by K. M. Scott
If only I could.
I climbed the stairs slowly, my feet landing on them as softly as nightfall itself so I didn’t risk waking Abbi. After all these months, I knew how much noise I could make before she’d open her eyes and see me. Once, back in late July, she woke and stared right into my eyes, her sleepy gaze making her unsure if I was real or a dream. I stood as still as a statue, struck by how much I’d missed seeing those soft blue eyes stare into mine, but I knew I had to leave. By the time she opened them up again, awake enough to check if I was truly there with her, I was gone.
Her room, always open, waited for me at the end of the hall, and just like every night as I stepped into it, a feeling of relief washed over me when I entered and saw her there sleeping in her bed. All the hurt and rage that coursed through me every day vanished as soon as I laid eyes on her. I looked forward to this from the moment I woke each morning, the wait nearly killing me as I drank myself into some kind of pathetic oblivion each day to push away the pain of missing her so fucking much.
She lay there quietly sleeping, her gentle breathing moving her body slightly up and down. Like an angel—my angel—she represented all the good I could find in this world, and the urge to reach out and touch her, to feel that good on my skin again, nearly overwhelmed me, but I knew better.
I could only look. It was the only way I could know for sure I wouldn’t hurt her.
Her blond hair, so much longer than when we first met, hid part of her beautiful face, and I crouched down next to her bed to get close so I could see that part of her. I wanted so much to brush that hair from her cheek and lean in to kiss her lips just once. Fighting the urge to do everything I knew was wrong, I sat back on the floor and hung my head, missing everything about her more than ever.
Tears burned my eyes, and I squeezed them shut to push away all those feelings I knew I shouldn’t have. She was better here alone without me. That was the hard truth I didn’t want to face and that I fought against every night, no matter how much I knew inside I couldn’t deny it. Her messages and calls pleading for me to return couldn’t change that truth, as much as I wished they could.
My body hurt from wanting her, and I held my head in my hands as my favorite memory of us together settled into my mind. It’s what I thought of every time missing her got too much for me, like some beautiful way to soothe my soul of all its pain.
Abbi lay her head on my chest and traced her finger down to just above the tattoo between my hips. I pressed my lips to the top of her head and kissed her hair, loving the flowery scent of her shampoo as it filled my nose.
I could spend hours there with her in that bed and never say a word. Somehow the silence between us made me feel like she truly loved me, even though she knew who I was. That quiet acceptance that required no talking and no explanation filled me with happiness I’d never expected to find again in the world.
Her mouth followed her finger’s trail, and she kissed over the words tattooed on my skin. DO NO HARM. It wasn’t meant to be sexual as much as respectful, and as I watched her carefully caress each letter with her lips, I loved her more because she knew how important that part of me was.
Looking up, she smiled sweetly and whispered, “Of all your tattoos, this is my favorite. It’s everything you are, Kane.”
I wished that was true. More than she could ever know, I wished I never did any harm. Even as I lay there with the woman I loved more than life itself, I knew all it would take would be one hurtful touch to her body or one angry word from someone in her direction and all my hopes of doing no harm would be pushed aside, replaced by the need to protect her.
Abbi slid up my body and kissed my lips just as she’d kissed the tattooed skin between my hipbones. “I know what you go through, Kane, and I need you to know I believe in you.”
“You believe in me?”
She nodded and smiled in that way that never failed to make my heart squeeze with the purest happiness I’d ever known. “I believe in how good you are. I believe you are gentle and tender, even if everything on the outside says different.”
“The tattoos and piercings?”
“Yeah, I love them too, but I know what they hide. I’ve seen the kindness in you, so you can’t fool me, Kane Jackson.”
I smiled at her sweet chastising of me. “Then I guess you just know who I am, angel.”
“I do, and I don’t want you to ever forget that. I know what’s inside you, Kane. I’ve seen the goodness in your heart.”
The goodness in my heart. I’d spent my life being told nothing good lived inside me, and now all Abbi could see was good in me. But she didn’t know what I knew.
Cradling my face, she whispered against my lips, “Hey, where did you go off to there?”
“All the days before I met you.”
“Oh.”
She knew there was something back there I needed to tell her. I’d danced around my past every time she asked, but I couldn’t anymore. She needed to know.
“I have to tell you something about me, angel. I’m scared to death that you’ll run away when you find out who I really am.”
Shaking her head, she smiled that gentle smile I loved. “Never. I don’t care who were in the past or what you did. I know what I know, Kane, and that’s all I need. So you can tell me whatever you need to tell me, but it won’t change anything. I love you for all that you are, no matter how bad you’ve been told it is.”
I took a deep breath and for only the second time in my life, I told another human being what I knew from the moment I was old enough to understand words.
I’d been born to hurt.
“My mother named me Kane because she said I was meant to hurt. My father left her the night he found out she was pregnant, and she knew exactly what she wanted to name me. After the world’s first murderer. I was her Cain.”
The words came out in a rush, like they’d been waiting forever to be released to willing ears. I watched Abbi’s expression for any change—for any sign she was as horrified as I thought she should be—but her gentle smile never faded.
I continued, “Every day of my life for as long as I can remember, my mother told me how I was meant to hurt. On her death bed, it gave her comfort to know that. I’ve never forgotten that. She was comforted to know that the son she was leaving behind knew his place in the world was to hurt. How could I ever be anything else if that’s all she saw in me?”
“You are so much more than what she saw, Kane. I don’t know why she couldn’t or wouldn’t recognize that in you, but the goodness inside your heart is obvious to me.”
Abbi’s words made the pain lessen, but it still remained and I needed her to know who she was with.
“Then when I killed that man and that judge called me a monster, my entire life came full circle. That’s what she’d meant all those years. That I was meant to hurt others. I hurt him because he hurt Holly. I was meant to hurt. That’s my place in life.”
I took a deep breath and finally told Abbi the truth that had weighed on my mind since the moment I met her. “I’m scared to death that’s all I am and I’ll hurt you, angel. It keeps me up nights and makes me want to push you away before I do anything bad. I don’t know how to be anything but what I’ve always been.”
Abbi placed her hand over my heart and leaned down to kiss my chest. Looking up at me, she said the words I’d waited all my life to hear. “The people around us tell us what they want us to be, but you are who you are in your heart. No matter what your mother or that judge said, you are good and you are kind. You weren’t meant to hurt, Kane. You were meant to protect, and there is nothing more honorable than protecting the ones you love.”
I wanted to believe her, and for a long while I did. But then my demons found a way to control me and I hurt someone again. I couldn’t risk doing that to her.
Abbi stirred in her sleep and suddenly opened her eyes to look up at me. Lost in my memories of that sweet moment when she’d seen me as exactly the man I wanted to be, I’d for
gotten to be careful and now I’d been caught. She gazed at me with a look full of love, and I stood up, riveted to the spot, never wanting to leave her side.
“Kane? Are you here?” she asked sleepily as she rubbed her eyes. “Is this just a dream?”
I remained there like my feet were encased in concrete, unable to move but knowing I must. I wanted to crawl into that bed next to her and take her into my arms to feel her body against mine. I missed that calm she brought to me, the ability she had with nothing but her hands holding me to make me happy again.
My need for her and the desire to finally be back in her world crashed into the reality I knew I couldn’t deny. She and I couldn’t be together for all the reasons I knew better than I knew my own name. I was no good for her, and I had to protect her.
Before she could realize if I was real or a dream, I raced down the stairs out to my car, my limbs warring with my heart as they forced me to drive away. I looked back in the rearview mirror and didn’t see her watching me as I left, so all I could pray was she thought she’d had a dream and had gone back to sleep.
For me, there would be no sleep, like so many other nights. No amount of alcohol would let me lapse into some drunken stupor and give me relief after seeing her like that tonight. I’d convinced myself that I could go out there to see her every night, thinking that would be enough, but it wasn’t anymore.
I needed her back by my side, but I couldn’t put her in that kind of danger. But for the first time since I’d lost her, I wanted to say the love we could have again would be worth the risk.
Chapter Twelve
Shay
I left Stefan’s condo unsure where to go or what to do. I hadn’t wanted us to fight again. For God’s sake, I’d defended him to that asshole Kevin at the party, so why when it came right down to it couldn’t I do the same when Stefan needed me to right there in front of him?
Maybe our differences were too great.
I didn’t want to believe that. Stefan had everything I loved in a boyfriend. Carefree and free-spirited, he loved life like no other man I’d ever met. Like no other person I’d ever met. Nothing wore him down. I spent my days with people whose furrowed brows made them feel proud, like being miserable and serious all the time meant they’d accomplished something great in life.
But that wasn’t Stefan. He was smiles and laughter, a good time when the world felt like it weighed on my shoulders. I craved that lightness in my life like a plant craved sunlight and rain, and he provided my soul that nourishment.
So why the hell did I fight him every chance I got, even when I wanted to take him into my arms and tell him how much I adored each moment he made my life better?
I wanted to return to those days when he and I were happy. Nights at Club X when it was all flirting and sexy smiles. The problem was he had never changed from that. He still was that Stefan he’d always been—the unbelievably sexy club owner who set his sights on me the first time we met and challenged every one of my defenses until he found a way into my heart.
The change couldn’t be blamed on him. He hadn’t changed. I had. That sexy bartender he fell for, the girl who couldn’t help but be enchanted by the man who wanted me to bury him in the sand under the full moon, had morphed into one of the people she spent her days with.
Serious, with a furrowed brow, and so sure what she did meant so much more than a mere club owner. In just a few months, I’d become what I hated, and now I took it out on the man I loved every chance I got.
I knew I should turn myself around and march right back to tell him all of this, but the distance between us felt so great that I didn’t think I could. I had to make sure I said the right words or I’d end up ruining the best thing to ever happen to me.
No, not my education or my degrees. They’d always be there as great accomplishments for me, and I would always be proud of them. No, the best thing to ever happen to me was having Stefan in my life.
After a half hour walking the streets of Tampa, I wanted company. Grabbing a cab, I gave the only address that jumped into my head and settled back into the seat as the driver took me to the one place where Stefan and I had always been happy.
Club X.
I stepped out onto the curb in front of the dark building and a part of me mourned the ending of this place that had been the start of something so good. Maybe it was still a symbol for our relationship, except now instead of it being a fun, sexy place it had turned to just empty and closed off.
Walking around the building, I saw Kane’s Mustang parked in the back and walked up to the fourth floor where I knew he kept his rooms. Stefan had mentioned that he’d returned to staying there after Abbi began living at Alexandria’s house on Anna Maria Island, so I took a chance at finding him. I didn’t know why, but I needed to talk to someone who knew how much Stefan meant to me.
The hallway into the building’s fourth floor had no light whatsoever, so I walked down the pitch black passageway feeling my way until I saw a tiny crack of light under a doorway. Not sure what I’d find, I knocked and waited for an answer. Kane opened the door and looked down at me through what appeared to be a drunken haze.
“Science girl, what are you doing here?” he slurred.
“I just needed to talk to someone. Can I come in?”
He shrugged and stepped back to let me through. “I guess. Come on in.”
I walked in and looked around at where he lived, surprised at the complete difference between his rooms and Stefan’s condo. Stark and almost penitent, this place felt like some kind of prison cell. He stood at the door as it closed in just a pair of jeans and work boots, and even though the months of punishment he’d put himself through had changed his body, he still appeared huge standing there.
“Nice place. Early cellblock D, I think?” I joked, unsure of how to approach his misery as mine mixed with it.
“It’s right for me.”
“Mind if I sit?” I asked as I pointed to an old black couch along the wall.
“Feel free. My couch is yours for as long as you need.” He handed me a bottle of Jack Daniels and added, “Want something to drink?”
“Thanks. I think I need it tonight.”
I lifted the bottle to my mouth and chugged a mouthful, feeling the alcohol immediately hit my system. I hadn’t drank in so long it would only take a few swigs before I was completely hammered at that rate.
Pointing toward the other room, he said, “Feel free to watch TV. I’ll be in there.”
As he turned to walk away, I said quickly, “Wait, Kane. I need someone to talk to. You don’t have to say much. I just don’t want to be alone.”
He thought about what I said for a long moment and nodded. “Okay. Misery does love company.”
“Thanks.”
I sat down as he took his place at the other end of the couch and before I could stop myself, the words began to spill out of my mouth.
“Stefan and I had a fight. I don’t know what to do. I’m fucking this all up, and I can’t seem to fix it. It’s like some horrible train wreck only I can prevent, and I’m not doing anything to stop it.”
Kane took a deep breath and let his head rest on the back of the couch. “I’m the last person you want advice from, Shay.”
“I don’t want advice. I know what I have to do. I just don’t know why I’m not doing it.”
“Maybe you don’t love him. Ever think of that?” he asked with such a sharpness to his voice that for the first time I understood why Stefan didn’t like him much.
“What makes you think that? Why would you say that?”
He shrugged. “Just a question. I meant nothing by it.”
I took another mouthful of whisky and let it drop down into my stomach, burning every inch on the way down. Clearing my throat, I said, “You did mean something by it. Just come out with it.”
“I don’t know. You two seem to fight a lot. Maybe the love just isn’t there.”
God, this guy was exactly what Stefan had said he was.
What an asshole! I turned toward where he sat and pointed my finger at him. “What the fuck do you know? You sit here all day drinking yourself into a hole while that beautiful soul waits every day for you and begs you to return to her and your baby. So what the fuck do you know about love?”
He turned away as a look of hurt settled into his blue eyes. “Obviously not much.”
This was a mistake. Kane wasn’t the person I needed to talk to. Stefan was. All Kane was now was a broken shell of a person I’d known. Standing, I looked down at him and tried to understand what had happened to him, but I couldn’t. Whoever he was now, he wasn’t interested in letting any of us in.
“I think I better go.”
He said nothing as I moved toward the door, but as I opened it, I heard him rasp in his low voice, “Don’t let him go, Shay. You’ll never forgive yourself, and trust me, that’s not a life you want to live.”
I stared over at him as he sat hunched over on the end of the couch and couldn’t help but feel like the guy was coming apart right in front of me. He may not see what Stefan and I had, or maybe he did, but he needed a friend and I did too, so I slowly closed the door and sat back down.
“What happened to you, Kane? What happened to that dark guy who ruled the fantasies of others on these top floors? That guy who was so cool and badass.”
He shook his head. “He was never real. That was just a face I put on for the world. Until Abbi. Once she came into my life, that guy ceased to exist.”
“So what’s wrong with this one? What’s making you like this?”
He looked up at me with a look of pain in his dark blue eyes so heartbreaking that I nearly turned away. “I can’t be with her because all I do is hurt. It’s all I’ve ever done. I’m trying so hard to let her go and it’s not working.”
“Why do you want to let go of someone you love so much?”
Lifting his hands, he curled his fingers into tight fists and held them up in front of him. “Because I’ll just end up hurting her, and I can’t live with that.”
I watched as the skin over his knuckles turned stark white and his hands trembled from fear or anger. I couldn’t figure out which, but they shook so violently I couldn’t help myself and reached over to cup my palms over his fists. He looked at me as if he didn’t know how to react, like touching those angry hands was some unbearable sin.
