“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I left after high school. It was a mistake. I should have followed your plan, even if it meant my father disowning me. I could have worked and gone to school.”
His face was intent, his words intense. “I thought the military would make me a man, and it did. But I’m not sure it’s the man you want me to be. I’m harder now,” he says, “and I’m haunted by what happened over there.”
I can feel my heart breaking for him. I know he had a tough go of things, remembering how he’d been five years ago when he’d come back.
“And that was before prison.” His gaze is heavy. “I’ve got scars, inside and out. I’ve made mistakes. But that doesn’t mean I ever stopped having feelings for you, Sabrina.”
He nuzzles my neck, making me feel weak. “I never stopped thinking about you,” he murmurs against my skin. “Never stopped wanting you. Even now, I can’t stay away. I need you, Sabrina.”
Ax pulls away, his eyes shining. “And you need me too.”
I swallow, overcome by his words. Everything inside me wants to give in, to pull his head down and kiss him like crazy. But I remember where we are, and what I have riding on it.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asks, the corners of his soft lips turning down. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing,” I protest, my pitch climbing. “We’re different people than we were in high school. Everyone changes. And the truth of the matter is, you’re still going to leave again.”
“What if I didn’t?”
“I can’t live on what-ifs, Ax.”
He stares at me, his expression hard to read. “It’s another man, isn’t it?”
I’m so surprised that for a moment, I don’t say anything. He reads into my silence and scowls. “I fucking knew it. Who is he?”
I shake my head. “No one.”
“Tell me,” he says growling, his hands coming up to cup my face. “Tell me who the bastard is. Tell me if he ever makes you feel like I do. Does he hold you like this? Kiss you like this?”
His lips descend on mine and Ax kisses me like I’m holding the last bit of oxygen on the planet. The kiss is devastating, and my knees go weak.
Everything inside me wants to surrender to the kiss, wants to allow this hulking brute to carry me off to his cave and prove his dominion over all lesser men again and again. But instead, I pull away with the last ounce of strength inside me.
“Stop it,” I squeak out, breathless. “You have to go now, Ax.”
“I’m not leaving,” he says, his face dark. “I won’t go until you tell me what’s going on. What are you hiding from me?”
My eyes are wide, and I feel like the deer trapped in front of the car, unable to move past the blinding spotlights that hold it in its panicked place. “Nothing. Now go.”
“Bullshit,” he says, then kisses me again, and this time I can’t stop myself from clutching his shoulders, from holding on tight. “Tell me,” he instructs again.
It takes all that I have to keep the secret inside me. “You have to leave,” I repeat, “now.”
“I don’t think so,” he says, kissing me again. “Tell me.”
“Mommy?” a small voice says, and my world crashes down around me.
Oh well, I had a good run. Mostly. Right?
I watch as Ax’s head turns to the side. I follow his lead and fix my eyes on Lex.
“Who’s that man kissing you?” my daughter asks as if it were the most natural question in the world.
I carefully disentangle myself from Ax. He’s standing still like he’s carved out of rock. Motionless.
I take a few steps toward my daughter, but his hand snakes out and grabs my wrist. “Did she just call you ‘Mommy’?”
I nod, knowing the jig is up. I can no longer hide what’s painfully obvious. My daughter looks just like her father, as Tonya pointed out to me earlier, and it’s only a matter of time before her father catches on.
I gently tug my hand out of Ax’s grip and kneel in front of my daughter. Her hair is wet from the shower, and she’s wearing the fuzzy pink robe her grandmother bought her last Christmas. Her eyes are wide, her expression curious.
I take a deep breath, knowing that everything is about to change. But maybe it’s time that it did.
With one last look over my shoulder and into the shocked face of her father, I say the words that I’ve said in my head over and over, but which have never before crossed my lips.
“Alexa, meet your father. Alexander Craven.”
21
Ax
“Alexa, meet your father. Alexander Craven.”
I’ve had insurgents explode themselves in front of me. Seen men and women torn apart by gunfire. I’ve stared down the barrel of a gun and known it was my life or his.
But I have never felt as shaken as I do right now.
When I recover enough to breathe again, I realize the little girl across from me isn’t unaffected either. Her eyes are wide.
Eyes the same shade as mine.
Her dark hair falls past her shoulders in waves, its thickness and shade similar to my own. In fact, she’d be my spitting image if it weren’t for her cute little upturned nose, a copy of her mother’s.
Her mother.
Sabrina is this girl’s mother.
And I—I’m her father.
My mouth is dry, my head pounding as I stare at the little girl and she stares back at me. A roar fills my ears, and I’m frozen. Shock pins me in place.
I blink, trying to think of something to say, but my thoughts aren’t connecting in my head anymore. I’ve left the realm of logic and landed in some sideways world where I have a daughter I’ve never met.
“Ax?”
Sabrina’s voice is soft as she rises to take a couple of steps toward me. I step back and immediately crash into the hallway wall. The impact knocks something loose inside me, and suddenly I’m able to react.
I turn my back on the scene and head for the door.
It’s the only defense I have. I can feel a tidal wave of emotion welling up inside me, and the only way I can prevent it from crashing down and pulling us all under is getting the fuck out of here.
I push my way out into the yard and take my first breath in what feels like ages. I’m halfway across the small yard when I hear the screen door clatter open.
“Wait!”
Sabrina is a step behind me, but I don’t let her catch up. I’m on my bike by the time she reaches me. Grabbing my arm, she tries to draw my attention.
Sabrina kept this from me. For years.
She had my child, and she never said a word.
“Ax, please stop. I know you’re upset, but—”
I pull my arm out of her grasp as if she were infected with some disease that transforms angels into betrayers. “Upset doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I am.”
Sabrina recoils at my tone and the disgust I’m broadcasting. The heat of shame flushes her features. She opens her mouth to speak, but I slam my foot onto the kick-starter and Delilah growls to life, burying whatever words she might have said.
Her eyes flash with hurt, and it hits me, but it doesn’t penetrate the ice that’s currently clinging to me like armor. I peel out, gravel shooting behind me, and I can feel the bike start to slide. It’s a stupid move, but I’m in a stupid mood.
Unluckily, I don’t crash my motorcycle, and I’m not killed or horribly maimed.
It just feels like it on the inside.
Dirt gives way to concrete pavement, and the tires engage, shooting me forward. I pay no attention to where I’m going, I just drive.
I’m numb. Overloaded. Unable to process what just happened.
I have a daughter. With Sabrina.
One that I’ve never seen before today.
I can feel a thousand questions beat at the walls of my mind, but I force them back, now holding tight to the numbness. I won’t let myself be overwhelmed.
<
br /> Then I can feel it behind me, breathing down on me.
The old enemy. With me since my time in the desert. Made stronger by the long nights at Tabor Correctional.
Panic.
My heart hammers at my chest until I’m sure I’m painted in bruises. My breath feels like a bird trapped in my chest. I know that, at any second, it will consume me.
I have to stay numb.
Don’t think.
Don’t feel.
Realizing that the usual stern words aren’t going to keep the panic at bay, I make a few turns until I’m in downtown Cape Craven. I pull Delilah into the parking lot beside the saloon, not bothering to park her around back. I’m off the bike the moment she stops and on my way to the heavy doors.
Ricky looks up from behind the bar, a hint of surprise on his saggy features. He grunts a greeting as I approach, but I cut him off.
“Give me the bottle, Rick.”
He nods and heads to the door that takes him to his storage area. The scotch costs more than a full college education at the closest state school. I remember the night I stole it from my dad’s cellar.
Dad was locked in his study, ostensibly working, but I knew from the growing pile of empty liquor bottles he was likely drinking himself silly in there. I was twelve, and my mom had died two months earlier.
I made sure my little brother was sleeping, then snuck down to the cellar and looked for the empty nooks. The wooden room had always bored me in the past, probably because we weren’t allowed to play down there for fear of a very expensive accident. But now, in the stillness of the night, in the house that had felt too empty for the last eight weeks, there was something almost churchlike about the room.
The bottles shined with glowing liquid of various colors. I convinced myself they were like magic potions, ones that took away all the bad feelings, made it so you could sleep, so you didn’t spend the long nights asking yourself what you could have done differently to make her stay.
Those infernal questions haunted my twelve-year-old self. Why my mom? What had she done? What had I done? Could it be undone? Or would I always feel this miserable? Would my house always feel so empty and cold?
My gaze landed on a region that seemed to have fewer bottles than the others. My father was proud of his collections, and to find a stretch of unoccupied slots was uncharacteristic. This was what my father was spending his evenings in the study imbibing.
I slid one of the bottles out, squinting at the unfamiliar Scottish name. The year stood out, 1926, which seemed unaccountably old at the time. I tucked the bottle under my pajama top and crept back up the stairs, all the way to my room.
I twisted off the cap and sniffed, and I remember I’d scowled, thinking it smelled foul. That didn’t stop me from trying a drink.
My eyes watered and I let out a scalded cough. But then I’d fought the burn for a few more swallows. That night, sleep had come without the questions.
Then, in the morning, I’d thought my brain was set to pound its way out of my skull.
I hid the bottle, and when I came back home to pack up my room and move it to my cabin, I came across it again. Deciding it wasn’t safe to keep the bottle with me, that it would be too easy to slide into the blackness that alcohol could bring me, I’d given Ricky the bottle to hold for me, figuring if I wanted a drink, I’d have to work for it.
They’d told me I was at risk for PTSD, after what I’d seen. What I’d done. But even though I’d soured on the military, I hadn’t given up on the world around me. I hid my struggle with the panic and set off for the woods, hoping to exorcise my demons with long walks and silence. Back in Cape Craven, I would get better.
I let out a disappointed burst of air. Imagine me having more hope for myself after coming back from a literal bloodbath than I do now.
I guess I was different then. That was before I spent five years behind bars.
Before I became a father.
I focus all my attention on the bottle as Ricky carries it to me. I take it from him, give him a curt nod, and turn to leave.
I hear the bartender clear his throat and I realize the sound is old Rick’s way of asking me if I need to talk, but I ignore it. Talking won’t help. Because if I talk, the questions might push their way through again. If I pause, if I breathe, the wave of feelings might drown me.
I’m back on my bike and heading to my cabin in less than a minute, the bottle tucked in Delilah’s storage compartment. The trees are a blur as I speed past them, a perfect mirror for my thoughts.
I can feel the numbness start to tingle, and I know that I can’t hold out much longer. This thing inside me is too big. The one person I would have trusted with my life, with my heart, with my fucking soul, betrayed me.
Sabrina, the angel of my dreams, my teenage crush.
My first love.
She turned out to be the witch I’ve always teased her about. She wrapped me up in her spell, then robbed me of a part of my life I hadn’t even known existed.
Delilah comes to a stop in front of the cabin, and I cut the engine and walk her to the shed. I won’t be driving her anytime soon, not with this near six-figure bottle of scotch in my possession.
The cabin is cold, and I ignore the temperature and decide to let the alcohol blanket me in its rosy glow. I consider grabbing a glass but say fuck it instead and throw myself into one of the armchairs. The cap is off and the bottle at my lips before I can blink.
The burn is still fierce, but a familiar friend. A couple of swallows and I stop to catch my breath.
I sense them, the fucking questions, trying to claw their way into my consciousness. What is she like, my daughter? What does she know about me?
Does she think I’m a hero?
Does she think I’m a convicted criminal?
I shake my head and force another gulp of golden liquid into my mouth. I fleetingly wish that it was the magic potion I pretended it was when I was twelve. Closing my eyes, I lean my head back and concentrate on nothing.
Just the silence and the cold.
How could Sabrina do this to me?
My eyes shoot open. That’s the $64,000 question, and it’s the one that breaks through, that lets the typhoon of emotion burst through the cracks.
Fuck.
I turn the bottle up, letting the liquid pour into my mouth, gulping until I almost puke. Through sheer stubbornness and the quality of the scotch, I’m able to bring the blackness back, to replace the numbness with a warm glow.
Fuck this fuckery, I think. This isn’t something we need to worry about right now.
Hell, it’s been ten fucking years. I think this shit can sit for another night.
The liquor convinces me that my world hasn’t been utterly destroyed. That Sabrina hasn’t just done to me what both prison and the terrorists hadn’t been able to do.
That she hasn’t completely broken me.
The haze of booze descends, and I’m grateful. But it’s not long before I’m cursing myself for a fool. I came back to Cape Craven for a reason. I was a man with a will.
And it’s only taken a run-in with an old flame to completely throw me off my mission. No longer. I have to convince myself that this shit with Sabrina doesn’t matter.
Even thinking that thought makes me want to punch the wall.
But it’s true, I tell myself. I’m here for one reason: to bring Brent down. I’ve spent five years scheming. I’m not about to throw it all away because a girl knocked me sideways.
They’ve gotten along fine without me for the last ten years. They can get along without me for the next ten. Or however long I spend in Tabor, once my plan lands me back in the clink.
I pull out my laptop before my vision gets too blurry to see the screen. Logging into the online trading site, I make a couple of sales, not quite enough to get noticed, but enough to start establishing a pattern.
Unexpectedly seeing my brother at Dad’s house in the presence of witnesses earlier actually helps me build my nefarious n
arrative. Clandestine meetings between the upstanding businessman and his convict brother at the family estate always come out in court after the charges have been levied.
My plan will see the end of my brother’s power-grab, and I can’t wait to watch him in the courtroom, to see his smarmy face as I layer lie after lie to weave a web of our guilt that not even expensive lawyers will be able to cut him out of. Just like he did to me five years ago.
I chuckle, and it’s a sick sound. With no small amount of self-disgust, I close the laptop and slump backward, draining the rest of the bottle and sliding into the welcome embrace of oblivion.
22
Sabrina
I listen to the howl of his motorcycle fade as he speeds away. Bowing my head, I turn back to the house, trudging across the lawn and realizing that I’m biting my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood.
Well, that went about as well as I thought it would.
There had been dreams, on the long nights I spent alone in bed, thinking about Ax and how it used to be. Dreams in which I told him about Alexa, and he broke into a smile, picking me up and twirling me around, saying how he’s always wanted a child with me. How I’d given him a precious gift, and he’s finally fulfilled.
Even as I think of those dreams now, I realize how absolutely naïve they were. Downright stupid, really. I can feel the tears that are filling my eyes threatening to slide down my cheeks and force myself to take large gulps of air and try to calm down.
My daughter is in the house, having met her father for the first time in her young life. And she had to watch him walk out the door without saying a word. I need to go to my baby, make sure she’s okay.
Lex is standing where I left her, in the middle of the living room. She’s still, like she was carved from marble, but I can see the emotion in her wide eyes. Eyes so like her father’s. I wrap my arms around her and bury her head in my chest.
Billionaire Biker's Secret Baby_A Bad Boy Romantic Suspense Page 15
