by Natalie Wrye
“Be right back,” he tells me.
“Wait…” But I have no choice. I can do nothing but watch as he climbs towards the front, plopping down in the passenger seat beside Kristoph. Motioning with his large hands, he says something to the driver I can’t hear, and suddenly… the truck starts to pick up speed. My heart picks up with it.
“What are you doing?” Marilyn calls out to the front seats. Brett puts a hand on Kristoph’s shoulder, turning. “Trust me!” he shouts back.
It’s the first time I realize how much I do, and as the bulky vehicle accelerates, I stare at Brett’s profile, hoping it won’t be the last time I can. The black Navigators surrounding us part like the Red Sea, and we split between them with the Escalade giving chase, sailing over the soaked street. The slush of the wet cement feels like a roar, and as the Navigator revs, my stomach sinks with each additional mile on the speedometer. The buildings are a blur as we pass. The rain is relentless. The pitter-patter is a reminder that we’re being pelted with the sky’s fury.
We’re going so fast. So fucking fast. I look out the rearview window, finding the black Escalade still on our bumper. It accelerates, and I can do nothing but watch with widened eyes as our velocity ticks up in frightening increments of ten.
Sixty. Seventy. Eighty… through the semi-thick Manhattan avenues.
And the Escalade’s course never wavers, never wanes. It follows us like a hulking shadow, its impossibly black windows preventing even a peek inside its dark interior. Swinging around to speed at our side, it runs parallel to our trajectory—as if in a race, and at neck-breaking velocities, we fly down the boulevards, the honks of horns around us blaring in a synchronized symphony. Through the black of night, I feel as if I can barely see. I hear the beat of my thundering heart, smelling the wet concrete outside and the leather seats against my damp skin—skin that is now sick with sweat.
I’m in sensation-overload, assaulted at every side.
And just as terror starts to chip away at my trust, I turn to call out Brett’s name and we swing around a corner without warning. Skidding. Sliding. Swaying into a curve sharper than a sword’s edge.
It’s a mistake.
I know it just as soon as we spin into the turn. My fingers grip the edge of the handle in the door, clawing into the plastic. My head spins. My stomach swims and a laundry cycle of assorted emotion takes a tumble at the base of my gut, nearly making me sick.
My only saving grace? The knowledge that the mistake is not ours but the Escalade’s.
And the sound is awful.
A mix of Marilyn’s frightened screams, the scorch of burning rubber and crunch of crashing steel create a jarring cacophony, one that makes the center of my core shudder. The big-bodied Escalade crashes, clipping the edge of a curb. It somersaults slowly through the air, tipping towards the ground and through the rear windshield I watch it—in horror—as it flips over and over and over again in twisting circles. Finally, it lands with a sickening smash, and we leave the mangled black truck in our dust, the dreadful rainfall drowning out the wails drifting from inside.
I wake up the next morning in Brett’s arms, my body sore.
In a bed the size of a cruise ship and ten times more luxurious, I discover in the daylight an ego more bruised than anything else… because after a long night of not making love, I can’t quite shake the feeling that somehow I shouldn’t be here.
The man whose bed I lie in sleeps like the dead, and despite the fact that less than ten hours ago, he pretty much pitted us face to face with a psychopath, he seems scarily at ease, his mahogany-hued hair tousled, almost hanging to his dark brow. I sweep the strands across his forehead, tempted to reach up and kiss the skin beneath.
Seven years… and I still can’t believe how perfect he is, how otherworldly. Masculine and divine.
Shirtless, his skinned tanned and surprisingly smooth, he looks innocent in the cloudy light of a misty morning. With his dark curtains half-closed, I can barely make out his features and I use my fingers to explore the rest, smoothing my hands over the sparse strands of hair across his chest, his pecs, his rigid, dipped and defined abdomen.
Who knew it was possible for a man to be this flawless?
The sculpted shoulders. The chiseled arms. The strong cheekbones and chin.
A layer of scruff lies over the hardened line of his taut jaw, and I trace it with my fingertips, careful not to touch too hard to wake the sleeping demigod.
I’d broken one important promise to myself—and in some ways, to Kayla—to make it here in his bed. And as I look at him—so uniquely strong and innocent in so many understated ways, I know just to be with him—right here, right now—I’d easily break a million more. In fact… I may already have.
I don’t want to think about the gazillion traffic laws we’d violated with Marilyn’s driver last night. And suddenly I can’t think about it anymore…as my fingertips catch against a rough imperfection across Brett’s chest—a raised layer of skin that mars the satiny surface. My palms stop. Squinting amidst the dark, citrus-scented sheets, I try desperately to get a peek at the rough lines that lie beneath my hands.
I snatch my fingertips back from Brett’s body—as if burnt, when I realize that the sinewy strands across his broad muscles are nothing more than scars. Lengthy welts. Tucked beneath the skin. Lightened by time.
They’re almost invisible to the eye. Slightly red and raised, the thin lines slash across the expanse of his lightly golden skin as if sprinkled there, and though my heart beats a heavy rhythm, my throat closing as I stare, I can’t help myself. Curiosity draws me closer, making my pulse quicken. I reach out to touch him once more when the sweep of lips across my brow breaks my attention.
Brett stirs, staring down at me.
“You’re awake,” he says, seemingly surprised, his deep voice sleepy with a hint of gravel. I smile up at his beautiful face, hoping my eyes don’t betray me.
“So are you,” I respond, my hand brushing against his morning hardness, the thick length stiffening at my caress. It’s clear as day. I want him again. I always want him. But with a throat now drier than the Sahara and a mind that is swirling with too many thoughts to count, I’m hoping my irreverent tongue won’t take total control.
But my thoughts trail off as Brett reaches towards me, his half-blue green eyes hooded, as he twists his fingers around the ends of my messy hair, curling the strands in his hands to form a fist. He holds me tight. Looking a model and a meal that I can’t wait to devour all at once, I suddenly feel modest in the borrowed t-shirt and boxer shorts that practically swallow me. It’s something about the hulk of a man in front of me that makes me feel so exposed and open, and I know that if I don’t say what I want to in that moment, I’ll chicken-shit the opportunity again.
He and I will go back to hating each other.
And I’ll never have the chance to say what I feel. The window of opportunity is getting smaller by the second, so I seize it.
“Brett,” I mumble, my lips sticking as I try to say his name. “Before we come to our senses, before one or both of us realizes what we’re actually freaking doing right now and fuck up any chance of having a decent relationship again, I have to say this: This—what’s happening between us—is throwing me for a loop. And while I understand that it’s my fault, that I was the one who reached out to you, a part of me hoped you wouldn’t respond to me again. That way, I could go on ‘hating you’… to cover up the fact that I have never, can never, and will never be able to hate you. But if I take on one more empty promise and it breaks…” I sigh. “I might fall apart with it.”
There. I’d said it. And now I hate myself.
I was a twenty-three year old woman, admitting to the boy-turned-man I’d lost my virginity to at sixteen who I was scared to love. Scared… because the people that made promises to you never kept them. My parents certainly hadn’t.
They hadn’t stayed true to their vows. Not to me, and certainly not to each other.
My bond with my best childhood friend, Kayla, had brought Brett into my life… and then a series of unfortunate promises had taken him away.
Hell, I was the series of unfortunate events.
The summer Brett and I spent together seven years ago was hot. Our romance was even hotter. But a summer romance didn’t erase the damage of a life led not believing in love and the unspoken promises it carried with it.
I wait for Brett to respond, feeling sixteen again, drowning under the weight of an old insecurity.
I wait for the “There’s no reason to be scared” or maybe even a “You’re crazy to think that. Let me show you why.”
But there was nothing.
Not a word. Not a look.
With an indiscernible expression on his face, Brett runs a hand through his messy hair. His frost-colored blue eye catches a spot in the middle of the blinding white sheets and focuses on it, concentrating so hard that I thought he might bear a hole right through the fabric.
I pull back to look at him, and his eyes turn serious. He withdraws by an inch that feels like a fucking mile.
“Do you want to know what I want?”
He brings his lips to meet mine.
“I want you to see that I’m not bullshitting.”
He kisses me again.
“That I’m not here to make you an empty promise. Hell, I don’t even know what the word ‘empty’ really means, but I want you to see that I’m not going to bail on you this time. That I’m going to keep the fucking vow I made to you seven years ago. I’m going to make good on mine, Elsie.” He grips me under my jaw, wrapping four fingers around my throat—a possessive hold that inherently says “mine.” I blink back tears, wishing I could tell him that I’m his. That I’ve always been, and always will be. But I can barely talk without clearing my throat.
My response is a sunken whisper.
“I don’t remember you making any vows to me.” I can feel my brows scrunch, and Brett shakes his head, his head sinking as he brings his gaze to mine.
“I didn’t. But my heart sure as hell did.”
He captures my mouth again in a feverish kiss, one that sweeps away my doubt, replacing it with a relief I hadn’t known was possible, and with the deep breath he takes of me, my mouth, my skin…I’m sure we’re going to make love.
I wrap my arms around Brett, settling inside his. I inhale his scent, smelling the sensuality on his body, trying to calm my suddenly racing heart. But the calm only lasts for a second… because as soon as my pulse reaches a steady beat, his cell phone rings, mimicking the pattern of the still anxious organ in my chest.
He rolls over with a groan, reaching for the blaring black square. “Fuck,” he hisses. “Forgot I told Marilyn to call me.”
He answers the phone, his voice still gruff with desire.
“Yeah, Mare?”
“Mister Jackson?”
I hear a muffled voice on the other end. Feminine. Polite but authoritative. Its clipped tone lets me know that there’s no way it’s Marilyn, and inexplicably my stomach knots, my heated skin prickling as I watch the tense exchange—my body humming with unsettled nerves. I notice Brett’s shoulders squaring. He sits up in his gigantic bed, ruffling the pillowy sheets.
“Yes?”
“This is the Manhattan Police Department calling…”
My heart stops. Jesus H. Christ.
“Ma’am,” he begins, “Are you sure you have the right number?”
“Yes, Mr. Jackson, I’m afraid I do,” she cuts him off. “She gave us your number.”
He frowns. “Who’s ‘she’?”
“Your sister, I believe, Mr. Jackson. We have a Kayla Jackson in our custody at the station, waiting to be picked up.”
Chapter 29
BRETT
Elsie once called me a ‘prick’… and she was right.
I am a prick. Just not enough to blow off this.
I drop a kiss to her forehead as she sits there, wide-eyed after the phone call. Abandoning the gesture before my lips can travel any farther, I sweep my legs over the side of the mattress, rushing into the bathroom to freshen up before I head down to the police station to face a building full of cops. And God knows what else.
I don’t want to think about what’s happened. And I don’t want to drag Elsie into it.
Not now.
Kayla still doesn’t know about us, a secret I know Elsie is intent on keeping. Almost a decade of not seeing Elsie hasn’t squelched a thing from the past—least of all, my desire. But more than that, it hasn’t changed Elsie’s opinion about our relationship, and rather than risk the best friendship—Hell, the only real family she has left, I decide to leave the argument alone, giving Elsie what she needs even though it goes against everything that I want.
And what I want is Elsie.
In any way that I can get her.
I chose not to take it to a sexual place last night, even when my body was craving it. Even when I could smell the sensuality coming off the curvy blonde’s skin, I refused to touch her, allowing the circle of my arms to show her all the safety she needs after our nightmare of a night.
And I know with Elsie, once I start… I won’t be able to stop. It’s better that I not start at all. Elsie is still in my bed, in my thoughts when a noticeably missing Heath walks into my line of view, entering my building at the same time that I exit.
He’s dressed impeccably in a black suit that’s tailored from head to toe, looking almost misplaced as he heads towards the frosted double doors.
He looks better than ever, and I do a double take when he crosses my path. Despite the smile on his clean-shaven face, I can feel myself growing angry at him, unable to stop the heat that creeps up my neck.
And what’s more? I don’t want to stop it.
I gaze at him, my eyes hardening with every second.
“Where have you been?” I fume.
“In the shop,” he responds, covering his head from the drizzle that starts to pick up as I exit. “I wanted to come by your place and see you.” He shuffles in his Salvatore shoes. “Since we keep missing each other.”
My eyes narrow, and I have to keep myself from lashing out.
Lies. I’ve stopped by Heath’s office in the shop multiple times this week and he had been gone for every one of those visits. I glower at him, trying to gather the will to let the untruth go.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks.
I scoff. “Nothing a shot of whiskey won’t soon fix.”
I finally reach my car, turning towards a wide-eyed Heath who stands defiantly nearby.
“Call me crazy…” I start.
“You are crazy,” he interrupts.
“But, um, your office in the back has been a little empty lately.”
Heath shrugs. “Not really. I’ve been around. We’ve just been…”
“Missing each other, huh?” I finish for him, resenting his lax tone. And his lying. “Well, it’s good to see you now. But I’ve gotta go.” I hang on the last word, nervous to say the next, sighing. “It’s Kayla, bro.”
“Shit,” he hisses, rubbing his unruly head of chestnut hair. “What happened?”
I almost say nothing, deciding against it. I tell Heath everything, and he listens, seeming like the Heath I know best. Sympathetic and understanding. Until his eyes go slightly out of focus, his hand rushing to slide up one sleeve to check a sleek gold watch. He swears under his breath, glancing up at me. He motions over his shoulder.
“Dammit, I hate to leave so quickly, but… I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
I bow my head slightly. “Say no more.”
Heath extends his hand. “Good luck, bro. Give my love to Kayla.”
At that, he walks away, wiping the shoulders of his conspicuously new suit. Watching him, I climb behind the wheel of my car, a deepened frown on my tired face.
I just can’t put my finger on it.
Something’s wrong… and I don’t know what the fuck it is.
&nbs
p; Maybe it’s that his latent nervousness stuns me. For all of its genuine intent and earnest appearance, it seemed to be a deflection… and I’m not sure how much I trust it.
Something’s off about him—something other than the clothes.
Thunder claps suddenly, setting an ominous tone to my thoughts. I slap a hand against the wheel.
Get a grip, Brett. I’m driving myself insane. And I need all the neurons I can get as I speed through early afternoon city traffic, swerving across the heated asphalt of the summer streets like an oil slick across the surface of stove-lit pan. I blow off the stop signs, blowing past them when I can. I ignore the horns of every yellow taxi and half a dozen streetlights, and though the leather of the seats is hot against my skin, driving my madness to breaking points, I pull up to the unadorned building of the Manhattan police station calmly, throwing my BMW in park across several spaces, my face daring someone to move me out of the way.
Kayla lied to me. She’s been in New York at least a day. And I could kill her.
I contemplate doing just that when I enter the building and see her, sitting off to the side in a chain bolted seat, her chocolate-colored hair strewn around her pretty face. And suddenly I can’t help but to hold her.
I rush towards her, my arms outstretched, and she stands, crashing into them, a small cry releasing from her bitten lips as she pleads into my biceps.
“I’m sorry,” she simply says, and I crush her close. Her clothes smell of smoke—light menthol. Her hair is haphazardly thrown into a low ponytail, and the ends brush against my forearms, reminding me of the days when she was little, her brown hair cut into a bob, too short to pull the silken strands into anything—let alone a luscious tail.
