by Abby Brooks
“Being here and belonging here are two very different things.”
“Where do you think you belong if it isn’t here?” Ashley’s voice is hushed.
“I don’t know.”
Her gaze roves my face, the light in her eyes—the light I’ve worked so hard to bring back—dims. “You’re not staying, are you? That’s why you haven’t put anything up on the walls here. That’s why you aren’t even looking for your own house. You’re leaving again.” She wraps her arms around her chest. “But then why did you buy the bar? Why make such a permanent decision if you think you’re going to leave again?”
I watch her for a long time. How did we go from her writhing in my lap and grabbing my dick to all this frozen distance between us?
“None of that matters.” I trail my fingers along her arms. “I’m here now.”
“But it does matter. And you aren’t here. Not all the way.” She shakes her head. “I gave myself to you eight years ago. It broke me when you left.” She won’t look at me, stares out towards the clear night sky and the miracle of stars twinkling above the water. “I’m such a fucking fool.”
“Ashley…” She looks so hurt and I hate it. I want to wipe away all the pain she’s ever experienced, wrap her up and keep her safe so she never gets hurt again. I’m failing her right now.
She makes a move to climb off my lap, to put even more distance between us. I grab her waist and pull her back down.
She struggles. “Let me go.” Her voice cracks and a surge of need rushes through my body. I don’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to let her go eight years ago, but she was too young and I was too driven and now that I’ve got her again, I don’t ever want anything between us.
“I can’t,” I say, holding her tight. “I don’t want to.”
Bringing her gaze to me, so full of hurt and accusation, she goes still. She wrestles with what to say. I see her start half a dozen sentences only to discard each and every one.
This is one of those moments. One of those times where everything hinges on the choice I make. I can feel it in the very marrow of my bones. I can open myself up to her, show her who I really am and risk her rejection. I can walk away, leave Bliss and forever acknowledge that I am fatally flawed and I don’t deserve the happiness I have here. Or I can do nothing and let her walk away from me. Watch her fold back in on herself and hollow out, transforming our time together into just another bad thing that happened to her. Another reason for the light that shines inside her to dim.
I swallow hard and make my choice. “I never really told you about my childhood.”
She slowly brings her gaze back to me, hope softening her features. “You told me it was the kind of life that taught you to punch first and punch hard.” She lifts her shoulders a fraction of an inch. “I kinda filled in the rest based off that.”
“Yep. I remember telling you that.” I inhale deeply. This is it. The moment of truth. Everything hinges on the very next words out of my mouth. “I never really told you anything else, though.”
She shakes her head, breath held, afraid to move and chase this moment away.
Something tiny clicks inside me. Like two parts coming together. A connection I didn’t know I was missing, like the first time I held Georgia, the first time she took my finger in her tiny little fist. I reach out and pull Ashley close, snuggle her into me and kiss the top of her head.
I tell her everything.
I tell her about my mom, her thin body and wary eyes. The ever-present cigarette smoke spiraling around her, twisting and twining with the hateful words she spewed onto every conversation until I couldn’t smell a cigarette without a visceral reaction in my gut. I was too much like my father, my very masculinity threatening to her. I tell her about my dad, a big man with a bigger personality. His vocabulary cobbled together with words like cunt, asshole, and motherfucker all held together with more than his weight in cheap beer. What he couldn’t get across with his words, he got across with his fists. My mother and I wore his scars on our hearts, our souls, and our bodies.
I hated them both and they hated me right back.
I tell her about my brothers, each of them older than me, each of them capable of remembering a time when life wasn’t defined by hatred. While our life made me angry, determined to claw myself out of the shithole we called home, it made them sad. They left as soon as they could. Striking out on their own and never once looking back.
Money was tight. Hell, money was non-existent. Neither of my parents worked consistently. By the time I was fourteen, I figured out that if I wanted to eat, I needed to work. It wasn’t long before I was lending them money for groceries. By the time I was fifteen, I started walking to the store to stock the cabinets myself because they couldn’t be trusted to do it themselves and I was tired of a hungry stomach singing me to sleep each night.
They died on my seventeenth birthday while I sat at home alone, trying to figure out if I could afford an apartment and still finish high school. Dad drank too much and drove them right into a tree. They died instantly and my life changed just as fast.
Instead of going into the foster system for a year, my dad’s brother took me in. He brought me to live with his wife and his kids here in Bliss, this small town that, for all intents and purposes, lives up to its name.
“I remember this part,” Ashley murmurs. It’s the only thing she’s said and it stumbles me. In her silence, I’d almost forgotten she was here. Could almost believe that I was telling my story to the sea and the stars. My throat clamps down on the rest of my words, suddenly aware how bare I am to her. Aware that I’m sharing my deepest, most private parts and that I don’t like feeling this naked.
“This is my favorite part of the story,” I say. I run a hand through her hair and steel myself to continue. I’ve come this far and there’s no way I’m going to back down now. “My uncle and his family should have treated me like a stray dog. A ferocious creature, half feral, totally untrusting and just as untrustworthy. Looking back at who I was, they should have. But they didn’t. They treated me with a kindness that kept me off guard for a long time. I didn’t know what to make of it. I had no idea how to handle praise and encouragement. But after a few months, I realized it wasn’t a trick. They treated each other the same way they were treating me. They loved each other. They praised one another. Laughed at long-standing jokes. Diane left sweet notes for Frank and Frank made sure she never wanted for anything. And my cousins were so good, so happy…” I trail off and shake my head. “I hated them for it at first.”
“That makes sense.”
“And then I met you.” And here comes the deep down honest stuff. The part that will either scare her away or draw her to me. “You were this ray of sunshine. This vibrant, happy little thing. So sweet and pure and untainted. Even with your family being almost as dark as mine, you didn’t let it ruin you. You were the exact opposite of everything I’d ever known about life and I loved you for it. Between you and the Moores, I finally learned the meaning of happiness.”
“Then why did you leave?” There’s no hint of accusation in her voice. Just genuine curiosity.
“I sat down and thought up all the ways that my uncle was different from my father. All the reasons why his family was so much better than mine. I mean, they were brothers after all. They came from the same household, learned the same lessons. Lived through the same experiences. I wanted to know what was so different about my uncle. What choices did he make that brought him here while my father ended up where he did? All I could see was the money. Frank Moore grew up and went to college, got himself a fancy degree. He used his father’s money to better himself. My dad just spent it all on having fun until there wasn’t any more fun to have.”
“So you went to New York to chase the dream of a perfect life?”
I nod.
“Did you find it?”
“No.” I smile sadly, remembering the fights Meredith and I used to have in our fancy apartment, spittle flying betw
een us as we screamed across the granite countertops at each other while Georgia cried in her room. “Spoiler alert. Money isn’t everything.”
I run out of words and press a kiss into Ashley’s hair, soothed by the rhythmic rush of the waves lapping up onto our beach.
Chapter Nine
Listening to Jackson talk has been an exercise in stillness. I’m afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. Afraid to do anything that would remind him I’m here. That he’s baring his soul to me. His words are raw. Honest. They stumble past his lips. Awkward and unfamiliar. Like he’s stuffed them down deep and kept them hidden, even from himself.
So much of our summer makes sense now. The reputation he got at school for being a bad boy, for being too quick to hit first and ask questions later. I always thought I never saw that side of him because he was careful around me. Different for me than he was for other people. Like maybe I had reached something inside him and soothed the parts that hurt. Now, it sounds like he made a conscious choice to stop living like his father and start living like his uncle. A conscious choice to be a better man. A conscious choice to put down bad habits and create new, better ones.
No wonder I fell in love with him.
No wonder I’m still in love with him.
“Are you happy now?” I ask him, wondering about a life marked with so much sadness.
“Very.” He answers without thinking, his voice rumbling in his chest and his breath whispering in my hair.
“Me too,” I say and clamp down on the rest of what wants out of my mouth.
I love you.
The words almost roll out as naturally as the sun rises in the east each morning. It’s as true as any natural law out there, but we’re not ready for that kind of truth. Not yet and maybe not ever. I can’t give myself to him if he’s not going to stay.
My heart thumps away, reminding me it’s too late to worry about giving myself to Jackson Moore. I’m already his. I have been since the very first time I saw him all those years ago, strutting down the halls in school with all the swagger he could muster.
There’s something beautiful in the intimacy of knowing he trusts me enough to share those deep down parts of himself with me. He thinks his truths will scare me away. The fact of the matter is that they draw me in ever closer to him.
I slide down in the lounge chair, making sure my breasts press across as much of his body along the way before I find myself crouching between his legs. Faking a confidence I don’t really feel, I undo his belt and pull open the button on his pants. The zipper slides down as I pull it open, the sound hidden in the rush of the waves hitting the shore.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Jackson’s voice is low and thick and filled with lust.
“Rewarding you.” I pull his dick out and smile at how hard he is before I open my mouth and trail my tongue ever so lightly across the tip. “You gave me what I wanted, now let me give you what you want.”
His eyes, already covered in shadows, go dark. He thinks I’m too sweet and gentle to handle his truth. He’s wrong and I’m going to prove it to him tonight. I want it rough and raw. I want him to test my limits. I want him to be the truest form of himself with me so I can be the truest form of myself with him. I want to open myself up and let him in. If there’s a beast hiding under his practiced exterior, I want to know it. Personally.
I lick along his shaft and suck the crown of his cock, working him with my hands. The wind moves in my hair and he shifts, thrusting his hips up into my mouth. I moan, the vibrations eliciting a gasp of pleasure from him.
Lifting my head, I wait for him to meet my eyes. “What do you want, Jackson? Show me who you really are.”
Without a word, his hands go to my head. Fast. Hard. He grabs a fistful of my hair and shoves me down onto his dick, far enough that I have to relax my throat so I don’t gag. He pulls me up by my hair, my scalp stinging and my inner muscles throbbing with the intoxicating mixture of pleasure and pain.
“You aren’t ready to see who I really am.” Jackson holds my gaze.
“Show me.”
He slides his dick back into my mouth, rocking his hips ever more aggressively. I stay still and quiet. Let him take charge. His fists tighten in my hair and I gasp and gag on his dick even as I feel myself grow wet. He gets harder in my mouth, his dick straining as he brings himself closer and closer to coming. I moan again, undone by the thought that he’s finally showing me his truths.
His hands fall out of my hair and I look up at him, running my tongue in circles around his tip.
“Stand up.” He’s firm. In charge. His eyes are electric and energy courses between us, running like wildfire across my skin. When I’m standing, he takes me by the hand and leads me inside. We move through the kitchen and head upstairs, careful and quiet as we pass Georgia sleeping in her bed. He leads me down the hall and into his room, closing the door and locking it behind us.
“You have to promise me you won’t make a sound,” he whispers as he pulls my shirt over my head.
“I won’t.”
He grabs my jaw and I flinch. “That was a sound, Ashley.” His mouth is a hard line, his jaw taut.
I smile. I can’t help it. This is what I want. What I need. I want him in control. I want him to draw the line so I know not to cross it. He sees the smile. I watch him understand it. Watch him start to realize that I might truly be a match for him, soft where he’s hard and hard where he’s soft.
He undresses me almost reverently. Unveiling my body piece by piece and claiming it in an exquisite combination of pleasure and pain. He bites at my nipples and slaps my breasts and then kisses me so deeply that I know I am lost. When he’s had his fill of worshipping my body, when I’m a quivering disaster of sensation, so close to coming that all he needs to do is breathe on me and I’ll fall over the edge, he pushes me onto the bed and spreads my legs. His tongue touches my clit and I cry out, only to cover my mouth with my hand. Jackson doesn’t stop, he uses his mouth and his fingers on me and I lose myself. Starbursts of light shatter around me and inside me as I come undone, muscles clenching and quivering while I fight for silence. When he’s done, I’m loose and relaxed and as soon as his hands are gone, I’m craving more.
“This isn’t wicked, baby,” I say as he climbs up between my legs and positions himself at my entrance.
“We haven’t even gotten started yet.” Jackson slams himself into me and within a few sweet strokes of his cock against my inner walls, I come again, clamping my hand down against my mouth to stifle the rapturous shout building up inside me. He slows his pace and I come down, panting and desperate while he pulls out of me and climbs off the bed.
“On your hands and knees, Ashley.”
My muscles and tendons might as well be made of jelly, but I do as he says, eyeing him as he digs through the top drawer of his dresser. He looks so magnificent, standing there hard and naked in front of me. A jolt of desire courses through my body. Not just a physical desire, but an emotional one. A spiritual one. This man is mine as much as I am his. We may not have admitted it to each other yet, but I feel it deep in my core, in the very center of who I am.
He shows me what he pulled from his drawer. A bottle of lubricant. I’m so wet, there’s no way he thinks he needs it. Not unless…
My eyes go wide.
“Still feeling brave?” Jackson leans down and supports himself on the bed so we’re eye to eye. “We can stop if you’re not ready.” He kisses me and that electric charge hits my body again. I am done for. There’s no way I’m backing out now.
I nod and bite my lip, waiting as he holds my gaze for a few of my pounding heart beats. He nods once and climbs up on the bed behind me. The click of the bottle snapping open is louder than anything I’ve ever heard. It’s cold and wet as he pours it over my skin, but his hands are warm as he rubs it over me. He slides a finger into my opening, lets his thumb graze my clit. My hips buck and jerk. And then his hand is gone and there’s pressure where I’ve never been touch
ed before. His hands go to my hips, pull me back towards him. I focus on relaxing, on the exquisite pleasure of giving something to him I never even knew I had to give. And then, just like that, all resistance is gone. He slides into me. Slowly. Carefully. I moan despite myself and he growls.
“So fucking tight,” he whispers. “I thought your pussy felt good, but your ass feels even better.” Jackson begins to move, in and out, stretching me and pushing my limits. I drop to my elbows and bury my face in the pillow, biting down hard to choke back the scream. I am nothing and I am everything and I will never, ever be the same. Jackson picks up his pace, reaches around and massages my clit. A third orgasm detonates through me as he shudders and thrusts forward, spilling his seed into me and whispering my name through clenched teeth.
As he pulls out of me, I collapse in a shuddering heap on the bed. Jackson is at my side in a flash, brushing my hair out of my face and kissing my cheek.
“Are you okay, Sunshine? I didn’t hurt you did I?” There’s a sense of urgency to his voice. A desperation that sets my nerves on edge.
I try to peek up at him, a slow grin spreading across my face. “I am so more than okay that I don’t even have a word for it,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Jackson peers into my eyes, looking at me as if he thinks he can see all the way through me and discover I’m lying. That I am, in fact, not okay. That he’s hurt me, destroyed me in some way. What he doesn’t know, what he probably can’t yet see, is that he’s brought me closer to who I really am.
“You call yourself wicked,” I say. “But I don’t think that’s the truth. Not after tonight.” I can still barely string words together to make sense of my thoughts. Pleasure has liquefied my body, my soul. “If you were wicked, I wouldn’t have come so hard. So many times.”
Jackson shakes his head. “That’s not true…”
“But it is. You made sure you gave me pleasure just as much as you took pleasure. There’s nothing wicked about that.”
