by W Winters
I cut him off the moment he tries to speak. “You can’t bring it up. It brings it all back and I can’t go back, Seth. I can’t live in the past, not when my present—” My throat tightens, silencing the rest of my thought.
“I’m not trying to hurt you,” he says. His tone is calming and I know he’s telling the truth. I know he is, but I can’t allow the mention of it. Everything tumbles downward after it. I can’t stop the falling of memories.
“I’ll make a truce,” I offer him, desperate to end this. “I never bring it up, and you don’t hold my sin over my head.”
“What’s that?” His question is softly spoken.
“I never left. I never left you. I had no choice. If you get to live with a lie, so do I.”
Only feet apart, we couldn’t be further away from one another. Both of us struggling, but we can live this way. I know we can. We can pretend and be happy. That’s all I want right now, for a little while. All I have is a little while anyway.
“Can’t we just pretend? Please,” I beg him. “I don’t want to remember why I left. You say you’re going to punish me for it, but saying that only brings it all back up. I don’t want that. I don’t want to remember. Can’t we just pretend?”
“We can’t pretend that you don’t leave when things get bad.”
My voice raises and I slam my hand against his chest, trying to shove him away as my cadence cracks. “And you can’t pretend that things aren’t fucking horrific.”
I can pretend all I want but we are so badly broken, and the realization weakens my knees. I’d fall if Seth wasn’t still holding me.
“Please don’t do this,” I beg him again as he pulls me into his chest. “Please, I don’t want to cry anymore.”
Seth’s hand on my shoulder, his forearm against my back, steadies me. He rocks me softly and it’s completely at odds with everything else. We are so broken, but this is all I have and all I want. I’ve lived my life without Seth in it. I can’t do that anymore despite everything I now know.
It’s a whirlwind of emotions and betrayal, yet a constant in the storm is how he makes me feel when we’re like this. Me, broken and not knowing how to fix myself and him, steadily holding me.
“I need you,” I whisper. Pulling away from the warmth of his chest, I tell him, “I don’t need you to punish me.”
“I need to know you won’t run.” His answer is simple.
My gaze is beseeching. In an attempt to crack this armor he’s put up, I say, “I’m telling you I won’t.”
His lips part and I can almost hear his unspoken words declaring that I told him that before. My heart stumbles and falls so quickly. “Seth, I can’t leave you,” I say and swallow thickly, needing to tell him that what little time I have left, I need to be with him. The truth doesn’t come, though. What if he decides he can’t be with me when I have a faulty heart? He can’t love someone who’s only going to leave him. After all, that’s what I do. I leave him.
“I’m afraid,” I admit, opting for a new truth. Barely breathing as my eyes turn glossy. Haphazardly wiping them, I hold on to the anger. I pull away from him to bitch, “I hate fucking crying. When did I—”
“You can cry.” Seth’s voice is calm when he takes my forearm, pulling me back into him.
I don’t have enough time to cry.
“I’m afraid of this horrible side of me. It bothers me… how I always fall into this world. I’m drawn to it, Seth,” I confess and look him in the eyes. “There’s no point in leaving you when I know this bad piece of me is just who I am and it leads me into this… this...”
“Nothing about you is horri—”
I cut him off before he can console me and feed me some bullshit about how I don’t have that in me. I know I do. It’s there waiting and ready, almost greedily wanting to come out and prove itself. “There’s plenty of bad in me! I killed a woman. I killed her. I—I—I—” Words fail me.
“You had to.”
“A part of me wanted to,” I confess.
“Calm down.” With both of his hands on my shoulders, he tells me sincerely, “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“There is—” he doesn’t let me finish.
“No there isn’t.”
He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see the point.
“I can’t leave you, Seth, because I accept it. I accept that I’ll always be led back here. I promise you I won’t leave. Because I know I need you.” It’s not all the truth, but it’s jagged pieces of it. Reckless and scattered, but it’s all true. “I won’t ever leave you because I’m afraid of that side of me. But I know you understand it. I know you’ll protect me from it all.” That tiny last bit is so raw and honest that it shakes me to my core.
“Can I tell you something?” Seth asks and waits for me. I peek up at him, nodding.
A sad smile I know so well greets me. It’s the kind he gives me when he tells me something he doesn’t want to. “You’re my good side.”
My brow pinches with confusion until he leans in, kissing it, kissing that crease and then he says it again. “If there’s a good side and a bad side to every person. You’re my only good side. You can’t leave me again. I’m nothing that I want to be without you. Imagine that feeling when that dark side threatens to take over. Imagine that, and only that.”
Seth has been so steady, so strong, I haven’t viewed him as broken, not like I view myself. Never. Not once.
All I can do, as quickly as my body is able, is to lean forward and hold on to him. No matter how hard I hug him, he hugs me closer, his warm breath in the crook of my neck. I wish I could just go back. There are times in life when I wished that, but never so much as now. Thinking back to that first time I saw him, I would change it all. I’d save us. We could have had a different life. I know in my heart he’s the one I’m meant to be with, but why does this life have to end like this? Maybe in the next we’ll remember. Maybe we’ll remember this love and be drawn to one another again.
“I promise I won’t ever leave your side. Just please, pretend with me. Please.”
He doesn’t say he’ll pretend but when he kisses me, he promises not to bring it up again, and I’ll take that.
“Can we just agree on one thing?” I dare to ask, to put it to bed and let it rest where it is. “I don’t want you to bring up me leaving again. You don’t want me to bring up,” I have to pause and breathe in deep, pretending I’m not saying these words right now, “my father again.”
Seth is still and quiet.
“Right?” I ask him, prodding him to agree with me.
“You have to know I’m sorry.”
“Don’t, Seth,” I beg him, swallowing down the pain. “I need you to drop it, this talk about me leaving and needing to be punished for it. Drop it and never bring it up again and I’ll do the same.”
Seth doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t agree and he doesn’t disagree. He holds me though, close and with a grip that isn’t going to let up. That’s all I want right now. With everything going on, this is all I need.
“Hey,” I tell him, “I love you.”
“That’s all that matters,” he answers and then kisses me. He’s right. Right now, all that matters is this. I can be okay with this. I make sure I tell him, “I’ll never stop loving you.”
There’s a moment when he’s holding me, where I’m warm and so safe, that nothing else feels real. It simply can’t be true because when we touch, everything is right. So all of the wrong that is happening around us, all of this awful shit, it’s not real.
I let my lips slip up Seth’s throat. There’s always a little rough stubble there. The tip of my nose drags along it and when I inhale deeply, calming and settling, all I smell is him. I plant a small kiss right there, right on his throat and I’m awarded with a groan, deep and rough, vibrating against my entire front.
He readjusts and I know he must be hard for me. It’s so easy to get him worked up, to get him wanting me. Truth be told, it’s the same back. There
isn’t a moment where he kisses me and I don’t want and need him instantly.
“You really love me still?” he questions with his piercing blue eyes focused solely on me. I’m so hurt inside. For him. For us.
“I could never not love you, Seth,” I tell him honestly and kiss him before the swell of emotion takes over. All I want is him. To be held by him. To be loved by him. Everything else, in this moment, I choose to ignore.
Crashing my lips against his, I slip my hands up his shirt. One slides up while the other moves down, slipping past his waistband. I love the feel of him in my hand. How hard he is, yet soft and smooth. All of him was made to be a sex god. Every inch of his body. I grip him once and beg him, “Please,” in a heated whisper.
Seth inhales and lets his head fall back. With his eyes still closed, he commands me, “Get your ass undressed now.”
I can’t help that I smile, that I feel a rush of warmth from my cheeks, down my chest, all the way down at the thought of him taking me right now. With my teeth digging into my bottom lip, I’m quick to remove every article of clothing. Seth is slower, lazily stripping as he watches me.
“I love it when you smile like that,” he comments before pulling his shirt over his head.
“I love it when you make me smile like this,” I tell him back, feeling a dull ache in my chest, a pull to him that I need to hold on to forever. Until my last breath. Because it’s the best thing I have in this world. He’s the only thing that feels good. This. This moment and what’s between us, it’s worth living for even if nothing else is.
Both of us bared, he stalks toward me and I wait, standing with anticipation, goosebumps traveling over my skin, but I’m so hot, the shiver doesn’t come with an ounce of cold, only want.
He keeps his gaze pinned to mine until he has to break it to plant a single open-mouthed kiss in the crook of my neck. It’s then that I reach out to him, both of my hands on his chest until I move them up to his shoulders. His hands roam my body and I squeal when he lifts me into his arms. His cock is nestled between my sex.
He braces my back against the wall and it doesn’t escape my knowledge that the hole from the other night is still there, just to the right of me. That’s where he fucks me, hard and ruthlessly.
He doesn’t try to silence my strangled cries of pleasure. He tears them from me with each forceful thrust. His eyes never leave mine, even when he kisses my jaw.
“Seth,” is the only word I can say as he takes me, pounding into me relentlessly. He hits the back of my wall every time and I swear it’s too much, but the moment he’s gone, I want it again. Always.
Seth
“She’s good?” Declan asks as he pulls away, leaning back in his seat and taking control of the polished steering wheel with one hand. Resting my head against the passenger side, I check the side-view mirror as the lights in my front room windows fade into nothing. The car jostles as Declan turns and hits the edge of a pothole.
“She’s all right,” I say, giving him a vague answer. I have to move, setting my elbow on the rest and letting my thumb tap against my bottom lip. She’s not all right, but she’s better. I know her and this isn’t her. She’s not addressing what I did, she’s backing down from the fight. My babygirl doesn’t pretend, and she doesn’t hold things in. She’s not all right. Something is wrong with her. Something’s wrong with us and I don’t know what.
“Are you good?”
“Tired and pissed.” I answer him before looking at him. He knows I’m pissed. I haven’t told him that I don’t like that they left her in the cell with the hitman, but he doesn’t need me to say it. I can read it on him and I’m sure he can tell I’m pissed just the same. Laura should have never been left in there. It was a calculated risk. And I hate them for it.
Declan is the spitting image of Carter, but with lighter hair, lighter eyes, and a more approachable personality. Every hard edge Carter has worked at having, Declan’s cultivated the opposite. He wants people to come to him. He wants them to feel that they can trust him. It works.
“She’s not bait.” Apparently, I can’t let it go. It’s what irks me as I sit in this expensive sedan while Declan drives me away. They know I’m pissed. They know it was fucked. And yet, here I am, at war with an unknown man and pissed at the only allies I had.
“I know.” Declan’s tone is easy. He’s always easy, but I’ve seen the way he handles situations. There’s a grace about it, a calming air and then a brutal ending his opponent didn’t see coming. It’s all about the way he handles it, with both control and ease. “I told them that girl should have been taken out of Laura’s cell the second she was placed in there.”
The sun’s only just peeking over the horizon, the pale pinks and oranges kissing at the edge of the skyline. Laura slept soundly for a little while, then woke up screaming again. He wants to know if she’s all right? She’s not. Part of the reason is because they let that situation occur. They could have stopped it. They didn’t. And now she’s not all right.
“She’s not all right,” Declan surmises. I only look at him in response, mute. “You can’t hide it.”
“How do you know that what I’m thinking is about her?”
“How could it not be about her?” he questions back. A deep ache settles in my chest and I have to look away.
“I can’t stand this. She just had a hard time sleeping and now I’m leaving her. She woke up screaming, grabbing me. She has nightmares about it, Declan. She’s not all right.” He should know. They let that shit happen.
“She’ll be all right,” he answers. After a moment he adds, “She’s strong… maybe it’s better to be alone if she’s doing that.”
“Better to be alone?” I don’t hide how I truly feel about his comment. How could he think that’s better? Anger swims inside of me. He’s the only friend I have out here. Him and his brothers. Yet here I am, wanting to beat their faces in.
He glances at me quickly, with confusion at first before explaining himself. “Well if she’s grabbing you when you’re sleeping… I was just thinking… you know, you react to that. Being grabbed in your sleep.”
My head falls back and I stare at the visor and then up to the sunroof that still displays the fading night sky. “She’s screaming, Declan. My first instinct is to find her.” I explain it as calmly as I can remember something Declan told me that makes me feel like shit.
His first instinct isn’t the same. I forgot about what he told me a year or more ago. That must be why he said what he did. Why he assumed her grabbing me wouldn’t end well. And now I feel like shit. This edge I have needs to go. I need to get out this aggression before it gets me killed. Declan is not my enemy, even if I am pissed.
“Sorry,” he says and adjusts his grip on the wheel, then looks out of his window, away from me. “I didn’t mean for it to be taken like it was. It wasn’t meant to be… cold.”
“It’s not,” I say. “I get it.” The streets are vacant as we drive. I’m quick to change subjects and put this to bed for now. “Everyone’s going to be there?”
“The four of us. Daniel’s staying back.”
“Carter, Jase, you and me?” I question to clarify and Declan looks away to nod. I don’t like it. I don’t fucking like this one bit. Not when I’m pissed at them and they know it. “I’m not all right with the way things went down.”
“We know,” he answers and that’s what causes the cold prick to travel down my back. I’m not comfortable against the leather. It’s hot and this seat feels too small.
“If you knew I’d be pissed, then why?” I can’t help but bite it out. “Why use her as bait?” They left her in there, hoping to get more information about who put the hit on her. I don’t know how I could ever forgive them. Worse, I don’t know how they’ll react to knowing that.
“Carter got the note. It was never going to get to Jean.” This is the first I’m hearing about it. I’ve been out for half a day now, and Declan’s just now telling me?
“When?”
I question and quickly spit out more. “What’d Marcus say in it? Where is it?”
“It’s not Marcus. It’s not his writing. Check the glove box,” he says, reaching over. As the click of the lock fills the small cabin, he tells me, “We got it just after Walters gave Laura the package. If it had been delivered a moment before, things would’ve been different. I swear to you, if we’d already had the note, she’d have been in her own cell. She’d have been alone.”
The small note is familiar; the type of paper, the handwriting. Marcus has a tell and these notes are it. It’s his primary mode of communication. Thick handmade paper with deckle edges, his writing style, even how it’s ripped. There’s always a way to know it came from him and this looks like it did. My head spins reading it. Shock and fear come back with full force.
The note reads: Make it quick. It’s not her sin to pay.
My veins freeze with the ice that courses through me. The need to rip it up, to crumble it, to smash my fisted hand against the window rides me hard. “He gave the order,” I say and the tragic truth is ripped from me as my throat tightens and I read every word again. “She was going to die in there.”
“Again, it’s not Marcus. Someone wants it to look like him.”
I stare at Declan for a moment, who gives nothing away, then back at the note. Bright lights from the streetlamps come and go, casting more illumination for me to see clearly.
“How the hell is this not Marcus?” I don’t see it. It’s everything we know that comes from him.
“Look at the tail ends of the letters, they’re not like Marcus’s handwriting. I put it through the system.” Declan turns left, driving down a dirt road and past rural farms with bales of hay on either side of us. He explains, “It compares writing samples. This isn’t from Marcus.”
“What about the ones last week?” I can’t help but to think back to the notes. The ones that convince me Marcus knows about my past.
“They’re his.” Declan’s condolences are evident in his tone. “You ever decide on what you think it means?” he questions, taking a turn in the topic of conversation.
