Thrive (Guardian Protection)

by Aly Martinez

  And my confusion only intensified when he pushed the beer in my direction and casually prompted, “So, what happened after you got married?”

  I stole a glance at him as I took the drink, and then I did a double take to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

  Nope. Definitely my Jeremy.

  I took a long sip, hoping to buy myself enough time to tamp my emotions down and also reflect on my years of watching Criminal Minds in hopes that I could remember the best way to handle someone with split personalities. But the beer was empty long before I came up with any answers.

  I hadn’t set the bottle on the coffee table before Jeremy made a trip to the mini fridge and came back with two beers in his hand.

  For some insane reason, two beers felt like more space than he could ever put between us with distance.

  Disappointment churned in my stomach when he stopped in front of me, twisted the top off, and placed the drink in my outstretched hand.

  “You drink faster than you used to,” he muttered. “We’re never going to get through seventeen years if I keep having to get up for another.”

  And then he set the other unopened on the end table.

  My cheeks heated as a genuine smile split my face.

  He resumed his place at my side.

  Shoulder to shoulder.

  Arm to arm.

  Thigh to thigh.

  Calf to Calf.

  And, this time, he threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him.

  I wanted to relish in his affection and crawl in closer, but I’d been starved for his arms for too long. However, I’d be damned if I once again allowed Kurt to taint it.

  “Can I have some space?” I whispered.

  His arm fell immediately and he started to slide away, but I slapped a hand down on his muscular thigh to stop him.

  Licking my lips, I peeked up through my lashes. “But not too much.”

  His gaze dipped to my mouth, and then his chin gave the tiniest of jerks. “Whatever you need, Mir.”

  I passed him the beer, dread filling my veins because I had so much left of the grand, fucked-up story that was Kurt and me.

  But Jeremy had asked me to tell him all of it.

  And there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.

  “So, Kurt and I got married. He really had cleaned up his act. No more clubs. No more women. I thought I was happy.”

  “You thought?” he asked softly.

  I shrugged. “From the outside, everything was good. We bought a little starter house. I had a home for the first time in my entire life. I quit my job at the bar when Kurt was promoted and I became the consummate NCO wife. But none of that was real. His parents owned the house. Not even the power bill was in my name. And it turned out the consummate NCO wife doesn’t do a whole lot besides pack her husband’s lunch, fold his laundry, and show up with a bright smile to FRG meetings. I was just a girl playing house with a man who had built an illusion in order to keep her caged.” I shot him a smile and motioned for the beer. “Time marched on. On my twenty-first birthday, he was away in California for a month-long field exercise when I got a call that he’d been arrested for possession of steroids.”

  He cleared his throat to cover what had sounded like a muffled curse. But there wasn’t a name I hadn’t called Kurt left in the book.

  I continued. “His dad hired a big-time attorney and managed to get him off without jail time. But he got kicked out of the Army and had to do a boatload of community service. So we moved back to Driverton.”

  His hazel eyes came to mine, a knowing twitch flickering at the corner of his mouth. “You lose your shit about moving?”

  I laughed and gave him the bottle. “That snit fit was epic.”

  “Figures.” He tipped the beer back, but his smile showed around it.

  I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling too. “I have to say, I have no idea how Max and Terry Benton spawned a child like Kurt.”

  Jeremy barked a laugh. “I’ve wondered that myself many times.”

  I turned on the couch and propped my back against the armrest so I was facing him. “When we got to Driverton, the Bentons welcomed us with open arms and never brought up Kurt’s arrest again. But they never stopped asking about you.”

  This was not an exaggeration. At first, it had nearly destroyed me to go to the Bentons’ house. There were as many photos of Jeremy on the wall as there were of their son. Kurt had never told them about me and Jeremy or why their surrogate son wouldn’t be coming back. But, every year, Terry had made Kurt promise to call Jeremy and invite him over for Christmas dinner. And, every year, she’d looked crestfallen when his seat at the table had remained empty.

  Jeremy shifted uncomfortably and then crossed his legs ankle to knee. “I don’t want to talk about the Bentons.”

  I reached out and rested my hand on his forearm. “I still talk to Terry a good bit. We had lunch while she was in the city a few weeks back. I’m sure she would love to hear from you.”

  He snatched his arm away. “I said, I’m not fucking talking about the Bentons. Move on. What happened after you got back to Driverton?”

  “Jeremy,” I whispered.

  “Driverton, Mira. Start there or we’re done talking.”

  I frowned, promising myself to revisit the topic of the Bentons at a later date, when Mr. Hyde wasn’t perilously close to the surface.

  “Fine,” I huffed. “After we got back to Driverton, Kurt lost his mind.”

  “He still had a mind to lose at that point?” He winked and took a long pull off the beer.

  Annnd…he was back to teasing. Christ, I couldn’t keep up. Though I wasn’t about to complain that my Jeremy had returned.

  I smiled. “After that, he started working for his dad. And, God, did they fight. Eventually, those fights came home with him. And we started fighting. It wasn’t long before he started storming out and not coming home until two or three in the morning. And, after that, it wasn’t long before I found some texts from a woman in his cell phone. I confronted him. He denied it. I left.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You left?”

  “He cheated on me. Of course I left.”

  “Mira, he cheated on you at least a dozen times in the first six months you two were dating.”

  I shot him a glare. “Yeah. But I was nineteen, dumb, and sleeping with his best friend. I didn’t exactly have a moral leg to stand on.”

  “But you married him,” he half laughed, half accused.

  My imaginary hackles stood on end. I knew I had been an idiot, but knowing it and hearing someone you care about practically say it to your face were two totally different things.

  “And I divorced him!” I defended.

  He removed his hand from my thigh, scooted to the end of the couch, propped his back against the armrest, locked his fingers, rested them on the back of his head, and kicked his long legs up onto the couch, stretching them all the way down to my end so I was forced to shift to one side to make room for them. And he did all of this while laughing at me.

  He also did all of this while pissing me off.

  “What the hell is so funny?”

  “Babe,” he stated. And I knew from having spent the day with Johnson that that one word was his answer, not a term of endearment.

  Cocking my head to the side, I mocked, “Yes, babe.”

  His laugh got louder. “Mira, seriously.”

  My anger got angrier. I shoved his legs off the couch and once again mocked him. “Jeremy, seriously.”

  He eyed me skeptically, but I should note he was still smiling. “Are you about to have a snit fit?”

  I was not smiling when I retorted, “I wasn’t planning on it until you started laughing at me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at your rationale. You dated a man who cheated on you damn near weekly. He swore he was a changed man, so you married him. Then he got strapped with an arrest, moved you back to his hometown, and then cheated on you again
, what, four years after you got married? So then you left. But, seeing as to how Caleb told me you were married the day he got arrested, I’m assuming you went back and stayed with him for another decade. Baby, please tell me your head is not still so fucked up with his shit that you can’t see the absurdity in that. I get it. It’s in the past, but—”

  “You get nothing!” I yelled.

  His whole body jerked at my outburst.

  I didn’t have it in me to care if he thought I was having a snit fit or if I looked like a madwoman as I scrambled off the couch, walked over to him, leaned down, and stabbed a finger in his face. “You think you’ve heard the whole story? You’ve barely dipped your toe in the quicksand that has been my life.”

  His jaw went hard, and he pointedly looked at my finger. “We’re having a good night, Mir. I highly suggest you find a way to reel in the bitch before shit gets ugly.”

  “You going to reel in Mr. Hyde?” I snapped back. But I said it seriously bitchily even to my own ears, so I decided not to have a snit fit about his calling me out on being the aforementioned bitch.

  He scowled at me.

  I glared at him.

  Ultimately, it was Jeremy who put an end to it. And he did it in a way that didn’t just make me reel in the bitch. It exorcised her from my body altogether.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he growled. Snaking his hand up, he caught my wrist and gave me a hard pull.

  I flew forward and crashed down on top of him. One of us could have been seriously injured if, at some point in the one-point-four seconds it took me to fall, he hadn’t shifted to the edge of the couch, leaving a nice little Mira-sized spot between his body and the back of the couch. And like magic—again missing the cloud of smoke, but including a little bit of him juggling me—I miraculously became wedged in it.

  My shoulder tucked under his shoulder, his arm wrapping around me and resting on the curve at my waist.

  My breasts smooshed between us, which made them alarmingly close to popping out of the front of my shirt.

  My stomach plastered to his side.

  My other arm resting across a gloriously hard set of abs that felt even better than they had looked when I’d seen them that morning.

  And then, because all of that wasn’t enough, he reached down, caught my leg at the back of the knee, and lifted until my thigh draped over his hips.

  And it all happened so fast that I didn’t have the chance to make up my mind about whether I wanted to burst off the couch and sprint from the house like I was on fire or sink in deep, curl in tight, and live out the rest of my days on that couch with him. It was simultaneously the most uncomfortable and comfortable I had ever been in my life.

  “Uh…” I drawled.

  His voice was low and husky as he said, “Yeah, Mira. I can reel in Mr. Hyde. Though I’m thinking he might have a thing for your bitch.”

  This statement only made me more uncomfortable—my body went stiff.

  But also more comfortable—my nipples started to tingle at the idea of his having a thing for any part of me, including my bitch.

  “Well, then…” I stated for no real purpose except that I was seriously struggling to form a coherent thought.

  His chest shook, and then it rumbled when he ordered, “Relax.”

  “I’m not…unrelaxed,” I stated ridiculously, because—again—coherent thoughts and the lack thereof.

  “Baby, you look like rigor mortis has just set in.” Using his free arm, he guided my head down to his shoulder. Then he pressed on my stiff arm until it curled around his stomach, making contact from my elbow to the tips of my fingers, and after that he rubbed his hand over my thigh until it slacked and I gave him some of my weight. “There ya go,” he praised, folding his arm behind his head. “Much better.”

  I had to admit that he wasn’t wrong. My heart was still racing and my mind was a swirling mess, but this definitely was better.

  When I tilted my head back, he tilted his down to catch my gaze.

  Not surprisingly, he was grinning. And it was huge. And beautiful. And content. And full of life. And that one tooth that turned in just the tiniest bit was showing, so I knew it was real. And it was a gift no one could ever take away from me.

  And that was when it happened.

  After seventeen long years, I finally relaxed.

  “Is this what always happens when shit gets ugly?” I asked softly.

  “With you? Yeah.” His grin stretched. “It’s shockingly similar to what happens when shit gets fucking perfect.”

  My heart stopped, and based on the way his grin turned into a megawatt smile, I was relatively sure my cheeks went up in flames.

  “Jeremy,” I whispered, squeezing him tight.

  He squeezed me back, but his smile faded. “Look, you want space while we finish this conversation, I’ll give it to you. But talking about you being married to Kurt for fourteen years is not my idea of a good time. It was mildly manageable when I was listening to it while passing beers back and forth and a little more manageable when you leaned into me sweet and soft. But this—holding you, feeling you, knowing you’re here and not a fucking ghost from the past come to haunt me—might make it significantly more tolerable.”

  I liked that he thought this, because despite my pleas for space earlier, his holding me, feeling him, and knowing he was there and not a ghost from the past come to haunt me would absolutely make the next part of my story significantly more tolerable.

  Holding his gaze, I announced, “Two weeks after I left Kurt, I found out I was pregnant.”

  His eyebrows snapped together. “I thought you said—”

  “I had a miscarriage. But not before he’d convinced me to give our marriage another try and I’d moved back in. In hindsight, it was for the best. A baby in the middle of his bullshit would have been a mess. But it still hurt…a lot.”

  His lips found my forehead, where he mumbled, “Jesus Christ. Mira, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I rebounded. I got busy trying to distract myself and decided to get off my ass and finally open that bar I always dreamed of. Kurt was still in kiss-my-ass mode, so he told me he’d help. Which you know Kurt, so you know that help usually means he goes to his parents and they help. But I was sick and tired of mooching off Max and Terry. They’d already given us so much. So I made Kurt swear not to ask them for anything. So Kurt, still in kiss-my-ass mode, took out a small personal loan the next day.

  “I found a building. Kurt bought the building. I needed a business license. Kurt got it. I was on my hands and knees in there every day, scrubbing the floors, painting the walls, tearing shit down, and building it back up. I did the work and Kurt financed it all. Seriously, Jeremy, it took me months to convert that piece-of-shit old laundromat into a bar. By the time the Sip and Sud opened, I’d never been more exhausted in my life. The idea of a laundromat bar was unconventional, but I think that was exactly why it worked. And, God, did it work.”

  With a bright smile, he tucked a hair behind my ear, pride beaming in his eyes. And not pride because he was proud of me.

  Pride because he knew I’d gotten something I’d always wanted.

  Pride a person could never understand unless they, too, had been on the losing end in life.

  Pride Kurt had never felt for me.

  Pride that coming from Jeremy was another gift. And one that was even bigger than the smile.

  I kept talking. “A year later, we opened two more locations. Same concept. Same success. I swear I worked damn near eighteen hours a day for those first two years, but I was happy. And not because I thought I was happy. I just…was.” After rolling so half of my body was on top of him, I propped myself up on his chest. I was so caught up in the story that I almost missed it when the hand he’d had in the curve of my waist turned with me so it was now resting on my ass.

  Jeremy did not miss that I’d almost missed this movement; he also did not delay in testing the waters by giving it a generous squeeze.

  A
nd, because it had been a really fucking long time since a man, any man, had touched me like that, and factor in that said man was Jeremy, I gasped and rocked in deep with my hips, searching for friction in places that had no business in a conversation about Kurt.

  “Jesus, fuck, baby,” he rasped. Hooking me around the waist, he dragged me the rest of the way on top of him.

  My breasts pillowed against his chest, and he immediately dropped his heated gaze to them while licking his lips.

  Oh, yes. I knew that look. I’d envisioned it late at night as I’d touched myself too many times.

  “How much story you got left?” he asked my chest.

  “About eleven years,” I breathed.

  Closing his eyes, he sucked in a sharp breath and released it on a tortured, “Fuck me.”

  Which was appropriate because that was exactly what I was hoping to do.

  “Maybe we can press pause on the past for a little while,” she purred, her sweet ass rolling in my hand, her sweeter pussy rolling on my thigh.

  Fucking.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  I’d have pressed pause on the entire world if it would have gotten me more of her. The ability to finally take her mouth, taste more than the lip of a beer bottle we’d shared. Her tongue tangling with mine, hunger and desperation fueling us both. My hands in her thick hair, holding her against my mouth as if oxygen were a secondary need.

  And then I’d be peeling off that flimsy shirt she had been torturing me with all damn night. Each time she moved, I waited with bated breath for her breasts to pop free. Despite a tremendous effort on my part, it seemed God didn’t answer nip slip prayers. He probably knew what he was doing, because if I got her shirt off, one perfect fucking tit filling my hand, the other pink nipple between my lips, her frenzied moans serenading me, there was going to be nothing God could do for either one of us.

  Out of all the times we’d been together, I’d never fucked Mira York.

  We’d had sex—fun and fast.

  I’d made love to her—slow and tender.

  She’d ridden me—hard and long.

  But I knew with an absolute certainty that, if I ever got inside her again, it wasn’t going to be any of that.