by Emjay Soren
He storms toward me and drops to his knees before me, gripping my shoulders until I am looking at his face, blurred by my tears. “Do you fucking get this? Do you get the fucking danger of those type of secrets?”
“Don’t talk to me about what I don’t get Shamus. You have no clue what I have tried to fight against and protect.”
“Well make sure you run and tell Noah, but don’t tell me, the man who would fucking die for you. Don’t tell me shit right!”
I feel like he has dug a knife into my heart with his last dig. But even though his sarcasm hurts me, he has every right to feel this way. What he doesn’t know, is that there are secrets even Noah isn’t privy to.
I sit there sobbing, soaked and shivering from the rain as Shamus paces the dock muttering curses and sometimes screaming them. When he does speak I don’t know how long it has been.
"Anything else?" he asked, his voice like sandpaper and it scares me. His voice was the same as a man who had admitted defeat and stopped fighting.
*
Shamus
Cassa nodded at my question for more of her fucking bombs tonight. I didn’t know if I could handle any more of this shit. Knowing right now that he was free and walking all hi and mighty made my skin crawl.
“Fuck it. Let’s hear the rest.” I say and stand with my arms folded over my chest.
"He has made threats on Roni and Mike. They don’t know about his drugging me and they don’t know the half of the injuries I sustained from him to keep them safe. When he got angry for whatever reason; I would try and call or go to their house. He knew I couldn’t hide the bruises and so he would scare me into submission. Then I called his bluff one day, and Mike’s boat exploded. That he knew they were planning to be out on it all day and was willing to kill them made me feel true fear for the first time ever. Luckily they had docked it in Port Angeles while they were out shopping and weren’t on the boat when it blew." She walked up to me and stood toe to toe just as mad. "I. Don’t. Fuck. Around. Anymore. I keep this shit from all of you as best I can. If you or anyone else can’t see this and why I do the things I do, then there isn’t a point in me fighting for us anymore.”
She spun and walked up the dock, finished answering for herself and the choices, wrong choices she made for herself.
"Why didn’t you tell Mike?" I yell and see her pause in her frantic walking.
"Because he would have done some stupid ass thing and got him, and Roni killed. Besides it was three days later that he tried to kill me so it kinda slipped my mind." She spat the words at me, refusing to let me even close to hurting her. I had closed off every access point to her heart with my fit of rage, but luckily, I knew in my heart I was doing what Noah kind of suggested I do. I was backing her into the corner.
God damn it though, Noah was right. She was fighting me at every turn the defiant little brat. I don’t think I have ever loved her more. I didn’t like knowing I was hurting her feelings, but I was mad enough that it wasn’t really affecting me now.
"Don’t you see it Cassa, you are playing Judge and Jury here."
"Just waiting to be the executioner Shame."
I paused at that.
All the hope that she would crack, all the hope we would make it froze in that second at her words.
“Executioner?”
She just stared me down and said nothing and I knew that the same hate Noah carried, my Sassy did too. She was completely calm about the idea of killing Cory fucking Knox. This is the sort of darkness you don’t press further on… for now this one needed to chill the fuck out.
The rain had soaked her but here she stood defending herself tooth and fucking nail. I said nothing as she walked up the dock to my dad’s back door, and then turned and stood, in the rain and refused to move until I did.
Cassa
It had been an hour by the time I looked at my watch and screamed.
It had been two minutes.
I knew neither one of us would give in easily tonight but too damn bad, I was fighting. The longer I stood I realized he had some secrets too. He had a whole list of tidbits he had yet to answer, questions he had evaded for too long.
And I was in the mood to fight now.
I stormed down the dock, my feet pounding and splashing water up my soaked jeans.
"What about your secrets?" I roared over the wind and rain, not more than five feet from him.
"What secrets?" He yelled back, now standing to face me as we raged at one another, storm be damned.
"Try an easy one.... You have been home staying in Gig harbor every fucking break you had and never once sought me out like you say you wanted.”
"I always stayed there after we ended. It's a moot point Cassa. I had to live somewhere." He roared
"So why if you missed me so much, how is it you never bothered to come to me?" I was crying again, but my fury was still unleashing.
"I never even wanted to touch foot in Seattle!” He roared. “I hated being in the same fucking city where you and your husband lived. Why the fuck when I had no clue that you were in trouble would I come break up your marriage?" He didn’t spare my feelings when it came down to the truth. It obviously killed him that I married someone so soon after he had left. If I wanted the truth he was sure the fuck not going to sugar coat it and that was clear.
"Answer me the most painful of all then." I stepped closer to his face, but my voice was loud and demanding. It was the pain ripping through my chest at the question, the burning question I needed and feared the answer to. "Why did you leave me?" The words came out on a stream of tears, when I dropped my arms and accepted the defeat of the fight. All I wanted was the answer to that one fucking question. I fell to my knees once more, my hands in my lap. The tears had won over the anger; I had finally asked the one most painful question I had. I had to know why he left me.
I could see the pain on Shamus like an entire entity had formed between us. "Because I had to know if he was right." He dropped to his knees before me.
"Who." I cried.
"My Dad. I wanted to prove him wrong Sassy.” He says like a plea and pulls his soaked hat from his head and runs his hands over the hair he is now growing back. “But as I drove out of town his words made sense. So, I kept going. By the time I made it, you were married, so I never came back. I just wanted to prove I was right; I was possessed with proving him wrong. He told me if I took you and failed that you would resent me. I found out three days after we signed our deal that you had gotten married. I didn’t come home for two years after learning that." He cupped my cheek in his palm. "If I had known what you were going through I would have come for you. I was always coming back Cassa."
I broke apart at the seams and cried against Shamus's chest. “The black box… a ring?” I ask confused but only if I am wrong.
He nods and places a kiss to my temple and traced my tears as they fall along my jaw, his fingers tangling in my wet hair. “I was always coming back to get you, make you a James and fuck everyone who got in my way. I just wasn’t prepared for you to be the one in my way.”
I am devastated now, in this moment than I have ever been in any other. Even as I lost the baby I knew that it was for the best because I was only ever meant to raise a baby with Shamus. “This isn’t fair Shame.” I cry, and I am talking about it all and everything we have done to one another. This is literally the worst butterfly effect ever… all starting because Jerry was angry that Shame was leaving to be more than a crabber.
“No baby it isn’t, but we have right now to change it, accept it and be strong together, or bow out for good.”
“It’s you Shamus, only ever can it be you.” I cry and know he feels the same as his lips crush against mine. I slip my cold hands under his shirt, I didn’t care that we were cold and wet and standing in a torrential downpour. I needed to feel his skin.
Shamus pulled me tight and lifted me into his lap before standing. He was right where I was, and we weren't going to wait until we were back in the house
. He carried me until my back hit the wall of the boathouse, and then fused his mouth to mine once again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Shame
I couldn’t wait to be inside of her, to feel her clench and pull me in, to the place where I was all that existed in her world, as she only existed in mine. We worked at one another’s belts not willing to break this single kiss. I flipped Cassa's jeans free in record time and slid down her pants. When I did break the kiss, I felt how warm and slick she was for me and only me. Cassa hissed and arched back when I found her clit and the man in desperate love roared.
I knew she was ready for me, but I couldn’t help but linger, I wanted to hear her cry out and watch her come, from just touching her but my body was impatient. I dropped to my knees and removed her wet jeans. I could feel the gooseflesh and knew she was cold. I slipped my shirt off so that she could find heat against me, then hitched her thigh over mine and looked at her.
"I want this...." I slipped inside her with grace that I didn’t even know I possessed. I spoke to her, against her mouth and below her ear. "It's not about your pussy, or the way you cry when you come...." I drove in deep as my hand gripped the back of her head and pulled her to my mouth.
She let me engulf her mouth and take her good and hard in deep strokes. "It's you." I said and then let her hair go so I could grip her hips with both hands, going deeper and deeper. "Oh, God it's you Cass." I looked at her deep in the eyes and growled when she scored her nails down my back.
“It’s this irresistible combo of you when your beneath me, your skin against mine and my mouth fusing to yours babe. Perfect storm.”
I used one hand to go under her wet shirt, then hissed when I felt her nipple, so puckered from the cold. I lifted her shirt and sucked the bud of her breast into my mouth and moaned at the taste of her skin. Then she moaned and gripped her fingers into the back of my very short hair and I went wild inside knowing that I could draw these sounds and this reaction from her.
She wrapped her other leg around my waist and rocked her hips against me. "Faster Shame." She cried and tried to arch against the wall of the boathouse.
What my lady wants, she damn well fucking gets.
I rocked into her pussy in a relentless rhythm. The wetness of our bodies made a slapping sound with each slide. I knew the minute that Cassa came. Not because of her relentless cry, but because we were so deeply connected that I felt her tighten against me and knew I had taken her where we both needed.
I felt my heart stop when I saw the look on her face as she came. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I knew I was nothing without her. Fear that she didn’t know how deeply I loved her I whispered my desperate plea. "Don’t ever hide from me again baby please. I can't find a word to tell you how deep I feel. Love isn’t enough. Forever isn’t enough, but you being my everything, and I mean everything baby, is close." I looked at her then when she looked up as I spoke and kept her locked in my gaze. "Marry me...." I said so low I am not even sure she heard me. I was still deep inside, still moving her body against that wooden wall. I kept her gaze locked to mine until I came inside of her, begging even louder. “Marry me Sassy!”
*
Cassa
Shamus sat next to me curled under a blanket leaning against the boathouse watching the rain. “Are you cold Baby?” He asked his arm around me still. It was the first thing he spoke since asking me to marry him.
“Yea.” I laughed and felt my heart melt at the high of knowing we were finally on the same page, of the same book by the same author. I was naked and so was he and we both were too cold to put the wet clothes back on. So, we sat laughing and kissing and touching under the blanket while we watched the rain.
“Think any neighbors watched us?” Shamus asked while he kissed below my ear making me shiver.
I laughed a nervous laugh that turned to a giggle when his breath hit my neck. “Is it bad if I say I hope so? Sex that good deserves viewers.”
“We could give them another show.” He said and slid his fingers between my legs. He looked under the blanket and laughed. “No matter how bad I want to fuck the daylight out of you, this cold is causing some major shrinkage.”
“Take me inside then because I want you to fuck the daylight out of me.” I clamped my legs shut when he found my clit and pressed.
“We could make some memories in the basement.”
I give him my most endearing WTF look. “Why the basement?”
Shamus sat up surprised. “You haven’t been in the basement?”
He was standing before I had a chance to answer. “No basements are creepy.”
“Not anymore.” He put his shirt back on and cried out a loud “Fuck that’s cold.” Before extending his hand to me. “C’mon.”
I took his hand and he wrapped me in the blanket and then lifted and ran for the back doors the rain drenching us again blanket be damned.
We got inside, and he looked at me. My lips were chattering, and I was shaking. He took the blanket from me and grabbed my hand and dashed for the basement door. I wasn’t prepared for what waited in the basement.
Shamus flicked on a light and I stood shaking the cold off. Shamus had remodeled the basement at some point. I hadn’t been down here in so long that I couldn’t tell when or why he did it. He had three spare sets of drum kits, various guitars and microphones. I walked around taking in the look of the former concrete walls that were now carpeted with glass office partition to the left of a small sound stage.
“What is this? When did you do this?” I ask, the excitement in my voice making me smile. He had built a studio in Jerry’s basement, something Jerry wanted him to do but I never knew he had told Shame that. He had wanted Shame home as bad as me and on various occasions when he would drunk dial his son, it was to ask about the studio and when he was building it.
“I started building up plans about six months before he passed. He makes his way to his pearl white Yamaha set and grabs his drum sticks and sits in the stool. His hands are faster than what I can follow as he beats against the symbols creating a soft melody from that alone. Once done showing off, smiling wide he laughs and shrugs his shoulder. “I call it raindrops…it seemed appropriate.”
He is so undeniably sexy in this element, happy and excited that I can barely breathe overwhelmed by him and all he is to me.
“Yes.” I say breathlessly as a combination of excitement and fear bubble up inside of me. I swore I would never say yes again, but I cannot deny that I want it, all of it.
“Yes?” He asks with that big smile still plastered on his face, but his brows drawn in confusion. “Yes, it’s raindrops?”
I smile and shake my head no. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” I say loud enough he can hear me but shy of fear he may have not meant it.
Oh, fuck what if he didn’t mean it? As the voice of hate fills my mind I squash it because I know he meant it. Like that I stand taller, buck naked in his play room and look at him an old confidence I haven’t felt in years controlling me now as I swagger toward him. “I want to marry you Shamus James.” I say again and brush my hand down my side, exploring the feel of my own skin, though it isn’t smooth any longer, it is a magnificent work of art these days. I trace the petals of the blossoms, and the wiry branches as he watches my fingers dance.
“Okay baby stops begging.” He says and smiles with a wink and I know right there we are back.
We are so fucking back.
Chapter Twenty-Six
FOUR WEEKS LATER
Shamus
“I swear to God woman, I will not let Carrie rip my ass if we are late. It is the only thing I won't protect you from. Get a move on!” I yell down the hall of her apartment, where she still lives until the end of the lease which is next week. We went house hunting two weeks ago and found a small cottage in Gig that we like and one we need to renovate the shit out of. My reason 109,873 reason I love Cassa Rae Stapleton? Because she wants us to fix it all, or at least what we can do saf
ely. Where money isn’t a matter to me, it is to her and she wants us taking the time making it ours. I was in the minute she said ours that had me agreeing like a dope eyes dipshit.
I am smart though in those moments and I use those moments often to press home the fact her safety is key.
“Well until it is ours baby, you are still BFF’s with Drakes guys got it?” I asked her the night we chose the small cottage.
“I don’t need goons on my ass at a fucking grocery store Shamus.” She snarled, and it seemed these days I loved fighting with her perfect bratty ass. She had become the defiant little shit I remember. She had a few moments, some setbacks that came naturally but instead of running from me, she ran to me and explained her fear. She was the strongest person I know. Only my girl could make Noah look like a pussy in comparison but never ever tell him I said so.
“I am not about to even argue on this babe. Hard limit this time. I can bang that cottage out with the best security money can buy and even then, I don’t know if I’ll feel completely content with you being there alone with fucktard always around the corner, but I'll feel a shit ton safer knowing the ‘goons’ are lurking in the event Cory is too!”
She melted back at that because she knew the bottom line and that was always safety first.
Right this minute though, safety was key, and it was Carrie who would have our asses if we didn’t get the lead out. Right then Sassy came down the hall and I lost my breath.
In a flowing pink dress of some crazy ass material that hugs every single inch of her sweet body and some high heels that made her legs everlasting. She took my breath away.
