Decline (Declan Reede: The Untold Story #1)

by Michelle Irwin

  I pushed harder and faster, adding my fingers into the mix to press against her clit until she was writhing in ecstasy beneath me. When she came, her walls tightened around my length and drove me to release too.

  “Holy fucking hell!” I cried out as my body convulsed against hers. My arms gave way a little and I fell onto her. She wrapped her arms and legs tightly around me and held me in place.

  It was perfection.

  The sensation of releasing inside her with no barriers was just fucking bizarre. More sticky and wet than I would have imagined, but somehow that made it all the more sexy. When I regained some control over my body, I pushed myself up just enough to look at her. “So, what’s a Mirena?”

  She laughed loudly, her body shaking against me, tightening the hold she had on my cock and causing my body to quiver. I captured her mouth with mine and moved my tongue passionately against hers.

  I love you, my mind screamed. And I knew without doubt the sentiment was the truth. As much as I’d denied it over the years, I was one hundred percent in love with Alyssa Dawson. I just couldn’t force my mouth to make the words. Not in that moment at least. It seemed contrite, as if I were saying it out of some weird obligation because I’d just fucked her. As if love had anything to do with fucking.

  Pulling out slowly, I stood and offered her my hand. When she was standing, I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her into a tight embrace. I let her presence wash over me and relished in its calming effect.

  “Thank heavens for fucking without complications,” she said after a beat. Her voice shook slightly and her breathing was still irregular. It almost sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “I really needed that.”

  She kissed my cheek and pulled out of the embrace before making a hasty retreat from the room. Confused, I watched as she pulled the door closed behind her. At first, I figured she must have been going to clean herself up, but then I heard her bedroom door close.

  What the actual fuck?

  My stomach sank down to my feet as I replayed what I could remember of our conversation in the kitchen before we’d started. She’d asked me if I could fuck without complications. She’d asked me if I would do it again. She toasted to fucking without complications.

  Oh God.

  No strings.

  Oh fuck.

  Just fucking.

  Oh hell.

  I ran to the toilet and vomited up all the alcohol I’d had.

  Oh Christ.

  My stomach twisted. I hurled again. Palpitations stole my heartbeat. The symptoms of a new panic attack washed over me, rendering me almost helpless. I grabbed the edge of the sink and dragged myself to my feet. I flushed the toilet and rinsed out my mouth. I couldn’t break down there. Not just then. Alyssa could come out and find me, and I couldn’t let her see how much she fucking affected me. Not when there were no strings attached for her. Fucking without consequences.

  How could I be so fucking stupid?

  While I tried to focus and think of anything but the wave of panic and fear rising within me, I stood with my grip firm again the sides of the sink, desperate for oxygen. I pushed myself forward, back toward the safety of the bedroom. Sanctuary. Where I could let go and let the panic take me away. Maybe this time it wouldn’t let me come back. Maybe this time I would be lost forever. I felt sure of it, and the certainty grew with every laden step back to the bedroom.

  Holy fucking heaven in hell.

  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Pressure constricted my chest. I couldn’t walk. My knees buckled weakly beneath me.

  Fucking hell.

  I crawled the last of the distance, inch by agonising inch past her bedroom door. It was closed.

  Just like her fucking heart.

  Sounds echoed out from beneath the door. It might have been sobbing, but it could have just as easily been laughter. Either way, I couldn’t face her.

  Finally, I was in my bedroom, but it smelled of sex, and of Alyssa. I saw the two untouched glasses of whiskey in the corner. I crawled over to them, picking them up and downing them one after the other. I shrugged into a pair of pyjama pants and staggered back out of the room, my head spinning in vicious circles the whole time. When I reached the stairs, I stumbled down trying to ensure I didn’t make too much noise and disturb her—the fucking harpy who’d decided to completely fucking ruin my life. She’d tricked me and brought me back to life with her magical touch, just to leave me dead inside once more.

  I wanted to be angry with her. To hate her. But I couldn’t. Even though she’d ripped my heart out and stomped it into the carpet, I couldn’t hate her. She didn’t know how madly in love with her I was. Fuck, I didn’t even know until a few minutes earlier. I pushed myself into the kitchen, yanked the bottle of whiskey off the bench, and slumped to the floor.

  To wipe away the pain, I drank deeply straight from the bottle. I barely acknowledged the tears running down my cheeks. Whenever I felt the need to try to breathe, I drank instead. I didn’t even realise that I’d emptied the bottle; instead I continued to try to drain it further. Hugging the empty bottle tightly to my chest, I began to sob. Once the sobs started, and the lack of oxygen really kicked in, the full throes of my panic hit me. My heart raced and I was utterly breathless. My palms were sweaty and I was both too hot and too cold all at the same time.

  I was going to die.

  It was a simple, inescapable fact.

  My heart was going to stop beating at any second because it was beating much too fast, I was certain of it. I tried to breathe in, but all I managed were weak, wheezing gasps. I tried to stand, even though I didn’t know where I was planning on going. All I knew was that I had to get the fuck away from there. Away from her. I pulled myself up along the counter, desperate for something undefinable.

  I took a tentative step away from the counter, relying on my own legs to carry my weight. It was a monumental error. My head whirled from the alcohol I’d downed—easily over half a litre. My chest ached from my struggles to breathe.

  The floor slipped away underneath my feet and I heard a loud smash an instant before my face impacted on the hard surface.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A BIG EFFING COMPLICATION

  WHEN I CAME to I had no idea where I was or even when I was. I assumed my head was pressed to the floor, but it didn’t make sense because it was too soft.

  Much too soft . . .

  My head pounded.

  Not just pounded. There was a fucking jackhammer attached to the inside of my skull. It wasn’t the normal hangover pounding though, which gave the feeling of too much blood pulsating against my temples in a regular, thudding rhythm. Instead, my whole brain felt swollen and at least two sizes too big. My face ached and burned; the whole right side tingled with non-existent flames. My tongue was swollen and my teeth felt loose inside my jaw.

  I tilted my head to one side and instantly regretted it. The pounding wasn’t just confined to my head; it ran down the length of my body too. Every inch of my right side throbbed with a blinding agony similar to the one I’d experienced after Alyssa’s brother beat the shit out of me.

  What happened?

  Bits of memory filtered back in, as well as a feeling that this was all too familiar.

  Ice.

  Whiskey.

  No consequences or complications.

  Oh fuck!

  Alyssa . . .

  She was what happened.

  I raised my hand to run it through my hair, but felt a tugging sensation when I tried to move it, which stopped me. My other hand was wrapped in something warm, someone’s hand maybe. I would have to open my eyes to figure it out—together with finding out where the fuck I was, because I sure as fuck wasn’t still in the kitchen at Danny’s flat—but doing so would allow reality in. And pain. With the throbbing in my head, even the smallest amount of light would only increase the agony. All of that would come when I opened my eyes, as well as awareness and the need to face Alyssa before she left. A groan left my throat, scorc
hing the dry surface, before sticking to my parched tongue.

  “Oh, Declan, thank God.” Alyssa’s strained voice was beside me, yet all around me. It came from the side of the bed with the warm, possibly enclosed, hand. The volume of her voice sent a new ache through me and my head pounded harder than before. The words, and the way she made it sound like she actually gave a shit about me, made my heart throb with an agony ten thousand times worse than the one which held my body captive.

  When I risked opening my eyelids for half a second, light flooded into my eyes. The fucking pain ramped up and my assessment of the situation started all over again. I slammed my eyes shut again and issued another groan. Despite my sticky mouth, I tried to slick my lips with my tongue—which was pointless because both were as dry as the other.

  “What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Her voice rose higher than before.

  I almost felt like smiling at the frustration in her tone. That I recognised. That I could almost understand. At least, it made far more sense than the caring tone from moments before. Only I didn’t know what the fuck she could have been angry about.

  Opening my eyes completely, I tried my hardest to ignore the light, and the pain, and focus on Alyssa’s face.

  “Why did you go downstairs and drink the rest of that bottle? There was almost a whole fucking litre left.”

  The room behind her was wrong. It was so out of place that I couldn’t focus on her words. Instead of neutral tones and a warm palette, it was white and expansive. Sterile. I raised my head again, ignoring the throb, and looked left and right.

  “Where am I?” I asked, although I recognised the place on some level. My voice croaked and my throat was desiccated. I coughed to clear it, but the action pinched my ribs and sent a new agony rushing through me. I fell back onto the pillow with a fresh groan building in my chest.

  “You’re in the fucking hospital. Where else would you be?”

  With some effort, I focused back on Alyssa’s face. She looked like shit. Black bags rested under her eyes and her hair was a mess. Despite that, the sight of her was still enough to twist the knife in my heart and leave it red raw and bleeding. I pushed the agony to the side because there was something I was missing . . . something I needed to find out. “Why?”

  “Because you’re a fucking idiot.”

  I tried to sit up. “No. I mean what for? What the fuck happened?”

  “I went to bed last night after . . .” She looked away and a blush crept up her cheeks.

  Yeah, after you tied my heart up with your fucking strings. I kept my mouth shut even though the thought raced through me.

  “Half an hour later, I heard a godawful crash. I ran downstairs to see what it was and found you, unconscious, over a smashed bottle. I was so scared. I . . . I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice sounded close to tears.

  It was the breaking point for me. Biting the inside of my cheek, I closed my eyes so that she wouldn’t see the tears threatening me. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing what she had reduced me to.

  “I didn’t even realise until after the ambulance came that you’d fucking cut your arm and almost bled out. They had to pump your stomach because of how much you’d drunk. Why would you do that?”

  “I want to go home,” I murmured without looking at her. I didn’t want to be in the hospital anymore. Not with Alyssa at my side pretending that she gave a single fucking shit what happened to me when I knew the truth. Fucking with no complications was the truth. London no longer held any appeal—I just wanted to be home. In Sydney. Alone and coping with everything the best way I knew.

  “I’ll see what I can get the doctors to do,” she said, clearly misunderstanding the meaning of my statement. Whether her lack of understanding was deliberate or not, I couldn’t say.

  An hour later, after getting some painkillers, a little disgusting food, and a lecture on the dangers of alcohol abuse, I was released into Alyssa’s care. As I dragged myself down the hall—the painkillers had only dulled the ache in my body, not destroyed it completely—all I could wonder was what sort of fucking hell was I being forced into by the hospital quacks. I wanted to be away from her, not having her play nurse—despite the fact that my cock sprang to life at the thought of her in a sexy nurse’s outfit.

  Alyssa hailed a taxi and gave the driver Danny’s apartment address. After helping me from the car, she unlocked the front door and led me through. The way she acted, it was almost as if she fucking thought she owned the place. I wondered how long would be polite before I could tell her to fuck off. Knowing her as I once did, she’d probably force me to follow the doctor’s advice to the letter, which would see her hanging around for another couple of days.

  Just kill me now.

  I climbed up the small flight of stairs to the open living area and walked straight to the couch. Folding myself into the seat as carefully as I could with my swollen side, I tried to relax. I stared off into the distance, unsure what I was seeing, or even what I wanted to see. After a moment, Alyssa sat beside me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to. No, I knew that I wanted her to; I just didn’t want to want her to.

  She didn’t want me in her life again. She’d made that perfectly fucking clear the night before. Fucking with no strings. Another nameless, faceless woman to add to my bedpost. Except Alyssa was never that. I’d never wanted that of Alyssa. She was my one perfect woman, even if I didn’t always admit it, and she’d forced me to use her like any other woman in the world.

  Fucking hell, Reede. You’ve cocked it up again haven’t you?

  With soft, feather-light caresses, she ran her fingers through my hair. I was sure it was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but I wasn’t sure if I was helped by it. Instead of telling her to stop though, I just closed my eyes and leaned into her touch. For a moment, things were quiet, with only the sound of our breaths puncturing the silence.

  “Do you know what the worst thing about our break-up was?” she asked in a breathless whisper as her head rested near mine on the back of the couch. Her words carried across my skin in a way that told me she was close. If I opened my eyes again, she would have been within kissing distance.

  My heart constricted at the thought. I squeezed my eyes closed tighter to avoid the temptation of checking if I was right.

  “That I lost my best friend too.” Her tears were clear in her voice “For almost eleven years we hadn’t gone more than what, a month, without talking to each other. Then all of a sudden you were gone. Right when I needed you the most.”

  Even though I didn’t want to admit it, I knew exactly what she meant. I could still picture the first time I ever saw her. Every moment of our friendship crashed over me and I had to open my eyes to escape the barrage of images.

  Even though I’d expected Alyssa to be close to me, I hadn’t expected her to be as near as she was. Another centimetre or two and her forehead would have rested against my cheek. Her eyes were closed now, tears staining her eyelids black with moisture and running down her cheeks. It seemed she was as deep in thought as I’d been, no doubt lost in the past too. I took the chance to examine all the little changes time had wrought on her face. She didn’t have wrinkles or anything like that, but the bags under her eyes seemed to have a degree of permanency and her skin was paler than it had been years ago.

  She opened her eyes again and captured my gaze. The sorrow and loss buried within almost killed me on the spot. I didn’t know what could have caused it, but I couldn’t cope with it. My lips pulled down into a frown.

  Her eyes darted away, as if embarrassed to have caught my gaze.

  “You hungry?” she asked, pushing herself back up off the couch.

  I closed my eyes and shrugged. My throat stung like a bitch and my stomach churned. The food they’d tried to force on me at the hospital just didn’t cut it, but I didn’t want to rely on her to be fed either. I could manage on my own if she would just go away. Even though I wanted her gone, the thought forced my heart into
my stomach.

  “How about some takeout,” she asked.

  “Whatever.”

  I heard her opening a book, no doubt some phone book she’d found on the roll-top desk. Obviously finding something she deemed suitable, she picked up the phone to place an order, walking from the room as she did. She didn’t ask me what I wanted, but I didn’t care. She knew what I liked. Despite the years that had passed, nothing had changed there. After a few minutes, the springs on the couch shifted as she settled back beside me.

  “Did you want me to stay tonight?” she asked. “To look after you?”

  Did I? Yes.

  Should I? No.

  Opening my eyes to look at her, I shook my head. “You should probably check into your hotel if it’s booked anyway.”

  “Okay, if you think so,” she whispered. Then she bit her lip, deep in thought again. She took a deep breath. “Declan . . .”

  She stopped. That’s what drew my attention. If she’d kept talking, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I might have barely heard what she said after that. When she stopped though, she guaranteed she had my undivided attention. I turned toward her. “What?”

  “You know . . .” She trailed off with a sigh. “Why is this so hard?” she added, but I didn’t think the words were meant for me.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “What is it?”

  “There’s so much I need to tell you, and no way to start.”

  “You open your mouth and let the fucking words out.”

  A half smile lifted her cheek. “Thank you. For last night. It’s been a while for me.”

  “What’s a while?” I asked. She had captured me with her eyes and I felt compelled to continue the conversation.

  She looked off into the distance. “About two years. I was with Cain, Flynn’s brother, for a while, but I just couldn’t . . .” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t commit to him the way he wanted.”

  “Why?”