I clung to him.
Gave him my body.
If I could, I would have given him everything.
But I guessed maybe I knew better when his body went rigid and he grunted when he came, one moment behind me as he drew out my pleasure perfectly.
Knew better when he slumped to the bed and wrapped me in his muscled arms that were covered in weeping ink.
Knew it when I fell into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke in the morning and he was gone, I realized I’d known it all along.
1
Nikki
One Year Later
“Miss Nikki?” The timid voice hit me from behind.
I stilled where I was refilling my disposable coffee cup at the table. It was set up at the back of the large meeting room in the basement of an office building we rented out every Tuesday night.
I gave myself a moment to gather my composure after the intense session before I turned around with a soft smile on my face.
Brenna.
She stood there, nervously twisting her fingers together, the bruise around her eye finally beginning to fade. She hadn’t said a thing the entire session, but the fact that she had even shown up at all had felt like a victory.
“Hey,” I told her gently. My heart suddenly felt as if it were too big to fit in my chest. “What did you think of the meeting tonight?”
She chewed at the inside of her lip. “It was good. Everyone is really nice.”
“That’s good to hear. We want you to be comfortable. It’s a safe place.”
“I feel safe here.” She almost blanched when she said it. As if she never truly felt it or maybe she was scared to. She hesitated and then said, “I wanted to tell you something.”
I set my coffee cup aside and fully turned to her. “Of course. You can tell me anything.”
There was something about this young girl that got to me. Something that made me want to wrap her up and protect her. Hold her and keep her safe forever.
At barely eighteen with a two-year-old little boy, she’d already been through enough to last her a lifetime. Most of her turmoil was thanks to the piece of garbage who was supposed to be her boyfriend.
“I left him.”
Relief.
Sometimes I wondered how it could be so intense.
“I’m so proud of you,” I told her, not even trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Where are you staying?”
“My momma’s. She said Kyle and I could stay with her a bit until I get on my feet.”
“That’s good. So good. Do you need any money? Anything from me?”
I knew I was making myself too available. Offering too much. But with her, I couldn’t help it. All I wanted was to make a difference; although, I was pretty sure Kathy, the doctored psychologist who oversaw the group and mentored me, would tell me I was being a little too overeager.
Or maybe tell me I was straight up breaking the rules.
Call it a pitfall of my personality, I didn’t care. I just wanted to do . . . something.
More than something.
Truth was, I’d give absolutely everything I could.
Brenna pursed her lips. “Just you bein’ there for me that night meant everything. I don’t think I would have had the courage to call anyone else. I’ve never been so scared—for myself or for my son. You were there when we needed you most. I don’t know how to repay you for that.”
I gave a tight shake of my head, unable to hold back the moisture that rushed to my eyes. “You don’t need to repay me. The only thing I need is to know the two of you are safe. You keep my number close, okay? If you need anything, anything at all, I want you to call me.”
“I will,” she promised. Her gaze turned to the ground before she looked back up at me. Expression loaded with trust. “I just wanted to let you know.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Her nod was slight, and I gave her a small smile before she turned and climbed the steps leading from the basement floor meeting room.
Joy filled me full, and I turned back to the table and pressed my palms to it, head dropping as I pulled in a deep breath.
Two years ago, I’d taken the plunge and started accelerated online courses to get my psychology degree. Quietly at first, because I hadn’t quite put my finger on why I felt compelled to start down this path. Unsure of where I was going or if I’d stay the course.
Mostly I’d been uncertain of why I was doing it.
My purpose.
I’d finally realized I’d just wanted to make a difference.
If I could make one person’s life better, help them see the beauty of the world in the midst of so much cruelty and sorrow, it would be worth it.
Maybe I was doing it because of Sydney.
That was okay.
The only thing I knew was I wanted to pour something positive and good into the world after experiencing such a great loss.
That didn’t mean the last two years hadn’t been rough. It’d been difficult balancing all the online classes and now interning here with Dr. Kathy’s women’s program while I was still working at Pepper’s Pies, the diner my friend Rynna owned.
But after tonight?
I knew it was all going to be worth it.
With a smile on my face, I finished cleaning up the refreshment area while Kathy stacked the folding chairs.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I am.”
We flipped off the lights and headed up the stairs. The darkness was thick as we made our way to the ground floor and let ourselves out the front door and down the steps that led to the sidewalk.
The Alabama air was muggy and thick, the summer night sagging with humidity.
The area was pretty much deserted this time of night, the street flanked by two and three-story office buildings that had been around since the beginning of Gingham Lakes.
The drone of cars echoed in the distance, and Kathy’s heels clicked on the sidewalk as she headed for her car, which was parked at the curb in front of mine. “Good night,” she called.
“Good night. I’ll see you next week,” I hollered over my shoulder as I rounded the front of my old car to the driver’s side.
She paused at hers. “You did well tonight, Nikki. Really well. The women feel comfortable with you.”
I looked back at her.
It was funny how I was always the first to laugh. My first instinct to tease and play. But when it came to this, there was nothing but somberness on my face. “I hope so.”
A soft smile graced her face. “They are. It’s clear you’re doing this for all the right reasons. Because you want to be here.”
As soon as she said it, she slipped into the front seat of her car and started it. Her headlights cut through the darkness.
I was grinning as I opened my car door and started to slip behind the wheel, only to pause when my attention caught on a small, folded piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper.
I snagged it, jumped inside, and started my car, only then unfolding what I expected to be a coupon or announcement or sale.
My heart stuttered in my chest.
Deep dents were made in the paper in scratchy letters.
Don’t forget about me. I’m coming for you.
Dropping the note, I grabbed on to the steering wheel. My attention darted all around, eyes squinting as I searched the shadows.
There was nothing.
No sign of life other than the brake lights illuminated at the back of Kathy’s car as she waited for me to follow.
Dread settled in my gut, and the tiny sheet felt as if it weighed a million pounds as Brenna and Kyle’s faces filled my mind.
That little punk.
He thought he could scare me.
He thought wrong.
2
Ollie
What the fuck was I doing? I knew better than this. So much better than this. But I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop mys
elf.
Not when it came to her.
Call it a sickness.
I didn’t care.
It was after ten at night when I inched my car up behind her, and that pissed me off, too.
The girl traipsed across the deserted parking lot.
Alone.
Wading through this shithole like a sitting duck.
A tremor of anger ridged down my spine when my gaze moved over the area.
The lot was hidden at the back of the run-down apartment building, like it’d been designed that way specifically for some lowlife to take advantage of the defenseless and vulnerable.
Space nothing but a blanket of darkness except for a couple of dingy, dull streetlamps that barely leaked light in small pools onto the pitted pavement.
Two dumpsters lined the far end, motherfucking shadows dancing out from behind them and across the asphalt like they were restless, eager to become a player in a horror story.
With her head down, she walked toward the exterior stairs of her apartment. She didn’t even notice me since she had her attention all wrapped up in her phone that she was staring at in her hand.
Didn’t know which was worse.
That, or her other hand being clutched around the handles of this huge-ass bag, just swinging it along at her side like she was begging for it to be stolen.
My chest clenched.
Reckless girl.
Reckless girl who was wearing these tight red pants and some flowery, flowy blouse that I’d expect to see some grandma wear.
How the hell it still managed to get me hard, I didn’t know, but there I was, shifting in my damned seat.
Light brown, honeyed locks tumbled a few inches below her shoulders, her hair messy and wild and untamed.
Just like her personality.
As eager as her heart and as bright as her spirit.
Motherfucking sunshine.
The girl was tall and so goddammed skinny. All sharp edges and waif-thin lines. I had to remind myself I liked curves and big tits and handfuls of ass.
Nikki. Fucking. Walters.
The bane of my existence.
Hands gripping the steering wheel, I angled my car right behind her. The spray of my headlights struck her like a spotlight, making her jump about two feet off the ground. She spun around, hand with her phone going up to cover her heart.
Her mouth gaped open in shock.
Well, at least she noticed me.
I rammed the gear of my old Mustang into park and threw open the door, feeling all kinds of pissed off that this girl didn’t seem to have a defensive bone in her body.
Self-preservation nonexistent.
She just stood there like a deer caught in the headlights, two seconds from being run down and unable to move to do anything about it.
Hankering for a confrontation, I jumped out.
The fear in her expression transformed the second she realized it was me.
Her eyes were an indigo-blue, like a cracked-open amethyst crystal.
Her own brand of indignant anger burned through the center of them.
Hurt and a fucked-up sense of loyalty.
God damn it . . . I knew better than this.
But with her, I didn’t know how to stop myself.
3
Nikki
“Ollie.” I rasped his name, trying to steady my wobbling knees. To steady my feet. “You scared the crap out of me.”
He’d almost gotten himself a face-full of mace, which would not have been pretty.
And man, oh man, was the boy pretty.
It really would have sucked to muck up that view, even if he would have deserved it. Especially after the note I’d found tonight.
“You should be scared,” he gritted.
Beneath the hazy glow of the streetlamps, my heart drummed an erratic beat, and I struggled to slow my ragged breaths that jetted from my lungs. Panic and angered surprise was a blaze that beat through my veins.
My nerves were already set to high-alert, every faint sound enough to have me looking over my shoulder, worried that little asshole would follow me. Threaten me as if I’d just give up and send Brenna back to him. Or maybe he’d go as far to hurt me the way he’d hurt her. Or worse.
“And what exactly am I supposed to be scared of, Oliver?”
He scoffed. “I could have been any asshole out hunting for prey. Some disgusting prick looking for an easy target.”
The thing with Ollie? He did make me afraid. But not for my physical wellbeing. When it came to him, the only thing in danger was my heart.
He was always sneaking into my life when I didn’t have the mental fortitude to resist him. Tonight, I was feeling fragile, and the sight of him just about dropped me to my knees.
I thought I’d made it plenty clear he wasn’t welcome. Not anymore. Not after that night a year ago.
Giving comfort did not mean making myself a doormat.
And that was what he’d made me.
Nothing but a place to stomp the dirt off his big shoe.
My head shook. “Yet, you’re the only asshole standing there.”
A harsh breath of air left his gorgeous mouth. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice. “Call me an asshole. Fine. I deserve it. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were out here alone. Vulnerable. Someone could hurt you.”
With the last, I saw the worry flash across his magnificent features. Maybe the hardest part was how genuine it was.
Which was precisely the reason I couldn’t tell him what had happened tonight.
He’d demand I quit. He’d insist I was putting myself in danger and what I was doing was stupid.
Careless.
When I’d never been so full of care in all my life.
He stared me down.
Attraction trembled around us like a magnified force. As if the world still spun while we stood still.
The two of us no longer in orbit, and instead, we were strung up in an endless oblivion.
Shivers rolled, and it didn’t have a thing to do with the tremble of fear I’d felt a few moments ago.
It was the potent energy that was this man blasting across my flesh like the warmth from a furnace on a cold winter’s day.
My attraction to him was so intense I wondered how he didn’t taste it in the air.
Bristling and brimming and begging.
Chemistry.
As much as I didn’t want it to, it banged between us.
Painfully.
I didn’t mean for my smile to come across as sad. There were just some things a person couldn’t help. Not when we’d planned for things to turn out so differently between us.
“I don’t exactly have someone I’m coming home to who can watch out for me, now, do I?”
He lifted his chin in some sort of defense, and a flash of severity and regret and things I didn’t want to read struck through his eyes. “Why do you think I’m here, Nikki. To look after you.”
My eyes squeezed shut, and I tried to pretend I didn’t want to welcome it. His safety and his protection and his care. But it was right there, surging and spinning like a tease.
It was all compounded by the tight ball of hatred I held for him. He’d used me, and I’d let him.
“You’re here to look out for me?” My words were incredulous.
“Yup.”
Ollie, who was all rigid anger and glowering scowl where he clung to the top of the doorframe of the black muscle car that was almost as pretty as he was.
He looked like a savage beast with the long pieces of his dark, sandy hair pushed back on his head, the sides cropped short, beard on his face trimmed but full.
The man was this hulking tower of muscle and brawn and intricately drawn ink.
A haunting rendition of the lake had been imprinted on the entirety of his left arm, and a field of the same purple blazing star flowers we’d run through as children swayed from his wrist and up his forearm on the right, those massive, bulging muscles flexed in restraint as he
gripped the door.
The position harshly exposed the words etched on his knuckles.
Lost on the left and Soul on the right.
It was as if they’d been purposefully tattooed there to punch me in the gut every time I saw them, the permanent reminder of what he’d lost.
Of what we’d lost.
My lips pursed. “Maybe I don’t want you here.”
“Too bad.”
Cocky bastard.
I pointed at my apartment behind me. “I don’t need this right now, Ollie. It’s been a long night, and I just want to go upstairs, pour myself a glass of wine, and crawl into bed.”
He stepped away from his car and slammed the door shut.
“Where were you tonight?” he demanded. As if I’d done something wrong.
Every inch of him was rugged and rough and commanding, his body dripping sex from behind a closed-off exterior.
It was all mixed up with this troubled kindness that weighed heavily in the depths of his sapphire eyes, his soft lips always quick to tip into a gentle smile.
He was an enigma.
A veiled mystery.
A cliffhanger waiting to be written.
Who was I kidding?
He was a goddamned mindfuck, that was what he was.
And he’d broken my heart one too many times for me to fall into that trap again.
A resigned sigh pilfered free. “I was at the women’s support group. Remember? The internship I have. You know . . . to finish my courses to graduate?”
I didn’t mean for the sarcasm to drip out with it, but it did. Ollie had this way of getting under my skin.
“Of course, I remember. I just didn’t think that’d mean you’d be running around at all hours of the night.” His return came out just as harsh.
“People have lives, Ollie. Jobs and families. It only makes sense for these types of meetings to happen after normal work hours, don’t you think?”
“Suppose so. Guess that just means I’ll have to drive you.” He said it as if it made perfect sense.
Why did he have to constantly do this to me? Pulling and pulling and pulling me closer.
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 70
