by Eden Butler
But it was foolish to think that this simple, gentle gesture would be able to break the spell of the powerful eroticism of the dance; Ransom’s breath came out not in a sigh of relief or pleasure, but in a lustful grunt, and he moved his fingers away from my mouth, to grip my hips again, tight.
“I love when you touch me,” he said, voice a little loud with the hint of restlessness in his tone. “Don’t stop.”
It was like taunting a starving lion with the freshest cut of bloody meat. A little groan moved in the back of my throat and I slid my fingers in his hair, closing my eyes and he pulled me close, his mouth came to my chest, hands gripping on my waist. And the faster I moved my hips, trying to keep up the pretense that I did this all the time, the harder he touched me, like he was needy, like only my skin would cool his burning fingers.
“God, I need this. I fucking need this so much,” he said, running his tongue beneath my collarbone, dipping his nose in my cleavage. “This is, okay. This is…this is fine.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself that touching me, having my body under his hands wasn’t wrong. Like he needed to convince himself that he was not broken. “Just…just you…only you touch me,” he said, fingernails smoothing down my back. “She…she won’t be mad.”
I stopped moving. The sensation of his large hands on me, his breath dampening against my skin felt cold. Ransom looked up at me, likely wondering why I’d pulled away and I saw the same desperation in his eyes that had been there when he’d left his car and all those red roses behind him. He wasn’t with me. He wasn’t with the dancer. I was a body to hold on to while his mind warred and debated with the memory of Emily and the guilt her loss had created.
He blinked twice and kept his hands on my waist as though he wanted me to speak, like it had to be me who gave him permission to keep touching me. But I couldn’t. Not another second. This broke me, completely—Ransom being so lost, so blind to what was right in front of him, to the happiness I could give him because he’d never let go of his guilt. It would always be there. So would Emily, and the realization toppled me hard, so that I felt the foreign burn in my eyes, tears that never came from me, stinging behind my lashes.
I stood, awkwardly scooted away from him, but he didn’t let go of my waist. “I can’t do this.” He let me pull his hand free, but still sat up, coming closer as I stepped back. “Not with you.”
“Why?” Ransom, said, reaching for me. “What’s wrong with me? Didn’t you like the way I touched you the first time?”
It had been all I’d thought of for days afterward. Ransom touching me deep, making me feel something besides worry and exhaustion; modi, why not just say it? Making me come, and come hard. God, I’d loved it. But this? Right now? No, I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t. Not when I knew, to him, I wouldn’t ever be anything but a replacement.
His expression was worried, eyes squinted as though he didn’t understand why I stood away from him, why I wouldn’t let him touch me. I knew the second I explained myself that this would be over. The same kind of moment I had when I decided to leave my father’s home and never looked back. Hard, but necessary. I was good at taking care of myself. I had to be and though it would kill me, it would break me in so many ways, I could not be around him if he could never fully be with me. I could not be constantly reminded what I could have given him, if he’d only have let me.
I’d tell him the truth and break my own heart in the process.
“Ransom,” I started, leaning toward him so he had to rest back. I took a second to look over his face, wanting to remember how dark his eyes were, how those faint freckles on his cheek were shaped in a triangle. He let me touch him then, and the pain throbbed deep, knowing he’d wouldn’t resist the dancer’s fingers against his bottom lip, but would have never let me do the same thing. “I’ve always liked everything you do to me.”
His confusion was evident in the way he frowned, how those black eyes widened when I reached for my mask and peeled it away from my face, then reached back and pulled the wig from off my head, loosening my bound up hair and letting it fall around my shoulders and down my back. With nothing to hide me from him, Ransom’s confusion slipped to slow realization.
“I don’t…what… Aly…it’s…. Aly?”
I didn’t bother with an explanation. He wouldn’t hear it anyway.
I shrank two steps back, moving out of his way as he stood, clutching the mask and waiting for his temper to explode.
“Aly? I…I don’t understand…”
I could have said a hundred things just then. I could have told him how often I’d watched him when he wasn’t looking. I could have explained that I’d spent so many nights thinking about him, devising ways to slip past him in the hall just to catch a whiff of his cologne or hear his laughter when Tristian made a joke. I could have reminded him that it was me he kissed that night in the studio, that it was me he couldn’t stop kissing that day in his car. But none of that would matter. It wouldn’t take away this betrayal. And that’s what it was to him. I saw that in his expression and the shadow of disappointment that covered his face.
He stared at me, his top lip quivering as though he couldn’t control the anger. I expected him to shout at me, to insult me with more than just this hard glare. I didn’t expect his voice to be quiet or his question to be so simple.
“Why?” he said, his hands dropping to his sides.
What could I say? This time, it wasn’t about the money. But that wouldn’t matter anyway. The why was pointless. Instead, I settled on the truth.
“I wanted to help you forget.” I looked at him then, not caring that there were tears in my eyes. “Just for a moment, I wanted you to forget.”
Ransom was imposing all the time, but just then, with his frown hardening and his jaw tight, he was damn scary. I knew he’d never hurt me. Not physically. Ransom wasn’t the abusive, simple kind of guy. I just didn’t think he could wound with a look or tear me to pieces with a head shake.
I didn’t expect that he’d destroy me just by walking through the door.
But, he did.
16
I should have busted Irosnside’s lip. No one fucks with my head like that and expects me not to react. I may have learned how to calm my temper over the years, but that didn’t mean that I was always in control of myself, not when someone gets in my face. Not when that same someone manipulates me.
And Aly.
Shit.
I’d left that damn room and her lying ass only to run right into that bastard grinning at me like he had leverage.
“You wanna talk favors now?” he’d asked and I didn’t bother to answer him. At least, not until he started in with the threats. “Ransom, I’m sure the media would be interested in you getting a lap dance, especially if I have video.”
The hallway was quieter than the main club and I stopped my retreat out of that God-forsaken place the second that motherfucker finished his threat. He wanted a reaction and I gave it to him.
I’m big so most people expect me to be slow. I’m not, and when I turned and got right in Ironside’s face, it wasn’t the grip I had around his neck that had that jackass’s eyes round and scared. It was how quickly I’d managed to get his feet off the floor and his back up against the wall.
“You fuck with me about this girl and now you threaten me?” I shook him once and that asshole’s head smacked against the wall. “You think I give a fuck about some tape of me getting a lap dance? Motherfucker, I’ve had people talking about me since I was a kid. You think this shit bothers me?” I’d dropped him down when two of his overgrown bouncers started toward us. “Relax, I’m leaving,” I’d told them but not before I tilted my head, getting right into Ironside’s face. “You fuck with me, I will make shit messy for you.” My anger was sharp, pumping adrenaline so thick I had to breathe through my mouth to keep myself in check. I don’t know why I stopped, why I turned and made that douchebag another promise. “You fuck with her and shit will get mes
sier.”
I shouldn’t have cared what Irosnide did to Aly. It wasn’t my business, but something still had me watching her back, even now.
The next few days, the damn voice in my head was so loud I missed two tackles at practice and my father had definitely noticed. He kept after me during practice, then followed me around the locker room like I’d grown three heads.
“What the hell is going on with you?”
I hadn’t answered him and turned my phone off when he kept bombarding me with texts.My head was so full of stupid noise I couldn’t concentrate on my classes or even keep my thoughts organized enough to remember to eat or shower or answer people when they spoke to me. So, I stayed in my room with the voice screaming at me, laughing, making me feel like a general nut job. Still, that was better than memory. It was better than having to admit to myself that I hadn’t been really disappointed that it was Aly dancing for me. I was pissed, sure, surprised, absolutely, but when I thought about it days later, I wasn’t really mad.
Hurt like a son of a bitch, though and that did piss me off.
People lie to me all the time. Always have. Mark and Johnny lied for years about being roommates, which, even as a kid, I thought was stupid. Them together, as a couple, had always seemed natural and normal. No idea why they’d thought they needed to lie to me about it.
Girls always manipulated to get what they wanted from me. Teammates always told me what they thought I wanted to hear because I was bigger than them. Because they thought that my dad being our coach made a difference when they wanted to play. I was used to being lied to. But Aly never telling me that she was the dancer at Summerland’s stung a hell of a lot more than assholes wanting to impress my father.
Days away from her felt like months and that, too, pissed me off. I didn’t want to miss her. I didn’t want to be bothered that she’d lied to me. I didn’t want to hear that grating voice laughing at me about her. But I didn’t have a choice. It was what it was.
And I honestly hadn’t expected her to check out completely. I found out about it when I heard the dorm phone ring, and then Ronnie thundered up to my room to bang on my door.
“Man, your mom is on the phone and she sounds pissed.”
My phone had been off for two days, but Mom still had a way to get to me. I should have known Dad would go tattling on me. Another bang against my door and Ronnie sounded irritated, himself. “You hear me in there? Come talk to your mom before she decides to show up here and we all get bitched at.”
“I’m coming,” I told Ronnie, crawling out of my bed, not caring that I probably smelled and looked like I’d been on a bender.
I fucking wished.
The house was pretty empty for a Monday, with no one other than Ronnie and Mike in the front room blasting through what I suspected was a Halo marathon. They didn’t bother to look at me as I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone.
Man, she was gonna yell at me so loud.
“Hello?” I asked, waiting for my mother’s angry, clipped tone.
“Baby, what happened?” she said and I relaxed, knowing that if she was calling me baby she was more worried than mad.
“Mom, I have a cold, that’s all. If Dad told you about the practice…”
“Ransom, I don’t care about practice or you missing sacks.” In the background of her call, I heard Koa crying, a loud, angry tantrum and someone’s voice who I didn’t recognize trying to sooth him. Mom closed a door and the crying was silenced. “What the hell is going on with Aly?”
The weird thing about anger is that it can shift so quickly, straight to fear, then it doesn’t really exist at all. You trump up the rage because you are hurt. I told myself that Aly wasn’t someone I cared about, but with my mother’s frantic tone, all the lies I’d convinced myself were true completely disintegrated.
“What do you mean? What happened?”
Mom’s breath was loud in the speaker and that sigh worried me more, had me fearing the worst. “Neither one of you show up for lunch yesterday and she was supposed to be here today at nine like normal, but then called me and said she couldn’t work here anymore. She quit, Ransom. No warning or anything, she just up and quit on us.”
That was impossible. She loved my family. She wouldn’t have just…but then how could I be sure? She’d lied to me, kept things from me, maybe that little admission of loving my family had been just something she said because she thought it would make me happy. Still, to just leave with no regard to what that would do to my little brother?
“That doesn’t…wait. She left you hanging?”
“Of course not. She had one of her friends from the diner come over. Nice girl, but I don’t know her.” Mom’s voice was hoarse and I could tell she was stopped up, as though the worry, possibly her upset had her weepy. “She had references, but that’s not the point. Koa is having a fit because Aly isn’t here.”
“Did you ask Leann if something was going on?”
“She doesn’t know either. She said Aly was running off this morning for an extra shift at the diner and wouldn’t answer Leann when she asked why she quit.” Mom paused and the slide of a deck chair against the patio stone echoed into the speaker. “You’re her friend. Did she say anything to you?”
Man, I didn’t want to get into this with my mother. Ever. She’d tell me I was being irresponsible. She’d tell me that I should have kept away from Aly. She was right, I should have stayed away, but then it wasn’t like I had a choice in who danced for me.
You shouldn’t have gone to that club.
For once, the voice was right. I shouldn’t have let Ironside get me alone in that room. Maybe if I’d just walked away then none of this would have happened.
“We aren’t friends, Mom, not that close, anyway.” I had to clear my throat, knowing my mother wouldn’t buy that lie. Aly was my friend. At least, that’s what I’d wanted at the beginning. Alone in my room, moping like a little punk, I’d realized that pretty quickly. She’d been my friend, just one that I couldn’t keep from touching. Still, my mom didn’t need to know that shit. “We don’t keep up with each other outside of the studio and the lake house.”
“But her audition is tomorrow.” She sounded worried, and that tone killed me. I hated when something stupid I did had her speaking to me with that upset bite in her voice. “You aren’t helping her?”
“Mom…”
“Ransom, what the hell is going on?”
“It’s not...” I couldn’t tell her about the dance at Summerland’s. It would get back to Leann and if it did, well, shit, I didn’t know what my cousin would do but I didn’t think she’d be happy that Aly was doing private dances for extra money. Then, I felt like an idiot, just realizing I might not have been the only person who saw her dance. Fuck, if anyone else…It shouldn’t matter to me. She was a liar. And no, she sure as hell wasn’t my friend. “Mom, it’s nothing. We just…there was a thing but it’s not…”
“Luka Ransom Riley-Hale I am nine months pregnant and your little brother is freaking out because Aly has disappeared.” She sounded winded, but so damn fierce I was glad not to be standing right in the path of her fury. “I don’t care what happened, but you need to fix it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“No, it’s very simple,” she said, her voice level again, but that calm only meant she’d moved beyond rage and right into livid. There would be no argument from me. I knew better. “If you did something, tell her you’re sorry. If she did something, tell her you forgive her. See? Simple.”
“Mom, what she did…”
“I don’t care what she did, son.” She’d opened the door and once again I heard my little brother crying. He had calmed, but hadn’t completely given up the fight. When she spoke again, Mom’s voice wasn’t angry, but still came out clipped. “Aly is a sweet girl and she loves Koa. She wouldn’t just leave for no damn reason at all. Whatever it is, please, just fix it and fix it soon.”
The line went dead and I held tha
t phone in my hand, not knowing what I could do or why the hell it’d been left up to me to mend the fences broken by my stupidity. I did know one thing, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t blame myself.
17
September, 2015
Koa had fallen asleep in my lap and I’d followed, drifted until his small snore woke me up. It was late, later than I’d ever stayed at the lake house and I contemplated just crashing on the sofa. But my first class of the day at the studio the next morning would come early and the drive across the lake would take me a while, especially in the ratty car I’d picked up from a suspicious looking used car dealer. It couldn’t be helped. I had a job on the Northshore now.
I tucked the little man into his bed and headed down the hallway, expecting to find Keira still snoozing on the sofa as she waited for Kona to return from the game. But she wasn’t there and as I listened, her soft laughter and Kona’s deep voice coming from behind their closed bedroom door and I decided to leave without a goodbye that night.
The smile on my face lowered just a bit as I passed the patio doors and caught Ransom sitting on an Adirondack chair with his hands tucked into the pocket of his hoodie and his face turned toward the dark lake. He stretched his neck and looked up, his profile perfect against the reflection of the moonlight on the water. I could have watched him all night—the fleshy plump of his beautiful mouth, the sharp edge of his nose and that subtle cleft on his chin. I could have watched him, thought about touching him, thought of ways I’d invent to smooth out the worried wrinkle on his forehead and relax the hard dip of his eyebrows. Maybe I would have stayed there, just watching him, but then Ransom turned his head again and caught me staring.
The look he gave me wasn’t shocked, it didn’t seem like anything could surprise him and at first, caught in the act, I’d felt my face flame with heat, but pushed I it down, lifting my eyebrows when he nodded me over.
