NICHOLAS SHOT Livvy a glance as they walked out of the house, trying to read her expression. He wanted to ask her how she felt, if she was overwhelmed at seeing his grandfather, what the man had said to her. He wanted to gather her close and smooth her tangled hair. He wanted to do every damn boyfriendly thing under the sun he didn’t have the right to do.
They reached his car, and he beat her to the passenger door. He opened it for her and waited, but she’d turned away to look west. The sun was setting over where Sam’s house was hidden by the forest.
“Do you know who lives in our old home?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “It was a family directly after it was sold. Then an elderly couple, but they left. I think it’s been vacant for a while.” He hadn’t checked the property records, though that would be easy to do. He hadn’t particularly wanted to know.
She only nodded, but didn’t move.
Nicholas had used to sneak into Livvy’s room in that house. The walls had been painted blood red, her comforter and furnishings all shades of black and white.
She wanted to die because you didn’t love her anymore.
Jackson’s words had been looping in Nicholas’s head all day. He hadn’t been able to concentrate on work, or his father’s latest demands. All he could think about was a younger Livvy sobbing on the bed he’d lain in countless times.
She shifted, cocking her hip, a power pose she often adopted. Like him, she’d been raised to be assertive, powerful, certain of her place. She’d also been raised to keep a part of herself away from the outside world, visible only to the inhabitants of their privileged sphere.
No wonder she didn’t betray the depth of her pain when you helped yank that place away from her.
He’d tried ignoring his own past and history, burying his emotions so deep he could go long stretches without feeling anything. He’d tried binging on her in secret, stolen, isolated bites, telling himself that the small hit of excitement was enough.
It wasn’t now. He couldn’t roll away and walk out the hotel door, shove her in a compartment and move on with his life. He’d been taken out of that box and wound up so tight he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to go dormant again.
That didn’t scare him, oddly enough. For all his worries over the cauldron of emotions inside him, for the first time in a long time, he felt as though he was on the right path. Not the perfect path. But the right path.
He pulled his phone from his pocket.
Her cell beeped, and she took her time getting it out of the back pocket of her low-slung jeans. Her fingers hovered over the message and she glanced at him.
The silence grew heavy and weighted, but then she gave a single nod and started walking toward the woods. He knew she wouldn’t need to look up the coordinates he’d texted her. The numbers were burned into his mind as well as hers. She’d whisper them to him when they were kids, from the time they were fifteen and eighteen and wanted to go for a swim or hang out or meet up to chat. It had been innocent then. After they’d started dating, it had stopped being innocent.
He shut the car door and caught up to her, keeping his strides short. Funny how some things came back to him so easily, like how to match his walk to hers.
She looked up at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon.”
He gauged the remaining time they had. “Will your mother need you?”
“No. Aunt Maile’s always home, and Mom’s actually pretty self-sufficient.” She shrugged, but the action looked heavy, like her shoulders weren’t well equipped to carry the weight they did. “I’m not needed.”
He curled his fingers into his palms, the sadness in those words making him ache. Did her family know? Livvy thrived on feeling needed. He used to murmur the words in her ear, simply to watch her blossom. I need you. I want you.
She grew stiffer as they drew closer to their special place, but she didn’t demand they turn around. When they walked into the clearing, he caught the nostalgia and pain on her face. It was gone quickly, replaced by a blank stare.
She’d worn the same look when he’d told her they were finished.
Told her. It had been a speech, in the truest sense of the word, hadn’t it?
She strolled around the small pond in the center of the clearing and knelt to run her fingers through the water. They’d played here, loved here. And in the end, they’d broken up here.
He hadn’t sent her the coordinates that last time. He’d merely told her to meet him in the woods.
“Have you ever brought anyone else here?” she asked, staring at the water trickling through her fingers like they held the secrets to the universe.
He wasn’t fooled by her nonchalance. “Of course not.”
Another handful of water, seeping through her closed fingers. “Why not?”
“I would have felt like I was cheating on you.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “That’s dumb.”
“It’s probably why I haven’t been able to maintain any long-term relationships,” he said conversationally, pacing to the tree opposite the pond. “You either, right? You bristled when you saw me kissing Shel today.”
“We have no claim on each other.”
He chuckled, but he didn’t feel any humor. The words he spoke were naked and revealing, and he couldn’t stop them. “Livvy, for God’s sakes. How can I be with anyone else when I spend three hundred and sixty-four days waiting for you to draw me a map?”
She went statue-still. “Is that what you do?”
“Yes. It’s exactly what I do.”
Her light brown skin paled. “I—”
“It’s what you do too, isn’t it?”
“It might be what I did.” She shifted. “I stopped. Like I said, ten years is long enough to get it out of our systems.”
“Yeah.” He traced the letters carved into the tree. “You’d think so.”
The soft pad of her footsteps behind him made him ache. Her smaller hand came to rest just above the inscription. “I can’t believe it’s still here.”
“Where would it go?”
“Thought you might have chopped the damn thing down.” There was a quiver to her tone, belying her cockiness.
The words were carved in deep, made in the first flush of their love affair, not long after the first time they’d had sex.
NICO + LIVVY = 4EVER
A childish sentiment. A promise they’d made when they hadn’t understood what forever was or how it could be destroyed. “Remember when I carved this?”
“Yes.”
“You said the only bad part of our relationship was that it was so easy. We slipped from friendship to lovers so quickly. We never had to woo each other.”
Her lips trembled into a smile. He doubted she was aware of how wistful it appeared. “Could you blame a girl for wanting a grand declaration of love every now and again?”
“No. I could never blame you for anything.” His hand dropped away from the tree. “Why’d you agree with me, that night?”
“What night?”
“The night we broke up.”
Her guffaw was loud. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t change anything.”
“The past can never be changed.”
“Right. So why bother tearing it apart now?”
One feeling. “Someone smart told me talking about stuff can help.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Has a pod person taken over your body? I’d like to speak to Nicholas, please.”
“Livvy, I’m not going to move until you tell me why you agreed with me back then.”
“Then I’ll walk home,” she snapped and pivoted.
“Why don’t you want to talk about this?”
She stopped, her shoulders hunched. He kept forgetting how small she was. Her personality was so big. “It’s not something I like to think about.”
“I need to know.”
She looked at him. Annoyance, fear, and, finally, resignation flitted across her expressive face. “What you said made sense. Being together would have been too hard after everything.”
No, he hadn’t said being together would be too hard. He’d said it would be impossible. It’s impossible for us to be together now. They won’t let us. “Did you want to end things?”
“No!”
He couldn’t breathe. “No.”
“No, okay? I wanted to fight. I wanted to fight for you, and I wanted you to fight for me, and that didn’t happen, because that shit only happens in fairy tales.”
He was choking under the weight of their history. “You lied. You told me I was right. You agreed it would be impossible.” Every time he’d doubted himself, he’d tell himself she’d wanted their breakup too. That it had made rational sense, even without his father’s meddling.
“Fighting for someone only works when the other person wants to be saved. I couldn’t fight for you knowing that you’d already given up.” Her smile was bittersweet. “Nothing’s impossible until you quit, remember?”
Chandlers aren’t quitters.
She took a deep breath as if to brace herself. “You did quit, didn’t you?”
“I had to.”
“No, you—”
“I had to.” His raised voice startled the birds in the trees, sending them flying away in a great flock.
A line formed between her brows. “Because of the accident? It colored your feelings for me.”
“No.” He licked his lips. His heart was beating fast, his blood rushing in his veins. It felt . . . it felt so right. Tell her. “I didn’t end things with you because my feelings changed for you. The last time we stood here, I loved you. I honestly did.” I never stopped loving you.
No, too soon.
She didn’t look impressed. “You loved me but—”
“My father made me.”
Livvy drew back. “What?”
Nicholas ran his hand over his mouth, the words tasting like betrayal.
Family came first.
He knew that shouldn’t apply when that family was abusive. His brain was at war with the reflexive instincts that had been honed in him since he was a child.
He had to overcome those instincts. The questions in Livvy’s dark eyes demanded honesty. “My father made me do it. He made me break up with you.”
“You mean he disapproved of us being together.”
“It wasn’t only disapproval.” How could he explain a lifetime of dysfunction and resentment and emotional manipulation? “Brendan hated your dad. Despised him.”
“For driving that night.”
“Partially.”
Livvy’s gaze was hooded. “Eve said there were rumors my dad and your mom were having an affair.”
He jerked back. “Eve said that?” He hadn’t known Eve was aware of those rumors, though of course she wouldn’t have discussed them with him.
“I assumed she was trying to hurt me . . . but that’s what people believe?”
“Some people,” he admitted reluctantly.
“That’s foolish. My father would never have cheated.”
Nicholas wasn’t as certain about his mother. His parents had displayed a near-perfect image of marital bliss for the world, but he could remember the fights. He couldn’t blame Maria if she had gone elsewhere to find affection. “I don’t think my mom would’ve betrayed Tani like that. There were a million innocent reasons for them to be on that road, in that car together.” He’d believe them too, even if it did mean a lot of questions went unanswered.
Sometimes all the questions couldn’t be answered.
“Is that the other reason Brendan hated my dad? Was it the rumors?”
Nicholas raised one shoulder. “He does hate any kind of negative gossip, but honestly, I think he despised Robert even before the accident. Your dad got promoted to co-CEO with John. My dad had to technically report to both of them.” Robert had been an outsider, neither Chandler nor Oka, yet he’d leapfrogged over Brendan, who had occupied Nicholas’s current subordinate position at the time. Nicholas had always sensed a barely hidden resentment in his father’s attitude toward Robert. “After Robert died, Brendan transferred that anger and resentment over to your whole family. He wanted you all gone. He got rid of Tani by taking the shares, but then there was us.”
“When you said your father made you break up with me, what do you mean? Specifically?”
“He put financial pressure on me.”
“He threatened to disinherit you?”
His jaw clenched. “Not me.”
Her eyes went wide. “Eve?”
He closed his eyes, only opening them when a small hand ghosted over his arm. “Livvy, she was thirteen. I felt like I had no choice.” On a practical level, even if Brendan cut Eve out, Nicholas would have taken care of her. But the damage would have been done. Young Nicholas hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Eve knowing Brendan viewed her as nothing more than a disposable pawn.
Hell, he still couldn’t bear to see his sister’s pain every time Brendan ignored or dismissed her. But their father’s negligence toward her was a step up from outright disowning, or so he told himself.
“Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I couldn’t.” A pleading tone had entered his voice, one he didn’t recognize. The Kanes had been as close to family as one could get, but Brendan had always been very careful about making sure no one but his wife and son saw the true extent of his coldness. “I didn’t know if you’d believe me and I didn’t want to make things harder than they had to be.”
She slowly moved her head from side to side. “I would have wanted you to tell me. I was so hurt after.”
She wanted to die. His heart thudded.
“I would have loved having a villain. Someone I could fight.” Livvy’s smile was tremulous. “I would have made you fight.”
“I don’t know if I could have fought,” he admitted, unable to hide the trace of shame in his words.
“I know,” she said, surprising him. “I get why you kept it from me. In hindsight, you probably made the right call. Either way, your family would have been destroyed like mine was. Present me finds that thought really terrible.”
“My family was destroyed anyway.” His voice was so guttural he could barely recognize it.
A tear leaked out. “It would have been worse.”
Her concern humbled him. Yes, this was the woman he’d fallen in love with all those years ago. Soft and sweet and considerate, hiding under multicolored hair and a layer of pure steel. Nicholas took another step closer, until they were standing toe-to-toe. He dipped his head and breathed in her sweet, delicate scent. Vanilla cream.
He lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss was soft and sweet at first, only their lips brushing against each other. He ran his palm over her cheek and angled her so he could deepen the kiss. His tongue sank into her mouth and she stood on her tip-toes, rubbing up against him.
Her mouth was criminally addictive. It always had been. He tilted her head back and kissed his way along the curve of her neck, finding the spot that revved her up. She writhed against him and he gripped her hips and backed her up against the tree, her hands falling to the rough bark. “Livvy,” he breathed.
“Yes,” she whispered, both consent and appreciation. She shrugged off her jacket. He licked her lips and brushed his tongue against hers, pulling it into his mouth to suck and lick at it. His hands slid over her back and bottom, pulling her close so his cock nestled into the cleft between her legs.
“I want to . . . right here.”
“Yes,” she whispered again. With a jump he had her hoisted between him and the tree, her legs wrapped around him and interlocking at the base of his spine. His hand rested against the bark, the scrape a harsh reminder that her delicate skin would get messed up if they actually fucked here.
He whirled around and fell to his knees with her still wrapped around him like a koala, and tumbled her down to the ground.
He couldn’t begin to count the number of times they’d made love right here, their bodies straining together under the sky, back in the days when they’d been so hungry they could barely keep their hands away from each other. Each time they’d come together in some generic hotel room, part of his brain had been fantasizing that they were both right here.
Where they belonged.
He ripped at the buttons of his shirt, and she helped him before unbuckling his belt and unzipping his trousers. Her crop top—why wear half a top, he wasn’t sure—left her belly bared, but he shoved it up so he could get to her breasts, pulling her bra down so he could fondle her flesh.
He kissed his way down her neck, biting and sucking at the flesh at the hollow of her throat, knowing he was skirting the edge of pain, that he’d leave a mark.
Not caring.
He paused to strip her jeans down her legs, then her panties. “Sorry,” he panted, when the fragile silk came apart in his hands. “Is this—?”
“It’s fine. Just—yes. Yes, fuck me.”
He stopped when he was poised on the edge of penetration. He didn’t push his way inside her, but waited, teasing her lips with the tip of his cock. “I love this. This moment, right before I get inside you,” he said in a gravelly voice.
She ran her hands up his biceps and pulled at him, but he wasn’t budging. He dipped his cock inside, letting her wetness coat his flesh.
“Stop teasing me.”
Didn’t she get it? He wasn’t teasing her. Something momentous had shifted in his brain, some understanding that had taken ten years to get through his thick skull.
He’d made a terrible mistake. Clouded by grief and fear and yes, anger. He’d quit and thrown away someone he should have fought for.
Her legs tightened around his waist like a vise and she yanked him forward. Unable to resist the call of her body, he sank inside her with a deep groan, the shocking heat of her pussy making him shake. He raised himself on stiffened arms the second she froze beneath him.
“No condom,” he rasped. It had been so long since he’d fucked her bare. Whenever they’d met, she’d flung a strip of rubbers at him, or he’d produced his own.
Her nails stroked along his spine. “I’m on birth control. And I’m . . . I’m clean.”
He shuddered. “I am too.”
Those nails dragged down to his ass. “Just do it.”
Oh, God. “Do what? Fill you up with my come?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“Fill me with—” He hit a particularly deep spot, and she shook. “Fill me with your come.”
He fucked into her with slow strokes. He gazed down at her, mesmerized, as her head tipped back, and she moaned. The sun was almost gone, the hazy blue-gray sky turning her body into a dreamy portrait. Past and present and future melded together, forcing his body to move faster. He needed her to feel him inside her, in every inch.
She communicated in breathy gasps, her hands coming up to encircle his neck. She arched below him, her thighs falling wide. He wanted to be tender. He wanted to be kind. But his lust took over, until he had nothing in his brain but the elemental, desperate need to fuck her until she couldn’t walk, until he couldn’t move.
His hips snapped back and forth. Faster, and faster, until her body clenched all around his. Each contraction squeezed his throbbing cock like a vise.
His balls drew up tight, and he thrust deep, spurting inside her. Each pulse simultaneously weakened him and filled him with strength. He locked his arms to keep from collapsing on top of her and hung his head, panting.
They were both covered in sweat, but the cool air was working through his lust-induced warmth. Nicholas sat back, attention riveted on his still-hard cock withdrawing from her. He grasped his dick, his hand feeling too rough and unwelcome after the paradise of her pussy, and rubbed the wet tip against her slit.
“Look at that,” he rumbled. “What a mess we made.”
He stroked up to her clitoris. His heart stuttered when she breathed, “Nico . . .”
He went still. No one had called him Nico since her.
He batted the head of his cock against her pussy, then braced himself on one arm above her and pressed his lips to her neck. “You want more?” He rubbed her clit with his cock in a slow circle. “I can give you more. I can give you everything.”
She stiffened beneath him then pressed her hands against his chest, straight-arming him away. Shit. Had he said the wrong thing?
Nicholas moved back immediately, though with great reluctance. He didn’t want to separate their bodies. That meant they’d have to go back to thinking.
She sat up and scrambled to her feet way faster than he would like. It took him a second to get his legs under him and stand without wobbling. “Hey.”
She ignored him and scooped up her jeans, shoving them up over her legs.
He adjusted his own clothes absently. “Hey,” he said again.
“What?” she snapped.
Uh-oh. He had said something wrong. “Listen, what if—?”
“I don’t like that word.”
“What word?”
She readjusted her bra. “If.”
“Then I won’t use it. But can we talk?”
“I need to go. Take me back to my car.”
He needed time to figure out what was happening between them, or, hell, what was happening in his own head. “Livvy—”
She turned away and started walking, jerking her jacket over her breasts. Leaves clung to her hair. “Either take me back to my car, or I’m walking.”
“Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?”
Poking and prodding. Overwhelmed from all the confessions he’d shared with her, her snotty tone rubbed him exactly the wrong way. “Dramatic,” he snapped, and then grimaced, a chill running through him at the way she spun around and glared at him.
Maria, for God’s sake, stop acting so dramatic.
Drama was cold Brendan’s sworn enemy. Like father, like son.
Oh, fuck. Never.
“That’s what I am.” Her shoulders were set and rigid. “A moody drama queen. Now take me back to my car.”