5. Reed
Iwas on my knees in a six-thousand-dollar suit, but I would have taken it off if I had to. As a matter of fact, I wanted to take it off. Being between Faith’s legs brought back fond memories of teaching her just how good her body could feel.
Now she stared down at me like I was the lowest scum on the planet, and to some extent, she was right. The glimmer in her eyes that told me she wanted to give in to me and was disgusted with herself for even considering it was enough ammunition for me to stay right where I was.
“What do you expect, Reed? You want me to just crumble and fall for your game after all this time?”
“I don’t want you to crumble. I don’t want you to fall apart. I want you to believe that I want to make things right between us.”
“It’s mighty convenient that you want to do that all of a sudden after I’ve threatened to expose your business.”
“It may be convenient, but it’s long overdue.”
“That may be true, but contrary to what you might think, you can’t weasel your way out of everything with a bunch of semi convincing lies. I’m not going for it. I’m not the same girl that thought the world revolved around you, and just to clear the air, I don’t love you anymore.”
Faith’s words stung, but to use her own words against her, I wasn’t going for it. I never expected for her to give in easily. I just needed to make my intentions clear. I didn’t take the task of making things up to her lightly. I was in it for the long run.
Faith was stubborn, and rightfully so in this instance.
Her tenacity was one of the things I loved about her.
No matter how much she’d grown, she was still my baby.
Still soft, still sweet, still the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
Getting her back would likely be the hardest thing that I ever had to do, but I was up for the challenge.
It took years for me to convince myself that letting Faith go had been the right thing to do.
Seeing her again after all this time made me feel like someone had snatched my heart from my chest and set it on fire.
I felt raw, exposed, and willing to do anything in the world to get my girl back.
Her staring at me like I was the villain in her backstory made me feel like shit.
It hurt to know that I deserved worse than that.
“You will one day,” I stated as I stood to my full height.
“Do you really think a pitiful apology fixes what you did to me? Tell me you’re not that arrogant.”
“Maybe I am, but no, I don’t expect a pitiful apology to fix anything.”
“Good, because it won’t,” she said, pursing her lips.
“But it’s a start. You being here is a start.”
“There is no starting over for us, Reed.”
“You know what’s crazy? Not once in all these years have I ever stopped thinking about you.”
“I told you we’re not doing this.”
“I looked for you in every single woman I encountered. None of them ever compared to you. No one laughed like you, no one ever challenged me like you. Not one of them could ever make me feel—”
“Reed, stop it! I don’t know why you insist on rehashing ancient history.”
“Hmph, you’ll never be history to me. Not when you’re the only thing that makes me feel whole.
You’re very much the present for me. I’m pretty sure that’s evidenced by you sitting in front of me right now.
Please don’t tell me you aren’t real, because you’re the most real thing that’s ever been in my life, Faith.
It fucked me up to know what was ahead of me, when the best thing for me was right in my grasp, and I lost it. ”
“You don’t get to say that now. You made your decision.”
“I didn’t make anything. I tried to be the man I was raised to be and accept my fate. I knew what my life was supposed to look like. I knew what was expected of me. It was all planned for me before you walked into my life and gave me something authentic.”
Her eyes dropped from mine, and for the first time, I didn’t immediately want to demand to have them back on me. Faith needed time to process what I was saying. The fractures in her demeanor made me want to go in for the kill.
“I couldn’t stomach the idea of ruining your life.”
She scoffed again as she looked up at me with fiery eyes. “Yet you ruined me anyway.”
Her words hit me harder than I expected. Under the weight of her confession, I could only accept her reproach. There was no immediate quick-witted response. Instead, I sat with her revelation and let it destroy me in the same way that I’d destroyed the woman I proclaimed to love more than anything.
“You broke me. You made me feel safe and cherished when you were no better than the other guys. I told you how I felt, and you used it against me. At the end of the day, you were worse than any of them. At least they made their intentions clear from the beginning. You misled me all the way up to the point to where I found out the truth. Then you left me standing there looking crazy thinking I imagined everything between us, while you rode off into the sunset with another woman.”
“Zenia was never my woman, and we didn’t ride off anywhere.”
“Oh, excuse me, fiancée.”
“It was an arrangement!”
“It doesn’t matter what you want to call it. You fucking lied to me, Reed!”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t meet you with the intentions of falling for you.”
“Oh, I apologize that that happened.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, Faith. When I realized that I was falling in love with you, I decided that I wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement. There’s a process to get out of it. I thought I had more time to fix it.”
Her eyes narrowed, and that hesitation made me greedy.
“You think being all sweet and charming is going to get you somewhere, but don’t forget, I already know you. You’re still trying to manipulate the situation.”
“I may be, but I meant every word I said.”
“You are unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head.
“I’m in love.”
Her lips parted and closed without any words coming out.
I didn’t expect to shut her up, but I was grateful for the moment of reflection instead of the immediate comeback.
My girl was still in there. The same girl who used to curl up and lie on my chest while we watched sappy movies in her dorm room.
The adorable girl who used to blush when I kissed her neck.
The brilliant writer who helped make my mediocre words sound like art.
They were all there. I just needed her to let those titanium walls down.
I didn’t give her time to realize what was happening before I closed the remaining space between us and grabbed her throat. I moved slowly, giving her enough time to protest. She didn’t. Her heart pounded against the base of my hand as her eyes dropped to my lips.
“Reed.” She panted right before I crashed my lips into hers.
Carefully, I parted her lips with my tongue. Tasting her after all this time sent a war raging in my chest. It was like no time had passed. Every single year, every day that she was away from me disappeared. She tasted exactly how I remembered.
She whimpered quietly, making me ravenous as she opened more for me.
Her fingers clawed at my head as I fisted her hair, pulling her as close as I could.
Suddenly, she snatched away and slapped the shit out of me.
Her delayed response was the one I’d expected from the start, so I wasn’t exactly caught off guard by the stinging sensation setting my face on fire.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Reed?”
“There’s a lot wrong with me. Where do I start?”
“Move out of my way. You don’t get to just kiss me like that,” she fussed, picking her tablet up from the table and clutching it to her chest.
I figured it wasn’t the best time to mention how she’d kissed me back. Instead, I backed up and stood to my full height.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you again for seven years.”
“That doesn’t make it right. I don’t belong to you, not anymore.”
“Who said?”
“Your mother!” she snapped.
Her quip almost threw me off track. There was no use in backing down. I was all in now. It was time to go in for the kill.
“You kissed me back.”
“I absolutely did not!”
That made me chuckle. Faith could run from me while she was away, but she could never hide—not her feelings, not herself. I knew her better than I knew myself. I had gone through too much to make sure that when she finally came back, I would be ready to claim her. Faith was mine.
“You absolutely did,” I said, moving in and closing the space between us again. She was flustered, furious, and beautiful enough to stop hearts and ruin lives, mine included. “Why do you want me to think you hate me?”
“Because I do.” She snorted, lifting her chin defiantly.
“No, you don’t.” I noticed the very moment her breath caught in her throat.
Faith might have hated me, but I knew she still loved me too. I needed her to know just how much I loved her. How much I had always loved her.
“I had to kill two people to get out of that arrangement. I went to my dad a couple of months before graduation to find out the procedure. My mom knew that I was thinking about it. That’s why she showed up to try to get in the way.
Even after you left me, I went through with it because I knew one day, you would be back in my life.
I don’t care what you say. I’m not letting you go this time, Faith. ”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out. The pause nearly drove me up the wall. What was she going to say? What could she say? All I needed to hear was OK. Instead, she squared her shoulders and pushed down any signs of her surrender.
“So, when you realized seducing me to control the story wasn’t working, you figured confessing to murder was going to scare me into submission?”
I didn’t know why that made me laugh, but it did.
“I’m not trying to control or scare you, Faith. If I wanted to control the story, I would have never let a woman who proclaims to hate my guts into the building.”
“Well, what the hell do you want, Reed?”
“I want you. I don’t give a fuck about the story, or even this casino, if I can’t have you. Everything I have, everything that I have built is all for you.”
Her eyes narrowed as she prepared to try to finish tearing my heart out. I wasn’t sure if I could take that right now, so I spoke up again.
“Write your story the way you want to. Ask anything you want to ask, but you work directly with me. Take it or leave it, but I’m not letting up.”
“You won’t be able to hide everything by keeping me under your thumb.”
“Nor do I plan to. Let me know when you’re ready to start your investigation, my love,” I said, reluctantly backing out of her personal space and letting her go past me.
“Hmph!” She huffed as she pushed past me to get to the door.
This damn girl. I shook my head when the door slammed behind her. Thankfully, I knew what kind of task was ahead of me. It was a good thing that I was the only man for the job.