Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three)

by Dunning, Rachel

  “Oh, God, stop it!”

  “Just telling it like it is, Blaze. Snooze you lose. And you’re snoozing.”

  I look at my phone, consider calling Declan. It’s four P.M. now.

  I decide to text him, to give it another shot—at least a shot where I don’t storm out of his apartment and leave things hanging!

  Me: Deck, sorry about yesterday. It was a lot to take in.

  Before sending it I wonder if I shouldn’t suggest a time to meet. Is that too forward? Or should I wait for him to make the move. I look at the message forever. Vikki finally interrupts.

  “And?”

  “I can’t decide if I should tell him we should hook up for coffee or not.”

  “Coffee like with Laz or coffee like with me?”

  I make a ha-ha-funny-whatever face, and add Meet up for coffee sumtime? to the text.

  Then I send it.

  I’m instantly nervous. And instantly afraid.

  -6-

  Laz said something during the call, something important. What was it? Something that made my blood pool at my ankles, something scary...

  That I had cheated on him? No, no, that wasn’t it, but it was around there. What was it?

  Oh. Right.

  He said this:

  It’s not like I didn’t screw around when you were out of town either.

  Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

  SEVEN

  TOO HOT TO BREATHE

  ~ DECEMBER 17 ~

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  Last night I dreamed. I dreamed of Blaze and me under the covers, too hot to breathe, smiling, her sticky body pressed against mine, hot breaths warming my skin. I dreamed of my lips between her, pressed against her moist softness, her sizzling groans as I lapped her, tasted her lemon-tang and pressed my tongue into her. I dreamed of moving up to her stomach, her breasts, her lips above, of kissing her, and then sliding in between her. I dreamed of her saying “Mmmmm” and me growling “Urrrrrr” and then I felt her skin, felt her chest and nipples pressing against me. I fought for climax, pushed and tried and writhed and battled to reach it. She did, again and again, over and over...

  And she screamed, howled pleasantly and clutched my hair while her legs shuddered behind my back. And she smiled.

  And still the orgasm eluded me. I forced it, tried to push, groaned painfully, almost willing it out of me—

  Then I was awake, dry as a scab.

  And frustrated.

  Seeing Blaze. Seeing her again was like walking into the rays of the sun when it’s too close, and being burned to cinders. Yeah, Blaze, how damn poetic.

  Blaze is my own personal Temptress, the girl under whose spell I’ve fallen, my very own siren, singing me into the depths of dark water and death under tumbling waves. She weakens me, makes me do crazy things, makes me want to throw it all away for only one more second with her, just one more taste of her hot breath on mine, her spearmint flavor against my tongue...

  I didn’t drink after she left. I didn’t. There was no practice yesterday so I had the afternoon to myself—a deadly combination. But I didn’t drink. One shot of Jack had been more than enough. It took all the will I had but I didn’t do it. I owe Trev. I can’t screw this up. My attitude in the change-room on Sunday was bullshit, it was crazy, it was the old Bad Boy act taken to the extreme. And now, suspended. Fined. Again. I appreciate what Trev’s done for me, bringing me in to play football with him. Giving me something to work for, to aspire to. To dream about.

  I owe him. And even if my feet are rocking under me, the earth shaking, I can’t let him down.

  So, after she left yesterday, I sat on my couch, and looked at the blank TV screens. Seething.

  She loves me, I thought. She loves me and she’s never stopped loving me. And now she’s back, back in Brooklyn, back in NYC, and she was here, right here in this apartment that cost me millions and to which I haven’t brought a single other woman. My sanctum sanctorum. No other female has entered here besides Maria. It’s my place to get away, home. It’s a place Blaze is welcome in anytime.

  She’s back. A few weeks, was it?

  And how do I feel about that?

  Losing her last time sent me on a death trip down into the dungeons of self depravation and misery. I almost didn’t recover. Can I risk it again?

  I’m bigger now. Physically bigger. But aren’t we all just dwarves in our minds when faced with our largest fears?

  I’ve taken down three hundred pound giants on the field. But facing Blaze, allowing myself to fall in love with her again, and then falling down the cliff that would inevitably throw me over—I won’t survive that.

  Practice was grueling today. Every muscle in my body hurts. Coach is making me work to get back on the team. And it’s not a show. He won’t need me for the next two weeks, but he’ll need me in the playoffs. But if I step out of line, he’ll keep me benched even for those. He’d rather lose the playoffs and get his head ripped apart by the managers and fans than to lose face in front of his team. He’s the boss. A drill sergeant who demands respect and who gives it in return when it’s earned.

  Losing his respect is worse than being fined. I lost his respect on Sunday. And that I regret. So I’ll make it up to him.

  The discipline since I joined The Giants has been good. It’s kept me in line, given me something to live for, and to strive for.

  It gave me my self-respect back.

  I’m looking at Blaze’s text now, sitting on my couch with nothing harder than water to drink. Every muscle in my body aches, but seeing her words in front of me brings them alive again. Meet up for coffee sumtime? she asks.

  My answer: Blaze, you can’t walk into my life after four years and expect everything to be the same again. You ripped my heart apart.

  Her: I know. I know. And I owe you for it. I don’t want us to go back to what we had. I just want us to...talk. We need to talk, don’t you think, Deck?

  Talking hurts. Talking makes me love her again. Talking makes me want to rip the shirt off her fragile body and put her on silk sheets and devour her.

  Sex has never been the same since Blaze. It’s been...physical. Carnal. I might as well be using my own damned hand with these other women!

  I need to move on.

  I weigh the phone in my hand, every word on the screen throwing up memories of Blaze’s sweating skin and glimmering eyes against me. Her beauty, her aura...

  Blaze: Deck? I’m sorry. I need closure. And I know that’s selfish of me to ask but...

  I don’t read the rest. I call her.

  “You fuck me up, do you know that?” I say, not even bothering to say hello.

  “N—no, I didn’t know...that.” Her voice is fragile, like when I first met her. Hesitant. She’d grown teeth after we’d been together awhile, after the world had tried to take her apart. But the world hit her back down harder. And although the hits didn’t destroy her, they did take her back to what she used to be: Afraid, holding on. Life’s taken a heavier piece out of her than I thought.

  And then I came along and broke the worst news possible to her. What right do I have to be so hard on her?

  “Well, you do. You...” I can’t admit weakness with her. If there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s that. She’ll trample on it, stand on it—

  Oh, Deck, knock it the fuck off, bro! You loved this woman! Still love her! Knock off the goddamned macho act and admit that it scares the shit out of you to fall for her again!

  It’s the Good Angel on my shoulder.

  Bad Angel says: Fuck her, homes. Fuck dat putana! She didn’t give a chit aboutchoo! She fucked you over—

  Me, in my own mind: Enough!

  “Blaze, let me be blunt: If you come over to my place, I’m gonna jump you. I’m gonna rip your clothes off and— Never mind. I just... You and I can’t just be friends, Blaze. There was too much heat, too much passion between us once.” Too much love, but I don’t say that out loud. “Come over if you wan
t, but don’t expect it to be just a friendly chat. Because I can’t do that when I’m around you. And I don’t know how healthy it’s going to be for either of us if we end up in bed together.”

  Silence. Then, so quietly that I almost can’t hear her, she croaks: “I know.”

  Then more silence.

  When she speaks again, I get the feeling it’s taking all the strength she has to talk to me, like she’s saying the words against her better judgment, against whatever Good Angel and Bad Angel advice she’s getting in her own mind. “Deck, I’m...begging you...see me again. I’m sorry I overreacted. I...don’t even know why I need to see you, to talk to you, only that I must.”

  The phone trembles in my hand. I think of her walking into this penthouse, drenched, soaking, her hair glued to her skin. I imagine myself sliding over to her, all forgiven, all forgotten, slipping off her jacket, then her shirt, her bra...

  “If you come here I’m going to make you spend the night, Blaze. I lost you once. And I can lose you again, but I won’t resist you. I won’t even try and resist you.” I need you. “Could you live with that?”

  “No, I couldn’t. But I’m going to risk it.”

  “When can I expect you?”

  “When do you want me?”

  “I want you now.”

  EIGHT

  SILENCE

  -1-

  Blaze Ryleigh

  What do you do? You fucked up, he fucked up, you both fucked up. But you both love each other still.

  So what do you do?

  And seeing him again might bring the ghosts back out of their graves, might send the zombies after you and thrust the vampires’ teeth deep into your veins until you’re seeing monsters and hurting yourself and, worst of all, hurting him again.

  But you love him.

  So what do you do?

  Do you take him, lead him on, let him know that if he steps on the coal he’s gonna get burned, even if the coals aren’t lit when he puts his feet on them? Or do you play the Enchantress, the Black Widow who will take his life when he sleeps but who was Cinderella when he was awake?

  Moralistic questions.

  Questions of right and wrong, good and bad, righteousness and sin.

  But you love him.

  So what the fuck do. you. do?

  At Café Monet, I put my phone in my purse, look up at Vikki. “I’m gonna go see him. Now.”

  She’s smiling. “I heard.”

  I stop for a second, wondering if I’ll fall when I stand, because my legs feel weak. Every part of me feels weak. “I— Forget it.”

  “I’ll be here, Blaze. Well, not here exactly, I’ll be at my apartment most likely, but I’ll be here. For you. No matter what happens. I’ll be here.”

  Just like last time. I nod, too emotional to answer. We both stand. She hugs me and I find myself trembling in her arms. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Blistering cold sleet sloshes over me as I step outside. The ten paces I take to my car are enough to have me frozen and drenched. I drive over to Deck’s. I park in his parking lot, get out. Another ten paces outside and I look like a scene from Singing in the Rain.

  Concierge Jacques smiles when he sees me. I smile back.

  In the elevator I count the numbers as they light up and take me all the way to the top of his high-rise. The elevator dings in perfect rhythm to the violin (did the owners plan that as well?), I step out, walk the two or three paces to Declan’s large double-doors, under the portico.

  I knock.

  He opens the door, freshly showered and gorgeously handsome.

  For a moment I’m taken back, back to when we were just me and him, two crazy lovebirds trying to hold onto anything solid in an unsteady world. Because right now, before Hello has been said or How Are You or anything else, he’s just a boy, and I’m just a girl, and we’re just standing here, looking at each other, wondering what will happen next. I smile, and he smiles back, his wet hair now looking darker, bringing out his majestic blue eyes.

  In a simpler world I would let him take me, let him wrap me in his arms while his hot lips made their way down my neck and his hands climbed their way under my shirt, step by step, finger by finger, to my bra, my breasts, my nipples...

  In a simple world. A world with no consequences.

  He warned me that if I came here, he’d “take me.” And I came because I’ll let him.

  I love him. I’ll always love him. Maybe we’re no good for each other, maybe we’re like that couple in Hancock, destined to destroy each other and eat each other alive simply by being in close proximity of each other.

  And I don’t care.

  The need is too great, too inexplicable. To goddamned primal.

  I’ll warn him. I’ll tell him that we’re stepping on dangerous ground, that this isn’t healthy, that it won’t be just sex for me, and probably also not for him. I’ll make him tell me he loves me because I won’t let him have me if he doesn’t. And I’ll know if he’s lying, because I know everything about Declan Cox, everything there is to know about him. I know how he likes his toothbrushes to be green because he thinks it’s lame to always stick with blue for boys and pink for girls. I know that his favorite pair of socks is one his mother gave him when he was twelve with a picture of Bart Simpson on each, holding a football. I know that he keeps that pair hidden way in the back of his sock drawer so no one can find it, and that he never wears it because they’ve grown too small. But also because it’s the only thing he can remember his mother giving to him before she got sick and he doesn’t want to ruin them. I know that he sticks his tongue out when he’s thinking and I know that his favorite t-shirt is one which says Sweetness and has a pic of a dude in a 34 football jersey but that he probably doesn’t wear it in front of his teammates because that Sweetness is referring to Walter Payton. And Payton played for the Chicago Bears.

  I know that he sings in the shower, and that he sings badly.

  I know Declan Cox, found Declan Cox. Now I need Declan Cox.

  It’s not healthy. I know this as well. But it’s life. And all I know now is that one more night with him, one more memory of how things were before they went so wrong, is all I want, all I can think of, all my mind has been able to consider for the last twenty-four hours.

  Declan Cox is my heroin.

  And I’m gonna shoot up.

  God help us all.

  -2-

  Declan Cox

  She’s at my door, just as I imagined her: Drenched and beautiful.

  “Never heard of an umbrella?”

  She smiles innocently, and I almost take her right here. But the smile is also painful, the mixture of a laugh and the underlying acid of uncried tears.

  She takes a step inside, and my arm blocks the door. “Blaze, I’ve warned you. If you come inside, I’m ripping your clothes off.”

  She nods, rasps out, “I know,” then walks against my arm. I hold it there just a second longer, and she curls her fingers over it, moves it away like a boom gate. Each finger is a test of my willpower, ripping it apart, crumbling it to tattered pieces.

  Her nails on my skin send fire over my body.

  I close the door. It clicks.

  Showers roar outside.

  Her smell, wet and perfumed, wafts up into me.

  It’s like things have never changed, her back facing me, her body an arm’s reach away...

  “What made you come?”

  She turns, her eyes red. “I need you.”

  It shatters me, because I need her too. I won’t admit it to her, but I do.

  “I’ve missed you,” she says, “and seeing that ink on your back, believing that you missed—miss—me as well, hasn’t stopped playing around in my mind. I’ve already said I’m sorry, and I’ll say it again. I don’t expect us to get back together. I think there’s too much past there, too much pain, too much...”

  “Betrayal.”

  She looks up at me. Her voice is sti
ll quiet, measured, as if she’s thinking carefully about every word. “Yes, too much betrayal.”

  Her lips shine at me, round and ready for mine to meet them. Her words start to drown away. Her view becomes a haze, an erotic haze that only needs my hand to touch it and bring it to me to make it real, to taste it, to mesh with it...

  “All I know is I need you, Deck. That’s all I know. I know nothing else. I don’t know if we should be together, can be together, will be together. I just know that I’m South and you’re North, and the magnet is the size of this earth. And I’m too tired to fight it. Not today, not this week. I can’t promise you you won’t get hurt. I know that I will get hurt, but I need you. That’s... That’s all I have to say.”

  Two drug addicts, needing a fix.

  As much as I want Blaze now, as much as I want to pick her fragile body up and slam into her, hungry, I can’t bear the thought of it being over so quickly.

  We stand here, staring, both wanting it, both needing it, both too afraid to take it...

  She runs her hand through her soaking wet hair.

  Her gem-green eyes look up at me. She starts shivering from the cold, but takes her jacket off because its wetness doesn’t help. Her tatted arm, a splotch of long color down her left side, brings a smile to my face as I remember the first time I saw it, looked at through a haze of underground party smoke.

  “It looks like you need to get out of those clothes, Blaze.”

  She swallows. “Do you, uhm, have a clean shirt...or something...I could borrow?”

  “No.”

  I take a step closer to her so that we’re only an inch away, look down at her. I grab her jacket and throw it on the couch. Her eyes quiver as they look at me, then they look at the floor, back up at me. “Why don’t we start with this denim vest. It’s soaking.” I slide my hands under the shoulders of it. My fingers stick to her wet shirt underneath, pulling it back slightly and making it stick to her breasts, accentuating them. My fingers clench around her shoulders as the hillocks of her nipples stare at me, teasing me. I slide her vest off, let it fall to the ground. She’s shivering intensely.