Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter 22
DECLAN
I NEED THIS WOMAN.
I crave every inch of her, every smile, every heartbeat, every broken piece she’s afraid to show.
Sienna.
She has to be mine.
I’ve been too conflicted and insecure up to this point. Full of so many doubts. But I’ve decided. Whatever it takes, I can’t let her fucking walk out of my life, no matter how undeserving I am.
I’ll find a way to become deserving. Though I failed in the past and lost Tiffany, that doesn’t mean I’ll fail again.
I have to try.
I’ve fallen in love, so there’s no other option but to try.
Her hands clutch the front of my shirt, fingers twisting the fabric like she’s afraid of falling if she lets go. I wrap my arms around her waist to keep her upright, then I hold her tight.
My mouth presses harder into hers and she lets out a soft whimper, pushing on my chest. I pull back, realizing I may be coming on too forcefully.
She’s breathless, with burning pink cheeks and fluttering eyelashes, gazing up at me with worry twisting her brow.
I’m not sure why she’s looking at me that way, but I try to give us both a moment to breathe by saying, “You’re a magnificent painter. I don’t know how you saw…everything. That portrait is completely me.”
After hesitating, she reaches up to touch the light stubble along my jaw. “You let me see everything. I only captured it.”
I press our foreheads together. She’s right. She created cracks in my walls, and now I’m ready to fall to my knees before her. “Tell me I can be inside you.”
She weakens against me, lowering slightly as her knees bend, but I hold her steady in my arms. “Declan…”
“God, I need it.”
“I thought…I thought you liked to make the demands. Be the one in control.”
“Tell me, Sienna.” Rolling my hips, I press my hardness against her and she moans. I’m ready to give up all control for this woman. “Don’t fucking leave me in agony. Tell me.”
“Yes.”
In an instant, I lift her off the ground, walking forward until I can toss her back onto the bed. This isn’t the time for play or buildup or patience. My need is too strong. I’m already shredding off my clothes, yanking my shirt overhead. She helps me with my buckle, and then my pants and briefs are on the floor. Thankfully, she’s wearing a summer dress, and it’s easy to remove. Finally, her bra and panties, the last barriers, are gone, and I press my naked, rigid form against her softness.
Her essence and grace envelopes me as I brace my hands on either side of her head and explore her mouth some more. She’s clawing at me, squirming, meeting my tongue with hers in a messy dance. It’s the sloppiest we’ve ever kissed, and I only crave more.
“You’re staying with me,” I rumble as I graze her neck with my teeth.
“What?”
“San Francisco. You’re flying back with me and we’re going to fix whatever you’re running from.”
Her eyes are round with surprise as she shakes her head.
I don’t care—I won’t accept no this time. I’ll do everything possible to convince her that ‘yes’ is the only answer.
Raising myself, I grip her knees and spread her legs wide, gazing down at all of that glistening pink I’ll do anything for. I want to bury my face in her beautiful pussy, but other needs are simply too strong at the moment. As a compromise with myself, I shove two fingers inside her so she gasps and bucks, clenching deliciously around my knuckles. Then I bring the fingers to my mouth, sucking and licking off her taste.
Her expression is a war between shock and lust, her eyes wide but her tongue running over her bottom lip. I grin, dipping my fingers in once more, then feasting on her essence. Grabbing her hips, I yank her closer, my cock prodding her delicious entrance.
“But,” she says quickly, “a condom.”
“I’m going to come in you.”
Her cheeks deepen into an even lovelier shade of pink. “But you always…”
“Tell me, Sienna. Tell me I can.”
Her mouth snaps shut, and she nods, bending forward and reaching for my shoulder, yanking me back down on top of her as I thrust deep into her wetness. “Come in me,” she says through a moan. She wraps her legs around my hips and squeezes me closer.
A condom feels like nothing; the absence of sensation. There’s only a numbing heat. But with that damn barrier gone, I can feel all of her—every varying depth and shifting pressure in a warm, slick embrace.
It’s my soul connecting to hers, our bodies uniting as one.
My thrusts are hard and purposeful, each one stealing more of her breath until she’s gasping and moaning. Gasping and moaning.
“I’m not letting you go,” I say into her neck. “Sienna, you’re staying with me.”
I can’t get enough of her name on my tongue. Can’t get enough of her body, her primal gasps of pleasure and fingernails leaving marks on my back. The way she clenches around my cock, holding me, welcoming me home.
Can’t get enough of the way she nibbles her lower lip when nervous and becomes an enigma while painting. Her giggles and push-back; her hand reaching out to clasp mine. The snores that shake the walls; the mess of her clothes and art supplies around my room. Her ambitions, playfulness, empathy.
Her. I’ll never get enough of her.
“You have to stay,” I whisper before a kiss.
Feeling all of her puts me in a trance. I’m completely inside her; she’s completely enveloping me.
“You have to.”
Each moan from her throat and buck of her hips becomes more frantic. Her body is tensing and writhing, urging me to thrust harder, deeper, faster. My balls tighten, but I hold out until I feel her body surrender. Until she’s trembling and screaming and grinding me harder.
While her thighs shake, I finally spill inside her, cursing from the intensity, burying my face in her sweet-smelling neck and matching her moans and shaking limbs. Her scent, a mix of vanilla and sex, makes me drunk.
As the shudders of pleasure finally subside, I rest my forehead against her shoulder, both of us breathing heavily. With effort, I break our sweaty, flushed bodies apart and roll over to collapse on the bed. As I do, I bring her with me, cuddling her so she can rest her head against my chest.
Instead of us basking in the afterglow, however, the warm feelings coursing through me shatter when I hear her weeping.
I try to lift her chin and get her to look at me, but she dips her head, refusing.
“Sienna, what is it? Did I hurt—”
“No,” she croaks. She clings to me as if her life depended on it.
I’m at a loss for words because I have no clue what’s going through her head. The way her body opened up to me just now and matched my intensity told me she’s feeling something. But whether it’s lust or the feelings I have, I can’t say.
Though she finally gave me her name, I know she’s not one to open up easily when something is bothering her. It was hard enough just to get her to say she had fears about the painting.
I’m not the best with my emotions either, so I just wrap my arms around her, holding her close and safe. My lips brush her sweaty forehead, her hair. I nuzzle my cheek against her head, sighing deeply. And I stay silent, letting her weep if that’s what she needs to do right now.
Through the silence and rhythms of our breathing, comes a question I wasn’t prepared for: “What happened to your wife?”
An insatiable hollowness creeps into my chest, and I stare up at the spinning ceiling fan. The hollowness spreads until my entire body is numb. This is a moment I’ve been avoiding and fearing for years. I’ve kept every woman at a distance, setting rules and boundaries for casual dating and hookups, and buried the day my life changed forever. Though there are a few news articles out there with surface-level details about Tiffany’s death, the full truth is only known to a handful of people—needed medical examiners, a few authorities, one doctor, and Davis.
I always envisioned myself growing old alone—anything to avoid a situation like this. Yet, Sienna is in my life now and…and if I want her to stay, she should know the heavy baggage I carry. A relationship can’t be built on lies and secrets. Not one I want to be in, anyway. Tiffany kept so much from me, and if I’m going to move forward with Sienna, honesty should be our foundation.
Or maybe I’ll simply scare her away—she’ll decide my demons aren’t worth the hassle. My experiences with Tiffany do affect my need for control, something Sienna has often challenged.
I stroke her soft hair, gathering my thoughts. She asked, so I’m not going to skirt around the topic—I’ll tell her every last painful detail. This is going to hurt, so why not just rip the Band-Aid off?
“Tiffany killed herself,” I say, the fucking emotions already clawing at my voice and giving it frayed edges.
Sienna gasps, probably both at the truth and my blunt admission of it, but she’s been with me long enough to know I’m straightforward.
Her palm presses into my chest. “I’m…so sorry. That’s…unimaginable.”
I wait, giving her time to ask for more details. I know it’s human nature to be curious. Because of the news stories, which reported on her suicide but nothing else, I’ve been asked one question too much in my life: Why? Why would she do that?
I’ve never known what to say because I don’t have an answer. I’ve struggled for years to understand what Tiffany was thinking. All I know is that she was never herself in those depressive episodes. Like something took over her mind, convincing her to do things my Tiffany would never want.
“What happened?” Sienna finally asks.
For the first time, instead of deflecting or giving some minor detail so I can change the subject, I talk about it. “She…well, I mentioned she struggled with BD. It was something she’d been struggling with her entire life. She told me once she attempted suicide as a child. I couldn’t fathom a child feeling so depressed that they could think to…” I clear my throat, trying to keep my voice from cracking. The more I talk, it’s like I’m wandering deeper down a dark tunnel. What if I can’t find my way out?
“She was happy around the time we met,” I continue, trying to focus on the motion of the ceiling fan so I don’t collapse into myself. “She found some helpful therapies, the right mix of medication. She was happy. We were happy. But she still had moments that made work difficult, so I wanted to support her. My boxing career was taking off, but she was more important to me, and I knew boxing would wear on my body eventually. It’s not a career that’s easy to do once you hit thirty. So I made a pivot. I’d met some people getting into tech and lucked out with those connections. They gave me a boost in the tech company I wanted to start. I actually didn’t know shit about it, but I met Davis, who is now my VP—” I glance down at Sienna, who is gazing at me with a softness that wraps around my heart.
I kiss her forehead and refocus—she doesn’t need so much backstory. “Regardless, my company did well. Tiffany and I moved from a small apartment into a large house, and she was free to spend her days at home taking care of her mental health. She liked to hang out with friends, host small parties. That was a good time for both of us. Well…two major things happened in the span of two months—her brother died in an accident, and she became pregnant with our son.” My damn voice cracks on the last word, so I clear my throat as hard as I can.
Sienna chews her bottom lip and looks like she’s going to sob, so I train my eyes on the fan again, forcing myself to continue. What I tell her is something I’ve already relived over and over in my head for years. Inside, outside—it’s the same pain.
“While she was trying to mourn the loss of her brother, her body was also changing rapidly from the pregnancy. It made all of her symptoms worse. Suddenly, her medicine wasn’t working, or she stopped taking it. I never found out. Everything spiraled. My VP began managing the company while I stayed home with Tiffany. But nothing I did helped. She found no comfort in me. I was useless to her.”
I pause because I’m fighting too much emotion clogging my throat; I need a moment to beat it back. Closing my eyes, I focus on the darkness. My mind is flashing through snippets of volatile days—Tiffany’s manic pacing and clawing at her hair. Those bursts of energy that made her spend an entire day cleaning a house that wasn’t dirty. The razors and bloodstains and talks about her life meaning nothing, that existence meant nothing because we’re all doomed to die. Even the universe. She would always take things as far as possible—she would die, then all humans would die, then the sun, then the universe. And, in her mind, because everything had an end that meant nothing had a purpose.
So I would kiss her growing belly and say, “This is our purpose. We won’t be around when the stars explode and the universe becomes black. But we have a purpose together. We’re meant to live and raise our son so he can experience his own life and everything wonderful that comes with it.”
In the end, I was pleading with her through all these philosophical debates. Yet, she spiraled deeper and deeper, shifting from ‘life has no purpose’ to ‘you never loved me.’
I loved her. Loved her so much that when she was gone, I didn’t know if I’d go on breathing.
Sienna rubs circles over my heart as I’m failing to beat the emotion back. I just surrender and let a few tears slip out. The release steadies my voice enough to continue. “At her darkest point, she said she needed help and wanted to go to a hospital. We found one with a three-month program where they could help her with the pregnancy changes and everything else. She was only there a month and then called me to pick her up. She begged and swore she was okay and feeling stable, but I knew it wasn’t a good idea. I knew, and yet…”
Sienna shifts so her cheek can press against mine, and she strokes my hair. She’s crying softly as she holds me. It’s a kind, comforting embrace I haven’t experienced in over a decade. Haven’t allowed myself to.
She already knows how the story ends, so I don’t continue. But my mind does.
I remember how I brought Tiffany home from the hospital and we had one blissful week together. Something felt off, but I ignored it, thinking she only needed to adjust to being home again.
Friday of that week, I went into my office for a few hours to check on some things for NexaProtect. I can’t even remember what seemed so important at the time.
It was only a few hours.
When I left that office, Tiffany was no longer in the living room watching TV. She loved her garden, so it was the first place I looked.
I found her body in the fountain in the backyard. Red flowed from her neck. Red water. Red soaking into the white baby shoes I had bought for our son. A red-stained letter accusing me of so many things—never loving her, hating our baby, wishing she was gone so I could have a better life. The letter devolved into her saying she never loved me and how she’d be a horrible mother. Then it looped to the sun exploding and everything that exists falling into nothingness.
“I want to fall into nothingness now and get it over with.”
So many random, running thoughts.
Those were her last thoughts.
She died thinking that I didn’t love her, telling herself that I wanted her and our son out of my life.
I have dreams about him sometimes—what kind of man he would’ve become. How proud I’d feel, no matter what.
I’d feel proud and happy just to have him alive.
The emotions come up stronger and I choke, covering my wet face with the crook of my elbow. “She took our son,” are the last words I say about it.
Sienna cries with me, and we hold each other.
I don’t sense her recoiling or wanting nothing to do with my ghosts. Just as she’s done before, she gives me her presence, her understanding, her acceptance that life happens and mistakes can never be undone. Somehow, you just have to keep living.
Within my pain, for the first time, I see a way forward. It’s a brush stroke. Made by Sienna.