We walk up to the building in silence, stopping just outside the door.
She looks up at me with a pitiful smile.
And I just pull her into my chest.
Everything in her releases once she’s in my arms, a heavy sigh and shake of her head letting go of the tension she’s been holding. I just grip her tighter, running my hand through her hair.
“I know you’re not okay,” I say softly. “And we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But thank you for coming today, for putting up with my family,” I add with a chuckle. “I hope it helped.”
Erin pulls back, and though I long for her warmth as soon as it’s gone, I step back, too, giving her space.
“It did, it really did. Your family…” She smiles, shaking her head. “They’re wonderful.”
“It hasn’t always been this way.”
“That makes it even more special.”
I smile. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
Another quiet pause falls over us, and I’m just about to wish her goodnight when she rolls her lips together, crossing her arms over her chest and looking at my truck instead of at me when she asks, “Bear, am I desirable?”
Fuuuuuck me.
The ability to inhale or exhale or do anything at all is stolen with her question, my chest burning with the need to reach for her, pull her into me, and show her just how desirable she is. If I had my chance to have a real night with her, not like the one we had where we were both too drunk to remember, but a real night, she’d never even think of asking that question.
She wouldn’t have to.
She’d already know.
My throat is tight, nostrils flaring when I finally blow out a breath, and I slide my hands into my pockets to keep myself from reaching for her. “Erin, why would you even ask that?”
I mean for it to come off as are you fucking kidding me? Obviously, you are and how do you not already know that? But the way her bottom lip quivers, the way she tucks her chin and shakes her head before lifting her eyes to mine again and forcing a smile, I know I’ve said something wrong.
“No reason,” she whispers. “It was silly to even ask.”
“Erin…” I try, but she sniffs, leaning in to give me such a quick hug I don’t even get my hands out of my pockets to hug her back.
“Goodnight, Bear.”
And before I have the chance to get to the bottom of anything, she’s gone.
Still, I stand there, and I watch her wave at the front desk clerk of the lobby, watch her disappear into the elevator, watch the doors shut and block my view of her sad, broken face.
And I know in my gut the person responsible.
Gavin.
I may not know much past that, but there’s one thing I know for sure.
The sonofabitch is lucky I don’t know where he lives.
Season Finale
NOW WHAT?
It was the question I asked Brandon after we finally stopped playing games and fucked at the South Beach Agency Awards. It was the question I asked myself the next morning, when I woke up tangled in his sheets, feeling like I never left them at all and yet like a complete stranger in a place that once felt like a second home.
And now, two weeks later, I’m left wondering the same thing.
I stretch my arms up over my head and point my toes, feeling the juicy twist as I lean my hips one way and then the other in Brandon’s high-quality Egyptian sheets. When I creak my eyes open, the sun is splaying in through the windows, painting me in a ray of gold.
“I wish I was a painter,” Brandon muses from the doorway.
I smile when I flip onto my side to face him, propping my head up on my palm. “I seem to remember you painting a masterpiece last night,” I say, dragging the tip of my finger down the middle of my chest where he came after I gave him a long, slow blowjob.
Brandon chuckles and shakes his head, crossing the room and handing me one of the two cups of coffee in his hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” I admit, and I wince a little as I sit up and take the coffee from him. We’ve fucked more than any two humans should naturally be able to in the past two weeks.
Not that I’m complaining.
I eye him with my first sip, taking in his khaki slacks, leather dress shoes, and olive-green button up. “I hate that you’re already dressed.”
“Well, it is Monday.”
I sigh. “It is, isn’t it?”
“I wish I could lie here in this bed with you all day, but we’re both going to be late if we don’t get a move on.” Brandon checks the watch on his wrist, and then his warm eyes are on me again. “Come back for dinner after?”
I chuckle. “I should just pack a bag.”
“Maybe you should pack all of them.”
I pause with my coffee mug hovering below my lips, heart sluggish in my chest before it kicks to life with a thud. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, taking both our coffees and setting them on the bedside table. He folds his hands over mine and leans in close, his breath sweet and warm. “Move in with me.”
I blanch. “Move in?”
Brandon nods. “I know you have a place with Jess and Ashlei, and I know we just made up and there are a lot of things to discuss, but I—”
“Yes.”
He pauses, frowning at me like he can’t be sure he really heard me correctly. “Yes?”
I laugh, pulling my hands from his so I can loop my arms around his neck. “Yes, sir.”
The corner of his mouth pulls up into a sexy smirk at that, and he bites his lower lip, shaking his head before he kisses me long and deep. “You’re going to make me late for work if you keep talking like that.”
“I don’t think either of us would get fired,” I whisper, licking the seam of his lips until he opens his mouth and lets my tongue sweep inside.
We both groan at the touch, and he pulls me into his lap until I’m straddling him and wishing he was in briefs rather than dress pants.
“I mean it,” he says, breaking our kiss and holding my hips still so I don’t keep dragging them along his slowly hardening length. “I want you here, every night, every morning, every weekend. I want to see you walk through that door sweaty after pole class, and I want your workday frustrations, and I want to watch you soak this beautiful body of yours in my giant bathtub that I don’t use nearly enough.”
I smile. “I mean it, too.” Searching his eyes, I reach back to play with the short hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t think you understand. These last few months without you… I haven’t known what to do. I was going to work, and I was going to pole, and I was hanging out with friends and going out and trying to move on, but I just felt… stuck. Numb. Like the world was still spinning but I was hovering right above it, unable to put my feet on the ground and walk forward.”
Brandon heaves a sigh, letting his forehead rest against mine. “I know exactly what you mean. God, that day after I ran into you on my run…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what death feels like, but I imagine the way my chest was splitting open that I came pretty close.”
“Stubborn asshole,” I tease, kissing his nose. “You could have had me, right then and there.”
“I was angry.”
“And stubborn.”
“That, too,” he admits, pulling back to look me in the eyes. “But you kissed someone else.”
“She kissed me.”
Brandon levels his gaze with me, then, and I sigh, waving him off.
“Fine,” I admit. “I wasn’t innocent, I’ll give you that. But that little bitch ambushed me!” I pout. “Am I going to have to defend myself forever?”
Brandon chuckles at that. “No. I’ve already forgiven you, and I’m ready for both of us to move on.”
“Me, too.”
“You are the most frustrating woman I have ever met, but you keep me on my toes. I can’t predict you. And I like it.”
I smirk. “Good, because that won’t
change once I move in.”
“I hope it never changes. It’s what I love about you.”
I sigh, closing my eyes. “Say it again.”
“What?”
“That you love me.”
His hands squeeze my hips and I squeal when he effortlessly lifts me and presses me into the sheets, his hips separating my thighs.
“I love you, Ashlei Daniels,” he whispers against my neck before kissing a line down to my collarbone.
“I love you, too, Mr. Church.”
For a while, we just hold each other, kissing and touching and soaking in the morning rays. I haven’t dressed after Brandon stripped me last night, so as he runs his fingertips over my skin, I break out into a waterfall of chills.
“This is a big step, you know,” I say after a while. “With big implications.”
“Implications, huh?”
“Mm-hmm,” I say. “I mean, if I tell my parents that I’m moving in with a man, I imagine they’ll want to know what comes next.”
“And what do you want to come next?”
“I want to marry you and have twelve babies.”
“Twelve?” He barks out a laugh. “We need a bigger penthouse.”
“Or a real house. With a yard. Oh, and a dog!”
Brandon smiles, his eyes flicking between mine, and I expect him to laugh or call me crazy or tell me to slow down and hold my horses.
Instead, he just sweeps my hair out of my eyes and kisses me, soft and sweet. “Whatever you want.”
“You’re asking for trouble, not giving me any parameters.”
“I only want one thing, and that’s you. So as long as you’re mine, the rest is your call.”
I bite my lip, accepting his next kiss with my heart riding on the wings of a thousand butterflies.
“So,” he says, already kissing his way down to the swells of my breasts. He sucks a nipple between his teeth and bites gently. “Should we make a plan?”
I moan, arching into his touch, and I already know without him touching me that I’m wet and aching between my legs.
“Step one, I ride you until we’re both very late for work,” I say, and with the words, I roll us so I’m sitting on top. “Step two, we go to work.” I unfasten his belt, unzip his pants. “Step three, you meet me at my place and help me pack.” I yank his pants and briefs down, both of us laughing as I struggle in the process. But once his cock is free, both of our laughter fades. “And step four,” I breathe, running the smooth pad of my thumb over his glistening tip. “You bring me home.”
“Home,” he echoes, and then he groans as I roll my fist over his shaft. “I could get used to that.”
“Me, too, Mr. Church.”
And then my mouth is on his cock, and his hands are in my hair, and we’re well on our way to step one.
Who knows.
Maybe one day I’ll be Mrs. Church.
I rather like the sound of that.
WHY HAVE I BEEN here so many times?
I know this feeling as if it’s meant to be my perpetual state of being — the shaky hands, the shallow breaths, the racing heart, the dizziness and gut-wrenching sense of dread.
I’m not sure I even remember what it was like before I felt this for the first time, when I was staring down at that positive pregnancy test in my bathroom at the sorority house. Who was I, before that pivotal moment? That seems to be when it all changed, when I went from Erin Xanders, sorority girl living the dream, to Erin Xanders, magnet for eternal misery.
I thought it was finally turning around. I found a therapist who works well with me, and a therapy group that I feel comfortable sharing with. I feel like I’ve finally buried the demons of my past and stepped fully into the present. I graduated college. I started law school, just like I always said I would.
And I found an incredible guy.
Gavin has been everything I never thought a man could be — funny, mysterious, caring, and kind. From the moment he first laid eyes on me, I knew he saw deeper than even my closest friends ever did.
He knew my misery and pain, my scars, because he had them, too.
It feels like a dream, dizzying and foggy, how up and down my time with him has been. From him blowing off our first date to then pleasantly surprising me with an impromptu sushi dinner, from being a sarcastic little prick in group therapy to being the sweetest, most gentle and sensual partner on our spontaneous trip, and most recently, from being with me almost every night to only making time for lunch every other week.
He’s like the spinning teacup ride at Disney World, full of joy and laughter, but one wrong turn of the wheel away from a nauseating disaster.
I haven’t seen him since I left his apartment that night he rejected me.
For the first week after that, he was calling me every night, texting me throughout the day, checking in. But then the contact became less and less, the texts fewer and farther between. I asked him multiple times when I’d see him next, and he always found a clever way to avoid the question.
He didn’t show up to group therapy like he said he would.
He didn’t meet me for lunch or take me out for dinners or even stop by after work or school.
And eventually, he just stopped talking to me altogether.
It was a gut punch, one I didn’t know how to sit with. I tried to convince myself that he was just busy, that he wouldn’t just abandon me, that he wouldn’t ghost me after all we’d been through. But the more calls that went unanswered, the more texts I sent without a reply, the more reality sank in.
I tried tracking him down through our group therapist, but she hadn’t heard from him in weeks.
I tried showing up unannounced at his job, but they said he quit unexpectedly.
I even showed up at the Palm South campus and marched right into the building where I knew he had class that afternoon. But when the class let out, he wasn’t among the students that flowed from the classroom, and his professor said he’d been absent the past three classes.
He didn’t just ghost me.
He ghosted everyone.
Which is why I have that all-too-familiar sense of dread simmering low in my gut as I stare at the envelope with my name sprawled across the front.
It’s his handwriting.
And it was delivered anonymously to the front desk downstairs, no stamp or return address.
Usually, I’d want to be alone for this. I don’t like anyone around when I’m feeling this way. I want to be left alone to my misery so no one can talk me out of it.
But right now, I need a friend.
Ashlei is either with Brandon or at work, no telling these days, and Jess is in her second week now at her brand-new job. I can’t just bombard her when she hasn’t even learned the employee handbook.
And I definitely can’t wait until after work.
I debate calling Skyler, but it’s Wednesday, which means, as president, she’s at the Panhellenic meeting. And though I could call Cassie, she’s probably in class.
Even if she isn’t, I’m not sure she’s the one I want here right now.
“Looks like I’m on my own,” I finally decide, letting a deep sigh flow from my chest before I slip my fingernail under the crease of the envelope and slide it along the top to tear it open. I pull out a neatly folded sheet of notebook paper, then with an internal pep talk, I convince myself I can handle whatever it says.
And I open it.
Erin,
I’m sorry to do this to you.
I swallow just at the first line, and tears already prick my eyes, because I know now that whatever follows that sentence is going to hurt me.
There are many things I wish for in this world, and I could write a five-page letter if I detailed all of them to you, but I’ll save you the boredom. All you really need to know is that what I wish more than anything is that I would have met you in a different time in my life.
Whether it was before the car accident or ten years from now when, hopefully, I’ll actually have my
shit together, I just wish it was different.
As it is now, I’m no good for you.
I’m no good for anyone.
The tears blur my vision so much I have to look up at the ceiling and force a breath before I can keep reading.
I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re an enigma, a light so strong I couldn’t help but be drawn to you from the start. I knew I should have resisted, which was why I blew you off that first time I was supposed to take you out. But then I saw you again, and I just couldn’t tell myself no.
I’ve been living in this fairytale with you, in this place where I pretend like I’m okay and that you’re the answer to all my prayers and that we’re good together. It’s why I touched you that first night outside of the poetry bar. It’s why I soaked up every minute of our trip together. But something happened on Valentine’s Day that struck me back to reality.
You trusted me enough to give yourself fully to me, even after what happened to you.
And I realized that I didn’t feel the same.
I’ve been so eager to take all your scars and mend them, to hold you and bring you peace, but I haven’t been willing to let you in to do the same for me. I can barely talk about what happened with my sister, let alone the myriad of other things in my life that you have no idea about.
To be blunt, I’m fucked up, Erin.
And I can’t be with you.
A sob racks my chest so violently that I slap a hand over my mouth to try to soothe it, my tears splotting the blue ink on the notebook paper when they fall. I squeeze my eyes shut and compose myself as best I can before reading further.
I know it won’t make a difference, because even now, reading this far, I know I’ve hurt you. But I want you to know that it’s not just you. It’s everything — school, work, life.
I’m not okay, and I’m finally admitting it.
That’s why I’m voluntarily checking myself into a treatment center.
I think about killing myself every single day, Erin. Sometimes multiple times a day. And as much as I care about you, I can’t submit you to this. You don’t deserve it. In fact, it’s because I care about you that I’m doing the right thing in letting you go.
Hazed: A New Adult College Romance (Palm South University Book 6) Page 21
