by Maegan Abel
My hand was covering my mouth, containing the sob that wanted to break free as I watched Zane’s back heave with heavy breaths. After everything I’d said to him, the way I’d acted, here he was, standing up for me to a man that I never had the courage to stand up to myself.
“She deserves the world, everything she could ever want. And while I may not have the means financially, it’s not the material things in life she wants. I intend to give her everything I have. And I couldn’t give a fuck less what you have to say about it,” Zane said, turning before I had a chance to move. He froze when he saw me through the crack in the door, his expression shocked for a moment before he continued. He opened the door, immediately pulling me into his arms.
“You have to forgive me,” he whispered into my hair. “I don’t care if I have to spend every day of the rest of my life proving to you that you can trust me, I’ll do it. But one day, you’ll have to forgive me. I won’t give up, Pixie. Not on us. Not ever.”
Slipping my hands around his waist, I clung to him, letting his presence alone remind me of all the things I knew to be true. He loves me. He would give his life for me. He needs me.
“Get me out of here. Please?” I begged, wishing I’d never even come to begin with. I wanted to erase most of this night, forget that it ever happened. I felt his relief before he even sighed into my hair.
“I love you,” he said, kissing the top of my head before pulling away. He didn’t wrap an arm around me the way he had been since he arrived in Texas. He’d somehow lost that edge that made me feel like he thought I was going to fall apart. Instead, he took my hand, entwining our fingers as he guided me toward the front of the house.
Lying with Lili asleep in my arms was and always would be some of the most peaceful moments of my life. Currently, she was fighting that last drop into a deep sleep, giving little gasps occasionally that kept my hands slowly stroking along her skin to soothe her. Every time I fell asleep, I worried that she would have a nightmare, but there was nothing I could do to help her aside from what I was doing now. Or so she said.
When we’d left her parents’ house, she’d gotten a call from the prosecutor. Tomorrow they would be closing the gallery to all viewers. They would allow the jury, the judge, both attorneys, and Hunter to watch the video. Lili declined when he said she could be in the room if she chose. I couldn’t blame her. I was glad she wouldn’t have to relive it in a video, especially with that fucker in the room.
Following the video, the two attorneys would give their closing arguments and they suspected that by late afternoon, the jury would go into deliberations. Most likely, in the next twenty-four hours, this would be over.
And tomorrow, since we would be notified when the verdict was in and we could go back to the courthouse then, I was putting my plan into action. I hadn’t realized until I was talking to Denni and Kaitlyn that Lili and I hadn’t had anything that could constitute as an actual date. It was a huge oversight on my part, which I was using my new connections to rectify.
Lili’s eyes suddenly flashed open and she sat straight up, nearly slamming her head into mine.
“Whoa. Easy, Pix. I’m right here,” I said soothingly. I was getting used to her nightmares now and while this one definitely wasn’t one of the worst I’d seen, I hated anything that had her waking in a panic.
“Zane,” she choked out, curling into me and burying her face in my chest. She was shivering but she didn’t seem to be crying this time. At least, not yet.
“Shh…” I ran my hands over her back as I held her, letting her relax against me. Finally, she tilted her chin up to look at me.
“Promise me something,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.
“What’s that?” I asked, curious if whatever she wanted me to promise would give me some kind of insight into her nightmares.
“Promise me you’ll stop taking stupid risks for me.”
I felt my brow furrow as I stared into her eyes. “Stupid risks?”
“Like throwing yourself in front of a bullet.”
My jaw clenched as I realized she was asking me to not try to save her life. “I won’t promise that.”
“Think about Conner. What would happen to him? Where would he be right now if you hadn’t pulled through?” She seemed to stumble over the words as my eyes narrowed at her.
“That’s a low blow, Lili.”
“I know, but it’s all I have to work with.”
I took a deep breath, trying to think through her words. I couldn’t promise not to protect her. “I don’t think you realize just how much you mean to me. I can’t just stand back and let something happen to you.”
“Please, just think about it. Think about your son. He needs you.”
I stared at her, taking in her features one at a time as I considered her words again. “Go back to sleep, Pixie,” I said, kissing her on the forehead. If she wanted a direct answer on that, she wouldn’t get it. There wasn’t a direct answer, not when it came to the two most important people in my life.
“Why are we at the marina?” Lili looked around, confused as I walked her down the dock. I laughed, glancing over my shoulder at her.
“Did you really just ask me that?”
She made a face at me, rolling her eyes as we continued past the rows of boats. When I paused, she looked in front of us, raising an eyebrow. “You rented the party boat?”
“You’ve been on the party boat?” I asked, not answering her question.
She shrugged. “No, my parents own a boat and we’d come out once or twice during the summer with them. My father would always complain about the kids on the party boats.”
“Well, we will just have to make sure we do all kinds of things he would complain about while we’re on it then.” I grinned, pulling her to me and kissing her deeply.
We’d decided this morning, or she’d decided, that we weren’t going to talk about the trial until we got the call that the verdict was in. She wanted today to be a stress-free day and I told her I was already a few steps ahead of her. I had it all planned out.
“Is that so?” She smirked, watching as I carefully stepped over and onto the deck of the boat. When she moved to follow, I tugged on her hand, throwing her off balance. She gasped and let out a small squeak of surprise before I caught her in my arms.
“You’re a menace!”
“A menace?” I raised an eyebrow at her, letting her slide slowly down my body until her feet were on the deck. Catching her was playful; carrying her right now would probably piss her off. The lines I had to keep in mind when it came to my independent girl.
“Yes. A menace. If it makes you feel better, I could call you a jerkface?” I laughed, shaking my head as I turned to lead her by the hand toward the seats. “Asshat?”
“You think you’re so clever.” I used my grip on her hand to tug her to me, leaning down to kiss her deeply, completely disarming her. She blinked up at me through her lashes when I finally pulled away, letting out a heavy breath.
“What were we talking about?”
“That’s what I thought,” I chuckled, kissing her nose as I continued toward the seats.
“Do you know how to drive a boat?” She sounded skeptical, though still a little breathless.
“Are you doubting my skills?” I pointed to the seat directly beside the captain’s chair.
“Are you trying to tell me you have skills?”
“That hurts. Really. That was like, a junk punch for absolutely no reason,” I laughed as she dropped into the seat, shrugging her shoulders. She tipped the large sunglasses she was wearing down to eye me while I started the engine.
I followed the directions I’d been given, finding a fairly quiet cove area to anchor us in for a while. It was beautiful here. The sand lined the lower area and led up into massive trees. The contrast to Lake Mead being constantly surrounded by the mountains was impressive.
“What are you thinking?” Lili asked, walking up beside me and leaning into my side. I pulled h
er in front of me, wrapping my arms around her as we both looked out at the view.
“I was thinking it was beautiful here but when you walked up, it became stunning.”
She snorted, shaking her head and tipping it back to look up my chest at me. “Too cheesy.”
I shrugged, looking back out to the trees. “It’s true.”
She smiled as she returned her gaze to the distance as well. “So, where did you learn drive a boat?”
I stilled. The question was something I should’ve expected, but I hadn’t, and the suddenness caught me completely off guard. She felt my reaction and turned in my arms, facing me.
Sighing, I ran a hand over my hair. Honesty. This was why I hated the concept of complete honesty between us. “Um… Adam’s dad made him spend his summers doing all sorts of shit he hated. Somewhere around sixth grade, he started refusing to participate unless he could bring a friend. After that, I was dragged along to sailing classes and summer arts programs…” I shrugged. Her expression was frozen in shock for a moment before she nodded, turning back to face the water. “I’m sorry. I was trying to be honest.”
“So, his parents were rich?” she finally asked, her voice a little strained.
Tightening my grip on her, I decided to talk as long as I could before it got too hard. “Yeah. It wasn’t something that meant anything to either of us until junior high. In elementary school, social status isn’t really something you understand unless it’s forced on you at home. His parents wouldn’t let him come to my house. They weren’t mean about it or anything. They welcomed me into their home, actually. It was an escape for me.”
“You guys really were friends for that long?” She sounded genuinely surprised.
“We met in first grade. He was always arrogant and mouthy but one day he smarted off to the wrong person and got himself into a fight. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up in the middle of it. By the time the teachers came to break it up, Adam had fought his way in front of me and was defending me. He apologized in the office when the nurse was cleaning us up and we just became friends. As we got older…” I sighed. “As we got older, I learned how to use charm to get pretty much anything I wanted. I was better at it than Adam. I had a short fuse but his was nonexistent. He was constantly getting into fights and I’d end up having to talk our way out of things. I hate fights. Violence is something I grew up dealing with at home so the last thing I wanted to do was deal with it any place else.”
“So, what happened?” She turned again, leaning with her back against the railing as we spoke.
“What happened?”
“Well, what happened between then and now?”
“He fucked my wife,” I snapped, watching her eyes widen. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my hands around her hips. “Sorry.”
“There wasn’t a falling out before that? He just jumped into bed with Lizzie?”
I sighed, dropping my head. This was starting to tread on the area that I wasn’t ready to get into yet. “Our families have… history. Complicated history. I never thought it would affect us. I mean, I knew he could be a heartless prick, I’d seen him do some pretty fucked up things to people he didn’t like in the past, but I never really thought he’d turn on me. Not like that, at least.”
Aside from the wind and the birds, it was quiet. I stared past her and watched the water lap slowly toward the boat.
“What about Lizzie?” she finally asked, her voice quiet.
My eyes found hers again. “What about her?”
“You’re focusing so much on what he did, his betrayal, but what about Lizzie? She betrayed you too.”
“I left her, didn’t I?” My voice was cold. The memory of all of Lizzie’s actions both then and more recently had me on edge.
“You also went back to her. More than once,” she pressed. Her fingers gripped my waist, holding me close like she was afraid I would walk away from her words. I wanted to.
“And it was a mistake each and every time.”
She was quiet then, her eyes drifting down and scanning the deck of the boat. I took a breath, struggling to find a subject change but she seemed to find her voice before I could. “And what’s changed?”
I took Lili’s face in my hands, using my thumbs to tilt her chin toward me. Carefully, I lifted her sunglasses and rested them on top of her head so I could look her in the eye. “I found something real. Something that put things into perspective for me. I found the one that could make me believe in the concept of true love.”
Her eyes shimmered but I couldn’t tell if it was the sun or my words. Her fingers gripped my shirt so tight, I was sure if I looked down her knuckles would be white. “You can’t tell me you didn’t love her. Why would you stay with someone that long if you didn’t?”
I could feel her gaze gently probing at the depths of my soul. I fought the urge to break our eye contact while I thought of a suitable way to explain. “You know a little about my father,” I started, nearly choking on the word. I shook my head, I couldn’t go that far into it, but I’d try to give her something. “We were all pretty much raised with the belief that we were completely worthless. To our parents, to the world… just worthless. Period. It’s hard to love someone when you don’t love yourself. You don’t feel like you deserve them or their love.”
“Everyone deserves love,” she whispered, a single tear weaving a trail down her pink cheek as she rested a hand over my heart.
I shook my head slowly, covering her hand with mine. “Not everyone. Sometimes, people do things that are so deplorable, so completely unforgivable, that something inside of them dies. Something pure and good and whatever it is, it’s attached to that part of them that can truly accept love. And if you can’t accept love, you can’t honestly give your love to someone else.”
Another tear fell to her cheek as she shook her head slowly, her mouth opened to speak but she couldn’t seem to find her voice. I brushed the tears away and took her hand, pulling her toward the cabin. “Come on.”
I led her into the shade and pulled out the picnic basket Denni and Kaitlyn had hidden. When I sat it down on the bench seat, Lili smirked. Her amusement didn’t quite cover the discomfort of where we left the previous conversation. “Seriously?”
“Just shut up and enjoy it,” I said, gesturing for her to open it. She laughed when she saw what was inside. It was full of to-go containers from a creole restaurant that Kaitlyn claimed was one of Lili’s favorites.
“How did you know?” Her voice was soft and the adoration on her face was something I savored. Lili was usually so guarded that seeing her starting to let those walls down, even though I’d screwed up, was incredibly overwhelming.
“Kaitlyn and Denni. They helped me plan this,” I said, nodding my head toward the wheel to indicate the entire day.
“Of course they did.” She shook her head with a smile and started pulling out containers, piling them between us.
When she opened the salad, she raised an eyebrow. She didn’t eat lettuce and I knew that. “That’s mine.” I took it, placing it on the other side of me while she continued opening the boxes.
“Are you going to try some of this?” she asked, holding up the disgusting looking crawfish. I shook my head.
“I don’t eat seafood.”
“At all?” She sounded dubious. She glanced up, clearly trying to scan her memory.
“Nope.”
“Why not?” She cracked one side of the shell and pulled off the tail, dropping it into the empty lid. I watched, disgusted as she pulled the meat out of the shell and dunked it in some kind of sauce.
“Why don’t you eat lettuce?” I asked, digging through the bag for the plastic utensils.
“Because it’s nasty,” she answered, scrunching her nose as I looked up at her.
I pointed the small baggy of plastic ware at her. “Exactly.”
“When have you ever tried crawfish? Like, real, fresh crawfish?”
I shook my head. “Never. And
I’m not going to.” I eyed her as a smile stretched across her face. It was mischievous and I knew immediately that I was in trouble. “Don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, just don’t.”
“What?” she asked innocently, rising slowly and walking over to stand in front of me. I watched her cautiously as she moved the salad off my lap, taking its place before I could even think to stop her. She straddled my legs, kicking off her flip-flops and resting her knees on either side of my hips as the skirt she was wearing rode up her thighs. “Maybe I just missed your lips.”
This was a distraction, a trick of some sort. But I didn’t care. I grabbed her hips, yanking her forward so our bodies were flush. “If you’re going to tease, at least make it worth my while.”
“Who said anything about teasing? Wasn’t it you who said we needed to do all kinds of things for people to complain about while we were on the party boat?” she asked, shifting her hips against me as my erection pressed painfully into my zipper. Lili was sexy without even trying. When she was actually being seductive, she was fucking impossible to ignore. I reached a hand between us to adjust myself but she stopped me. “Oh no, allow me.”
I groaned when she palmed me through the denim, running the flat of her hand over my length as she rolled her body in time with the movements. My fingers gripped her hips, wanting to yank her against me again, but forcing myself to let her have control. It was a totally different experience to let someone else take the lead. It wasn’t a bad thing, just different. Of course, everything about my relationship with Lili was different.
She made quick work of my belt, popping the button and lowering the zipper on my jeans. Keeping my hands on her waist, I pressed my shoulders into the back of the seat and lifted my hips as she struggled to get my jeans and boxers out of the way. She wrapped her small hand around me then, causing me to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning. She lifted my hand from her waist, folding my fingers down so only two were raised. She pulled them to her mouth, licking and sucking on them in a way that had my dick twitching in her hand as he silently begged her to do that to him. When she finished, she kept her eyes on mine as she lowered my hand, guiding it under her skirt. She maintained a firm grip, holding her panties aside with a finger as she used mine to gently stroke her tender skin.
