by Quinn, Cari
“B-before? How much before?”
“A little while. And I know what you were thinking. I always knew, as much as I hated that I wasn’t enough for you.” He cupped her cheek and closed his hand around the tears he caught in his palm. “You wanted love. He gave it to you before I could.”
“No. No, that’s not true. You always loved me better than anyone else. After Brent, everything got so fucked up. There was always this wall between us, and I couldn’t find my way through.”
“What he did was one wall. What I did to push him to that point was another.”
“What? How did you have anything to do with Brent’s actions?”
Her confusion just added another layer to the self-disgust coating his throat. “You never saw me the way I truly am. Christ, I wanted to be a hero in your eyes. You saw me as selfless when the reality is I tried to be your entire world so you wouldn’t notice I didn’t measure up.”
“No.” Her shoulders hunched and she bowed her head, her cheerful hair only emphasizing the bleakness in her eyes. “I know you better than I know myself. The man I know never did anything to hurt me. Not once.”
If only that were true.
“Come here.” When she didn’t move, he hauled her against his chest, tightening his arms until she gasped against his throat. Her tears came harder, racking her shoulders. He pressed his cheek against her head, rocking her as carefully as a child. “I love you with everything I am,” he whispered once her sobs began to slow. “You deserve the best, and I’m going to give it to you.”
She tipped her damp face up to his and drew her quivering thumb over his lower lip. “I love you too. And you’re the best I could ever ask for.”
He dipped his forehead against hers. “I’m going to stop. I promise.”
She nodded so quickly that he would’ve chuckled if he hadn’t been a deep breath away from tears himself. “Yes. We’ll do it together. Whatever you need. I’ll help you.” Her lips lifted hesitantly, the double rainbow bonus after a destructive thunderstorm. “I’m good at projects.”
Now he did laugh, hard enough to elicit the tears he’d battled back. He closed his eyes before they fell, but one snuck through, cutting a shameful path down his cheek. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. You gave up everything for me. Everything. Your brother, your parents. You turned your back on them to protect me and I let you down. I left you alone—”
“No.” He grabbed her face, shaking her more than he’d meant to. “Goddammit, no. You aren’t to blame for any of this. I did it. Me, Jazz. I knew what I was doing, and I kept doing it. I did it before the second night we were together. God, oh God, I even wanted you to try it too. So don’t you ever say that you did anything wrong. It was me. I’m the wrong one.”
“No.” She shook her head, tears streaming. Breath hiccupping until each stutter echoed in the pit of his chest like an aborted heartbeat. “I won’t let you face this alone. Let me share the burden.”
“You are. You’re here with me, and I can face anything now.”
“We’ll face it,” she said fiercely. “Like we face everything. Together.”
“Yes. Lila gave me an advance, and I’ll get square with the people I owe. This is almost over.” He gathered her in close and buried his face in her hair, smearing his tears in the silky strands. Hiding them like a humiliating secret. “Just don’t leave me. Please.”
“I won’t. We’re a team. Always.”
Drawing strength from her words and her solid warmth in his arms, he swallowed and edged back. “In my shaving kit in the bathroom, there’s a baggie. Flush it down the toilet. I don’t want to see it or know it ever existed.”
She didn’t hesitate. She slid away from him and rubbed her palms over her cheeks before climbing off the bed and marching into the bathroom. As small as she was, she brought to mind a fierce warrior, ready to do battle in her off-the-shoulder top and skinny jeans.
He closed his eyes at the flush of the toilet, imagining all that pretty powder draining away. And when she walked back to him and whispered, “it’s done,” he realized she wore one of his shirts, wrapping his scent around her even as she faced the reality of his failures.
She’d used her favorite vintage Sex Pistols T-shirt to mop up his blood. Whipping it off without a thought to try to take away his pain.
Inhaling a ragged breath, he nodded and pulled her close. He pressed his face against her breasts, the gentle thud of her heartbeat as calming as the sound of the surf coming in at high tide. Jazz’s love burned inside him now, and nothing else mattered.
He laid his lips on that steady beat, smiling as it sped just from his nearness. She scooped her hand through his hair, gently soothing, and he turned his mouth to her breast. He drew her nipple between his teeth through the shirt, drowning in her summery watermelon scent and the hint of cinnamon from the cabin’s soap on her skin. Those two smells shouldn’t have worked together, but on her they were the perfect mixture of spicy and sweet.
Pushing his hands under her shirt, he rolled it upward until he glimpsed her black-and-white bra. The tiny bow in the middle might’ve made it chaste, if not for the quickness of her breathing pushing her breasts up and almost over the tops of the cups. One flick of his fingers and they spilled free, hopelessly vulnerable, her skin flushing prettily before he closed his mouth around her nipple and sucked in earnest.
Her soft moan washed over him, barely loud enough to reach his ears. He slipped his hand between her legs and cupped her, relishing the pulse that built there too, a butterfly beat against his palm. He licked his way from one breast to the other, giving them both special attention, lapping at the taut peaks while their color bloomed from pink to a needy red. He continued down her belly, shifting onto his stomach on the bed, ignoring his aches and pains in favor of peeling away her snug jeans to reveal the boy shorts beneath.
The damp spot that bloomed on the material beckoned his tongue. He pressed it to her mound and swirled it up and down, chasing the flavor that he’d already become addicted to. When he couldn’t wait another second, he pulled the side over and slid his mouth over her damp folds, absorbing the sigh that went through her and the pinch of her fingers on his hair as if they were as essential as breath. More so, because he’d felt like he’d stopped breathing for months and being there with her, feeling her swell and grow wetter with each erotic kiss, gave him a head rush unlike any other.
The roaring in his ears expanded, blocking out the world except for Jazz and the tiny, impatient pumps of her hips against his face. Knowing that she was trying to restrain herself made him chuckle, as did her growl and insistent tug on his hair, pulling him into her heat. He pushed her jeans and underwear down, freeing them from her legs. Then he banded his arm around the back of her thighs and drew her close, opening her up with the fingers of his opposite hand and teasing her clit and her piercing with the tip of his tongue. He moved down, seeking her entrance, closing his eyes at the suction of her flesh.
Pain raced along his scalp as she seized hold of his hair and gyrated against his face. So open and unabashed in her pursuit of pleasure. He dragged his fingers through her wetness and offered them up to her to lick off. A glimpse of her pink tongue slipping over the twisted silver ring he wore renewed the heavy pounding between his legs. He felt huge. Too sensitive to touch.
She gripped his hand in both of hers as she sucked him dry, swallowing her flavor without hesitation. Her tongue rode his knuckles, twined around his fingers. Just her stare and her wet kisses held him entranced. When her teeth grazed his palm, his cock jerked against his zipper and he groaned, impossibly lost.
Fuck, he could come just from the feel of her mouth on his skin. Any part of his skin.
Going any speed other than fast with her was basically a fantasy. He had a lifetime to make up for. Even spending the rest of his days inside her wouldn’t be enough to settle the debt.
Unable to wait anothe
r second, he fell backward and tugged her with him. Curtained by her hair, lost in his need, he lowered his zipper and freed his cock, letting out a groan of gratitude as she took control. One flex of her hips and he was inside her, her body splayed on his chest, her mouth moving with his. She cupped the back of his neck and lifted up before sinking down and taking him deeper. So deep that he couldn’t do anything but stare into the slumberous blue eyes that held him hostage while she started to ride.
She braced her hands on his torso and rolled him inside her, again and again. Slowly, sweetly, she ruled him. Her piercing scraped over his cock, sending a bolt of lightning down his spine, and he jolted off the bed. His ribs protested and he didn’t give a shit. Glimpsing the tight red crests of her breasts playing peekaboo between her arms as her hips undulated and her pussy enveloped him, slick and hot, exceeded any toll on his body.
Hooking one hand under her knee, he pulled her leg up and drew her head down, savoring the hiss of her breath against his cheek. Her heartbeat thundered in time with his, a race they would both win.
Together.
“I love you,” he murmured. She trembled with him, around him, and slid her hand up his abdomen to his heart. He laced his fingers with hers and brought them to his mouth, kissing her knuckles as she shuddered and tumbled over that final rise.
“I love you,” she echoed, her words following him into the glorious spiral of oblivion.
Falling, falling until only peace remained.
Thirty-One
Then
“Keep walking. Straight ahead. Bump. Step up. Your eyes are closed, right?”
“Oh my God, you can’t do this to me again. It’s not Christmas.”
“Good because I couldn’t fit this in a box. Okay, slight left. Straight. No peeking. Step down…and open your eyes.”
His hands dropped away as her eyes opened and the world spread out in front of her. Jewel-blue water glistened beneath the arches she’d dreamed about for so long that she’d taken to sketching them in her composition notebook. This was the bridge that would take her from her current reality to a whole new one.
And now it was almost close enough for her to touch.
“Oh Gray!” Jazz rushed to the railing of the balcony of their hotel room, leaning forward so far that she lost her footing. She gave a little screech but he was already hauling her back, his arms clamped securely around her midsection. She laughed and turned to face him, her hair blowing all over her face as the wind whipped it into a frenzy. And then it wasn’t the wind whipping her up any longer but his intense gray gaze riveted to her face.
To her mouth.
“Is it everything you were hoping for?” he murmured, and she had the feeling that he wasn’t only asking about the view. He was asking about them. About how it felt to have his hard, muscled chest against her breasts and his ropey arm holding her close. His heat surrounded her, chasing away the chill coming in off the bay. His lips were a fraction of an inch away, and if she inched upward, she’d be able to smell the scent of cherry cola on his breath.
“Better.” It was. So much better than she’d ever dreamed.
Lights twinkled to life in the early pink haze of dusk, and the sky glimmered with an endless canopy of microscopic stars. Gray tilted his head and eradicated the space between them, his intent clear.
The kiss she’d fantasized about for so long could be hers, and here of all places. She’d never dared to dream this big.
Yet all she could think was she would never have a mother again if she didn’t say no.
“Such a gorgeous view.” She whirled away to press her hands on the water-spattered balcony. She leaned forward again and this time he didn’t drag her back, just let her hang in the balance between the two lives she wanted with equal fervor.
The one where she was his sister.
And the one where she was his lover. His love.
“Jazz?”
She heard the uncertainty in the question, and it twisted another blade in her heart. How many nicks could one organ stand, she wondered, before it finally ceased to beat?
“I can’t believe you got a room so close to the bay. It must’ve cost a mint. We’ll have to rent bikes and ride them across. The tour guide I bought says—”
“Jazz. Look at me.”
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Because he would see that she wasn’t at all certain about the choice she had made, and then he would take the choice away.
She couldn’t say no to him twice. Not when he held the entire scope of her dreams in his hands, like a guitar only he knew how to play.
“Jazz.”
His hands touched her shoulders and she bowed her head, helpless to stop her babbling. She couldn’t let the silence fill in the rift she’d opened up between them, simply because she wanted too much. “We have to go to Fisherman’s Wharf. And oh God, the Art Institute. Did you know that—”
He turned her to face him and she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. So she did the one thing she always did when the world got to be too much. She burrowed her face against his chest and clung to his strong arms and hoped like hell he couldn’t feel the heat from her face through his T-shirt.
“It’s okay.” He rubbed his hand over her hair, his gentle touch finally making her realize that she was shaking hard enough to rock them both. “We’re okay.”
“I forgot my sunglasses,” she whispered, and he pulled her that much closer.
“No, you didn’t. I have them in my suitcase.”
Then she started to cry.
Thirty-Two
Now
Jazz rolled her tube of gloss over her mouth and narrowed her eyes at her reflection. She’d just finished a quick shower and was on her way to meet Simon and Deak in the steam room for a pow-wow on “Echoes” and “Undertow”, their latest two finished songs.
Well, until the other guys got their hands on them. But at least they had good material to present to the team at Ripper Records. That might improve Lila’s mood regarding Gray’s substance issue, though she’d been remarkably composed when she left the cabin. Maybe things were finally looking up.
A girl could hope.
She dug through her purse and pulled out her birth control, biting her lip as she saw how many pills remained. She’d skipped a few days, what with everything going on. Truth be told, she often skipped a few days, because it wasn’t like she was regularly sexually active.
Until now.
It probably wasn’t a big thing to skip. As long as she caught up now, she’d be fine.
She swallowed her pills, chasing them with a bottle of water from the mini bar. Then she glanced at her watch and judged she’d have just enough time before she had to meet the guys.
Sitting on the bed, she pulled out her phone and tapped in the number she’d looked up online earlier. She felt vaguely seasick, but that wasn’t surprising. She hadn’t talked to Mrs. Duffy in years. She wasn’t exactly making contact now for a social call. At any rate, she refused to reveal too much. She owed her allegiance to Gray. No matter her reasons for taking this step, she wouldn’t violate his confidence.
The phone rang twice before Conchita picked up. Jazz smiled at the sound of the Duffys’ long-term housekeeper’s lightly accented, musical voice and asked to speak with Eileen without giving away her identity. Conchita pressed for it, but Jazz stayed firm that it was a surprise.
A surprise, yes, but she also didn’t want to give Gray’s mother a chance to refuse the call.
“Hello,” Mrs. Duffy said after a moment, her tone coolly pissed. She wasn’t used to people refusing her demands—or the demands of her staff. “Can I help you?”
Despite the edge to her voice, she still sounded like the woman Jazz had loved so much. Everything that had happened had sent that love into hiding, but it only took a few syllables to bring it roaring to the forefront again.
Now if only she could speak.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Jazz gripped her phone tighter.
“Hi. It’s Jazz. Jazz…Edwards,” she added into the silence, trying to ignore the twist in her gut from the realization that perhaps Mrs. Duffy had shoved her into the back of her mind.
To Jazz, Mrs. Duffy had been a second mother. A better mother. In Mrs. Duffy’s eyes, Jazz had been the girl who shattered her family.
“Jazz? Is that really you?”
Don’t analyze her tone. She doesn’t sound hopeful, and if she does, it’s not because she wants to talk to you. And that’s fine. Her priority is and should always be her son.
“Yes. It’s me.” Jazz cleared her throat. “How are you?”
“Better now. How are you?”
“I’m good.” How could they talk so pleasantly when their last meeting had been so full of vitriol and pain? The intervening years acted as a kind of buffer, sheltering them both. “Gray’s good too.”
Lie number one. She hoped there wouldn’t be half a dozen more before the conversation ended.
Mrs. Duffy exhaled, clearly relieved. “I’m so glad. I’ve called him so many times but—”
“You have?” Jazz couldn’t smother her surprise. “He never mentioned it to me.”
“He doesn’t take my calls. Doesn’t respond to my letters. I leave him voicemails and I send him notes, but I get nothing in return.” His mother chuckled humorlessly. “That’s my son. Stubborn to a fault.” She paused. “I don’t doubt he’s been influenced to keep up his lack of communication as well.”
“You think I’ve asked him to stay away from you?”
The knowledge shouldn’t have wounded her. What else would Mrs. Duffy think? She obviously saw Jazz as the ho who had teased one son into going too far and cried rape then prodded the other son into breaking up his family.
Except she hadn’t cried rape. Gray had hassled her about going to the cops so many times during those weeks she’d lived at the Duffys after the attack, and she’d always said no. She’d insisted it was a family matter. Brent had just slipped up.
