by Shade, S. M.
Gradually, our group dwindles as everyone heads off to bed until Axton, Dani, and I are the only ones left. Axton’s stare finally gets to her and she rolls her eyes.
“I’m seeing someone new that I’m not ready to have your haughty opinion on. It’s not Dustin. I haven’t heard from him.”
Caden is nodding off on my lap, and I start bundling him up in his coat. “I’m going to take him back to the cabin for bed.” And get out of this conversation.
Axton surprises me by getting to his feet. “Fine,” he says to Dani, then turns to me. “Let’s go.” He takes Caden from me, and Caden lays his head on Axton’s shoulder.
The walk back to the cabin is peaceful and I take a moment to look around and admire the snow coated woods at night. “Do you know who Dani is seeing?” Axton asks.
“No, I don’t.”
The snow squeaks under our feet and his words come out in a puff of fog. “Would you tell me if you did?” One eyebrow is cocked at me when I take a moment to answer.
“I’d tell you if it were Dustin.” It’s the most honest answer I have for him. I’m not going to spy on his sister or betray her confidence. “I’d tell you if she were putting herself in danger.”
We walk up on the deck of the cabin and I add, “I really don’t know who she’s seeing.”
“I believe you.”
Caden doesn’t wake when I get him out of his coat and clothes and into pajamas. Today has worn him out. I can hear Axton’s music playing in the loft and I’m tempted to join him, but I know I shouldn’t. Instead, I shower and climb into bed with my book.
I don’t know if it’s the cold air or what, but it’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time and I wake up in a great mood. Axton sleeps late so Caden and I have breakfast with Patrick and spend some time hanging out in the lounge of the lodge with a few others until it’s time to head to the snow trails to go glow tubing.
“I’m not sure what Brynn will think,” Clara says. “She likes the snow but freaks out in a swing.”
“Hatch doesn’t like swings either, but loves the sled,” Axton reassures her.
We had nothing to worry about. The kids love it, but I swear the adults have as much fun as they do. The place is cool, and I wish we had something like it near us at home.
Rock music plays from overhead speakers and the lights and glowing arcs turn to colored streaks when we barrel down the lanes in the inflatable tubes that Brynn calls donuts. The kids get passed around to ride on our laps, and we take turns challenging and racing each other.
Brysen has Brynn on his lap and Clara holds Caden on their last trip down, their tubes hooked together. Axton and I can hear the kids laughing as they disappear down the hill.
“I’m going to beat you one more time,” Axton taunts and jumps on his tube.
He shoves off a split second before me, but I catch up with him. Taking advantage of a dip in the middle of the lane, I gain enough speed to slam into the side of him, nearly knocking him off of his tube, and steal the lead. I win, but he returns the favor at the bottom by crashing into me and rolling me off my tube and into the snow.
Everyone gathered at the bottom laughs, and I chuck a snowball at him when he tries to help me up. I love the joy I see in his face when he looks down at me. He’s relaxed and having fun, without all of the usual things that weigh him down. It’s a beautiful thing to see.
Snow starts falling on our ride back to the lodge and the radio warns of the approaching blizzard, advising everyone to stay inside and be prepared for power outages from the wind. The manager of the lodge left a message for all the guests, assuring us that the lodge has backup generators and can maintain heat and emergency lighting in the case of an outage. They don’t seem too concerned. They’re probably used to this up here.
Dani meets us for dinner and offers to keep Caden with her overnight. “Give Naomi a break and a chance to have a quiet night,” she tells Axton. “Plus, if we lose power, you won’t have heat in the cabin, but we will. We have security right across the hall. He’ll be fine.”
It doesn’t take much to convince him, and I get a security guard to escort me to and from the cabin to get Caden’s bag with everything he needs to stay the night. After we both kiss him goodnight, Axton and I head back to the cabin.
Axton builds a fire in the fireplace, then disappears into his room. I didn’t expect a night without the baby and I’m not sure what to do with myself. Finally, I settle down on the living room couch and put on a movie. With the lights off, the glow from the fire dances on the walls and the two large picture windows on my left feature a blanket of falling snow.
The holiday movie that’s showing is cheesy and kind of boring, but I’m comfortable and content, wrapped up in a throw blanket. About halfway through the movie, Axton sits beside me on the couch.
“Let me guess, the woman is going to leave her successful CEO boyfriend for the small town handyman who makes wooden toys for orphans.”
A snort of laughter jumps out of me because he isn’t far off. Despite his opinion, he stays and watches the rest of the movie, pulling me over until I let him share the blanket with me. It’s not a good idea. I know this.
Unlike when he found me in the hot tub, he isn’t trying anything. No, this time I’m the weak one when I scoot close enough for our legs to touch, and he puts his arm around me like it’s the most normal thing in the world. I had so much fun with him today, and now being so close, the warmth and the scent of him, I can’t help myself.
He must feel my gaze on him because he turns to look at me. At this moment, there’s nothing I want more than to kiss him, to feel his lips on mine. My hand slides behind his neck as I bring my lips to his and he cups my face.
This isn’t like the last time when he showed up in my room and we attacked each other. It’s not an overwhelming lust driving me into his arms. Just the urge to be with him. To be close to him.
Our hands caress and explore slowly, removing clothing as they go, until we’re naked on the thick rug in front of the couch, his gorgeous body on top of me, his mouth on my neck.
When he pushes inside of me, his lips find mine again and deliver a languishing, searing hot kiss. We move together so naturally, taking our time and just feeling every moment of what we do to each other.
It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt in my life.
After it’s over, we move back to the couch without a word. He plays with my hair while I rest my head on his shoulder and we stay that way for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. I know he’s regretting it already, and I should be too.
It wasn’t chemistry or lust urging me to make a bad decision. It’s worse. My heart was in it.
The TV goes from some silly commercial to the beginning of the SLY Entertainment Report. Axton looks for the remote to change it, but we must’ve knocked it down in the couch. The blonde onscreen reports from a street outside of a bar and she’s super excited with her announcement.
“Breaking news on the Tragic front. And it is tragic. It looks like the Nanny with Benefits, Naomi Wells, is moving on from the sex symbol heartthrob Axton Todd. It appears she’s found a new interest in the up and coming musician Patrick Thorn.”
Pictures of Patrick and I eating together the night before the charity concert, and another of him walking beside me in the hotel are plastered in one corner of the screen. There’s nothing suggestive or indecent about the pictures but it’s not like it matters.
I lean over, grab my clothes, and dress while she stops people coming out of the bar to ask their opinion.
“I’m glad,” a young woman says, smiling at the camera. “He’s way too hot for her. He could do so much better.” She waves. “I’m single, Axton!”
After stopping another person who calls me a gold digger and paints Axton as my victim, she wraps up with this statement before a commercial. “We have no comment from Axton Todd yet on how he’s feeling about this betrayal, but it’s clear there are a long line of wo
men ready to soothe his broken heart.”
“Naomi,” Axton calls when I walk away.
“I’m fine. I just need a minute to myself.” I go upstairs to the loft and sit on the sofa, watching the snow fall.
I know this is all part of being here, of being someone who exists near a person of Axton’s fame, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. The press has never painted me as anything but negative. First a kidnapper, then a negligent guardian, a gold digger, and now a cheater.
All I did was love him. Him and Caden.
If I’d seen that report at any other moment, I probably wouldn’t feel so shredded, but I was already too emotional. Axton’s footsteps on the stairs warn me he’s coming, and I wipe at my eyes, afraid he might be able to tell a few tears slipped out, even in the dim light. The couch dips as he sits beside me.
“They’re assholes, Naomi. They just make shit up. It’s best to try to ignore it. We know what’s true and that’s what matters.”
I can’t do this with him right now. Maybe because the whole nanny with benefits thing isn’t far off. “I know. It’s not like you can tell them that we just fuck each other when the mood strikes. Nanny with benefits is the closest they’ve come to the truth.”
He catches my wrist when I stand up. I can’t look at him. It hurts too much right now. “It’s not like that. I can’t—”
“I know. You can’t trust me.”
“No, that’s not it.” He lets out a deep sigh.
It’s time to admit what I’ve been denying, even to myself. “Ax, I’m not mad. I’m not asking for anything from you, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t pretend I’m not in love with you. It’s too hard.”
His hand goes lax on my wrist and the look of horror on his face at my admission scoops out whatever scrap of hope was living inside me.
“You can’t love me. You don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand. You get to decide what you want, Ax, but you don’t get to choose how I feel about you. No matter how this goes, I’m in love with you.”
“Fuck.” He gets to his feet and paces the room. “There are things you don’t know!”
Frustration clamps onto me. “Then tell me! I know it has to do with your nightmares, with someone’s death that you feel guilt over, with a door you don’t want opened.”
The lamp in the corner casts the room in shadows, outlining his form as he stands with his back to me. He stares out the floor to ceiling window and his face is reflected in the glass, giving me a look at his tortured expression when I walk up behind him.
He whispers, “I already opened it.”
His skin is warm under my arms when I wrap them around his middle from behind. “I know you’re afraid of loving and being loved, but it isn’t something you control. You can run from it like you tried to do with Caden those first few weeks, or you can avoid it and lock yourself away, but it won’t work.”
“Damn it, you don’t get it. Two women in my life have loved me. I loved one away and drove the other to death. One dead and one gone.”
Chapter Thirteen
Axton
She deserves to know the truth. After all the mixed signals I’ve thrown her, she needs to know why this can’t happen, no matter how I feel.
“You can’t love me, Naomi. I don’t want you to.”
My words make her flinch and I hate that I’m hurting her, that I’m not getting the words out right. But I’ve never told anyone this story and I don’t know how to start. She lets me take her hand and lead her back to the couch but puts a little space between us when we sit.
“Just tell me,” her soft voice cajoles. “I promise I won’t judge or think badly of you.”
My elbows rest on my knees, and I lay my head on my palm for a moment. “I’m trying to think how to start.”
“Who died that you feel guilt over?”
Straightening my back, I sigh and watch the snow fall as I talk. “My ex-girlfriend. Her name was Renee. We broke up, and she didn’t handle it well.”
I think back and remember how devastated she was when I ended things. “We were together for about a year. She wasn’t a bad person and it wasn’t some terrible relationship. We never fought or had any serious issues. I just…didn’t love her. By then I knew that how I felt wasn’t going to change and it wasn’t fair to drag it out.”
Naomi listens intently, scooting closer to me.
“She was in love with me. When I broke things off, she just fell apart. For months she tried to convince me to get back together, to try again. She made constant promises about what she could do better if I’d just give her another chance, but she hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I finally had to tell her bluntly that I didn’t love her, and I never would. She needed to move on and let me do the same.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face, her expression just…went blank. Her voice was flat and monotone as she said the last two words that she would ever speak to me. ‘I understand.’ She got in her car and left—she’d moved out months before. A few days went by—the longest I’d gone without hearing from her—and I thought it was over. She’d accepted it. She’d be okay. I was so relieved.
“The guys and I were just starting to get our shit together and really take a run at being musicians for a living. I’d spent all day with them, putting together some songs, drinking, just hanging out and having fun like I hadn’t in too long. It was like I was suddenly free. Free of the person who loved me,” I scoff.
Naomi lays her hand on my leg. “Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is hell, but being imprisoned by someone’s love when you don’t feel the same is no better. You were both suffering. It wasn’t wrong for you to be relieved or happy.” The compassion in her voice is set to break me.
I need to get the rest of this out or I’ll never be able to.
“I got home late and from the second I stepped through my front door, something felt off. I don’t know if it was instinct or my subconscious picking up clues or what, but that feeling of foreboding, I’ve never forgotten it. I feel it again every time I relive the walk through my empty house in my nightmares. Every time I stand outside that door with light licking out from beneath it.
“I knew something was wrong. I knew someone had been in my house. I knew I didn’t want to open that door. It seemed like years went by while I convinced myself to turn the handle and pull it open.”
Naomi’s soft hand slips into mine. My skin breaks out in sweat, the way it always does when I’m confronted with this moment. Nausea washes over me, and I spit the rest of the story out before I can lose my nerve.
“There was so much blood. And the smell. I never knew blood could smell like that. Metallic but also sweet in a sickening way. Like copper and dead flowers. At first, my brain just couldn’t register what I was seeing.”
It flashes across my vision now, and I squeeze Naomi’s hand, grounding myself. I’m here, not back there. This isn’t a nightmare.
“She sliced her wrists in my bathtub. The sight and smell of the blood was horrible but her body, it was so pale I swear it looked fake. For one second I had this insane thought that it was a prank. A mannequin. A mannequin up to its neck in a tub of blood. But it was Renee.
“The next hour is fuzzy in my memory. I remember screaming, lifting her out onto the floor, how icy the water was, her cold skin. I know I called an ambulance, but she was way past needing one. The coroner said she’d been dead at least five hours when I found her. On the wall beside the faucet, she’d written ‘I love you’ in blood with her finger.”
“Fuck, Ax,” Naomi whispers, wrapping her arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”
The words that fall out next I never expected to share with anyone, but I need her to understand why she can’t love me. Why we can’t be together. “There’s something wrong with me. I love too much or not at all, and it destroys people. Drives them away, like my mother. Or kills them.”
Her arms tighten
around me, and I loop my arms around her shoulders, resting my chin on her head. Breathing her in and reveling in the comfort she always brings me.
“I think we could use a drink,” she says. It’s not what I expect to hear, but I’m not going to disagree when she lets me go and adds, “I’ll be right back.”
To be inside her head right now would be my one wish. I feel lighter, better than I thought I would after telling my story, but her lack of reaction to it so far makes me worry. Which is stupid because I shouldn’t care. Her opinion shouldn’t matter so damn much to me. I’m not trying to win her over. I’m trying to explain why she can’t love me.
She returns with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses of ice, setting them on the small end table beside me. “You can pour.”
While I do that, she turns the lights up a little. It lets us see each other better but isn’t so bright it blocks the sight of the snow falling heavily outside the windows. Her fingers brush mine when I hand a glass to her and she sits facing me on the couch, cross legged.
“Did Renee ever threaten to kill herself?”
“No.”
“My mother did. She told me if I left to go to college, she wouldn’t make it on her own, that she may as well die. I left, and she followed through. Did I kill her?”
Fuck, her mother committed suicide. I shouldn’t have told her that story. Serious brown eyes stare into mine, and my mouth dries up. It’s not a rhetorical question. She’s waiting for an answer.
“Of course not,” I choke out.
Her eyebrows climb her forehead. “She specifically threatened suicide. I didn’t believe her, and I left. You didn’t even know Renee was considering it. By your logic, Mom’s death is my fault.”
“It’s…different. You’re supposed to leave your parents, go to school…”
“And you’re never supposed to break up with someone? Do you think you should’ve just stayed with her, given up the rest of your life and any chance at finding someone you love because she couldn’t cope?”
