Chapter 28
TILLY
“Shit—Rowe, I swear . . .” I let the words stop when he curls his fingers again, tapping roughly against my G-spot like he’s mad he can find it so easily. “I can’t!”
“You can, and you will.”
He spits on me again, then swirls the moisture around my clit. His tongue lashes against it, and I push into the mattress, trying to find space. I’m so sensitive. My head is fuzzy with both the want for more and the need to take a break. Yet I can’t tell him to stop. Won’t shove him off me.
My toes curl into the air as he keeps his fingers deep and continues his assault on my sweet spot, his eyes blazing with the high of knowing he’s turning me inside out. I’m about to eat my taunting words. This stupid deal I made was reckless, and now I’m paying for it.
“You’re almost there. I can feel it. Get out of your head and feel, hellcat. You like this, don’t you?”
He glides that godforsaken third finger back inside of me and starts thrusting all of them again, continuing to tap them against my front wall.
Faster and faster, he moves until I give up the fight and grind against him.
The sounds of how aroused I am don’t faze me anymore.
Let him hear. We’re too far gone now for that to embarrass me.
His tongue abandons my clit and drifts to circle his fingers and the stretch of me around them. He groans a low, dirty sound that moves like fingertips dragging up and down my body.
“Rowe,” I warn, my voice shaking and dipping. “I—”
“Yeah, you fucking are. I’m right here. Let go for me, Tilly. I want to see what I do to you. Need to hear you scream.”
A cry tears through my chest, rattling me down to the bones.
I grip the bedding and yank as my muscles seize, keeping his body locked between my thighs.
The firm press of his palm against my cheek draws me back.
I try not to fixate on the way he sucks his fingers clean before bringing them to hold my chin.
“What did you mean when you said you didn’t want to be careful anymore? Is that the life you’d made for yourself all these years? A careful one?”
I can do nothing but nod, sinking into the bed. “Ethan was safe. Easy. I thought that meant he’d be loyal too.”
“And he wasn’t?”
“No.” Avoiding seeing his reaction, I close my eyes. “He got his assistant pregnant.”
“I’m . . . sorry.”
“You don’t have to be. I should have known that something like that was going to happen.
I spent too many years of my life trying to dull myself down for him and the people I’d found myself surrounded by.
Being accepted was so fucking important to me while I was over there.
I let it change me, and it all became a bad joke in the end.
Turns out that I was too boring for a guy named Ethan.
I should have done everything differently.
If I’d thought before acting, the time I was gone wouldn’t feel so wasted. ”
A gruff laugh blows across my mouth before he captures it in a soft kiss. It takes me a beat to respond. It’s been a long time since I’ve been kissed like this. Our lips move lazily, almost sloppy in their lack of urgency. His shirt bunches beneath my fingers when I pull him further up my body.
“Did you love him?”
I hardly hear the question. When it registers, I glide my hand up beneath his shirt and nod. I can feel every muscle in his back contract and then relax. He stays where he is, proving just how serious he is about us talking about this.
“I wouldn’t have married him if I hadn’t at one point.”
A heavier question hangs between us, untouched.
It’s taunting, and I consider being the one to mention it before slapping the idea away.
I focus on the slow glide of his tongue across my bottom lip instead.
The gentleness is such a hard contrast from a few moments ago.
It’s like this right here is all he wants.
“If you had gotten my letter, would you have stayed?”
“Stayed?”
Our lips are slow to separate. He hovers above me, eyes open and a stormy grey colour. The steady stroke of his knuckle along my jaw has me ready to answer just about every single question he’s got locked away in that thick head of his.
“You met your ex-husband when we weren’t speaking, and you were upset with me,” he says gruffly, scowling slightly. “If things hadn’t taken that turn, would you have still moved away with him, or would you have stayed until I was out?”
Intended or not, I feel the blow of his words behind my ribs. The guilt I’ve always felt for not being here for him when he was released from prison will stay with me forever.
“I don’t know. I’d like to think that I would have stayed.
Everything would have been different if you hadn’t gone away.
I didn’t only leave because I met Ethan, Rowe.
When I took the trip out East that I wrote to you about .
. . I found a peace that I’d forgotten existed.
Sure, I met him too, but it was more than that.
I loved Oak Point, yet being here was killing me slowly.
My parents were constantly asking if I was okay, and Ash was so goddamn sad all the time.
Lacey was there for him back then because I couldn’t be, and I let her slip away because of it.
Ash was missing you, but so was I. It wasn’t . . . I needed a fresh start.”
Inhaling deep through my nose, I try to shift out from beneath him. The weight of his body above mine is suffocating. There’s a burn behind my eyes that promises a goddamn breakdown if I don’t get off this bed and into a place I can be alone.
But as hard as I smack my hand against Rowe’s chest, he doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t move back so much as an inch to allow me the space to slip away.
I use more pressure this time, but then his arms are sliding over my waist, and we’re rolling.
A sharp grey gaze burns into my face as I try to wiggle free of his hold.
“You’re not running off on me again, hellcat.”
“I need space.”
“You don’t need fucking space,” he declares, raising his hand to hold my head in place. His pillow’s pressed beneath my cheek, smelling strongly of his aftershave. “You need someone to hold you like this and make you talk. I want inside the vault again, Tilly.”
I clench my teeth. Our close proximity is distracting me. His palm is warm and steady, and once he uses his thumb to trace the tiny scar I have on the underside of my jaw, I release the breath I’ve been trapping inside.
“You want to hear all of my thoughts until they hurt you. Which they will,” I say.
“I’m not afraid of getting hurt. I’ve suffered plenty in my life.”
“I’m serious. My truth isn’t going to make you feel good.”
Rowe doesn’t retreat. He leans closer, releasing my face and gripping my thigh so he can guide it over his hip. We move impossibly closer. My chest brushes his when I inhale.
“Tell me anyway.”
“You were always Ash’s best friend, but I considered you one of mine too.
I was as close to you as I was Lacey, and way more than Shade.
Then you were gone, and it was because of me.
That truth took me a long time to make peace with.
I don’t even know if peace is what I feel now.
Whatever it is looks close enough to it that I’ve been able to not hate myself every day.
“Staying in Oak Point was doing nothing more than driving me further into depression. I hated getting out of bed every day for the first month you were gone. The sun was too bright, my parents hovered, and when I was at the ranch, I searched for you in places I knew you wouldn’t be so often that I thought Otis was going to have to fire me himself.
I pushed Lacey away and couldn’t be assed to answer my phone when anyone tried to contact me.
There were so many days that I just felt like staring at a blank wall in silence was more fulfilling than attempting to interact with society.
Therapy would have been great, but I didn’t give enough of a shit about the appointments my mom forced me to go to.
It wasn’t until I moved away that I started taking it seriously. ”
Rowe’s fingers press harder into my thigh, like they’re trying to fuse themselves to my skin. I let him, having not realized that I’ve done the same to his chest. Right over where I used to imagine his heart racing for me.
“Did the letters make it worse for you?” he asks, his tone heavy.
“No. They helped.”
Until the last one.
“I didn’t know if you were going to be waiting on the other side of the fence when I got out.
Ash wouldn’t tell me shit about you when I asked, so I stopped trying.
I was so fucking angry, Tilly. At you, but also myself.
I had too much rage inside of me, and looking back now, I’m glad you were gone.
I’d have dragged you right down with me if you’d been waiting.
It wouldn’t have mattered how close we’d gotten.
I’d have ruined your life all over again. ”
“You never ruined my life. We ruined each other’s lives,” I correct weakly.
He makes a disbelieving noise in his throat. “No. I did what I did because I cared about you. I’ve never regretted that.”
“That’s not what you said before.”
“Do you wanna talk about that letter, Tilly? Because I want to get it out in the open. Locking it all up tight hasn’t done shit to help either of us.”
Rowe keeps his hand on my thigh but somehow manages to push himself up the bed at the same time. He leans against the headboard, expression even, calm. Without the slimmest bit of struggle, he hauls me with him and plants me over his lap. I place a hand on his shoulder and arch my brows.
“I don’t want to rehash what happened. Just don’t lie to me to make me feel better about myself and the thoughts I used to have,” I argue.
“You should have known better than to think I meant a damn word of what I said in that letter. If it had been Lacey in your shoes that day, I can’t swear to you that I’d have done the same thing.
I wouldn’t have seen red so thick I thought it would never fade or blocked out the shouts of everyone around us because I was so driven to make Ezra pay for what he’d done.
Everything I did that night, I did because of how much you meant to me.
The only two people in the world who I would have done that for were and are you and Ash. ”
I can’t look away. Rowe’s hand finds the curve of my waist and holds me steady when my body threatens to topple over. My mouth dries, filling with cotton.
“You told me the opposite to hurt me, then? To push me away?”
“I was young,” he says, as if that’s explanation enough.
And the truth is that it is. Twenty-one is so young. Especially when your future looks like four concrete walls and solitude. How am I supposed to blame him for acting out in an attempt to protect himself when protection was the last thing he had?
“So what, you sent that long-lost letter to apologize? Because if so, it won’t fix anything now.”
“I know that.”
“It would be easier to just move on from this. I don’t know if there’s anything you could say that would take away the hurt I felt reading that letter.
Lies or truth, it still broke my heart. And you felt the same when I moved away.
Maybe there’s just too much hurt here,” I ramble, hating the sound of every single word.
His eye roll is unexpected. My responding laugh is startled, jolted.
“Try and run again, hellcat. I fucking dare you.”