There was a part of Maxon that hunted it.
Wanted the pain.
Wanted the disorder.
Wanted to make himself pay.
I’d been desperate to fix those pieces for so long, but those were the parts of himself that he’d always kept out of reach. The ones he didn’t let me touch.
“Should I call Jace or Ian?” I finally managed to ask, the words choked as they scraped across my raw throat.
“No. Just you,” he slurred.
Air heaved from my lungs, and I squeezed my eyes for a beat, coming to the decision to be there for him.
“Okay. Let’s get you cleaned up.” I edged back over, wading through that energy, my footsteps slowed in that quiet ferocity.
I wrapped an arm around his waist.
Chills spread. Fire and ice skating down my spine, tingles spreading outward, touching every cell.
“Do you think you can walk?” I forced out.
“Yeah. Looks worse than it is,” he rasped.
“Don’t lie to me, Maxon Chambers.”
He released a rough sound, pressed his nose into my hair, his mouth moving near my temple. “You’re right. It hurts, Izzy. Hurt’s so fuckin’ bad. That’s the truth.”
The words staggered me, whipping through me with the force of a storm. And I knew what he was sayin’, where they were coming from. But I didn’t think either of us were prepared for that conversation tonight. I didn’t want him saying things he didn’t mean when he had alcohol soaking his brain.
When my heart was already tattered and torn and mangled like his body.
Bleeding at the sight of him like this.
I started toward the short hall at the back of the open room that housed his living room and kitchen.
He took lurching steps as we went, teeth clenching as he grunted with physical pain, and I took on as much of his weight as I could.
Tears stung the back of my eyes.
Because he was hurting.
Because he felt too good.
Because I didn’t think I could ever fully trust him again.
“Where is your bedroom?” I murmured.
“Down the hall . . . last door on the right,” he grumbled through halting breaths.
I got him all the way to the end of the hall, to the double doors sitting there as if they were asking for permission for passage.
A disorder blew through, the air too thin, too deep, too profound.
Gathering my strength, I reached out and turned the knob. The door swung open to a big room.
Modern and redone like the rest of his house.
Masculine and sexy.
My heart panged.
I ignored it, ignored the forgotten dreams and his massive bed and his scent that was hitting me from all sides. I led him into the attached bathroom where I flicked on the light.
He squinted beneath the harshness, and I gasped again when his wounds were illuminated this way. “Oh, God, Maxon . . . what did they do to you? You should be at the hospital.”
“Don’t want to.”
A frown pulled at my face. “You don’t have to be the tough one all the time.”
He stumbled over a choked laugh. “Not so tough tonight.”
I released a breath. “Four men got to you?”
“Four punk kids. I should . . . I should have . . .” He trailed off in some kind of agony. I could feel it. All the things from earlier.
“Izzy . . . I’m so sorry.” He was slurring more, and I was shushing him, whispering, “We’ll talk about it later.”
“You came.”
“Yeah.”
“For me?” Vulnerability tumbled out with his question. A band pulled tight, right through the middle of me.
The part that wanted to promise that I’d be there for him forever and the other that hated him for what he’d done.
“I figured you and I had more things we needed to say to each other.”
“So many things,” he mumbled.
“Let’s save it for when you feel better, why don’t we?” I pled, sure my heart couldn’t handle a thing he would say.
Maybe I should have listened to my mama when she said we both needed time to clear our heads. She was right. We needed it. But that would have meant I wouldn’t have been here for him this way. And tonight . . . just for tonight, I wanted to be.
“Fuckin’ hurts.” His face twisted.
My stomach did the same, hating that he was in pain.
“I know,” I told him, trying to soothe him. Because it did. It hurt so bad. And I wasn’t sure if that would ever go away.
He reached out, and his fingertips brushed my cheek. “So pretty.”
Redness flushed. I bit my bottom lip, ignoring it, knowing he wouldn’t be sayin’ it if his restraint wasn’t dulled.
If the reality wasn’t marred and distorted by the trauma of the night.
“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
I stepped back a little so I could gather the hem of his shirt in my hands. Maxon stared down at me.
Blue eyes roiled, fierce and uncontrolled, air coming in harsh breaths from his nose.
I tore my attention away, unable to stay standing beneath the weight of it all.
“I’m going to need to take your shirt off. Is that okay?”
He grunted his approval, and I started pulling it up, over those rows of perfectly chiseled abs he’d been teasing me with a few days ago.
I tried not to look. Not to let my mouth water or my body trip into need.
I tried all the harder not to cry when I saw the purples and blues rising under the red scrapes, some of them pitted with tiny rocks where his shirt had torn, a big scrape over the scar that remained on his side. One that I would never, ever forget.
And I was picturing him a ball on the ground.
People hurtin’ him. I hated it. Hated it so much.
“Oh, God, Maxon.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I hate that this happened to you.”
“Deserve it. Deserve it all.”
“Please, don’t say that,” I begged as I lifted his shirt higher.
It exposed his chest, and I was struggling for air.
Fighting my senses.
The sorrow at him being hurt this way. The love that had refused to die. The arousal that stirred just being in his space.
I wanted to reach out. Touch him. Caress his flesh. Kiss it better the way Pete had implied.
The man was magnificent. Wide, bristling strength. Solid muscle carved from a stony cliff. Jagged and hard, destruction below if you didn’t hold on tight enough.
But it was the wounds covering almost every inch of him that shook me to the core.
“Tell me these assholes got arrested?” I peeked up at him, praying he couldn’t read everything I was thinking. “I can’t believe what they did to you.”
He gave me a grim shake of his head, and his body slumped a little to the left. “No. I’ll get ’em. Don’t be scared, Izzy. Won’t let nothin’ happen to you. Never.”
I didn’t want to point out that he’d hurt me worst of all.
Swallowing down all the confliction, I peeled his shirt the rest of the way over his head, careful of the gashes on his face. I tugged it free, dropped it to the floor.
My eyes drifted.
Catching.
Hooking.
It pulled a gasp out with it, and I tried not to gape, tried to keep my eyes from racing to take in every inch of his bare shoulders and upper arms. The designs he’d marked there.
The man a hardbound book.
Grief almost cut me in two.
I ached, and I wanted to reach out and turn the pages.
Read everything that was inside.
“Izzy,” he grunted, feeling the fever of my gaze.
I shook the reaction, fought to maintain a semblance of control. Of decency in this moment. “Why don’t you sit on the toilet so I can tend to your wounds.”
A frown pinched his brow,
but he nodded, backing away as I stepped toward him. My trembling hands reached out, tentative, hovering, before I wound them around to his back to support him.
His massive arms wrapped around me way up high.
I could feel his heart. The pound, pound, pound.
While mine ached and ached and ached.
He eased to sitting, and his arms that had been around my upper back slid down, hot hands landing on my sides.
Tugging me close, the man searched my face before he leaned in and ran his nose along the exposed flesh above my blouse.
Shivers flashed.
A river of gooseflesh that ate up my body.
“So good, Izzy. You smell so good. Like a field of wild jasmine. Want to lie in it.”
Oh, he needed not to be sayin’ those things to me.
“Don’t, Maxon. You’re drunk,” I begged, trying to quiet him, to stop this from happening, my mind from taking a jaunt into lurid thoughts
I set my hands on his shoulders and peeled myself away. I fumbled over to the sink and turned on the faucet so I could warm a washcloth under it, trying to gather myself while I was there.
You can do this.
You can do this.
I edged back over to him, and he lifted his face, those eyes on me.
Energy sizzled in the tiny space.
I swallowed around it and focused on cleaning up his wounds.
Gingerly.
Tenderly.
What he really needed was a shower, but I knew there was no way I could hold him up, and I had an inclination that getting this man naked would be a bad, terrible idea.
So, I just kept rinsing the cloth, ringing it out, going back time and again.
Caring for him, a stupid part of me wishin’ it’d always been my job. That he’d returned it. Been there for us when we needed him most.
A heavy sigh pushed from his mouth, and his head kept sagging forward, the man close to passing out. I was pretty sure that was more from the alcohol than any of the injuries he’d sustained.
Tipping his chin up, I dabbed at the biggest cut over his eye, his striking face right there.
He opened his eyes when I did.
Potent blue gazed up at me. Intense and wild and running to places neither of us could afford for them to go.
“Izzy Baby,” he grated.
I struggled to swallow around the lump.
“You’ve got to stop.” The words shook as fiercely as my hand.
His head rocked to the right side, and his mouth was tweaking up again, arrogance sliding free. “You remember, Little Bird? Bein’ with me?” Big hands gripped me by the thighs. “Sneaking away so we could get lost? How fuckin’ perfect I fit in this body?”
A flashfire of memories sped through my mind. Incinerating everything. All rationale. All logic.
He grunted. “Never have had a woman that felt so good. Nothin’ has ever felt so good as Izzy Lane.”
Redness clawed and streaked, a fire lapping higher.
I struggled to fight them. To extinguish the flames.
“Almost finished,” I grated, words so rough I didn’t even know how I managed to force them out.
“But I wasn’t good to keep you. Wanted to keep you. Fuck . . . Izzy, I wanted to keep you.” His confession was slurred, edged in sorrow, hinting at desperation.
I had to stop this. Stop this before he said things we’d both regret.
We needed to talk.
But not like this.
Not when our defenses were shot and our sanity had fled.
I moved to the cabinet, inhaling cleansing breaths as I rummaged around for a bottle of alcohol. Unscrewing the cap, I covered the opening with a cotton ball and tipped it over, and I tried to prepare myself for when I turned back around.
But he was still there.
Looking at me like he wanted to devour me. Like he wanted to cry.
God, had we gotten ourselves into a mess. And I tried to remember all the hurt inflicted as I swabbed the cotton ball over the gashes on his face. To remember the way it’d felt when he told me he didn’t want me anymore. That picture of him with her engrained in my head as I bandaged the wound.
“Never good enough, Little Bird. Wanted you to fly,” he rumbled, as if he were hearing every single one of those thoughts. But even if he had, that wasn’t reason enough for him to do what he’d done.
He’d broken me.
Shattered me.
Left me weak.
I’d struggled for so long to be strong. To be the kind of mama I wanted for my boys.
He didn’t get to negate that by still claiming that stupid belief that the two of us didn’t belong together because we were from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks.
“Can’t believe we made a baby,” he kept on, though it was choppy, getting caught on barbs of grief.
Could feel them penetrating both of us.
Arrows piercing deep.
“We made a baby,” he whimpered.
Agony blistered from his body, seeping from his skin, and he dropped his face to my stomach. Those hands that had felt seductive shifted in possession, digging in like a plea.
“I didn’t get to hold him. I didn’t get to hold him, Izzy.”
The magnitude of his pain almost dropped me to my knees.
Gutting.
Obliterating.
“Please . . . stop, Maxon,” I begged. Begged desperately because I couldn’t handle what he was sayin’. The truth that he hadn’t had the chance. The choice because of the bad choices we’d both made.
“You’re breakin’ my heart.” I ran my fingers through his hair, wishing I could take away something—some piece of what we’d both been through. “We’ll talk about this when you’re sober. When we both can think straight.”
But he wasn’t stopping.
A groan left him, a low wail of mourning that rippled through my body. His hands cinched tighter. “What happened to him, Izzy? What happened? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
His words turned into a mumble of disorder, mind fading in and out of coherency.
Anguished.
Tortured.
I reached out, prying his face away from my stomach, and forced him to look at me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. It was my fault.”
My fault.
Grief blistered through my being. The reality of my naivety.
He grabbed my wrist and pressed his mouth to the inside of my forearm. “No. Perfect.”
I trembled under his caress, and I squeezed my eyes closed to break the connection, unable to take it a second more. I pried my hand away and tried not to look at his eyes as I finished applying his bandages.
I had to stop what was happening in this bathroom before I had no chance of escaping it.
“Come on, let’s get you into bed.”
I helped him into his room, trying to keep my distance, which was basically impossible considering the way the man leaned on me as he staggered across the floor.
I sat him down on the edge of his bed, and he flopped onto his back, so close to passing out.
Which was exactly what I needed him to do. Close those eyes and that mouth and let us both rest.
It’d all become too much.
I leaned over him, hating that I felt even an ounce of attraction right then. That my belly would tighten with need, a fire blooming when it should have been left to ash.
Hands shaking out of control, I flicked the button of his jeans and pulled down his fly.
The muscles on his abdomen rippled and danced.
“Izzy Baby.”
“Shh,” I told him as I dragged his pants down his thick legs, tossing my gaze to the far wall to keep myself from looking at him in his underwear, hating that every cell in my body felt heavy and needy at the thought.
I managed to wind them off his feet without peekin’ like a creep.
I pulled down his covers. He rolled into them with a sigh, a
nd I covered him up.
“Little Bird fly,” he muttered, close to incoherent.
Still, I heard it somewhere in my soul.
One second later, he was passed out, and I sat there in the muted light, watching him breathe.
The steady rise and fall of his chest.
The man so beautiful it wasn’t fair to my broken heart. My mind so conflicted and confused I had no idea where we stood.
My gaze caressed over him.
Like a fool, I reached out and traced my fingertips down the dragon he had tattooed on his left arm.
It appeared as if it were perched on his shoulder, the tail wrapping down and around his arm, the monster’s eyes red and confused.
Beautiful and deadly.
“My dragon.”
I knew if I got too close, I was gonna get burned.
Eleven
Mack
Seven Years Old
Mack darted through the forest, moving tree to tree, hiding behind their fat trunks as he stalked around the perimeter of the meadow.
Stealthy and fast.
He crouched down, peering out behind a big oak, her sprawling, spindly branches twisted and gnarled. Some stretched toward the sky before they drooped to the side, and others crawled along close to the ground, like fingers reaching out to dip into the yellow flowers that grew wild in the clearing.
Streaks of sunlight sheered through the sky, touching down like glittering darts on the toppled trees and gurgling stream.
Movement rustled in the middle of it, and Mack jerked, shooting to attention, before he went running to pounce.
Sprinting as hard as he could, he hurdled over a downed log, splashing into the water, coming up fast on the other side.
He dove, just barely missin’ the rabbit that went scurrying away.
He flopped onto his butt.
Dang it.
He wasn’t ever gonna be a hunter, especially if the only thing he could hunt with was his bare hands.
He froze when he heard the rustle from above. The tinkling laughter that filtered down, impaling him like those laser-beam rays of light.
He peered up into the dense tree that sat at the edge of the meadow. Already knowing what he’d find. Or who he’d find.
Her face peering down just as intently as he was peering her direction, the girl at least twenty feet up in the tree, and his chest was clutching in a strange way.
Pieces of Us: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 13
