Winter's Heart

by Warneke, A. C.

  After Addison left, his thoughts were even more tortured and convoluted. He was going to have to track down Flynn and talk to her again. And this time he was going to have to listen.

  “Daddy!!” Storm cried, running into the room with a monster smile on his cherubic face. Winter squatted down as the little boy flung himself into his arms and hugged him with all of the love he had in his little body.

  Closing his eyes, he held his son and breathed in the little boy’s clean scent. If Flynn was innocent, he was going to have to grovel and beg for forgiveness. But if she was guilty, he would fucking destroy her.

  Holding his son in his arms, he was almost certain it was going to be the former and not the latter, and she had the power to destroy him completely if she couldn’t forgive him.

  Chapter 22

  “Chin up, Peanut” her father said as he nudged her chin upwards, offering her a warm smile as he looked at her with the increasingly familiar concern.

  Forcing an expression to her aching face, she smiled up at him, “I’m okay, Daddy.”

  When she had returned home, she had holed up in her room because the dam had cracked as soon as she saw her daddy waiting for her at the airport. Ugly tears coursed down her cheeks, smearing the white and black face paint and making for a ghoulish appearance. He hadn’t said a thing, about the article, about her outfit, about Winter. Instead, he had taken her into his arms and held on tight as he guided them out of the busy O’Hare Airport and to his parked car. He settled her into the backseat, where she promptly curled up into a ball to try to keep the pain from tearing her apart, and then he climbed into the front seat and drove home.

  Her mother fluttered uselessly around her, offering food or drink or anything, before finally sitting on the edge of Flynn's bed and rubbing her back, murmuring nonsense words meant to comfort. All they did was bring home the fact that her heart had been ripped from her chest, torn to shreds, and set on fire.

  After four days of raging tears, she was all cried out and back to that comfortable numbness that had sustained her that first week. The week she turned twenty-two. But it quickly became impossible being around her family, who loved her to pieces but were walking on eggshells to keep from upsetting her. She tried to tell them that she wouldn’t break but they didn’t listen and the silence became deafening.

  Unable to stay, not knowing where else to go, she had begged her father to let her stay in the trailer at one of his construction sites. She knew it wasn’t entirely legal for her to live there but it was only temporary until she pieced the charred remains of her heart back together and figured out what to do next.

  “Now, no one should bother you out here,” her dad told her, standing in the doorway as he prepared to head home for the night. “But if they do, 9-1-1 is on speed dial and there’s a bat right here next to the door.”

  He patted the baseball bat that he had brought with them that afternoon and looked around the small trailer as he stalled for time, obviously reluctant to leave his youngest child on her own. “I gave the crew the morning off so you’ll be able to sleep in….”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Daddy,” she interrupted. It wasn’t like she’d be getting much sleep anyway. When she fell asleep, her emotions decided to resurrect themselves and she woke up with tears on her face. “But thank you.”

  “The port-a-john is just down the way,” he said, pointing out the portable toilet he had pointed out at least three times already. “If you have to go in the middle of the night, be sure to bring the baseball bat.”

  “Okay,” she laughed, the sound foreign to her own ears.

  Blowing out his breath, he softened his voice and murmured, “It won’t last forever, you know. The pain will ease and it’ll get better.”

  “I know,” she replied, wanting the solitude as much as she wanted her daddy to stay and make it all better. But there was nothing he could do. She just needed time, lots and lots of time. Luckily, she was only twenty-two, so she’d be ready to get her feet wet in the dating pool by the time she was, oh, let’s say forty.

  Instead of leaving, he came back inside and hugged her where she sat. “I wish I could take all of your pain away, Peanut. I could kill that boy for hurting you.”

  “It wasn’t his fault entirely, Daddy,” she said, still defending Winter as she returned her father’s hug. “The evidence is overwhelmingly against me and to be honest, I don’t know who else could have done it, either. If I was on the outside looking in, I’d be pretty damn positive I was the culprit as well.”

  “You didn’t do it,” he rumbled with utter certainty and it made the cold remains of her heart spark and glow a little to know she had such unwavering support from her family.

  “Still, it hardly matters since the world hates me anyway,” she said with a sad pathetic smile curving her lips. Standing up, she walked with her father to the door, knowing that her mother was back at the house anxiously awaiting his return. “And nothing is going to change that.”

  “Once the truth is known….”

  “If it’s ever known,” she corrected. Shaking her head in resignation, she continued, “It won’t matter. A lie travels half way around the world, gaining traction and size, while the truth is still lazing about in bed thinking it’ll be all right because it’s the truth. Silly truth doesn’t realize that lies are far more powerful and harder to defeat, especially when the world would rather believe the lie.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t a philosophy major?” he chuckled, the sound as sad and resigned as her heart.

  “And I would be just as unemployed with a philosophy degree as I am with a Lit degree.”

  Looking uncomfortable, he shifted from foot to foot before he worked up the courage to ask, “Do you think Winter….”

  “No,” she said without hesitation before he could even ask the question. “There’s no way in the world Winter would have written that article and if he did, he would have used his own name. He’d never purposefully let someone else take the fall for him; he’s just not that guy.”

  “You still love him.”

  “I think I’ll always love him.” Uncomfortable with such a raw admission, she nearly pushed him out the door. Giving him one last hug, she whispered, “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too, Peanut,” he whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She nodded her head as he finally left, waving goodbye as he climbed into his truck and drove off. Standing there, staring out over the nearly complete house, she sighed in almost relief. As she watched, another car pulled out of there and she briefly wondered which of the crew was just now heading home. Not giving the car another thought, she closed the door and bolted it shut, not that the lock would keep a determined intruder from breaking in but it offered a little peace of mind.

  Collapsing onto the bench behind the built in table, she lay back and stared at the ceiling overhead, wondering how her life had changed so completely overnight. Wondering what she did to deserve it. Maybe this was the price a mortal paid for falling in love with a god… well, an American god. Maybe the hate mail wouldn’t have been so scathing if she had been worthy of him, at least in his fans’ eyes.

  Closing her eyes, she let her mind drift, trying to keep it away from thoughts of Winter, of Storm, of anything in California, including her sister and Harry. She didn’t want to think about them in case her bad karma rubbed off on them and ruined their happily ever after since she was the one who brought them together. What if she was the reverse Midas and everything she touched turned to shit? She’d have to move far away from everyone she loved just to keep from infecting them.

  She’d have to become a hermit and learn to live off the land.

  With a wry smile at her flights of fancy, she let the sounds of the night lull her into oblivion.

  The desperate need to pee woke her a few hours later. Even though it was a new development and she doubted there was anyone out there lurking in the shadows, she grabbed the baseball bat because
she knew it would make her dad happy.

  Doing her business in the small enclosure, she heard a car door slam but didn’t think anything of it until she saw the shadow moving around inside of the trailer. Her father’s car was long gone so she knew it wasn’t him and the car that was parked there was unfamiliar and a rental if she wasn’t mistaken. Great, it was just her luck that the one night she decided to sleep there some lowlife decided to break in.

  Holding the baseball bat up in ready position, she debated whether or not she should face the burglar. Or possible rapist. If she went in there, there was a very good chance she’d end up dead on the outside, not just on the inside. Even though there was no one around for miles, she decided to make a run for it, figuring she’d meet up with the main road and flag someone down and beg them to drive her back to her parents’ house.

  Spinning on her heel to run, the door creaked open and a painfully familiar voice rasped, “Flynn, don’t go.”

  Winter? Winter! What the fuck was he doing there? How did he find her? Her lower lip trembled as emotion she thought dead and gone came roaring back to life and she slowly turned around to face him. The light spilled around him, as if he had fallen from heaven but had enough of the divine to still be cast in its Grace. The hard angles of his face were only softened by the curve of his full lips while his black hair looked as if it had been tugged to within an inch of its poor life. He had a haunted look as he stared at her with the eyes of a condemned man and it made her heart quake and her eyes water but she refused to cry.

  He swallowed as he asked in a soft, familiar voice, “Where’s the money?”

  Pain lanced through her because his question was so absurd and she threw her head back and laughed, a cold, mocking sound that hurt her soul. Forcing her feet forward, she said, “It’s in my super-secret account in the Cayman Islands.”

  “Liar,” he breathed as she pushed past him, trying to ignore the way her body lit up in response to his nearness. Crowding her space, he stalked her over to the counter and pressed his front against her back and whispered, “There was never any money.”

  “Right,” she sneered, her body stinging in prickly pain as blood once again flowed through her no longer sleeping veins. It was as if her entire body was waking up after being asleep for a thousand years and it hurt. She wanted to roll her shoulders, arch her back, anything to ease the torment but if she did, she might accidentally touch him and then she’d be a puddle on the floor. Unlike Winter and Melissa, she didn’t have an excellent cleaning service. “Because I wanted to ruin your life, my life, for shits and giggles. That’s brilliant, Winter, seriously brilliant.”

  “Because you didn’t sell the story,” he rasped against her ear as he put his hands on her hips and pulled her against his hard body. Nuzzling her ear, reminding her of the explosive chemistry between them, he breathed, “I would have figured it out sooner but the night of the party I saw you and Frankton.”

  Trying to claw her way through the sensual fog, she managed a single word. “Who?”

  “The man who handed you the envelope,” he explained slowly, turning her around and carefully watching her face. “I saw the smile you gave him when you saw what was inside but I dismissed it at the time. And then the article appeared Monday morning in his paper and it… short-circuited my rational brain that knew it couldn’t have been you. What was in the envelope, Flynn?”

  Scanning his face with her eyes, seeing the hope mixed in with the pain, his own confusion, she softly explained, “It was the payment to Gilded Dreams for the party and a note from Melissa wishing us the best. I smiled because you were finally free.”

  Scrubbing his hands through his hair, he bit out, “Fuck me.”

  Seeing the firm set of his jaw, the tight press of his lips, the guilt and the relief, she asked, “If you no longer believe it’s me…”

  “I don’t think I ever truly believed it was you,” he interrupted. “But I’m pig headed and stubborn and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

  She smiled slightly at his admission before she continued, “Who do you think did it?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said, his eyes troubled as he stared at her with an emotion she couldn’t quite read. Shock? Relief? A strange expression twisted his features as he closed his eyes and swallowed thickly, “But if I had to take a guess, I would say Melissa.”

  Her eyes slid closed as she heard the heartache in his voice. He continued talking, “I should have confronted her before I came to you but I couldn’t bear another minute of not being with you, of you hurting because you thought I believed you capable of such treachery.”

  She nearly collapsed as a massive burden was lifted from her shoulders. It didn’t completely erase the blistering pain of being accused in the first place but it was a start. His hands wrapped around hers and she opened her eyes and looked up to see that he was still troubled. “I have one last thing to ask you and whatever answer you give me, I’ll believe, no matter what.”

  Her stomach flipped over on itself, not wanting to hear the question, afraid of the words that were about to come out of his mouth. When he stared at her with a mixture of regret and longing, she nudged him, “Go ahead.”

  “Did you sell the sex tape of us?”

  ♥~♥~♥

  Flynn looked like a waif wearing that raggedy sweater that was at least three sizes too big for her. Her face was thinner than it had been the last time he had seen her and it worried him that she wasn’t eating. The dark circles beneath her bruised eyes let him know that she wasn’t having any better luck sleeping than he was. But as the words fell from his lips her eyes widened in horror and he knew without hearing her answer that she hadn’t done it. He wished he had never asked, simply owned up to the fact that it was out there and that they would deal with the fall out together. Now, she was furious, which was, admittedly, better than the shell he had been talking to.

  Her eyes flared with fire and color stained her pale cheeks and she practically grew an entire foot as she seethed, “You’re accusing me of selling a tape that I didn’t even know existed? That should never have existed?

  “I fucked up.”

  “Yeah,” she said, the one word filled with scornful anger. “You promised to erase the videos but you didn’t and now they’re out there.”

  “There’s only one,” he admitted clumsily, wanting to ease her mind if only a little bit.

  “Oh, great!” she cried out sarcastically, throwing her hands up in the air and walking away from him. “Only one. And I’m sure my face and body are blurred out and I am totally unrecognizable.”

  He felt the heat in his cheeks but he remained standing, unwilling to buckle under from the weight of her words she hurled at him. She deserved to get mad, to lash out, and he was strong enough to take it, no matter how it flayed him alive on the inside. There was no excuse for why he made the tape to begin with, let alone why he had kept them, except for the fact that he had wanted them. He wanted to capture that which was uniquely Flynn and hold it tight.

  Because he hadn’t actually expected her to stay, not after she discovered how fucked up he was. What kind of man fucked three girls at once because they had been cruel to him in high school? Who fucked a stranger in a mask because he couldn’t bear the thought of cheating on a woman who had never loved him? Who had to take a woman’s ass to assert his dominance over her, even when she offered everything without hesitation?

  Staggering back under the weight of his thoughts, of Flynn’s words, he tried to take a breath but his throat was clogged. He needed some air and he needed it now.

  Flynn’s warm hand was on his arm, pulling him back from the edge, and she looked at him with concern, even after everything he had done to her. “Winter, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “God, I’m sorry, Flynn. I’m so sorry,” he choked out, the words raking across his skin as he realized what he had done to her, what his world had created within him. Scrubbing his hands through his hair, he looked
at her and silently begged her to understand, to forgive him, to love him as unconditionally as she did before. His chest heaved as he tried to breathe and get the words out that wouldn’t come, that were branded in his heart but unable to be spoken, not after what he had done. “I need to leave before I destroy what is left of you.”

  “Winter?” Her eyes widened with hurt and shock as he tried to walk away but he couldn’t move. His body was betraying him, refusing to leave the girl it loved more than life itself. But if he stayed, he’d only end up hurting her more.

  Tortured, he looked at her in despair, waiting for the moment the love faded and disappeared from her eyes. In a rough whisper, he admitted, “I can’t bear your hatred, Flynn.”

  She smiled, sad and resigned, as she cupped his cheek. He closed his eyes to absorb the pleasure of her touch before it was taken from him forever. As her hand slipped away, he looked at her as she stepped away from him, “I love you, Winter, I’ll always love you but I am, God, I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that you kept the sex tape even after you promised to erase it. And now it’s out there for everyone to see and I need to figure this out. I can’t be with you right now.”

  “I know.” Empathy shone in her eyes but she was backing away from him and it was only a matter of time before she realized she deserved so much better than a damaged actor who only had his heart and some kinky sex to offer her. Would that be enough? If she could forgive him, would it be enough to keep her forever? “I’ll go.”

  A tiny, aching whimper of protest came from the back of her throat but she didn’t try to stop him. Even as he pressed his house key into her hands and told her the house was hers when she wanted to return to him, she remained stoically resolute. Holding her eyes, mentally begging her to stop him, to come after him, he stepped out the door and down the steps. Her lips pressed together in a tight line and he hoped she fought the same battle he did to let him stay. But then she tilted her chin up and he knew she wasn’t going to give in, no matter how slowly he walked away.