by Aly Martinez
“Ah. Okay. This makes more sense,” he said, nodding. After walking over to the bar, he retrieved a barstool and carried it back over and placed it on the floor a few feet in front of me. He settled on the edge, kicked his legs out in front of him, crossed his arms over his chest, and asked, “Have you considered Mexico? I hear it’s gorgeous this time of year.”
I blinked. Not what I’d expected him to say, though not a terrible idea.
Rolling my shoulders back, I replied, “I…don’t…um, have a valid passport.”
“That’s probably for the best. No one knows where to find you, it’s hard to get yourself kidnapped or killed.”
I pursed my lips. “Excellent point.”
“Though.” He raked his gaze over me from head to toe before coming back to my eyes. “A woman like you wanders into the wrong parts of Mexico, you might find trouble of a different nature. How do you feel about shaving your head?”
I gasped, dragging my hair over my shoulder as if to apologize to it for his offensive suggestion. “Have you lost your mind?”
And that was when Jeremy proved he had.
Exploding up off the stool, he stormed toward me, heavy footsteps closing the distance between us.
My eyes flashed wide as I scrambled away. I wasn’t afraid of him—well, not exactly. I was more concerned he wouldn’t be able to stop fast enough to keep from plowing me over.
He followed me forward until my back hit the wall. His muscular chest collided with mine while his hands landed beside my head. “Yes!” he roared into my face.
My heart pounded in my chest as I searched his face, pure confusion ricocheting inside me.
“Yes…what?” I asked timidly.
His face got closer, and his tone took on a malevolent edge. “Yes, I’ve fucking lost my mind. And it happened the first time Mira fucking York walked into my room at the barracks on another man’s arm. I spent half of my life withering, telling myself I was better off without her. Went so far as to marry another woman who could never live up to the standard she’d left behind.”
My heart stopped. Oh my God.
Oh. My. God.
“She couldn’t live up to my standard?” I whispered in disbelief.
He laughed, but it held no humor. “You have no fucking idea the wasteland you left inside me when you chose him. My whole fucking life, I convinced myself I hated you. But you were always there, baby. Under my skin. In my head. In my veins. Refusing to let me go… Even after you actually…fucking…let me…go.”
My mouth dried, shock combining with an emotion I couldn’t quite put my finger on, making my head spin. I rested my hands on his sides and twisted them in his shirt. “But I never let you go,” I admitted.
“You did,” he shot back. “You fucking chose him, and you broke me. You destroyed me, Mira. I had nothing to offer you, but if you had just gotten in my fucking truck that day, I would have had every fucking thing that mattered.”
Like someone had flicked a cigarette onto a trail of gasoline, I ignited into a blazing fury. A million emotions I’d stowed in the recesses of my mind for seventeen years all joined in a conflagration that held the power to burn me to the ground. Wanting the answer almost as much as I feared it, I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Then why didn’t you fight for me!”
And then Jeremy’s fiery rage tore from his soul as well. “Why did I have to!”
Our chests moved together, rising and falling, silently colliding against each other with labored breaths.
He slapped his palm against the wall by my face. “Jesus, fuck, woman. All I ever wanted was to be enough for you.”
I stared at him, and for the first time, I saw a poor, broken kid who had never had anything of his own staring back at me. I’d always known that Jeremy and I shared a lot of demons, but this… That… It was as though I were looking in a mirror. My stomach rolled, tears springing to my eyes. The burden of the truth in that moment was too heavy to bear.
I wasn’t the only one Kurt had played. Jeremy had been his pawn long before I’d entered the picture.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I confessed, “I know I made the choice that day. But every day that we were together for the six months before that, I needed you to choose me over Kurt. And not because you were mad or drunk or bored. I wanted you to choose me because you loved me. Because I loved you so damn much that I couldn’t deal with knowing you didn’t.”
He shifted deeper against me, one of his hands moving from the wall to the back of my neck, his fingers sifting up into my hair. “I did love you. Jesus, Mira. I’ve always loved you. You’ve been back in my life three fucking days now. We’re goddamn strangers. I am not positive I’ll even like you two weeks from now. But I know with every fiber of my being that I love you, Mira York. Because it never died. Not for me.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I wasn’t even sure my heart was still beating, because Jeremy had said that he loved me past and present and it felt a whole lot like I had died and gone to heaven.
“I used to pretend you’d come back for me,” I confessed. “For years, I used to hold my breath and stare at my bedroom door, waiting for you to storm through and rescue me from the flames of hell.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Jesus. I would have. In a heartbeat.”
Encircling him with my arms, hugging him tight, I half laughed, half sobbed, “God, I hate Kurt even more now. And, thirty minutes ago, I didn’t know that was possible.”
A beautiful smile broke across his face. “Does that mean you aren’t joining a convent?”
I sniffled. “Oh, please. I’d be kicked out after my first snit fit.”
He chuckled. “This is probably true.” Lowering his mouth, he brushed a kiss across my lips. “I’m not letting you go, Mira. We’ll take some time, get to know each other again. But, if you think for one second that I’m letting you go again, you are the one who has lost your fucking mind.”
I dropped my head to his shoulder and whispered, “How is this my life?”
“Don’t worry about Kurt’s bullshit. Leo and I—”
I cut him off with a kiss, soft and sensual, wishing I could convey how much everything he’d not only said but also done for me had meant. Jeremy had done more for me in three days, emotionally and physically, than everyone in my entire life combined.
“I don’t mean Kurt’s shit. I mean being here with you. After all this time. Finding out that a part of you always belonged to me.” I kissed him again. Deeper and filled with reverence. “It never died for me, either, Jeremy. I’ve always loved you.” My voice cracked at the end, the sheer elation too much for my exhaustion to handle.
He backed away only far enough to slide his arm between me and the wall. Then he shifted me into his curve until we were flush head to toe. Closing his eyes, he nuzzled his nose with mine. God, I loved how gentle he could be.
“Christ, Mira. Seventeen years… Seventeen fucking years I could have been loving you. Holding you. Making a life with you.”
“But then you wouldn’t have gotten all this. Look around you, Jeremy. Everything we talked about. Everything we dreamed about. You got it all.”
Pain was carved in his face as he argued, “But I didn’t get you.”
“You got Sophie and Amelia,” I retorted.
His lips went thin. Yeah. He loved his kids.
I carried on. “And your career. And this house. It’s not the mountains. But it’s still gorgeous. And a new truck…and an Escalade.”
“But I didn’t get you,” he repeated more firmly.
“But you got—”
“My girls. That is your only valid argument. I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Not even for seventeen years with you. But, if you think for one second that I wouldn’t give up every possession I got to go back in time and rescue you from the flames of hell, selfishly saving myself from them as well, then you are fucking delusional.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he didn’t give me a
chance to speak.
“But I don’t have a time machine. All I have is the future. So, right now, before you have the chance to go off about joining convents or the Witness Protection Program again, I’m going to need you to shut up, follow me up the stairs, get naked, let me make you come, you return the favor, then go to sleep in my bed so we can both wake up in the morning, smiles on our faces, drive out and get the rest of your shit from that goddamn piece-of-shit house you lived in, potentially set your car on fire, then set up your shit here, and set forth about starting said future together.”
I blinked. And not because that was a really freaking long sentence and he never stopped for air, but rather because he had just declared that we were setting my shit up in his house. It wasn’t a sentiment that insinuated hearts and flowers, but it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me.
He didn’t have a time machine—but he had the future.
A future with me.
A future he wanted to start on immediately.
And that’s when I finally realized I didn’t hate change at all.
Through the years, I’d started my life over at least a dozen times. The day Jeremy had left. The day I’d married Kurt. The day Kurt and I had moved to Illinois. The day I’d left. The day I’d found out I was pregnant. The day I’d gone back. I’d sworn to myself over and over that each and every time was going to be different, but deep down, I’d known that it was always going to be the same.
The same struggle. The same lies. The same regret.
I had been terrified that nothing was going to change. And, for almost twenty years, that had been the case.
But not this time.
Not with Jeremy.
Therefore, as I stared up into his hazel eyes, a future was finally within my reach. And it was a future with a good man. A kind man. A man who would look out for me and let me look out for him. A man who believed in following his dreams, so I knew he wouldn’t try to stop me from following my own. A man who could ignite me with a single touch and soothe my darkest demons. A man who never made me feel bad for being myself. A man who had always owned my heart from the time I was nineteen years old. The same man who’d told me that his love for me had never died. And that man was offering me a future?
The answer flew from my tongue faster than a lightning bolt. “Okay.”
His eyes flared. “Okay?”
“Jeremy, if you want me to build a future with you, I’ll move to Mars.”
He smiled, that poor and broken kid who had only ever wanted to be enough staring back at me. “Mars is a long way away, baby.”
“I don’t care. Say the word and I’m there, Jeremy. Wherever you are, I want to go.”
I didn’t even have time to gasp before his mouth was on mine, and then I was up off the floor not a second later.
Looping my legs around his hips, I slanted my head to take the kiss deeper.
“Fuck, Mir,” he groaned into my mouth.
“Upstairs,” I murmured, shifting my attention to his neck.
Palming my ass, he strode to the stairs and then up them faster than I thought possible.
“You gonna move in with me?” he asked, kicking the door to his room shut.
I stopped my assault on his neck long enough to reply, “Is that where you are?”
“Fuck.” He deposited me on the bed, immediately prowling up after me. His mouth hit mine again and I could taste the desperation as his tongue swirled with mine. But that wasn’t why I smiled.
Breaking the kiss, I asked, “You thought I was going to freak out about moving in with you?”
Stretching his hand over his shoulder, he tugged his henley off and then threw it into the darkness. “It’s been three days, Mira. If we had half a brain between the two of us, we wouldn’t do this.” Gently, he untwisted the scarf over my head, and then, with one swift movement, he tore my shirt off.
I kept right on smiling, but I did it while undoing the clasp on the back of my bra while he went to work on the button of his jeans. “Second thoughts?” I teased.
After getting off the bed, he slid off his jeans, saying, “Not at the moment. But ask me again in six months, when I discover that you snore and you won’t stop bitching at me about leaving the toilet seat up.” Looming at the edge of the bed, he started on my jeans, peeling them down my legs.
“I don’t snore,” I informed him on a giggle.
My breath caught in my throat when his sensual fingertips grazed my thighs as he dragged my panties off.
Once I was fully naked, he finally looked up and quirked an eyebrow. “I notice you didn’t mention anything about not bitching about leaving the toilet seat up.”
I smiled. “It’s a safety hazard.”
One foot still on the floor, he put his knee to the bed and bent until our faces were mere inches apart. “Mira, shut up.”
“I’m serious, Jeremy. In the middle of the night—” I lost all train of thought as his hand dipped between my legs, one finger sliding up my opening until he found my clit.
My mouth fell open as every nerve in my body roared to life. I arched off the bed, my breasts pressing up, an offer he did not refuse. His warm mouth sealed over my nipple, teasing in time with the movement of his hand.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, threading my fingers into the top of his hair.
Just as he had the night before, he played my body with bold caresses. I became lost in him, equally focused on the sensation and the man giving it to me.
An orgasm in and of itself was a spectacular event.
An orgasm given to you by a man who owned your heart was glorious.
An orgasm given to you by a man who owned your heart and had just declared that you were building a future together… Well, that was life altering in every sense of the word.
And, as a shattering climax crashed into me, his head popped up from my breast. Resting his forehead on mine, he opened his mouth, consuming my release in the sound of his name.
“Fuck, baby. You can bitch about the hazards of me leaving the toilet seat up one second and then the next come on my hand like that… I’m thinking we are going to be just fine living together.”
With all of my energy spent on passion, I didn’t have it in me to fire off a witty response, but a smile still cracked my face.
“There she is,” he rumbled, brushing the hair out of my face. “My Mira.”
Sated and spent, I pried an eye open and found him staring at me, his gaze so heated it sent a shiver down my spine.
He kissed me, allowing his lips to linger long after our puckers had disappeared. And he continued to hold my mouth, his exhales filling my lungs as we shared the same air. When he finally climbed on top of me, his heavy weight feeling like everything I’d been missing in my life, I opened my legs wide, pleading without words for what I knew he had every intention of giving me. And, as he slipped a hand between us, guiding himself home, his length stretching and filling me until the love had no choice but to spill from my eyes, I realized that maybe, just maybe, change was really a fucking good thing.
The room was bright when I woke up and sensed that Mira was no longer in the bed beside me. The clock read eight, but it was still too early. It had been one hell of a night; we both should have been sound asleep until the morning hit double digits. But neither of us had been able to find any rest that night. Or, more specifically, Mira hadn’t been able to sleep, so she’d tossed and turned all night, making it so I was unable to sleep.
That shit with Kurt was heavy. It was going to settle deep in her chest and weigh her down for a good long while. And, until I could figure out how to make her safe once and for all, it was going to weigh me down too. Though that wasn’t why I’d asked her to move in with me.
Christ. I’d actually asked her to live with me.
The night before, I’d spent the majority of our ride home from Guardian prepping for when she told me no about moving in. I’d had no less than twelve different reasons for why it was best
we live together locked and loaded on the tip of my tongue. Her one simple “okay” had rendered them all useless. Okay had officially become my favorite word in the English language, though the way she moaned my name as I slid inside her was a close second.
I had no regrets about taking this next step in our relationship. In a lot of ways, it felt like we were picking up where we’d left off. If she’d gotten into my truck that day and chosen me over Kurt, we wouldn’t have driven off into the sunset to get separate apartments. She had been it for me back then. I didn’t need weeks or months of living apart to recognize that she was still it for me. I hadn’t been able to wipe the smile off my face since she’d agreed. Every time I thought about waking up with her, bickering over who got to watch what on TV, and arguing over who had to do the dishes, my stomach would pitch like I was riding the highest roller coaster, laughing and loving every second of it. I hadn’t enjoyed any of that shit with Melissa. Not even in the beginning, when I was supposed to enjoy those things.
But this was Mira. And she was finally back. Yes, living together after only a few days of reuniting was probably crazy and rash, but I wasn’t letting her get away again. She’d asked me why I hadn’t fought for her. If a fight was what she’d wanted, I’d battle to the ends of the earth.
After knifing up, I put my feet to the floor and set about finding her, pausing only long enough to snag a pair of sweats and tug them on.
Knowing my girl, she was probably downstairs, her knees pulled to her chest, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand, her gaze aimed at a wall while panic and anxiety devoured her.
I didn’t make it to the bottom of the stairs before the smell of pancakes and sausage hit my nose. This would have been fucking incredible except I hadn’t been to the store in a week, so the contents of my fridge and my pantry were seriously lacking. I was sure there was no pancake mix or sausage to be found.
The alarm bells in my head started ringing.
Picking up the pace, I jogged down the last few stairs and rounded the corner to the kitchen. Sure as shit, there she was, standing over the stove, spatula in hand, flipping fucking pancakes. But the worst of it was she was fully dressed. Tight jeans, a pink, long-sleeved top that should have been conservative had it not clung to her breasts and her flat stomach, and another one of her scarfs wrapped around her neck to keep people from seeing the bites on her neck.
