Perfect Storm (The Exes #1)

by Cheryl Douglas

  I tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down gently.

  “No.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “No way. You’re not leaving. You can’t do that with me and then get up and leave.”

  His heart was breaking, but mine was too. Leaving was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t stay. If I did I’d wake up in the morning right back where I started. Waking up to the man I loved but could never have.

  “I’m sorry. Jace.”

  I reached out to stroke the stubble on his jaw, closing my eyes when he turned into my hand like he craved my touch. He’d been alone so long. I was the only woman he’d ever really let in and I hated myself for hurting him this way. But I was hurting too.

  He leaned over and held me tight, crushing me against his chest. “Don’t leave me again, Cor. Please.”

  He’d begged me before, but I’d had to leave.

  When we first met he knew what I wanted. I’d made no secret of the fact that I wanted a baby and a family someday. He ignored me for as long as he could, changing the subject until my biological clock was ticking so loud it was keeping us both up at night.

  I hadn’t lied to him. He’d lied to me. By omission. Letting me believe that he wanted the same things I did until he couldn’t go on pretending just to hold on to me anymore.

  Chapter Three

  Jace

  I’d just filled her with my goddamn seed and she was threatening to leave. There was a package of forgotten birth control pills on the floor. All I had to do was throw them in the trash and tell her I wanted this. That I wanted her to have my baby. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say the words. I couldn’t take that kind of risk.

  “So you’re saying you don’t love me anymore?” Maybe if I heard her say those words I could figure out how to let her go. I watched her get dressed, my gut aching with the knowledge she’d be walking out the door again.

  “Jace, please.” Her voice was low. Her pain as raw as mine.

  “So, you do love me.” I grabbed her wrist, hauling her back to the bed. She was only wearing a bra, her jeans undone, and I was getting hard all over again. “Just say it,” I pleaded. “Let me hear you say you love me, that what we did meant something to you.”

  Most who knew me would call me a tough mofo. And they’d be right. Except where this woman was concerned. She made me weak. She made me beg and plead. And yeah, she’d even made me cry when she broke up with me. Man, I hated that she’d made me cry.

  She curled her hands around my head, looking down into my face. “I love you so much it tears me up inside even to look at you sometimes.”

  “Then don’t go, baby.” I wrapped my arms around her waist, wishing I could hold her there forever. “Stay here with me tonight. In our bed. Tomorrow we can talk about… us.”

  She sighed, stroking her fingers through my hair. “But we both know nothing will have changed by tomorrow. You’ll still want what you want and I’ll still want what I want. There’s no middle ground for us. No way for us to compromise.”

  I knew she was right. I’d seen her with her beautiful little niece. She lit up like a Christmas tree when she held that baby. Asking her to go through life without having one of her own would be cruel and I couldn’t do that to her.

  I tipped my head forward, resting my forehead against the cushion of her breast as I inhaled deeply, trying to memorize that scent. Vanilla. Sex. Booze. Addiction. It was a potent cocktail of danger that could only lead to slow and painful destruction.

  I tried to draw my lips away without kissing her again. I really did. But my tongue somehow strayed to the creamy flesh spilling out of her bra and I tried like hell to use my mouth to draw her back to bed. Yeah, I was a selfish asshole, but only because I was so lost to this girl.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, using my hair to draw my head back.

  I let her go, watching her bend to pick up the plastic disc. She rotated it and dropped a tiny pill into her hand before dry swallowing it. “See,” she said, with a sad smile. “Nothing to worry about. You saw me take it.”

  I tried to swallow the lump in my throat so I could tell her that I never really believed she’d try to trap me, but words wouldn’t come. When she picked up her shirt off the floor I got a good look at the tattoo Johnnie had been referring to earlier.

  It was just above the swell of her perfect ass and it had two brightly colored lovebirds holding a banner that read Freedom in script. I knew the work right away. One of my so-called best friends had marked her with that word and now I was going to have to kill him.

  “Jude’s work?” I asked, gesturing to the tattoo.

  “Uh yeah,” she said, slipping her shirt on and fastening the snaps. “Don’t be pissed. He wasn’t really comfortable doing it, but I told him if he wouldn’t do it I’d find someone else to take my money.” She shrugged. “He decided you probably wouldn’t want some other guy staring at my ass for four hours so he finally agreed.”

  “Freedom,” I repeated the word, tasting the bitterness on my tongue. “You feel free, Cor? ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t. You’ve got this vice-grip on my heart and you won’t let go.”

  “No,” she said, sitting on a chair in the corner to fasten her shoes. “I don’t feel free either. The tattoos were Tracey’s idea. She got one too. Supposed to mark a new chapter in our lives or something.”

  I knew her friends loved her, but not as much as I did. “Stupid reason to ink your body,” I said, trying to swallow my bitterness.

  “Don’t be such a hypocrite, Jace.”

  Sure, I had a full sleeve that had spread into a back piece, but I’d thought long and hard about each and every phase, especially the one bearing her name. I turned my arm over and rubbed at the colorful ink. “You know, you can take a wedding ring off, but this shit is for life. If that isn’t a commitment, I don’t know what is.”

  It wasn’t the marriage that scared me as much as the babies she wanted so desperately.

  “Would you take it off if you could?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No. Never.”

  She stared at my arm, her eyes glistening. “Your next girlfriend will probably hate that you have my name on your arm.”

  When I’d gotten it I couldn’t have imagined a time Cory wouldn’t be in my life. “I don’t want anyone else. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “But you will find someone else,” she said, gently. “Someone who thinks the way you do. Someone’s who okay with just living together and doesn’t want kids.”

  She swallowed several times before her eyes met mine. They were filled with unshed tears and I wanted to see them fall, to know that she still felt something.

  “You’ll fall in love again,” she said, her voice breaking.

  “Fuck that,” I said, my voice hoarse. “You think I’d put myself through this shit again?”

  “Don’t close yourself off again, Jace.” She got up and crossed the room before kneeling down in front of me. “The way you were when we met, that wasn’t living. Different girl every night, never letting anyone get too close.”

  But she broke down every one of my walls and made me fall in love with her, one sweetly agonizing day at a time until I was so into her that I hated to let her out of my sight. I was afraid she’d find someone else. Someone better. Someone who deserved her.

  “What’s the alternative?” I asked, brushing my hand against her soft cheek. “To break down and let someone in only to be… destroyed in the end?”

  She bent her head and there was only a sheet between her mouth and my hard on, but I couldn’t think about that when she already had one foot out the door.

  “I’d go through it all again,” she whispered, looking up at me. “Every minute I spent with you. Even if I’d known it was going to turn out like this, I’d do it all again.”

  And that was the bitch of it. So would I.

  ***

  I stormed through the door to Jude’s tattoo shop and pointed at him. “You asshole. I
should mess you up.”

  He groaned, raising his hands. “So, you saw Cory’s tattoo, huh?”

  “Why would you do that?” It wasn’t even noon, which meant none of his artists had rolled out of bed yet. I could let him have it without an audience. “You brand my woman with some bullshit tattoo about freedom?”

  He smirked when I sat down in his chair and leaned back. “Thought she wasn’t your woman anymore.”

  Flashes of last night coursed through my mind, making it hard to think straight. “We’re still, uh, business partners.”

  “And…?”

  I’d known Jude for years. We grew up together in the old neighborhood. We both veered down the wrong path before we found martial arts and a Sensei who gave a shit about us. Lying to him was like lying to myself. Pointless.

  “We, uh…” I scratched the scruff on my chin. “Crossed that line last night. The professional one.”

  He curled his fingers, begging for more. “Don’t leave me hanging here. What’d you do? Kiss her? Give her-”

  “Like I’d tell you.” Sex with Cory was sacred to me. I wouldn’t share that. Not even with my crew.

  He rolled his eyes. “So you two back together or what?”

  “Or what.” I grunted. “Sucks man. Getting that close to her only to get shut down again.”

  “So give the girl what she wants. Put a ring on her finger. Knock her up.”

  Easy for Jude to say. He already had an old lady at home and a kid on the way. And he wasn’t scared shitless.

  “You know that’s not me, man.” I linked my fingers, resting them on the back of my head. “I’d be a shit parent. Look at the examples I had.”

  He gave me a hard look before stabbing a finger at me. “Forget about them. They’ve already messed you up enough. They don’t get to take this from you too.”

  I had a blood brother but I swore Jude was my brother from another mother. He’d take a bullet for me and I’d do the same for him. “It’s not just them. It’s me too.” It would be too easy to put all the blame on them. My mom bailed on me. My dad was an abusive alcoholic who used me as his personal punching bag… until he couldn’t anymore. Sad story, sure. But they weren’t the only reason I couldn’t give Cory what she wanted.

  Jude was cleaning his tools and sanitizing his station when he looked up at me, his eyes pleading. “Tell me what it is. You need to get this shit off your chest, brother.”

  I sighed, knowing he was right. I’d never told this to another living soul. “You remember Caron Walker?”

  He frowned. “That chick you dated in high school? Yeah, what about her?”

  “Got her knocked up when we were in eleventh grade.”

  His jaw dropped, just like I knew it would. This was the kind of shit you told your best friend when it went down, not fifteen years later. “What the hell happened?”

  “She had a miscarriage.” I stared straight ahead. I could hear her wailing, almost feel her tears soaking my shirt. She’d wanted that kid… and I’d wanted nothing to do with it. I felt relieved when she told me the baby was gone and I knew there was a special place in hell for guys who felt that way about their own kid.

  “Man,” he said, swiping a hand over his face. “I had no idea. That’s messed up. No wonder you were so obsessive about wrapping it.”

  I used to lecture him all the time about using condoms. I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to him too. I couldn’t think of anything worse than an unwanted child being brought into the world… one just like me.

  “Except with Cory,” I said, quietly. “I never wrapped it with her.”

  “Seriously? I thought you always-”

  “Couldn’t do it with her.” I couldn’t stand the thought of a barrier between us, even though I knew it was for our own protection. There was just something so primal about filling her like that. I couldn’t let go of that feeling… not even knowing the risk.

  “Guess you were lucky then, huh?”

  “She was on the pill.”

  He chuckled. “Like I said, you were still lucky. A girl who wanted your baby that bad might have resorted to drastic measures.”

  “She told me last night that she’d had a couple of scares. A couple of negative pregnancy tests.”

  “Not surprising. You guys were together a long time.” He leaned over and gripped my shoulder. “Guess you dodged a bullet, buddy.”

  Didn’t feel like it. It felt like that bullet was still lodged deep in my chest. Right in my heart.

  Chapter Four

  Cory

  “I’m so pissed off at you right now,” Tracey said, glaring at me across the small bistro table in her bakery. “I don’t know whether to smack you or demand details.”

  One of Tracey’s part-timers had just arrived to relieve her so she could spare me a few minutes to spill my guts. I needed to confess my sins and since I wasn’t Catholic and hadn’t attended church in years, spilling to my girl would have to do.

  “I know,” I said, groaning as my head fell forward. “I’m an idiot.”

  “You were just getting over him.”

  Not really, but I was prepared to let her think that. “I know three months is a long time, but I was back in that bedroom and it was like all the memories came flooding back, ya know?”

  She sighed as she took a big bite of a red velvet cupcake. “I guess I can understand that. Jace isn’t a douchebag like Richard. He didn’t cheat on you.”

  Because if he had I would have castrated him and kicked the shit out of her. I may be small but no one messed with my man and got away with it. A passion for martial arts was one of the many things I got from Jace.

  “I still love him so much,” I whispered, leaning in like I was revealing state secrets. “I don’t know how to get over him.”

  “I don’t know how you expect to since you see the guy every day.”

  Yeah, there was that. “I know you think I should just sell him my half of the bar-”

  “You should!” She reached for a paper napkin, dabbing her lips. “He’s offered to buy you out how many times? Just go back to selling real estate. You were good at that. You made a shitload of money.”

  “Yeah, but it was sucking the life out of me. It wasn’t until I went into business with Jace that I was actually excited about something.” I bit into my double chocolate cupcake with chocolate chip sprinkles. It was my favorite, but even that held no appeal today. “Besides, we built something amazing. Within a year we were making so much money we were able to buy the whole damn building.”

  Jace had a lot of friends and loyal customers when we started the bar so they’d been willing to follow him wherever he went.

  “Yeah, but isn’t being there with him now, knowing you two can never be what you want, sucking the life out of you too?”

  She had a point, but it was more than four walls and a bunch of memories to me. It was our staff, who’d become like family. Besides, the bar was the baby Jace and I had made together. The only one we’d ever have. I couldn’t sell it.

  “I wish he’d sell to me,” I said, wondering if that were really true. Would I love it as much if he weren’t there to share every success and challenge with me? “Or at least agree to work alternating shifts.”

  “He’s still there whenever you are, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I pushed my cupcake aside and hoped my friend wouldn’t be offended. She knew I could eat a truckload of these babies when I was in the right mood. “And I don’t know how we’re going to move forward. Especially after last night.”

  “Did you guys talk?” She wiggled her auburn eyebrows comically, making me smile. “You know, after you did the deed?”

  I propped my chin in my hand. “We did, actually.”

  “And?”

  “I’d told him he’d fall in love again someday.”

  She winced. “I can’t even imagine what it cost you to say that.”

  “I wanted to rip my own tongue out so I couldn’t say stupid shit like tha
t ever again.” I half-smiled when I made her giggle. “But deep down I guess I really do want that for him. There’s a girl out there who’d make him happy. I know there is.” And I’ll hate her guts.

  “Sure there is. Just like there’s someone for you, like I keep telling you. But neither one of you will find anyone else if you keep falling back into bed with each other.”

  I rolled my eyes, holding up my index finger. “It happened one time in the past three months. One time. It’s not like I’m doing him in the supply closest every other day.”

  She leaned in, whispering, “Have you ever done him in the supply closet?”

  “Sure, when we were together.”

  She laughed, slapping my hand. “You dirty girl.”

  That’s what Jace used to call me. His dirty girl. Because with him that’s what I was. Nothing was off limits. Not public places or sex toys. In fact, I only drew two lines. Sex clubs and sharing him with other women. Because that was just… ew.

  “But no more,” I said firmly, crossing my heart. “I may have lost the last chip I earned by falling off the wagon last night, but I can do this, Trace. I can get over him. I will get over him. Starting now.”

  She held her fist out and I bumped it with mine. “Amen, sister.”

  ***

  Jace

  “Hey, Jace. Have you seen my sister around?”

  I looked up from behind the bar to see Cory’s older brother Carter bouncing his beautiful baby daughter in his arms.

  Ellie had blue eyes and fair hair. Just like her aunt. And seeing her shy little smile felt like a sucker punch to the gut. Shit. If Cory and I ever had a baby together she would probably look a lot like this little angel.

  “Uh, no. She hasn’t come in yet. Why?”

  “I’m in kind of a bind.” He rubbed a hand over his cropped blond hair. “My wife’s out of town on business and I can’t get hold of my mom. She must be at one of her board meetings. You know her, she’s always volunteering for some cause.”