But I needed to get prepared. The Diesel I’d come to know was gone, and another had taken his place. The man in front of me wouldn’t be swayed by words.
“No, I didn’t. All I can say is I’m sorry. I messed up terribly.”
“Why?”
“I told you why.”
“You want me to believe it was something real?”
“Yes.” It was the most real I’d ever had. That I would ever have. Diesel was my end game. There wasn’t any other.
“Show me.”
“Show you what?” I asked. I couldn’t focus, my mind and body reeling beneath his disapproval.
“Show me how desperate you are for me.” He stepped closer, his arms stiff at his sides, his hands opening and closing as if he were wrestling with his conscience.
Tears pricked my eyes. “I would do anything for you.”
“You’ve made a similar statement before. And before, I might have believed you.”
“What would you have me do?”
“I want you to prove you mean what you say. I want you on your knees in front of me. I want those lush lips of yours around my shaft and your moonbeam hair all around me. No words, no lying, just you and me.”
“Okay.” And it was. I wanted another opportunity to give him pleasure, knowing it would be the last.
I stepped closer and reached out for the string on his board shorts.
“Not here.” He grabbed me by the wrist. “A goddess on her knees, I’ve changed my mind.” His cynicism seared my heart. “It just wouldn’t be right.”
Nothing was right anymore. But I didn’t protest as he led me through the living room.
Another spike of pain pierced my heart when he pulled me into the guest room rather than his room. He didn’t touch me, although I wanted him to, desperate for one more caress. But if he wanted to punish me by withholding his affection, wasn’t it a punishment I deserved?
Diesel reached back between his shoulder blades to pull off his tank. After dropping his shorts, he climbed into the bed. Lying on his back with his magnificent cock pointed straight to the ceiling, he put his hands behind his head and regarded me coolly.
I moved forward, knowing somewhere inside my brain that I shouldn’t do what he wanted. That doing this would ruin everything between us. But then everything was already ruined. And I was desperate to touch him, even if only like this.
“Clothes off. Hair unbound.”
“Okay.”
I took my time removing my new pink Roxy top, then unzipping my white shorts and lowering them. My hands shaking, I slid off my panties. I wasn’t moving slowly to be seductive. I slowed down because I felt awkward and self-conscious baring myself to him without his affection and approval. It hurt.
“No ponytail.” His voice was a deep, masculine rasp.
My nipples drew tight and my clit throbbed. My body was trained to expect certain things from him, but I didn’t get them. I wouldn’t get them anymore. This wasn’t about me. But telling myself didn’t stop the longing.
I reached up and removed the elastic, reluctant to shake my hair loose. But I needed the curtain around my face, not wanting him to see the tears in my eyes. I almost thought he did.
Through the fall of my hair, I thought he reached for me, but when I turned my head to regard him fully, I decided I’d only imagined it. Wearing nothing, he lay completely immobile on the bed.
“What are you waiting for? For me to compliment you?” He made a scoffing sound. “You have to know, I’ve seen better.”
“I’m sure you have.” I licked my dry lips. “And I’m sure you will again as soon as I’m gone.” Another slash of pain stabbed my heart. “But for right now, you have me.”
I would make it good. I wanted it to be good. I wanted to show him how I felt, since words wouldn’t sway him.
My body shook as I climbed into the bed.
Diesel didn’t speak. He didn’t move. I could barely hear him breathing, but I could feel his gaze on me. So hot, it kept me warm.
“Can you open your legs?” I stroked my fingers down his solid thighs.
His cock was hard, long, thick, and beautifully formed, tempting as it always was, as he would always be to me. I licked my lips in anticipation as precum spurted from his shaft.
Scooting into place in the space he provided, I lowered my head and grasped him by the root. He was so thick, my fingers barely went around him. When I finally had my mouth on the blunt tip, he groaned.
Wet heat rushed down my legs. I wanted him inside me so badly. I felt so empty, so bereft without him. But I wouldn’t ask.
This was about him. I was determined. I would give him this one last thing.
As I licked and sucked Diesel, as I bathed him with my breath, as I lovingly attended to him and nearly came when he did, I hoped that maybe there would be absolution in the process.
But there wasn’t.
In the end, there was only regret. For both of us.
Chapter Fifty-One
* * *
Diesel
When I returned from the shower, Hollie was gone. Not just from the bedroom. From the house. From my life.
I could feel it, the complete absence of her. A soul-sucking emptiness that stole the breath from my lungs.
I didn’t need to open the front door to check to see if the rental car was there anymore, but I did. It was gone. Closing the door, I stood in the entryway, not really sure what kept me on my feet. Maybe shock.
Why had she lied?
Why had I asked her to do what she’d done? It had hurt me worse than I’d intended to hurt her. I would never forget watching sadness extinguish the light in her eyes after she’d wiped her mouth.
Moments passed, or maybe it was hours. Time had no meaning without someone you cared about to share it with you. I’d suppressed that hard-earned knowledge for years.
Somehow, I ended up on the porch. The place that had the least stamp of her presence, or maybe it was the most. I dropped onto my ass and leaned my back against the wall.
Darkness within me, darkness around me, I could barely hear the waves crashing against the shore over the cracking of my chest, splitting into two separate pieces right down the middle. I’d only felt pain this terrible once before.
My cell rang. Vaguely, I recalled that it rang more than once. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Shattered, I closed my eyes.
• • •
I woke to the sunrise, and that hurt too. The ghost of her diminished it, diminished everything. My entire world was shrouded in black. Without Hollie, I couldn’t see hope in a new day or anything else.
I got my sorry ass off the porch, grabbed a board, and hit the surf. The waves were firing at least eight feet. I took them as they came.
Over and over, I popped up and cut back, unleashing my fury at myself and at her on the water. It was what I should have done instead of taking it all out on her. But there weren’t any take-backs in real life.
Fuck the world. Because it sure as shit will fuck you.
I came in as the sun went down, not overly surprised when I saw two familiar figures standing on the porch under the light.
“Fucked it up with her.” Ash shook his blond head at me and gave me a pitying look.
“She ran away from you.” Fanny hit me with the full force of her ire. She was a redhead and the sister of the goddess of fire, so her anger was understandably a significant blow. “You finally showed her what a prick you are. Can’t believe she thought she liked you. Regret is the more usual effect you have on women the day after.”
“Why are you here?” I asked, throwing that question out to both of them.
“For you to help us find her,” Fanny said, her glare intensifying.
My blood ran colder than the ocean water running off me. “Why does she need finding?”
“She’s turned off the location and won’t answer her cell. And she just left me a voice message I don’t understand.”
�
�And you think I will?”
“You’d better. If you don’t, I’ll lop off that big dick you’re so proud of.”
“What did she say?”
“Here.” She dug her cell out of the front pocket of a long skirt that had more colors in it than an island sunrise.
“Fanny, I . . .”
The sounds of Hollie’s sobs on the recorded message crushed the two broken parts of my chest into unsalvageable rubble.
“I don’t know who I am anymore. I thought I did with Diesel, but I ruined it like I ruin everything. I need to figure out on my own how to be strong, how to be someone I can be proud of. For me and my baby.”
Hollie was already strong. Why didn’t she see it?
I refocused on Fanny. “Hollie associates identity with family. She mentioned thinking about her real dad a lot. I bet you money, she’s gone to look for him.”
“We don’t know who our dad is.”
“But you know where your mom met him, don’t you?”
Fanny’s eyes widened. “She’s gone to Vancouver Island.” Tugging on Ash’s solid bicep, Fanny looked like she was ready to jump into the ocean and swim to the Pacific Northwest if necessary.
“Hold up,” he said. “We’ll get a flight in the morning. I wanna talk to Diesel first.”
“All right.” She put her hands on her hips. “Go ahead.” Her red curls vibrating with her impatience, she tapped her foot.
“Alone.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Thanks, little one.” Ash followed his gypsy rose with his eyes until she disappeared around the side of the house. Then he turned to glare at me. “I should beat your ass for putting her through all this worry.”
Was it my imagination, or was he being even more incredibly protective of Fanny than usual?
“I’m not the one who messed up in this scenario,” I said in my defense, but the churn of guilt in my gut said he was right.
“Hollie’s a sweet girl,” he said.
“She’s a woman.”
“I guess, but in a lot of ways, she’s still a child.”
“She’s a grown-up, pregnant with another man’s child.” Pregnant by a man who didn’t deserve her affection, but one I felt I could never measure up to. One that I felt like I had no chance to measure up to because of the baby.
Ash shook his head. “You know what I mean. She’s sweet, naive, and far too trusting. The thing with Maximillian, I should’ve seen coming a mile away, but she was so lost after the incident with her stepfather, and he seemed to make her better.”
“The bodyguard was a jerk.” I shook my head. “He manipulated her to get laid, and then he abandoned her.”
“And he’s different from you, how?”
“Fuck you.” I glared at him.
“No, Diesel. You’re the one who’s fucked. I’m pointing that out to you as a brother, even though a lot of the time, I just don’t get you. You had a rose in the palm of your hand, and you crushed it because of one little thorn.”
“A goddess.” The correction was important. “Hollie’s a fucking goddess, not a rose.”
Ash raised a brow. “You care about her?”
I nodded.
“Then I suggest you sort your shit out about her fast,” he said in parting, and then left me to do just that.
Alone again, I went inside and took a shower. Not going to get into how even taking a shower was a fucked-up experience without her, but it was. Trust me on that.
Then I got a phone call that had me throwing on a shirt, and fuck me, world, because the shirt I picked up sure as shit was the Dirt Dogs tee she’d abandoned. It smelled like her, like us. I swayed on my feet and had to sit down on the bed to catch my breath.
Ten minutes later, I stormed into my dad’s room at the assisted-living facility.
“Here. She left this with me for you.” He thrust a small jewelry box in my hand while shaking his head at me. “When you do stupid shit like this, you make me believe your pecker overrules your brain.”
I’d heard this put-down before when I told him I was quitting high school to marry Lalana.
I squinted at him as I shoved the box in the pocket of my board shorts. “What’d Hollie say to you exactly?”
“Nothing. Not a fucking negative against you. She told me she kept something from you. Said she made a mistake, and that she was sorry. She said you wouldn’t forgive her, but that she didn’t want to leave with me thinking badly about you.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Is that all it is?”
“Dad, c’mon.” Didn’t he see how significant that was?
“You know she’s the best thing that ever happened to you, don’t you?”
“I know, but—”
“She’s not Lalana.”
“I know, but—”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Knew you did. Wondered if you’d acknowledged it.”
“Not to her.”
“That’s a mistake.”
“Love’s a trap.”
Dad raised an eyebrow at me. “Or maybe it’s the key to open the lock you have on your life to set you free.”
“Didn’t you tell me it was a mistake loving my mom?”
“I chose the wrong person to give my affection to, but I don’t regret loving her. The time I had with her was some of the best of my life, and she gave me you.”
“Hollie is pregnant with another man’s baby.”
“You see her being pregnant with this other man’s child as a reminder of a rival, and a reminder to you of all that you lost with Kellan.”
I nodded. “Doesn’t that make her the wrong person for me?”
“You chose Lalana because she had a pretty face and big tits. I think you recognize that Hollie’s heart is a better prize than all the rest of her. She needs you, and she brings out the best in you. She’s perfect for you. So, you need to decide. Is the baby a lost dream, or a second chance for one that brought her to you?”
Chapter Fifty-Two
* * *
Hollie
On the private deck of a hotel suite on Vancouver Island, I tilted my face to the warmth of the rising sun while marveling at the view. The peaks of the mountain range on the other side of the Inside Passage seemed to pierce the lightening sky. I listened to the calm water of the protected channel lap the pilings beneath my room, made myself breathe properly, and tried to hold on to the Zen my thirty minutes of yoga had brought me.
But watching the sun rise hurt without Diesel. It was just one more hurt to add to the many.
Leaving him.
Saying good-bye to his father.
Getting on the plane and staring down at the birthplace of my heart from up above in the sky, I’d felt the leash that tethered me to it and him snap.
Breathe, Hollie.
I couldn’t. Any thought of Diesel destroyed my peace. There was no balance without my heart. My chakra had no center. I was incomplete without it.
Drifting back inside, I forced myself through the motions of getting ready for the day. I showered. The luxurious travertine was nothing like the dated peach tile at his place, but the warm water sliding over my cold skin reminded me of his caresses.
The cavity inside my chest aching with longing, I shuffled back into the main room of the suite, staring at the sundress laid out on the bed. I couldn’t wear it again. I just couldn’t.
I went to the phone, calling down a request for something to be sent up, and within minutes there was a knock on the door.
“Good morning, Miss Wood.” The eager young bellhop swept his gaze over me.
Holding the lapels of the courtesy hotel robe closed, I took the sack of clothing from the hotel gift shop that he offered me.
“Did you sleep well?”
Hardly. I’d tossed and turned, the nightmares returning to batter me. I had no anchor without Diesel’s arms around me.
“Thank you for bringing
the things up so promptly.”
The bellhop nodded. “Have a great day.” He might be eager to see the famous Holliewood in a robe to have a story to tell his friends, but he remained professional.
I closed the door and withdrew the items from the bag. A tee. A track suit with red striping on the pants, and a cashmere-lined hoodie. Leather tennis shoes with wool socks. The items were better suited for the Canadian climate than a sundress and flip-flops.
I folded the dress carefully, trying not to think about the first time that Diesel had taken it off me. I failed.
Swiping a hand through the wetness on my cheeks, I tried to blame my emotions on pregnancy hormones, but it was a lie, and I was done lying to myself. I preferred Diesel and his father’s way. I loved him, but love wasn’t an excuse. I’d messed up with him. There was no undoing my mistake.
I had to move on. It was difficult. It hurt. It would take time. I might never get over him like my mom had never gotten over my real dad, but I would try.
I had to try.
My cell rang. I’d turned the ringer back on this morning. Part of my keeping it real was not hiding from my life.
“Hello.” I knew who it was. I’d glanced at the caller ID before answering. I collapsed on the bed as I heard his booming authoritative voice.
“Miss Wood? Lovely of you to take my call at long last.”
“Mr. Hart.” I had a death to process. Now I had a lost love to mourn. “I had things to sort out. I apologize. How are you?”
“Could be better. I’ve got a circuit judge breathing down my neck for the second delay in taking your case to trial.”
“I don’t know if I want to continue with the lawsuit. I told you that before Max died.” Pain sliced through me, but not as badly as before. I wasn’t alone. I laid my hand on my stomach. I’d made my peace with the past.
“It would be a mistake to drop the charges.” A mistake that would lose him his portion of a potential settlement.
“I’m not ready to make a definitive decision right now. I need some more time.”
“We are at the upper limits of an extension already. Your stepfather’s attorneys—”
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 138
