Mackenzie
I woke up to the sexiest set of abdominals I’d ever seen. Jake was up and doing pull-ups across the room, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweat pants that barely sat on his hips.
My eyes started at the point where his sweatpants met the sculpted V of his pelvis, then slowly moved up to a stomach of carved muscle. I blinked. He was absolutely ripped. And try as I might, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. My brain told me to look away but my eyes had their own agenda. They were going to absorb as much of this eye-candy for as long as it was on show.
I bit into my lip to contain the sigh, spellbound by the pull and flex of his muscles beneath honey-toned skin. I was mesmerized and probably being a little bit creepy lying there as still as a mouse, watching him. But, hey, I was a hot-blooded woman.
I glanced at the window. It was still dark outside. My eyes darted to the clock above the window and in the dim light of the dying fire I could just make out the time. Two-thirty-eight AM.
I sat up.
“Boy, you’re really committed to your six-pack,” I joked, wiping sleep from my eyes.
I expected some kind of smart-ass retort from him, at least a sarcastic glance, but what I got was nothing.
Nada.
Not. A. Thing.
I sat up straighter. “Jake? Is everything okay?
He stopped his knee lifts and dropped to the floor. When he stood up he kneaded the palms of his hands with his thumbs.
“I don’t mean to burst your bubble or anything, Z, but I don’t exercise to look good or be healthy. Do you really think I give a fuck about my well-being?”
The scruffy jaw, unkempt hair and look of pure distain for life on his face told me that no—he was giving no fucks. But the six-pack and the thick bulge of muscles on his arms, chest and shoulders were beacons of hope that somewhere deep inside him, Jake Pennington was simply looking for a way out of the darkness.
“You train so hard,” I said hoarsely.
“You want to know why I train hard? It’s because it’s the only time I’m not thinking about Tyler and the fact that I killed him.”
There was a strange feeling in the air. This was the first time Jake had ever brought up the subject of Tyler and his death. Since meeting him at Squire Tucks three days ago, we had both managed to sidestep it, but I knew it was never far from his mind. And what he’d just told me confirmed it.
Silence hung between us for a moment before I spoke.
“It was an accident, Jake,” I said finally. “No one blames you for what happened.”
His jaw ticked as he thought about what I said. “I do.”
I walked across the bed on my knees and reached for him, taking his hand in mine and guiding him to sit down.
“I get that you do. But, Jake, self-blame is one of the worst demons to let into your head. I know. Because for a long time I blamed myself for what happened to me. I filled my head up with a lot of what ifs and it almost made me crazy.” My fingers tightened around his. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Just like I didn’t.” I swallowed hard as Derek Jones’s face briefly swung before me. “Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. And that’s the simple truth.”
His beautiful gaze had dropped to our entwined fingers, so I gently shook them so he would look at me. “You need to move forward from the self-blame and start healing.”
He stood up abruptly, breaking our handholding, and I watched, fascinated by the movement of strong back muscles as he began his pull-ups again.
I felt powerless. Yet, I needed to do something to ease his pain.
“You know, after the incident . . . I felt like what happened to me was what defined me. That when people saw me it was like “oh, there’s Mackenzie Eden, you know, the one who was stalked and . . .”
Abducted. I still had a hard time saying it.
Abducted.
Abducted.
Abducted.
I closed my eyes. Yes, I had been abducted. But I had survived. I was surviving.
“It took me a while before I realized that I was so much more than that.” I looked at him. He had stopped doing his pull-ups and was watching me intently. Light from a dying fire bounced off his smooth skin, deepening the shadows across his muscles. As he dropped to the floor again, his muscles rippled and flexed across his belly.
His voice was hoarse. “I’m pleased you found your way out of the darkness, Z. But I’m just not there yet.”
I nodded. People healed at their own pace. “You will be, one day.”
In the glow of the fire his face softened.
“You should go back to sleep,” he said.
“Only if you do.”
He raised an eyebrow and I felt the mood lift. “Is there any point in me fighting you?”
I grinned and relaxed. “I like that you’re a quick learner.”
His smile was subtle and closed-lipped, but at least it was a smile.
He climbed into bed and secured his arms around me, and I could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat against my cheek.
I raised my face and it brushed the fullness of his beard. Without thinking, I reached up and ran my fingers through its thickness, enjoying the softness against my skin. I didn’t say anything, I just lay there listening to the thud of his heartbeat and falling in love with the heat of his body against mine.
It was Jake who broke the silence.
“Tyler and I used to grow beards before the playoffs. I’d just started growing mine when he died.” I felt his chest sink and expand with a deep breath. “There didn’t seem any point in shaving it off at the time. And when I realized it allowed me a certain amount of anonymity I decided to keep it.”
“I like it,” I whispered.
“I do, too. It keeps the rest of the world out.”
I frowned and rose up on one elbow, and looked down into the depths of his blue eyes. In the light of a dying fire they gleamed like dark orbs of onyx.
“What do you mean?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed deeply.
“I guess it makes me feel less exposed.” He turned his beautiful face to me and the vulnerability I saw there made my heart hurt with sadness. “People can’t see me and I don’t want them to.”
I had no words. Jake felt he needed to hide from the world, like some kind of monster and the thought was no less painful than a knife through my heart. When his tormented eyes found mine I longed to ease his pain.
“Do you think you will ever shave it off?” I asked.
He was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe one day,” he said. “If I ever have a reason to.”
My heart ached. But I didn’t reply right away. Instead, I lay back down and settled against him, pressing my cheek to his warm chest. My arm went around him.
“I sure hope that’s soon,” I murmured. “Because there’s a lot of people out there and you’re one of the best I’ve ever met.”
* * *