Sunshine Bleeds A Black Edge (The Wild Things (standalone) Book 3)

by A. Wilding Wells

  A lump thickens in my throat. “That’s because you were. Are.”

  “We were so good together, baby. We had fun… We had crazy… We had…”

  “Each other,” I say.

  Rebel kisses a line down my throat as I play with the wet hair on his chest and marvel at the span of his shoulders and the muscles wrapping them.

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Do you remember when we got busted for jumping off the bridge?” He shifts his weight then lifts me onto his legs to straddle him. His hard abs lead down to the juncture where our bodies meet, and it’s so sexy that I curl my hips to feel the friction of us.

  “Yeah. Everything about it,” I say. “Especially what we did to get so hot that we stripped down and jumped naked.” I nip at his lips, his tongue meeting mine for a slow, drawn-out kiss tasting of the past and present and sounding like budding, new love.

  Funny how something you once had can still feel like something you need to rediscover.

  “At least we didn’t get caught doing that.” He chuckles and smooths his hand down my spine, grabbing my cheeks upon arrival.

  “Those stupid cops. They only busted us so they could see me get out of the water naked.” I run my fingers through Rebel’s messy locks then trace the tattoos across his chest.

  “Can you blame ’em? Hell, I’d have busted you too. Your dad was so pissed at me. Pissed as hell when they brought us home.”

  “Dad loved you. He knew we were good together. Didn’t you, Dad?” I look up to the heavens and laugh. Ghost whisperer. My mother myself, I chide.

  “We’ll be good together again.” His voice cracks, his eyes wet. “I promise.” He swipes the back of his hand across his eyes and bites his bottom lip as it curves into a smile.

  I cup his face in my hands, rubbing my thumbs over his full lips. “Rebel, it wasn’t my fault.”

  He grabs my ass and scoots me closer, plants a kiss on my neck, then several more. “What?”

  “That I got pregnant. Just please know…I never wanted that. Not any of it. But you never came for me and…it happened.”

  “I’m not going to ask what any of that means. If you need to talk to me, you can. If you can’t, that’s okay. I couldn’t come to you that night. But I feel like you’re putting something on me. Something like blame…maybe more.”

  We say nothing for noiseless minutes, but behind our eyes are all the words. Anyway, behind his eyes. And in mine? A question and an answer. How many minutes does it take to alter the course of a life? In my case…less than ten.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve owned that night for so long, felt guilty for many things,” Rebel says, threading his fingers with mine. “My dad and you and… Honestly, I wish I had come to you. It’s not your fault things happened… It’s mine. That night was full-moon crazy.” He searches my face, his fingertips tracing paths over the landscape of my body.

  “Just tell me you had a good reason,” I say.

  The past is something I may never figure out. Just when I thought I’d buried the bitch, she scratches her way to the surface of my heart. She’s the devil in disguise with endless reach.

  “I was running away,” he says. “Guess I was running the wrong way.”

  Chapter 39

  Rebel

  In truth, perhaps that whole night is my fault. But it’s so puzzling. She slept with them because I never came to her? What we had was massive love. I thought. Maybe she always had a crush on them that I took for something else. Maybe all those times I interrupted the spats they had, the poking fun of her, and the going out of their way to yell nasty shit at her in the halls were I-hate-you-but-I’m-crushin’-on-you things. High school is weird like that.

  “Did something happen?” Ruby asks.

  Yeah, everything. “I walked in on my dad, and my world tilted then crashed. He was staring at himself in a full-length mirror. The only clothing he had on was a red lacy bra and matching ladies underwear. He had no idea I was in the cracked-open doorway, my jaw on the ground. My father, the man I looked up to, my hero… Who was he?”

  “Jesus.” Ruby’s eyes widen when her mouth drops open. “That’s how you found out?”

  “Yeah. I caught him ogling himself. His bra was stuffed, and he had on neon-red lipstick. And the cat was on the bed, playing with other lingerie, and…me and Dad… We met in this weird-as-fuck stare. Time stopped, and I remember the rain, the sounds of it like a clock ticking. Then I smelled an oriental perfume I vaguely recalled floating down the hall a few other times. Everything was stuck in that moment. My pulse, caught between boy and man…fantasy and reality. Time was... It was motionless and dense and impenetrable. And all I wanted to do was become one of those damn raindrops that melted into the earth. Then I ran.”

  Tears river down Ruby’s face as a bitter tonic seeps into my gut. I’ve persecuted her when I might be the one who messed up.

  “I forgot about you…and look what happened,” I say. “Everything changed that night because I walked in on my father and couldn’t deal with what I saw. I wasn’t man enough to understand who he needed to be.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that. You lost things too. You lost your innocence just like I did,” she says.

  “Yeah, I lost so much that night. We did.”

  Had I known my running away would destroy us, what would I have done? Regret doesn’t show her face until it’s too late. There was no crystal ball. All of my truths vanished in that moment, my future wants and needs trailing along shortly after.

  “We were both lost in something powerful and mind-blowing, and we forgot about each other,” Ruby says.

  Ruby slouches onto me. I follow a path down her arms then travel up her waist and onto her shoulders.

  “Tell me?” I ask. “How did you think I was deserting you since it was just one night? One night, Ruby. I loved you, and you chose them.”

  “I begged you to come. I begged the universe to send you to me. I prayed to the God I grew up loving with all my heart. And He never sent you.”

  “Well, that was your first problem. That crap doesn’t work. And it’s not the answer I’m looking for. Don’t hide behind God like most people do. Like your mom does.”

  Hell, with her parents being as whacked as they were on religion, I was sure Ruby had her head screwed on straight and could see through the fluff and BS of her faith. Guess I was wrong.

  “I know,” she whispers so softly that not even an angel on her lips would hear it.

  “I can’t forgive you for so many things, but I will love you despite them. You deserve love even if what you did still feels wrong to me.”

  “What I did?” Her top lip curls as she scoots off my lap and sits next to me. Curls as if she smells something rancid.

  Do lies smell the same as truths? Bitter and sweet depending on whose tongue they’re dancing from?

  “I wish you understood I didn’t do anything wrong,” she says.

  How the fuck is she so resolute?

  “Whatever you want to tell yourself,” I say.

  “Or I could tell you the truth.” Ruby slides her hand toward mine, the tips of our fingers meeting.

  “No, you can’t. Because I don’t know how I’ll be able to handle the truth, and I need to be able to love you. I can love around this thing.”

  “Love around?” She laughs. Then her smile flips and turns criminally sad.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that like half love?”

  “No, I can’t half love you. You are too everything to me. I half loved once. Who the hell is that fair to? When I say love around, I mean there is something between us we can’t discuss because it has the potential to end us. Anyway, I’m guessing. So I’ll turn a blind eye because not having you in my life is no longer an option. Not ever again, no matter what happened that night.”

  “Rebel, most people only ever get half love or none at all.”

  “I guess I’m too bullheaded.” I shake my head and stare off at nothing. “What were yo
u expecting when you came home, Ruby?”

  “It wasn’t so much an expectation as it was a hope.” She throws off a halfhearted shrug.

  “Same thing, but…what were you hoping?”

  “You first. You were so pissed when I came into your hardware store. But were you excited? I mean…to see me. It didn’t seem like it.”

  “I was confused, excited, scared, heartbroken. I have never in my life wanted anything more than your love. And I know that makes me sound like a chump. But it’s true.”

  “You’re my chump.” She rubs her hand over her heart as her eyes mist with tears.

  “I’ll be honest. I was also fucking starstruck by everything about you.”

  “Me? That’s a riot!” She snorts. “I mean, shit, I’m a complete goof. Hardly a girl to be starstruck by.”

  “Now you’re blowing smoke up my ass. You know exactly what I mean.” I peck a kiss on her lips and tickle her ribs to receive a giggle. She’s so fucking gorgeous. “Your turn. What were you hoping for?”

  She chews her thumbnail for long seconds and grunts out a few ums and I’s. Then, after her gaze dances between my eyes and my chin, she utters, “Forgiveness.”

  Fuck. I can give her brazen kisses in public and moonlit dancing in firefly meadows at midnight. I can promise her a future of unbroken bonds and making love on cold blanketed mornings. I will, on my knees, beg her to be my wife and promise her I will be faithful in my undying love.

  But forgiveness? That is something I cannot give without losing more of me to the unknown of us than I can handle.

  Chapter 40

  Ruby

  Forgiveness I may never get. I almost told him everything—that’s how much I need his forgiveness. Because, if he forgives me, I will forgive me. For Opal. For everything. But the damage to him will be too great of a burden.

  I know in my heart of hearts it isn’t my fault Opal killed herself, but the guilt is so heavy most days, I can’t face it. I feel like I murdered her with my martyrdom.

  Yet, had I said the evil words of my truth, I might have taken everything from my family. Then, eventually, from him. His business. His land. His father’s grace.

  And us.

  “You’re pretty quiet, Rebel.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About forgiving me?”

  “About what would happen if you told me every detail about that night and the whole next week.” He scratches the scruff of his jaw and hums low in his throat. “Every fucking thing.”

  I blow my cheeks out then swallow. “I’d have to make you promise me a couple of things first.”

  “Like what?”

  “That you would keep it between us and that you’d marry me somewhere down the line. And I know that’s a lot since I don’t even know if I can live here again, and I have a career I’m not sure I want to give up on. I couldn’t ask you to move, you’d hate living in Paris. Maybe I’m putting too much out there. God, what a mind dump.” I swallow so many times in a row, I choke on my reflex. Then I close my eyes and offer a stupid prayer to Opal. As if her ghost might be able to arm-wrestle his demons. What did I just say? I guess sometimes you just have to throw things out there and figure out the logistics later.

  My mother myself. Jesus Lord, help me. And, now, I’m praying to God too? I have lost it.

  “That was quite a mouthful. Let’s take one piece at a time. Would I be breaking the law?” His eyebrows rise.

  “By marrying me?” I laugh and poke him in the chest. Though, inside, I’m all jelly. What if he says yes? What if this is the moment?

  “No, by keeping it between us. I’m serious, Ruby. I’m not interested in either of us getting locked up.”

  I scrub a hand up and down my face when my ears fill with blood, heating up. “What do you think I’ve done?”

  “I don’t fucking know. I don’t want to know.”

  “You’re lying. You have something on your face that says you think I crossed a line. Tell me.”

  “Did you?”

  I tilt my head, hair falling across my eyes, which he thumbs away. “Did I what? Jesus Christ, Rebel!”

  “It’s a simple yes or no.”

  Looking for false bravado, I hug myself. “And if I say yes? What then? And if I say no? You think I did something criminal?”

  “Don’t say yes, Ruby. Don’t say anything.”

  “You don’t want to hear it, do you? The pain and guilt and the reason I can’t say…can’t tell you. I suppose I do have blood on my hands and I will never feel redemption for it, but was it against the law?”

  “Not another word.”

  I grit my teeth as a lightheadedness takes over. All the tingles of wonder and lust I had become ice and knives.

  “Laws were broken that week, Rebel, and—”

  “Baby, stop talking.” He places his hand over my mouth, and my blood boils.

  I shove his hand away. “You don’t trust me? I can’t believe I just laid my heart on the line and you still don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “How can you love someone you don’t trust?” All the hope in my heart and mind shuts down as I second-guess myself and mine for answers and truths.

  Rebel captures my face in his trembling hands. “You open new places in your heart and you close others off. It would be impossible to love everything about someone. We all have flaws. Love means you love… Regardless of the flaws, you still love.”

  “And I’m supposed to be okay with the idea that you won’t forgive me and you don’t trust me because you’re more capable of opening your heart than I am? Where do I fit into this?”

  “You fit in right beside me.” Rebel wraps an arm around me and pulls me close. “We have no choice but to weather this thing, even though I don’t know what it is. Isn’t that how storms go? You never quite know what they are until you’re in the middle of the hell?”

  “And sometimes we have no choice but to forgive someone when they tell us it’s important to them.”

  Impossible is what this is. I tell him the truth and unearth temporary sanity relief and bloodletting of my guilt. And, in whiplash response, he vanishes into a world of hate and ugly retort. I feel like the wife who had an affair then, out of guilt and need for redemption, tells her husband. And, before the news hits him like a tidal wave, he says, “Yes, tell me. Give me the truth.” And, when I do, it ends everything.

  So, what good is truth? What do we get from it?

  Salvation? A beginning or an end?

  It’s a dreadful situation. Die inside of grief and guilt from holding it in, or let it out and die from regret and loss.

  For everything.

  Yet I did nothing wrong. I didn’t cheat or take what wasn’t mine.

  I was stolen from.

  Chapter 41

  Rebel

  Tornado sirens blare and lights around us flicker then die. Classic Wisconsin; wait a minute, and the weather will change. Hailstones ping off the windows, and Ruby works her clothes on. Again.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I ask. “We still have plenty to discuss.”

  “I’m not staying here.”

  “The hell you’re not,” I tell her. “This building is safer than anything we could get to if we get hit. This whole side of the street is brick, Miss Dorothy.”

  “Let’s check the weather,” she says.

  “Let’s not.” I grab the edge of her skirt and flirt with it. “Get down here.”

  “Rebel?”

  “Listen to me, I know we’re dancing around like a couple of confused kids. One minute we’re angry and judgmental, the next we’re dreaming about a future together. Hell, you just told me you might consider moving here. I know it’s unlikely with your career and all, but still. You said the words. That’s big. We have years of time to slog through and things to make up for. And right now, I’m going to make love to you and it will feel like all the forgiveness in the world.” I haul Ruby onto my lap and, for the third time
tonight, strip her clothes off.

  As I’m unfastening her bra, she cuffs me in the jaw with her cast. It’s all play, and silly fun, but I know where it’s going.

  “I want the words,” she tells me.

  “Shhh,” I say as I grip her face. “Give me your tongue.”

  “No tongue without words.”

  “You stubborn, sassy cuss.” I kiss her hard and messy.

  And her moans, her arching neck, and her gyrating hips are all the answers I need. I want to take her on her back then on her belly, but she’s pulling away. And I give up. At least she’s not running out into the storm.

  “You want me to feed you something besides my cock? You hungry?”

  She grins. “Starved. Are you going to make me a first-date omelet? I might stay for that.”

  “I’m going to make you some eggs, and then I’m going to make you come again.”

  “Not without words, you’re not.”

  “Fine. Then let’s eat and talk.” I snap my jaw shut before I give in and instead whip up an omelet. “Are you really thinking you could live here? Not sure I believe it.”

  “That depends,” she says, a fat smirk on her face.

  She’s fucking stunning, crawling around the floor in her underwear and bra with a dust pan and a brush as she picks up our earlier mess. I’m half tempted to screw the eggs and fuck her on her knees.

  “On me?” I ask.

  “You are brilliant.”

  “What if I give you one of Gilbert’s puppies? I’m willing to bribe you. I hear a man with puppies can do no wrong.”

  She stands and nestles against my back. “I don’t have a house for a dog. Mom is allergic. I have to figure out what it means for my work and my life there. And I need more than a puppy to convince me to stay. But nice try.”

  After plating the eggs and pouring wine, we sit at a candlelit table.