Wrong For You (Before You Series Book 3)

by Lisa Cardiff

  His hands paused, no longer moving and she opened her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Don’t say that. It’s not true.”

  She opened her mouth to object, but he placed his finger over her lips.

  “If anyone isn’t good enough, it’s me.” Darkness flashed across his face. He had secrets, lots of them, she realized, and a tinge of unease slithered down her spine. “I’m not a good person, Violet, but when I look at you, I want to be.” He looked up at the ceiling momentarily. “Maybe that counts for something,” he mumbled, his voice almost inaudible.

  She nodded, circling her arms around his shoulders, pulling him toward her. “Right now, I just want you to be you. That’s good enough for me.”

  He kissed her again then, a long, indecent kiss that curled her toes and made her feel like a goddess born to be worshipped by him. She could get used to this…to him. His lips drifted from hers to her jaw line and then her neck as his hands skated down the sides of her breasts in slow motion as though he had nothing better to do than touch every inch of her.

  When his hands reached her waist, he lifted her onto the tiled countertop, pushed her knees apart, and without hesitation he stepped in between her legs, his lips coming down hard on hers again. His lips moving expertly against hers, he forced her gray cotton skirt up around her waist, exposing her boring white underwear. Crap, she should have thought that through this morning after he left and worn something a little more appealing.

  Not even bothering to look, he yanked her panties down her legs with one hard pull and she started to have second thoughts. This was real. This wasn’t some crazy dream without consequences. She couldn’t take this back. “Alec…wait,” she blurted out and then his fingers slid along her entrance.

  “Wait for what?” His finger slipped inside of her, teasing her with the perfect angle, rhythm and tempo. “Ah,” she groaned and she felt his smile against her neck.

  A sensual fog wrapped around her and she couldn’t focus. She should probably have all those responsible conversations she lectured the kids at the Foundation about when they wanted to take a relationship to the next level, like number of sexual partners, sexual history and expectations, but what Alec was doing to her left little room for rational thought.

  He lifted her hand and placed it on his chunky silver belt buckle and she knew he wanted her to take the next step and unbuckle it—show him that she wanted what he wanted. “I’m not sure if I’m ready,” she finally confessed, because as much as her body said go, go, go, her mind wasn’t ready for this. As much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, she wasn’t a one night stand type of girl. She didn’t know what Alec wanted beyond tonight, and even if he wanted something, he planned to go back to LA in two weeks.

  He slid his finger out of her, balled his hands into fists before he rested his hands on the top of her bare thighs. Leaning back, he looked at the ceiling for a few awkward seconds. “You want me to stop?” His dark blue eyes were more hooded than usual as his gaze turned to her. With his impenetrable mask back in place, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  She rubbed her hands along the sides of her face thinking, contemplating, and trying to make responsible decisions. “Yeah,” she finally said. “I just don’t know if this is right…yet.”

  He sucked his lip into his mouth, his inscrutable gaze, telling her nothing as second after second ticked by in absolute silence. “I don’t know what you mean by right. Right for this second? Right for some elusive long term plan?”

  Her eyes wandered around the room, trying to separate her mind from the intensity of this moment so she could make an intelligent decision. “I don’t know enough about you to take this step. I’m always telling the kids at the Foundation to be responsible and not to act impulsively. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

  He snapped his hands off her thighs and stuffed his hands in pockets. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know…how many sexual partners have you had?”

  “Enough,” he answered, his voice harsh and she flinched.

  “What’s enough? One, ten, fifty?”

  He took a few steps backward and she wanted to pull him back, but she knew she just hit a hot button and whatever was happening between them was definitely over. “Fuck, Violet. I don’t know. I don’t keep count. I’ve never cared. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter.” He raked his hands through his tousled dark hair. “Probably too many, but I’m always safe,” he added.

  She nodded absently. “Okay. Thanks for being honest.”

  “And what does my honesty get me?”

  She smiled faintly. “Nothing tonight.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “It’s not a no forever, just tonight,” she said, sliding off the countertop and pulling her shirt over her head. She needed some armor in the form of clothing to continue their conversation.

  His eyes narrowed as his gaze took in every inch of her disheveled clothing and the heated blush creeping up her neck. “Okay. Little Violet, I’ll let you go…for now.”

  She nodded her head, already accepting that she wouldn’t escape again. Who was she kidding? She didn’t want to escape at all. She liked his hands touching her too much. She just needed to get her mind in the right place before she took the next step.

  “Bye,” he said, brushing her hair from her face, then kissing her on top her head, and before she knew it, she heard her front door close. It took every bit of control she had to stop herself from running after him and telling him she changed her mind.

  Chapter Eleven

  Frustrated. Relieved. Those were the only two words he could find to describe the emotions rolling through him as he turned the corner of Violet’s house to the entrance of his temporary basement apartment and that’s when he saw her. Fucking hell. His day just got a thousand times worse.

  “Alec,” the woman said, her voice gravelly and hoarse from years of smoking and hard living.

  “Cecilia.”

  “You can call me mom. It wouldn’t kill you to acknowledge me, or are you too big and famous for your poor, old mom?”

  Mom. Now she wanted him to call her mom. She never did after his dad died. In fact, she barely wanted to acknowledge that she knew him, especially when she was too busy accusing him of ruining her life. “How did you find me?”

  “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and raised one eyebrow.

  She sighed. “One of my friends saw you walking into the Foundation. I asked him to follow you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  He didn’t want to, but he also didn’t want to have a confrontation with his mom on the side of Violet’s house. Knowing his mom, this visit could turn really ugly fast and he didn’t want Violet to witness the ugliness in his life and realize he was tainted by association. He brushed by her and unlocked the door. He didn’t bother to see if his mom followed. She’d do what she wanted. She always did. When he heard the door slam behind him, he sat on the couch and turned on the television.

  “Your dad wants to see you,” his mom said, breaking the silence swirling in the room.

  “My dad is dead, or have you drank too much and fucked too many men that you can’t remember him anymore?” He didn’t turn to look at her, but he landed a direct hit, judging from her swift intake of air.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No. I don’t.” His voice was dead and void of emotion.

  “Your biological dad, not Jim.” She touched his shoulder lightly, trying to get his attention, but it only made the anger simmering inside him overflow. He wanted nothing to do with that bastard.

  “Not interested,” he said, flipping through the channels, barely registering the pictures and commercials as they flipped on and off the small screen.

  “I think you owe him a couple minutes of your time. He’s your father.”<
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  “He’s the man you had an affair with, the man who ruined our family. He’s your dead husband’s brother and my inconvenient sperm donor. Beyond that, Brad doesn’t mean anything to me.” Alec stood up, his heart jackhammering against his chest as memories best forgotten rushed to the surface. He didn’t want to talk about his past, ever. There wasn’t any reason to. It was better relegated to the dustbins of history. “Is Brad the only reason you’re here? You want to plead his case? What the fuck has he ever done for us, for me?”

  “He wants to change that,” she said hurriedly, wringing her chapped hands together.

  “What’s in it for you?” There had to be something because his mom didn’t do things out the kindness of her heart—she didn’t have one. Her heart had shriveled up long ago. She had an affair with her husband’s brother and lied about it for ten years, and then she had the nerve to blame everything on her son. For eight fucking years, she reminded him how much better her life would be if he were never born, that she should have had an abortion when she had the chance. That Jim, the man he thought was his dad, would still be alive if she had aborted him. Not exactly the type of information that made a child feel warm and fuzzy.

  His mom’s eyes bounced all over the room. She looked like shit. Her dark shiny hair that used to look like black silk was threaded liberally with gray. Her dark blue eyes, so like his and Taylor’s, were foggy and surrounded by heavy wrinkles. Time hadn’t been kind to her and he didn’t even feel a twinge of sympathy for her plight. The evil in her soul finally seeped out and destroyed all her superficial beauty. It was about time karma kicked her ass. She was only fifty, but she was the poster child for what fifty years of hard living looked like and it wasn’t pretty.

  “I’m sick. I have cancer,” she blurted out.

  “And…?” he prompted, not showing any hint of compassion. Sure, his stomach twisted a bit with that announcement. After all, she was his mother, but she had shoveled so much shit on him his entire childhood that he couldn’t say he would miss her or spend a single sleepless night cataloging the ‘what ifs’ in their relationship because there weren’t any. She was a pathetic excuse for a mother, and no matter what he did differently; it wouldn’t have altered her choices.

  “I joined Alcoholics Anonymous because I can’t drink anymore. As part of the program, I need to make amends to people I’ve wronged.”

  A dark, bitter laugh escaped his mouth. “Save your breath with me. I’m not interested.” And he wasn’t. Nothing she could do or say would change what she put Taylor and him through. Now that her mortality was shoved in her face, she wanted to say sorry. Fuck that. She was a decade or two late for that shit.

  “I owe Brad, too.”

  “That sounds great. Go seek your forgiveness from Brad because you aren’t going to find it with me.” He walked toward the door, his eyebrows lifted in disdain. “Are we done?”

  “No.” Her lips thinned into a straight line. “I need your help and I’m not leaving until you agree to give it to me.”

  “In that case, I hope you enjoy the couch, because you’ll be here a long time.” Alec raked his hands through his hair. “Or I could call the police and have you removed.”

  Her eyes narrowed and he could see fire raging behind her eyes. “Why are you such a bastard?”

  “I can’t help it. You spread your legs and fucked your brother-in-law and I’m the result. By definition that makes me a bastard. What can I say? I’m acting accordingly.” Her hands fisted next to her legs. Based on her past behavior, it’d only be few seconds before she had a full-blown tantrum. He’d seen enough of those in his life. He didn’t need to witness another. He opened the door. “Leave.”

  “I’ll call Taylor. Maybe she’ll help me.”

  His hands curled into fists at his sides as his blood pumped wildly through his eardrums. “I will never send you another penny if I hear you contacted Taylor.”

  “Why can’t you help me?” Her voice broke on the last word.

  His jaw clenched so tightly he felt as if his teeth might shatter. She actually had the nerve to ask why he wouldn't help her. His mother had a seriously twisted perception of her actions. Everything was always somebody else’s fault. “So many reasons, so little time, but let me give you a taste of why I don’t feel compelled to help you with your apology tour. You lied to me about my father for the first ten years of my life. You blamed me for your indiscretions. You were a shitty mother who didn’t care if her kids had food to put their mouths, and I don’t even know the extent of what you did to Taylor, but I have a feeling if I knew I’d be tempted to do you bodily harm despite the fact that you’re a woman and you’re my mother.”

  She cradled her face in her hands and instead of feeling pity or sympathy, he felt strangely detached as he watched his mom’s worn face crumble in front of his eyes. “I need to make this right between you and Brad,” she mumbled as she covered her face with her hands.

  “Make what right? He wasn’t interested in me when I was a kid or as a teenager and if he’s changed his mind recently; it probably has to do with my band, not me. Leave it alone. I don’t want him in my life.” On his fifteenth birthday, he had taken the bus to Brad’s house to beg for his help. His mom had been gone for a week and he and Taylor didn’t have any food in the house and less than three dollars in change. He used all of it on the bus ride. His wife slammed the door in his face after she not so politely informed him that he wasn’t welcome in their home or their life. All his calls went unanswered and eventually he accepted that Brad didn’t want to be his dad or even his friend.

  Tears streamed down his mom’s face unchecked when she dropped her hands from her face. “That was my fault.” The words were so soft he could barely hear them.

  “At least you admit that you had some fault in the mess you created. That’s a start.” He waved toward the still open door. “Good luck with everything, Cecilia. Have a nice life.” He didn’t plan to see her ever again. There wasn’t anything to say. She’d made it clear many times that she didn’t want him. He had no intention of letting her crawl back into his life because she needed to complete her twelve-step plan. An apology wouldn’t heal their relationship. There was too much bad blood.

  She started walking toward the opened door, only stopping when she came within inches of him. “He couldn’t be part of your life because I got a restraining order against him after your dad died. I felt like he stole my husband from me. I didn’t want him to take you, too.” She forced a piece of yellow paper into his hand. “Here’s his phone number. Call him. He’s always wanted you. That’s why he was at the house that day when you overheard our conversation. He planned to fight for custody, but I couldn’t let him do it. Your dad didn’t know you weren’t his.” She wiped her face and then a smile full of bitterness and anger spread across her face. “Well, not until you questioned him about our conversation, and you know what happened after that.”

  With that bomb, she turned and walked out his door. After he shut the door, he slammed his fist into the wall repeatedly until his knuckles were bloodied and swollen. Times like this reminded him why he started playing his drums. It gave him something to hit without inflicting more pain and destruction on everything around him, including himself. No such luck tonight. His drum kit was in his music room in his house in LA.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He never should have come back to Missoula. He didn’t need this drama in his life. Nothing good ever happened when he came here. His mom always sucked him into her chaos. He needed to leave this town where it belonged—in his past.

  His mom came seeking forgiveness, trying to make amends, but all she did was twist the knife she planted in his gut years ago a little harder and a whole lot deeper. Brad always wanted to be part of his life. He didn’t know what to do with that information.

  Chapter Twelve

  From the swing on her front porch, Violet watched an older woman walk out of Alec’s apartment, around the side of the house, and get in
the car and then all hell broke loose.

  For twenty minutes, she listened to the destruction in her basement apartment. The next ten minutes she repeatedly told herself to mind her own business while she mentally catalogued all the reasons she shouldn’t interfere. Five minutes later, she ignored everything. Without thinking, Violet grabbed her keychain, which included a spare key to the basement apartment, and she ran down her front steps, directly to the door of his apartment.

  “Alec,” she yelled, knocking on the door. He didn’t answer, but she knew he was there. She could hear loud music screaming through the door.

  Her palm open against the heavy wooden door, she banged on the door three more times. “Open the door.” Nothing. No response. Just loud, obnoxious music flooding through the door. So much for the nice, quiet tenant she had hoped for when she offered the place to Alec. She’d never sleep tonight if this continued.

  Twirling the spare key on her finger, the dark brown ‘M’ for Missoula on her key chain danced around and around in circles as she contemplated her next move. Screw it. She was going in. It was her house and she needed to see the damage and stop any more from happening, or at least that’s what she convinced herself.

  Sliding the key into the lock, she twisted it until she felt the familiar click. Afraid of what she might find, she took a deep breath before pushing the door open.

  A version of Alec only hinted at before that moment sat at the kitchen table. Other than the faint flicker of the fluorescent light above the table, the apartment was dark. Alec had discarded his t-shirt, leaving the black tattoos on his arms fully exposed. A bottle of amber whiskey was in one hand, his other hand banged against the table in time with the music. His dark hair was messier than an hour ago and he looked like a darker, meaner, barely recognizable version of the playful man who kissed her in her kitchen after dinner.