Continuum (The South Beach Connection Trilogy Book 3)

by A. R. Hadley

  Annie laced her fingers through Cal’s.

  And squeezed.

  “You’ve been doing really good. What’s happening?”

  She turned her face away from his kindness. Tears slid past her closed lids. She waited a minute.

  “This thing ... these feelings ... they don’t just go away in an instant.”

  He squeezed her palm, her chest rattling with her exhalations.

  “I realized something today.” She turned her face toward him, angling her body a little his way as well. “The song. The one we were dancing to...”

  Cal was on his side now too. “It’s a good one.”

  “And old.” She smiled. “The lyrics are for us ... and me. I know why I have wings.” She pinched her eyes shut and started to cry.

  “You need sleep. I’ve been gone too long. I won’t leave again for that many days. I promise.” He braved placing a palm across her waist. He held it there until she calmed.

  “He’s teething. He’s been up a lot.”

  He trailed his fingers up and down her arm. “I’ll get him tonight if he wakes up. Please, Annie,” he whispered. “Open your eyes. Look at me. That’s better.” He slid hair from her eyes. “Why do you have wings?”

  “I used to think I needed permission to fly. To be free. I have wings … so I can fly away from the sadness. It’s the only way. It’s better than jumping.”

  Cal swallowed, then brushed a single tear from her cheek. “Can I make wine from these?”

  “I love you,” she said in the most heartfelt voice he’d ever heard.

  He cupped her jaw, stroked his thumb over the plains of her beautiful face.

  “I need to tell you something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a reason I wouldn’t take birth control pills. I’ve never told anyone this but Tabitha…”

  “What is it, Annie?” Cal asked even though he knew what she was about to say. He was proud of her bravery. His chest inflated. She trusted him ... and he had no resentment over the time it had taken for her to give him this precious gift.

  Annie scooted closer, placed her head in the crook of his neck, and sighed. She told Cal the rest, sparing no details. And he held her tight and listened, loving her, caressing her … letting her cry.

  When she finished, the three o’clock in the morning had passed, and she lay in the safety of his arms as his mate in the branches of his sequoia tree.

  And that was where she fell asleep.

  "I miss you telling me what you want to do to me."

  They’d been sitting in a restaurant, rekindling the flame, trying to start a fire … for over an hour.

  They’d finished and paid.

  It had taken Annie the entire length of the meal to muster up the courage to say those words to Cal. And she’d released a bellyful of nerves along with the earring she’d been fiddling with when she uttered them.

  Annie hoped her vulnerable admission would give Cal back the power he’d always honed then wielded like a chess master.

  She’d never wanted it.

  And maybe it hadn’t truly been absent in their lives. Ever.

  Cal could’ve used it any time he damn well pleased, but she knew his love for her stood in its way. Or his fears. Or her moods…

  Had they both reverted to being afraid?

  "Baby..." he began, his dinner-conversation smile changing.

  His expression was mixed actually. Both nervous and longing. His eyes held the yearning and his shoulders the hesitation.

  "I haven't stopped wanting those things from you."

  "Then show me you're the same — that you haven't changed."

  "I thought I had to." He hadn't really become a different man, but she was correct: he had stopped being himself in certain respects. "I thought it was what you wanted. Do you have any idea what I've stuffed aside? What I've turned off?" Cal's voice was laced with kindness and pain. "I didn't want it this way. This was your choice."

  "God, Cal, you know it wasn't a choice I made.” Their eyes locked. Her body language was open and inviting, her heart all over her face. “I didn't wake up one day and wish this upon us."

  "I stopped initiating because you pushed me away, not because I don't want you."

  Silence fell over the table like a stagnant wind between their gazes.

  “You’ve barely even let me touch you, just to hold you, to cuddle in the bed. Have you forgotten?"

  "No, no, I haven't forgotten," she said, tears crackling in the sound of her voice.

  Annie wanted to forget.

  She wanted him now. She wanted him to have his way with her.

  Hold her. Pin her. Bruise her. Claim her.

  She needed to feel his naked body pressed against her skin.

  Or at least she thought she did.

  "So, what do we do? How do we go back? I want to go back now. I want you the same as you were the first day I met you.”

  The sincerity in her voice and eyes gutted him. His mind drifted to the first night he’d seen her on the stairs … a radiant vision pulling him into a vortex. His thoughts had gone into overdrive, and her eyes … fuck … they’d always made him want to be a better man.

  But the last few months of marriage had made it feel like it had happened many moons ago. The first year was supposed be the hardest, or so he’d heard… Theirs was one for the record books.

  "Your eyes,” she began when he had no response to her questions, her throat tightening, “they followed me around Maggie's house.” She swallowed. “And it felt like…” Her eyes twinkled like the wings of a butterfly in the sunlight. “It felt like they undressed me." Her cheeks flushed, but she could feel the warmth everywhere. "You could’ve had me that night, Cal."

  "If you were ready.”

  "I'm ready now." She extended a hand across the table and touched his forearm.

  It had been a while since he’d heard that inflection in Annie's voice — since he’d seen that look in her eyes. All he could do was stare at her outstretched hand, nerves flickering in his gaze, possibilities running through his veins.

  “Annie…” He blew out a breath. He thought he was ready to be with her too, but now that the moment had arrived, he knew it couldn’t be in the way she’d asked. “I switched a part of myself off. I…” He ran a hand clean through his hair. “This almost feels…”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Forced.”

  “I want to go.”

  They held hands on the way to the car in silence, and once Annie reached the passenger side door, she said, “You didn’t unlock it yet, hun.”

  Cal slapped a palm on the roof from behind her, trapping her between the Tesla and his body.

  Annie jumped, then froze, a rush coming over her like a wave. Her knees faltered as he nuzzled her hair, pushing the strands away with his nose and cheeks. His lips, close to her ear, gave her goosebumps.

  "The moment we go home, we’ll turn back into pumpkins." His words were a slow seduction. The effect of his breath and the nearness of his skin made a beeline of pure adrenaline to her pussy.

  "It doesn't have to be that way." She laid her hands flat against the vehicle, responding to him in all the ways she knew he wanted, but something still wasn't right.

  Cal lifted his head toward the sky. He didn't want to lose the moment. But he had to tell her what was in his heart.

  "I'm not the only one who needs to flip my switch back on."

  Annie turned and faced him. "What do you mean?" She’d done so much changing — her life was a fucking carousel of change, switches flicking on and off.

  "Baby, you won't accept help from anyone.” He cradled her face, boring his gaze into hers. “You still barely accept it from me." She tried to look away, but he searched her eyes and kept her jaw in his grasp. "Let Rosa come back. She can stay for a few weeks. Let me take you out on a date — several times a month." He inhaled sharply. "Let someone else take care of Ben sometimes, Annie, just a little, so you ca
n keep taking good care of yourself."

  “I did tonight. And Tab helped.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “But … you won’t … you won’t make love to me until I have Rosa come … until I agree to your terms?”

  “I won’t make love to you until I have you back full-time.” He tucked strands of hair behind her ears.

  “How can you say that? How can you do that?” She wiped a tear from her eyes. “You can’t hold that over me.”

  “I’m not, Annie. I just want it to be—”

  “What? What do you want it to be? Perfect? This coming from the man who was ready to fuck me the first minute he ever saw me.”

  A smirk curled at the corners of his mouth.

  “Don’t smile.” After pushing her knee against his thigh, she began to grin herself. “God, you and your damn smile.”

  “This is different. You’ve been sick.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say it like that.”

  “Why, baby?” he whispered, brushing bangs from her eyes, pressing his body closer. “There’s nothing wrong with that word. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “I’m getting cold.” She turned her head away.

  “I’m not finished.” He tugged on her waist. “Look at me.”

  Annie surrendered to those three words the way she always had in the past and met his astounding tropical-green eyes.

  “You’re an amazing mother.”

  “Cal…” she said in a hush, stretching his name.

  “You are,” he said, tugging more than her sides, tugging her heartstrings. “You make Ben’s food from scratch, always have actually, manufacturing it from the finest breasts I’ve ever seen.”

  Annie smiled and pushed on his wrists.

  “And you’ve done it without complaint, getting up with him at night, night after night, meeting his every need, willingly and patiently. And the way you look at him...” Cal glanced away, swallowing the saliva pooling in his mouth, though the wet in his eyes remained. “When you look at our son, I’ve never seen such love.”

  “You can stop now."

  “I’m not done. You won’t even give yourself credit. You’re doing it right now. You won’t accept more than half of what you actually do and have done because you’ve been—”

  “Depressed,” she interjected. “You can say the word. It sounds better than sick, for God’s sake.”

  “It doesn’t take away from you. You, Annie. It doesn’t change who you are.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because the depression doesn’t change you. It doesn’t make you a bad person or an unfit mother. It doesn’t define who you are.”

  Hadn’t Annie always needed definitions?

  Cal watched his words hit their mark while brushing his fingers across her tear-stained cheeks. I love her more today than I ever did, he thought.

  “I want to get to know you all over again,” he said as she looked rapidly into his eyes. “I want to be slow … with everything. With all of it.”

  Still, he wanted to make love to her regardless. He longed to trail his lips over the entirety of her body, to bury his nose between her thighs. To hold her wrists, slap her tits… Now he was getting ahead of himself.

  “Holy shit.” She rested a palm over her chin. “I never thought I’d hear those words come out of your mouth. Hasn’t it been slow enough already?”

  “I would wait forever for you.” He slid his fingers down the strands of her hair. “For it to be right … for both of us. Completely, absolutely … right."

  “It’s not for you?” she asked with a strain, feeling the sting of his rejection and finally understanding the pain he’d been experiencing since the start of The Nothing.

  “I thought it was,” he said, exhaling, voice shaking. “I want you. I want to fuck you.” Cal met her eyes, penetrating her with a look. “But it’s not the answer. I thought it was. God, Annie, I thought sex was always an answer to everything. But if all the pieces aren’t right, then it’s just a moment, and then that moment is replaced with a bitter you don’t want to taste." He seemed to be sensing wormwood in his mouth now. “For the first time in my life … I don’t want sex to be a Band-Aid. And I want to be able to be myself with you in every way. I want to be everything you need me to be.”

  “You are.” Her fingers circled his arms.

  “No, baby.” Cal smiled. “I mean the way we always were with each other — sexually. The way you asked me to be at dinner. I can’t be that man tonight.”

  "Why?"

  Ready to call her bluff, he smirked, then gave her the ruler-of-the-fucking-world eyes.

  "Put your hands under your dress." He nipped her ear, and she giggled. "And then slip them inside your panties."

  "What?" She laughed again.

  "You're not ready."

  Smug bastard was right. He looked pleased, although she couldn't imagine why. His dick was surely making a tent in his pants.

  "Because I won't put my hands up—"

  "You never hesitated before. You never laughed."

  She pinched her thumb and forefinger nearly together and said, "Maybe a little."

  Cal wanted nothing more than to flip her around, shove her against the car, and smack her ass hard enough to make her gasp and heave and beg for more — the way she always had — but he knew it wouldn’t go well. Not tonight. He knew she'd be more concerned about the fact they were in a parking lot than obeying. He needed an uninterrupted night to break her, to make her feel the passion she’d asked for … in every fiber she was made of. He wouldn't have mediocre sex just to get the wheels turning. He wouldn't entertain her giggles or lack of trust.

  “Cal, I don’t expect you to always—”

  “But it is what you need.”

  Her mouth went dry. Breath left her lungs.

  It was what she needed.

  His typical blinding insistence was what they both needed.

  His plans, his tone, and his commands always gave her an absolute freedom — not just a sexual one.

  “How could it have been so much easier when I hardly knew you?” Her question broke their hypnotized gazes.

  “You’ve always known me,” he replied, not skipping a beat — only his heart palpitated, jumping, leaping for her.

  She dropped her forehead against his chest and held onto the lapels of his coat.

  “And it wasn’t that it was easier. It was timing. It wasn’t forced. It happened naturally. Don’t you want it to be that way again?”

  Annie inched her fingers toward his collar and began to play with it, folding it up and down.

  “And I want to wait for you to get better, baby.” Cal’s lips spoke against the top of her hair. “And better and better. I want you whole.”

  “I’ll never be completely whole.” Her voice cracked.

  “No,” he said and paused, making sure she understood. “But you and I will both know when it’s right, when it won’t feel forced, and you can’t look me in the eye and truthfully say it’s now. Even that first night at Maggie’s, we wanted each other, but it wasn’t right.”

  Stubborn and determined, Annie shoved her hands inside her coat pockets, wishing Cal wasn’t right — but he was. A grin spread across her face as she looked at him, beginning to shake her head.

  “Calvin Prescott … always a riddle."

  She spread her jacket and enveloped him with it as best she could, her arms around his waist. “You still manage to surprise me, you know that?”

  “Good,” he replied, deepening his voice and smiling. “Now, get in the car. I’m freezing, I'm tired, and I want to go home and give my son a kiss good night.”

  Annie rolled her eyes and grinned. “Give me a kiss good night.”

  “My lips are cold.”

  “I don’t care if they’re blue. Put your mouth on me.”

  “You shouldn’t have your work here, Calvin.” Rosa waved at the papers scattered across the dining room table, frowning.
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  She’d been in the Prescott home for a few days. A couple of weeks had passed since Cal had made the suggestion, and Annie had finally agreed.

  “I like the light in this room.” Glancing toward the window, he squinted into the late-morning sun through his lenses.

  “But now you have a family to share with. And you have an office for this. Yes?”

  Tapping a pen against his thumb, Cal glanced at Rosa and smiled. Then he began bunching the papers into a neat pile. She looked pleased as she made her way to the sink. And then the front door creaked open, and rubber wheels rolled across the wooden floors.

  “Did you get to take some pictures?” Rosa asked Annie as she appeared in the kitchen, resting the stroller near the table.

  “Yes.” She pushed the hood of her jacket down and ruffled her hair.

  “Oh, he’s sleeping.” Rosa peeked under the canopy, her enthusiasm at an all-time high. "I love his chunky face.”

  “He fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the pavement. I found a little spot I’ve never seen,” Annie began but stopped when she noticed Cal’s expression. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, but his eyes, as usual, said everything. “I’m proud of you.”

  Annie was proud too.

  She’d given herself permission to be a photographer again, to make it a priority in her life — daily. She was taking pictures and editing and had even scheduled an upcoming wedding. Although the work didn’t come first in her life, and it may not for a long time, the freedom she felt when she held the camera in her hands simply couldn’t be replicated by any other pleasure.

  Each day, Annie seemed to find new creatures and trees, outlines in the sky, faces, new life to photograph. Each thing — big and small, powerful or weak — made her smile. Everything was alive and vibrant, including her spirit.

  The change wasn't lost on Cal, and she could feel the connection between them renew with each passing glance, with each brush of their skin. She could feel it now by the way he’d looked at her and spoken to her … and by the way his shoulder nudged hers as he passed, the stack of papers and laptop under his arm.

  He backpedaled.

  Came to a stop right in front of her.

  Made a point to kiss her on the cheek.