Chapter Twelve
Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.
~ Dan Brown
Feet tucked beneath her on the couch, Jasmine exhaled slowly as she stared out of the window to the sunny afternoon.
Her navy blue, low-riding, fleece wide-leg pants offered warmth that one may think she didn’t need on a day like today.
But sometimes she merely needed the comfort.
Even so, she had tugged on a pale pink form-fitting tank.
It’s time for a change. Time to get away from the heat and blazing sun.
Normally she enjoyed it, but right now she could go for something dark and cold to hide away in. Insecurities rising with the speed of the tide, she swallowed back her guilt.
The drugs, using her sister. Her twin. All the other things she’d done in her past after being burned. Part of it was survival, sure, but she couldn’t blame all of her behavior on such a thing.
She readjusted her position and tugged her legs up so she could rest her chin on her knees. Arms wrapped around her shins, she closed her eyes.
Time vanished and she sank into her thoughts, the good, the bad, and definitely the ugly.
A hand on her shoulder.
Without hesitation, she reacted. Lunging up and around in a single move, she struck for the throat, meaning to incapacitate as she wasn’t carrying. Not a mistake she would make again.
“Holy fuck!”
The male went down stumbling back over his own feet, but it wasn’t enough. Touches were bad, they meant things were going to happen to her. She rode him to the floor, landing with a grunt, her legs on either side of his chest, knees bent.
Holding herself over his form, she snarled as she continued to strike.
His mouth moved, but the words blurred and couldn’t penetrate the haze surrounding her. It sank in, finally, that he wasn’t fighting back. Not trying to harm her, but simply deflect her attacks.
She bared her teeth and went for his eyes. He moved to block and flipped her over, pinning her to the ground. Arms stretched above her head, his heavier weight pinning her hips down.
Bucking hard, try as she might, she couldn’t dislodge him. Panic welled up and she refused to give in. Not again.
He smacked her cheek, not overly hard but enough to jar her.
What was happening slammed into her and she lay there beneath Lance, chest heaving as she struggled to ingest the slightest bit of air.
“You with me, Jasmine?”
Sweat dripped down her face, soaked her back and through her tank top. He didn’t rush her, just sat there, watching her, eyes locked on her face as he continued to hold her wrists and keep his weight on her pelvis.
She dragged her tongue over her dry lips, shame rose and he clucked his as he shook his head.
“No, baby. Focus on my voice, not on any shame you may think you deserve to feel.”
He dipped his head, his dark hair falling forward. No anger existed on his features.
“I’m letting go of your wrists.”
He put action to his words and released her. Watching him with suspicion and shame, she brought them to her torso and rubbed. Not because he hurt her, no, merely because she needed to do something with her hands. Lance had been extremely gentle with her given how much she’d been fighting him.
“You with me?”
It was a struggle to even nod but she managed to give him a small one.
“Good girl.” Eyes locked on hers, Lance placed his hands by her shoulder and with a swift move lifted himself off her, settling once more at her side.
She didn’t hesitate, jumped up herself and beelined it straight to her room. She closed the door behind her, and had made it three steps to her bed when it popped open.
“I don’t think so, baby.”
“I can’t… Leave it alone.” She didn’t turn back toward him.
Even as the words left her mouth, she knew it wasn’t meant to be. Lance Baldwin did his own thing. Forged his own path.
“Not happening, baby.”
She felt him near. As always, the comforting warmth that never failed to surrounded her when he was close wrapped her up once more. He skimmed his touch over her bare shoulders and down her arms so he could lace their fingers together.
Shame flooded her and she remained rigid as his larger body curved around her. He shared his heat, his strength, his protection.
“Come on, talk to me.”
Coaxing, his words strummed along her skin and tugged at some need she hadn’t realized she had within her to share with this man. To allow him to shoulder some of her burden.
Had he been in front of her she would have glared at him. He wasn’t.
“My helping you keep your ass alive isn’t contingent on you knowing my personal feelings, Lance.”
His arms flexed around her and he pressed his lips to the rapid pulse in her neck.
“I’m not letting this go, baby.” He moved them to and the bed and put her on the mattress first before climbing in behind her.
She appreciated him not making her face him. “I’m fine. I’ll work through it.”
“Let me help you.”
Four words. Four words that gutted her on every level.
“Why? We’re pretending to have a relationship purely to keep you breathing and not becoming a corpse. You don’t need to pretend this is anything other than what it is.”
He circled her neck with his large hand, tightening his hold.
Fucking hell. She melted, core dampening and clenching for him to fill her. Bad-ass bitch turned wanton hussy the second this man gripped her neck. Fucking pathetic.
“Why do you hate yourself so much?”
A humorless laugh burst from her. She reached up and grasped his wrist but didn’t attempt to pull him off her, just allowed herself to rub her thumb along his skin.
“I’m not exactly anything to be proud of.”
“Bull-fucking-shit.” His tone was firm. Absolute. “You’re amazing. A fucking survivor.”
“I’m also a shit person, Lance. Let’s not forget the drugs, lying, stealing, and endangering my family.”
“You made a bad decision when all you had were shit ones. You can’t continue to beat yourself up over that, Jasmine. Why can’t you forgive yourself?”
“Because I used my twin. I barely knew her and honestly, if she’d not been what I needed to get out of the situation I was in, I don’t think I would have ever reached out.” Shameful tears burned her eyes and a few traitorous ones leaked free.
“I think you would have. Maybe not as soon as you did, but she’s your twin, and once you learned about her, nothing would keep you apart for long. If that thought of yours was true, this wouldn’t be eating you alive.”
She huffed at his words.
“And you showed back up when you’d said you would.” He used his hand not on her throat to draw abstract patterns on her exposed belly. “You defended her and threated to pull your testimony unless she was protected, not once worrying about your own safety.”
She clenched her jaw and screwed her eyes shut. “And I also fucked the man who ended up betraying her and getting her kidnapped, all because he didn’t like being ignored.”
“While hearing you talk about men who’ve been blessed enough to touch this body is at the bottom of my ‘Things I love to do’ list, his behavior isn’t yours to control. Stop shouldering the world’s problems, baby. You can’t save everyone.”
She sagged into his chest, his words freeing in a sense. It was different trying to come to this conclusion by herself versus having someone tell her with such definitiveness.
His fingers continued their idyllic motion on her belly. “Why do you think you aren’t deserving?” A deep breath. “Of anything good in this world of shit, what did you do that makes you less than every other human?”
“I wasn’t always like this.”
His breath ghosted her ear and she opened her eyes to stare at the bare, water-stained ceiling and the wall with torn blue-flowered wallpaper. “Baby, I don’t think you’re like this now, you simply have the mistaken belief you don’t deserve better.”
She skimmed her short nails up and down his corded forearm, and the demons she’d held inside for years bubbled over.
“She was my best friend. We went through training together. Her nickname was Moonlight.”
“Smoke and Moonlight.” His squeeze was subtle but she got the message. He was ready to keep listening.
“When the op,” she cleared her throat, “our op went sideways, and out of the stratosphere sideways, I wanted to get out, like we should have without question. I wanted to stay and help. Had the misguided belief it was our duty. So we stayed.” Nausea churned.
“We had carried two kids out from the burning building that hadn’t been cleared despite what had been claimed.
Seconds after she handed the child off to the parent, she took one in the head.
Her blood and brain matter all over me as I watched my best friend die.
They told me it was our fault for trying to be heroes and save the children.
” A shudder. “She was Mark’s woman. Den called her mom, even though she came into their life after he’d been born.
Everything I touch, anyone I love, they are in danger.
I even attacked you for simply touching my shoulder. ”
Every tear, every whimper, ripped out what was left of his heart.
The devastation in her tone and the pain drowned him.
The sun was lowering in the sky, turning the small bedroom a soft golden hue.
This room had the general safe-house feel, nothing personal, only practical.
But right here and now with this woman beside him, it felt like more.
Or like it could be.
They weren’t in a position to think more than their present. And yet, he did. He was. As much as he could, his thoughts were on ways to tie this woman to him in a permanent way.
“I’m fine, Jasmine.”
She didn’t respond. Her light touch on his arm was grounding him and, he thought in a sense, doing the same for her. She was private. Clammed up. And deadly as hell, but she cared more than she ever wanted people to know, so for her to feel so bad about being alive gutted him.