Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
ELIZABETH
I Like You Messy
With my hands full, I use my foot to hook the front door closed.
“The stars are most definitely out tonight,” I comment, gazing out at the night sky.
Dinner was…interesting. Charlotte didn’t take a breath the entire time as she talked Fallon’s ear off. But her smiles were a mile wide, and her excitement palpable. I haven’t seen her so happy in a long time.
When Marcus could slip in a word, he and Fallon bonded over horsepower and all things cars.
Christopher, on the other hand, sat hunched over his plate, brooding quietly and barely touching his food.
I decided to leave our talk for tomorrow.
I’m too tired to argue with a stubborn seventeen-year-old tonight.
I’m barely able to keep my eyes open as it is.
“Knox is on his way,” Fallon says, putting his phone away.
“After all this time, I’m still not used to calling him that.
” Knox will always be Seamus in my mind.
The lanky teenage kid with green eyes we met at the women’s center in New York, who grew into a wonderful man and became a good friend.
I hand Fallon his beer before joining him on the bench swing.
“I can drive you home,” I offer, but it gets lost in my yawn.
Fallon drapes an arm over the back of the swing and takes a sip of his pale ale. “You’re not going to make it another five minutes.”
“Or you can take my car.”
“Appreciate the offer. Kids asleep?”
I yawn again. “Hardly. Summer vacation for Christopher and Charlotte means bedtime at the crack of dawn. Marcus has to get up early to open the garage, so he usually conks out around ten.”
“I’m glad he decided to roost and stay close to home,” Fallon says.
I look out over the front lawn. Landscaping lights illuminate all the flower beds and line the drive.
I’ll need to go to the hardware store to get a new sprinkler head to replace the one that’s broken.
I’ve been putting it off, but the small patch of wilting flowers confirms that I need to do it sooner rather than later.
“He’s nineteen, going on forty. He needs a place of his own and some privacy.
I hate that he feels obligated to live here because he’s worried about me.
” In my peripheral vision, I see Fallon’s frown.
I know what he’s about to say, so I preempt him.
“Out of all the places you saw, which had the best stargazing?” I ask, yawning for a third time.
“Africa and New Zealand. It feels like you’re standing in a snow globe of stars.”
Resting my head on his arm, I imagine sitting under a glass dome and watching all the stars float around me as they slowly fall to the ground.
“I like that analogy. I wish I could capture every city you took me to in a snow globe. Then, whenever I wanted, I could hold Paris or Iceland or Barcelona in my hand and remember it all again.”
With a nudge from the toe of his shoe, he sets the swing gently rocking.
“Finding Elizabeth,” he muses.
“The trip that changed my life. I still owe you for that.”
His sigh is heavy. “You don’t owe me a damn thing, Elizabeth. Other way around.”
When will he forgive himself for what Peter did?
I slam my beer bottle on the small side table against the porch railing harder than I should and angrily twist around.
“We’re not going there. Ever again, understand?
” To make my point, I lift the hem of my blouse up to expose the faded scars covered with broken blue butterflies along my side.
Fallon’s gaze zeros in on them in the darkness.
“These do not define who I am. So don’t you dare use them to define who you are. ”
I suck in a sharp breath when his hand curves around my waist, his fingers skimming over the thin raised lines where Peter’s knife cut into my flesh.
He feathers his fingertips back and forth along the curve of my ribcage.
Goose bumps explode everywhere, stoking embers of desire into a wildfire of need.
Arousal and guilt fight a war inside my subconscious.
I shouldn’t crave another man’s touch. But god help me, I crave his.
Fallon makes me… ache . He makes me… want .
Like an unwelcome thought, they whisper possibilities that feel like both a promise of something that could be and a betrayal of what once was, leaving me stranded between longing and loyalty.
“Fallon, I?—”
“Close your eyes and tell me who you see.”
He would ask me that every day we were in Europe. When my memories returned, I was so confused. Old Elizabeth versus New Elizabeth. A fractured woman in love with two men. Jayson or Ryder. I chose Ryder.
But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with Fallon, too.
I can’t hear another word. It’s too painful. His parents are monsters. He was a child, and no one protected him. The only thing he ever felt growing up was pain. He has been hurt by every person who should have loved him.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. No, that’s not true. I know exactly what I need to say. “I love you, Fallon.”
He twists around and stares at me, confusion and need warring within his blue eyes. My heart aches at the vulnerability I see.
“What?”
“I love you.”
I want to offer him something no one else has given him—a love that doesn’t ask for more. Love that sees beyond his broken edges and says, You don’t have to be whole to be worthy of this . A love rooted in the friendship we have forged.
The warmth of Fallon’s hand burns me like a brand, but it’s the emotion etched on his gorgeous face that singes me to ash.
“Answer me, Elizabeth.”
“I see…” I swallow, refusing to say it.
You. I see you.
Grasping at any excuse because I’m about to do something very reckless, I reply, “My life is a hot mess on a good day. I’m a mess.”
The heated look he gives me curls my damn toes.
“I like you messy.”
“I’m a single mother with three kids,” I half-heartedly argue, not knowing what else to say.
His bark of laughter startles me. “So?”
“Why would you want that? You could have any woman eager to fall all over herself to get a chance to be with you.”
Those ice-blue eyes narrow under furrowed brows. “I don’t want any other woman. So, the question you need to ask yourself is, what do you want?”
Deflating like a popped balloon, I slump back against the swing. “I don’t know what I want.”
Never afraid to challenge my bullshit, Fallon retorts, “Yes, you do. Stop being afraid. What do you want, Elizabeth?”
Headlights pierce the inky night as they come up the long drive.
“Looks like my ride is here.” Fallon pushes to his feet and leans over me, caging me between his muscled arms. He takes a wisp of hair that escaped my bun and tucks it behind my ear. “There’s something I’ve always wondered.”
“What’s that?” I ask, my pulse skyrocketing at his nearness.
“Do you see him when you look at me?”
I hate that he thinks I might. Peter was a monster of the worst kind. Fallon was my fallen angel who saved me. They may have shared Phillip Montgomery’s blood, but that’s about all they had in common.
“ Never . Not once,” I reply vehemently.
His thumb moves down my neck to the notch of my collarbone, and every nerve ending sparks to life. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
I open my mouth, then close it, then open it again. The man has rendered me speechless.
Knox rolls down the window of the Porsche and pokes his head out to wave. “Night, Hoops.”
I don’t wave back. My attention is glued to the man walking away.
Fallon climbs inside the passenger seat, and I helplessly watch the taillights of the car fade into the distance as it drives away.