CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gavin
I was a man who rarely tasted temptation.
Not because there weren’t tempting vices around me, but because nothing got my blood flowing enough to risk sin to have it. Women, drugs, alcohol—I’d never been interested beyond reason, like so many others. They were everywhere in my life. Free drinks, willing women, coke at the after party; I could fall into temptation and never see the end of it.
Maybe that’s why I avoided it. Self-preservation was a good enough excuse.
But it didn’t feel right.
I knew it was the feeling I felt right now. From birth to ten-years-old, I felt nothing. Not love, not want, not contentment. It wasn’t until I got fostered out to the Birks, and I saw the scrawny little girl out front playing hopscotch, did I feel something.
Jas could blame me all she wanted, she could drive our love into the ground, but there was a reason I never loved again. She was it. She made me feel where there was only emptiness. And right now, I was catapulted back to a time where I could have her, feel her… want her.
Showering together was our thing. Wet, soapy bodies. Slippery, hungry hands. She was doing this on purpose. Even if she didn’t understand why, she was torturing me. Showing me what I was missing, what I broke.
So I was a man who rarely tasted temptation, but right now, I wanted to feast on it. Bend her over and drive into her relentlessly until she shuddered around my cock.
My hard cock. I hadn’t so much as looked twice at my cock for weeks. But it was harder than it had ever been before, straining as it stood, wanting so badly to slip into her and fade away.
And her body. Damn it, her body. My heart saddened at the sight of it at the same time I wanted to lick, suck, get to know each inch again. She was five-eight—I never forgot a thing—and skinny; she always had been. She had a tiny waist with her hip bones poking out, but tits two times too large for her body. They always took the breath from my lungs. They were a righteous pair of tits. Heavy, ripe, tender with smooth flesh and the sexiest dark pink nipples. Long, pale legs, leading down to the cutest feet; my mind turned to mush. Long neck I wanted to wrap my fingers around while I drove into her. Gorgeous, dark hair wet and matted to her face. Her beautiful face was flushed and her long, brown lashes were wet and fawning. And her lips. Her fucking lips. They were constantly puckered, supple, and a shade of pink that didn’t exist outside of her.
How could I ever be so stupid to think there was life after beauty this intense? She was burning with color and this lush state of enticement oozed from her every pore. In a way, she was made for me. She had to be. Killing me that hard.
I was lost in a haze of lust.
But I was also struck with a punch of heartbreak. I had this. I had her and I blew it. Like touching heaven, I’d been falling toward hell ever since our divorce. I wanted to crawl from the pit and touch her again, have her again… marry her again.
It pissed me off that I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She still loved me, I knew that, could see it in her eyes, but she didn’t like me; I could see that too. The curl of her lip, the pain of heartache in her eyes—she blamed me too much to ever just break through her walls.
But what other choice did I have than to break down her walls?
Something told me the only reason I made it out of that chopper alive was because I’d thought of her. As I lay there in the rubble of metal and screaming men, as pain burned in my blood, I thought of the one that got away.
The one I pushed away.
I wanted her back, but I didn’t think she’d ever want me the same way again.
That was the true tragedy in all this. Not the broken bones, or the memories; I lost the only person who ever loved me without question.
And nothing I did would bring her back.
She left me in the shower for a moment, returning a few minutes later dressed in fresh dark gray sweats and a long sleeve shirt the color of her lips, this pastel pink. She’d put her hair in a damp bun and had a dry towel over her shoulder.
Without speaking, she held out her hand, helping me stand so I could hobble over the lip in the shower. It was as painful the second time as it had been the first time. The pain in my leg twisted and turned my threshold for the sensation inside out. It turned my thoughts into monsters. Everything I’d faced and had to face came into focus, and it was too painful to think about.
When I’d gotten back into my chair, she guided me away from the steam, and stood behind me, drying my hair. I spotted her sweet face in the mirror as she took her time drying every strand with the towel; her hands on my scalp sent shards of good through a body riddled with bad.
I let my head fall back so she could reach the longer strands, completely unabashed that my dick was still hard. Wasn’t any point trying to hide it now. She’d washed my shaft, gripping my cock as she washed me. My balls filled with heat and her fingers dug into my scalp so deep, I heard myself moaning.
“Gavin,” she warned quietly, dropping the towel in my lap. “Would you put that thing away already?”
“What do you want me to do about it?” I sneered. “Wank it right here?”
She sighed dramatically. “If you need five seconds, I can wait outside.”
I leaned back and glared at her. Her eyes were shimmering with humor, glittering a soft shade of gray. If I weren’t so damn annoyed with her attention—and not the kind I wanted—on my dick, I’d mention how beautiful they were. “I forgot how un-funny you were. And it’s more like an hour. You know that. My stamina’s one of my quintessential personality factors.”
She let out a snort behind me, grabbing hold of my chair and pushing me out into the bedroom where our things lay scattered around. “You’re so cocky.”
I grinned to myself and shrugged. “Some things are the way they are. Just boxers, all right?” I bent down as carefully as I could and pulled the pack of briefs from the shopping bags. I cringed. “Calvin Klein is going to shit a brick.”
“Why?”
“I have a contract with them. I can’t wear any other underwear for five years. It’s kind of one of my trademarks. Getting glimpses of the waistband when I’m on the ice.” There were worse trademarks to have.
She was quiet for a moment. “I know, Gav.”
She knew? I ripped the boxers open with my teeth and tore a pair out. Did that meant she’d followed my career? I’d wondered, countless times, if that she’d seen a single winning goal, or watched a game at all. Of course, there were things I’d hoped she hadn’t seen, like the women and the gossip.
I slipped the boxers over both feet one handed, and managed to get them up to my knees, before I needed a break. I couldn’t even put my own underwear on.
“Let me help,” she offered. “All I need is for you to lift up for a second.”
I wondered if I should have left the hospital in that moment. Her face was so close to me as she managed to wriggle my briefs up my leg. She let my waistband go and stepped back with a relieved sigh. She was glad to have my dick covered. Either because she didn’t want to see it, or she did.
Judging by how tight her grip had been on me in the shower, I suspected it was the latter.
“Do you want to lie down?” she asked.
It was crazy how long we’d gone apart, and how all I wanted was to erase the distance. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
Getting into bed was as hard as showering. Once on top of the covers, she began propping my leg and arm up on pillows. I hated this. The pain and the confinement were going to drive me crazy. I relaxed my muscles and closed my eyes, breathing through the pain.
“I need another pill,” I gasped, pressing my teeth together until my jaw hurt enough to distract me from the worse pain.
“The doctor said—”
“I don’t give a damn what the doctor said. Give me the fucking pills,” I growled, glowering at her.
She shook her head at me and turned, leaving with a wounded look on her face.
I groaned miserably. I didn’t need to add more guilt to my growing list of unpleasant emotions.
“Here’s your pills.” She catapulted them at my chest. “You control them now.”
I grabbed them and twisted the top, taking two dry. I let the bottle fall to my side and covered my eyes with my good arm. I didn’t look to know if she were gone. I knew it. Her absence took all the good and warmth in the room with her, leaving me in a horrible mood.
It was nice to have her as a distraction, and even so, there were so many things wrong and broken. Things I didn’t want to think about, like Orson; things I didn’t want to face, like my team. Things I refused to accept, like the ending of my career.
I’d been alone lost in my thoughts for at least an hour when she returned. I hadn’t moved. Hadn’t so much as considered doing it. The pills created a low dull white noise in the back of my skull that numbed the sound of the propellers.
Whop, whop, whop.
You survived.
Whop, whop, whop.
Orson didn’t.
Whop, whop, whop.
She’ll never want you back.
“Can we talk?” I cleared my throat to free it of the ache, and spotted her. She was sitting on the floor organizing our clothes and the things Lance had bought.
She didn’t say yes or no, so I took control.
“I’m sorry for being a dick. Maybe if I distract myself with things I can think about right now, all that other horrible shit I don’t want to face goes away for a few minutes. I don’t know. What I do know is that I really appreciate that you’re here, Jas. I like being able to see you again, to have you around—I don’t want to mess that up. I’m going to try not to.”
She looked down, closing her eyes for a moment. Then she looked at me softly. “Thank you, Gavin. I appreciate that. I don’t blame you, though. I wouldn’t be in a good place either. I don’t even think I’d be where you are. You’re allowed to be upset. What you went through.” She shook her head, her eyes glossy. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like.”
“Don’t even try. I don’t want that shit in your head.” Leave it in mine, where it festered; where it unfortunately belonged. Feeling a bit loose, which I suspected was a product of the pills, I patted the space on my right. “Come lay down with me.”
“With you?”
I smiled softly at the horrified furrow between her brows. “I’ll keep the one hand I have to myself. Promise. You know what you do to me, baby. You take the roaring in my head and turn it into a whisper. You always have.”
She sat back, her lips opening into a soft O. She closed her mouth and her throat bobbed. “I never did that for you. And if I did, that was before.”
Before. “Before I fucked it up?”
“Something like that.”
I hated the pain in her voice. “Can we talk, really talk? I promise to keep my cool.”
“No.”
“Not about what you think I did. But after. We never talked about after. Not with anyone.” I didn’t have to ask if she’d spilled her guts. I could see her guts churning in her eyes every single time she looked at me. I held my right arm out. “Lay with me.”
She stood, but she didn’t come to me. She clasped her hands in front of her and her chest moved rapidly. Panic ensued in her gaze, turning the gray in her eyes into liquid metal. The sight of her took my breath away. And with that, ache moved into the missing places.
“As friends?” she whispered. “We can be friends,” she repeated, as if she were trying to convince herself of that, too.
“You want to be my friend, Jas?” I gazed up at her, wishing I was well. But if I were well, she wouldn’t be here.
“We were friends once, before we were anything else.” She took a step toward me.
I knew in that moment that if I didn’t concede, I’d lose her completely. If friendship was all I could have from her, then I had to take it. “I’d love to be your friend. To have you back in my life. I need you in my life.” The emotion in my voice shocked me.
I felt raw, ripped apart for her to see.
Her eyes welled with tears. “Why me, Gavin? When you woke up in the hospital, why did you want me? We haven’t talked in years.”
At that point, lying would only push her further away. It felt like she was a million miles away, but still within eyesight. Like a mirage I wanted so desperately to be true. She slipped through my fingers when I reached for her, but I saw her, I saw more than I’d ever have her again. “When the engine cut out in our chopper, and panic set in, I didn’t scream once.”
She stepped closer.
“I saw your face instead. I saw your face and—” I choked on my sob and forced it down. “And all I wanted in that moment was to be with you. To touch you, see you, hear your beautiful voice. The four years between us didn’t matter, didn’t even make sense. And I knew, in my heart, that I would never see you again as the sound of the propellers churned and I careened toward earth, all I wanted was you, Jasmeen.”
She covered her mouth with her hands and did the sobbing for me.
“But I know I can’t walk in here and expect you to be over what happened. That isn’t fair. And it’s a real dick move. But I want that. I want to forget the last four years ever happened and go back to how we were. We were so good together,” I insisted, fighting through the burn in my eyes.
She moved the hands over her mouth over her eyes, and then she shook her head. Not in denial, but in disbelief. “I can’t, Gavin.”
“I know,” I hurriedly continued before I lost her. “I know you can’t. I just wanted you to know how I felt. I’m not going to push you, unless you want to be pushed. If all you want is to be my friend, then that’s all I want, too.”
“I—” she began, dropping her hands to gaze at me in torture. “That isn’t fair, leaving that up to me.”
“Why not, baby?”
“Because I want that too!” she screamed, shooting heartbroken daggers at me. “That’s all I ever wanted. The distance gone and you in its place. But that can’t happen. It can’t!”
Because she didn’t forgive me. I didn’t blame her. If she’d been the one to leave me—
I couldn’t even finish the thought without being filled with rage and… hurt. Hurt because we were the other’s everything. You can’t feel what we felt and not know the other felt the same. Love was a two-way street. Lust had a fork in the road, and hate went alongside love, but they never went to the same places.
“Can I apologize? I need to if we’re going to be friends.”
She cried looking into my eyes. “Don’t tell me why. But you can apologize.”
“Come here.” I held my arm out again.
She collapsed on my right side and curled up against my chest. My heart wanted to keep this, but my actions forbade me.
“I’m sorry from the bottom of my shit eating soul for what happened. For ripping you apart. For ripping us apart. Everything compiled into a horrible decision, and I’ve felt like total shit for throwing twelve years of us away for nothing. I’m sorry,” I promised, burying my face in her hair.
She sobbed against me, her entire body shaking. I held her as she did so, letting her get it out. The sun set behind the far window, and soon, the moon bled on our conjoined bodies.
“Accept it,” I whispered. “You don’t have to forgive me. Ever. But I’m begging you to accept my apology.”
She took a deep, pained breath. “I accept it.”
I closed my eyes in relief.