Built

by Jay Crownover

  I kissed her for real. Kissed her with everything I had. Kissed her with the desperation and fear that I had felt the first time our lips touched. I kissed her with enough force and fury that I knew she had to make room for it. She kissed me back the same way. It was a collision of lips and teeth. It was a duel of tongues and pounding hearts. It was slippery and messy in all the best ways, and when I mimicked the motion my hips were making as I drove into her harder and harder, she groaned into me and clutched at the back of my head like I was her lifeline.

  I wasn’t. She had to save herself, but I would be around waiting on the shore to scoop her up when she did, when the storm she was caught in subsided and the howling winds that were whipping her emotions back and forth died down inside of her.

  I rolled her puckered nipple between my fingers and then circled it with my thumb. She panted into my mouth and one of her hands fluttered over mine where I was still holding on to her heart. I caught her free hand and dragged it over the flat plane of her stomach until we were both at the apex of her thighs. I knew how to touch her now, how to make her go off and wilt with just the barest hint of pressure. I knew all her secret spots of pleasure and how to manipulate them to make her break for me.

  “I still want to watch, but not today. Today I just want to feel. I want you to feel us together and understand what you’re giving up.”

  She made a strangled noise in her throat as I told her to spread her fingers around where I was driving in and out of her body. The added stimulation from her touch and the gentle squeeze she added had my eyes rolling back up in my head as I used my index finger to circle her straining clit. Everything between us was coiled so tightly and ready to snap that neither one of us really needed the extra stimulation, but fuck if it didn’t feel good.

  Her fingers had her spread wide and everything was wet and warm as I felt my heart rate kick up and as pleasure almost took me to my knees. I applied even more pressure, used a firmer touch than I normally would on that sensitive little nub that was singing under my fingers, and continued to eat at her mouth like it was my last meal.

  Her fingernails raked across the back of my skull and she jerked her head back so that she could scream my name. She wasn’t much of a screamer when we had sex, usually just urging me on with soft little mewls and whimpers that made me feel like I was king of the sheets. But the scream . . . God . . . the earsplitting, brain-rattling, throat-breaking scream was the prettiest sound I’d ever heard. My name never sounded better. She owned it now and I knew there was no way she could deny it after coming apart like that.

  I let her go and she folded back over so that I could reclaim my maniacal hold on her hips and ride her hard. It didn’t take long, not with my name still singing in my ears and her body pulling at me with desperate tugs.

  I came so hard my vision went black.

  I came so hard my knees shook and I almost fell across her back.

  I came so hard I felt it in my back teeth.

  I came so hard that I knew that she would be feeling me for days and days after I was gone because I would be feeling her.

  When my breathing regulated itself and I could see again, I ran both of my hands up either side of her spine and through her now ridiculously tangled hair and shifted so I could pull out of her and kiss her on the back of the neck.

  The despair was there again when I separated our spent bodies, but this time it didn’t feel like it was going to crush me. I took a step back from the edge of the bed and hefted my pants back up as she rolled over onto her back and stared straight up at the ceiling. She was so pretty and mussed up and messy from my hands and mouth. Her chest was flushed, her breasts still had pink imprints from my hands, and where her legs were slightly spread we both glistened shiny and real as our good-bye leaked out of her body.

  She lifted her hands up and wrapped them around her throat as she continued to stare at the ceiling. It was like she was trying to hold that scream in. But there was no going back. We both heard it.

  “What almost happened today . . . I can’t ever be the reason that little boy loses you. I can’t be the selfish, thoughtless person my father spent my entire life trying to convince me I was.”

  I blinked, a little bit stunned at her quiet revelation, and bent over so I could pick my shirt up off the floor.

  “You could never be thoughtless or selfish, Sayer. You don’t have an ounce of that inside of you.” I shoved my hands through my hair and stopped to tug on it hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. “You want to be the emotionless robot you had to be to survive your father and your mother’s death, that is a choice you are consciously making when you know there are other options. That is what you are choosing when instead you could choose me, could choose us. I know it’s a risk but it’s a risk we would take together.” I sighed at her as I yanked on my shirt, not even bothering to try and find my T-shirt. “I love you and you know it. What you choose to do with it is also your choice.”

  I saw her hands tighten reflexively where she was still holding her neck and I wondered if all those emotions she kept bottled up and trapped inside were rising up to choke her.

  I took the step that was needed to have my knees touching hers and hunched over so that I could put my hands on either side of her head. I stared down at her as she continued to cry and gazed up at me with those liquid, thawing eyes. Parts of the iceberg were shearing off and the jagged edges were slicing her to bits.

  I touched my lips to her forehead and whispered against her skin, “I choose you, Sayer. Lover, lawyer, and all the shit you are in between that, I choose it. I choose us. When you’re ready to accept that, you come find me.” I pushed up off of her and gave her a twisted grin that had no joy or humor in it. “I’ll see you in court.”

  The gauntlet was thrown down, my last hand had been played. Now all I could do was love her and leave her.

  I LIKED BERYL’S boyfriend. Wes was an easygoing guy and he didn’t seem put off by my sour mood or the fact I had a five-year-old Velcro’d to my side. I was surprised how shy Hyde was when the whole family got together for brunch on Sunday. It could have been the way my mother burst into tears the second she saw him and that she couldn’t stop rubbing the top of his head or bending down to hug him. Or maybe it was that after we all ate, my mom and sister presented him with an army of toys that were more than enough to make up for every Christmas and birthday we had missed with him. There was no way my condo wasn’t going to be considered kid-friendly after I hauled everything home for him.

  I kept asking the little boy if everything w1as all right and he would nod at me and not say anything. Finally, after everyone was stuffed with dessert, Joss dragged him away to go watch some Disney movie with her in the living room while Wes and I tackled the dishes in the kitchen. Beryl was torn between keeping an eye on the kids and making sure I didn’t do anything to embarrass her now that she had officially brought her man home to meet the family. Around the fifth time she stuck her head in the kitchen to ask if we needed help, I made sure she caught me relaying the most embarrassing story I could think of from when she was in high school. It involved her sneaking out in the middle of winter to hook up with a neighbor, getting locked out of the house by accident, and almost getting frostbite because she was too scared to ring the doorbell to let Mom know where she was at. I told him my sister had always taken risks when it came to men and rarely did they work out. She glared at me as Wes laughed, but there was weight to my words under the humor and my meaning was clear.

  Don’t be a risk she regrets taking.

  Wes handed me a stack of plates to dry and leaned on the counter so he could face me. “I’ve never worked as hard in my life as I have to get her to give me a shot. She’s beautiful, but it was more than that from the very start. I knew she was special and she made me feel special by being around her. That isn’t something you give up lightly.”

  No, it wasn’t. It had only been a few days and I felt the weight and loss of walking away from Sayer with
every breath I took and in every movement I made. She was settled in my bones, tied so irrevocably to my foundation that the absence of her made me feel like I was going to collapse in on myself. I was also back to being in one hell of a shit mood because of the untouchable blonde.

  “And Joss.” He shook his head on a laugh and his eyes lit up as he talked about my niece. “That kid is something else. The life in her is amazing and you never know what is going to come out of her mouth.”

  I snorted and put the plates down so I could adopt a similar pose to his.

  “Usually something that shouldn’t be coming out. She’s trouble, and as she gets older it’s only going to get worse. Beryl is going to have to be on her toes.”

  “Well, hopefully she won’t be the only one. I plan on sticking around, Zeb. I’m in this for the long haul. I want them to be my girls.”

  I considered him thoughtfully and silently for a long time. I could tell my lack of response made him nervous because he shifted on his feet a little bit. I was a good six inches taller than him, probably outweighed him by a solid eighty pounds, and I knew that he knew about my past. But he never wavered or looked away. He just told me softly, “I’m not asking you to give them up, but I do want you to share them with me.”

  I dipped my chin down in a jerky nod. “As long as you treat them right and they want you around, I’m happy to share. Make my sister happy and try and keep my niece out of trouble, that’s all I ask for.”

  He chuckled. “Neither of those things is an easy task, but I’m going to give it my best shot from here until eternity.”

  The guy really loved my girls, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t sting just a little bit at how easy it seemed to be for them. I knew that wasn’t the case; Beryl had been burned and turned just as badly as Sayer had been, but my sister wanted more, so she let the past go. Sayer seemed to be holding on to it in a death grip. If I could just get her to let go I could have everything I wanted: the girl, my kid, the dream house, and a life with all of those things tied together.

  After the dishes were done we went and watched the rest of the movie with everyone. Hyde was curled up into my mother’s side, and I don’t think he had any clue that the simple gesture was making her cry. It was so small and yet so huge that he was here with all of us. He was ours and he fit right in.

  He was still withdrawn and quiet when I bundled him up in his coat and brand-spanking-new Batman hat and loaded him into his seat in my truck. There would be snow on the ground soon and that meant my baby was going to have to go into storage for the winter. She was pretty, but she sure didn’t like to get her wheels dirty and she was the only girl on the street that could make a child’s safety seat look badass.

  I reached across the bench seat and clapped my son on the back of his neck and gave him a little squeeze. He might not want to talk in front of everyone else, but I knew when we were alone he would spill why he was so sullen and remote today.

  “Why so quiet, buddy? Grandma was so happy to meet you, and Joss talked about playing with you all week long.”

  He shrugged his tiny shoulders and kicked his feet like he did when something was bothering him. As if on cue, he sucked in his lower lip and looked out the window.

  “You can tell me, Hyde. You can tell me anything, and if you don’t want to tell me what’s bothering you, that’s okay, too, as long you know I only want to help if I can.”

  He was silent for a few more minutes and then turned so that he could look at me. “I’m coming to stay with you soon, right?”

  I squeezed his neck again. “You bet. This is the last weekend where we hang out during the day and then you get to come stay overnight at my place. Not every day just yet, but that will happen really soon.”

  “Okay.” His voice sounded thready and thin. When I looked down at him he appeared to be holding back tears.

  “Hey, if you aren’t ready for that you don’t have to come stay with me, Hyde. I want you with me, but you have to be all right with it.” That was some heavy stuff for a five-year-old, but I wasn’t exactly sure what was wrong with him. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.” It seemed like I was going to wait on everyone I loved to be ready for me.

  He lifted a hand and rubbed it across his eyes. I palmed the back of his head and contemplated pulling over on the side of the road so that I could give him a hug.

  “Are you going to leave me alone in your house when I come stay? My mom used to leave me alone all the time and it was scary. I hate the dark and I was hungry. Auntie Echo would come over and take me to her place so I wouldn’t be scared. You take me places all the time now, and people are always around, so you can’t leave me alone. I don’t like to be alone.”

  Talk about a knife right through the heart. I did have to pull over because I was shaking so hard and was so full of regret and wrath that I could hardly respond to him. It took a solid two minutes of deep breathing and mentally talking myself off the edge before I could reply. I was so lucky he had survived his mother’s neglect. I was beyond fortunate I even had a chance to love him and care for him.

  “I won’t leave you alone, Hyde. I won’t leave you alone at my house or anywhere else. In fact, if you ever even feel alone I’ll show you how to use my phone and you can call your aunt Echo, you can call your aunt Beryl and Joss, and you can call your grandma because even though I’m there, you still might feel lonely, okay?”

  He nodded and sniffed up what I was sure was an epic amount of snot. He rubbed his eyes again and blinked lashes that were spiky with spent tears at me. “What about Sayer? Can I call her if I feel alone?”

  The kid was going to kill me. “You want to call Sayer?”

  He shrugged again but this time he had a smile on his mouth and that dimple that matched mine flashing in his cheek.

  “She’s really pretty and nice. She smells good and she plays with me. She’s a princess and I like her.”

  I bit back a groan. She was all of those things . . . well, maybe not a princess, but that aside, I liked when she played with me, too. “I like her, too, and I’m sure she would be happy to talk to you if you were feeling lonely. She really wants you to be happy.”

  He nodded like a little grown-up and gave me a full grin. “She wants you to be happy, too. She told me.”

  I lifted my eyebrows up at him and pulled the International back onto the street so that I wasn’t late dropping him off back at the foster home.

  “She did? What did she tell you?”

  “Hmm . . .” He kicked his feet again and laughed at me when I growled at him because he was tapping his chin like he was thinking hard about the answer. He giggled uncontrollably when I reached out and tickled his ribs with my index finger until he gasped, “Okay, okay! She just said that she was working hard to make sure I got to go home with you because it’s what was best for both of us. She said I made you happy, which made me happy, which made her happy.”

  Five-year-old logic at its finest. “You do make me happy, kiddo.”

  “You make me happy, too, Zeb.”

  We just needed to get the third member of that happiness tripod on board with all the good things we were feeling so we could be complete.

  “When did she tell you all of this?”

  He shrugged. “When she came to the house to play with me. She’s always dressed up.”

  Which meant she must have stopped by after work to see him. I didn’t want to be jealous of my kid, but I kind of was.

  She might not know it or be willing to admit it, but she was going to choose us . . . both of us. Her actions said as much.

  Again that tiny spark of hope, that thing I was clinging to with every ounce of strength I had, pulsed bright.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sayer

  It had been nearly a month since Zeb walked out of my bedroom, leaving me shattered and pooling into a puddle of misery that was entirely of my own making. I was drowning in every single choice that had led to that point, and every word he uttered to me a
s he walked out wrapped around me and cocooned me in his harsh truths.

  I still had to talk to him about the case. The court had wanted Social Services to check out his place before Hyde went to stay the night, and I felt like a boulder dropped on my heart when he’d told me they could come up and that he didn’t think I needed to be there for the visit. He answered every text I sent him asking about how Hyde was settling in with one word like: “fine,” “okay,” “good.” Every email I sent asking if he had already talked to the school district and made sure Hyde’s vaccination records were up-to-date was answered with one that had only the facts and copies of the documents I would need to show the court if they asked for proof about how proactive Zeb was being as a parent.

  I understood that he had to pull away because I left him no other option. I understood I had given him nothing to keep fighting for, but the loss still hurt. I knew that space he made for himself inside my life and my heart wouldn’t be filled with anything else and I became achingly aware that alone and lonely were two different monsters.

  Even as bad as being alone felt, it couldn’t hold a candle to feeling lonely.

  Alone was empty and cavernous. It yawned wide inside of me, never ending, and the pain of it echoed hollow and dull.

  Lonely was the exact opposite. Lonely filled me up to the point of bursting. There was so much of it that I had no clue about how it wasn’t pushing through my skin. Lonely screeched loud and infinite between my ears. The shrill cry was an ugly mélange of blame, want, fear, and fury. There was also nothing dull about lonely. It poked hot, so hot, in every tender place it could find. It prodded all those wounds now open and weeping as they bled everywhere, and I was finally forced to do something about them or end up bleeding to death.