Chapter 6
JAYDEN
Silence.
Everything is shrouded in silence.
My shock.
My tears.
My rage.
I open my mouth, only to close it again. Nothing comes out. I’m speechless. Wordless. Mute.
What do I say?
What can I say?
Because nothing is okay.
It’s not going to be okay, because I can’t fix it.
I can’t undo what those bastards did to Eli.
I can’t ever make that better.
…And what good am I to him if I can’t do anything?
Eli glances up from the table where he’s been ripping sugar packets apart, pouring the granules over the puddles of his tears—like he’s trying to turn something bitter into something sweet.
His hands shake harder now than they did before. Harder than when he told me the story behind the photos.
Except, it’s not a story.
It’s his reality.
His living, breathing, corroding pain.
“Eli…” I choke around the lump in my throat, leaning back against the wall across from him. It’s the only thing keeping me from throwing my arms around him, from wrapping him up in me.
“Please don’t. Don’t look at me like that,” he breathes, voice raw. “I’m not a victim. I don’t want to be a victim.”
“You’re not,” I say quickly. My feet carry me toward him before I even register it. I stop a foot short, my hand reaching for him.
This is why he doesn’t like being touched. Why he flinches from proximity… from intimacy.
Dark, tear-bruised eyes drop to my hand gripping the edge of the table. I’m holding on just to keep myself from taking something that isn’t mine to take.
Slowly, he brings his hand closer and sets it beside mine. “JJ?”
“Eli.”
“You can touch me,” he murmurs, sucking in a deep breath as he pries my fingers loose from the table one by one, sliding his beneath mine. “I like it when you touch me.”
Those words are salvation. The only ones that stop the endless hole in my chest from swallowing every ounce of hope I have left.
I clasp his hand, tracing my fingertips across the flat of his wrist. He’s still shaking. His skin is as cold as the shock quaking through me.
“Why didn’t you report it?” The question slips out before I can filter it. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Those bastards get to go on with their lives like… like…”
My head’s stuck. My heart’s frozen. On. One. Thing.
Eli—my brooding, beautiful Eli—was raped.
All this time. Years of knowing him. Of watching him. Of falling in love with him. All those moments of searching his eyes for the reasons he was closed off—
I never saw it.
I never imagined it could be this.
Because even when he’s vulnerable, Eli is strong. Steadfast. Ready for every challenge.
“Why, Eli?” The waiver in my voice betrays me.
“Fear…” he whispers, staring at our hands. “Shame…”
I crouch in front of him, tilting my head so he has to meet my eyes. “You did nothing wrong.”
I don’t understand how he could be ashamed of something that wasn’t his fault. How he could be scared of the consequences of someone else’s crime.
I don’t understand it. But fuck, I want to. I need to.
Because every part of me is aching to destroy Presley Tomes. To find him, break him, and burn him alive for what he did. For all the slurs he’s taunted Eli with. All the times the bastard has touched him, and taken joy in all the ways he’s hurt this perfect, kind man in front of me.
“I don’t know,” Eli whispers. His eyes glaze, distant. I grip his hand tighter, tethering him to me. “I should’ve never put myself in that situation. It was stupid… I was stupid and na?ve, and maybe I deserved it.”
What?
“No.”
How can he think that?
Instinct takes over. The hand braced on my thigh lifts to his face. For a second, I’m about to pull away, until he leans into my palm. Nuzzling his tear-tracked cheek into it.
I’ve never been a believer, but right now, I pray—pray I never have to let him go.
I can’t.
I want to bury him inside me, wrap my skin over his bones so nothing in this cruel world can ever reach him again. To fight every demon he’s ever known. One by one. Until every piece of his happiness is mine to guard.
“Eli, you’re the best person I know. You’re… you…”
Words fail me. None of them fit. Nothing can hold the sheer enormity of what I feel. Because he’s more than I’ve ever dreamed or deserved.
Eli is everything.
He has filled my entire existence with a love I’ve never known, and I have known so much love. I have been spoiled rotten with it from my momma’s womb.
“I hurt you, JJ.” His sob cracks through me. Like hurting me is the worst of his pain.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.” I stroke my thumb across his cheek, my fingers curling against the hinge of his jaw.
“It matters. You matter.” His stare locks on mine as his hand grips my wrist, pressing my palm deeper against his skin. His fingers lace tighter through mine. “I hurt you because I was too afraid of what loving you might make me. Of what it might mean.”
The universe shifts.
Maybe I heard wrong. Maybe my shock is twisting it.
Then he sucks in a deep breath and leans forward until his forehead rests on mine.
My pulse ricochets.
I’m starving for air, starving for his breath. For his sadness. For the pain between us that feels almost holy.
He brings our entwined hands to his chest, pressing them over his frantic heartbeat. His palm flattens over mine, and my fingers splay against his warmth.
“I thought that wanting you would make it true. That it would mean I wanted it… that I asked for it somehow.” Tears spill down his cheeks.
“I didn’t want it, JJ. Until you, I’d never felt this way about a man.
But what if I did look at Ryker too long?
What if I gave him the wrong impression? What if I brought it on myself?”
“You can’t blame yourself for the choices others make—especially when they choose to hurt you. It doesn’t matter who they are. Nobody has the right to touch you without your consent. It’s inexcusable whichever way you look at it.”
“You sound like Taylor,” Eli chuckles past his teary hiccups.
His billet dad. That’s one person Eli has told me about. Someone who cares for him. Who loves him…
“Because I care about you, too.” The small smile that tugs at his lips warms through me, but I need it to be bigger. I need to see it in his eyes. “Because I love you, Eli.”
There it is.
That gorgeous, brooding smile that changes the rhythm of my heart without fail.
It’s so fucking beautiful that it literally takes my breath away.
And if I could just fix it to his lips for the rest of my life, I would spend the rest of my days, every second I have left in this world, telling him I love him.
Stroking my hand over his jaw, I mold it to his nape as I lean closer. Needing to feel more of him. Because if I feel him and his pain, then maybe I can bear some of the brunt of it for him. Maybe I can make it better.
I can take his fear and leave more room to give him love. To give him joy. To hold me and Finley and…
Finley.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
“She doesn’t know.”
Eli stiffens. The smile I put on his face instantly falls, and I hate myself for it.
“Jayden,” he enunciates carefully, slowly, “Finley can never know.”
“Eli…”
“She’ll carry this for the rest of her life like it’s her sin. She’ll never forgive herself. It’ll break her beyond repair. I can’t do that to her.” His eyes lock on mine. “Can you?”
“No.” Of course not. “I can’t. But she’s going to see that story, and it will hurt her, Eli.”
My chest constricts. His hands tighten around my face.
“She has seen it.”
The pounding in my chest stutters. “And?”
“Finley knows me. She knows the article isn’t true.”
“Knowing it’s not true doesn’t mean she’s not wondering what the truth is, and—”
“Does it feel better now that you know the truth?” His voice is quiet, edged with fear and disgust.
“No,” I whisper, sliding my hand up from his chest to his throat, bracketing it lightly.
Eli exhales, his hands falling to my shoulders. “So what difference does it make?”
“You’ve always been Fin’s, Eli. She believes she knows every inch of you. This will make her feel cheated and betrayed. One terrible thing will cast doubt over everything she believes she knows—herself, you, me. She’ll think it’s all a lie. We’ll lose her.”
Panic swells in his stare.
“Can you live without Finley?”
“No,” Eli says instantly, shaking his head.
“Neither can I.” My thumb traces the line of his jaw. “I want you, Eli. I need you. And I need her. I need us.”
He nods, fingers lacing behind my neck. “Me, too.”
A what then frown creases his brows together.
“Finley needs to know the truth; otherwise you’re never going to be able to look her in the eyes and love her the way you want to. You’ll never be able to be with her the way you need.”
He gasps at my words. Like I’ve hit the epicenter of his gaping wound and brought the pain back to life a hundredfold.
I don’t know where they came from. I haven’t had enough time for the truth to settle, to truly hit me, for me to deduce that what happened to him is the reason he can’t be intimate with Finley. But this is Eli, and like when Finley told me about his grandmother and the cutting—I know.
“There will always be this dark secret between all of us—” A tear skips down his face as heavy as the rock in my stomach. “—and we will always be afraid of the day that she does find out. Because that day is somewhere in our future, Eli, whether we acknowledge it or not.”
“How do I tell her what her brother did to me? How am I supposed to look in her eyes and tell her that he—” He stops. The look on his face tears me apart. He can’t even say the word. “How, JJ?”
His eyes dart between mine, searching for an answer I don’t have.
“I don’t know,” I breathe.
Shuffling forward on my knees, I trail my hands down his chest slowly, giving him the chance to pull back. When he doesn’t, I settle between his thighs and wrap my arms around his chest until he’s cradled into me and his arms coil around my shoulders.
I hold Eli as tight as I can and promise, “We’ll figure it out together.”
“It’s not your problem,” he says with a choked sputter that wrenches all my insides into my throat.
After telling him I love him, I thought that it was plain to understand that we’re in this together. He’s not on his own. The pain that lives in his chest is mine. The hurt he carries is mine. His fight is my fight.
“Anything and anyone that hurts you or Finley is my problem.” I pull back to hold his face in my hands. Tracing every line of his bewildered expression, I wipe away his tears until his eyes focus on mine. “You’re mine, Eli, and what hurts you, might as well kill me.”
His arms loosen around me with the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Silent hiccups vibrate through him while his hands mold to the back of my head.
The light trail of his fingertips through the short strands of my hair sends a wave of heat through me.
My heart loses track of what to do when his eyes lower to my lips.
Narrowed with longing. Blinking with curiosity.
I want to sate every want and need glimmering in his stare. I want to give him every ounce of love and affection he doesn’t know yet. My love. My affection.
“JJ…” he breathes my name like a prayer, leaning closer.
Holding his gaze, I tilt my head, thumbing his cheeks in a gentle caress. “Eli…”
The air in my lungs heats, the particles expanding with a heady buzz.
Then the tip of his nose brushes mine, and a choked hiss parts my lips. His eyes flit to mine again while his fingers tunnel deep into the longer lengths of my hair. Twisting and pulling with each of his shallow breaths growing raspier as my hands trace down from his cheeks to his jaw.
“I don’t…” His deep, obsidian stare skirts back to my lips. “I don’t know what… how… I…”
“You know, Sweetheart.” The endearment rolls off my tongue without prelude. There’s no thought, no pause, just feeling. With his focus back on my gaze, I tell him, “Do whatever you want, how you want. Because I want it all.”
My stomach whirs with a breathtaking thrill every second he studies my face, and a slow smile ticks up the corners of his lips, lighting his eyes with a bashful glint. The tremor in his breath wracks through my chest, punctuating the light tug of his fingers in my hair.
It’s so good. So fucking good, that I gasp at the same time as my face lifts to his and his lips brush mine.
Eli freezes. Still as stone. His top lip pressed to my bottom one. His hands tangled in my hair. His breath ghosting my skin.
Waiting.
Holding.
“Fuck,” he groans, the sound dragging from his chest until his mouth crushes to mine.
Everything explodes. Breath, heat, need. His tongue sweeps into my mouth with a sigh that sounds like release. Like he’s wanted this as long as I have.
Our teeth clash, our hands fumble, desperate to hold, to feel, to anchor. Eli deepens the kiss, tasting me, pulling me in until I’m nothing but our frantic heartbeat and unrelenting want.
God, he tastes like heaven. Mint and sugar and something wholly him. Something I’ll never get enough of.
When he stands, he pulls me with him. My chest collides with his, our hearts pounding in sync, faster, louder, wilder.
I can’t breathe.
I don’t want to if it means losing this.
It’s too good. Too perfect. Everything I could never imagine.
Eli smells like me. Like my body wash.
And I hate it.
Because I want his scent, peppery, citrus, burning my lungs each time I gasp.
My hands drop to his hips with a groan as he nips at my lip, sucks it into his mouth, and breathes me in. His hand grips mine, guides it under his shirt, presses it flat to his abs.
Oh my God.
“Fuck.” The word rips out of me as he pecks at my lips.
We’re both breathless, our air thick with heat and wanting. We keep kissing, just lips brushing lips, breaths mingling, trembling.
My fingers dig into his warm skin. His hands stroke through my hair, down my neck, up my back again.
He doesn’t pull away.
Eli holds me like he’s afraid the world will end if he lets go.
“Fuck, JJ…” he murmurs in my ear.
“Yeah,” I rasp back, voice wrecked.
He drags his nose along my cheek, ghosting his lips over mine before pulling back.
When our eyes meet, every emotion hits me all at once.
Joy. Pain. Hope. Grief.
I can’t smile without crying. Can’t feel the joy without the ache.
I’ve waited so long. And it’s everything.
“Hey, Sunshine,” Eli whispers, wiping my tears, his hands still framing my face. “You okay?”
The question breaks me open. “Me? Yeah. You?”
“Better.” His smile widens, just slightly, and he leans in to nudge his nose against mine. “I love you, too, Jayden.”
Who knew a whisper could set the universe on fire?
Not me.
Not ever.
Not in a million years.
Not. Me.