by Knight, Amie
“I want to see the moon,” she said to the app. She gasped, and I watched her walk two feet and then stop and reach her hand out, touching nothing but air in the room.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Oh my God, Adam, this is amazing. It’s like I’m walking on the moon. Like I’m right there. Like I can reach out and touch it.”
The sheer fact she thought that meant so much more to me than the millions and millions of dollars I’d made off of it.
“Thanks, Liv.” My face got hot at her praise. “You should ask LUNA to take you stargazing.”
She froze in her tracks before lifting her hands and removing the goggles. “Thanks, but I think I need to get back to work.”
She ran a hand through her hair and avoided my gaze.
“Not a fan of stargazing anymore?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Her face was sad. “Not really.”
“What a shame. You used to love the stars.”
“I still do. I’m just more realistic about it.” She passed me the goggles back and that’s when I saw it. I’d almost forgotten I’d given it to her, but there it was, plain for the eye to see. She snatched her hand back when I saw it, but I was quick and grabbed it, bringing it closer to my face.
“The ring,” I breathed. It sat there on her hand like a beacon of hope. She was still wearing it. My mother’s ring. The ring I had given her all those years ago in a field of stars and dreams. Long before our futures and hopes had been snatched from us like crude consciousness in the middle of the sweetest dream.
She pushed her hand into her pocket, hiding it.
“Why?” I asked.
She looked away from me, her face red. “Why what?”
“Why do you still wear it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand from her pocket. I laid her hand in the palm of mine and stared at my mother’s ring. For fuck’s sake, she was still wearing it. What did it mean? Why did my body think it meant something good? Something great. My chest felt full. I couldn’t catch my breath. Like maybe my heart would beat right out of my chest.
“Why would you?” I asked, rubbing my finger back and forth over the moon and star of the ring, but looking into her eyes.
I had to give her credit. She was holding it together pretty well, while I was splintering apart. This moment. Her next words had the ability to change everything.
Her chin wobbled only a small bit when she said, “Because it’s still the thing I love most in this world.” She looked down at the ring longingly. “You probably want it back?” She looked devastated at the prospect.
My fingers tightened on her hand and my jaw worked. “No.” I didn’t want the damn thing back. It was hers. I’d given it to her a long time ago, along with my heart. She still owned them both, completely.
Fuck. What was she saying? It didn’t make sense. She had never come. Never tried to contact me. And I was done with the fucking games. This place, the island, it was all one big mind fuck and I was over it. I needed something real. Something true, so I finally asked the question that had been haunting me for years and years. “Then why didn’t you come?”
Her forehead wrinkled in confusion as she stared into my eyes. “What?”
I let go of her hand and walked to the other side of my desk. I was losing my nerve. I couldn’t look at her when she answered this question. When she broke my heart again. “Why didn’t you come to see me when I was in jail? Where were you?”
Gone was the sadness and in flew a slash of anger across her face that had me swallowing hard and preparing for what I knew was about to be a disastrous hurricane of emotions.
“Where was I? Where were you?” She slammed her fist to the top of the desk.
And there it was, the anger. The feeling. But she couldn’t beat mine. I’d waited every day, dreamed every fucking night. Hoping for a goddamn visit from her. Some fucking sign. I leaned forward across the desk. “You know where the fuck I was, Liv. I was in the same goddamn place for three years. Where the hell were you? Couldn’t spare me one fucking visit?”
The anger slipped from her face and tears pooled in her eyes. Her lips trembled. “I couldn’t come that first year. I was just a minor and there was no way in hell Georgina would take me.” She left her place on the other side of the desk and paced the room slowly, staring at nothing, lost somewhere in a memory. “But on my eighteenth birthday, I took a bus to the prison, skipped school and everything. I wore a nice dress. The white one. For some reason, I always thought you loved it.” She gave one of those hysterical laughs people gave when they were done, just over everything—life. “I waited in line, so excited I thought I might die. I was finally going to see you. It had almost been a year. And you hadn’t written. Hadn’t called. And me, I’d kept my phone on, praying, waiting. But nothing.
“And still, I showed up that day in my white dress dying for a glimpse of my tattooed boy. I waited an hour in line. And then thirty more minutes at a table in the waiting room, my heart in my throat, my knees restlessly bouncing underneath the dirty table. My heart about to walk through the doors in front of me.”
Her accusatory eyes slammed into mine from across the room and one tear slipped from her eye and down her cheek. “‘He’s not accepting visitors, Miss Montgomery,’ the security guard had said.” She sniffed and rubbed angrily under her eyes.
She was breaking right before my eyes, falling apart, but me, I was flying. She’d come.
“That’s what the guard had said, but do you know what my eighteen-year-old heart had heard? He doesn’t want to see you. I cried the whole bus ride back. And then for three more days.”
Striding across the room quickly, I went to her, wanting to hold her, console her. But she wasn’t having it. Her hand flew up, palm out. “No. I’m not finished.”
She crossed the room on slow feet and stood behind my desk, right in front of my chair, using the desk as a barrier between us. I wanted to smash it to smithereens. I couldn’t bear anything being between us right now.
“I was a stupid girl, because six months later, I tried again. And this time I didn’t even get to the waiting room. As soon as I said my name, they told me you weren’t accepting visitors.”
I was desperate to hold her, wanting more than anything to make this right. “Liv, I—”
She interrupted me to deliver the final blow. “I know you spent three years in prison, Adam. I hate it. It hurts me to my very core, but I spent three years in hell. Every minute you were there, it destroyed me,” she finished with a sob. “I’m so sorry.”
She squinted her eyes closed and the tears poured. And fucking finally, this time when I tried to wrap my arms around her, she didn’t stop me. Instead, she collapsed into them. So, I gathered her up, cradled her in my arms, and sat in my office chair with her in my lap.
“It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry. Will you ever forgive me?”
I smelled her hair and pressed my lips to her cheeks and tasted her skin. I rocked her. I petted her. This was a dream. How long had I dreamed of this moment? But she was right. We couldn’t afford to dream anymore. I pinched my eyes closed as I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the opening of her ear.
“Shh. It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. I didn’t turn you away. It wasn’t me. Never in a million years would I ever not want to see you, Liv. I’d never turn you away. Never,” I whispered vehemently.
Her soft cries became full-on cries as she buried her face in my neck, soaking the collar of my shirt.
“Do you understand me? It wasn’t me, Liv.”
“Then why did you never write me, call me?” she asked softly, ripping my old wounds wide-open. I wondered how we would ever recover.
Pushing the hair off her face, I rubbed her head. “I couldn’t.” I thought of Sheriff Rothchild’s visit to the prison, the first time I’d tried to mail Liv a letter. He’d held it in his hands and warned me. I’d gotten seven years. He said he’d mak
e sure I served every one of them if I tried to contact her. I’d gotten out in three for good behavior only because I’d listened to him. I couldn’t protect her in there.
“Why? Why couldn’t you? Why wouldn’t they let me see you?” she asked, finally looking up at me through tear-soaked eyes.
I couldn’t tell her. It all made sense now. They wanted her money. They wanted me gone. Liv’s money and my mother’s murder somehow becoming crazily intertwined. Putting me away had been killing two birds with one stone. I finally got it now, thanks to Braden and Sebastian. I wouldn’t involve her in this clusterfuck. I wouldn’t endanger her.
“I just couldn’t. But I thought of you every day. I dreamed of you every night.” Those were the truest, saddest words I’d ever spoken. I didn’t realize quite how broken we were until that very moment. I wondered if I’d ever be able to piece us together again.
SECRETS WERE JUST LIES MASQUERADING as honesty and Adam was definitely being dishonest. It infuriated me. After all we’d been through, he couldn’t even be honest with me. After my crying jag in his office, I was very careful to avoid him. It was clear he wasn’t ready to come clean about everything and it was even clearer that I’d poured my heart out to him in that office. I felt like a fool. I’d given him everything in that moment and in return all he’d done was hold me when what I really wanted was answers. Why? Why didn’t he call or write? Something. It wasn’t enough that he had thought of me, that he had dreamed of me. I’d exposed my soul to him and he’d kept his heart from me. Again.
“What are you doing up and at’em so early in the morning?” I asked Raven while I popped toast. It was 8:00 a.m. and she was dressed and ready for the day. It was a miracle.
She smiled shyly. “I’m picking up Olivia and we’re going to the beach for the day.”
I huffed out a laugh. I still couldn’t believe it. Olivia Drake, robot girl from school, was dating Raven, my gothic girl best friend. It almost seemed impossible. “You hate the beach.”
Raven waggled her eyebrows. “I like Olivia.”
I laughed. “Okay, well, have fun. I’m off to work.”
I took my toast to go, but I didn’t drive straight to work. I don’t know why I drove to that field, but something compelled me there. I pulled my car up to the side of it and parked, a huge pit in my stomach. It had only been two weeks since I’d been here, but that sign hadn’t been here then. The sign that said sold was blaringly loud for something that couldn’t talk.
My insides churned. Someone had bought my field. I put my toast on the passenger seat. There was no way in hell I was eating it now. My appetite was gone. There were already building supplies and wood for something to be built here and a few big pieces of machinery. I wondered what they were going to put there, probably a gas station or some other kind of commercialized store. My heart ached right down to my soul. That was my daddy’s field. Mine and Adam’s spot, and they were going to build something there and pave over the grass I’d lain on when my daddy told me goodbye.
I couldn’t look at it another second. Devastated didn’t begin to cover how I felt as I pulled away, the tears heavy in my eyes. And that was the beginning to a day I just wanted to start over.
When I walked into the planetarium that morning, I dashed past Adam’s open door and straight to my room where I could hide. I locked the door and had a good angry cry while I cut out star shapes for our craft after school that day.
I was so mad. After all I’d lost, now someone had gone and taken my field from me, too. And I was mad at Adam for his stupid secrets that would undoubtedly push us farther and farther apart. It killed me that he couldn’t see it.
I was butchering the hell out of paper planets when the intercom came on in my room.
“I’d like to see you in my office, Liv.”
I glared at the intercom like Adam could see me through it. “No.”
“No?”
“That’s right. I said no. I’m not in the mood today, Mister Nova.”
“What’s wrong?” His voice dripped with concern and I immediately regretted snapping at him.
“Nothing. I’m fine. I just need some space today.” These poor planets, I was murdering them.
“Come to my office now.” Patience had never been a virtue for this man.
“Adam, please.” My voice even sounded desperate to my own ears. Couldn’t he just give me a break one fucking day? Since he’d been home, my life had been in turmoil.
I think it was the use of his first name that gave him pause and gave me a bit of hope that he was going to leave me the hell alone today.
“My office. Now. I’m the boss.” And then he clicked off.
“Bastard,” I whispered.
A click. “I heard that.” And then another click.
I rolled my eyes as I cleaned my paper mess. I made sure to take my damn time going to his office. He may have been my boss, but he wasn’t the boss of me. Yeah, I was pretty mature today.
I knocked at the door and no one answered, so I knocked again. Harder.
Eventually, Adam turned the knob and opened it, his cell phone to his ear. He motioned with his hand for me to have a seat in the chair in front of his desk while he sat behind his desk, still on the phone.
The longer I sat there, the angrier I got. I didn’t even want to come in here and he insisted on it so he could sit his ass on the phone and look at me. It didn’t even seem like he was really talking to anyone except for the occasional yes or good from his mouth. He was making my already shitty day even shittier.
He finally hung up the phone and just gazed at me from the other side of the desk.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Was there something you needed from me, Mister Nova?”
He ran a hand over the scruff of his jaw. “Ya know, Liv. This Mister Nova shit is getting really fucking old.”
I wasn’t in the mood for his bullshit today and I could tell he was really planning on giving it to me. “Ya know, Mister Nova, this calling me into your office for no fucking reason is getting really old, too.”
He stood up and stalked around the desk toward me like a predator after its prey. “I hate it when you cuss.”
I pursed my lips. “I hate it when you boss me around.”
“I want to kiss the sass right out of you.”
I stood up and we were toe-to-toe. “Don’t you even think about it,” I breathed.
He grabbed me by my hips and swung me around until I was pinned between him and the desk. “Oh, I think about it all the time and who’s going to stop me?”
My eyes fluttered closed. Oh fuck, he was getting to me. The fever was back. Making me hot and bothered and wanton, but I wasn’t easy. “My knee.”
“Oh, come on.” His nose brushed the side of mine. “I just want a taste.”
The smell of sweet smoke invaded my senses, making me crazed and incredibly dumb because I whimpered. And that was all she wrote.
His hands went to the back of my head and gripped my hair tight, angling my head just how he liked, and he didn’t just press his lips to mine. No, this wasn’t one of Adam’s sweet, thoughtful kisses. He pillaged my mouth. The man kissed me like he was drowning and I was his only source of air.
He bit at my lips and pulled my hair, the sting, the sheer intensity of the moment causing me to groan. I was angry and hot and God, I wanted him. I wanted to forget today. I wanted to bury myself in his kisses and passion for just a few minutes. I wanted to forget the time that had separated us. I wanted to pretend we hadn’t been separated for years and miles. I wanted to remember when he was mine and I was his.
He slid his hand up the outside of my thigh, almost like he’d held my hand all those years ago, with such thought, agonizingly slow and right up under my skirt. My heart raced in my chest. It beat so loudly in my ears, it was all I could hear.
“What are you doing?” I whispered, desperate for him to continue, praying he stopped. This was the best worst idea in the history of ideas.
&nbs
p; “What I’ve been wanting to do since I saw you in that little black dress at the Gala. The dress you wore to torture me,” he growled, dropping to a knee while he shrugged out of his suit jacket.
My face grew hot as he pushed my skirt up, trailing his fingers up the outside of my thighs, sliding his palms up the inside, like his hands were on a leisurely walk, instead of seducing the hell out of me.
“This is a bad idea,” I panted, clutching the edge of his desk in my hands as his fingers brushed the apex of my thighs. “You’re my boss. You’re my ex-boyfriend. I’m not even sure you like me.”
“On the contrary, this is the best idea I’ve had in years.” His head dipped, and the sting of teeth right at the top of my thigh was dangerously close to where I ached. “And I’m gonna show you how much I like you.”
“Ah,” I grunted out in surprise. Before I knew what was happening one of my hands had left the desk and was in his hair tightly, holding him to me. I wanted to punish him for torturing me when he came back, for not coming for me sooner, for ten missed years. For everything.
He growled low in the back of his throat while he sucked the very spot he’d bitten long and hard. I got the impression he wanted to punish me, too.
My nipples were hard and burning beneath my bra. My skin was covered in goose bumps. My head was thrown back. My eyes pinched closed. And God, I was hot. Burning up. I wanted him. I’d always wanted him. But nothing had compared to this moment. This need. I was aching with it. I was in flames.
Both of his hands ghosted up my thighs again, right to the middle, and I trembled beneath them, my breath choppy, my body on fire.
And then I heard it, the rip of my panties. My head shot up and my eyes flew wide, but I didn’t have time to yell, “What the hell? Those are sixty-dollar panties, crazy man.” because his mouth was on me in half a second flat.
“Oh, God,” I moaned, my eyes falling back closed as his body pushed me further back onto the desk until I was laid out like a buffet.
