Heaven. I dreamed of heaven.
Yet I woke up alone, in a bed that felt a little too big when I was the only one in it. I reached out, thinking maybe she’d just gotten up to use the bathroom. But the other side of the bed was cool, as though it hadn’t been occupied for a while. A sigh escaped me, and I flopped back onto the pillows, frustrated.
She’d left already.
The memories of the night before flooded my mind, leaving me hard as a fucking rock and aching for her. Everything that’d happened between Larkin and me had been absolutely perfect. The way she looked, with all that black hair falling across her pale shoulders, her kiss-swollen lips red and juicy and just begging for me to take another bite. The way she smelled, like my soap and shampoo, but also something darker, something earthy that was all her. The way she sounded, low and rough and needy.
The way she moved. Fuck. The way she moved, like a woman on a mission. Like a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it.
She wanted me, every bit as much as I wanted her.
God, it was powerful stuff.
The bathroom door opened, and I grinned. So she hadn’t left already.
I watched her as she walked into the room, looking my fill, now that I could. Now that it wasn’t inappropriate for me to ogle her. She must have grabbed the laundry from the basement, because she was wearing her own clothes again, now clean and dry, and she was freshly showered.
“Hey,” I said, because I had just woken up, and I was not capable of any sort of wit before I’d had my coffee.
She jumped, eyes darting around the room like she hadn’t realized I was awake. They settled on me, and she looked me up and down, her eyes lingering on the tent I was pitching with the sheet.
I swelled under her gaze, eager to get right back to that heaven we’d achieved last night. Because I may have just had the best sex of my entire life with her, but I was more than ready to try to top it.
Her eyes slid away, and she frowned like she’d tasted something unpleasant.
“Hey.” Her tone, the set of her mouth, even her posture was stiff. She was not happy.
I sat up, throwing the covers back. I’d put my pajamas back on last night, because the heat had taken a bit too long to come back on. And I was glad I had now, because she obviously was not in the mood for my hard-on.
I took a deep breath, adjusting my wishes for the morning. This was okay. She wasn’t really a morning person, and I knew she hadn’t slept enough last night, what with our impromptu love-making at three o’clock in the morning. We didn’t need a repeat right this second. We had the whole day ahead of us, a day that I was really looking forward to spending with her.
She cleared her throat. “I need to talk to-”
“So I was-”
We both stopped. She gestured for me to continue, then looked away again.
“So I was thinking,” I said, crossing to the dresser and grabbing fresh clothes. “I need to hop in the shower, but then I figured we could get some breakfast. How about bagels?”
She didn’t answer. She just blinked, staring at the wall like she was trying to read the secrets of the universe on it.
I cleared my throat. “There’s this awesome bagel shop here in town, The Better Bagel. They have the best bacon, egg, and cheese on Long Island.”
She raised a brow, and sure, that was a ballsy claim to make. But I was confident in my hometown’s ability to deliver the best.
“And then I need to go to the hardware store to get a couple of things.” I smiled. “But I thought we could come back here and relax after that. You can read, and I can get some work done. Nice lazy day.”
She said nothing. She just frowned.
I bit my lip, wondering what the silent treatment was about. Was she mad at me for something? I flipped through everything that had happened last night. The car had broken down, she’d walked here in the rain, I’d warmed her up, we drank hot cocoa – well, I drank hot cocoa – we watched a couple of episodes of Mr. Wizard, and then we went to bed. We’d woken up in the middle of the night, had hot, passionate sex, then fallen asleep. And now here we were.
“Oh, duh,” I groaned, backing up again. “The car. Okay, I can have it towed here. I’ll take a look at it later, maybe after dinner.”
She turned to me finally, but her expression was blank. “I need to go home.”
“Go home?”
I searched her eyes, looking for something, anything, to explain her behavior right now. But she gave me absolutely nothing. It was like someone had toggled her on/off switch. The lights were on, but Larkin was not home.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Well, I can take you home. Hey!” A thought occurred to me. “I can help you fix your door. We can grab the lumber when we go to the hardware store. Should be a pretty easy job. Just need to repair the framing, then hang the new door.”
The corners of her mouth turned down. “It’s already fixed. I hired a guy.”
“Oh.”
Jesus, what was wrong with me? If I wasn’t being a total babble monster, I was grunting like a simpleton, my mouth hanging open. She’d rendered me stupid.
Stupid in love. I sucked in a breath as the realization washed over me. I was in love with her. I was in love for the first time in my life. With Larkin.
I probably should have been freaking out. I’d known her for barely a week, and she was, at best, emotionally unavailable. At worst, she was a wreck, swinging from one extreme to another with virtually no warning. It would be a long, difficult road ahead.
But I wasn’t scared by any of that. No, I felt surprisingly calm. Happy, even. Because I loved her.
Even if she was acting really weird.
“Okay, well, I can just take you home. Maybe I can cook dinner for you there. I’ll bring my laptop, if that’s okay?”
She shook her head, her eyes sliding away again. “I called a cab.”
“You-” I blinked, not understanding. “You called a cab?”
Her eyes snapped to mine, finally showing signs of life. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
Her nostrils flared. “Repeat everything I say. Why do you do that?”
“Repeat everything you say?” Did I really do that? No, that wasn’t possible.
Because if I did it with her, then I probably did it with everyone. And someone would definitely have pointed it out by now. My little sister would have teased me, or one of the dudebros I worked with would have outright hazed me. My mom would have chided me in her own gentle way, correcting me until eventually I stopped doing it. There was no way I’d made it to thirty-one years old with a habit like that going unnoticed.
“Cute. Real cute.” Larkin let out a little growl. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
I almost said “fucking with you?” Almost. But her eyes were narrowed, and she was radiating anger from her very pores. She looked like she was about to claw my balls off. And I liked having balls.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked slowly, taking a cautious step forward.
She gave me a look that could kill a lesser man, and I froze. “How could I pick just one thing?”
O-kay. Her sudden, blistering anger was a swerve I hadn’t seen coming. This whole fucking conversation was a swerve I hadn’t seen coming.
But I guess that was my fatal flaw. I never saw the crazy coming.
You’d think, after that blind spot had almost led to my baby sister’s death – after it had led to my parents’ death – that I’d have learned my lesson.
You’d be wrong.
“First you have the nerve to come to my fucking house looking like you stepped out of a men’s magazine.”
“Uh.” I blinked. “Let me get this straight. You’re mad at me for dressing well?”
“Obviously,” she hissed, giving me a dirty look. “And then you have the fucking gall to not be my date.”
I said nothing. It seemed like the wisest option at the moment. If I didn’t say anything, then I couldn’t say anything wrong.
“And now you, what? You think because we had sex, you’re my boyfriend or something?”
I was utterly confused. First she was mad at me for not being her date, then for wanting to be her date? I opened my mouth to speak, despite my self-preservation instincts screaming at me to keep it shut.
But she cut me off.
“You can’t make these decisions for me. You can’t just fucking decide we’re friends, without even consulting me. Like, who the fuck do you think you are?” She started pacing. “Deciding I need a friend. So you what, pity me?”
“No,” I said, before she could start shouting again. “I wanted to be your friend because I like you. Because I thought you were funny and smart and I wanted to get to know you better.”
“And you felt sorry for me,” she added, her eyes challenging me.
“I thought you could use a friend, yes,” I said carefully. “But I wanted to be that friend because I like you. And every day that passes, I like you even more. I want to get to know you more. I want to spend more time with you. I want to take you out on dates, or stay in, if that’s what you want. I just want us to be together.”
“I knew it,” she scoffed. “I knew you had a fucking savior complex.”
I huffed. I’d just poured my heart out to her, and this was how she responded?
“I do not have a savior complex.”
“Fine, then a bodyguard complex. You have to be the protector.”
I didn’t answer, because I couldn’t refute that. Not if I wanted to be honest with her.
“It doesn’t fucking matter. You want to be my friend to feed your goddamn ego. ‘Oh, look at me, I’m friends with this widow. I’m totally helping her with all her issues, even though I won’t let her help me in return.’”
“What the fuck?” I ran my hands through my hair. “I don’t have any issues you need to help me with!”
“Bullshit.” Her chest was heaving with each breath. I hadn’t yet seen her this angry, even the night I’d met her, when what’s-his-name, the gnome, had been a dick to her. “What happened to your parents?”
“I told you what happened to them,” I reminded her. “I told you my mom died last year. I told you my dad died when I was in high school.” I shook my head. “I’m not hiding anything from you.”
“God, for a smart guy, you can be really fucking dense.” She glared at me. “Your real parents. You refuse to tell me what happened to your real parents.”
“Because they weren’t my real parents!” I shouted. She flinched, and I took in several ragged breaths, trying to calm myself down. I was getting too angry. I was letting my temper get to me. I never, ever wanted to do that. Not with anybody, and especially not with her.
“Fred and Millie Morris were my real parents,” I said. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “They took care of me, and loved me, and made me the man I am today. They took me to Boy Scouts, and came to my football games, and put me through college. They are the only parents I have ever needed.”
She blinked rapidly, and I knew she was close to tears. “But what about the people who gave you life?” she asked. “What about them? Every time I ask about them, you change the subject.”
“Because you don’t need to know about them!”
“So you are trying to protect me,” she sneered.
“You’re goddamn right I am,” I shot back. “I will always protect the people I love.”
She froze, her eyes going wide. And ah, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. That was not the way I wanted to tell her I loved her. But there was no taking it back now.
“You don’t need to know about them,” I repeated, trying to soften my tone.
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.” she insisted. “I need to know. I can’t be the only one who gets to fall apart here.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” I asked, sinking down onto the bed. I had no idea what the fuck had happened here, how I’d gone from happily anticipating a lazy day with the woman I loved, to having the worst fight I’d ever had with anyone.
“Tell me everything!” she cried.
“You really want to know?” I asked, letting my anger roll over me. “You want to know that my parents were a couple of psychos who were crazy in love with each other, but hated their kids?” I looked down at my hands. “You want me to tell you that my father used to beat the shit out of me, while my mother laughed at me and told me I deserved it?” I looked up at the ceiling. “Or would you rather hear about the time he came home from the bar one afternoon, drunk and looking for a fight?”
I looked up, locking my gaze with her. She was deathly still, those damn lavender eyes wide and fearful.
“Do you want to hear that when he couldn’t find his favorite punching bag, because he was too drunk to remember that it was the middle of a school day, he decided to just wail on his two-year-old daughter instead?” She gasped, but I kept going. “Should I tell you that he kicked Ellie so hard he broke her collarbone? And that when I finally came home, I found my baby sister broken and bloody on the kitchen floor, screaming in agony? That I somehow managed to fight him off long enough to pick her up and hide us in the bathroom? Only I locked the door with the phone on the other side of the door, so I couldn’t even dial 911?”
Tears were now streaming down her face, but it was like I couldn’t stop myself. Now that I’d started, the whole terrible story just had to come out. I had to get it all out.
“And that when he couldn’t get at us, he turned on my mother instead, unable to stop his blind rage?” I swiped at the tears on my own cheeks, swallowing roughly. But I kept going. “That when Ellie passed out from the pain, I thought she’d died? So I had no choice but to sit there, locked in the bathroom, and listen while my father beat my mother to death? That I actually soiled my pants because I was so scared. Because I knew, I just fucking knew, that I would be next?”
“Graham,” she whimpered, reaching a hand out like she wanted to comfort me. But I gave her a forbidding glare, and she took it back, wrapping her arms around herself instead.
“Do you want me to tell you,” I whispered, “that we were locked in that bathroom for over an hour, until finally the neighbors called the police because my father wandered out into the street, covered in blood and screaming that he’d killed his wife and daughter?”
She slid down to the floor, folding in on herself. She looked utterly devastated.
But I still wasn’t done.
“I suppose I have to tell you that the police killed him. That he was drunk and belligerent and covered in my mother’s blood, and Ellie’s blood, and probably some of his own blood. And he wouldn’t cooperate with them, so they shot him.” I stood, taking a couple of steps away from the bed. Away from her.
“And I guess you want to know that every morning, when I look in the mirror and see the fucking carbon copy of his face, when I see his goddamn Hulk body, I wonder if today is the day I’ll hurt someone. I wonder if today is the day I’ll lose my temper, or get too drunk and do something I’ll regret for the rest of my life. That I go to the gym and work out until I puke every single day because I think, the next time someone tries to hurt my sister, I need to be ready. I need to be strong enough to protect her. Because I can’t fail her again. I can’t be locked in that bathroom again with her little broken body in my hands, knowing that I fucking failed her.”
“Graham,” she whispered. She sat on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees like she was trying to cocoon herself against the world.
Against me.
She looked up at me with those lavender eyes that I loved so much. “I’m so-”
“Don’t.”
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t hear her apology. I could barely even look at her. I couldn’t look at myself.
Because I’d done exactly what I’d always feared I’d do. I’d lost my temper. I’d hurt the one I loved. I may not have touched her, may not have ever laid a finger on her, but I’d hurt her all the same. She was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around herself, sobbing softly, and my heart broke. Because I’d done that.
This was why I didn’t want to tell her. I knew she couldn’t handle it. But she’d pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more. And eventually I snapped.
I turned away from her, looking out the window instead. My gaze landed on a car that was idling at the curb.
“Graham, I didn’t mean to-”
“Your cab’s here.” I turned back to her. “You need to go home.”
She stared at me for a long time, like she was debating whether to argue. Her eyes flashed with a half-dozen different emotions.
Eventually, she nodded, wiping her sodden cheeks. “Okay.”
I watched as she tried to gather herself. It looked like it took a lot of effort. After a long minute, she stood up and walked to the bedroom door. At the last second, she turned, giving me a haunted look. She opened her mouth, like she was about to say something else.
“Don’t,” I pleaded.
She let out one last strangled sob, nodding her head to signal her defeat. And then she walked through the door, leaving me alone with the mess I’d made.