CHAPTER FIVE

TYSON

I wake with another hard-on. Bigger than the one I woke with yesterday. No morning wood here. It’s all her. The woman of every fantasy I’ve had.

When Lynne left the other night, I locked up, went straight to bed, and tossed and turned with long lost memories floating through my head. My reality blurred the lines of the animosity I’ve felt for her. I began to defrost, and it scared the fuck right out of me. My nerves ate away at my stomach. Branding me into a curled-up fetal position of balled-up torment. I hated it and loved it at the same damn time.

I knew who Lynne was before we met. The odd, beautiful rich girl. The one who didn’t quite fit in anywhere. I felt the same way she did. I grew up as a state welfare child. Living with a family who acquired me for money. They didn’t give a shit about me or anyone else. They provided me with a home, food, and clothes. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It took days for me to gather the courage to talk to Lynne, to ask her why she was wandering down the hall where we poor kids hung out. One day, I gathered that courage, sat by her at lunch, and we easily started talking about the book of poetry she was reading. I couldn’t have cared less about it, but it intrigued her, so I listened. When the five-minute alert bell rang, I walked her to class, left her there, and stayed clear until the next day, when I sat next to her again. Our conversations turned into talking about everything from the weather to the clothes some of the kids wore to school. I asked her out, we became inseparable, and she fought daily with her parents about me. I never knew what the word love meant until I fell for that innocent green-eyed girl. Love is the highest emotion of them all. You can fly, or you can crash. You can feel, or you can go numb. It’s a tricky thing to live with, and I’ve denied it for a long time.

I hated that I came between her and her family. Especially when I never had a real one myself, but when she convinced me she was nothing like them, I stayed away, let her handle them until the day I was ready to enlist. I couldn’t go without her. So, I bought a ring with a diamond you could barely see, asked her to marry me, and we started to plan; that is, until her mother stepped in calling me names whenever I called, and her father asked to see me. I wonder if she still has the ring.

I never told her any of this. On how he tried to tear me a new asshole. Tried to buy me off. I had hated that measly fucker before he tried handing me fifty thousand dollars to walk away. There was something in his beady little eyes that told me he was being forced to give me that money. I cast it aside as quickly as I did the money. The man was and still is too much of an arrogant prick to let anyone tell him what to do. Every day since then, I’ve wanted to kill the son of a bitch for not putting his daughter’s happiness before his own. I told him to fuck off and if he didn’t give her the wedding she wanted, I would expose him to the world. He blanched, his head shot back, and I explained about seeing him leaving the house down from mine several times during the day and night. That was the first time I found out he was fucking around behind his wife’s back. He caved just as easily as he defied my relationship with his daughter. He’s a pussy, a coward, and he’s the grit behind taking Lynne’s sickness and twisting it to his own fucked-up pleasure. I’m going to demolish him and anyone who stands in my way for what they’ve done.

Lynne’s words of what good will any of it do echo in my head. It will do me good to know I’ve destroyed him, and if he makes one move to try and drive a wedge between us, he’s as good as dead. I’ll ruin him and his precious reputation. I’ll fuck that entire family up the ass with information, and I’ll be damn sure to stand there and watch their empire crumble.

I roll my body out of bed, my dick soft and throbbing. The minute I crank on the shower, I look in the mirror and tell my reflection I’m changing. The old Tyson is back, and he’s going to fight for what he wants. I have to, or I’ll become a dead man over this. I’m not ready to forgive her just yet, but I’m willing to try. To talk and will the strength I possess to help both of us heal.

I have plans for Lynne today. No more thinking of that lousy fucking excuse of a father of hers, not until after I put her first.

My hand slides down the length of my cock the minute I step in and allow the heated water to soak into my skin. The more he grows, the more painful he becomes. God, I ache for her. This is wrong in so many ways. My dick should not be coated by my hand; it should be coated by her pussy, her mouth, her hand, and yet here I am taking a shower before work thinking of Lynne. Stroking my dick with a reminder of the way she was looking at my naked chest. She wanted to touch me as badly as I did her. Christ, how I wish she were here with her legs spread wide and my face in between them.

With one excruciating painful talk, the woman has made her way back into my life, and it sheds a dead layer of skin from me, leaving clean flesh that could easily be diced into pieces. I should be running, avoiding her at all costs. I can’t. Now that she’s admitted the truth, it’s dulled the burn. Aspired my fantasies. And I’m riding some sort of high that she found the strength to find me herself. To explain in her words and not someone else’s that she was wrong.

I stroke my cock with one hand while rolling my balls in the other, my fingers gliding over the slicked head. The veins are angered and protrude out. Closing my eyes, I try and remember the last time Lynne and I were together. Teenagers, exploring, learning, and driving one another mad with burning desire. I loved her more than I could begin to describe. I cherished her, wanted to give her everything when I had nothing to give except a young man with goals to make the woman he loved happy. It was enough for her. I was enough. I know I was.

Everything we did together put a smile on her face; the movies, roller skating, or simply swimming at the beach. My girl didn’t need the fancy shit. The high-class parties where the parents sat around discussing who made more money that day, while the kids secretively snuck out to drink a bottle of expensive whiskey they stole from their parents’ stock. She wanted me. A poor white boy.

My dick swells in my hands from remembering the first night we made love. I worked her body with my mouth, my fingers, and eventually we explored sex for the first time, together. I never took her roughly, always slowly, passionately, and it was the best fucking feeling in the world to make love to her. Right now, as the first squirt of my come hits the wall of my shower, I’d give anything to experience that all over again, to make love instead of fuck. Or to fuck while making love to her. A face that has never escaped my mind. A woman who has never left my heart and who never will.

***

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get your boots off my desk, asshole.” I shove Riddick’s legs off the edge of my desk after dropping a couple of files off to my captain. Both his and Jude’s laughter rings out in the small area of the precinct the three of us share. Jerks.

“Fuck off. Neither one of us has spoken to you since the other day. You were pissy and shitting down everyone’s throats for two weeks. The normal Tyson, and now today, you’ve been sitting there with a smile all over your face. Something’s going on. So, the way I see it, I can’t have my new boots covered in the horseshit that’s piling up in here, man. Either you finally talked it out with Lynne, and Christ, I hope that’s it, or you hit your head on the sidewalk.” I feel the skin around my eyes crinkle upward. I do owe them some sort of explanation for my behavior today. Shit, I owe them justification for years of being a complete and utter bastard.

These two were out in the field yesterday, while I worked the desk. I called in for flowers to be delivered, did my job, and went straight home. This morning, I came in and set about doing some paperwork while making a call to Dane to run a check on Lynne’s father for me. Dane has a nose like a K9, ears like a bat, and eyes as sharp as a nocturnal animal’s in the night. He can sniff out when a person took their last piss, and I’m going to have him dig until he can find something other than Richard’s marital discretions to wrench that prick down from his throne. I know the dirty Hollywood leech is sucking the blood out of someone. Covering his tracks. Whatever it is, I’m going to find out.

Now, I’m sitting here trying to figure out where to take her tonight. She and I still need to talk, sort things out, and we can’t do it publicly. That leaves two options, her place or mine. And there is no way in hell she’s coming back to my place, not until I can treat her the way a woman should be treated. Fuck, I don’t even own a set of pots and pans, let alone a table for her to eat at.

“I talked with Lynne the other night. There are things I need to tell you, just not here.” Jude meets my eyes, grinning like a damn fool, while Riddick’s brows rise a notch, his eyes not blinking for several drawn-out seconds. I squeeze my eyes shut when his expression begins to soften. I’ve been at the opposite end of many stare downs from him. Over half of them, I was too drunk to remember. When I open them to witness a gleam of thankfulness in his eye instead of disappointment, anger, or frustration, it eases more of the dull ache in my chest. It’s a short-lived look. One he’s experienced along the same stretch of highway. It’s having your heart beat rapidly in your throat when you think of the woman you’ve always loved. When you see her face, hear her voice, and push your anger over the edge of a cliff, allowing it to die and to replace your life with gratitude, happiness, and the knowledge of starting over or finishing where you left off.

“Tyson, we’ve waited years for you to fill us in. We’ll wait as long as it takes. This isn’t about us; it’s about you and her.” I have to look away after hearing Jude say that. For years, I’ve lived a life full of hate, trying to put my mind into a coma by fucking, drinking, and doing things I’m ashamed to admit. It was the only way I could erase her from my head. To take away the anger, the pain that held my heart captive in unbreakable chains. Not once did I turn to my two best friends, who are before me now telling me to get on with it. To do what I feel is right for me. I feel the weight being lifted already.

“I’m ready. Let me get through tonight with her.” I shoot them a sly grin. They’ve worried about me enough. I’m done hurting them. Done hurting myself over something that was completely out of my control.

“We’re here whenever you’re ready,” Riddick replies with a cocky smirk.

“I appreciate it. You mind telling me what that grin is for?” His smile widens; it’s damn close to blinding me.

“Richard Chapman. Are you going after the dirtbag? Because if you are, that’s one Goddamn situation you aren’t shutting us out of. I want that motherfucker about as badly as you do.” I doubt that. Although with the shit he did to Cora, I’ll allow him to stand second in line.

“You bet your ass I am. It would be my pleasure to slap some cuffs on him, watch him squirm, and interrogate him all the way to prison,” I answer furiously.

“I’m already on it. There’s no way he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s too shady to be clean,” Jude snaps. Fingers are clicking away on the keys of his laptop. Fuck me. I don’t deserve these two, but fuck all if my insides aren’t lighting up like a stormy sky. I fucking love these guys.

“You know I can handle him, right? I mean, come on, don’t you two think you’ve been through enough?”

“Not when it comes to family, we haven’t,” Jude implies, lifts his chin my way without looking up from his screen. My heart has been bleeding out for years, holes poked until there have been days I didn’t want to live, and here I stand with tears in my eyes over this selected family of mine I couldn’t have hand-picked any better if I had tried.

“I feel the same way. You good if I take off?” I bid, pushing my emotions down.

Jude peaks over the edge of his glasses, a choked-out laugh escaping his throat. “Man, you’re scaring the piss out of me with being all nice and shit. Before you go, I want you to know I went and spoke with Lynne the other day.”

I knew that motherfucker had something up his sleeve after talking to him in the hall. “She told me,” I lie. I’m not going to chew his ass out for having my back. What I will do is acknowledge him for having it. I’ll let Lynne know Jude told me and leave it at that. If his talk pushed her to come see me, then so be it. It’s done, over, and I’m moving on. “I’ll catch you both later.”

Emotions controlled, I grab my helmet off my desk, make my way down the hall and out the door with not a care in the world except for treating Lynne right. It’s an unaccustomed feeling that grips me by the balls and squeezes my lungs. The only thing that matters to me at this moment is thoroughly talking this out. As I crank up my bike and start to weave my way toward her house, a thought of how to do that strikes me. It’s been so long since I’ve dated. Hell, I’m hoping my sensors are remotely correct and she’s on the same page as I am. I need her back even if everything we say to each other lashes out and strikes my skin hard.

Everything looks foreign to me as I pull down her small street, one I’ve been down many times. It’s as if I’m reliving a part of my life all over again. The part where a young kid shows up in a neighborhood he shouldn’t be in. All those memories fade when I come to a stop in her driveway, flip up the shield on my helmet, and watch her climb out of her car with a grocery bag in her hands. Her eyes locking shocked onto mine.

I’ve wished many times to be able to resemble an intense moment like this. Where I could set the pause button on my life, press rewind, or fast forward to monumental instances similar to this. For my wife to be waiting for me to come home. Dinner. Laughter and this spark. God, this flaming spark between her and me. To be able to experience some of the best feelings in my life over and over again. They would never grow old. They would never stop, and I would never get tired of seeing her look at me this way. I feel her energy from here. It’s pulling me toward her, tugging at the tattered strings on my heart. Sucking me into the world I’m welcoming with open arms.

Questions flurry across her face. Answers dangle in the warm breeze of the air. It’s time to battle. Time to win the war that’s been beating me down for thirteen years. I can do this. I can be the man I was meant to be. For her.

Her contact roams over my face as I tug off my helmet. It’s full of a powerful passion that sets my soul on fire.

“Hi,” she says. The sound of her sweet voice is enough for me to realize that this is really happening. That the opportunity to put my life back together is standing mere feet away from me in a white off-the-shoulder top, a pair of black shorts, and heels with a strap winding around her ankle and ending shy of her knees. I’m fucked. Royally screwed. She’s stunning.

“Hey.” I hang my helmet on the handlebars, swing my leg around, and make my way to her. I would hang the moon right now to be able to pick her up and carry her inside the house. To strip her of everything but those heels and take my time memorizing every dip, every curve, and every shape of her body. It’s a slow-burning ache that has subdued my conscious mind. It’s draining my brain. Running a ruckus of years of pent-up emotional hazards that I’ve spent hating her right out of my open veins and melting them into the hot cement below my feet.

“I…um…I thought we could have dinner here. Maybe sit on the beach and talk.” A breath expels out of those pink-stained plump lips. Lips I need to taste and memorize again.

“Either that or you can hop on the back of my bike.” Preferably with those shoes on. I’m not hungry for food. I’m hungry for her. I need to cram it down about a thousand knots, or I’ll be fucking her and regretting it. Our relationship is delicate. Hell, I don’t even know what to call it at this point. A new beginning. Fuck if I know what’s happening here. I’m all in down this free-flowing highway once we get over the speedbumps, the potholes, and the curves that have slowed us down. Until then, my cloudy thoughts need to stay lodged in my dirty little intellect.

“Um. If that’s what you want.” She bites her bottom lip. My dick screams, I’m down here.

“Another time. Tonight, I’d like to sit around and talk.” She releases her lip, smiles, and sighs. I’m totally screwed.

“Thank you for the flowers. Would you mind?” She hands me the bag, bends down, and gives me the perfect view of her ass as she leans in her car and retrieves the giant vase out of a box. Fuck. My thoughts aren’t going anywhere. My hands, however, want to grip her hips, shove her ass into my groin and allow her to wiggle. To let her see what she’s doing to me. Fucking hell. My dick is really screaming now.

“You’re welcome,” I answer, swallowing. I’m a nervous wreck. A stranded man along the road in the dark. Fucked and screwed over. Hurt and bleeding out, and there is more to come.

“I love them, Tyson. You remembered my favorite color.”

“I remember everything about you, Lynne.” I close my eyes wishing I could inhale those words back. That ache hitting me square in the chest again. I hate that I’m hurting her. “Damn it. I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“I know, Tyson. It’s going to take time. I have all the time in the world. Let’s go inside,” she says with sorrow. It’s her eyes, though, that give me hope, which simmer with the one memory I can’t ignore. Lynne is looking at me as if I’m the world she’s talking about. I’m all the way in. Heart, head, body, and soul.