by Shayla Black
“Don’t say that… You are more than enough.” I stress my words, grasping both of her hands in mine firmly and holding her gaze with mine to steady her. “Not a damn thing is your fault. Nothing but keeping all of this from me and letting it tear us apart. You have to talk to me.”
“You have to talk to me too.” She whimpers the plea as her watery eyes look up to mine.
“I can do that.” I’m quick to acquiesce to her request. “I can talk to you, but you have to tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s all too much,” she admits, “but I still want it. I still want you.”
The relief that blooms inside of me is instant. It’s everything I needed.
“One thing at a time.” I wait for her to nod at my words, to know she’s listening. “You are more than good enough. You’re too good for me, but I’m keeping you anyway.”
“Daniel—”
“No.” I don’t let her interrupt me. “You got to tell me, now it’s my turn to tell you.”
“Okay,” she whispers, her grip getting tighter as she waits.
“You are with me and I am with you. We can’t let each other be lonely. I’m right here,” I whisper against the shell of her ear and then plant a gentle kiss against the tender skin beneath her ear. “We’re going to be okay. You’re going to find your place…so long as it’s right next to me. We have to talk. We can’t hold it in.” I’m careful with my next suggestion. “You don’t know your place, because you don’t know what’s going on. I want to tell you. I want you to know.”
“The stress…” The words leave her sounding more like a helpless question than a statement.
“I think it will help, not hurt to know. It’s the not knowing that’s stressful.”
She doesn’t respond even though I give her time to.
“Do you think you’d be all right with that? Instead of you asking, I just tell and if it’s too much, you tell me to stop and I will.”
“Will that help you?” she questions me. The hope in her voice is there, but it’s surprising that it comes with this particular question.
I almost tell her I’m fine. I’m so close to saying just that. Which would defeat the purpose of all of this. “Yes. It fucking kills me that I can’t tell you what’s eating at me.”
“Okay then. New rules. You tell me everything unless I say stop.” Fear and hope swirl in her glossy gaze.
“The loss is something we have to go through together and maybe we’ll have moments where we feel alone, because we were wishing those moments were with the little life we never got to hold. But if you can try to remember I’m here, I hope it will help.”
She swallows her words rather than responding. I keep going though. I’ll take the lead and she’ll follow. She has to. I don’t know how this can work otherwise.
“I gave you the ring because I love you. The only reason I didn’t give it to you sooner was because I wasn’t sure you’d say yes. I thought I had a little anchor knowing you were pregnant. It wasn’t an obligation because you were pregnant. It wasn’t that, Addison. Don’t think that.”
She searches my expression, maybe in an attempt to determine if I’m sincere or not. It’s what I deserve. Years ago, I kept everything from her, for a very long time. Our relationship started with lies, and it’s carried on with secrets. She’ll learn to trust me though. She has to. I won’t give her any reason not to.
“I want you to wear my ring. I want you to come to bed with me, be with me again, even if you want to be safe and wait to try again. I need you, Addison.”
It feels like I’ve emptied everything out. Leaving me hollow and waiting with nothing but the hope that she’ll know this is all I’ve got. It’s everything, every bit of me, and I don’t know if it’s enough but I’m damn sure going to try.
“I need you too,” she finally whispers in the warm air between us, making it feel even hotter than it already is. I’m still on edge, waiting and needing more of her.
“Tell me we’re going to be all right. That you’re going to be all right.” It’s a command.
“I’m going to try,” she answers, and I know it’s because she wants to be honest and that she doesn’t actually believe it. She doesn’t know deep in her bones that it’ll work. It never has before.
“You’re going to succeed. You are meant to be with me, Addison. There’s no way this ends otherwise. I need you and I need my family.” I suck in a breath, ready to tell her if we have to, we’ll leave. We did it before; we can do it again. It’ll kill me, but for her, I’d do it.
“I need them too,” she says, quick to cut me off. “I want this to work. Not just us; we work, and I love you, but this place. I just…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, that’s exactly it. You don’t know anything and that’s the problem. I’ll fix it. We’ll fix this.”
“I don’t know that I can handle it,” she confesses with a quivering bottom lip. “I’ve never felt so insignificant and weak.” As she speaks, her voice goes dry and cracks at the words.
“I’ve put you through hell, and you survived.”
“They’ve gone through worse. Aria—”
“Don’t compare your story to hers; it doesn’t change your pain.” She’s unraveling in front of me. Six months of being here and I’ve never seen her like this. How did I let it get this bad? “Get on the bed. In the center.”
“Daniel—”
“The bed. Get in the middle, now.” I emphasize my words and slowly pull away from her, keeping my gaze pinned to hers. “You can handle it, Addison. You can take everything.”
Her shoulders drop heavily as she swallows, and her chest rises faster with every breath as she stares back at me. Not moving.
“I need you, Addison, and you need me. That’s why we’re off, why everything feels wrong. Get on the bed.”
I’ve never had to repeat myself. She’s always listened before, and staring at her now, not knowing what she’ll do, I can’t breathe. I can’t lose her.
“On the bed, Addison. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Addison
I’ve loved this man since before I knew what love was.
I’ve craved him, adored him, fucking worshipped him.
But never like this. An intense heat ignites inside of me, a spark hotter and brighter than the sun dances on every nerve ending in my body.
I’m paralyzed, needing to feel him take me, own me, and devour me exactly how he wants.
I need it more than he’ll ever know.
Slowly, I obey, although I don’t know how. Every movement is gentle and meticulous. My hands reach the center first and immediately my fingers dig into the mattress.
It’s so slow. Time moves so slowly. A part of me knows it’s because I’m trying to remember this moment. Remember it all and hold on to it forever. I need it in the good times and the bad. In the horrible moments, I need this. What we have right now. I wish I could just stay here forever. Being his and him being so completely mine.
Bared to him, I wait and watch. His cock is hard and ready as he strokes himself in front of me, pacing, debating what he wants me to do, what he needs from me.
All the while, those sparks tingle up and down my body in waves of want.
Instead of climbing on the bed, pinning me down, and ravaging me, he asks me, “Why do I love you?”
His words are hoarse and at first I hear him wrong. I hear, “Why do you love me?” but I catch myself before the answer can leave me.
“I don’t know,” I answer him.
Instead of answering me, he tells me to spread my legs wide so he can see me.
“Fuck, I can see how wet you are from here,” he breathes out deep with frustration as my fingertips run along the length of my pussy and then rub my swollen clit so he can see. A shiver of desire runs down my body from my shoulders to the tips of my toes. It’s cold compared to the heat that burns between my thighs for him to enter me.
“Why do I love you?”
I close my eyes, pushing my head back into the mattress, and move my hand away, hating that I don’t know what to tell him.
I don’t know why people fall in love. I know why I love him though; I want to answer him that. Ask me something I know.
“Eyes on me. Don’t you dare close your eyes.” His steps are hard as he rounds the bed, getting close enough to backhand the inside of my thigh as punishment. The sting is fierce, but the touch is so needed, all I feel is a spike of desire shoot through me.
My breath is stolen from his admonishment, seething through my teeth and desperate.
“Put your fingers back on that pretty cunt of yours and look me in the eyes when you tell me you don’t know why I love you.” There’s no hurt in his eyes, no pain in his voice, even though I feel it, deep down inside of me. Past everything physical, I feel it.
Tears prick at the back of my eyes as I let my fingers touch my warmth. His gaze parts from mine, only to watch me.
I have to give him something, so I tell him what I know. I tell him why I love him, praying he loves me the same.
“You know I’ve wanted you for as long as we’ve known each other. You know I’d risk it all to be with you.”
My fingers slip just inside my entrance as I start to say the next reason, and a soft moan spills from my lips in its place.
“Fuck,” he mutters. The word is a groan on Daniel’s lips and hearing it makes my body heat.
“Touch me please,” I beg him, but he shakes his head.
“Why else?” he asks huskily, the need showing through his intended words.
“You know that I would die without you. Whatever makes a person a person—I’d die if you weren’t here anymore.”
“I don’t want you to ever say that again. Don’t you ever talk about that. You’re not allowed to die.”
A short laugh that’s not humorous at all bubbles from my lips. I feel crazy, on the verge of tears, feeling the pain of a great loss at the very thought that he might die. “That’s my fear. It kills me, Daniel. You can’t die.”
“Well, for you then, I’ll do my best not to,” he tells me as the bed dips with his weight while he climbs over my body.
Pinning my wrists above my head, he nearly kisses my lips, but he moves to suck the arousal off my fingertips before our lips touch. The light, warm feeling is a stark contrast to his hard cock pressed into my thigh.
I try to writhe under him, but he keeps me still as he takes his time. The second he braces his forearm beside my head and positions himself, I suck in a deep breath and stare into his dark eyes.
He enters me slowly, torturously so. Taking his time to stretch me. The gentle sting elicits an instant heated wave that forces my back to arch. He doesn’t stop, he just pushes in deeper and stays there, pressing against my walls and forcing my lips to form a perfect O.
Still inside of me, he tells me, “Because I want to grow old with you. I want everything you want, whatever it is, because it’ll make you happy. I want my family to love you and protect you, in case something ever happens to me.
“You don’t want those things unless you love that person. I love you more than I love myself, Addison. I need you to know that.”
I only know I’m crying because he bends down to kiss the tears.
When his lips finally brush against mine, I steal them, kissing him hard and with the passion I have for him, for what’s between us.
With his left hand still pinning my wrists down, he ravages me, a savage taking of what’s his. I scream my pleasure into his mouth, letting the strangled moans take over when my climax hits me with a force I’ve never felt before.
It’s all consuming. It’s everything I’ve wanted and needed and the only thing I’ll ever crave for as long as I live. Because it’s him.
6
Addison
“It’s a pretty ring.” The timid voice carries across the large kitchen. “Blue under it; that’s unique. Is it a blue diamond?”
I didn’t even hear her walk in. As I stirred the sugar into my coffee, watching the white swirl of steam, I was focused on the ache between my thighs and the memory of Daniel kissing me all over last night.
He only left me to get the ring from my nightstand and to put it on my finger. If this ring ever comes off my hand, it’ll be because someone took it from my grave.
“It is. It reminds me of forget-me-nots,” I answer her. “That’s why we went with this one.”
“You picked out your ring together?”
“I know it’s not traditional—”
“What is anymore?” she says and shrugs. “If you haven’t guessed, I’m Bethany.” The smile she gives me reaches her eyes.
I laugh, short and with a single breath. It’s genuine. “I guessed as much,” I answer her with a smile.
It’s only us in the kitchen and as she pulls out one of the tall chairs at the island, the sound carries through the open space.
“First, I want to say hi. Second, I want to say I’m sorry. Jase told me…about the baby.”
My little piece of heaven splinters, but only slightly as I take my seat.
“Thank you,” I answer her.
Holding on to my mug of coffee, I pull it up to my lips to keep me from saying more. The warmth billows into my face as I take a long sip, praying for composure.
I don’t want to break down. Especially not in front of her, someone I don’t know. This…Bethany Fawn. I don’t know that I’ll ever be okay with losing our baby. Especially if we never get pregnant again, if we never have a little one to hold. I don’t see how it’s possible. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.
“I heard you got a ring too,” I say as I lift a brow and when her gaze catches mine, I make a note of staring down at her ring finger. She pulls her hand into her chest with a blush rising to her cheeks.
“It was a shock, to be honest,” she answers but the content note in her voice and the smile on her face remain the same. “We’re quite different…Jase and I,” she adds when I look questioningly at her.
“Yes, they are…different. That’s a word for it.” We could write a book about the Cross brothers and how different they are. There’s a time and place for that conversation though. “So Jase told me your last name is Fawn?”
“It is.”
“Mother or father?” I ask her and then shake my head as I let out a sigh at my ridiculousness. “This isn’t an inquisition. I’m just… I’m very curious.”
“It’s fine,” she responds and then she leans forward on the chair to rest on the counter. Her thin cream sweater is pushed up to her elbows. Paired with her dark blue jeans, it’s a simple look, but something about this woman screams that she’s anything but simple.
“My father’s last name, but he didn’t stick around after I was born.”
“My father’s last name as well,” I tell her and feel a chill sweep over my skin.
“You’re a couple years younger than me, right?” she questions me and I nod. Daniel told me what he knew of Bethany.
“A little over a year younger.”
“What’s your father’s first name?” I ask her as my gaze sweeps over her facial features. She doesn’t look like me, nothing but her lips. My father’s lips.
“Jeremy,” she answers, and I tell her the middle name, “Nathanial. Jeremy Nathanial Fawn.”
“This is weird.” Bethany pushes out the same thought I have.
“I think your dad left your mom because my mom was pregnant with me.” The years make sense. “That’s why you didn’t grow up with him.” Not that I grew up with him either. He left my mother and my mother left me.
“So he knocked up my mom and had my sister. Married her and they had me. Then he left us when I was a baby, because your mother was pregnant with you?” Bethany fills in the blanks.
“He got around, as if I needed another reason to hate the thought of him.”
“My mother had substance abuse issues; I always thought that was why he left us
,” Bethany muses. “He was good at leaving,” she comments with a crease in her forehead, as though a bad memory is creating a groove right there. “That’s what my mother used to say.” She doesn’t try to hide the bitterness as she turns her back to me, leaving her seat so she can go to a cabinet to get herself a mug. I note that she already knows where they’re kept and where everything else in the room is too.
“If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t stay long and what I knew of my mother and the men she was with, it’s probably best you grew up without him.” With another sip of coffee, the room’s quiet except for the muffled hiss of the coffee machine. I don’t comment that I was a child when I knew them. Either of them.
“Yet we both received his last name,” Bethany says as she leans against the cabinet and then offers me a half smile curved with sarcasm before lifting her mug and telling me cheers. “Lucky us.”
“If we hadn’t, we never would have known.”
“We’re sisters. Same father, different mother.”
“Right.” I nod in understanding. Curiosity nags at the back of my mind, but I can’t bring myself to ask her any questions. That part of my life is long behind me. I wish it would stay in the past. I don’t want to think about my father or how many other children he had.
“Do you have any other siblings?” she asks me and I shake my head no as I reply, “All I had growing up was a rotating address until I met…” I pause and wave my hand in the air. My throat’s dry but I shake it off. I’m stronger because of what I went through. But that doesn’t mean I want to relive it with this woman. Biological sister or not. My curiosity can wait until I’m better prepared and in a more stable state. Everything is chaos now and it doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere anyway.
“The Cross brothers,” she answers for me. “So you knew them before all this? Back when things weren’t so…”
“Yeah, but I left. I left before a lot of things happened. I left when things got bad. What a wonderful mother I’ll be.” All of our past history hits me at once and the same thoughts I had before, the ones that tell me I don’t deserve Daniel, I don’t deserve a happily ever after, and I don’t deserve to be a mother come back. Weaker than before, they’re only whispers and not screams. Nonetheless, they’re back.