His First Surrender (Stonewall Investigations Miami Book 3)

by Max Walker

Something else quickly followed behind the realization.

  Fear. I felt fear. For the first time in years, I felt a visceral hit of panic slash into my chest. The same kind of fear Sam must have felt when he looked over the edge of the restaurant. A chilling kind of fear that made your hair stand on end.

  I had already learned my lesson about attachment. I knew it could only bring pain. Death. The kind of pain that suffocates you over and over again, and when you finally are able to catch your breath, it just gets knocked out of you again with a force greater than the last. That’s what happens when I let someone in. Sure, there could be moments of levity and bliss, but, inevitably, the pain would always come.

  Always.

  I took in a deep breath, my lungs filling with Sam. My heart doing the same.

  I couldn’t allow this. I was falling too fucking hard, way too fucking fast. With his scent still tickling my nose, I separated from him, stepping back. I still watched the show, but my head was somewhere else. In an endless field of questions.

  Was I ever going to be able to get over the trauma that still made its home inside my chest? Could I ever allow Sam to see that dead, scarred part of me? And if I did, what would happen? Would he accept me, or would he push me away, only accelerating the pain I was sure would come eventually.

  17

  Sam Clark

  Rocky started acting weird the second the show finished. It had been such an incredible time. Not only were the strippers mind-blowing and the stunts jaw-dropping, but at one point, Rocky had wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into him, and I’d never felt safer. It was a hard feeling to describe. It wasn’t the kind of safe you feel when you lock a door or when you shut a window. It wasn’t the safe you felt when you clicked in a seat belt or you followed the speed limits.

  It was a different kind of safe. One that went down to the deepest part of me. Like nothing, absolutely nothing, could have hurt us in that moment.

  And then he separated from me, and I drifted back into the dark waters, pulled by a riptide of doubt and fear. When the show finished and we left for the now empty valet, my fears were further validated. Rocky was barely looking at me, and the words he’d shared were of the one- or two-syllable variety. Something had happened, and I had no idea what.

  Did I do something? Was I not “holdable” enough for him? Did he feel that I didn’t have a six-pack or bulging biceps underneath my clothes? Insecurities began to spread through me like a poison dust carried by strong winds.

  “So, what was your favorite part?” I asked him as we waited for his car.

  I wanted him to say “holding you,” but instead he said, “The stunts some of them did.”

  I nodded, chewing on my lip. My mind whirred like a broken gear spinning without anything to moor it down.

  The car pulled up then with a loud roar coming from its exhaust, the valet parking Rocky’s shiny Corvette directly in front of us. I noticed Rocky slip out a twenty-dollar bill as a tip, handing it to the grateful valet. My door was already open. I slipped in and Rocky closed it behind me.

  In the car, silence reigned. What was going on? Did I smell bad? Was it my breath? I subtly covered my mouth and pretended to yawn.

  Nope. I smelled like goddamn daisies and dreams. It couldn’t have been that… but then what had twisted Rocky’s panties into a tangled bunch?

  “You can drop me off at home,” I said to him as he pulled onto the highway. “Just get off on Kendall Drive.”

  “Are you ready to call it a night?”

  “I thought…”

  He glanced my way, the orange glow of the passing lights playing off his eyes. “You tired?”

  I shook my head. “No, not at all. But, well, are you upset at something?”

  There it was. Might as well rip it off like a Band-Aid. Clearly something was going on, so maybe he could just be up-front with me and fill me in. If this wasn’t going to work, I’d rather he told me now before I caught any feelings.

  His eyes turned back to the road, both his hands on the black leather steering wheel. The air freshener filled the space with vanilla. I took in a deep breath, expecting the axe to drop down on my head.

  “I’ve got some shit I have to deal with, Sam.”

  Oh. Well, I wasn’t really expecting that.

  “Nothing to do with you,” he continued. “I’ve just been through shit that fucked me up. I’m still healing. And tonight unexpectedly opened up some of those old wounds.”

  My eyebrows rose in surprise. “Is it okay if I ask what happened?”

  “It’s okay.” Rocky’s grip tightened around the wheel. “But I’m not ready to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s totally fine. I get it.”

  “You do?”

  I nodded, looked out the window. We were driving onto an overpass. Underneath us were quiet homes with their residents tucked into bed, completely unaware of the kind of conversation happening right above their heads.

  “We’ve all got some shit, don’t we? Everyone we walk past, everyone we say hi to, every telemarketer who calls me at four in the morning because that’s apparently their witching hour.”

  Rocky chuckled at that. “You’ve got some shit, too, huh?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” I said on an exhale.

  “Try me.”

  I considered it for a moment. Did I open up to Rocky in a way he clearly wasn’t ready to do for me? Something about this scared me. Was I just opening myself up for more hurt, or was this a necessary step? Not just for Rocky and me, but for myself. I had to be able to talk about what happened to me, because it still affected me.

  “I was at a party,” I started. The floodgates opened with that simple sentence. No turning back now. “A frat party. It was my first year of college. I went away for school, up to Boston. I’d never been away from my parents for more than a day, and now I was without them for an entire semester. I went balls to the grimy walls. I drank and I danced and I drank some more. It was one of the best nights of my life. So, the next day, I wanted to do it all over again. We got invited to the same frat house, and I was ready for round two. I wasn’t out at the time, but I thought maybe I could sneak a kiss with a closeted frat guy. So, I went to the bar one of them had set up in his room. It was dark, neon lights everywhere. I grabbed a drink he poured and started talking to someone I thought was a good prospect. He seemed so kind, so genuine. I had no idea.”

  Rocky turned off on an exit, but it wasn’t toward my house. I focused on spilling out my guts, not really caring which direction Rocky was driving in.

  “Little did I know, this prospect had a roofie in his pocket.”

  Rocky took in a sharp breath. “Fuck.”

  “I turn away for a second. I thought I had heard my name. That was all it took. He must have slipped it in. I drank about half the cup before it hit me. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t even talk. Thank God Hazel was there, and she knew something was wrong from the second she saw me. She grabbed me, and with the help of someone else, they carried me into the car and took me straight to the hospital.”

  “Fuck… Sam. I’m so sorry.” Rocky’s knuckles were pale as his grip tightened even further. His jaw twitched. I could see the anger that rose in him, something like a force of nature. “Did you press any charges?”

  “I tried.” My lip started to quiver. I clenched my hand and dug my nails into my palm. I wasn’t going to break down. Not here. Later, once I got into my parents’ house. I could lock myself in the bathroom, run the shower, and cry my little heart out onto the cracked tile floor. But not now.

  “His family had money. So much money. I was on a scholarship and had everything paid for, even my ramen noodles. My parents couldn’t help, and I also didn’t want to tell them… I felt… I don’t know. I felt ashamed.” My voice cracked. “It was the first thing they said to me when they found out I was leaving. Be safe, be smart, and don’t drink. I couldn’t tell them.” Instead of cracking, my voice brok
e completely. I could taste salt on my upper lip from tears I hadn’t even realized were falling.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping at my cheeks.

  Rocky surprised me then. He reached across and laid a hand on my knee, stopping it from shaking. It was a touch I hadn’t been expecting and one I so desperately wanted. It no longer felt like I was shouting across miles of open water to be heard by him. We were now on the same boat, drifting together, toward a distant but bright horizon.

  “You did nothing wrong.” His words were simple yet powerful. “Nothing. It’s the other fucker I want to strangle. To damage you in the way he had… Fuck. He deserves a life of pain. Did Hazel, when she found you, were you okay or—”

  “She found me in time, yeah. He wasn’t able to do anything. Thankfully. Hazel said he was practically carrying me through the crowded hall. She was on her way to the bathroom and saw me. She knew I couldn’t have been that drunk since we had just gotten there. She went full Mama Bear mode. Ended up slapping him and leaving some scratches on his face.”

  “Good.” Rocky sucked his tongue. “If I could get my hands on that asshole. Fuck. I don’t know what I’d do. Probably land myself in jail.”

  I wanted to say that it was okay, that I didn’t need him to protect me. Instead, hearing him talk like that, well, it made my temperature shoot up into fever territory. Thinking that Rocky would be there, having my back and breaking the other guy’s. I hated any kind of physical violence, but I couldn’t help the caveman part of me from waking up at the idea.

  “Well, it’s over now. I learned my lesson.”

  “What lesson did you learn?”

  I shrugged. “That people can wear all kinds of masks. I started talking to this guy because he seemed like the sweetest one out of all the people at that party. He had big brown doe eyes and an electric smile and a moppy head of light brown hair. He’d play with the glasses on his face, and he had jokes that made me laugh right from the start.” I swallowed what felt like a lump of coal. “But none of that mattered. He was still a monster underneath it all.”

  Rocky stayed quiet for a moment as we drove down the empty highway. “It’s a good lesson, but don’t let it mess you up, all right? Don’t stop yourself from finding something good because you’re always assuming the worst.”

  The way he said it made me feel as if he were speaking to himself more than to me. “That’s something I’ve got to work on,” I said. “I had a really hard time trusting anyone after that. It’s only been until recently that I’ve let my guard down a little bit.”

  “How recently?”

  I looked to him, a cocky smirk beginning to play across his face. “Very recently,” I answered, being coy.

  The smile stayed on his face as the conversation shifted into more neutral territory. I thought maybe that since I opened up, Rocky would, too, but he kept those iron walls up as we continued to chat, now talking about Kim Petras, a crazy-good singer who Rocky had no idea about and who I had to pull up her entire discography for. At one point, I lowered the window and raised the volume, letting the dance beat fill me and the angelic voice lift me as wind filled the car, messing up my hair, making me feel alive.

  “Do you want to come over?” Rocky shouted over the music and wind.

  I didn’t miss a beat. “Sure!”

  Rocky, cocky grin and all, pulled off the highway at the next exit. Before I knew it, we were driving through the wide streets of Coral Gables, the porches and driveways of the large houses all lit up, the families tucked away in their bedrooms or watching some late-night TV show in their living rooms. I lowered the music a bit but didn’t kill the vibe, still jamming to Kim and feeling a different kind of happiness tonight.

  It felt good having talked about what happened to me with Rocky. It felt like I had given him a key and he’d used it to lock up all the demons that haunted my dreams, to then grab the locked box and throw it overboard, letting it sink down to the bottom of the sea where they’d never touch my dreams again.

  Was I being a little dramatic? Sure.

  Was I feeling so much better? Hell yeah.

  Was I lip-syncing the entire lyrics of “Heart to Break”? You damn well know I was.

  Rocky pulled down a street, one I recognized. It was the one my uncle lived on, which meant it was the same one Rocky lived on. I remembered how nervous I’d been driving down it, looking for the mailbox Rocky had mentioned. A manatee with a top hat. My heart had been beating inside of my throat when I pulled up to his place, but not in the same way it was now.

  I felt nerves, but they were different. I wasn’t walking into the unknown anymore. Even though I’d barely scratched Rocky Hudson’s surface, I felt like the unknown was no longer an issue.

  The heavy black gates opened for us. Rocky drove up his driveaway and parked just in front of the door, the lights of his front porch clicking on and bathing the area with clarity.

  Of course I wondered where he got the money for this. Unless he moonlighted as a dermatologist or a Fortune 500 CEO, I really couldn’t imagine that his detective salary could cover all this.

  But, as I was coming to learn with Rocky, things took time. And I was fine with that.

  Time seemed like an infinite resource when Rocky was in my orbit.

  Inside his home, we walked to the kitchen, where Rocky opened his wine fridge and pulled out a chilled bottle of expensive-looking champagne, the wrapper a gold and pink, the bottle a jet-black. As he walked around his kitchen, his socks and shoes already left abandoned by the door, I couldn’t help but drink him in, admiring his beauty. Everything about the man had me wrapped up in his six-foot-something web.

  The way his strong shoulders sloped down to biceps that pushed at the fabric of his dark black shirt, his tattoos lighting him up in a way that felt surreal, like I was watching a living piece of art gliding around the room. I could see his chest pushing at his shirt the same way his arms were, making me wonder how it would feel if my hands glided up and down, skin on skin. I could even see his nipples through the fabric, making it even easier to imagine myself leaning down, kissing and sucking and touching.

  I moved behind the massive marble island, hiding the growing boner.

  “So,” Rocky asked me, holding the bottle of gold-wrapped champagne in the air along with two champagne glasses. “Want to open this upstairs? The view from my balcony should be a great backdrop right now.”

  It was kind of him to ask. I had noticed he wasn’t one to push without asking, even from our pool fiasco, from the time I had my first ever kiss.

  He had asked me if it was okay. He didn’t push in or force things. It felt as if he could sense my fear and did everything in his power to soothe me. I appreciated that more than I thought I ever would.

  “Let’s go check out that view, then.”

  Rocky led me through his kitchen, my eyes dropping to his firm butt, the light jeans he wore highlighting his body perfectly underneath the soft, warm lights of his hall. I was so distracted, I almost missed a peculiar sight as we walked.

  It was in the upstairs hall, a wide space with beautiful gray wood floors and walls displaying beautiful works of art, but it wasn’t the art that had caught my attention. There was a door, one that would have looked like any other door if it weren’t for the lock that blocked the handle. He walked right past the room, but I stalled, cocking my head. He must have realized, stopping a short way down the hall and turning on his heel.

  A flush of sudden nerves came over me. My cheeks burned red. Had I made a mistake? What the hell would be behind a door like that?

  “I’ve played plenty of video games, and locked doors usually mean treasure or a zombie boss ready to tear apart some limbs. Sometimes both.” I swallowed. “Which one is it?”

  “Treasure,” Rocky said. “I swear.”

  He came over to the door. The screen on the lock turned on, and his fingers glided over the numbers. A heavy lock unclicked. I looked to Rocky, and for the first time since meeting him
, I picked up on something. Nerves. He wasn’t making any eye contact, and he seemed to be thinking hard about opening the door.

  I put a hand on his, stopping him. “It’s fine. I can get the full tour afterward.”

  There seemed to be a flash of relief across his face. My curiosity was definitely spiked. As we walked down the hall, toward the two large doors that I figured marked his bedroom, I glanced over my shoulder and looked at the locked door.

  He opened the doors, my guess about his bedroom being correct. We walked into a huge master bedroom, the space most likely bigger than the living room I shared with my parents. In the center of the room was a California king-sized bed with a dark wooden headboard that looked specifically made for Rocky, with its simultaneous grandness and warmth. The walls were a soft light gray, playing with the navy blues and soft greens that popped from the different art pieces and thick blankets, one laid across the bed, a few others spilling out of a large basket that sat next to the balcony door.

  And the balcony. Holy crap, the balcony. It wrapped half of the room, making two of the walls into wraparound windows.

  “Like it?” Rocky said as he walked over to the door, unlocking it and opening it, a blast of Miami humidity entering the room.

  “No. I hate it. Absolutely hate it.” I shook my head, acting as if I just got a whiff of the worst garbage in the world. “Are you looking to give this place away, by any chance? I hate it soooo much, I think I should, I don’t know, live here? Just to, you know, hate on it whenever I wanted.”

  Rocky laughed, stepping out onto the balcony. I followed, my jaw dropping even farther. The view really was beautiful. We could see the Biltmore Hotel only a few streets down, one of the most iconic hotels in all of South Florida, where Al Capone himself had stayed and where Franklin Roosevelt had set up a temporary White House for whenever he vacationed in Miami.

  Rocky walked to the railing, where he turned around to face me. With a bad-boy smile, he thumbed at the cork and popped it off, champagne foaming over and falling onto his bare feet.