Chapter 17Hailey
CHAPTER 17
HAILEY
“No, no, no,” I grumble, my throat thick with sleep, when I feel Luke sliding away from me.
There’s a chuckle as he keeps moving, slipping from the bed, but before he goes any further, he leans over and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “My phone has been going off for the last twenty minutes. I’m coming right back.”
I hear it then. The light buzzing sound jingling against something else. Change, or keys, I’m not sure which. It stops as Luke stands upright, moving towards his jeans, and before he’s there the noise starts all over again. Whoever it is, is persistent as hell.
My stomach clenches with fear, hoping there isn’t some kind of emergency. The thought is enough to rouse me from my sleepy state, and I sit up, pulling the sheet up over my chest as Luke picks up his pants from the floor. My body protests, aching and sore after what I think is probably a couple of hours of not moving while we napped. Both from the accident, and from Luke.
He wiped me right out. Orgasm after orgasm. His mouth. His tongue. His fingers. His cock. It kept getting better the longer we went, the more he learned about my body, and what made me moan and cry his name the loudest.
I’ve never been so thoroughly sated. I’ve never had so many orgasms. It was like he was trying to make up for all the lost years between us, and by the last orgasm he wrung from me, I had to beg him to stop. For one moment, I didn’t think he would, a mischievous glint in his green-blue eyes, but then he conceded, and we curled up in each other’s arms, drifting off.
My body hums with the memories of all the things he did to me, and I wonder, now that we’re both awake, whether he’ll start again.
“It’s Nate,” he says, pulling my attention back to the present moment.
Right. The phone. A possible situation at hand. God, my mind is muddled.
Then the name hits me and I sit up straighter as Luke answers the call. Nate? Why the hell is Nate trying so desperately to get a hold of Luke? Oh god, what if something happened? To him or someone else. Quinn? Liam? Brody?
“Yeah, she’s here,” Luke replies to whatever Nate has said, eyeing me as I swivel around so I’m sitting up on my knees. There’s a pause and he frowns, responding, “Oh. Well, hold on.”
Despite the furrow in my brow, relief washes over me that it doesn’t seem to be bad news regarding someone else. But the fact that Luke is holding the phone out for me isn’t very reassuring either. He must sense my sudden uneasiness, because he offers a tender smile.
Wrapping the sheet tighter around my chest, even though Nate can’t see me and Luke answered in the nude, I take the phone and answer, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Nate’s voice comes from the other end, sounding weary. “Sorry to bother you after everything, but your mom called. More than once.”
A growl filled with rage comes from deep within the pit of my soul. The noise surprises me, and I clamp my mouth shut to keep from uttering a string of expletives at Nate. Fisting the comforter in my hands, I try not to picture it as my mother’s neck.
Fuck her. I can’t even begin to process what she did or how she did it, and I don’t want to. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not ever. Right now, I want nothing to do with her.
When I say nothing else, Nate adds, “She’s called Quinn too. A few times.”
Luke sits on the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand, his fingers running over the back of it as it clutches the bedding. When I let go of the material, I realize that I’m trembling from head to toe, and Luke took note. Must have known I needed his reassuring touch.
My fingers curl around his, my grip on his phone tightening as I take a steadying breath. “Okay. I’ll handle it. I’m sorry she’s being like that.”
“It’s okay. She knew about your car going over the side of the mountain, but can’t get ahold of you. Earlier you said you were going to let her know what happened, so I was worried,” Nate explains, caution in his tone. “Everything okay?”
A wave of nausea hits me, and I close my eyes against it, shaking my head. “It’s complicated. But I’ll deal with her. If she calls again, just block her.”
“Hailey?” Nate sounds surprised.
“It’s fine, Nate. You don’t need to be part of my family drama. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Sorry again.”
I don’t wait for him to respond before I hang up the phone and toss it to the bed, scared that if I hold onto it for one second longer I’ll throw it across the room or crack it in my grip.
“All these years,” I whisper, unsure if it’s to myself or to Luke. “She was the reason.”
Luke moves onto the bed, shuffling on his knees closer to me. He brings both hands to my face, cradling me in warm palms. “Hey, what matters is now.”
Renewed anger seeps into my veins and I jerk my head back, snapping, “Are you not mad? She didn’t do this to just me.”
“Oh, I’m bloody furious with her,” he tells me, his hands having dropped to my shoulders. They run down my arms until he reaches my hands, taking them in his. “But I don’t know that my anger helps you right now. And you, Freckles, are my number one priority.”
Luke brings my hands to his lips, kissing each knuckle, one by one, his eyes holding mine, allowing me to see every emotion in their depths. Pain. Sorrow. Regret. “You always were. It’s why I believed her all those years ago. I thought I was giving you what you wanted.”
If I weren’t so angry with my mother, tears would fill my eyes right now. Of course he gave me what he thought I wanted, or needed, even if it meant his own pain. It was never just a physical thing, even though that’s when he vocalized giving me what I needed, or wanted, the most. But it was always there. In the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, the way he always asked for permission, even if it wasn’t always with spoken words.
“I hate her,” I breathe, barely audible. It doesn’t matter. I could have mouthed the words, and Luke would know.
He nods, tugging me towards him, releasing my hands to wrap his arms around me. My own arms slide around his midsection, and I press my face into his bare chest, breathing him in. Breathing comfort in. Warmth. Stability.
“In this moment,” he says, pressing his mouth against the top of my hair. “In this moment you hate her. Don’t decide right now that you hate her for the rest of your life.”
That’s a big ask. One I don’t know if I can follow through on.
Eighteen. The number of text messages my mom sent Luke.
Nine. The number of times she’s called him.
Sitting at his kitchen island, wearing one of his Waco fire t-shirts that barely covers my ass when I sit, I stare at the messages until they blur in my vision. Wringing my hands in my lap to keep them from trembling with the rage still swimming inside of me, my mind feels like it’s on a hamster wheel, trying to work out the logistics of what my mother must have done to get me to this point.
Luke texted, called, emailed, checked my socials. And when I came out of my coma in the hospital and was able to look at my phone, there was nothing. No trace of him. By then it had been weeks since we’d seen each other. Long enough without contact that he’d given up hope, and believed my mom when she said I wanted nothing to do with him.
I don’t understand why she would do it. There isn’t a single reason, as I wrack my brain, that makes sense. She met Luke that summer. Seemed fine with him. She was cautious, sure, but I was a seventeen year old kid, about to fly the nest and go to college. Of course she was cautious. She’s cautious about everything in life.
“I can hear you from here,” Luke says, breaking through my thoughts.
Across the island, he’s slicing through avocados to make homemade guacamole for the chicken enchiladas, waiting for the oven to pre-heat, and I give my head a small shake and sigh. “I just can’t figure out why.”
“You’re not going to figure it out until you’re ready to talk to her.”
Luke’s phone dings on the counter, and I glance down at it and sigh again. Nineteen.
Mom: I’m begging you. Please have her call me.
Scrubbing my face with my hands, which probably does nothing to help the light remains of the makeup I was wearing, I let out a loud, frustrated huff before dropping my arms and head onto the counter with a thunk. What am I supposed to say to her? My fingers itch to tell her off, to say the hell with her, but I can’t. She’s my mom—and I’m the only thing she has left in this world.
Luke was right. I can’t make a decision right now. Knee jerk reactions never end well, and I probably do need to hear her out. Eventually.
The water turns on, the sound of it running filling the kitchen, then turns off, and a moment later arms slide around my middle from behind, pulling me up from the counter to sit back against the chair. Luke leans forward, grabbing his phone from the counter, holding it out for both of us to see.
He types: I’m fine. Stop calling my friends. I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.
“She’ll know something is wrong,” I mutter, and with some reluctance, I take the phone from him, and start to delete the last line, then stop.
Maybe it’s better if she knows I’m angry about something. Why should I shelter her from what I’m feeling? She’s the one that created this mess, not me. I tweak the message until I’m happy with it and then press send before I overthink it.
Me: I’m fine. Stop calling my friends, I told them to block you. I’ll talk to you when I’m ready, until then you’re blocked here too. If you don’t know why, go back ten years in your memory and figure it out.
Hitting the block button on her number after the message is delivered, I put the phone down and give it a bit of a shove, pushing it away from me on the counter. Even though she’s blocked, I don’t want the temptation of looking in Luke’s blocked messages folder to see if she’s messaged back.
Luke nudges my cheek with his nose. “Good girl.”
His arms are still around me, one hand pressed to my stomach, the other having found my thigh when I took over the phone. Turning my head towards him, my lips gently brush across his once, twice, and by the third time, I’m capturing his mouth, half twisting in the chair to bring my hand to his face. Holding him there, needing to taste him.
Fingers dig into my thigh, gripping me almost to the point of pain, like he’s refraining from moving his hand up my leg to the apex of my thighs. Where I want him. Need him.
“Make me forget,” I groan into the kiss.
Our kiss is frenzied then, Luke taking the reins, plunging his tongue between my lips to sweep through my mouth. I swear I taste myself on him, and he swallows my cry of need as my fingers curl into the short hair at the back of his head. His grip loosens, pushing one leg to the side, opening me to him before his hand slides up my thigh until he’s between them. One slow, delicious stroke of his finger over my clit has my hips bucking, seeking more. I turn towards him, hooking my other arm around his shoulder as he moves around the chair to gain better access, his finger sliding lower until he’s at my entrance.
My body knows what to do with him this close. I’m drenched for him already, wanting more than he’s giving, but willing to take what I can get.
Except… I want more. I need it. I need him. To wash away the sudden grief cascading over me for everything I know I lost. For the moments like these that I wasn’t allowed to experience. For a future that wasn’t meant to be lived. Taken from me, not because I was unloved or mistaken, but because someone I thought loved me ripped them away and pretended it wasn’t their doing.
“More,” I gasp into the kiss, my fingers digging into his shoulder. When he breaks away, one finger partially inside of me, and leans back, I don’t hide the tears that have filled my eyes. “Please. Make me forget. Make it better.”
“Freckles…”
A tear spills down each cheek then, and I angle my hips, desperate for him to keep going. “Make it hurt in different ways than it does right now. Please, Luke.”
For one long, agonizing moment, he searches my eyes, and I think he’s going to deny me. The pain I see in his gaze tells me he knows a sliver of what I’m feeling, which helps because I know I’m not alone. But it’s not enough for me to feel okay.
Luke’s jaw sets, he blinks, and then everything changes. No longer is his hand between my thighs, but grabbing my hip, pulling me off the stool. I gasp, suddenly pressed against him, but he pays me almost no mind as he grabs the chair now behind me and turns it before turning me.
“Straddle the fucking chair, Hailey. Now,” he growls in my ear, lightly holding my hips.
The demand in his tone makes me whimper in need, and I do as I’m told without hesitation. My mind empties as I slide back onto the stool, but I’m hardly on before Luke is pulling me back towards him until I’m perched so my pussy is there for the taking.
“Mmm, that’s my girl,” he mumbles. “Arch that back for me, baby. Pop that pussy out.”
Doing as I’m told once more, I cry out as pain erupts in my right ass cheek, the sound of him slapping it filling the air. My feet plant onto the bar at the bottom of the stool and I leverage myself so my ass is lifting towards him, searching for more.
“So fucking compliant, Freckles. Fuck, you’re so bloody sexy. You liked that smack, didn’t you?”
The word is breathy, full of lust as I say, “Yes,” and arch further, desperate for more.
There’s a crinkle behind me, and I know he’s sheathing himself. The knowledge that he’ll be inside of me soon has my breath coming in pants, a rush of arousal swirling through my body, concentrating between my legs.
Luke’s hand is in my hair then and he yanks on it, drawing me towards him. I struggle to keep the same arch in my back when I feel his lips at my ear.
“This is going to be fast, hard, and dirty,” he growls, and I swear I almost come on the spot from the anticipation. “You understand how I’m about to fuck you?”
His cock is at my entrance. I can feel it nudging against me, ready to fill me.
“Yes,” I gasp, reaching behind myself to seek him out.
My fingers barely graze him when he propels his hips forward, sinking into me. Not some slow inch by inch bullshit. Fully. Fucking. Seated.
“Fuck, Hailey,” Luke grits out, his fist tightening in my hair. “This tight fucking cunt makes me feel so fucking out of control.”
Luke swearing has a direct link to my pussy and the need I feel for him. It’s like he’s proving he has no control, the words slipping from his mouth without filter.
I flex around his cock, and he groans, savoring the moment for one second, but then he’s drawing halfway out of me before his cock slams back into me. It’s his last warning that my pussy is about to be battered and bruised, and all I do is grip the back of the chair and pop my ass a fraction more, welcoming everything he wants to give me.
And fuck, does he give it. As promised, every thrust of his hips is hard and fast, and it’s all I can do to hold on and not tip over on the chair. Luke releases my hair, grabbing onto my hips for more leverage, to give me everything. Pound after pound, his cock drives into me until I ache from the inside out, but it’s exactly what I wanted, what I needed from him.
Just when I think I can’t take anymore, even without coming undone, he’s pulling completely out of me, replacing his cock with his fingers. Curling exactly the way I need them to, he works my pussy, his other hand dipping until his fingers are at my clit. With a light but firm touch, he’s sweeping back and forth against me, and I’m right there, about to see stars.
“Come for me, Hailey,” he commands, and it’s all I need.
I let go. More than I’ve ever let go in my life. Nothing but Luke exists in this moment. The way he consumes me. The way he makes me feel. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. The time and distance between us closes, becoming obsolete, and all that matters is we’re here. Together.
I feel like I’m on some other planet, in some other galaxy, my brain exploding with the kind of pleasure only a chosen few feel in their lifetime.
“Oh fuck,” Luke moans from behind me. “Oh fuck, that’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucking seen. Fuck, Hailey. Fuck, such a good fucking girl. Do it again, baby.”
My entire body tingles, from my scalp to my toes, my legs feeling like Jello as I reenter my body, only to be met with Luke’s cock hammering into me again. He’s still working my clit, and it only takes him seconds to get me back to that same place, teetering on the edge, but this time he uses his cock to get me there.
“Come. Now.”
I cry out, my toes curling as my body shudders so violently, I’d be on the ground if not for Luke. That’s when I feel it. A flood of wetness between my legs and on the chair as Luke pulls out of me again, but the pleasure is so intense that I haven’t a clue what it means, or why it’s there.
“Fuck,” he groans, the sound long and drawn out, and then he’s inside me again, driving in until he stills, seated to the hilt, gripping my hips with bruising power.
Finally his hands release my hips, only to come around my arms and grab onto the back of the chair as his body sags against me. “Fuck. Holy fuck. Shit.”
We’re both breathing hard. Both of us silent as we collect ourselves from the experience. And what a fucking experience it was.
“Luke?” I murmur when I’ve almost caught my breath.
He sounds completely spent when he answers, “Yeah, baby?”
“You’re wearing a condom, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” he says, lifting his head from where it was resting on my shoulder.
I bite my lip, feeling a little shy, on the verge of feeling embarrassed. “Why is… why is the chair really wet?”
A deep, rumbling chuckle sounds from behind me, and he stands upright, slowly withdrawing himself from me. “Because you squirted all over the chair, me, my sweats, the floor.”
“I did what?” I screech, horrified, scrambling off the chair so quickly I nearly tip it and send myself to the ground.
Luke catches both me and the chair, though I’m not sure where he finds the strength. I’m horrified when I look down and find not only the floor wet, but his light gray sweatpants darker with a lot of wet spots all over.
He lets go of the chair and gathers me in his arms, pulling me into his body. “Hey, hey, hey. Relax. It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Without seeing myself in a mirror, I know my face is a brilliant shade of red, along with the rest of me, as embarrassment takes over. “Sexy? That was… sexy?”
“You have no idea how much of a frickin’ champ I feel like right now,” Luke tells me, his chest puffing even as he holds me. “I can’t wait to do that again. Over and over. I dang near came the first time you did it, but seeing it the second time, I was a goner. It’s going to be my sole purpose in life from now on.”
“Luke!”
He chuckles and kisses my forehead, then more seriously asks, “You okay?”
“More than,” I say, even if I’m bordering on mortified. He really does seem proud that I squirted all over the place, and I’ve never felt anything so incredible, so who am I to argue with him. Even if the thought of drenching everything around us is slightly embarrassing. “I’ll go get something to clean up.”
“You will not. You’ll stay right here,” he releases me from his arms, giving my ass a light swat before stepping back. His pants are still around his ankles, and he kicks out of them, bending over to wipe up most of the wetness on the floor. “I’ll be right back to clean you and the rest of this up. Just relax for a minute.”
When he lets go of me, I wobble a little, my legs feeling like mush, and he grabs me, turning me towards the island. “Hold onto the counter for a sec.”
I lean over it, letting it hold me up because I don’t feel very stable, and I don’t want to sit down in the drying wet spot on the stool. It would be easy to just walk to the bathroom down here and clean myself up, which I need to do, but besides feeling a bit dazed, part of me also likes the idea of Luke coming back to clean me up before I do a more thorough job.
Luke taking care of me is what my dreams are made of. Even if I refused them until now.
His phone lights up a couple feet away from me on the counter, and instinctively I reach out for it, dragging it towards me, wondering if my mother is checking in with another text.
Luis: Hey brother, how’s California? Has the change of scenery done you good? Have you heard from…
That’s all I can see in the preview, but with it not being my mother, I don’t care. Then I realize it couldn’t be my mother because I blocked her. And even if it had been, I shouldn’t be reaching to look at anything she has to say. Luke helped me forget, and that’s where I want to stay. At least for now.
“Someone named Luis texted you,” I say as Luke comes down the stairs in a new, dry pair of sweats, carrying a towel and something else. “I wasn’t trying to snoop. I thought it was my mom again and then I remembered I blocked her.”
“One of the guys from my old crew,” he explains, setting what I now recognize as a fresh t-shirt down on the counter when he reaches me. I turn to face him and find an affectionate smile staring back at me as he adds, “Probably the best guy I know back home. He and I were like Nate and Liam.”
The thought of Luke having a bond like that with someone makes me smile. “Which one were you? Liam or Nate?”
Luke laughs, straight from his belly. “Don’t walk out my front door, but definitely Liam.”
My eyebrows raise. I know he loved the ladies before we met, but I thought it had just been a high school jock attitude and that he’d grow out of it. “Liam? Really?”
“You were it for me, Hailey,” he says, leaning in to press a kiss to the tip of my nose. “Choosing anyone else would have been settling, and that’s boring. When have you ever known me to be boring?”
“God forbid.”
He chuckles again, dropping down in front of me. Luke on his knees before me. Goodness, I am definitely dreaming.
Biting down on my lip as he takes a washcloth I didn’t know he had and starts to clean me from center to toes, I watch with utter fascination at the care he takes. His hands are gentle, tender and full of devotion, and if I’m not careful I’ll end up wanting him all over again simply because of this.
To distract myself, I ask, “You needed a change of scenery?”
Luke’s eyes lift from what he’s doing to meet mine. His jaw works for a moment as he contemplates my question which tells me that the answer is yes. He confirms it a second later. “I needed out of Waco, yeah.”
“You haven’t mentioned that since coming to the firehouse.”
He shrugs, going back to what he was doing. His hand slips between my legs and heads skyward, moving over my ass cheek. “Freckles, there’s lots of things I haven’t mentioned yet. We have a ten year gap to fill in and it’s been a bit rocky. Give it time.”
While it’s a fair assessment, something about it makes me feel uneasy. The time and space between us that seemed to disappear when he was rocking my world opens again, and I realize that even though this feels right, there’s so much that we don’t know about each other these days. What if we discover that the people who we are today don’t match the same way we did back then?
Swallowing that thought down with a harsh bob of my throat, I forge ahead. “Why did you need a change of scenery?”
Luke’s hand stills for a second too long, and then he blows out a breath. It’s another moment before he says, “Some stuff happened, and I knew I couldn’t stay in Waco anymore.”
My eyebrows knit together. “What kind of stuff?”
He’s silent as he mops up the floor with the wet towel he brought, then dries it with another one. When he’s done, he gets to his feet, frowning at me, which brings all the uneasiness to the forefront, my stomach swooping with anxiety. He shifts from foot to foot but tries to mask it by putting the towels on the stool to take my hands.
“I promise one day I will tell you, but tonight I don’t want to get into it. It’s a long story, and it brings up some really awful memories for me.” He dips his forehead down until it touches mine. “Can we just enjoy our evening together? Please?”
Leaning back so I can study him for a moment, I take in how hopeful he is that I’ll leave it be. He’s given me everything today. My life, my dreams, helping me forget when I needed it the most. Luke never fails to give me what I need. I believe him when he says he’ll tell me one day, he just doesn’t want that day to be today. How could I possibly deny him?
Finally, I nod. “Okay. But I’ll hold you to that promise.”
“You better,” he says, then touches his lips to mine, and as he kisses me, I allow it to melt away all the anxiety that was building.
Luke will tell me. I’ll trust that.