Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
ELIZABETH
Ghosts of Love’s Past
With Charlotte and Christopher fast asleep and the house quiet, I half pay attention to what I’m reading while I wait for Fallon to come back and ponder whether to make a cup of coffee after I yawn for the tenth time.
My shoulders and quads are starting to feel the effects of climbing the rope earlier.
I’m getting too old to do stuff like that, but damn, it was fun.
I never thought my heart could beat like this again.
After losing Ryder, I accepted the ache of loneliness as my lifelong companion, the kind that settled into my bones and made a permanent home there.
Then Fallon comes barreling back into my life, igniting something inside me I thought had long been extinguished.
Every second with him whispers in my ear that I’ve still got so much life left to live, and for the first time in years, I want to chase that promise.
With Fallon, laughter comes easy, and the world feels bright again, full of color and no longer filled with the gray of grief.
He doesn’t ask me to forget. He doesn’t try to replace what I’ve lost or erase the past. Instead, he walks beside me, showing me the possibilities of where I can go while understanding where I’ve been.
I want to walk that road with him. I want to take his hand and step onto whatever path fate has paved for us.
Finding Elizabeth . That’s what Fallon called it when we traveled the world together. Now it’s time for our new adventure. Finding Us .
I will always love Ryder. That love is embedded into the fabric of who I am. Unshakable, unchangeable, and unbreakable. Moving on, letting myself love Fallon won’t take away from that. Life has given me another second chance. Some people never get that, and I’ve been lucky to get it twice.
I hear the rumble of an engine just as the beams from headlights sweep through the curtains and along the walls. I kept the living room light on so Fallon would know I was still up. With my heartbeat tripping all over itself, I get to the front door just as he knocks.
“You could have used your key?—”
The silver-gray eyes of the boy I used to love stare back at me, and my heartbeat no longer skips. It stops.
Jayson’s mouth kicks up at one corner in a lopsided, wobbly grin. “Hey, Princess.”
I have no control over my actions when my hand makes contact with his face, the sting as bright as the handprint I leave on his cheek. I slap him again. And again. Years of pent-up anger and heartache unleashing with every blow. Jayson stands there and takes it, not moving. Not saying a word.
“ I hate you .” I’m shaking so hard, it feels like the world is crumbling beneath my feet.
“Not as much as I hate myself,” he harshly rasps.
We move at the same time, our bodies crashing together and our arms banding around one another so tightly, I can barely breathe. Jayson cradles the back of my head as I sob into his neck.
“I’m so goddamn sorry, Liz,” he chokes out.
A mess of ugly tears, I pull back and take his ravaged face between my hands.
One side of his mouth is swollen and scabbed over, his left cheek crimson from where I slapped him.
I count the freckles that bridge his nose, something I used to do when we were kids.
Seven. Still my Jayson, even though time has chiseled its own story into him, one I was never a part of.
It’s a recurring thought that always twists something deep inside me.
The weight of the past, our childhoods, and what we meant to each other strangles me with memories of shared laughter, whispered secrets, and the way we used to fit together like two halves of the same whole.
But that was before. Before choices, lies, and that night carved a canyon between us, and he became someone I barely recognized.
“You look awful.”
He releases a harsh chuckle. “I’ve had worse days.”
I don’t even know where to begin. My head is twisted all around, and my emotions are all over the place. I’m so damn angry with him, but I’m also so damn happy to see him. Hate and love merge in a bizarre combination, and I don’t know how to process it.
He stopped coming to Elizabeth Ann’s gravesite on her birthday, and Julien refuses to talk about him after some big fight they had, that he also wouldn’t tell me about. And Ryder…
“Where have you been?”
His large, calloused hands cover mine, the gunmetal gray of his gaze filled with so much sorrow. “In hell.”
Something’s not right. Years may separate us, but I still know him better than anyone.
“Come inside. I can make us some coffee, and we can talk.”
His palm is cold when he caresses my cheek. “Not yet. Soon, I promise.”
He can’t just show up out of the blue at my house at midnight, then walk away without telling me anything.
“I don’t believe your promises anymore,” I quietly reply.
Goose bumps scatter everywhere when he grazes a fingertip across my collarbone.
I watch with bated breath as he lifts the locket dangling from its thin gold chain around my neck.
He flicks it open and stares intently at the tiny photographs I keep inside—the one he put in there of us as kids and the one I added of the little butterfly girl statue that stands at our daughter’s grave.
Gently closing the locket, his thumb lightly brushes over her name engraved on the back. “Will you meet me tomorrow?”
No. Yes. I don’t know.
Too much is happening, and I can’t keep up. Fallon, and now Jayson. Two men from my past who have suddenly reappeared without warning. Fate must be laughing her ass off right now. She loves to play cruel games with my life.
I come to a decision I hope I don’t regret. “Our forest fort at one.”
He nods. “I’ll be there.”
My stomach drops when Fallon drives up on his Ducati. This is not good.
Jayson steps away from me and shoves his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans. “I think it’s best I go.”
I nod, not knowing what else to say.
He stops on the bottom porch step and looks back at me. Curls of his dark mahogany hair fall across his brow. “Liz?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t trust him.”
Fallon sits motionless on his bike and watches Jayson as he walks to his car and gets in.
The tug I feel in my chest when he drives off is like a heartstring being stretched to its limits, the ache spreading like a bruise.
Grasping the porch railing, I slam my eyes shut and force air in and out of my lungs to ease the tightness.
I thought I was prepared for the moment I would see Jayson again.
I was wrong. And despite everything, despite the anger and the hurt, the part of my heart that will always be his still loves the boy who broke it.
Fallon remains on his bike, like he’s deciding whether to leave or to stay. I make the decision for him. Walking barefoot down the porch steps, the night dew clinging to the blades of grass dampens the soles of my feet and slicks between my toes.
“Why do I have the feeling that was the something you left to take care of?”
With lethal grace, Fallon dismounts from the saddle, removes his helmet, and shakes out his hair. “You okay?”
I almost laugh at that. I feel like I’m spinning in dizzying circles on an amusement ride that I just want to get off. “Not really. How did you know?”
I expect him to reply with his usual, “You know I have my ways,” so I’m a little surprised when he says, “Someone saw him at O’Reilly’s the other day. I had Xander track him down.”
The bar? “Is that where you found him tonight?”
“Yes.”
Please, God, no , I pray. I didn’t smell alcohol on Jayson’s breath, but the fact that he was at a bar…
“Was he drinking?”
“No.”
The profound relief I feel is immense. “Did you punch him?” I ask, not thinking that he did but needing to know how bad things got.
“Marcus.”
Jesus. With a weary sigh, I tip my head and gaze up at the midnight sky, the three stars that make up the Summer Triangle directly overhead.
“Did Jayson fight back?”
Even though Marcus was completely in the wrong, I would hunt Jayson down if he laid a hand on my son.
“No. Marcus is fine. Upset, but fine. Hannah is with him.”
“She’s a good woman. Sweet girl, but tough when she needs to be.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Fallon replies softly.
Glancing back up to the heavens, I find Cassiopeia and trace a line from its middle star to the handle of the Little Dipper, then continue across to the Big Dipper. What new stories are being written in the stars tonight?
“Jayson said something as he was leaving.”
One dark-blond eyebrow hikes up, the only indication of interest breaking through the stony, blank expression Fallon has been wearing. He’s a master of masking his emotions, but I see through his disguise of apathy.
“What did he say?” he finally asks.
I look at him then, really look at him. Fallon is the epitome of devastating beauty. The devil with the face of an angel. A man who loves with his whole heart but won’t blink twice as he cuts yours out.
Jayson was my moonlight; Ryder was my starshine.
But Fallon’s darkness calls to me, its pull a force I can never escape.
The scars he carries are the same as mine.
We’re both broken. Damaged. Survivors. Two souls who were destined to collide, the threads of our lives tangled in intricate knots, tying us together for eternity.
“That I shouldn’t trust you.”
A crack in his armor appears. “You shouldn’t.”
“Well, tough shit,” I reply, my backbone rigid and my resolve made of steel, “because I will always trust you, even when you lie to me.”
Lies are different from secrets kept for good intentions or manipulations from people who mean well.
I’d rather you flat-out lie to my face than try to subversively control my life and take away my choices because you presume to know what’s best for me.
Been there, done that—numerous times. Never again.
And maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s reckless, but if trust is a choice, I will choose him. Every time.
“Are you coming in?” I ask.
Fallon brushes the flyaway strands of my hair back from my face. The blue of his eyes shifts to a deeper color as he leans in, and my heartbeat slams against its cage of bones. “It’s late.”
I step into his body, the heat radiating off him warming my skin. “So?”
He cocks his head. “So…I can leave if you’re tired and want to go to bed.”
“I’m not tired.” Far from it. I brush my nose up the masculine column of his neck and place a tender kiss behind his ear. “And what I want is standing right in front of me.”
Fallon’s eyes widen—with surprise, with desire—but it’s the roaring heat swirling behind the blue that sets my body on fire.
“Kitten, we don’t have to—” he begins, but I shut him up by pressing my lips to his mouth, giving him the invitation to take more.
His hands take my hips, and he hauls me to him. A small moan escapes when I feel him already hard for me, how badly he wants me but holds himself back.
“I can’t be them.”
Not understanding, I ask, “Who?”
“Ry. Jay. Me fucking you isn’t going to make you forget.”
I frown at his crass remark. Ryder and Jayson were the furthest things from my mind when I asked him to come inside.
And when I gave him a key to the house, it meant something.
I wanted to show him that I was ready. That I wanted him.
That I wanted my life and my children’s lives to be filled with him.
I’ve seen how they have connected with Fallon, searching him out like they used to do with their dad.
My children need him. I need him. And not because I’m trying to fill the void Ryder left, but because I’ve opened my heart to love again.
I put a foot of space between us and cross my arms over my chest, what he said pissing me off. “You think I want you to spend the night because…what? I miss my husband? Because my ex showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night? Because sex is the cure for a broken heart?”
“You tell me, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth, not Kitten.
“Your dick isn’t that magical, no matter how many women you’ve screwed.”
That damnable smirk appears, exposing a dimple on his left cheek. Infuriating, sexy jackass. Seeing it just irritates me more.
“Think what you want. I’m not going to stand here and beg the man I’m falling in love with to spend the night with me.”
I wait for him to say something… anything , but he just stares at me.
When he doesn’t utter a sound after a very long minute, I decide to call it a night.
I’m not running from our argument. I’ll fight and yell and use whatever metaphorical sledgehammer I need to bust down his stubborn walls.
But it’s late, and I’m emotionally and physically exhausted from a long day, and if I can’t have him tonight, then all I want is to take a shower and curl up on my pallet on the couch and fall asleep.
“I’m going to bed. You’re more than welcome to come over for breakfast. If not, I’ll call you in the morning.”
With each step I take toward the house, my heart screams for him to tell me to stop. But he doesn’t.
I refuse to look back when I quietly close the front door and lock it. I lean against the pressed wood and blow out a breath. “Why do the men in my life always have to be so damn stubborn?”
Flicking off the living room light, I climb the stairs to say good night to the kids. I peek in on Christopher first, then Charlotte. They are both dead to the world and fast asleep in their beds.
Deciding to wait up for Marcus to come home so we can talk about what happened between him and Jayson, I go back downstairs and head down the hall to the bedroom, wanting to take a quick shower to wash away the thin sheen of sweat caused by the evening humidity.
Removing my necklace and earrings, I set them on the dresser—then startle when strong arms grab me from behind.
Fallon’s heart pounds against my back, its rhythm matching the frantic beat of mine.
“Let’s make one thing clear in that beautiful head of yours. I haven’t touched another woman since I saw you at the student center the day Ry found you,” he practically snarls in my ear.
I want to dismiss it as a declaration spoken in the heat of the moment, but I can’t. Because holy shit . How is that possible?
He curls a gorgeously inked hand around the front of my neck, his indelicate touch stoking the embers of desire into a flash fire.
“I can’t be gentle. I want you too fucking much.”
This is a new beginning. Our beginning. Mine and Fallon’s.
“I don’t want gentle. I want you to make me burn.”