Chapter Twenty-Four

Stefanie

I woke up slowly. Warmth wrapped around me, making me feel safe and cozy. In the recesses of my mind, I knew I was dreaming. I had to be. My body felt heavy and light at the same time. Well rested.

It wasn’t until I felt his bristly kiss at my shoulder that I realized he was in bed with me.

He picked us. My heart skipped a beat.

“I know you’re awake,” his deep voice rumbled behind me. I wiggled closer to him, his hardness nestled between my cotton-covered butt cheeks.

“You slept with me.”

“That couch is tiny,” he muttered. I smiled against the pillow and opening my eyes slowly, staring out to the room.

“The couch is fine; you’re just a giant,” I quipped and felt another kiss on my shoulder.

“You okay to talk now?” he asked into my hair. I took a deep breath before turning around to face him.

I’d started my day to the sight of his face more than once, and every time I did, it took me by surprise.

The line of his nose. The soft sprinkles of freckles you didn’t know existed unless you were really close. The masculinity of his jaw and closely trimmed beard that had started to have salt sprinkled into it. If that wasn’t enough to make a woman weak in the knees and tossing her panties to the side, there were his eyes.

His eyes made everything better.

As growly and surly as he could be, withholding the words I’d wanted to hear, his eyes gave away everything when they looked at me.

“It’s a little early to talk, isn’t it?” I whispered, my hand resting on the furnace that was his chest. He’d slept with only his boxer briefs on, and by the thick bulge, he was very happy to see me.

“I’m really sorry for leaving,” he sincerely said. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I freaked.”

“I know,” I whispered back even though it was clearly day time with the way the sun was shining in through the windows and it was just the two of us. “I get it. Knee-jerk reaction and all that.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I know.” I swallowed hard. “Because I can’t do this again.”

“What?”

“I love you, Garrett Wright, but…” I took a moment to breathe and get the right words together, even though there would never be any right words. “I can’t try again.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” he growled.

“I…” I watched him retreat, push off the bed, and stand up. His large, strong body paced back and forth before he turned to look at me.

“I fucked up,” he repeated.

“You pushed me away,” I weakly used as an excuse.

“So now it’s your turn to do it to me?” he threw out, and I stilled.

Was that what I was doing?

“Geez, woman, you drive me crazy!” he burst out saying. Unsure if he had hit the nail on the head and not wanting to deal with him, I hopped out of bed, unashamed of being braless and in undies. I needed space between us.

“Good!” I bent to get my jeans and bra from the floor. “I’m glad I drive you nuts,” I muttered, and when I turned, he was right.

Right. Freaking. There.

His massive chest rose and dropped. “The feeling’s mutual,” I tried to hiss out, but I knew I wasn’t convincing when our eyes met.

“Is it mutual?” His eyes flared a darker brown, if that was possible without turning completely black. “Because I fucking love how you drive me crazy.”

“That’s lunacy!”

“I love how you bust my balls and don’t let me get away with the shit everyone else does.”

“Really?” I poked his hard chest. “You love that I drive you nuts? Do you not hear how crazy that sounds?”

“That’s because I’m crazy about you!” He surprised me, and the next thing I knew, his lips were on mine.

My hands found their home in his hair, and it was like we were off to the races.

I didn’t know who had started what, and I didn’t care. I’d missed his mouth, his taste, the feel of him. I’d missed everything that was Garrett Wright. Need surged to the forefront, both of us lost in the riptide of lust and passion and love.

One moment I was standing next to him, and the other we were in bed, his body looming over mine, my legs wrapped around his narrow waist. When he pulled away, I reached to pull him back, too far gone in the moment to think about more than what our bodies clearly wanted.

“Sunshine,” he heaved, and I mewled. “Jesus, those sounds of yours will be the death of me.”

“Good,” I groaned, greedy for more, trying to pull him closer. Reaching his lips, I kissed him. Our mouths fused, and my skin burned with heat and need, groaning in frustration when he pulled back again.

“Forgive me.”

“Make me.”

“Babe. I’m serious,” he rasped as his forehead rested against mine. I took a gulp of air.

“Can’t we talk about this after?” I whined, and he chuckled.

“You make me laugh. You make me crazy. Don’t you see why you’re it for me?”

“Damn it, soldier, you can’t say things like that when I’m horny. It’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair in love and war, sunshine, don’t you know that?”

“Garrett,” I purred as he rolled his hips, grinding his steely tip just right.

“Give me another chance, baby.”

“I… I don’t know.” Shut up and give him whatever he wants, so he gives us what we want! a voice yelled at me. “I want to. I do.” God, so much. I wanted everything with him. I just didn’t know if I was brave enough.

“Let me earn your trust back,” he growled against my lips, doing that damn thing with his hips that left me begging for more, and he knew it took. I knew he could feel the way he moved his body against mine ruined my panties. “Fuck, you’re wet.”

“Soaked,” I clarified because I was, and if we weren’t going to play fair, it was a two-way street. I knew what dirty talk did to him. Not that I was one to talk; it totally got me off, too.

“Stefanie.” His warning sounded strangled, like he was barely holding on by a thread.

“Fuck me, Garrett, fill me up and hold me tight.”

“Goddamn it. So bossy,” he snarled, then he sat up on his haunches, and his hands moved to the waistband of my panties, and instead of pushing them down like I had expected him to do, he ripped them off like they were made of tissue paper.

One moment he was looking at my wet sex, and the next he was devouring it like an animal. A starving, feral animal.

My hands clenched the sheets, my mind and body powerless to anything but feeling him, letting him take me far to the edge and back. My eyes closed when minutes melted away to seconds, and seconds felt like hours. When his fingers entered the play, there was no stopping the sounds I was making. Unrecognizable, guttural sounds.

It wasn’t sexy or soft. It was loud and raw and real.

I begged in whispers, and when he flipped me to my stomach, his mouth back where I needed it, I bucked into his face, needing everything he could give. And damn, he was generous. All too fast, I flew off the edge, his fingers toying in areas I had never been touched, and my back arched before falling back to the bed, feeling his body against mine.

“Fuck,” he huffed, both of us out of breath. “Sweetest sunshine ever,” he muttered against my back as he peppered slightly tickling kisses down my spine before settling to the side of my body and pulling me in so I could rest my head on his chest.

“What about—” The words died on the tip of my tongue as I looked down at his cum-covered boxer briefs. “You did?” I asked, unable to hide my grin.

“You tasted too damn good.” His hoarse voice made his body vibrate beneath my ear as I settled into him and let the fatigue take over as he stroked my hair slowly with his fingers.

Love you, Garrett, I thought to myself as I dozed to sleep, unaware I’d said the words out loud.

Garrett

She snuck out on him.

Well, not really snuck out since she had left a note on her pillow, but it didn’t make her any less gone. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like waking up alone, reaching for her and finding nothing but a fucking piece of paper. He didn’t like her working a million and a half jobs, wearing herself thin, both figuratively and literally. It was alarming to him how much weight she’d lost since that morning at the hotel.

Not that he was in any better shape. Right after his talk with Nicola, he had missed his daily workouts here and there because he couldn’t think of anything other than her. He was obsessed. A love-sick fool. But like dear ole Doc had reminded him, he had to get his head on straight because without his shit being better, he would be useless to her.

Whether she got it or not, they were far from over. He had at least another thirty to forty years to graze this earth, and if he had it his way, which he was determined he would, she’d be beside him every step of the way.

That’s why he had to bite the bullet and why he found himself where he did after his workout at the hotel gym and a shower.

“What the hell do you want?” the old man rumbled as he opened the door to the modest ranch home.

“We need to talk.” He stood straight, his hands in his pockets as he looked at Kip.

“Fuck, no, we don’t,” the old man growled as he went to shut the door, but Garrett was younger and faster than him and put his hand on the door before it was slammed in his face.

“Kip.”

“You can call me Mr. McCallister, you know-it-all little shit.”

“Geez, man. I just need a moment.”

“You have five minutes, then I’m done with this conversation, and I’m done with you. Soon enough, hopefully, Stef will be, too.”

“I love her.”

“You said that already. Hell of a way of showing her.”

“I want to marry her,” Garrett said, his gaze never wavering from the man’s ice-cold one, and he didn’t miss the way he hesitated and sighed.

“Fucking kid’s been a pain in my ass since the day she walked into my bar,” he muttered. Garrett was ready to pull out the big guns.

“We both know that is a shit lie.”

“You sure?”

“About?”

“About marrying her. About putting her first no matter what or who, and you won’t play this leave ‘em and lose ‘em game so many of you kids play.”

“Mr. McCallister, I know she’s not your blood. But I also know, because she isn’t, because of the way you have watched over her that it’s a tighter bond. I’m not looking to hurt her—”

“Again. You mean hurt her again,” Kip interrupted, obviously trying to get a rise out of Garrett, but he was going to let the old man get his way.

“I messed up,” he admitted full-heartedly. “My head was in the wrong space.”

“Is it in the right one now?”

“Kip—”

“Is it? Because that girl does not need you to promise her rainbows and butterflies with a happily ever after. She’d hate it. What she does need is someone who is going to stick around in the good and especially in the bad. Show that girl people don’t just leave after they have taken everything they could.”

“No disrespect, but I think you taught her that.”

“Excuse me?” The old man’s brows furrowed together.

“Since the moment she walked into your bar, you’ve shown her there are good people in the world. People who love and care for their own. Who show kindness when others don’t think to look twice. She’s the woman she is today because of you, and that’s why I’m standing at your door right now, trying to have this conversation.”

Kip studied him, his ice-blue eyes scrutinizing everything about him. Garrett didn’t flinch. He wanted the old man to see he meant business. He was serious about Stefanie.

“I love her,” he repeated.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The old man stepped out and sat on one of the two porch chairs, pointing at Garrett to join him. “I knew this would happen one day.” Kip looked out and kept talking. “A poor unsuspecting soul would catch her attention, and she’d wrap her web around him. It’s the way of the world.”

“You make her sound like a spider.”

“Women can be.” He sighed. “But there are good ones and bad ones out there. That girl…”— he shook his head with a small smile playing on his lips—“is the best kind there is, and I’m not saying that because I had a hand in raising her however the hell I was able to. Hell no. She just was. Born that way. Sparkle in those eyes no matter what storm she was facing, determination for more than she had, which isn’t hard considering those foster homes were a piece of shit.” He went silent, lost in his own thoughts. Garrett gave him a moment.

“For whatever reason in life, I didn’t have kids, I didn’t make a family, and the one and only attempt at marriage was a fucking nightmare I’d rather not talk about.” Kip’s hands scrubbed his face. “But I had the pleasure of being able to be there, even if only in a standing at the sidelines kind of way with Stefanie and Sebastian.”

“Bash?” Garrett guessed.

“Aye.” The man shook his head, looking at Garret, and laughed. “Calm down. It’s not what you think, kid. Far from it. They used to be thick as thieves. Had to be to survive the shit hole house they were placed in. Though, I’ll admit, I knew the road Bash would take, and I worried she’d catch him in her web, but thankfully, it was only in the kind of way she cast her line with me. In a family way. He considers that girl a sister, whether she knows it or not…” He sighed. “As he’s been building his…well, let’s call it his business, so to speak, he’s always had an eye on her. Like an overprotective older brother.”

“Right,” Garrett gritted through his teeth, torn about what to feel. The caveman in him was green with jealousy, while the evolved part of him was glad she had that even if she had no clue she did.

“She’s going back to school. I’ve been trying to talk her into it for years, but as we both know, or you’ll soon find out, the girl’s stubborn.”

“She’s going back to school?” He grinned. He liked that. He liked that a lot.

“I’m gonna pay for it, and you or she won’t have shit to say about it.”

“Wait, what?”

“She’s working herself to the bone, doing these three asinine jobs to build a savings nest. One she doesn’t need because I’ve paid the tuition for the next two years.” Of course, that’s why she was working so much.

“I’ll give you my blessing if you please try and not knock her up until she’s done and graduated.” Kip stared at him with a scowl on his face. “It’d give you time to really get your shit together and ready for kids, because from what I hear, they can be a pain in the ass.” Garrett found himself chuckling and quickly agreeing.

“Okay. I can do that.”

“Now, do you have a ring?”

“I do.” Garrett stood up, took the box out of his pocket, and handed it to the old man. Kip whistled long and low.

“Damn, kid. Cops going to come looking for this?”

“No, sir.” He rolled his eyes.

“Alright, that’s all settled and done for. Can I go back to bed, or do you need something else from me?”

“There are one or two more things.” Garrett found himself grinning wide.