by Carnal, MJ
Ax's face twisted with pain. "Amy, I had to protect you… at all costs I had to protect you."
"Your protection broke my heart," I whispered.
He sighed, running his hands through his hair before answering. "Ames, sometimes what's the best for us — is exactly what hurts the most."
I refused to look at him. Instead I looked down, down at my bare legs, at the outfit I'd almost paraded about in before a crowd of horrible drunk men in order to make money. I wasn't the same girl he'd left. I was damaged in the worst way. Because by saving me, Ax had taken away all purpose from my life. When I thought he'd died, my only goal was to live because he hadn't.
And now? Now the shame of my situation was crippling.
Foster care kid.
Unwanted.
Unloved.
And completely and utterly alone. Abandoned, even by my best friend.
"Five years, Ax. And now you come for me…" I licked my lips. "I'm not vain enough to think it's because you can't find anyone to warm your bed at night, and I'm not confident enough to think it's because you missed me so much you just couldn't stay away. What do you want?"
"You."
"Try again."
He swore and looked away. "It doesn't have to be like this. Had I known you were in this position—"
"What?" I snorted then bit down on my lip to keep from crying. "You would have driven here faster? You would have rescued me sooner? Pitied me more? Take your pick, Ax. Now tell me the truth. Don't start off this newfound relationship with a lie."
He was silent for a while then whispered, "You have something I need."
"A brain?"
Ax's smile nearly took my breath away "Besides that."
I pressed my lips together and looked out the window at my dark and cramped apartment. "I have exactly one stuffed animal from my old life, the one you gave me when I was six. I have a Polaroid picture, a toothbrush, enough clothes to get me through a week and a half of living, a hairbrush, two elastic hair bands — Do you see where I'm going with this?" I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. "I have nothing you need, let alone want. Believe me."
Ax studied my face, his expression softened as he said, barely above a whisper, "Let me be the one who decides that."
I looked away.
"Don't do that, Ames," he murmured. "Don't shut me out."
"Five years, Ax." I looked straight ahead. "Five years where my tears were the only thing keeping me company at night. I think you lost the right to tell me what to do."
He swore. The car door opened. I gasped as humid air filtered in. "What are you doing?"
"Getting out of the car." He shrugged and gestured at the building. "Going into your apartment and packing you up. We'll stay at a hotel tonight."
I snorted. "My apartment not good enough for you?"
"No." He pulled a gun from his jeans, thumbed off the safety, and held it out in front of him. "I just hate getting woken up in the middle of the night with gunshots ringing out, don't you?"
"Yeah." I gulped, my eyes still trained on the gun.
"Guns don't hurt people… people do," Ax said softly. "Remember that."
"I do." I met his gaze. "Because in the end, it wasn't the gun that broke my heart — it was you."
CHAPTER SIX
Axton
I'd always prided myself on being able to keep my emotions in check — especially when it came to Amy. I think I proved that time and time again when all I wanted to do was kiss her. But she was seventeen — or had been seventeen — and I knew it would be wrong. Kissing a girl who viewed me as her hero when I wasn't even honest about who I was.
It was wrong to lust after a girl… especially when you were the one who was going to take the hit out on her father.
It was wrong to love that girl.
It was wrong to feel for that girl.
It was wrong to desire that girl.
Because all those feelings wouldn't do me any good. To her I was enemy number one, and I think all those years part of me knew that if she ever found out I was alive, or if she ever found out what I'd kept from her, the look she'd give me would be complete disgust, mistrust, and betrayal. And I couldn't take it. I almost didn't survive leaving her the first time.
Having her reject me, knowing I was alive?
It burned.
It created a fire so hot that I wasn't sure anything would ever alleviate the slow fanning of the flames. No one but her.
"You coming?" I called back, trying to keep my tone businesslike when really my gut instinct had been to pull her into my arms and kiss her tears away, to swear unwavering loyalty to her only after proving my worth by eliminating every single person in her life who had treated her less than the way she deserved to be treated.
I had a list a mile long.
Foster parents.
Social security numbers.
IDs
Hell yeah, I'd enjoy that certain assignment, scaring the shit out of people who dared tell her she wasn't beautiful every damn day. Feeling the knife lodge between the owner of that club's ribs and smiling as it took his life inch by inch.
Damn, I was mafia through and through.
It was in my blood and for the first time I could remember, I embraced it, because it meant that I could actually do something to make myself feel better about the fact that everything she'd said was true.
I should have done something after she moved away.
Fear held me back.
Rejection kept me locked inside my house.
And bitterness fed the doubt.
"Yeah." She teetered on the high heels they'd put her in and walked slowly across the pavement to her apartment. It was in a low-income area of the city. Each of the three buildings were two stories. They had peeling white paint and enough stray cats to drive anyone who was allergic into an early grave.
Amy put her key in the lock, but the door pushed open.
"Shit." I grabbed her as fast as I could and pushed her behind me then put my finger to my lips.
She nodded quickly.
The apartment was dark. I had my gun out in front of me and was ready to raise hell if anything so much as blinked in my direction. The light from the crap TV in the corner was the only illumination to the sad little studio. Her mattress lay flat on the floor, looking like it had been in a knife fight and lost. Two sheets were ripped to shreds and all her belongings were thrown around the room. Clothes were destroyed. It seemed that whoever broke in was either pissed she wasn't here or pissed they didn't find anything.
I pushed open the bathroom door and almost got sick as a mouse ran across my feet and hid behind the toilet. The smell of mold and mildew burned my nostrils. Quickly, I shut the door and turned on the lights to the room. They flickered twice before humming to life.
"Coast is clear, Ames."
She walked in and stared, her eyes widening as she took in the state of disarray, but she didn't cry. Which was so wrong. Who didn't cry when every possession they'd ever been given was thrown to shit?
I wanted to comfort her.
But the days of comfort were long gone.
She wasn't a girl anymore, but a woman, a woman in a very, very seductive piece of clothing that both revolted me and made me stare. I hated myself, hated the situation I'd helped create and hated that I was probably the reason she had no more tears left to shed.
I'd stolen them all.
Because I was a selfish bastard.
"Ames, it's just stuff. It can be replaced."
"Right." She huffed and crossed her arms. "I um…" She kept looking down at the floor, her feet shifting as her cheeks burned redder by the minute. "I don't have suitcases, the trash bags, the black ones have been with me for a few years…"
I quickly scanned the room and noticed both trash bags ripped to shreds in the corner.
"So," she continued, "I don't really have a place to put anything, then again—" she looked up her eyes bright— "it's probably not the end of the world, since
I don't have much, right?" Her smile was forced.
My heart twisted.
My breathing slowed.
"Ames." I took a step towards her and set the gun on the one and only table in the room. "Let's just grab what's most important and then we can get new stuff tomorrow."
"I don't have money for new stuff."
"I do." I reached for her. My knees almost buckled when she met me halfway and gripped my hand in hers, our fingers linking like they'd never been apart, my body responding like it couldn't imagine that reality in the first place.
Slowly, she stepped towards me, our hands were still linked, but she didn't lean on my chest. "I'll pay you back."
"You won't."
"I will." Her eyes flashed as she jerked her hand away.
Smirking I leaned in and tilted her chin towards me. "I can do this all night, sweetheart."
"Me too." Her eyes flickered to my lips before flashing again.
I suppressed a groan and released her chin. "Grab what's most important and then we'll go to a hotel."
My voice was gruffer than usual but I couldn't help it, she made me react. Everything about her had my entire body in knots.
Amy sighed, putting her hands on her hips, then after a minute of staring around the room, she went to the mattress and lifted it.
Underneath was the flattened stuffed animal I'd given her when she was six. It was a stuffed lamb that used to be white but was now a grayish color. She held it to her chest then pulled something else from underneath the mattress, a Polaroid picture of us goofing off right before the incident that changed both our lives forever.
"Ready." She stood.
I fought hard not to ask her about the picture, about the animal."Two things." My voice cracked. "You sure you don't want to take—"
"What?" She looked around the room. "My clothes are shredded. I'll grab my bathroom stuff and my textbooks, if they didn't get destroyed too."
"Textbooks?" I repeated.
"College," she snapped. "It's why I'm poor, it's not like I do drugs or anything. Every cent goes to spending money on college and textbooks."
Feeling ashamed I looked down, breaking eye contact.
When she returned from the bathroom she'd taken off all the makeup they'd put on her at the club, her face was fresh, beautiful, and clean. Her hair was pulled back into a loose braid, pieces fell against her soft cheeks, she was stunning. With a huff she put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. Slowly, she kicked up different pieces of ripped clothing. Her knees popped when she bent down to grab a sweater. When she held it up it had a giant hole in it. Amy managed a frustrated sigh and then looked at me, like really looked at me.
In that moment, in that crappy apartment, I fell in love all over again..
Over a girl in a braid.
Shit I was in deep.
"Aright." I reached for her. "Are you ready?"
"I think so I just need to find something to put over this." She pointed down and shuddered just as she put her hand over her stomach.
"But all the clothes are destroyed. I'll feed you — now are you ready?"
Smiling she reached for my hand and gripped it tight "You could hear my stomach all the way over there huh?"
"And your heart," I whispered, knowing she didn't hear me, not caring even if by some off chance she did. "Why did you put those things under the mattress, Ames?"
I led her out of the apartment and shut the door.
She shivered so I wrapped my arm around her relieved she wasn't crying anymore or yelling at me for touching her.
"It was the safest place I could think of, to put my most prized possessions. I know it's probably the first place people look for money but one glance at my apartment and you know I wouldn't be hiding money if I had any."
My eyes narrowed. "A picture and a lamb?"
"A picture and a lamb," she repeated. "The picture of us. You took it on my seventeenth birthday."
I shook with the need to kiss her, to make the pain go away, maybe even a bit of the guilt. "And the lamb I gave you when you were little?"
She shrugged. "I'm kind of attached to it now."
"It's not even recognizable, Ames."
Grinning, she looked up at me, her big brown eyes doing a ridiculously good impression of Bambi. "It slept with me every night, protected me from monsters, and never complained once."
"I highly doubt anything stuffed or human would complain if they were sharing your bed." I arched my eyebrows and unlocked the car, opening her door for her.
"You did." She tilted her head. "Every night."
"Exaggeration."
"Don't think so."
I snorted and shut the door then made my way to the driver's side. Once I started the car I tugged her braid and whispered, "Well, here's a little secret… sometimes guys mean the opposite of what they say. Spending the night with you was my heaven, and it was also my hell."
Her cheeks lit up with red. "Your hell?"
"You were underage," I explained pulling out of the parking lot. "It was my heaven because you were by my side, because I knew you were okay, because even though I knew I couldn't or shouldn't kiss you, that didn't mean I couldn't hold you, it didn't mean I couldn't feel your skin against my fingertips. Yeah, my heaven and hell, but worth the hell to get to heaven."
Her eyes were wide; she opened her mouth then shut it. After a few minutes of silence she said, "I'm not seventeen anymore."
"I'm well aware of your age," I said hoarsely. "Just don't remind me or I'm going to take advantage of that fact."
"And if I want you to?"
I groaned aloud. "Don't say things you don't mean, an hour ago you were slapping me and yelling in my face."
"Right." She licked her lips. "Right, sorry I don't know why I said that."
Why the hell did it feel like I just rejected her when all I was doing was protecting her? Damn Campisi. I was not the man for the job. The right man would do his job without wearing his heart on his sleeve; he'd do his duty, report home, and wash his hands of it.
That wasn't going to happen with me.
She was a part of me again.
And I wasn't letting her go.
I just needed to give her time to realize I wasn't abandoning her — and I couldn't do that by pressuring her before she was ready, even if she thought she was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Amy
Tears threatened — again. I was so embarrassed that I'd been ready to cry because of what Axton had said.
What was wrong with me?
He'd found me in a strip club — then kissed me, then rejected me all over again, and I was wondering why?
The more I thought about it the more it made sense. Five years is a long time and if there was one thing I knew about his family or the real "family" he was a part of? They were loaded. Like Richie Rich — I own several jets and can rent out Disneyland a million times over and still end world hunger — loaded.
No wonder he didn't want my money.
I barely had any pride left, but what I did have still demanded that I pay him back for whatever he spent on me.
Lost in thought I didn't even realize we'd pulled up to the hotel until he turned off the car. "You okay?"
"Great." I lied. I wasn't great. I was going back to Chicago, the last place I wanted to be, and my best friend was suddenly alive, which should make me happy but all it did was make me feel so terribly rejected. My heart hurt so bad that it was hard to breathe. He had connections — he could have found me, did he and Sergio even talk?
I had to know.
It was killing me and I had a right to know. Even if I knew the truth already, I had to hear him say it.
"Ax, before we go inside…" I met his gaze even though I wasn't feeling very brave. He tilted his head to the side, his crystal blue eyes drinking me in, swallowing the darkness. "Why didn't you tell me you were alive? Why didn't you… call?"
"Ames." His face contorted with pain. "Let's not talk about
this now."
"I need to know."
"Damn it, Amy." He jerked the keys from the ignition. "By the time I was out of the hospital, you were gone. Already in foster care. Sergio wouldn't help me track you down… I finally found you and I couldn't… I couldn't just walk up to you and say 'surprise!' I freaking helped ruin your life, who does that? Who just ruins someone's life and then asks for forgiveness? Or expects a damn hug? I couldn't do that to you. I couldn't put you through the pain again. I convinced myself you were fine because I was too afraid to believe otherwise."
"Okay."
"That's it?" he roared. "You're just going to say okay? After I tell you I'm the worst type of human being on the planet?"
I shrugged. "What do you want me to say? That it hurts? Because it does. That it sucks? It really does. That I understand? Well, I don't, not even a little bit, because if the positions were reversed I'd spend every waking moment tracking you down and when I found you, regardless of what was in the past, I'd spend the rest of my life trying to make it better. That's love… that's friendship. What you did was self-serving, and I can't love that person, the person you are now? I can't love him — because the Axton I used to know was the most selfless person in existence."
"Ames." His voice hitched, like he was on the verge of tears. "I wish you could see how sorry I am."
I smiled sadly. "I wish I could too."
A valet chose that awful moment to walk up to the door and knock. Cursing, Ax opened the door and gave him the keys. "Try not to scratch it."
I got out of the car and waited.
The valet's eyes bugged open. "Um, sir… you can't… I mean…" He shook his head. "You can't take prostitutes into the hotel."
Ax froze. His face going from someone I recognized to a complete stranger as he slowly turned around and grabbed the guy by the throat. With a heave he shoved him back towards the cement pillar and then punched him in the stomach. "She's not a prostitute, you bastard."
