CHAPTER 14

SLAPPED IN THE

Face WITH MEMORIES

LANCE

When a person chooses to bury memories, there’s usually a reason. The span of time between my brother dying and my aunt realizing my mom was beating the shit out of me—verbally and physically—was the worst of my life. When we moved to Chicago, her beatings got worse instead of better, so I shut down. I locked everything away—all the good and the bad and everything else in between—and kept it stored in the dark place in my head.

It was almost like the mental place I go to when I get into a fight on the ice. Keeping the memories on lockdown is a lot easier than contending with them. Or at least I thought it was. But everything just changed.

I’ve been slapped in the face—not literally, I don’t think Poppy has a violent bone in her body—with a deluge of memories.

Now I understand why Poppy’s always felt so familiar. She is. Flickers of things long buried start to surface: my first week of school in Chicago, the still-healing bruises on my back and legs and knees, wearing pants when it was hot, all the attention from the teachers and other students.

A lot of the memories aren’t very pleasant, but the good ones that contain Poppy come hurtling to the surface now, obliterating everything else. She’s the strawberry blond girl with the long ponytail who looked like home.

Not home in the sense of parents and family, but familiar and comfortable, warm and welcoming.

For a while I’d tried to ignore her, but she was always in the same hall as me during third period, so eventually I caved. I pulled her ponytail because I wanted to touch her hair and see what kind of reaction I’d get. Her smile, so curious and innocent, was something I’d forgotten existed.

I’d never bothered to find out her name. Comfortable things were alluring but untenable for me back then. Hell, mostly they still are. Stability was frightening. After we moved to Chicago, everything—my mum’s happiness, my well-being and safety—was contingent on my success. And failure, perceived or real, required punishment. I accepted this because I knew I had failed my mum in the worst way possible.

Even after my aunt realized what was going on and my mum moved to Connecticut, I still didn’t trust the peace. I would push my aunt’s buttons, waiting for her to lash out, to the fill the void my mother’s absence had created. It wasn’t an absence in the sense that I missed her, but without the constant verbal and physical violence that had become normal, expected, anticipated even, I didn’t know what to do. I waited for the slaps—the physical attacks, the breaking me down emotionally. But they never came. And I didn’t understand it.

So I picked fights on the ice, needled players until they cracked. And I let them get in solid hits before I shut them down. If that didn’t satisfy the need for violence that had been conditioned into me, I would destroy my own property and myself.

I wasn’t prepared to interact with anyone appropriately, so it was better for me not to know her name. Yet here she is, more than a decade later, and she still feels more like home than anyone I’ve ever known. I get it now. All my reactions to her make sense. Finally.

She skims my knuckles with her fingertips. “Before they opened the door, you told me to remember who you were in that closet, because that was the real you.”

That was probably the last time I was real with anyone. I remember what the rest of that night looked like. I remember the aftermath of it, too, and I know why I buried this memory. Because it was pure, and I didn’t think I deserved to have something so good. So I forced myself to forget it.

“You were so sweet.” The alarm on her phone goes off. She silences it.

“It’s time, pretty Poppy,” I whisper, and I’m right back in that closet with her, all those years ago.

I bring her hands up, and she clasps them around my neck. Her palm curves against the back of my head. She’s still so small compared to me. Her body is flush with mine.

My lips touch the corner of her mouth before I press them gently against hers. She doesn’t open for me, so I just appreciate the softness for a few seconds before I pull away.

“Was it like that?” I ask.

“Exactly like that. I wanted you to kiss me again, and I was angry at myself for wasting those six minutes.”

“I did kiss you again.” I’d tried not to be pushy, but she’d tasted so sweet, like she does now. Once I started kissing her, I hadn’t wanted to stop.

“But it could have lasted a lot longer.”

“I’m glad I talked to you instead. This time will you open your mouth a little?”

“Yes.”

When I press my lips to hers, I feel the velvet stroke of her tongue across my bottom lip. I don’t grab her ass, even though I wanted to then, and I want to now. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in close. I skim her hip and explore her mouth with my tongue, and like that first time, she lets me lead.

She kisses me back, tentative, and then she grows bold, our tongues dancing. She’s not innocent anymore, not like when we were kids. She’s given someone else her other firsts, but that kiss—that still belongs to me.

She presses her curves against me and makes a small, plaintive sound. I could kiss her forever. I could live in this memory—past fused with the present. This kiss would be my heaven.

I realize, though, that I can’t keep Poppy in this closet for the rest of our lives, and that if we keep going, I’m definitely going to want to get her naked—okay, I already do—and make her come. I want to know what my name sounds like as a moan on her lips. I want to see her cheeks flush when I whisper how sexy she is, because I know under these clothes is a gorgeous body begging to be worshiped.

But I’ve already made enough mistakes when it comes to Poppy, so instead I slow the kiss, scale back on the tongue, loosen my hold on her, and open the closet door.

I take her face in my hands and press a few semi-chaste kisses to her lips. Then I go back for one more with tongue because I don’t have as much self-control as I’d like.

When I try to leave the closet, Poppy wraps her arms more tightly around me and tries to pull the door closed again.

“What’re you doing?” I ask around her tongue.

“Adding another seven minutes.”

I laugh, but then it’s not me leading anymore, it’s her. I don’t try to slow her down again, but instead of staying where we are, I take a step back, then another and another until I hit the opposite wall.

If it’s her against it, not me, I’m liable to find a nice warm home for my thigh between her legs, or worse, I’ll use the convenience of the wall as a great way to keep her pinned as I lift her up and wrap her legs around my waist.

And she’d let me. The tension between us has been building for a while now, and all this truth is unraveling the tenuous control I’ve been holding on to when it comes to her.

But if I fuck this up, I stand to lose a lot. Poppy’s touch is the first to be enjoyable in my entire adult life, and I want to find out exactly how good it is when we’re naked. And that’s not happening tonight.

She moves her palm from the back of my neck to my cheek. I have a brief moment of panic in which flashes of Tash touching me like this threaten to ruin the moment. Every hint of gentleness with Tash was balanced with aggression. But this is different. Poppy is almost careful, and as much as I like the way that feels, it makes me nervous. She has a new, different kind of power over me, and I’m not sure how to deal with that.

When her hand moves to my chest, I cover it with mine.

She pulls back; worry making her sparkling eyes wide. “Sorry.”

I lift her palm back to my cheek and drag her fingers along my jaw, then I kiss the tip of each one, resisting—just barely—the urge to bite or suck on them. My dick is achingly hard.

“I’m going to go home now.” Jesus. It sounds like I gargled with razor blades.

“You don’t have to leave yet.” Her eyes drop, her teeth pressing into her lip.

“Poppy, look at me.”

Her gaze lifts. She’s hurt. I can read it in her expression.

“I’m not leaving because I don’t want you. I’m leaving because I do.”

“But I—”

“If I’m going to have to see a different massage therapist for the rest of my life, I’m sure as hell not going to screw up my chances of getting more kisses like that from you by jumping the gun tonight. Your body is a gift I want to earn the right to enjoy. Okay?”

That changes the hurt to a tender smile. “Okay.”

“Can I steal one more kiss, though?”

“Please.”

I savor her—taste her mouth, sample the sweetness of her tongue and the press of her body against mine. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want her. I don’t want to claim, fuck, devour. I want to be worthy, and I’m afraid I never will be.

This is exactly what makes me a bad person, because that won’t stop me. I’ll get inside her. I’ll find out how good it feels to be with her, even if I never deserve her.