The adrenaline followed by the searing pain ripped through every muscle of my heart.
I didn’t know if Eli was repeating himself or I was just hearing him over and over again.
He shot himself.
I dropped my hold on him like he was a leper. Like his news was a disease I could avoid believing if I just let him go.
“No.” I shook my head. “No fucking no. Something happened. It had to be Blackman. Or Rich. He wouldn’t—”
“It’s not their fault,” he said, devoid of any emotion while mine suffocated me. “It’s mine. I tried… I tried to save him…” He spoke, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was reliving everything that he’d described. Devoid of tone and probably his own fucking soul because that’s how I felt. “I told him about his medication…”
I couldn’t listen to what he said, all I heard was ‘I failed.’
With each word, it felt like everything I’d done… everything that I’d become… since moving here was gone. Just like that. All the tethers that grounded me, that gave me a foundation, a solid place to start over from—they were all fucking gone.
With one goddamn bullet to the head.
As though he was coming out of a daze, Eli looked at me as though he could ignore the way something in the world had changed tonight. Like he had no choice if he wanted to survive.
“Dex and the police are there. I left after giving my statement and came here. I need to go tell—”
“Go.” A voice that wasn’t my own spoke, my head jerked to signal him to leave.
“Are you—”
“Get the fuck out,” I growled, feeling like in losing one person, I’d lost everything.
I threw the door shut behind me, unsure if Eli was still out there and not caring that the force of it probably would have crumbled my shack to the fucking ground had it been any other day—had enough not been taken from me already. My thumbs pinched the bridge of my nose as my forearms rested on the door for a second. Then, the pounding began. I slammed my fist into the door over and over again until I heard the wood begin to splinter and began to feel blood trickle down my arm.
“Ash!” Taylor’s scream and her hands pulling on my other arm made me realized she must have been trying to get my attention for a long time.
Numbly, I stood there. I could feel her hands digging into my scalp, pulling my forehead to her. I could feel her body pressed against me. I could see the tears that scarred her cheeks. I had every sensation, but they didn’t seem like they belonged to me. It felt like I was living in the third person. Distant. Disconnected. Drowning.
“He can’t be gone,” I heard myself say. “He can’t…”
And then I was gone.
Out the door.
Into the rain and darkness.
Anything to deprive my senses of the pain they couldn’t bear.
Ash
For the first time in six months, I felt drunk. Moments blurred until I was on my knees at the edge of my restaurant’s deck. The cold rain smacked reality against my skin—that even God wept with me. The water could wash the blood from my hands, but not the hole from my heart.
Taylor’s voice was distant and indistinct even though she was close.
My head fell, my shoulders and chest shaking like I held an earthquake inside me—one I wished would send me into the sea.
Why?
The word played over and over. In my head. Out of my lips. A curse. A plea. A prayer. I yelled it—roared it—into the tempest outside. And I didn’t care if it was God or the Devil who replied, but someone had to know the answer.
I screamed until the storm and the sea were blocked from my view. Taylor stepped in front of me, her stomach in my face.
New life blocking out recent death.
I grabbed her waist, blood and tears staining her shirt as I yanked her to me, pressing my face against her firm stomach even though it shook with sobs against my cheek.
This couldn’t be fucking happening.
I meant to push her away. I was breaking, and even I didn’t want to see it.
But as soon as I held her, I couldn’t let go.
She was like a lighthouse in the storm. She always had been. She couldn’t save me. But she could stand there, bright and shining on the shore, reminding me that there was safe harbor out there if I could just hold on long enough.
Tilting my head up, I searched for her eyes, barely feeling the rain on my face. I searched for something to tell me this was anything but what it was.
“I don’t understand, Taylor,” I said thickly.
Her body trembled against my hands as she knelt in front of me. Even with tears spilling along her cheeks and her hair matting to her face, she was so beautiful. Too beautiful for such tragedy.
“I’m so sorry, Ash.” Her voice broke, but it was her lip that wouldn’t stop quivering that captured my attention.
“I don’t understand why. I don’t understand how this is real. How this happened. Nothing makes sense.” My incoherent mutterings streamed out. I stared at her like her beauty could make this better. Because angels could do that, right? “Nothing makes sense… I don’t make sense.”
Not anymore.
It was the first day of recovery all over again. There I was, empty-handed save for the guilt I carried for the horrible things I done, lost in the very pit of my despair, with no idea who I was anymore.
But this time, there was no Larry waiting in the shadows, holding out his hand to help me back up.
Even kneeling on the edge of my dream, the hard wood that we’d just laid down not even two weeks ago digging painfully, it all felt worthless now. A fruitless attempt.
Foolish.
“Where would I be without him?” I asked with a low, hollow voice. “I don’t make sense anymore.”
Desolation rained harder than the storm above us and crashed louder than the waves below.
This was loss in its cruelest, most real form.
No warning. No reason. And every imaginable hurt.
“Don’t, Ash. Don’t say that. Please,” she begged as her tiny hands cupped my face.
“Why?” Cold seeped out from my bones. “Why should I make sense? Why should I care?”
If sadness was the gasoline, anger was the match, lighting everything in my path into burning, careless rage.
My lip curled in disgust. “He shot himself. Why? Because his fucking shop got robbed? Is that really all it takes? What was the point of any of this?” I waved an arm back at the empty structure that was so close to being something worthwhile. “Of helping anyone? How could you sit there and work to convince people that there is always something worth fucking saving and not even follow your own goddamn advice?”
“Ash, please…” One hand shot up to cover her mouth as I made her cry even harder.
“Please what, Taylor?” I snarled, lashing on the very last person who deserved it but the only one who would stand there and take it because she was a warrior. And she would fight for me even when I didn’t deserve it. “Please don’t say the truth? Please don’t point out the obvious that if Larry wasn’t worth saving, there’s no way in hell that I am? I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but I’m not worth lov—”
Soft, salty lips pressed against mine. Like a break in the line that sent the train of my thoughts derailing off its destructive course, she kissed me, and the world stopped.
Actually, we just stopped.
Because, sometimes, the world has to go on without you for a little bit until it’s time to catch up. It’s not about being left behind, it’s about staying back until you’re ready to move forward.
“I love you,” she whispered into the kiss over and over again.
I struggled to believe her at first. How could I? But words mixed with tears and desperation and desire made some sort of salve that promised that I would survive this.
That I would survive this with her.
“I don’t know what I need,” I rasped against the sweet haven of her mo
uth, the salt of our tears making the kiss even more potent.
She pulled me tighter. “You need someone to lean on,” she told me. “Lean on me, Ash. Love me…”
“I don’t fucking deserve you.”
Her fists bundled into my shirt around my neck. Rain and tears drenched her face, and she was still so beautiful. It only made me hurt even more.
“That’s a lie,” she returned, fighting my rage with a burningly beautiful brand of her own.
“Then you deserve better, how’s that?” I spat. “That’s not a lie.”
Her mouth slanted over mine roughly and sloppily. I grunted when her teeth bit down on my lip with enough force to make me hope she drew blood.
“You don’t get to tell me what I do and don’t deserve.” Her small fists shook against my chest, my wet shirt slapping against my skin, as she swore, “I know what I deserve. I deserve to love the man I love.”
I felt like I was sinking; the man I was pulling me beneath the surface while the man I wanted to be tried to keep me afloat, and I was trying to dislodge one without losing the other.
With a voice both beleaguered and taut with anger, I confessed, “I’m drowning.”
She pulled back just enough so that her gaze could find mine. Her lashes clogged with thick raindrops as she spoke almost out of reflex, “I see you.”
Her words sliced through my armor of anger with a deadly parry.
“I see you, Ashton Tyler, and you are a good man.”
I see you.
Something burned inside my head, something distant yet familiar when I heard her say those words. It hurt to think about, but everything fucking hurt to think about now.
Larry was gone.
Breaths heaved out of me as though I’d run a marathon—as though they could run my body away from my heart’s grief.
He was fucking gone.
But all I could see was that Taylor was still here. Her bright green eyes shining through the dark and rain.
She was still here, and I needed her.
With a desperate growl, I tore into her mouth, needing to lose myself in her love.
I needed to push it. Twist it. Stretch it… I needed to feel its limits against me so I knew it wasn’t going anywhere.
She was sweet and salty as my tongue stroked her, luring it into my mouth where I could bite down on the tip and swallow her gasp. I wanted pain and pleasure because that’s what was ripping me apart inside.
I should have cared about the cold and the rain. I should have cared about it all.
But all I could care about was taking her. All I could care about was burying myself so deep inside her warmth that she’d never be able to let me go.
And she urged me on, needing that comfort, too.
No, her mouth pushed back against mine with equal fervor if not more. She kissed me like she’d willingly drink down my sorrows and my pain—she’d bear it all to make me okay again.
Our mouths ravaged each other until the storm around us felt like mist to cool us off.
“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded against her swollen lips. The warm fog of our breaths pierced by the falling rain.
“I won’t.”
She shuddered as I pulled the wet, clinging fabric of her shirt from her skin and up over her head, dropping it onto the deck with a heavy plop. My mouth was back on hers as I flicked open the clasp to her bra, adding that to the pile of barriers that I could no longer stand.
“Cold?” I asked, my hands finding her pebbled nipples straining and waiting for me.
“Hot,” she moaned and arched into my hands.
With a growl, I dove forward, viciously sucking one smooth peak into my mouth while my fingers pinched the other. She writhed against me, her hips surging up against my leg like she’d caught fire, gasping my name as she begged for more.
My need for her pulsed through my body and thundered through my veins, the force echoing in the sky around us.
Rain followed the trails of licks and bites I left over her swollen, heavy tits. God, she was perfect. I devoured them with my mouth while moving over her, growling as goosebumps coated her damp skin as her back came to lay on the deck.
My dick pushed against my jeans, angry and desperate to be buried inside her as I peeled her sweats and underwear from her legs, growling my appreciation. She looked like a wet nymph that just jumped out of the fucking ocean to seduce me.
Pushing her knees apart, I bent between them and flattened my tongue against her wet sex.
Mine.
I owned her pussy, sweeping my tongue over her until her hips thrashed against my face and her fingers clawed at my hair. I couldn’t stop myself. I hurt so bad, all I wanted to hear was that I still made her feel good.
“Ash,” she called breathlessly.
Leaving her spread wide, I yanked off my shirt, watching her twitch every time a raindrop landed on her clit.
“Touch yourself,” I demanded, knowing it would push her.
I needed her so goddamn bad I couldn’t think or breathe. A better man would find the words to ask her for forever. A better man would find the words to tell her just how much she meant and how much he needed her comfort in this moment.
I wasn’t a better man.
I was a broken man.
And the only thing I could do was show her and whisper desperate dirty promises because eloquence eluded me. I had nothing left to give but raw, ragged emotion. Nothing but love in its most basic and crude form.
The kind that needs to possess… to claim. The kind that needs to push as much as it needs to pull to see if she’d stay.
I needed to love her… I needed to love her, so I knew I wouldn’t lose her.
Taylor
My heart raced inside my chest. Adrenaline and desire threatening to rip me into pieces.
I noticed the rain, but I didn’t feel it, not from the moment I launched out the door after him until now. I felt nothing except what I felt for him.
Bone-crushing sadness and soul-searing desire.
Just like that first night, I’d do anything to take away the look in his eyes. At first glance, what appeared to be betrayal, but deeper than that was the hurt. It was a hurt so profound I wouldn’t be surprised if blood began to mix with tears as they fell from his eyes.
Whatever he needed, I would give. I refused to give up. I refused to let him shoulder this alone. He could lean on me and no matter how hard, I wouldn’t let go.
My heart broke a thousand times as his head pressed into my stomach and grief overtook him. Silent tears poured down my face to hear him plead and then rage for answers. I withstood it all even though my own sadness made my knees shake underneath the weight.
The truth was I didn’t have words either.
When you lose someone… when you realize that you’ll never see them or speak to them or hold them again… it brings out something primal in you—an unquenchable need for physical connection, hand-held proof that at least one person can’t be taken from you in that moment.
And that’s why I poured everything into that kiss.
I needed to support him in a way that was beyond words, because sometimes, words are not enough.
I didn’t think twice as my hand climbed over my stomach down toward my sex. I didn’t think twice to do something that I’d never done to myself before. And I couldn’t tear my eyes from his, the storm around us just a shower compared to the desire raging in his eyes.
I heard my own strangled gasp as my fingers found my clit, swollen and hot with need. Bursts of pleasure bloomed over me, heightened by the way he rubbed the thick ridge of his arousal.
When my legs drifted wider, giving my hand more room to move as it was slightly hindered by my stomach, he began to slowly undo the waist of his jeans.
My body tensed and vibrated against my fingers as they rubbed furiously over my sex. My moans were lost though when a hoarse groan erupted from his chest. Everything around me was lost except the way the noise set off a quake down his body
as he pulled himself free of his jeans.
Even the rain that dripped into my mouth was like sand as one of his hands tugged once… twice… down his angry pulsing cock. My fingers began to move sloppily over my core as my desire drenched them.
His erection bobbed when he let go to grip my hips and yank them up onto his lap.
“Don’t fucking stop,” he growled at me when my fingers stopped moving in surprise. “I want to watch you while I fuck you, Tay. And then I want to come all over you.”
The earth shifted underneath me as desire made me delirious.
I forced my fingers to rub again, gasping for breath just as he slammed his cock all the way inside me, my back sliding against the deck with the force of his thrust.
Stars exploded now behind my eyes.
“You feel that, Taylor?” he rasped, nudging his tip against my womb.
A moan spilled from my lips as my body squeezed around him in response. It was a miracle I still kept my fingers moving.
“That’s my cock inside of you. From the first goddamn time you took me in your perfect little body, you’ve been mine. You hear me?”
I arched up with a garbled nod. He had no idea how true that was. He had no idea how far back that first time was. But it didn’t matter—a decade or day ago, from the moment I gave him my body, I knew my heart went along with it; I never expected to get it back.
I reached for his gaze, need making my vision turn like a ship on stormy seas.
“I’m not leaving you, Ash,” I murmured. “I’m still here. I love you.”
I said it because I felt it. It just so happened that it was also what he needed to hear.
With a feral growl, he slid out and thrust completely back inside me. I screamed his name, the bump against that spot deep inside my magnifying the touch of my fingers on my clit.
This time wasn’t gentle. He shoved into my body with a fierceness that hurt and healed at the same time. His lack of control making my body arch for more as it convulsed around his hard, brutal length.
“Mine. Every part of you. Forever,” he promised as his hands clamped down on my hips and he drove mercilessly into me.
Redemption Page 25
