This Is Me, Baby (War & Peace #5)

by K. Webster

  Then I can hate myself all I want.

  Then I can force myself to face the truth.

  Then I can apologize.

  “I’m not him,” he growls in a no-nonsense way. He grips my chin almost brutally before crashing his lips to mine. This kiss tastes familiar, but the harsh way he delivers it isn’t familiar. Despite not recognizing it, I crave it.

  “I need you inside me,” I plead, hot tears rolling from my eyes. I’m fully aware of my betrayal but I won’t let it win. Not now.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” he hisses.

  At one time, he’d have been the gentleman. Made me come to terms with reality. Held me through what I’d almost done.

  But this isn’t the boy I remember. I don’t know this man at all. I let out a sigh of relief when he lifts up long enough to pull his cock from his boxers. My panties are hastily pushed to the side. There isn’t any time to change my mind. To focus on the wrongness. To erase this mistake.

  With one painful thrust, he’s deep inside me, drawing out a crushing wail. His cock splits me wide open all the way down to my soul. Flashes of a simple past flit through my mind like blinding white zaps. Each one electrocuting me with realization. This isn’t my fantasy at all, and yet I’m soaking it all in. Drawing comfort from the sound of the waves. The warm sunshine. The way he used to kiss me until my mouth was raw on the beach. How we’d dry hump long before he took my virginity.

  His fingers are back to biting into my jaw as he kisses me. There’s nothing soft about the way he mauls me. He thrusts into me so hard, I imagine I’ll be bruised. My clit throbs out of control each time his body hits mine.

  So close…

  Don’t think about it, just do it, I tell myself.

  I make the mistake of opening my eyes. Moonlight peeks in through the window, casting a sliver of light across his face. One steely blue eye is illuminated and it bores into me. His one eye flashes with anger and love and need. And it’s too much.

  I want to run away from it all.

  Pretend this never happened.

  “Goddammit, Brie,” he growls. “Look at me.”

  His fierce command has my eyes popping back open and my pussy clenching in response. His gaze softens before he kisses me in a gentler way. A way I remember. A way I used to dream about late at night before my world turned upside down.

  “Relax, baby,” he murmurs against my lips. “Just let it go.”

  I shut off my mind and allow my orgasm to overtake me. My nerve endings take on life as they all seem to explode at once. The shudder that wracks through me is so strong, I actually jerk from beneath him. When my body clamps down around his, he lets out a guttural groan. A gush of his hot seed fills me. Throb after exhilarating throb.

  “What have I done?” I whisper mostly to myself.

  He releases his grip on my wrists and slides a palm over my heart. “You were letting go of some of the pain.”

  I blink in the darkness, stunned by his words. My body is relaxed. My mind is calm. It’s just my heart that is destroyed. I feel like a whore who can’t keep her legs closed.

  “My heart still belongs to him,” I blurt out.

  He flinches at my words. But then he takes my tattooed wrist and draws it to his lips. The way he kisses it reminds me of how Duvan would. It makes my chest ache painfully. “I know, Brie. Nobody’s asking you to forget about him. But having that orgasm was probably the best thing you could do for yourself right now. You were so fucking tense.”

  He slips his softened cock out of me and then climbs off the bed. Soon, the bathroom light blinds me. It sheds light on the horror of what I’ve just done. When he returns, carrying a wet cloth, I can’t bear to look at him.

  “Brie.”

  I clench my eyes closed, hoping he’ll get a clue.

  “Open your eyes, dammit.” His words are harsh and it makes me open them so I can see his expression. He’s never been the angry type. I don’t understand who he is anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  He grabs my panties and tugs them down my thighs. They’re soaked with his cum and need to go. He clutches my knees and pulls me open once he’s removed the last of my clothing. I start to drag my knees back together, but he’s stronger and he wins. The warm cloth travels over my still pulsating clit as he cleanses me between my thighs. He does it in such a gentle, protective way, I think I might burst into tears. My emotions are all over the place. When he’s finished, he stalks back over to the bathroom. I get a better peek at his back tattoo, which seems to have a lot more going on with it since my last perusal. Thankfully, he’s pulled his boxers back into place.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he tells me as soon as the room goes dark again. I should probably make moves to find my shirt or a new pair of panties or a wall to put between us. Instead, I remain frozen.

  He slips into the bed and hauls me to him. His sculpted chest presses firmly against my back while his arm wraps possessively around me. Now that I’m fully aware of my situation, it’s more brutal to my psyche admitting that I need him comforting me right now. If I could fall asleep forever like this and never wake up, I would.

  His lips kiss my shoulder, and I shiver. I don’t know what to do. I should push him away and yet I don’t. I should ask him to sleep elsewhere and yet I don’t. I should warn him I’ll only fuck up his heart because I’m a mess and yet I don’t.

  I let him hold me.

  I let him kiss my neck.

  I let him snuggle his flaccid cock against my ass.

  I’ll allow myself this one night. Then, tomorrow, with reality, I can deal with the consequences of my actions. Right now, though, I refuse to let them win.

  For the first time in over a month, I fall asleep with a blank mind.

  My heart aches but not as much as usual.

  Tonight, for a short while, I am free.

  I’VE SLEPT LIKE SHIT for months. My mind has been plagued by all the wrongs and I can’t focus on anything right. Everything seemed to be spiraling out of control.

  Until now.

  Sleeping with Brie tucked in against my chest was calming. The anger that had been simmering below my surface seemed to cool. For once in what seems like forever, I slept easily.

  But last night?

  Last night was probably a big fucking mistake. As much as I wanted to be inside of her, it was wrong. She was lying to herself and wanted me to play along with her little charade.

  I fucking did.

  Fucked her right into a sleepy stupor.

  Her scent still clings to me and my dick twitches to ram into her again. Her body simply responded so differently than the other two times we’d had sex. It wasn’t lovemaking, like before. It was carnal, animalistic, unapologetic fucking. And, my God, it was amazing.

  But now she’s locked herself in the bathroom. As soon as her alarm went off, she bolted from the bed, and out of my arms, to lock herself away from the reality of what we’d done.

  I need to make her understand it wasn’t a mistake.

  It was simply…a release.

  A release she needed more than I did.

  With a sigh, I climb out of bed and walk over to the window. The sky is overcast and ominous as a storm looms. I catch sight of my reflection in the glass. My eyebrows are furled together in a contemplative manner. The stubble on my cheeks has grown in recently. I’m normally one to keep my face clean-shaven, but lately, I like the way it scratches my palm when I’m in one of my moods. Tiny bites of pain keep me alive.

  I wonder if they could keep her alive too.

  Would the hair scratch her inner thighs in a way that hurts so good?

  Finding my jeans, I pull them up quickly and forgo a shirt. When I make it over to the bathroom door, I raise my hand to knock but pause when I hear her sniffling inside.

  “Brie,” I murmur, “open up.”

  The sink turns on and then, after a moment, she opens the door. Her face is splotchy and red from crying. But it’s the holl
ow look in her brown eyes that’s haunting.

  “What I did…what we did…” Her bottom lip wobbles as tears well in her pretty eyes.

  Stalking over to her, I grip her chin and tilt her head up so I can look at her. The tears break free from her eyelids and race each other down her cheeks. Her two eyebrows are pinched together as if she’s in pain.

  I caused this pain.

  But I can take it away too.

  “Nobody is judging,” I tell her firmly. “Nobody.” When I hug her to me, she doesn’t resist. Instead, she clings to my bare chest and cries. Brie has always been so strong. It’s a hidden strength that not many see. I’ve always seen it, though. Seen the fierce glint in her eyes when she’d talk about her future. And when she was with Duvan, her strength seemed to intensify. He was good for her. I’ll always be grateful for the love he gave her when not many people would. It was a love she needed—something I couldn’t quite give to her at the time.

  One day, I will find exactly what she needs and I will give it to her.

  My heart. My soul. My devotion.

  Of course, now’s not the time. What she needs from me now is my strength. This poor woman is broken and slayed. She’s bleeding uncontrollably from a wound in her heart.

  I’m going to help her soothe the pain.

  I’ll wrap her up tight in my safe, loving heart and keep her protected from the hurt that plagues her.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she hisses a second before jerking from my embrace.

  She clambers over to the toilet and barely pushes the lid open before she’s puking inside. I storm over to her and grab a handful of her hair to keep it from her face. Between her heaves, she sobs so loudly, I’m sure God can hear. I hope he hears her pain and fucking does something about it. I hope he gives her some peace.

  Once she’s done throwing up, I release her to get a cold, wet cloth. She still hugs the toilet bowl but has shifted to sit on her ass.

  “I’m going to get you something to drink,” I tell her.

  I stalk out of the bathroom and through her bedroom on a mission to the kitchen. The rest of the house is dark and quiet. But when I reach the kitchen, Gabe sits perched on a bistro chair. His hair is disheveled. A dark, black circle rings his eye where I managed to get a swing in on him last night.

  While I can respect his need to protect Brie, I wasn’t going to be deterred.

  When he notices me, his tired brown eyes meet mine. The usual anger doesn’t flicker in them. Sadness does.

  “How’s Brie?” he mumbles before sipping from his mug of black coffee. His gaze rakes over my bare chest. I’m sure he knows we’ve been intimate but I don’t give a rat’s ass what he thinks about it.

  “She’ll be fine. A little sick this morning,” I grunt back as I rummage in some cabinets on a hunt for crackers. The house is all packed up, but I do find a basket of snacks on the counter.

  “How am I going to fix this, Ren?” His voice is choked. Broken. Vulnerable even.

  I pluck a sleeve of peanut butter crackers from the basket before regarding him. “Fix what?”

  He runs his fingers through his messy hair. “Your sister. My daughter. How do I get to have this family? My family? Together. Under one roof.”

  Just the mention of my sister has my blood boiling. “You chose Hannah over Brie. I don’t understand how. She certainly doesn’t.”

  He flinches at my words. With a scowl, he twists his wedding ring on his finger. “Love is fucking messy.”

  Tell me about it.

  “You can’t have the best of both worlds,” I finally utter out. “You want true love and children with Hannah but then you have this amazing daughter too. Unlike most normal blended families, they can’t be around each other, because Hannah is a fucking murderer. She killed your daughter’s mother. So, Gabe, I’m sorry, man, but you’re just going to have to accept that you can’t have both. You can’t fix it.”

  He clenches his eyes shut and lets out a ragged sigh. “Toto would love Brie. You know she would.”

  Toto’s pretty brown eyes are at the forefront of my mind. I love that kid like you would not believe. “Brie will love her too. With time. You can’t rush into it, though. Maybe one day I can bring Toto with me to visit her. Brie is a good person,” I tell him vehemently. “She has so much love in her heart. It’s just been crushed in the past few years. Once she begins to heal again, I think she’ll be ready to show some of that love.”

  He stares at me for a long moment. “You’re okay, kid.”

  I let out a humorless chuckle as I snag one of the last cans of Sprite from the refrigerator. “I’m not a kid anymore, man. I kicked your old ass last night.”

  His lips tug into a smile. “You caught me at a weak moment. Next time, your ass is mine.”

  I smirk and flip him off before trotting back to Brie’s room. She’s still in the bathroom on the floor where I left her. Kneeling beside her, I pop open the Sprite and help her take a sip. When she notices the crackers, her nose scrunches up.

  “I don’t think I can eat anything,” she murmurs.

  I stroke her hair and set the drink on the counter. “You need to if you want to feel any better. When my mom was pregnant with Mason, she did okay as long as we kept food in her. It was when her stomach was empty that she would get sick.”

  She turns and regards me with sad brown eyes. If I could cut open my own chest and give her my beating heart, I would. If only somehow that would fill her empty one up. I sit beside her so that I’m facing her.

  “Tell me about…” I trail off as I clutch her shaking hand. I draw it toward me so I can look at her tattoo. “Him.”

  Her eyes snap to mine and she frowns. “You want to know about him? I thought you hated him.”

  Bringing her wrist to my mouth, I kiss the flesh there, my eyes never leaving hers. “He made you happy. How could I hate him for that?”

  Tears pool in her eyes and she breaks our gaze. For a moment, I don’t think she’ll speak, but then she does.

  “He was good to me. Found ways to make me laugh. Wanted me to make my own decisions. He paid attention to the small details, and sometimes I thought maybe he knew me better than I knew myself. Duvan filled parts of me I didn’t know were empty.” Her lips curve up on one side, and I see a small flash of a smile. “He encouraged me to be a better person. Loved me without rules or conditions. He was so excited to be a father.” Her voice cracks and her tears fall freely down her cheeks. “We were going to have such a good life together.”

  I squeeze her hand. “But it was stolen from you.”

  That day online, when I watched as Heath appeared behind the finally-happy woman and her husband, will forever be etched into my brain. I’ve never been so fucking terrified in my life. The scene unfolded like that of a horror movie, but it was real. Every single awful second was real. Their love, so visible on the screen was literally cut open and drained before my very eyes. I was disgusted to see something so beautiful ruined because of the greed of another. Heath had vacant eyes as he slit open Duvan’s throat. Her screams had been otherworldly as her love died in her arms. I still remember how Oscar tried desperately to shield Vee from the gruesome scene—a scene her father played a leading role in, and his brother the victim. And just when I thought I’d lose Brie next to a brutal rape and murder, Gabe showed up. Too little, too late, though. It’ll be a guilt he’ll have to bear on his shoulders until the day he dies. How he wasn’t quick enough to get to them. To save Duvan. Watching Gabe stab Heath to death was oddly satisfying. If I were there, I’d have wanted to do it myself. Duvan was always the better man when it came to the two of us in Brie’s eyes, but I never once wished him dead.

  Because his death meant the death of her heart.

  And her heart has always been my focus.

  “Your mother would have liked Duvan, huh?” I ask as I pull some tissue off the roll to dab her cheeks with.

  She nods and gives me a brief wobbly smile. “Daddy would have hate
d him but Mom would have thought he was perfect.” Her eyes flit to mine and an apology flickers in them. She has nothing to be sorry for.

  “Why would your dad have hated him? Besides the fact that he hates everyone, of course,” I say in a light tone.

  She laughs through her tears. “He does hate everyone.” Her finger brushes against the scab on my lip from where he split it with his fist. “Including you.”

  “After the black eye I gave him, I can agree with that.” I wink at her.

  Her smile falls and she regards me with a serious expression. “Actually, Daddy would have hated the life I was exposed to with Duvan. We’d made a plan to get away from it all but for a while there…” she trails off and nervously starts to open the crackers.

  I know she’s thinking of what Esteban did to her. The drugs. The rape. The terror.

  “Duvan may have led a dangerous life,” I admit, “but your safety was his main priority. You were loved, Brie.”

  You’re still loved.

  She starts to cry, so I wrap my arms around her and haul her to me. For what seems like forever, we sit on the bathroom floor in an emotional embrace. When I hold her like this, I feel like I can keep the broken parts of her held together. That maybe, even if only for a moment, she’ll feel whole again.

  “I’m so lost,” she murmurs against my chest. “I’m drifting. No home. No future. No anything. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m sinking, Ren, and it feels like I’ll never hit the bottom.”

  I kiss the top of her head. “I’ve got you. You may feel lost or alone, but you’re not. I’m right behind you. When you feel like falling, I will catch you.”

  She lifts her chin and peers up at me. Her swollen lips are so goddamned kissable, but I refrain. “I’m so scared.”

  Using my thumb, I swipe away a drying tear. “Even the bravest, toughest of people have moments of weakness. You’re going to lick these wounds and then you’re going to come out swinging.” I smile at her. “You have his child inside of you. And that baby is going to need its mother to be strong.”

  Hope, such a rarity in her world, flickers in her eyes as if she believes every single word coming out of my mouth. My chest swells with happiness. I hope she hears them. Draws them inside her tattered heart and puts them on a shelf so she can stare at them. I mean every single word.