Chapter 16
ABEL
My hand aches from punching Peris, so I clutch it to my chest as he stares at me. Balking, really. Like he can’t believe I had the gall. But it’s really me who can’t believe it.
I just punched Peris Baxter in the fucking face…
“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, and I startle at the question.
“Someone you used to know.” Because how else am I to answer that?
And then, I’m gasping because Peris’s lips are bruising, and his coppery-flavored tongue is sliding along mine, and I’m groaning into him.
One of his hands finds my throat, while the other slides down my waist and hooks around my thigh, bringing it up around his hip.
I take the invitation and jump up into his waiting arms.
He catches me easily, even as our teeth smack together. It’s jarring, and we both groan, but I don’t care. It’s fucking fantastic because Peris’s hands are all over me, touching every inch of me like he can’t get enough. Like he can’t breathe without me.
He doesn’t even bother taking us to the bed.
Instead, he drops down right onto the floor and rips his mouth away to tear his sweatshirt away from my torso.
I shiver as the air hits my exposed skin, and I flush as Peris stares down at me, taking me in greedily.
I try to cross my arms over my chest, but Peris growls and reaches out to smack my arms down.
He pins them under his knees to keep his hands free and uses them to touch my body.
He traces his fingers across my chest, over my nipples and the jewelry through them, down my abdomen to the piercing in my belly button, which he yanks on, making me gasp.
He plays with the trail of hair leading to my groin, and I groan and toss my head back as he tugs on a few of the hairs, but just as I think he’s going to delve inside my panties, he skims his fingertips back up.
“Bastard,” I hiss, and I’m able to get my hands free to yank on his hair, and that really gets him going. He growls and dips down to nip along my flesh, leaving imprints of his teeth to follow the path of his fingers, and I’m writhing uncontrollably until he reaches my scarred thighs, and I tense.
Peris senses this and slows down his ministrations.
He laves his tongue out over the thickest of my scars, soaking them in his saliva and sucking them gently between his lips before moving on to the next.
He does that with each individual scar, whether they overlap or not, and by the time he’s made it back up to my groin, I’m a quivering, writhing, panting mess.
“Oh, fuck. Peris, please. Please.”
“What do you want, puppy?”
“Oh, God,” I cry out at hearing him call me that again.
It brings tears to my eyes, and I can’t hold back that sob that springs forth.
“Fuck.” I wrinkle my nose, and I know it’s not attractive, but I don’t care.
I buy my fingers in his hair and try to pull him up.
When our eyes meet, I feel everything else fall away, and my heart thuds painfully.
“Fuck me, baby boy. Please,” I beg desperately.
Peris looks right into me, and his golden-green eyes are so painfully clear, I can see everything.
His want, his need. His… devotion. And then, I see the switch.
His eyes narrow into slits as he pulls back, just slightly, and says, “It’s good to want things, Abel.
Truly.” And then, he adds, “Don’t you have to get to work? ”
“What the fuck?” I say softly, but Peris is already pulling away from me, leaving me cold and bereft as he climbs off me and walks out the door. “What the fuck,” I repeat again, this time to myself as I stare at the space he left behind, feeling confused and hurt and surprisingly lonely.
It’s awkward as I clamber off the floor, pretty much naked, to put on my dirty clothes from the night before, but I do so with my jaw locked tight because how fucking dare he treat me like that. The gall that man has…
But that doesn’t stop my eyes from stinging. Or my heart from aching because try as I might, Peris always finds his way back inside me. Into the deepest parts.
Once I’m dressed, I stride out of the room with my head held high, not even bothering to enter the kitchen to say bye. If he wants to treat me like some shitty fuck he picked up, then that’s what he can get in return.
Fuck him.
“Leaving so soon?”
“Jesus!” I shout, whirling around to face Gabe on the couch. He’s watching some movie on the T.V. “You are always coming out of nowhere.”
“I’ve been here the whole time.”
“Sure, whatever.” As I turn toward the door, Gabe’s voice stops me again.
“What happened?”
I tense. “None of your fucking business.”
“It is my business when I have to deal with him getting—” he cuts himself off, and I stare at him, narrowing my eyes to deduce what he was about to say.
“Getting what?” I ask, and Gabriel shakes his head.
“Fine. Don’t tell me. But it’s not my problem.
I’m leaving. Oh. And he called him.” And before Gabe can say anything else to remotely convince me to stay, I yank open the door and stomp my way out into the frigid afternoon air.
It’s freezing for late November, even with Peris’s sweatshirt wrapped around me.
Because yes, I did fucking take it. Fuck him.
I sit outside and wait for my car to show up, which thankfully only takes a few minutes, and I’m unbothered by anyone as I wait. When I jump in and close the door, I welcome the heat with relish as the driver starts the journey to Mo’s facility.
I should probably go home and get dressed first, but I just need to spend the day not thinking about anything, and there’s no better way to do that than with Morana.
“Again? You’re kicking my ass today, Mo.”
“You’re not in it,” she accuses, and I nod my head shamefully as I grab the pile of cards and begin to shuffle them.
“No, sorry. It’s been a rough day.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Mo. I’m okay,” I tell her as I look up at her gratefully.
I know I can’t be one hundred percent truthful with her because she can’t really handle it with her traumatic brain injury, but it’s okay.
I don’t need a confidant. I just need her.
And I’m lucky to have even found her in the first place.
The guilt I feel not having found her sooner will never subside, but we’re here now, and nothing can be done about it other than what we’re doing. This is the life we have, and we’ve just gotta live it.
And I’ll always do whatever I can to take care of her.
It’s why I’m still seeing clients and why I can’t stop.
Mo is on state health insurance, which covers all of her medical bills, but I’m terrified she’s going to get kicked off some day, for some fucking reason because it’s the government, so I do what I do and save up in case I need to provide insurance for her, so she’ll never be without.
Thankfully, nothing has lapsed yet, and I’ve been able to create quite the nest egg, but that doesn’t mean I can just stop.
You never know what could happen.
Living in these homes is expensive, and I need to know she’ll be taken care of.
I can’t leave her again.
“Hey, Abel. Will you come help me with this?” Stella, one of the aids asks, and I nod with a smile.
“Be right back,” I tell Mo as I push away from the table and move to help Stella pick up an extra table and chairs.
“Figured you could use a little Uno break. You look exhausted.”
“Thanks. I am. Just been a shit day.” I start folding the brown chairs and leaning them against the wall.
“You look it,” she tells me bluntly, and I snort.
“Thanks.”
“Sure thing,” she says on a giggle, and I find myself joining in for no other reason than it is kinda funny. I let Peris Baxter get in my head. Of all things, and of all people. But I guess if it had to be anyone, it makes sense that it was him.
There’s never been anyone else.
But that doesn’t mean we can just… be together.
He can’t accept what I do, and I can’t just stop…
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Stella replies easily, pausing in her movement of the table to lean her hip against it.
“What happens if someone here were to get kicked off their insurance?”
“You mean, like their Medicaid?” she asks, eyes softening in understanding, and I nod.
“Well, you know Jan works really hard to make sure that lapses never happen, especially for those who don’t have any… legal family,” she adds the word in carefully, and I nod. Because I’m not technically anything to Mo, so there’s not anything for me to do for her. It’s all up to the state.
“But it’s happened before, once or twice.
” I wince and feel my heart rate kick up a few notches.
“But that doesn’t mean we kick patients out right away.
Paperwork takes time. A long time usually,” she emphasizes, and my brows furrow, but I nod, following along.
“And then, usually, by that time, it’s been figured out, and there’s nothing to worry about. ”
“But what if there is something to worry about?”
“Then, we worry about it then. Not before.”
I shake my head. “I just can’t get past something happening and her not having anywhere to go…”
“Abel.” Stella places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “She’s not going to get kicked out. We don’t do that.”
“But I know how the government works—”
“Maybe you do. I don’t know, but I know how this works, and I’m telling you we would never just leave her, okay? Can you trust me on that?” Her blue eyes are soft and sincere as she tries to meet my gaze, and when I finally look at her, I nod my ascent. She gives me a small smile in return.
“Good. I don’t want you stressing about this…” And when she catches whatever look I must have on my face, she pales slightly. “Oh, God. You’ve been worrying about this the whole time, haven’t you?”
“Just since I found her again,” I admit with a wince.
“Abel… we’re here to take care of her.”
“I know. But that’s what I should be doing—”