Ignite (Legacy)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “I know,” I said, putting my arm around her. “But we can’t just leave him.”

  “We wouldn’t be. Aunt Dawn is here. She’s already offered to take care of him, and let’s face it—she’s the only one he’s remotely scared of.”

  “That’s true, but he’s our dad.”

  “He’s never going to forgive us for Mom dying,” she whispered.

  I wanted to tell her that wasn’t true, but I’d made a promise to never lie to her, so I stayed silent.

  “Avery?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did something.”

  My stomach clenched. “Okay. What did you do?”

  “You know my savings?”

  “I do.” She hated that I made her save half of every birthday gift from our extended family.

  “I spent it yesterday.”

  Before I could flip out on her that she’d need that when she went to college, she unfolded a paper from her back pocket and handed it to me.

  Doing my best to keep my hands from trembling, I opened it up. Then my jaw dropped. “You want me to be your legal guardian?”

  She nodded. “There’s nothing left for us here, Avery. You’re already more of a parent than he is. This would just make it possible…”

  “For us to move to Colorado without him,” I whispered.

  “For us to be free.”

  I hugged her to me, and for the first time in my life, I considered leaving him behind.

  “You’re sure you’re okay to get him to his appointment?” I asked Aunt Dawn.

  “Yes, Avery. You go to work. Maybe stay out late? Go see a movie?”

  It had been a month since River left, and I still hadn’t ventured out for more than work, groceries, or getting Adeline to school. Just like River’s house had become nothing more than a shell when he left, I was hollowing out on the inside without him.

  I stalked his Instagram like a mad woman, savoring the pictures he took of Legacy, of the views from his run, or the deck. Where he told me that he loved me.

  As much as those pictures hurt, it was nothing compared to the pain that ripped me in two when his house here sold.

  As I reached for a pre-work snack, I saw a pamphlet on the counter. “LaVerna Lodge. What’s this?”

  “That’s an extended rehab center,” Aunt Dawn said slowly. “I wanted to talk to you about it later. He’s not getting any better with how we’re doing things, and I thought maybe he needed a little more structure. A firmer hand.”

  He hadn’t had another violent outburst, but he hadn’t cleaned up the glass he’d broken, either. He’d been careful with his words, especially when Aunt Dawn was around. Maybe Addy was right and I wasn’t what he needed to get healthy. “You think this is what he needs?”

  She covered my hand with hers. “I do. I have the money, you don’t have to worry about that. But I think you both need to go. Him to the recovery center and you to that man you love so desperately.”

  A lump formed in my throat. “That ship sailed.”

  “Chase it down,” she said softly. “You have your whole life ahead of you. Let your dad get healthy. Right now he doesn’t deserve you, and there comes a point where you need to recognize that he’s not your responsibility, no matter how much you claim otherwise.”

  Never tell, Avery. You can never tell. Mom’s words came back to me as I glanced at the pamphlet. “He’ll never agree. His addiction…it was something he would never let on in the public.”

  “Now that, my dear, is a ship that’s sailed. The ambulance and hospital stay outed him pretty damn loudly. I honestly don’t know why you didn’t come to me earlier.”

  “I…he…” I stuttered. “I did it for Mom, because I was scared that if I left, or I brought attention to it, the system would take Addy. She was so little, and I was still in high school.”

  “You’re not anymore. You’d be more than fit as a guardian…if you wanted to be. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, and if you want to go, I can take care of Adeline. Either way, we really need to get him into treatment.”

  I nodded. She was right about everything. The same fear that had me covering his ass all these years didn’t come into play anymore. “Maybe I can talk to him about it.” A quick glance at my phone told me I had thirty minutes before I needed to leave. “Let me get dressed for work, first.”

  Ten minutes later, I walked toward the living room but paused just outside the door when I heard Aunt Dawn talking with Adeline, and I shamelessly eavesdropped.

  “They have a great pre-law program, and the campus is gorgeous,” Addy said.

  “I’m sure it is, baby. I’m so proud of you for thinking ahead. Have you looked anywhere local?” Aunt Dawn asked.

  Dad struggled to sit up, and Aunt Dawn helped him, propping a pillow behind his back.

  Addy licked her lips nervously, her eyes darting toward Dad before answering. “Not really. I think I belong there. Colorado just kind of calls to me.”

  I smiled at the wistfulness in her voice, the way her world seemed so open, everything possible. She had the determination to do it, too. Once Adeline put her mind to something, it was pretty much a done deal.

  “What about Avery?” Dad asked, turning his eyes soft in a way I had only seen when he wanted something.

  Chills raced down my spine.

  “What about her?” Adeline asked carefully. “She loves Colorado.”

  “She does, but she won’t leave here. This is her home—your home, too, but I understand you wanting to stretch your wings. Our little town isn’t for everyone, is it?”

  “No,” she said quietly, looking at her hands.

  “I guess…” He shook his head, and I leaned closer.

  “What?” she asked in a small voice.

  “I just guess I never saw you as being the kind of girl who would abandon her family.”

  Oh, hell no.

  “Oh, that’s not what she’d be doing—” Aunt Dawn argued, but the damage was done.

  Addy’s shoulders slumped. “I guess I’d never thought of it that way.”

  “I bet Avery has,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I don’t know how she’d get by without you.”

  Every time he’d used those exact words on me flooded my head, the memories bringing with them the kind of cold rage I hadn’t felt since the night Mom died.

  It wasn’t about family for him. If it was, he’d be content that I was here to take care of him and he would have eventually let Adeline go. No, it was about control.

  And I was taking it back.

  I walked to the hall table and calmly took out Adeline’s folded paper, then grabbed a pen and went back to the living room, Aunt Dawn following me with her head tilted.

  “Avery?”

  I ignored her and made a beeline straight for my father. “Addy, move,” I instructed her.

  She jumped, moving out of the way. I didn’t look at her, instead I focused completely on the man who’d blamed me for his misery since I was fifteen.

  “Sign it,” I said, handing him the paper and pen.

  “What?” he scoffed, opening the paper. “Like hell am I signing this.”

  “You’ll sign it,” I told him. “I’m taking Adeline to Colorado. She’s going to have a life. She’s going to finish out a real childhood and then be whatever the hell she wants when she grows up. She’s not staying here under your thumb so you can guilt her into spending her life in this house. I refuse. Sign the goddamned paper.”

  “Have you lost your mind, girl?” he spat at me. “She’s my child. You want to leave? Go. No one’s stopping you. Good riddance. But she stays.” He pointed the pen at Adeline.

  I sat in the chair, leaning close to him so only he could hear me. “You sign that paper, or I will tell her why our mother is really dead.” He tensed. “You were high while you were driving. You see, you can play off your addiction as the result of that crash and get all the sympathy, but I’m old enough to remember. We were at Grandma’s because Mom neede
d to dry you out before your work buddies realized what you’d become. I know because I wasn’t a kid when it happened, Dad. I heard her on the phone. I knew what drug paraphernalia looked like.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he whispered, his eyes wide with panic.

  “I would. For Adeline, I would. You can blame us for being born all you want, but you were an addict way before that accident. And I know that the only reason you weren’t put in jail was because you were on the force and your buddy figured losing Mom would change you. He didn’t want to take you away from us.”

  “Avery…”

  “I hated you, but I was also so grateful just to have you alive.”

  “Please don’t…”

  “But I don’t feel that way anymore. I have no problem writing a huge article about it for the paper. Sure, maybe no one will believe me, but chances are they all will—including Adeline. Sign the paper, Dad. Free her. Get healthy. Then come find us, and we’ll see if we can ever repair what you’ve systematically destroyed. Until then… Sign. The. Fucking. Paper.”

  A simple movement of his wrist, and Adeline was free.

  And so was I.

  13

  River

  My heart pounded as I finished my run. When the hell was I finally going to adjust to this altitude? I’d been running every day for the last five weeks and I still felt like I needed a lung transplant after four miles.

  “It’s embarrassing, Zeus,” I said as we stretched out near the steps.

  He looked up at me with an exasperated expression and laid down while I worked out my quads. I glanced over at the flower beds I’d put in last weekend and wondered what Avery would have planted.

  Would she have wanted one around the mail box I’d just put in? Did it even fucking matter? I closed my eyes against the onslaught of pain I knew was coming. Every time I thought about her was followed by an exquisite ache somewhere in the vicinity of where my heart used to be.

  I clicked my tongue and Zeus jumped up, following me into the house. All the furniture I didn’t like had been taken away, but I was too damn lazy to pick out anything new. I’d donated damn near every piece that had come from Alaska. It just hadn’t fit here. It was too much…Avery. I’d kept the bed, though. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the one place I’d slept next to her, made love to her.

  Maybe I should have told Bash that I wanted a different house, one she hadn’t been in. He’d already been pissed at me for insisting on paying him for this one. Not that I cared. I wasn’t going to live in a house that another man paid for—I didn’t care if he called it a signing bonus or not. Maybe another house would have been better. One where I didn’t see her smiling, crying out in pleasure, or picture her arching underneath me.

  One where I didn’t see her standing in my kitchen.

  My heart stopped beating, my breath faltered, and the only muscle I moved were my eyelids, trying to blink away the vision of Avery standing at my stove, making breakfast.

  Hell, I would have thought she was a mirage, if not for the smell of bacon and Zeus’s excited yipping. Damn, that dog turned into a pitiful puppy when she was around…just like his owner.

  “Hi,” she said softly, the island between us.

  “Hi.”

  She licked her lips nervously, her hair a wild tumble around her shoulders that I was desperate to slide my hands through. “So, I used my key.”

  “Finally. It only took me moving three thousand miles away to get you to do that.” My feet were frozen. No matter how much I wanted to move, to get just the slightest bit closer to her, they wouldn’t comply.

  She forced a smile, and it was the most beautiful damn thing I’d seen since she’d smiled here six weeks ago. “I’m a little slow to act sometimes.”

  “Snails are faster,” I agreed.

  “I’m here,” she said softly, her nervousness showing in the way she twisted the spatula in her hand.

  “I’ve noticed,” I said. Why? For the first time, I was scared to ask a damn question, scared that this was just a visit. Scared that all she wanted was my friendship when I loved her so much that I ached with it.

  She swallowed, taking the rest of the bacon out of the pan and then moving it off the heat. “I thought maybe I was too late,” she said, looking up at me as she came around the island in a pale blue sundress that matched her eyes to a T. “I wondered if you’d moved on. It’s not like you’re hard to look at,” she muttered.

  My forehead puckered, trying to figure out what the hell to say to her that wouldn’t send her running back to Alaska.

  “I had Harper drop me off. She has Adeline at the school right now, picking up enrollment papers.”

  My heart slammed to a beat again, life rushing through my veins. She was moving here. She’d brought Adeline.

  She was staying.

  “And when we pulled up, I was terrified that I’d find some other woman here, you know? Because I was so fucking stupid to let you go.”

  I stepped forward, and she put her hand out, taking a step back and shaking her head. “No. I told you once, I can’t think when you touch me.”

  My feet stayed planted only with the utmost effort.

  “But then I got out of the car and saw the flower beds,” she whispered. Then she smiled so brightly that her entire face lit up. “And I saw the swing you put on the front porch, and I knew.”

  “Knew what?” I asked her, needing to hear the words.

  “I knew that you hadn’t moved on. That this was still our house, even if I’d pushed you away. I knew that you still loved me.”

  I almost laughed. Almost. “I’ve loved you for seven years. It would take a hell of a lot longer than a month to stop. It would take about seven eternities.”

  Her breasts rose and fell quickly as she struggled for control. “Thank God,” she said as her voice broke. “Because I’m so in love with you that I don’t know what I’d do if you ever stopped loving me.”

  Three steps and she was in my arms, my mouth fused to hers. The kiss was desperate, hungry, with an edge to it that I hadn’t intended, but it was there all the same. I picked her up, and she wrapped those legs around me, her bare feet digging into my back as I carried her to the counter and set her ass on it.

  “I missed you so fucking much,” I told her in between kisses down her neck, the tops of breasts that peeked just above the fabric.

  “River,” she moaned, her hands tight in my hair, threading through where I had it pulled back. I’d never heard a more beautiful sound. “I can’t think.”

  “Good,” I told her, stroking my hand up her dress, caressing her thigh. “I let you think too much and look where that got us. From now on no head, just heart.”

  Her hand covered my heart. “What does yours tell you?”

  I smiled, happiness bursting through me in ways I never thought would happen again. “That I’m going to love you until the day I die.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now you’d better be quick. You’ve got maybe an hour before Addy is back.”

  “Welcome to life with a kid.” I laughed, kissing her as my fingers slipped under her panties. “I haven’t showered,” I told her.

  “I could not care less,” she said, ripping my shirt over my head, then gasping as I parted her and ran my fingers from her slick entrance to her clit. “Just don’t stop.”

  “There’s no chance of that,” I promised. “You’re all I’ve thought about since I left Alaska.” I stripped her panties off her and dropped my shorts to the ground, pulling her to the edge of the counter, my mind focused on getting inside her, fucking her until she couldn’t ever think about walking away from me again, and then making love to her until she agreed to marry me. “Shit. Condoms are upstairs.”

  “I’m on birth control,” she said, her voice breathless as she brought her mouth back to mine. “Now, River.”

  Raising her dress to her waist, I nudged her entrance with my dick and then thrust home.

  Holy. Shit.

 
; “I didn’t imagine it,” I said into her mouth between kisses. “We really are this good together.”

  She rocked her hips against me, her feet digging into my ass for leverage. I groaned and gave up trying to talk. I used my body to tell her everything I needed to say. Every thrust was my vow of love, every kiss my plea that she never leave me again.

  Every gasp from her lips told me how much she’d missed me. Every rake of her nails told me she was as desperate for this as I was.

  I grasped her hips and pulled her closer, changing our angle to hit her where I knew it would make her writhe.

  “Yes, River. Yes.” She chanted my name as I thumbed her clit, kissing her deeply, stroking her mouth with my tongue the same way I moved within her.

  She was molten, pouring over me, setting me on fire as I thrust again and again, never giving her a chance to catch her breath.

  She tightened around me, her cries growing louder, her breath catching and then holding as she came apart in my arms, arching against me. I was helpless against her, my orgasm ripping through me, shredding everything I was and rebuilding me as nothing more than Avery’s man.

  It was perfection.

  She was perfection.

  Our breathing was ragged as she stroked my hair, my lips pressed to her neck. “Wow,” she said, reminding me of the first time she’d seen our house.

  “Is that all you can say?” I asked her with a laugh.

  “Do you have something better?” she asked with a grin as I pulled back to look in her eyes. She was so beautiful, her lips swollen from my kisses, her hair wild from my hands.

  “I do.”

  She arched a delicate eyebrow at me.

  “Welcome home, Avery.”

  Epilogue

  Avery

  Two years later

  “Midnight. Do you understand me?” River’s voice was low and menacing.

  “Y-y-yes, sir,” the boy said as he stood in our entry hall.

  “I don’t care if it’s homecoming. I don’t care if you think you’re getting lucky tonight. You touch her in any way she doesn’t expressly ask for and they will never find your body.”