Flawed

by Claudia Burgoa

  “Why?” I slide in next to her with my own plate. I pop a piece of bacon into my mouth, then feed her some. “If you tell me more about what’s going on, we can adjust.”

  “Adjust to what? I don’t know what I have.”

  “Depression?”

  No one believes I can handle whatever it is going on with her. I must look like a pathetic idiot. Telling her my story is working against me. I never should have told her I can’t handle shit. Well, maybe I could deal with the emotional baggage now.

  “Trust me a little, gorgeous.” I feed her a pancake since she’s ignoring the food on her lap. “Yes, I was shallow with the others, but you’re different. We’re both trying to get out of our comfort zone. You let someone into your world. I get to know you before we . . .”

  I move closer, my lips almost touching her beautiful neck. Her breathing hitching. “Make love.” I nibble her lobe before I find her lips and kiss her. “For days at a time.”

  “When I disappoint you, you’ll leave me.”

  Moving the plates to the end table, I push her to the corner of the couch. Hugging her with both arms. “Nothing you do will push me away unless you don’t want to be with me. We both fear being left behind. If anything, I think we’re perfect for each other.”

  “How?” She places both hands on my face, holding me still. Staring deeply into my eyes, I feel our souls touching.

  “You should communicate what you feel, I will do the same. Like last night,” I blurt without thinking about the consequences of my words. “If you are done or overwhelmed, you just need to tell me and we can leave the event.”

  “I don’t belong in your world.” Her tone is low, almost a whisper. “I feel anxious when I think you’re going to find out who I really am. What will I do then?”

  “You are becoming my world, Willow,” I respond. I take her hands off my cheeks and kiss the back of each finger, pressing one of her palms onto my heart. “It’s beating for you.”

  She puffs her cheeks, wrinkling her nose. “You’re idealizing someone I’m not. There will be days I can’t go out because I hate everyone, myself the most. I ruin everything I touch. The hardest are those days when I don’t see the point of going on.”

  A chilling thought strikes me. “Not continuing?”

  Her eyes concentrate on the carpet. “It’s a cycle, a rollercoaster. My only stable relationship is with my sister. I can’t hang on to a friendship for long. When I feel like someone is rejecting me, I want to give up . . .” She finally looks up, finding my eyes. “I fall apart.”

  I run both hands through my hair, trying to absorb what she’s saying.

  “In my experience, no one wants to stick around,” she continues. “Why would they? They don’t care to understand.”

  Would she believe me if I tell her I can see the ache in her eyes? Her agony hurts me as well. It devastates me not knowing how to help her, how to reach inside her soul and comfort it. Is it her soul, her mind? What is it that makes her so miserable and unreachable?

  “I want to be with you any day of the week. In your darkest as much as in your brightest days.”

  She tosses her head back, closing her eyes for several breaths. Then, opening and straightening herself lightly she throws a curve ball. “So, I get used to you, what will happen to me when you leave?”

  Running a hand through her hair, I understand what’s happening. The same doubts I have. “We don’t know the future. Maybe you’ll be the one who leaves me.” Please don’t leave me. Yes, I’m already licking the wounds as I imagine her shutting me out of her life.

  “For now, we have to enjoy what we have.” Sprinkling kisses on her face, I give her a quick peck. “Life is a sequence of breaths. You can’t live worrying about what will happen next between us.”

  “Then, why continue?”

  “I’d rather have my heart broken than miss the chance to be with you.” She shivers. I caress her shaky limbs. “We can make it work. There’ll be mistakes. Neither one of us knows how to be in a real relationship. Give us time.”

  Mistakes? You have no fucking idea of what you’re doing with her!

  “Time for you to reject me?” she questions. “I harbor these feelings of worry and mistrust under my sleeve. What’s their motive to be around me? When are they leaving?”

  “You’re expecting me to leave?”

  She bobs her head, redirecting her eyes to the side.

  Her response angers me, but I swallow it. “I’ll prove you wrong. Two blind people, you help me, I help you. My only motive is to be with you for as long as you’ll have me.”

  So, what if I bluff my way through the conversation. It sounds like the best thing to say. According to the manual of common sense, the following phrases are a big no.

  I am fucking scared of how I feel about you.

  You are going to shred me to pieces if you leave.

  I’ll die without you.

  And my favorite, please marry me before you disappear from my life.

  Fuck, yes! I am fucking in love with this woman. Is it sudden? Maybe. But life happens in an instant. One second you’re alive, the next one you die. Will she see it the way I do? I just have to time everything right. First, convince her that I’m safe. Second, make her fall in love with me—that’s what will take the longest. She only trusts her sister, but Hazel’s attitude earlier today has me worried about her support. Once Willow has fallen in love with me, I have to convince everyone that marrying her is a natural step.

  We will be as happy as my parents were up until . . . I still remember them holding hands. Dad bringing Mom small presents to celebrate their relationship. They did everything together. We were a happy family. I want that again. I’ll have it soon—happiness with this woman.

  “What movie do you want to watch, gorgeous?”

  “Are you listening?” she frowns.

  I shrug and give her a what can I say, I’m stubborn look.

  Setting the television, I start playing Chicago. It is the first one of our Sunday marathon. One movie at a time, I cheer her up and bring her back to the light. By dinner time, she’s cooking by my side. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say we are perfect together. We already complement each other. I’ve watched more musicals since I’ve met her than I have in my entire life. Spending time with her is the goal. Once she trusts me, I can push things further. We are going to be so happy.

  Happiness is subjective. It’s been two days since we started the movie marathon and nothing I’ve done has improved her mood. That’s incorrect, everything you do changes her mood every two seconds. Two fucking days and things haven’t turned around. Hazel left Monday night, her grandfather is working, and I’m the only one paying attention to Willow.

  So far, I haven’t found a manual that can walk me through what’s happening. Being with her feels like living inside of a snow globe. At times, everything is calm, and we laugh. In a matter of hours or minutes something triggers her emotions, and she switches drastically. She’d be bawling or asking me to leave her since I am not interested in her.

  Earlier, she accused me of flirting with Fitz’s assistant over the phone. A few minutes later, she’s balled up in my arms, mumbling nonsense and begging me not to walk away.

  Incoherent or not, being the center of her life is everything to me. We are finally in a place where we can openly hold onto each other, where we can kiss and enjoy our relationship. It was during the last day when I begged her to tell me what was going on that we had a breakthrough.

  “Don’t speak, write everything down.” Handing her a pen, I took off my shirt.

  “You simply don’t understand.” Her hands fluttered as she held it, swallowing hard. “I already shared too much.”

  “I thought you said you wanted me to be a part of you.” I lowered myself onto the bed, resting on my stomach. “We have to start somewhere. Write your thoughts.” Resting my chin on top of my folded hands.

  “Trust me this once.” I stared into
her eyes as I looked over my shoulder, begging her soul to listen to me this time. “Share your secrets. Everything you feel, everything you think, every disappointing moment, every joyful period will be written on my skin. My soul will be reading and listening if you have anything to say.”

  She scribbled from left to right, in every space she could until the sun went down. Spent, she collapsed on top of me, kissing my neck. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me.”

  Finally, I was on top of the world. She was trusting me, opening up to me.

  “What do you want to do, gorgeous?”

  “Can we wash them?” she runs her tongue over her lower lip. “The words on your back.”

  “Wash them?” I moved from underneath her, tucking her in close to me. Her bright eyes studied me under her long, thick eyelashes. “Why, gorgeous?”

  “Maybe they’ll go away forever?”

  My mouth found hers, and my hands ran up and down her body. She mirrored my movements on my bare skin tracing my muscles, her eyes following her index finger. My breath hitched as she ran it so close to the elastic of my sweats. Controlling my lust, and the awareness of how close she is to my already pulsing dick—the hammering noise inside my chest was so loud I feared she’d hear it and stop.

  Fuck, I wanted to strip her of my dress shirt. The same one she’d worn on and off since Saturday night. I caressed her jaw as I pushed her lightly, lowering my mouth and kissing the hell out of her. She melted under me—our bodies grinding, the friction creating a different kind of heat I’ve never experienced—heat that became an intense fire. Fuck, I wanted her so much, and the way she responded with the same need was sending my entire body spinning out of control.

  “Do you think we know each other well?” she gasped between words catching her breath, flushed. The things I could make her feel if only she’d let me. Those eyes filled with uncertainty answering the silent question, are we stopping for the night?

  Fuck, I didn’t want to stop. I wished she would let me go down to her core and drive her mad with pleasure as I licked her, over and over again. I wanted to consume her, own her, and have her legs wrapped around my waist. I craved having her nails dig into my back as I slammed myself inside repeatedly.

  I met her eyes, trying to read her. She was burning just like I was, yet her words told a different story. “What happened to dating? Getting to know each other while hanging out around the city?”

  I brought my hand to her chin, tipping her face lightly. “If you allow me, I’d love to go out with you for as long as you’ll have me, Miss Willow Beesley.” I brushed my lips across hers.

  Her eyes brightened, and her lips parted.

  “It’s a date,” I said as I took her lips and kissed her more, hoping I continued being the person she trusted, and maybe become the center of her universe, as she was becoming my entire world.

  Fourteen

  Hop on the bus

  And I don’t want to waste more time; I’m in a New York state of mind. ~ Billy Joel

  Four days after her meltdown, she finally agreed to get out of her grandfather’s penthouse. Fitz continued to cover for me until Willow is a hundred percent recovered. As much as they insist I get out of the relationship before things get out of hand, my brothers support me. Even if they believe that my irrational decisions will create some kind of pandemonium not even they will be able to fix.

  Will it? It won’t, I’m behaving out of the ordinary but I’m capable of getting out of my comfort zone.

  Have I mentioned I don’t handle crowds well?

  Hopping on a double decker tour bus might be seen as irrational, but according to Willow it’s the best way to see New York the way the outsiders see it.

  “Are you sure you want to skip the first stop?” Willow releases my hand, taking off her black leather backpack.

  “Come on, do you honestly want to see the Freak museum?” I respond, laughing as we grab two seats on the upper deck.

  “Frick,” Willow corrects me, pushing my sunglasses up to look at me. “It’s an art museum. Lovely place for weddings and special events. Your entire house is filled with expensive pieces of art. Aren’t you into that kind of stuff?”

  “That kind of stuff? Like the art cult?” I arch an eyebrow and give her a look that says, “woman, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lifting her hand, I kiss it and keep holding it as the bus rolls onto Fifth Avenue. Leaning closer, I whisper close to her lips, “I’m into any cult that worships you.”

  Biting the smirk, she tries to tug her hand out of my grasp but I don’t let her. “You have art everywhere, I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  “My house is fun. If you prefer, we can go there and I’ll show you.” I wiggle my eyebrows, drawing circles along her wrist. Oh, what I’d give to be able to run my hands across her silky skin.

  Everything changes the moment I see him. My body tenses when a bearded man wearing a hoody and sunglasses sits right next to us. His hands are tattooed with symbols, letters, and designs I can’t read. He looks like the Unabomber, the famous serial killer who attacked people by mailing bombs. The chills running through my body make me shiver. What if this man is carrying a bomb inside the orange backpack he carries?

  Fuck. Willow is with me. I can’t let anything happen to her. This is a bad idea. Should I call Harrison? Can he stop this man from killing all of us? Hunter, you’re making shit up, calm the fuck down. Placing a hand into my pocket, I rub the piece of cloth I carry around like a security blanket.

  “My parents are with me. I’m safe,” I mumble a few times.

  No, they aren’t with you. They are dead! Because they couldn’t escape.

  Run, go home.

  “Or we can head back,” I suggest weakly.

  “Today is a good day. I feel energized.” She chooses the worst time to become Little Miss Sunshine. The sweetness in her smile calms me for a few seconds, until I realize she will die with me. I’m such an irresponsible asshole. I put her in danger. “We said we were going to pretend to be tourists.”

  Willow hasn’t realized this is it for us. What should I say? Stand up and run with me. Use all the self-defense lessons Harrison taught me. Kill him by destroying his trachea with one hard hit on his throat.

  “Loosen up, Hunt.”

  Are you insane?

  We are going to die!

  “We haven’t discussed our motivation or where we’re from?”

  Running for your life is motivation enough. He’s going to kill us all.

  Willow rests her head on my shoulder. Her coconut scent slows my heartbeat, dragging me back to reality . . . Outside my fucked-up mind.

  She angles her head slightly, watching me. Fucker, don’t let her see you lose your shit. What is she waiting for? Right, an answer. Say something. We are the kind of tourists who take a helicopter ride instead of a bus. They’re safer, unless someone is using the aircraft to crash it against a building. Utilizing it as a bomb. Fuck, my anxiety spikes once more. My heart thunders against my chest, as the man rises from his seat. I cover Willow with my body. The man bends, catching the little blond boy running toward him. Why didn’t I see him?

  “Daddy!”

  Fuck, I’m such a loon. You’re twenty-eight years old. Hold your fucking shit, Hunter. Touching my throat, I loosen the imaginary hands choking me. Air, I need air. Fuck. Should I have taken a couple more Ativans for my anxiety? Negative, the crap knocks you down for days. Shit, I feel like I’m about to die.

  “Are you okay?” Willow squeezes my hand, grounding me. Her warm breath hits the base of my neck.

  Act normal! But I can’t get rid of everything going inside and outside of my head. I’m sweating, cold, shivering, and fighting an anxiety attack.

  “You’re cold.”

  “Nah, I guess it’s chilly.” I hug her tighter. Control your shit for her, fucker!

  She gives me a suspicious glare.

  “I’m fine, babe.” I kiss the top of her head, nuzzling
her hair. Fuck, I wish I could lose myself inside of her.

  My cock twitches as I imagine myself thrusting hard in and out of her pussy. Forgetting my shit, driving her wild with my mouth. Listening to her husky voice scream my name as I make her come all over my cock. My hands rest so close to her core, I restrain myself from undoing the button of those tight jeans. I want to do it so badly. I’d be unzipping them and sliding my hand inside her panties, my finger finding her wet pearl. Rubbing it fast with my thumb as I push my finger inside of her entrance.

  Fuck, I’m aroused just thinking about the way I can drive her into madness.

  “I want you,” I murmur, caressing her ear with my lips, making her shiver. “Are you cold?” My question is followed by my fingers sneaking inside her blouse, finding her warm skin. I draw small, tantalizing, inviting circles. “You have no idea what you do to me, Willow Beesley.”

  “Stop it, Hunter Everhart.” She laughs.

  I follow, pretending nothing is wrong, as my hand pushes inside of her jeans. It’s too tight, but I’ll make my way inside her. I need her.

  “What kind of tourists are we?” Her throaty voice makes my dick harder, if that’s even possible.

  “International tourists.” I clear my throat. “From Australia.” I fake the accent, sounding like a cheap imitation of Ricky Gervais, who is British, with a bad cold.

  “Behave, Mr. Everhart.” She laughs and shakes her head, pulling my hand out of her pants and kissing it. What the fuck am I doing, acting like a pervert? “How about Californians?”

  “You’re from California.” I hand her the pair of pink shades hanging from her low-cut blouse. Fuck, those tits, I can’t wait to lick them—suck each one so hard she’ll come as she rides my hand.

  “Eyes up here, Hunter Everhart. This is a PG zone.” She runs her finger over my jeans. Her nail teases me, almost touching my crotch, but stopping as I push my hips forward.

  “We’re from the Valley visiting New York for the first time.” Pressing her hand against my crotch, I mumble, “On our honeymoon.”