Accidentally on Purpose 6 Book Box Set

by L. D. Davis

  Wordless, I turned around and instantly reached for his neck as I stood on my toes to kiss him. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me thirstily, like he was dying for me to quench his thirst. I know, because that’s how I kissed him, too. Only he could soothe my parched soul.

  As I stood in the arms of the only man I ever loved, sharing his oxygen like life support, the gifted butterflies soared.

  So did my heart.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The kids had no idea that Grant and I had gone through a crisis. He told them that I was sick, which wasn’t too far from the truth. They just didn’t know that it was a mental and emotional sickness.

  I never thought I’d be happy to see children…but I was. It wasn’t just because of the natural high I was on after Grant’s beautiful butterfly surprise; I was genuinely pleased to see them, and maybe a little relieved. I wasn’t all mushy about it, though.

  “I made you a get well pwesent,” Nat said, soon after our arrival.

  She climbed onto the couch next to me and handed me an envelope decorated with lopsided hearts and crude looking stick figures that rather resembled us holding stick hands.

  “What is in here?” I shook it a little. “Did you get me a baby elephant? I’ve always wanted a baby elephant.”

  She giggled. “No! A baby elwephant won’t fit in there!”

  “A rocket ship?” I sounded hopeful.

  “No!” she shrieked, laughing still. “Look inside!”

  “Fine.” I released a sigh and slipped my finger under the flap.

  A moment later I tipped the envelope and deposited a pile of multi-colored paper clips into my palm. I looked at it blankly for a few seconds until Natalie picked one up. Then I realized all of the paperclips were linked together in a chain. Several little plastic charms that looked suspiciously like pieces from one of her doll sets dangled from it.

  It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but I felt myself swallowing and blinking rapidly to keep myself from crying again.

  “It’s perfect, Nat,” I cooed when I was able to speak again. I touched one of her two long braids and smiled appreciatively.

  I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist. When I looked up, I met Grant’s eyes as he stood in the kitchen talking to Juliette. He raised one eyebrow in question as if to say, “Are you getting sentimental on me, Grayne?”

  I shrugged in response as Natalie climbed on my lap. Maybe I was getting a little sentimental, or maybe I was just learning to appreciate the smaller things in life, like an ugly bracelet made by a little girl who had wiggled her way into my heart.

  Later that night, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at my reflection and praying for my speeding heart to slow down.

  I pulled my fingers through my curls for the hundredth time, and again, examined my body in the white silk chemise I had purchased earlier that afternoon. I had never had a reason to buy lingerie in the past because I didn’t care about pleasing other men. They were all a means to an end for me, but for the first time since before I was…raped…I was interested in mutual pleasure, not just my own.

  It wasn’t going to be easy for me to walk out of the bathroom and essentially present myself on a silver platter for Grant. For one, even though we were back together and probably more secure than before, I still felt the remnants of the agony surrounding our breakup. I still felt the ghost of despair I’d felt when I kept taking my heroin tools out to look at them with longing. I still felt a pinch of the pain from when I’d closed the door in Grant’s face. For the most part, I was relieved and happy to be back at the ware-home with Grant and the kids, but I still had to deal with those other, darker emotions.

  Like any physical afflictions, those mental and emotional aches don’t stop on command—not even with a dose of medication to ease it. If the pain goes away at all, it’s a gradual retreat.

  The biggest reason it was going to be hard to walk into the bedroom was because I hadn’t quite been able to shake the cracked images of being violated. It was something that was always with me, but most days, I was able to function and not think of it. However, after telling Grant about it, it was still fresh in my mind. The last thing I wanted was for our time together to be again tainted by my flashbacks and fears, but I knew I had to try. I wanted to try. I wanted him.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” I whispered to my reflection.

  I dashed a little bit of a vanilla scented perfume on my neck and between my boobs. I inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times before opening the door and turning off the bathroom light.

  My heart pounded so hard as I stepped into the bedroom that it must have been bruising me from the inside out. Grant was sitting up in bed, shirtless and wearing a pair of lounge pants as he played a game on his phone. I stood motionless as I waited for him to notice me. He glanced up very briefly before his eyes immediately went back to his game. Then his head snapped up as his brain registered what he had seen. He stared at me with his mouth hanging comically open in astonishment.

  The chemise wasn’t the sexiest, most revealing thing, but I thought there was eroticism in the simplicity of it. I just hoped that Grant thought so, too.

  Once I had his full attention, I walked across the room to his side of the bed.

  “Damn,” he whispered as his eyes slowly traveled up and down my body.

  “Do you like it?” I asked as I tried not to sound timid. Me and timidity didn’t go together.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and put his hands on my hips. He gazed up at me with lust and love, but there was restraint in those brown eyes, too.

  “I love it,” he said and swallowed. “But…what if…”

  “What if I freak out like the nut job I am?” I finished for him. I put my hand on his head and lightly moved it over his short dark hair. “It’s very possible that I will freak out again,” I said softly. “But I’ll have to get through it. You will have to bring me back to reality, and you can’t stop.”

  He looked alarmed and angry at that. “You want me to continue against your will? Are you damn crazy?”

  I smiled a little. “I am damn crazy. You already know that, but yes, I want you to continue.”

  He stood up and started to push me away as he shook his head. “No. I won’t do that.”

  “Grant,” I sighed when he succeeded in pushing me back a couple feet.

  “I won’t do that to you!” he snarled at me. “That’s rape, Mayson. I won’t be another one of your rapists.”

  I flinched at his words, but I didn’t back away.

  “I’m not telling you to ignore my pleas. Talk me through it, Grant.” I threw my hands up and let them fall. “It might not even happen. It doesn’t always happen. Something triggered it, and I don’t know what it was.”

  “What if I’m the trigger, Mayson?”

  “I don’t think that you are.”

  He paced the floor agitatedly. “What if talking to you doesn’t help? Then what? We’ll be right back where we were a few days ago. I’m not ready to lose you again for a little bit of physical satisfaction.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “First of all, I would hope that it is more than a little bit of satisfaction. I’m expecting way more than a little bit, so you better deliver. Secondly, we’ll never be back to where we were a few days ago. The circumstances were different. You didn’t know before, and I... I am beginning to have a better view of myself…at least as far as you’re concerned. Now stop pacing the floor and get over here and make love to me!” I pointed to the floor in front of me. “Now.”

  He relaxed a tiny bit as he gave me an equally tiny smile, but he didn’t look prepared to do my bidding. Silence stretched between us for a whole minute or more before he finally moved, but he didn’t come to me, not exactly. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor for another several seconds.

  “When I left you thirteen years ago,” he began solemnly, but I held up my hand and shook my head.

  “St
op right there,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He looked up at me, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you don’t want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I repeated. “Like ever.”

  The expression on his face was so dubious that I cracked a smile.

  “You wanted to know,” he said, his voice just as disbelieving as his expression. “I don’t blame you for wanting to know, especially after what happened to you. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t—”

  I held up my hand once again to stop him and shook my head once.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. There are a lot of things in the past that do matter, but that’s not one of them. I don’t blame you. I blame myself, I always have, but I needed someone else to direct my anger and hatred at because it was too much for me. But I don’t want to talk about it, Grant. I am ready to move forward.” I took a deep breath. “If you’re able to forgive me for Shari’s death, I can forgive you for leaving, and really, there’s nothing to forgive.”

  He stood up so abruptly, I was forced to take a few stumbling steps backward.

  “Forgive you for Shari’s death?” he asked, his voice hard and demanding. “What are you talking about?”

  I sighed heavily. My night of seduction had gone completely awry. My chemise began to feel like a useless potato sack hanging on my body.

  “I introduced Sharice to heroin, Grant. You know that. If I hadn’t—” It was his turn to cut me off.

  “If you hadn’t, she probably would have done it anyway. Besides, she had free will, Mayson. She could have said no.”

  Anger began to infiltrate me. He was trying to deflect blame from me, and when it came to Shari’s death, that was something I never did. It was ultimately my fault and I always owned up to my bad deeds.

  “It’s still my fault, Grant.”

  He advanced on me, his eyes hot with fury and the muscles in his body taut with savagery. I had some idea of how the criminals must have felt when they saw that big man coming for them with bulging muscles and huge hands balled into fists. I looked up at him with wide eyes.

  “I’m not letting you take responsibility for someone else’s actions!” he said ferociously. “Sharice was my sister.” He put a hand to his heart. “I will love her and miss her for as long as I live, but you did not kill her. She did that on her own. It was her actions that put her in a grave decades before her time, not yours. No one forced her to put a needle in her arm.”

  My anger quickly boiled over. I turned my back on him, and with thunder in my movements, I walked to the armoire in the corner. I threw the doors open so forcefully, that they bounced back and hit me as I grabbed a pair of jeans.

  “You ruined everything,” I shouted, tripping as I tried to get into my jeans. “It was so easy. All you had to do was get hard, appreciate how effin’ amazing my body looks in this chemise, take it off me, and ravage me. Four steps, Grant. Four freakin’ steps! Why couldn’t you just appreciate what I was offering, considering how difficult it is for me to offer it?”

  I yanked the jeans into place and furiously fumbled with the button. When I felt Grant’s big hand on my arm, I knocked it away and spun around to face him.

  “I am to blame for her dying,” I shouted at him, shoving at his hard chest. He didn’t budge, but stood his ground and let me shove at him again. “She was your sister! You should have tried to save her first! If you hadn't saved me first, Shari wouldn’t have died. You said you don’t blame me, but how can you not resent me for living when there is nothing left of her but bones?”

  Grant looked like I had just hit him with a mac truck. He took a couple unsteady steps back from the impact of what I had just said. I didn’t even know that my words carried that kind of weight.

  His voice was hoarse and shockingly weak when he spoke. “You think… All these years, you’ve believed that I had a choice between you and Sharice and that I chose you?”

  “It’s not what I think,” I snapped. “It’s what happened. I was there.”

  He closed his eyes for a long time and let out a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, his body relaxed with a resignation I didn’t understand. He moved forward swiftly and framed my face in his hands before I had time to get away. His eyes glistened as they peered into mine, and that alone left me temporarily immobile and without speech.

  “Baby,” he whispered gently. “If I truly had a choice, I would have chosen to save you both. I would have given my own life to save both of my most favorite girls, but the fact is that I didn’t have a choice. Mayson, honey,” he said, his voice so thick with sympathy and sadness that my whole body jerked from the emotion in him. “When I found the two of you, Sharice was already gone. Her body was cold. She was already gone,” he repeated. “She was dead already.”

  Stunned, I could only stare at him for a silent moment until I found the will to move my head side to side in negation. I tried to pull away, but Grant’s hands held on to my face, almost to the point of pain.

  “Mayson, you had overdosed. Your brain and body were fried. You weren’t even conscious when I found you. Whatever you remember is inaccurate. I never chose you over her, I would always choose both. It is not your fault that Sharice is dead.”

  My knees wobbled as I stared up at him with misty eyes.

  “But I remember…” I whispered.

  “What exactly do you remember?” Grant asked, running one hand soothingly over my hair.

  I opened my mouth to tell him, but other than seeing Sharice’s laughing face just before we got high, my only other memory was of Grant holding her in his arms as he’d sobbed.

  “I...” I said and paused. “I saw you holding her and crying,” I whispered as a tear fell from my lashes. “Is that right?”

  He swallowed hard as he fought off the misery of the memory, but nodded before asking, “Anything else? Do you remember what happened after you shot up?”

  I closed my eyes and leaned into him. He pulled me against his body and wrapped his arms around me as I pressed my forehead to his chest.

  “I remember the incredible beauty of dying,” I said honestly. Then I cried as thirteen plus years of guilt began to fall away, and thirteen years of grief crushed me.

  “Good morning, my beautiful, splendid, soaring, gorgeous, sexy, sexy butterfly,” Grant crooned.

  I opened one eye and found him standing beside the bed holding a large tray in his hands.

  “What is that?” I asked, my voice heavy with sleep and hoarse from the tears I’d shed the night before.

  “Why don’t you sit up and find out?”

  Slowly, I pushed myself up and leaned back against the headboard. Grant placed the tray over my lap and removed a silver lid from a plate. I smiled as I looked down at the arrangement of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. There were also two slices of wheat toast cut into triangles and lightly buttered. A small bowl overflowed with strawberries and blueberries, and there was a carafe of coffee, a small glass pitcher of cream, and another with syrup. Blue and yellow carnations stood inside a skinny vase, and beside that was a crayon-drawn picture of a crooked heart and a dark figure I suspected to be Dusky.

  “This is very nice,” I said to Grant and angled my face toward his for a kiss.

  It was more than nice. Still feeling a little raw and emotional, I was surprised and irritated to feel tears building again.

  “How are you feeling?” Grant asked after kissing my hair. He sat down on the edge of the bed in front of me.

  “Better. I’m sorry I had another meltdown.”

  “Don’t apologize to me for that,” he said sternly. “I’m sorry you’ve been carrying Shar’s death on your shoulders for all these years.”

  “Now that I know what actually happened, I do feel…lighter, but I still feel some guilt. I can’t help that.” I shook my head as if trying to shake away the impending sadness that threatened to take me down again. “I don’t want to talk about it again, not for a long time any
way. Like I said last night, I’m ready to move forward.” I gave him a pointed look. “With all things.”

  I offered him a forkful of eggs and he accepted it. Quietly, we shared my breakfast for a few minutes. I wasn’t fooled by his silence, though. I knew he was thinking, and I knew he’d say something I probably wouldn’t like. He didn’t disappoint.

  “I think we should wait,” Grant finally said, meeting my eyes. He held his hand up, much like I had done the night before to stop him from talking. “I know that you want to, and I know that you want me to try to talk you through if you have another flashback, but I can’t do that, Mayson. What if I can’t get you through it? I would stop, of course, but what kind of condition will you be in then?”

  I didn’t reply because we both already knew the answer to that. I would be in terrible shape, and there was no telling how long I would stay that way. A few minutes? An hour? A few days? Moreover, in my traumatized state, I might unfairly blame Grant. Then where would that leave us as a couple?

  However, how else were we supposed to move forward? We were both very healthy, relatively young people. Although we hadn’t said it to each other in over thirteen years, I was two-hundred percent positive that he loved me as much as I loved him. The desire to be intimate would only get stronger. The flashbacks may never go away, or it was possible that I’d never get another.

  Were we never going to have sex? Did he expect us to be forever abstinent?

  I was about to object. I was ready to toss the tray aside and insist that we try right that moment, but Grant’s next words made me sit absolutely still.

  “I can’t watch you cry and panic and try to talk you through it,” he said, his voice low and harsh. His eyes closed and pain tightened his facial features. “Every time I remember the horror and despair on your face, and the panic in your eyes and the way you scrambled away from me, my mind forces me to imagine what you must have looked like when it happened. I see you, on the floor and faceless men on you…” He opened his eyes, but they were unfocused. “I don’t even know if you ever made a sound,” he whispered. “I don’t know if you screamed, cried, or begged, but in my wild imagination, you did all of that and more. I hear you in my head like it’s real.”