It felt carnal and tender. Desperate and adoring.
And I knew in the way he was holding me that he had me. That he would protect me instead of harm me.
“Trust me?” he asked as the bedroom door shut behind us.
I’d just begun nodding, already searching for his mouth again, when his hands dropped to my thighs and lifted me. The air ripped from my lungs, and my legs wrapped around him instinctively as he walked us through the room, never slowing as he knelt on the bed and lowered me. His lips capturing mine as he deftly turned us so I was positioned on top of him.
Never caging me in.
Never confining me.
Just stealing my breath and making my head spin and shaking my soul.
One of my hands moved up to his chest as I settled on top of him, to the unforgiving beating of his heart that was in sync with my own. A groan rolling up his throat and getting lost in the kiss as his fingers clenched tighter on my bare thighs, pressing me harder against him for a moment before his hands were moving.
Trailing up and up, the path all hesitance until I rocked against him. The feel of his hard length had heat unfurling in my belly and unease rolling down my spine as the first ice-cold finger brushed along the vault I kept the memories locked up in.
Oh God.
My breathing hitched when Reed’s hands shifted beneath my shirt, lifting it as he continued higher and higher.
I slammed my eyelids shut and fought to keep the demons at bay. Struggled to know this was my choice and under my complete control. That it was Reed.
But they were there.
Mocking me as I was blasted with pieces from too many nights—flashing through my mind and blurring together like a horrifying collage.
“Emma.”
“I can’t,” I choked out as if I’d been trying to get the words free, head moving in tight, quick shakes.
I wasn’t sure when we’d stopped kissing or how many times Reed had said my name. Only that I was pushing against his chest and shaking. One of his hands was resting on top of mine while the other hovered in the air as if he wanted to touch my face and was afraid to.
Oh my God, I’m crying.
“Emma . . .” His gray eyes searched my face, pain and regret swirling there. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I told—” A jolt went through me when a crash sounded from downstairs, everything from the past minutes making it hard for my mind to process what that meant until Reed was hissing a curse.
We scrambled off the bed and raced for the door. By the time I was starting down the stairs, Reed was already clearing the last chunk of the steps with a single jump and calling out Lala’s name.
A heaving breath escaped me when her unconcerned response floated up from the kitchen, and I slowly backed up to the landing until I was pressed to the wall. Listening as Lala admonished Reed for worrying too much.
A soft laugh bubbled free when she said, “You don’t see Emma running down here because a few pots fell.”
By the time she finally let him go, I was sitting on the floor, going over what happened in the room. Trying to figure out what had gone wrong when everything had felt so right with him. And I couldn’t help but wonder if I hadn’t been met with all those haunting memories just minutes before Reed had shown, would I have still had the same reaction.
I studied his withdrawn expression as he climbed the steps, never taking his stare from me as he did. When he reached where I sat, I let him help me to standing and relaxed into his hold when he curled his free hand against my cheek and pressed his forehead to mine.
“Can we talk about it?”
“I don’t want to.” I wasn’t sure I could. I was already so horrified by what he’d seen in the room.
He nodded against me after a moment. “Want me to go?”
“No,” I admitted, even though he and I both knew I was always waiting for him to leave. Waiting for him to realize we couldn’t work.
Leaning back, he passed his mouth across my forehead and then wrapped our joined hands around my back as he started toward my room again. Never saying anything until after we were in there and he was on the bed, propped up against the headboard.
“Tell me something about you,” he said once I was seated beside him, bringing up our familiar request.
I bit back the impulse to turn the request right back around on him and thought for a long time before admitting, “I don’t know how to do this—any of this. But I want it, and I hate that parts of you still terrify me and that I can’t change that, just as I can’t make you understand those parts.”
“Can’t make me understand?” he asked softly.
“I can’t,” I clarified, stare on the comforter as I waited for his reaction. When he just held out his hand, I let out a weighted breath and slipped my hand into his. “Tell me something you think I should know about you.”
“These few hours with you aren’t enough.” His response was immediate and dripped with meaning.
He wanted more.
More time, more of this, just more.
“Tell me something about you.”
“I hadn’t realized that I couldn’t breathe before you entered my life.” The confession was softer than a whisper, but his hand tightened around mine once it finished leaving my lips.
“Emma . . .” My name was a revered breath. A prayer.
It had butterflies erupting in my belly and my heart racing like a stampede of wild horses.
My gaze shifted to him, that energy around us so charged and magnified from our revelations. “Tell me something you think I should know about you.”
His brow furrowed as he searched my eyes, his free hand lifting slowly to my face and trailing along my jaw as he vowed, “I’ll destroy whoever hurt you.”
A shiver rolled down my spine at the low and threatening tenor of his voice, my head shaking subtly as I acknowledged, “It isn’t that simple.”
A gasp ripped from me, my heart already racing and my body tensing as I was pulled from sleep.
The arm around me tightened, and I reacted.
Twisting and shoving my hand against the chest I was trapped against. Realizing too late where I was. Who I was next to.
Oh God.
Reed grabbed my wrist and wrenched my hand back as soon as it touched him, his eyes flying open and a fierce, terrifying look covering his face before he registered what was happening less than a second later. Chest pitching and muscles straining as he held me above him.
“Shit,” he breathed, head falling back against my pillows before he gently released me and wrapped me in his arms. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?” he repeated tightly.
“Yes.” I listened to his thundering heart for a few moments before saying, “Something woke me, and I—” I bit back the rest of the explanation. “I’m sorry.”
“I grabbed you, and you’re sorry.”
“I hit you first.”
A soft laugh rumbled in his chest, his hand making slow paths up and down my spine as we spoke, soothing me in that way he always seemed to. “I’ll try to be prepared for that next time.”
My stomach swirled with excitement and nervousness at the idea of next time. At the thought of meaning to fall asleep next to Reed. Because the last thing I remembered before freaking out on him was talking and waiting for the sun to finally come up.
My brow furrowed as I realized the room was lighter, and I turned my head, looking to the window. “We missed the—what time is it?”
I scrambled away from him, looking for my phone and finding Reed’s where I’d been lying.
“I have to get ready,” I said when I saw the time, a soft laugh breaking free when Reed grabbed the phone and tossed it aside before pulling me into his arms again.
“That time’s wrong.”
“Is that right?”
“By a few hours,” he confirmed, a hopeful grin on his face that made him look younger and unreasonably adorable
.
An amused hum sounded in my throat as the bed vibrated near my legs. “That’s what woke me,” I realized. “Your phone is vibrating.”
“I don’t care.”
I lifted my hand to his chest, a deep breath leaving me at the feel of his steady heartbeat there. “Sunrise tomorrow?”
“I’ll wake you,” he promised as he placed one of his hands over mine. “Tonight’s my last shift for four days. Can I have more time with you while I’m off?”
The door opened before I could respond, quickly followed by Peter’s voice. “Answer your fucking phone.”
“Rowe, what the fuck?” Reed bit out as he turned, keeping his hand wrapped around mine.
He sent me a cheesy grin as he walked deeper into the room. “Morning, Emma.”
“Hi, Peter.”
Reed kicked Peter when he sat on the bed, but Peter just smacked Reed’s leg and got comfortable. “Get up.”
“Shoulda answered your phone,” Peter said, unaffected.
Reed reached for his phone, only glancing at the lock screen long enough to swipe into his messages and tap into Peter’s conversation.
Rowe: Breakfast?
Rowe: I’m starving.
Rowe: Don’t make me come up there. I missed sunrise with y’all.
“Lala told me where y’all were,” Peter said when Reed dropped his phone between us with a sigh, grinning as if he was enjoying irritating Reed.
Reed’s voice was deadpan when he asked, “And you took that as an invitation to join us?”
But I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation.
I couldn’t hear much of anything over the pounding in my ears. I couldn’t focus on anything other than the way it felt like my stomach continued dropping as my mind raced. Trying to understand words . . . trying to make them fit with what I knew about Reed.
Because another person had messaged him, and I’d had plenty of time to see it before Reed swiped away from it.
Kira: Please come home.
“I have to get ready,” I said, getting off the bed as if in a daze as I thought of everything Reed had told me about his ex. Remembered the pain when he’d talked about her.
“Get out,” Reed demanded as Peter asked me, “You’re leaving? What about breakfast?”
“I have to go to work.”
“You have breakfast without her every other day,” Reed said as he got off the bed and started pushing Peter out of the room.
“Yeah, but I’m working, and I won’t be able to eat with her tomorrow either.”
“Jesus,” Reed said on an incredulous huff. “Leave.” Once he got the door shut, he turned, confusion marring his features. “I’d apologize, but I don’t know what the hell that was.”
“I really have to get ready,” I said when he started toward me. “I’m already late.”
Reed’s expression fell and his feet stilled. I wasn’t sure if it was because he heard the lie or if, now that Peter wasn’t in the room anymore, he could sense something was different. That I was struggling to hold myself together when my mind was coming up with a dozen reasons for the message.
Every one of them began with Reed’s lies and a woman left waiting for him, broken and forgotten.
“You okay?” he asked carefully.
“I just should’ve been gone already, and I still have to shower.”
“All right,” he said after searching my face for a second longer. “I’ll set an alarm tomorrow in case we fall asleep again.” Gathering up his phone from my comforter, he looked at where I stood on the opposite side of my bed. Confusion and worry bleeding from him. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yeah.” The answer came a beat too late, and his jaw flexed as if he were holding back his questions and concerns. I forced myself to move and tried to relax, but by the time Reed’s hands curled around my cheeks, I was shaking from holding myself so tightly.
“Is it because he came in here?” he asked softly.
“What? No,” I said quickly. “I just have to leave.”
His forehead fell to mine, his fingers drifting down to tenderly curl around the sides of my neck. “I don’t like this lie.” The claim left his lips just before they pressed to my own.
The kiss was slow and pained and tasted like hesitation.
Or maybe that was my own.
Because there was a girl begging Reed to go home.
“Can I see you in the morning?”
My chest ached at the pain and uncertainty in his voice, but the shields forming around my heart kept me from doing anything more than nodding.
“Then, I’ll wake you,” he promised before pulling away and quickly leaving the room.
I sucked in a shuddering breath when the door closed behind him and stood in the pain and unknown for a little longer. Warring with myself over what I’d seen and what it could mean—that maybe I’d taken it out of context. But I already knew he didn’t speak to his family, just as I knew how he sounded when he spoke about his ex.
And even if it wasn’t her . . . it was someone.
That battle raged in my thoughts all through my shower and getting ready. By the time I was heading down the stairs, I was firmly in the middle of wanting to push Reed away and wanting to be brave and defenseless enough to just ask him who Kira was.
I waved to Nora and offered a forced smile for the people who were eating breakfast in the living room with her, then slipped between two uniformed men heading toward the tables with plates in hand as the front door opened to let in more first responders.
“Good morning,” I murmured in return to whoever had said it, then hurried into the kitchen. “Morning, Lala.”
She waved her spatula. “You want breakfast to go?”
“Oh . . . no. Thank you.”
She turned and set a glare on me. “I asked if you wanted breakfast to go.”
I eyed the empty containers next to her. “I believe my answer is yes?”
She smiled and turned back to the food. “I thought you might. Don’t worry, I’ve got more than enough for Ms. Donna too.” She held the containers out to me and said, “Fill those up full, don’t go making me leave my station to do it for you.”
I grabbed them and started turning for the food where it was laid out on the island. At the last second, I turned and hugged her. “Thank you, Lala.”
“Go on now, get,” she said, voice thick with emotion.
“I’ll be back to help you with dinner tonight.”
She scoffed and waved me off. “I’ve been doing this by myself just fine for years now, don’t go worrying about getting back to me after a long day at work. Just help Ms. Donna, then come on home for some food.”
I didn’t answer because she and I both knew that I would end up helping her anyway—I just went over to fill up the containers. When two women started that way, talking and laughing, I stepped back, giving them time and space to get their food first.
“I can’t believe it’s finally happening for the two of y’all,” one of the girls said, voice soft and wistful. “Every woman in town is probably grieving, even the married ones.”
The one in uniform laughed but quickly quieted herself, looking around as if she was afraid of whoever might be listening. “We’re not official or anything yet. Just having fun.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” The first snorted. “I call it him not taking calls or doing any kind of work during his shifts because you’re keeping him all kinds of occupied,” the first said suggestively, complete with crude hand gestures, as the other tried to stop her.
“People will hear you.”
“People already know, Hannah,” the first went on, bumping the officer’s shoulder. “You can’t be sleeping with a guy like Reed Ryan and not have the town talking.”
I went rigid.
My body felt cold.
My heart gave one painful thump before it and my lungs stalled.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Lala.”
I jolted a
t the booming voice and sucked in a ragged breath when it kickstarted my lungs.
I managed to force my stare from where it had been on the floor in time to see a bear of a man in uniform headed toward my grandma, arms opened wide, only to turn at the last second. Pointing toward the women who had just cracked the small part of my heart I’d unwillingly given Reed.
“Hannah, hold up, I need to talk to you.”
I glanced between him and the women as he enveloped Lala in a big hug. After talking to her for a short second, he turned back to the women and pulled Hannah aside.
From where I stood, still rooted in place, I only heard the first few words from the man before they were out of hearing distance.
“Hey, I saw you at Reed’s the other day when I . . .”
Oh God.
Oh God, oh God.
As soon as the first girl followed them with both their plates, I dropped the containers on the island and finally pushed away from the spot I’d been speared to, going straight to my grandma.
“Lala,” I said, voice soft and sounding suspiciously like I might pass out or throw up.
She looked at me in alarm. “What is it?”
“The girl—” I licked my suddenly dry lips and shook my head, trying to get the text and conversations I’d just heard out of my mind. “The girl you said was trying to catch Reed’s eye, the one you said would be good for him . . . what was her name?”
Her head listed and her eyes shifted around the kitchen, no doubt because she’d just been in there. “Well, I’m not sure why it matters now, but her name is Hannah.”
All the shock and pain and denial built up inside me, forming a red-hot ball of anger in my chest. “She isn’t trying to catch anything. They’re well-acquainted with each other.”
Before Lala could respond, I turned and left the kitchen, intent on running upstairs to get my purse and then leaving the house for the entire day, if at all possible.
But as soon as I took the turn out of the kitchen, I bumped off of a wall of muscle.
“Whoa, sorry about that.” Hands came up around my arms to steady me, but I quickly maneuvered away from them.
Lie to Me Page 22
