22. Caves – Stella
“We never dated, Stella,” Riggins says, pushing me out of my trip down memory lane. I sigh, closing my eyes as I do. When I open them again, somehow, the anger is gone. I’m just tired. Tired of this back and forth, of this digging up of the past. Of the disappointment.
“Riggins, you don’t have to lie to me anymore. Really. We were kids with big dreams, and in a way, we both got ours. You’re allowed to live your own life. Just... sign these papers for me, so I can live mine too,” I say, then reach into my large bag slung over my shoulder, gripping the envelope in my hand.
“It was all fake, Stella.” He runs a hand through his hair like he’s frustrated I’m not understanding. “After my dad died, the label threatened to drop us unless I went to rehab, but they didn’t want everyone to know I was going because what’s the fun of a sober rockstar?” His laugh is incredulous and angry. “It’s part of the reason that when our contract was up, we left Blacknote and went to Catalyst Records. The album after was all about my sobriety. About loss and... well, you. Blacknote didn’t like that; they liked the wild rockstar vision.” He shakes his head like this is just part of it, but I’m aghast. How did I not know this?
“Stella, I’m breaking about a thousand NDAs telling you this shit, so if you want to ruin my heart and my career, this would be a good place to start. But Willa doesn’t date, or at least not really. She has fake relationships for PR; the more interesting and controversial, the better. She doesn’t believe in falling in love, but the public won’t believe love songs if they don’t believe she wrote them about someone. So we were a perfect match. I needed to clean up my image a bit and hide out while I was in rehab, and she needed someone the public wanted to see her with. That was it. We’re just friends. Good friends who both used each other to get what we needed from the industry.”
I stare at him, noting the honesty in his eyes but trying to be strong and hold myself to the plan I made.
Come here, give him the papers, and end things forever.
The papers that have sat in a desk drawer for years. Papers I’ve never been able to send because a part of me never wanted to break that final thread that held us together.
But it’s time.
It’s just hurting the both of us.
I pull out the envelope and hand it to him with no words. He accepts, opening the silver fasteners, pulling out the stack of papers, and staring at them for long, long minutes.
I should leave.
I should turn and leave before he can argue, but instead, I stay, dissecting the look on his face as it moves from confused to sad to angry.
“What the fuck are these?” he asks, waving the yellow envelope the papers came in.
“Divorce papers,” I reply, doing my best to keep my voice neutral, no emotion there.
When he looks at me next, I see it all there. The hurt, the confusion, the frustration, the regret.
But no anger.
He’s not mad. It makes my stomach churn because I can handle anger. I can handle him being mad that I’m severing this tie, but sad? Disappointed? That’s a harder pill to swallow.
“Got that. I’m asking why the fuck you’re giving them to me.”
“So we can cut the bullshit, Riggins. We?—”
“Riggs,” he says through gritted teeth.
“What?”
“You call me Riggs. Not Riggins.”
“Are you really nitpicking this bullshit?”
He steps closer, and I take a step back, my back hitting the wall, leaving four feet between us.
“You always call me Riggs. My Stella always calls me Riggs.”
My jaw goes tight.
“Well, newsflash, babe, I’m not your Stella anymore. You don’t know me anymore.”
“No, I don’t know this weird robot version, but I know you. I know you to your core, Stella. And I don’t know what happened?—”
“What happened? Are you insane?” That takes him back, his head moving with my fierce reaction, but all of my bottled-up feelings are bubbling to the surface, pushing back the well-composed neutral version of me.
“Stella—”
“I said, are you insane? You don’t know exactly what happened?”
He shakes his head. “No, because you refuse to talk to me about anything!”
I laugh, but there’s no humor in the words. “Fine. You want to know what happened? I asked you—no, I begged you to slow down with the drinking, and you agreed. Promised me the world and told me things would get easier. But you didn’t, did you? You just got sneaky with it. Do you know that I can’t even smell mint mouthwash without wondering if that person has a drinking problem they’re covering up?” I can see that hits the mark, guilt suffusing his face.
“We woke up that morning, and you didn’t remember marrying me, Riggins. We got married, and I woke up happy as could be, and you didn’t even fucking remember.”
“You didn’t say anything! You?—”
“Don’t with this bullshit, Riggins. Because what bride wants to remind her husband the next morning they got fucking married!” I shake my head and take a deep breath to try and regulate myself. “I had to get away. So I did.”
“Stella…”
“And then you never came after me.” His brow furrows, confused, and he opens his mouth to argue, but I’m on a roll, speaking over him. “And now here you are, back in my life, raking up shit.”
“I’m not raking shit up, Stella. I’m trying to fix things. We were always meant to be together, and I fucked that up. So I’m here, better and clean and healthy, trying to fix it!”
I shake my head again. I can’t believe that’s what he’s here for. I won’t believe it. Doing so means I’m risking everything. The safety and sanity that I’ve crafted for myself over the last seven years, the walls I’ve built to protect my heart. He absolutely destroyed me once, and I barely survived. A second time might kill me.
“Let me go, Riggins,” I say in a near whisper, the tears clawing at my throat. “Let me go. Go live your life and do it without me. Stop dragging me down. I live in the same old town we grew up in, but you got out. You’re a new person. Take it. Run with it. Be Riggins Greene, rock star. Be everything you were always supposed to be.” He takes a step closer, and I close my eyes, not wanting to see him.
“And you’ll be what?” His voice asks, low and concerned. The same way he’d talk to me in the middle of the night when I’d confess my fears in the safety of the dark.
“I’ll just be Stella,” I whisper.
“You were never just Stella. You were never meant to be just Stella.”
“Well, that’s what I am now.”
“No, it’s what you’ve convinced yourself you need to be to fit in this town. Small and meek and unassuming.” He takes another step closer until there’s just a foot between us, and my breathing stops with the determined look in his eyes.
I know if I wanted to, I could tell him to back up, I could leave, and he wouldn’t follow, but I can’t make my feet move. I can’t force myself to do that.
“But you were always extraordinary, Stella. The brightest star in the sky.” His eyes take in my face, reading my deepest secrets and uncovering all of my truths. It feels like it lasts a lifetime before he sees what he needs to.
A whisper of hope.
The confusion battling within me, the bright pull I’ll always feel to him that sometimes seems to fight back the darkness of my fear.
And I’m so tired of fighting. I’m so tired of lying to myself, of telling myself that I don’t miss him, that I don’t crave him. Would it really be so bad to give in just this once? To scratch the itch, to ease the burn? Then we could go right back to before; I could finally move on…
Closure. It could bring me closure.
“Fuck this,” he says, pinning me against a wall and kissing me as if the world is about to implode.
The kiss detonates something inside of me in a way that our kisses in the past never have. That wall I’ve erected between us caves in, leaving me open to accept whatever he’s willing to give me.
Whatever he’s dying to take.
As soon as I do, any and all rational thoughts leave my mind. No thoughts on how this might destroy me later, nothing about how I’ll regret it in a bit. Just the all-consuming joy of being back in Riggins’ arms.
His lips move on mine, and my lips part like they’ve been trained to do so, his tongue sliding in and tasting mine. My hands move to his neck, tangling in the hair at the base of his neck, and I moan, trying to get closer to him.
“Jesus fuck, it feels good to hear that sound again,” he says when he breaks from my mouth, lips trailing down my neck, nipping and sucking as he goes.
My neck has always been wildly sensitive; kisses and nips there always made my entire body erupt in flames, and it seems he remembers that. His lips move, shifting so his thigh is between my legs, the firm span of it pressing where I already need him.
I moan again, the sound deep and feral. The pleasure and need rocketing through me catches me off guard, but I should have known.
I always knew I was born to be Riggins’. My body was built to respond to him.
“Riggins,” I whisper as he sucks on my neck. His hands move to my hips as his lips move back to mine, kissing me wild. He uses the new grip to move me, shift me, and encourage me to grind on his thigh. I’m rocketing toward pleasure and release at record speeds, but I don’t have enough of my mind in place to feel self-conscious. Instead, my hands grip tighter on his hair, pulling his face closer to mine like if there’s any space between us, I’ll cease to exist.
“Please,” I whisper, the words meaning so much more than a plea to convince him to take me over the edge.
I’m begging for him.
For Riggins.
The versions of him I refused to let myself even contemplate.
The one who loved me wild.
The one who always made me see stars.
The one that could make my body sing.
Instead, he shifts, hands going to my ass and lifting until I’m wrapping my legs around his waist, pressed to the wall. It’s then I feel how hard he is, my hips rocking to find something, anything to take the ache away.
“Tell me to stop,” he says, standing in front of me, pressing me to the wall, my legs wrapped around his hips.
I shake my head, his lips trailing down my neck, sucking and nipping and causing me to moan.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“Need to hear you say yes, Stella. I won’t wake up knowing you regret this.” I close my eyes and take in a deep breath, trying to channel my common sense and come up with a real answer, but all I can focus on is how much I miss him. Miss this.
How much I miss being Riggins’ entire world.
I don’t say yes the way he asks, but I say what I need to say.
“Destroy me. You’ve done it once before. What’s a little pain with my pleasure?” He lets out a deep groan, but it seems to be what he needs to hear because he steps back, his hands gripping my ass tighter, my hands gripping at his neck, my hips tipping forward to grind against him as he moves away from the wall. His teeth nip at my neck, harder than before, harder than he ever would have dared all those years ago.
A feral noise leaves my throat, loving it.
He walks through a doorway I instantly recognize as his childhood bedroom, and I giggle a bit at the idea of us finally fucking in this bed after years of not. I barely have time to take in the room before he’s throwing me on the bed.
“Shirt, off,” he says, reaching behind his head to grab his tee shirt and I watch as his creeps up his front.
Normally, I’d argue. It’s all I know how to do with Riggins these days, but, for the first time, winning is outweighed by need. Absolutely, all-consuming need. The kind that burns in my veins soothed only when his fingers touch mine. They the waistband of my shorts, tugging them to my ankles, grazing as he goes, taking my underwear.
I pull my shirt off with my bra as well, tossing it in the corner. My chest rises and falls as he stands straight again. So much has changed—his shoulders are broader, and his skin is healthy. Muscles twine down his arms, carved but still lean, his stomach flat, taut muscles disappearing under his jeans. His hand, long fingers, and tiny scars and calluses move up, brushing through his hair before moving to the button on his jeans with ease.
I lean back on my hands, my legs stretched and crossed as the ankle, watching. His lips tip up, his dimple showing as he looks at me before shaking his head like he’s entertained by me. I would laugh or smile or say something, but then he’s pushing his jeans and boxer briefs down, and I’m at a loss. His hard, thick cock juts out, bobbing as he stands tall again.
He crosses his strong arms on his chest and lets his eyes survey me as I have been him. His gaze goes from my face, taking it in, weighing how I feel as he always seems to do now, down to my breasts, not large but one he always loved; nipples peaked before moving down to my belly. When I shift, I uncross my legs and widen them a bit. Letting him see me.
“Jesus fuck, Stella,” he whispers like he’s in awe before moving onto the bed on his knees, crawling up to between my legs; I shift back, pulling my head to the pillows, but I prop myself up again when he stops before he’s laying atop me.
“Riggins, what—” I start, but I swallow my words when a hand goes to both thighs, widening me further as he lays between my legs.
His eyes look up, and his face is suddenly feral, serious, and crazed with desire.
“I’ve been waiting to taste you for seven years. Now, be patient, and let me enjoy this.”
“Let you enjoy this?” I ask with a laugh, looking from my body to him. But the laugh stops when he runs his tongue over me, from the entrance to clit, and quickly sucks there. A deep, low moan leaves me as I tip my head back, but I look at him again when he stops.
His eyes are on me, serious and full of fire. “And you’re going to watch, little star.”
Something in me knows that’s a demand, and I take it seriously.
I watch as his head lowers, lips wrapping around my clit and sucking hard. I scream out a moan, hips bucking up, but one of his wide, rough hands moves to my belly, holding me in place, his eyes still boring into mine. I pant, and then I scream as his free hand moves between my legs, two fingers sliding inside me easily and crooking.
“Oh, my fucking god, Riggins!” I shout, the fire in my belly pooling, heat taking over my body. I’m so close. It’s been just a minute or so, and I’m already at the edge of the cliff. I can’t even get myself off this quickly, but here he is, gathering up years and years of pent-up sexual frustration and channeling it into something I know is going to be huge.
My hand moves up, inching and rolling my nipple, making my pussy clamp around his fingers, and he must like it, the look or the feel, I’m not sure, but either way, he moans around my clit where his tongue is expertly flicking me. I scream, my free hand moving to tangle in his long hair, holding him in place as I start to help, to ride his face, to help him finger fuck me.
It creeps up, starting at my toes and traveling up and up and up. Right when it’s about to crest, his eyes lock on mine, his teeth scrape my overly sensitive clit right as he crooks his fingers and pushes them in deep, and I explode.
I come, and I come, and I come, my body quaking, his tongue lapping as I moan his name, dragging out this orgasm until I feel wrung out from it, at which point he moves finally, looking at my panting body, pleased.
Finally, I let my eyes drift closed.
I’m still catching my breath when Riggins crawls up my body, caging me there before kissing me wild. I taste myself on him, feel it on his chin, and it makes me gasp in pleasure.
The satiation that was lingering in my bones just a moment ago is gone, leaving nothing but a burning need in its place. His body lays along mine, and I can feel every inch of his skin against me. “I really, really wanted to make this last long,” he says, pressing kisses down my neck, sucking where my neck meets my shoulder when he gets there. “But there’s no fucking way. Seeing you, so fucking beautiful, so fucking sexy, hearing you come with my name on your lips? I need you, Stell.”
“I have an IUD, and I was tested recently; everything came back negative,” I say, breathing heavily. I think I would give anything to get him in me, to feel that connection and closeness right now.
“Me too,” he breaths, “Are you saying?—“
“I’m saying I need you inside me now, or I’m going to lose it,” I whisper. “Please, Riggins. I miss you so fucking much. It consumes me. I wake up, and I miss you; I go to sleep, missing you. I just need you. Pleas—” I barely get the last word out before he’s sliding into me, both of us moaning loudly as he does.
It’s as I feared. Or hoped, maybe. Riggins fits me perfectly as if he was made to be mine and mine alone. Full to the point I can feel a stretch, his pelvis pressing on my clit as his hips press into me, a riot of pleasure filling my veins.
“Oh, fuck,”
“Stella,” he groans. “Stella.”
My hands move to his neck, fingers looping around his neck, his face coming to mine to kiss me again as he slides out. I moan again, the sound consumed by his lips as he breathes heavily and bites my lip. His hair falls in a curtain around me, and it feels like right now, all that exists in this world is Riggins and me.
There is no history, no past. No addiction, no depression. No music industry, no disappointed mother and no forgotten wedding. It’s just Riggins and I, clean slates. Two stars in the universe, lighting each other’s worlds.
He slides in and out of me, and one of my hands brushes up and down his back, scratching and grasping, trying to pull him closer, get more. My legs hook around his hips, both opening me so he can thrust in deeper, so he can hit right where I need him.
“I missed this so fucking much,” he says, moving and kissing my neck before removing to look into my eyes again. It’s like he is afraid if he looks away, this will all disappear, and I get it. It feels like I’m in a dream. My heart”s greatest desires and hopes balled up into one thing that has to be too good to be true.
For a minute, I have Riggins back.
My Riggs.
The realization cracks something up in me and the pleasure gowns and builds, starting in my belly and moving to my lower back, pressure and excitement as I reach for my orgasm.
“That’s it, Stella. That’s it, baby, Fuck you’re beautiful. So tight, so wet, so hot,” He groans in my neck as my head tips back before he moves again, pressing our chests closer, his weight in one forearm as his other hand moves behind my head, pushing so I’m forced to look at him again. He keeps sliding into me but doesn’t increase the pace or the pressure, keeping me idling on the edge.
“Look at me, Stell,” he says. I do, I am, I have been, but this time, I look at him through the haze of pleasure. Then I see him.
Cracked wide open, I see Riggins staring at me. He’s open and honest, and I see it all. The guilt, the fear, the anxiety, the sadness.
But I also see the love.
It’s like he’s trying to show me why he really came home. It wasn’t the marriage or the town or the music.
It was me. It was us. It was because just like me, he has only been half alive for nearly a decade and he’s tired of living without me.
“You’re back,” I whisper like it finally makes sense to me.
“I am,” he says, his voice a heated, strained whisper. He continues to fuck me. “I am, Stella, and I’m not going anywhere. You were made to be mine. You were made for me. And I’m back. Now fall. Fall, and do it saying my name,” he says, then slams into me, grinding as he does.
“Riggins!” I shout, my eyes slamming shut, my head tipping back.
And I come.
I come hard, stars shooting behind my eyelids as my eyes slam shut. The room goes quiet; the only thing I can hear is the pounding of my heart. Pleasure cascades through me, my back arching, my hips tipping to try and get him in deeper still. And then I hear his deep groan of my name that reverberates through me, launching a smaller second orgasm through me as I feel him fill me, pulsing.
We stay like that for long, long minutes before he rolls off me, and we lay next to each other.
“God, I missed you,” I say. A moment passes and I continue to stare at the ceiling, drained in the best possible way, pleasure still lightly simmering beneath my veins.
And then, the next beat, I’m being pulled into Riggins’ chest, his booming laugh filling the room.
And it, too, feels right.