Bare_Raw 2

by C. A. Harms

“She took him and with it she took my ability to trust. I felt like everything I imagined my life to be was nothing but a hoax. It became easier after that to remain detached. Then I held the control over everything, and it became my way of life.”

  “Which explains your need to keep everything within a relationship business-like.” Brynn looks back at me with understanding in her eyes. “No emotions or expectations, and so many rules.”

  “I thought it was the only way to keep myself from reliving that same nightmare.”

  Chapter 20

  Brynn

  I felt raw, I may not have been there when he’d had his life ripped apart, but I could swear I felt his pain in that moment. I know it’s not the same but I imagine what I would feel if Katelynn was taken from me and I was never to see her again. It would shred me.

  We finished our meal, though I couldn’t really taste a single bite. The agony he felt and still did couldn’t be hidden. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his words. There was a sadness in his eyes that I’d never seen before. An emptiness that made him seem so vulnerable. The knowledge of what he’d gone through, how he’d chosen to live a life of solitude versus every feeling he felt before broke me. Never allowing himself to love again just to keep his heart protected seems like such a lonely way to live.

  Even after the bill was paid and we exited the restaurant I knew there was more he wanted to say, but I think he was spent. He’d allowed me to see two years of pent up anger and sadness. He shared everything he spent so much time hiding. There was a somber haze hanging over us both, like unsettled feelings. I want to tell him I understand and that it’s all okay, yet I know the pain I still feel inside over the way things fell apart between us wasn’t something I could simply ignore. It would take time and healing on my part to trust him again. But for the first time since the night at the club, I felt like he wasn’t the enemy.

  Leaning against the side of my car, I feel the heat of his body pressed to my side. I want to say so many things, yet I remain silent waiting for him to break the tension.

  “I want you to know that nothing happened with Raine.” It wasn’t what I expected to be his first words after everything he just told me. “It was wrong of me to treat you the way I did. But it was my way of pushing you away because I wanted you to hate me.”

  “Why would you want that?” I ask finally looking at him.

  “Because if you hated me then it would be easier for me to stay away from you. Or so I thought.” The side of his mouth tips upward but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “It backfired, because being away from you was worse than trying to resist the pull I felt when you were near. And it only made me feel worse in the end because I knew I hurt you”

  “You’re a confusing man.” I shake my head, trying to hide my own smirk.

  “Like I said before you defied all my rules.”

  “Are you saying I’m difficult?” This makes him laugh and I smile up at him seeing that man from before. The guy that lay on my couch in the living room and carried on with Katelynn about Adam Sandler and all the other characters in the movie Grown-Ups. The man that at that moment appeared to have not a care in the world.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He doesn’t even try to deny it or sugar coat it which only makes my smile widen. “You went against me right from the start, and though I tried to act as if it frustrated me, it only made me want you more.”

  When I see sincerity flash in his eyes, my heart rate feels as though it picks up, thumping hard and rapid. I wasn’t ready for this, this connection I feel and have felt for him since the first word he spoke. Even before that I think, that nervous energy one gets right before something big happens only I had no idea that what I felt that night was related to a man that now changed my life forever.

  I look away quickly because that intensity in his gaze only causes a vulnerability to return that I knew I couldn’t allow. So much had happened, so many things said and done. I knew if I just simply allow myself back into this mess with Alec with blinders on I would later hate myself. I don’t think I could take another round of crazy at this point. I need security and I wasn’t sure I could gain it in Alec. He has so much to work through, and in a way so do I.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” he whispers as the back of his hand brushes against my own. “But I know that I want to be in this baby’s life as much as possible,” he pauses for only a few seconds, “and yours.”

  “Alec,” I wasn’t even sure what to say, but I think he senses my struggle.

  “You don’t need to say anything in return,” his assurance doesn’t soothe me because I can see it in his eyes that he wishes I would. “I just want you to know that I’m here.”

  “I would never deny you a life with your child.” And I wouldn’t, even before I knew what I know now, I wanted Alec to be in our child’s life.

  “But yours is a different story.”

  A big part of me wanted to say all I need is time, but I couldn’t, because I wasn’t sure time could honestly fix the wedge I now felt was lodged between us.

  “I’m willing to hold out even for that small possibility that you may give me a second chance.” Why did he have to keep saying things like that? Things that made me want to throw caution to the wind and ignore that voice in my head that was screaming for me to guard my heart. “I won’t push, Brynn, but I also won’t hide my need to care for you. It’s not just because you’re carrying my baby, because that urge was there from the beginning, only now I’ll admit it’s non-negotiable.”

  “Oh really?” I ask him with a smirk on my face.

  “Yes.” And there is that cocky man I remember. Only now that smoldering look in his eyes was filled with playfulness that I rarely got to see before, yet when I was gifted with it, I felt blessed. “You’ll fight me on it, because that’s just you, but you should now, none of that scares me.”

  “I can be pretty intimidating at times,” I try for the serious look he conveys and epically fail and he challenges me with a lift of his brows. “You’ll see,” I nudge him in the side with my elbow and he chuckles before pulling me in close to him for a sideways hug. It was a different kind of feeling than all the other times I’d been in his hold, a caring, friendly one. It felt nice to be like this with Alec, gone was the tension, and in its place was an acceptance. One I know wouldn’t last long, because he wasn’t a man to back down.

  “When do you go to the doctor?”

  “Oh, that reminds me.” I stand tall once more and break from his hold as I dig inside my handbag. With a smile on my face I pass him the sonogram picture I’d gotten only a few days ago and watch as he looks at it closely. “It’s early, and Katelynn says it looks more like an alien or a blob than a baby, but—”

  “It’s beautiful,” he finishes my sentence as he continues to look at the picture, tracing over it with his fingertip. “I remember this feeling.” When he looks up I see his eyes shining in the darkness of the night with unshed tears. “This deep crushing weight on my chest, like I can’t breathe. It’s such an amazing feeling.”

  He was referring to what he felt once before when he was told he was a father and my heart broke for him all over again.

  Reaching out I place one hand over his and offer a gentle squeeze. “The difference is that this time, this baby is part of you, and no one will ever take him or her away from you.” I hope he understands just how much I meant those words. When he nods before his gaze shifts to the photo once more, I can still feel that vulnerable hesitation within him and it almost breaks me.

  “Uncle Aric is back.” I roll my eyes as I enter the living room just at the point where Katelynn allowed the oversize kid to enter our apartment. He has really owned the uncle title, not only was he all about Katelynn, but the little Reynolds I’m harvesting too. “I brought presents.”

  I watch him place not one but three large bags onto the loveseat and wonder if it truly was him that these so called presents were from. Or were they bought by a cert
ain man that I believe may be using his brother as the go between?

  “What kinda presents?” Katelynn jumps up from her place near the coffee table where she was doing her homework and moves toward him like a bullet.

  Aric looks as if he is greatly enjoying playing the early Santa as he begins digging through the bags. “This one is yours,” he passes the larger of the three to Katelynn and she lights up, her eyes growing wide and she eagerly reaches for the bag. “And the other two are yours.”

  “Truth time?” I ask, and his smile falters for just a split second, before he nods and quickly recovers. It was a game him and I started playing a couple days ago, and it was a time when I already knew the answer to my question yet I was giving him his chance to come clean. “Are these presents from you, or are you just the delivery boy?”

  “First off,” he arches a brow and narrows his eyes. “I am not a boy.” He punctuates this statement with the infamous Reynolds smirk. “And if the situation was different I would prove it,” then comes the wink I’ve seen many times before.

  When I roll my eyes in Katelynn fashion he chuckles.

  “Because I can’t lie to my girls,” ‘his girls,’ yeah, apparently he’d claimed us. “They may not be from me directly but I do approve of them.” I say nothing only cross my arms over my chest and stare back at him. “Cut the guy a break, he’s trying, Brynn, but he’s always been the one used to being in charge. He can’t be here directly, but he’d go insane if you cut him off completely too.”

  Katelynn squeals in delight and I look over at her just as she pulls a tablet out of the bag and a new coat to follow. “I love it all,” she says in awe. New hat, gloves, and scarf to match she looks back at me, and even though it all felt like entirely too much, I couldn’t help the joy I felt seeing her smile.

  “It’s pretty,” I tell her, and it wasn’t only pretty it also looked very expensive.

  “What did you get?” I’m suddenly reminded of the fact that I have a bag waiting. With hesitancy I sit on the edge of the couch near Katelynn and begin to look inside the bag. I wasn’t sure if by accepting these items was entitling Alec to some type of claim or allowing him to gain one step closer to things I wasn’t sure I was ready to give him. One being my heart.

  The first item I pull from the bag is my own tablet, only mine was pink and Katelynn’s was purple. I assumed it was Aric that had given him a little help in that category because I wasn’t sure that Alec knew either of us this well.

  I keep my head down as I continue to pull out one item after another. My own coat, hat, and gloves with a matching scarf. A set of the softest house slippers I’d ever felt and a stuffed animal. A tiny little stuffed giraffe. Immediately my eyes clouded with tears and I took in one deep breath after another. It wasn’t a gift for me, but a gift for his child. It was his acceptance, and though I’d heard the words from him the night we shared dinner, this little giraffe was a confirmation of those words.

  “He’s not a bad guy,” Aric says as he sits next to me on the couch. “He hit a rough patch, Brynn, but if you’d known the man prior to that you wouldn’t be able to recognize them as the same. He holds the ability to love someone so fiercely that it may seem suffocating at times. That guy is still inside him, I’m seeing him more everyday.”

  I only nod still holding the toy in my hand securely as I stare ahead at it.

  “He wants to fix things, and I know that something like that, after everything, it’ll take time. But I also know that you feel something for my brother, I’ve seen it in the way you react whenever he’s brought up.” I squeeze the giraffe just a little tighter. “Let him back in, Brynn, I’ve never seen him more dedicated to making things right, then he is now.”

  “He can’t make things right by buying us gifts.” I finally look away from the animal.

  “He’s got my vote,” Katelynn says as she taps away on the tablet.

  “No, but when you’ve got him on limits, when he knows he can’t just show up and use other ways to show you he cares, this is all he knows.” There was a small silence that settles over the room before Katelynn spins around so fast she gains both Aric’s and my attention.

  “ReynoldsGirls,” she whispers in awe, “are you telling me that we have internet?”

  “What?” I knew before I even took the chance to face Aric that the items in the bags weren’t the only thing that Alec had done.

  “That was me.” Aric shrugs. “I mean, he refuses to allow me to pay, but I’m the one that mentioned you can’t have a tablet without internet. So in a way it is a gift from me too.”

  My shoulders sag and Aric pulls me in for a hug, “He needs to know he’s taking care of you, it’s who he is. The rest will come with time, the love and devotion, but this is all he can give you for now, until you two work through the rest. Until you choose to let him in.”

  I still didn’t know for sure if I could do that. Letting him in meant opening up my heart once again, and I still felt bare from the last time I did that.

  “Hey.” Aric pulls back and flashes me a smile. “You should be thanking me. I didn’t let him buy what he’d set out that morning to get.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “An Audi Q5,” I stare at him wondering what in the hell a Q5 was. “A car, Brynn, he wanted to buy you a new car.”

  My heart feels as though it lurches in my chest. “He is not buying me a car.”

  Aric only shrugs which did nothing to ease the panic I felt. I had a feeling this was all just the beginning of a long stretch of splurging. My stomach ached at the thought.

  Chapter 21

  Alec

  “I need that Anderson file on my desk, as well as Pfeiffer.” I let go of the intercom button, and turn back to my computer once again becoming engrossed in my work. Old habits die hard and I’d become once again used work as a way to occupy my thoughts. It was easier than doing the things I really want to do, like going to Brynn’s demanding she let me be there for her in every way possible.

  I don’t even look up when my office door comes open, expecting it to be my assistant bringing me the paperwork I asked for only moments ago. “You can just lay them on the desk.” I direct as I scan over the figures for my upcoming projects.

  “Sorry to interrupt.”

  I spin in my chair and find Brynn standing in the doorway and my chest tightens immediately. I swear each time I see her she becomes more beautiful. “You’re not interrupting anything, please,” I stand and move around my desk in a hurry. “Come in.”

  She moves in with that timidness I remember about her. That caution that makes her seem so quiet and scared, her innocence that had originally been the biggest draw I had to her. The difference was then I wanted to take advantage of that shyness, take her under my wing and mold her into exactly what I needed her to be. I was wrong, so wrong, that I wanted to take from her only the things I was longing for, but now it was different. The need I had to sooth her was so strong within me. The desire to hold her body to mine and make all the promises I was more than willing to keep if she’d just give me one more chance.

  “I wanted to stop by and thank you,” she said, looking around the room instead of directly at me. “The gifts weren’t necessary, but they were perfect. Katelynn and I are both very grateful.”

  When her eyes finally meet mine I can sense that she wants to say more, yet she quickly presses her lips in a tight line. My hands itch to reach out for her, yet I grip the edge of my desk as I sit back on the desktop.

  “I want to believe that your intentions are genuine.” My heart rate spikes as the confident woman I’d seen only a few days ago slowly emerges. “Everything inside me is screaming that I should keep this thing between us strictly about the baby and nothing more.”

  “What does your heart tell you,” I ask as I grip the desk so tight I feel the ache in my fingers from the pressure.

  “It tells me the same thing it has over and over since the first night I met you.” I remain quiet wait
ing for her to continue. “It tells me that there is a good man with an amazing heart hidden inside you. But then I remember how you were that night at the club, how you dismissed me so easily for Raine.”

  Her words, and the disappointment in her eyes cuts through me like a knife.

  “And it still hurts just as much as it did that night. I wanna believe that something like that could never happen again, but I can’t get that vision out of my head. How easy it looked for you to treat me as though I meant nothing.”

  She takes in a shuddering breath and I feel my own chest ache with such an intense amount of discomfort. “I understand where you were coming from in regard to the questioning of being the father. It doesn’t mean that it hurts any less, but I see now where you were coming from.”

  “I was wrong,” I push off the desk and move toward her, “taking Raine up to that room. It was all wrong, I was pushing back after you left my penthouse, and nothing about it was fair. But nothing happened, and I don’t expect you to believe me. I know I need to earn your trust but I need you to know that there was nothing shared between her and I. I stood inside that room, watching you through the window.” Brynn looks up at me, her eyes filling with unshed tears. “I watched as you stared up toward the top of the stairs, a look of devastation on your face that fucking cut me open, Brynn. There I was, the man responsible for that pain, and the hardest thing was not coming to you. But in the moment I felt you were better off. I felt like going down there to you would cause more pain than me letting go. Everything you made me feel, everything you make me want, it scared the hell out of me.”

  “Saying I was better off was not your decision to make,” she confesses. “I know I left telling you that I couldn’t be who you wanted me to, but I wanted more than anything for you to want me anyway.”

  “And I did,” I reach out for her, placing my hand on her hip. “I do.”