Not My Heart to Break

by W Winters

  With my back to him, I sulk to the bathroom, turning on the faucet to run as hot as it can. With a hand on either side of the sink, I stare at the clear water swirling down the drain, waiting for the steam to come.

  Seth isn’t quiet when he comes up behind me, and I meet his gaze in the mirror.

  “I mean it,” Seth says again like it’s a warning.

  “Mean what?” I say and whip around, pissed off.

  “You’re mine.”

  “Seth… I am very much aware of that.” It’s all I can say. I won’t deny it.

  “Good.” He gives the one-word response before grabbing my thighs and pulling me into his arms. His touch is fire, possessive and full of need.

  It shocks me. Even as my back hits the tiled wall of the bathroom and his lips crash against mine. The wind is knocked out of me from the sudden wave of desire.

  His fingers dig into my flesh as my legs wrap around his hips. His hard touch softens as he nips my bottom lip and pulls back, breathless.

  With his body pressed against me and my hands on his muscular chest, I stare into his eyes wanting to know what the hell has gotten into him.

  Before I can speak, he nudges his nose against mine and my eyes close from the tender touch. He kisses me once, short and soft.

  Then he kisses me again and this time he deepens it. The water’s still running, but I couldn’t care less. I moan into his mouth and let him love me the way he knows how.

  He nips my bottom lip, my breasts pressing flat against his chest as he leans forward, pinning me where I am.

  Instantly, I’m hot and I feel suffocated. I crane my neck, to breathe cooler air, and he takes that as a sign to rake his teeth down my neck. The hint of pain as he drags his teeth and then bites down on my shoulder only ignites pleasure deep down in my belly and then lower.

  “Seth,” I moan.

  “I fucking love it when you say my name,” he groans in the crook of my neck before picking me up, one arm keeping me pinned to him.

  He turns off the water, turns off the light. He doesn’t ask at all if I was done. I hadn’t even begun but none of it matters.

  With the lights still off in my bedroom, he lays me down, never separating his body from mine and continues his slow, deliberate nips and kisses down my body. He peels my clothes down as he goes. When he gets to my waist, I have to prop myself up to take off my shirt. With my arms above my head, the shirt covering my face for just a moment, Seth unhooks my bra and viciously sucks my nipple. Gasping, I arch my back, and nearly buck him away from me because of the sudden onslaught of pleasure. He’s everywhere at once, his hands, his lips, his hard body pinning me down, feeling my curves, worshiping every inch of me.

  He only breaks long enough to remove his own shirt and then his pants after he’s removed mine.

  With both of us naked and panting he braces himself over me, in the perfect position to have me. I can’t help but to reach up and kiss him, again and again, on his jaw, his lips, down to his neck. My touch isn’t as rough and primal as his, but it’s just as needy.

  “Touch yourself,” Seth says, pulling back when I kiss him again. My lips brush against his, the electricity vibrating through my body. It takes me a moment, my head spinning with desire to realize what he said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he commands, “touch yourself the way you did when you thought about me.”

  Thump. My heart pounds from the tone of his voice.

  Unconsciously my left leg wraps around his thigh, wanting to urge him on, to have him lose control with me.

  “I want you,” I whisper, practically begging him.

  “Touch yourself first, Babygirl.” The depths of his eyes reflect only lust and that gives me hope in the uncertainty of what he’s doing. “I want you to know the difference,” he says, his voice deep and jagged with his own need that he’s resisting. “I need you to feel what you can do all by yourself and then feel what I give you.”

  I crash my lips against his frantically and before he can pull away, my right hand moves to my clit. My nipples are pebbled against his chest and every small movement feels like heaven against them.

  A small protest of a moan slips by me when Seth sits up on his knees, watching me in the dark bedroom as I touch myself beneath him. My head falls to the side as I circle my clit, but Seth’s quick to put an end to that.

  With his hand on my throat, he forces me to look up. “I want to see you,” he whispers roughly with his other hand wrapped around his cock and I cum, just like that. I could see him stroking himself as I do the same to myself and the very thought of him losing himself on me was my undoing.

  “So easy,” he teases me in a murmur, leaning down to kiss me as the waves of my orgasm rock through me, heating my skin, paralyzing my senses in overwhelming pleasure.

  Before the pleasure has waned, Seth grips my hips and flips me onto my belly in a swift movement that causes me to yelp in surprise. Lying flat on my belly, he teases my entrance, his thick head probing and playing.

  “So easy, so wet. Tell me it’s just for me.”

  With my eyes closed his command envelops me. Of course it’s just for him. It’s always been him.

  “Just for you. It’s all just for you.” I barely get the words out, still struggling to breathe. In a forceful stroke, Seth enters me, brutally and with a blinding pleasure that has me screaming his name. My nails dig into the sheets and a cold sweat layers every inch of my skin. He waits a moment, his forearm brushing my shoulder until his front is against my back. Simply hovering over me, touching me although his weight doesn’t push me down.

  “You were made for me,” he whispers at the shell of my ear, slipping his hand between my hip and the bed, not stopping until his fingers brush my clit. “This is how you did it?” he questions.

  “Yes,” I answer quickly and honestly.

  He circles my clit and I bury my face into the sheets, moaning low in my throat from the sweet, decadent pull in my core. Bringing me closer to the edge once again. Just as a sheen of heat lifts from my body, as the coiled pleasure threatens to burst, Seth thrusts his hips, never relenting in the attention he pays to my swollen and sensitive nub. And again, and again. Picking up his pace and steadily fucking me deep and raw and possessively.

  I have to bite down on the sheets. I try to move away from him; it’s all too much. At the same time, I want more, I want him deeper, I want to feel him pulsing inside of me.

  “Seth.” The only word I can say is his name. Even the friction between my breasts and the sheets is igniting as he ruthlessly fucks me from behind.

  He made his point with the first thrust. He made his point without even touching me. I know I can never have what he gives me with anyone else, let alone my own touch. He doesn’t stop though, not until my voice is hoarse and raw, my body and lips tingling with a heated sensation that feels like it will last forever.

  Seth

  Parked in the lot across from the Rockford Center, the police station is about a mile down the road and easily monitored. From here, in the driver side of my car with the window rolled down, the cop cars come and go, seemingly insignificant at a distance. I remember a time when I’d get anxious from just the thought of one.

  Time changes a lot of things.

  An old man in blue jeans and a thin dark gray hoodie mows the circular patch of grass out front of the large cement building directly in front of me.

  Other than the small garden of roses on either side of the sidewalk that divides the grass, there’s no color at all. The upper half of the three-story building is painted gray. The lower half is the same shade as cement.

  Men and women go in and out of the Rockford Center, but the police station is far busier. There’s only been a handful of nurses, out on smoke breaks, the mailman and now the gardener taking up residence out here. Even the parking lot is barren. Employees park around back and that leaves only myself and one other parked car with no one occupying it in this lot.

/>   It’s an odd choice to plant roses in a place like this.

  It reminds me of a book we had to read in school, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. It was about some girl in a place like this. I didn’t read it, Laura did though. She cried at the end. I wonder if she likes the roses out front, or if they make her want to cry like the book did.

  The smell of freshly cut grass hits me as the breeze drifts into the car. Picking up the paper bag next to me, I realize the sandwich inside it isn’t quite hot anymore. It’s still warm though.

  I must’ve been sitting out here for longer than I realized. At least the coffee is still hot. I picked up everything from the corner diner by the bar; they have the best coffee in town. It’s something sweet, caramel drizzle, or some shit like that, for Laura.

  She may have eaten lunch already. I don’t know. My phone’s been in my hand, the bag on the passenger seat, and all the while, I’ve just been sitting here, watching, not going in.

  The flowers have fucked with my head more than they should. They’re just too much like the ones I gave her. It’s unsettling. It feels like a sign or something. A signal that what we’re doing is wrong. That it’s not supposed to be this way.

  I always knew I’d see Laura again, talk to her. Sometimes my thoughts would be only of a moment. One moment where we recognized each other and maybe even kissed, but never more than that.

  A girl at the bar one night talked about star-crossed lovers and ever since she rattled on about it, I wondered if that’s what we were meant to be. Because every time I’m around her, it hurts and I know it hurts her too.

  It’s like falling down a spiral where nothing else matters; I can’t even see anything but her when she’s in front of me. But I know I’m falling. Some falls you don’t recover from.

  Last night, sleep evaded me, the image of the flowers and reckless thoughts haunting me every time I closed my eyes.

  My phone pings and I’m grateful to be ripped from my thoughts. The message I get isn’t what I want to see though. Cursing under my breath, I don’t respond.

  Declan’s got nothing.

  The box the flowers came in was in the trash in her kitchen. I searched for it the second she passed out last night. It didn’t have any identifying information. No note, no nothing. Declan can’t find a record of any flowers ordered online to be delivered to Laura’s address either.

  It doesn’t sit right with me.

  If she wants to believe they came from me though, I’ll let her believe it.

  It’s something more though, something unsettling deep in my bones. It feels like a warning. Like her leaving me is going to happen all over again. I barely survived the last time. She’s the same, better even. But me? I’m a fucking shell of the man I was when I was with her.

  Declan messages again and I have to respond to his text which reads: Did he get the list?

  Looking past the center and to the police station, as if I can see Walsh opening the note I dropped in his box outside his office, I text Declan back: Yeah. I left it at his office. A list of all six names with the note, they’ll lead you to the man you’re looking for.

  Declan sends a series of texts and I read them one by one. Little things he’s wondering about from the copies of the diaries he has. He wants me to read them to get an idea of what I think about his conclusions. It’s years of scattered thoughts from a tormented woman and right now, that’s the last thing I want to do.

  “Seth?” Laura says my name like it’s a question.

  “Shit,” I hiss and get over the jolt that pinned me to the back of my seat. My back teeth grind and I have to unclench the paper bag to put it down. “You like scaring the shit out of me, don’t you?”

  My comment comes as I shake off the unease of being startled without her knowing. Her smile never falters. With her hair pulled high into a bun on the top of her head and a pair of scrubs with a print of coffee cups and hearts, she looks like she doesn’t belong here. It’s too much sweetness for a place that’s made of stone.

  “I thought it was you sitting out here.” She rocks on her heels before lowering herself to the open window, folding her arms over it and getting closer to me. “I needed some fresh air… didn’t expect to see you.”

  It strikes me for a moment how easy she makes it seem. Like there was no hesitation, no reason she shouldn’t come to me.

  My gaze darts to her lips as she licks them and the wind rushes, making her shiver.

  “I was just thinking of you and brought you some coffee.”

  “As an apology for keeping me up all night?” she jokes and then hums, “Smells good.”

  Grabbing the bag and the coffee, I hold them in my lap. “Kiss first.”

  As the smile grows on her face, so does something warm inside of me. Something that covers the nagging feeling that everything’s wrong. It comes with that first step down the spiral staircase. Blindly moving. Just like she does when she lets me hold her chin between my thumb and forefinger and steal a kiss from her. And then another.

  There’s always another when it comes to her.

  Laura

  “God I wish Bethany were here.”

  “Anything I can help you with?” Aiden asks me and it’s only then that I realize I spoke the thought out loud.

  “Oh, no. No, just… nothing.” I force a smile to my face and tap the pen in my hand on the chart. “All good,” I tell him when he doesn’t look away.

  He keeps looking a moment longer, even after I turn my attention back to Melody’s sheet.

  My coffee’s lukewarm now, but it hits the spot as I take a nice long sip and then look at the clock. One more hour until things wind down.

  “She’ll be here tomorrow.” Aiden’s comment reminds me that he’s still standing by the nurses’ station. “I have to say, I missed her.”

  “This place missed her,” I say then add, “I’m glad she’ll be back to pick up some of these rounds.”

  Aiden’s chuckle isn’t forced and it reminds me that he’s a nice guy. I haven’t been able to think of him the same since E.J. was admitted. It’s hard not to think of it as a political decision. The check was big enough, so he let the rules slide for her.

  Whoever has her here, with her information hidden, they want her alive and taken care of. I guess that’s all that matters.

  I watch him leave, waving at Mel who’s counting pills that go into each of the little cups behind the half wall with a windowpane for the upper half.

  Just as I’m returning the clipboard, I get that nagging prick that someone’s watching me on the back of my neck and instead of being quiet about it, I whip around quickly, fear gripping my heart in a cold vise that chills my body.

  The back of a black hoodie and dark jeans disappears behind the corner to the hall where my patients are.

  I don’t like it. Not the look of him or the feeling that resonates in my gut. Grabbing the sign-in sheet for a half second, I don’t see a new name. No one signed in recently and I know every name on this list. Every single one. His name isn’t here and it damn well should be.

  My strides are purposeful as I round the corner.

  “Excuse me,” I call out, eager to get to the man as he nears the very end of the hall. He stops between the doors that lead to either Melody or E.J.

  When he turns around, he tilts his head questioningly and a thin scar on his chin shines from the fluorescent lights above us.

  “Do you mind signing in, please?” I ask him cordially, through an innate dread that creeps along every inch of my skin. He’s handsome, although rough around the edges. Something about him… my soul doesn’t like him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the guy says as he smiles at me, and it’s a charming smile, with perfect teeth. It makes him look younger too, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He scratches his chin, at the scar, maybe in an attempt to hide it. “This way?” he questions me, urging me to walk with him and I don’t want to. The need to check on both the patients beyond those doors rides me harder than any
thing else in this moment. He was headed to one of them.

  It’s then that I realize it’s quiet, there’s no one else here. No patients on their way to the game room or the library. No visitors other than this man in the lone hall and every door down this way is closed.

  “Yes. Let me show you,” I speak politely, hiding everything I’m feeling and brushing aside my nerves. I feel paranoid. Shaking my head, I breathe out in exasperation.

  “Something I said?” the visitor asks. His blondish hair is long enough that it tousles as he walks next to me.

  “No, sorry. Just something I was thinking about before I saw you.” I direct him to the clipboard, picking up the pen and holding it out to him. He takes it, but not quickly enough. His slender fingers linger. Standing this close to him, I note that he’s taller than me. He doesn’t carry a lot of weight to him, but he’s lean and toned.

  The cords in his throat tense when he says, “Thank you.”

  Shoving my hands into my pockets, I only nod.

  “Who are you here for?” I ask him when I see he’s only filled out his name. Jacob something. I can’t quite read his last name from this angle.

  “Just checking on a friend is all,” he says softly, with a hint of an accent although I can’t place it. Southern, maybe?

  I’m stern but still polite, still kind even, when I explain, “You have to write—”

  “Laura.” I’m cut off by a familiar voice.

  Officer Walsh nods a greeting at Jacob, and then apologizes for interrupting. After looking at the silver watch, which looks expensive and doesn’t match the read I got on Jacob, the visitor who never said who he was visiting, tells Officer Walsh it’s all right and he has to get back to work anyway.

  I watch the man go, not listening to a damn word coming from Officer Walsh.

  “Do you know him?” I ask the man to my left, a police officer who should have the kind of sense about a person that I’ve learned to have.

  He blinks at me once, his thick lashes covering those pale blue eyes for a moment before his brow raises and he catches sight of the black hoodie just as the elevator doors close.