Twenty-Four

Damien

 

She was shaking. I’d never seen a person shake as much as she was beneath my touch. Her crying filled the entire living room cutting through the now-silent air.

The loss she cried for was monumental. The pain and hurt that fueled every sob was palpable. If I tried hard enough, I could have plucked it out of the air and destroyed it.

I couldn’t.

I wanted to reach inside her and rip it away from her. Make it so that she never had to feel this kind of ache in her life ever again, because I knew how much she hurt.

I knew the loss. I knew that pain. I knew how it consumed you and reminded you of all the things you’ll never have again.

I pulled her into my chest. My arms wrapped around her tightly, and the urge to swallow her pain and feel it twice for myself was overwhelming.

I’d never cared before.

I’d never wanted to care. I’d never wanted to do anything to stop another person’s heartbreak, but I’d take hers in a fucking heartbeat if I could.

In this moment, her heartbreak was my heartbreak.

Seeing her cry was nothing short of gut-wrenchingly devastating.

This woman was a marvel—strong and smart and beautiful, fearless and unrestrained. I respected her, I trusted her, and I wanted her beyond belief.

Nothing. Nothing mattered more than making her stop hurting. Nothing mattered more than holding her and rocking her and smoothing her hair until she was all cried out. I didn’t shh her or try to stop her.

I held her.

Kissed her hair.

Squeezed her tighter.

Breathed her in.

Wiped her cheeks.

And she held me back. She buried her face into the curve of my neck, soaking me with her tears. She was nestled onto my lap, pressed so firm against my body that guilt licked at me everywhere we touched.

As her fingers twitched against my skin, the guilt flinched.

As her tears rolled down my chest, the guilt followed.

As she calmed every few minutes, whimpering, only to cry again, the guilt ebbed and flowed through me until it mirrored her grief.

I made her hurt tonight.

My refusal to tell her the truth about my life, about that fucking scar, about my fucked up, broken family, had driven her to relive her own hurt to the point she couldn’t breathe.

I had self-doubt. I had self-doubt, all right, even if she never believed it. I doubted I’d ever be good enough for her. My selfishness would always mirror her selflessness. We both knew loss and pain and loneliness.

We were two peas in a pod.

Except one was rotten.

And it wasn’t her.

I was the master of lies and manipulation. She was the master of kindness and truth. I breathed in deceit and exhaled hatred. She inhaled love and sighed out laughter.

If it weren’t for me, she’d be laughing now.

She’d given in to her hurt. For me. For someone who didn’t deserve her kindness.

She was afraid of caring about me.

I was afraid of her.

Terrified.

More than anything else in this world, I was afraid of falling for the woman in my arms.

Because I knew. I knew, deep down, that she deserved more. More than the person who’d lied and tricked his way into her life, even if I would eventually leave with honesty.

The biggest problem with that was that I was even more afraid of leaving her and going back to life before Dahlia.

To life without her eyes or her laughter or her smile. Without her wit or her sarcasm or her smartass comments.

Loving her terrified me.

Never being able to try, scared me even more than that.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair, stroking it. “I’m so sorry.”

Over and over.

I said it again and again. The guilt drowned me. The anger stabbed at me. But I could block that out.

For now.

For right now, because she was more important. I would face it, though. I would be her kind of brave and tell her everything. I owed her that, even if I never uttered any of the words again.

I would tell her about the destruction of my family. Of the lies. The hurting. The secrets. The deception. The fixing. The happiness.

I would tell her about the final breakdown that shattered it—and me—forever.

And then, maybe, I would be strong enough to leave her so she could be happy.

I pressed my lips to her forehead in a kiss that screamed to me I’d never be able to. Even squeezing my fucking eyes shut didn’t beat that thought from my brain.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” I whispered.

She was finally silent, the only tears remaining completely noiseless.

“Why?” she rasped, her voice cracked and broken and hoarse. She tilted her head back and looked up at me. “You didn’t do it.”

“I know.” I cupped her cheek and brushed my thumb beneath her eye. “But right now, all I want to do is suck the pain right out of you, and I can’t do that.”

“That’s okay. It’s mine.”

“It shouldn’t have to be.”

“I know,” she whispered, tucking her face back into my neck.

I shut my eyes and rested my cheek against her head. “I’m sorry I made you relive it.”

A moment passed before she said, “I’ve never done it before. Not like that.”

Guilt. It hit me hard once again

“Maybe I should put you to bed and then go.”

“No!” She scrambled on me, twisting and turning, her knee narrowly missing ramming into my cock.

Not that I didn’t deserve it.

Dahlia grasped my face, laying her hands on my cheeks, and looked into my eyes. Her skin was red and puffy, blotchy right down to her neck. She focused her swollen eyes on me and shook her head with such vehemence, it was shocking.

“I didn’t tell you to make you go. I told you so you’d understand. So you’d get it, Damien.” Her soft, earnest voice twisted my heart. “I don’t…Please don’t…” She took a deep breath. “Stay. Please stay.”

I gently took her hand and kissed the center of her palm. “You want me to stay?”

She nodded.

“Then, I’ll stay.” I kissed her hand again, then scooted forward on the sofa. She wrapped her arms and legs around my neck and waist when I stood, lifting her up. The TV was already blinking to go off, and I paused for her to turn off the light.

I wouldn’t sleep, but she was exhausted. A part of me wanted to lie next to her in bed and watch her sleep. Watch her at peace.

Did it hit her when she slept, like it did to me? Or was she spared it?

I hoped she was spared it. I hoped like fucking hell she didn’t endure the subconscious terrors and reminders that I did in the middle of some nights.

I carried her into her room and gently set her on the bed. When I tried to let go, she tightened her grip on me, bringing her lips to mine. It was little more than a comfort, something to hold onto, but that didn’t mean I would pull away. I wouldn’t give her more, but I’d give her this. I’d give her a thousand soft kisses if it made her happy for even a split second.

After a minute, she released me, twisting so she could take off her t-shirt. By the time I’d brushed my teeth and returned in nothing more than my underwear, she’d already crawled into the bed.

I joined her. Immediately, she snuggled against me. She was still trembling, so I wrapped myself around her, cocooning her with my body and the sheets as much as I could without her being uncomfortable.

“Sweetheart?” I whispered, touching my lips to her hair.

“Mm?”

“I understand. And…I promise. I’ll tell you. Just not tonight.”

She shifted so she could tilt her head back and look at me. “You don’t have to.”

“I do.” I brushed a kiss over her mouth. “Trust me.”

“I do. Trust you. For both the skirt in my panties and the burning building thing.”

We shared a smile.

One that was warm and genuine and punched me in the fucking heart with its intimacy.

“Go to sleep. You need to.” I kissed her once more and wriggled.

She did the same, except she closed her eyes as she adjusted herself in my arms.

Minutes later, her breathing shallowed, and her heartbeat slowed against my chest.

I stared into the darkness of her bedroom. I could do nothing but let reality wash over me, because fuck.

Fuck.

Dahlia Lloyd owned me.

My mind. My body.

Everything but my goddamn soul.

For now.

 

***

 

She was so hot when she slept. If there was any doubt in my mind that she was a red-blooded woman, one night of having Dahlia Lloyd pinned against me for hours on end would have killed them.

She was a human sauna.

It’d been three hours since I’d left her at her house and I could still feel the heat of her skin against mine. She’d insisted she had to get to work, completely refusing to acknowledge her emotions from last night.

I wasn’t going to push. I wanted to, though. I wanted so fucking bad to know even more about her.

Now, I knew how she felt.

I hadn’t known a thing about her mom, but I’d always wondered how she’d died. I’d always wanted to know that one thing—when, how, why? All those questions had quietly bugged me for the last few weeks.

Now, it didn’t feel good to know.

Seeing her pain had drummed home how I felt about her. How much I truly wanted her—how badly I wanted a little piece of her heart for myself.

How selfishly I wanted all those things.

Nothing good would come of that. Even if I snuck through the darkness and stole a piece, it wouldn’t change that.

So different. We were so fucking different, even though we were so similar. I had to remember that. I had to remind myself of all the reasons why we wouldn’t work. Thinking about the reasons we would…

I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. The stone wall behind me pressed through my shorts and into my ass, so firmly it was stinging across my skin.

This morning was the first morning that running hadn’t helped. It’d done nothing to beat out the frustration that clung to me. It’d done sweet fuck all to push away my feelings for Dahlia.

I traced my mom’s name on her midnight-black headstone like I always did. Except this time, it was slower. I took in every sleek curve of the blocky, bright-white font, from beginning to end.

Her name.

Her birthday.

Her death day.

The line that said she was loved.

The one that said she was a cherished wife and mother.

The final words that proclaimed her death to be an irreparable hole in the lives of all who knew her.

If I knew the day she died how true that final statement would be, I would have created the biggest goddamn fuss of my life.

It seemed like a fucking eternity since she’d died. Eight years wasn’t that long, not really, but it was still as raw to me now as it was back then.

I shifted my gaze to the stone next to my mother’s.

Penelope Fox.

My heart clenched. Pain radiated throughout my entire body. I didn’t think about her. I’d blocked her out. All the memories had been firmly locked away from my life because thinking of her as a real, living person was too excruciating.

Maybe I missed her more than I missed my mom. It was an incomparable ache, I knew that much, but Penny had been so much more.

My baby sister had been the glue that was destined to hold our family together.

In a sick twist of fate, she was the explosion who’d shattered us.

I should have been thankful. Thankful she only took my mom. Thankful my dad felt a sense of duty to me and Perrie. Not that it had mattered for Perrie—she’d been the burden and I’d been the failure.

Penelope had always been the golden one.

The irony of that wasn’t lost on me either.

I’d been the failure, and now, I’d succeeded. Penny had been Miss Perfect, and she’d fucked up so monumentally, she’d ruined all our lives with her choices.

She’d fucked it all up, broken our family in more ways than one, and she wasn’t the one who didn’t have to live with it.

When she died, her pain died with her.

Not that I gave a fuck about her self-inflicted pain. I gave a fuck about her actions, about the way she’d stolen life, about the hurt she’d forced on the people who once idolized her.

I took a deep breath.

Dahlia’s words—her decision to tell me what she had—made sense. Hit me like a motherfucking freight train going faster than it should.

Anger.

I was fucking angry, even that description wasn’t enough. I didn’t think the pure frustration and fury that rolled inside me was describable. It burned and it stung, consuming me one heartbeat at a time.

Yet, at the same time, it was freeing. Something inside me gave out, moving aside for a fucked-up form of acceptance.

Acceptance that it had happened.

That my baby sister was the cause.

That my mom had responsibility, too.

That there was nothing wrong with me.

But most of all, acceptance that this anger, this gut-wrenching sickness I’d been holding onto for the best part of the last ten years, was o-fucking-kay.

 

***

 

My dad was waiting for me in my driveway when I got home. I was sick and sweaty, covered in dirt and dust from the graveyard. The first thing he did when I walked in was to take a good, long look at the grass stuck to my sneakers.

His nostrils flared as he did so, and the downturn of his lips proved something else to me—in his eyes, I’d never be the success who’d kept his business up on cloud nine.

I’d always be the little failure, paling in comparison to my perfect sister.

My perfect, dead, addict sister.

My father said nothing, so I turned upstairs before he could change his mind over his silence. He knew exactly where I’d been from the grass on my sneakers, so there was no doubt he was furious.

He hadn’t been in years. Not that I knew of, anyway. I didn’t want to know. I was pretty sure that, by this point, whatever heart he’d once had, had died with my mother.

In reality, Penny hadn’t stolen just one of my parents.

She’d stolen them both.

My hand went to the scar that curved around my eye. I rubbed, the sting in it brought to life by the thoughts that’d been streaming through my mind for hours.

That night. I remembered it.

All too well.

I pushed it back—temporarily—and got into the shower. I had work to do after this. There were emails and phone calls, plus two interviews. I had to contact the realtor to set up a surveyor for one of the club buildings because I’d made up my mind.

We would distribute the strippers in the failing club. We’d send them where they’d be happier. We’d put the building up for sale and plow the money from it into the other clubs.

My father had been living in the past, and so had I. Except, he’d lived it over and over, and I’d ignored it. Either way, the result had been the same.

I got out of the shower and dressed.

I found him in the kitchen, nursing a hot cup of coffee, sitting at the marble-topped island. No doubt the coffee was laced. A glance toward the liquor cabinet confirmed that suspicion. The door was ajar.

I kicked it shut and leaned back against the side. He barely glanced up before taking a big gulp of his coffee.

Tension tightened in the air between us.

“You went to see them,” he said gruffly.

“I go more than you realize. Just because you’ve forgotten them, doesn’t mean I have.”

He snorted, putting the mug down with a clink. “I haven’t forgotten them. I just choose to think about them differently.”

“I’d say that by the time you reach the bottom of the bottle, you don’t possess the mental ability to remember your own name, much less two people who died eight years ago.”

Another snort. Another swig of coffee.

“I’m calling the realtor today. It’s time we sold Thunder. I already have it planned out. I’ll be running it by the staff today and rearranging everything through the rest of the week. The building isn’t prime real estate compared to Spark and all the others.” I folded my arms across my chest. “It’ll be quick and painless, and you won’t have to do a thing.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Isn’t that how you want it?”

He grunted.

Apparently, he’d already exhausted his conversation for the day.

“You got that fucking bar yet?”

I should have known that was coming. “No.”

He drained the rest of the coffee, which I was sure was actually more alcohol, judging by the fact that smell outweighed the one of caffeine. “Why not?”

I rubbed my hand over my jaw, wondering how to break it to him. Had I decided fully? Had I made a decision to stop, to let her keep it?

Why was she so determined to keep it?

“Because I haven’t.” On that final note, I pushed away from the kitchen counter and headed for the front door.

He had a key.

With any luck, he’d lock the door on his way out…then put the damn key through the mail slot.