Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Dare
I write, but you never write back. Has something happened? Did you change your mind about forever? If you did, just tell me.
If you did, I might write anyway. I don’t know who else to talk to.
Mom’s not going to beat the cancer this time. Her doctor said it spread everywhere, and she doesn’t have long. And she won’t let me come home. She says doesn’t want me to remember her like this…
I’ll never understand why she gets to decide that the pain she’s sparing me from is worse than this alternative. Don’t I get a say in how I want to be hurt?—Athena
This was the third time I’d pulled up to her mom’s house in less than three weeks. The day of the explosion. The day I’d gone and failed to find this invoice. And again today.
Three times, and it should’ve gotten easier to pull up to the curb out front and not remember the way the front door would swing open, Athena’s face beaming when I’d come to pick her up for a movie. Easier to not think about how close we’d cut it to her curfew, making it back just in time only to spend twenty minutes kissing in the car. How her mom would flicker the outside lights to bring us back to earth, and Athena would smile at me like I hung the moon and then hurry inside; meanwhile, I’d sit in the car another twenty minutes thinking about how all I wanted was to kiss that girl forever.
It should’ve been easier to be here. And maybe if I hadn’t kissed her again— touched her again— it would’ve been.
Instead, driving here was like going back in time. Back to the days we spent at the beach, her painting and me in awe…and nights we spent on a blanket in her backyard picking out constellations from the sky.
I put Rob’s Mercedes in park. I’d borrowed her car because I wasn’t putting Athena on my bike. My motorcycle was my haven—the one place where the guilt and regret couldn’t catch me. Sherwood had been that place, too, until I brought her there. Now, my bike was the only spot untouched by her. By her memory. By the way I still wanted her. It also rained all morning, and they were calling for showers the rest of the day, which made asking Rob require less explanation.
I reached for the engine button and froze, the sunlight glittering off the leftover raindrops on the grass catching my attention. It looked just like the dew on the lawn had that morning .
Fuck. I forced my eyes shut. The good memories were painful; the bad ones were worse.
But there was no escaping this one because, when I closed my eyes, all I saw was Athena’s face from the other night. There were a million new memories from that night. A hundred other expressions I could’ve envisioned. The relief when she’d lowered into the tub.
Instead, I kept going back to the last look she gave me—the one where she tried to hide the pain she was feeling inside when I told her I was leaving.
It was the same hidden hurt that had been in her eyes the last time I’d told her I was leaving almost two decades ago. The day I’d left for basic training, she’d smiled with hope as though I couldn’t see how she wanted to cry.
I hadn’t known how I’d hurt her then—I hadn’t known that the forever I’d promised would be a lie—but what difference did it make now?
“Dare…”
A whip of self-loathing snapped through me.
“Yeah, we’re here.” I punched the button, shutting the engine off, and got out of the car.
Being around her now made my body react like I was at war. Every muscle tensed. Adrenaline thumping. Prepared for danger and attack at any moment. Except the danger was desire, and the attack was self-inflicted each time I touched her.
“I’ve got you.” My teeth ground tightly together as I took her hand and helped her out of the car. “Curb,” I warned.
She lifted her foot higher, leaning closer—harder on me for an instant—until she was on the lawn. And then I heard her inhale, her breath like a key in a lock, before she gently pushed away from me, wanting to move forward on her own.
“Athena…” She should let me guide her.
She turned her head, and the way the sunlight bathed her was almost too painful to bear. Her blond hair moved gently with the breeze. Her white summer dress—also borrowed from Rob—hugged each and every curve, which was now memory rather than fantasy. The soft part of her full lips and my sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose—the aviators looked better on her than they did on me. Like they belonged to her.
Just like everything else of mine.
My cabin. My bed. My bathtub.
My hands. My mouth. My ? —
I let out a groan and stepped my feet apart, feeling my cock start to thicken.
“Even blind, I know when I’m home,” she said firmly, thinking my groan was directed at her. And I didn’t correct her.
Touching her the other night was a mistake of the first order. But touching myself while I did it…that should’ve been a fucking felony.
But I couldn’t control myself. I couldn’t control the need raging through me when she pulled my mouth to hers. It was like a dam burst inside me. Mind, body, and every bit of my broken soul were flooded with wanting her.
And I couldn’t let it happen again—I wasn’t even going to let myself get close. And part of that plan involved not discussing the other night at all even though I’d told her we would.
What was one more broken promise except a good reason for this woman to stop wanting a man she never should’ve wanted in the first place?
I hoped she’d come to a similar realization, and that was what kept her quiet. Regret rather than unrequited want. Like we’d created our very own bomb, and we were now too ashamed to get close to it for fear of what destruction it would cause .
“Dare—” Athena stopped suddenly when she reached the door.
“What is it?” I was by her side in an instant, barely managing to hold myself back from reaching for her arm. “Do you remember something?”
She turned her head. This close, I could see her wide gaze through the dark filter of my glasses. “How did you get inside the other day?”
Shit. I tensed, cleared my throat, and then lied straight through my teeth. “Picked the lock.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve told you there’s a spare key underneath that planter.” She pointed with surprising accuracy at the small container I was already reaching under— the key exactly where I’d found it—and then returned it the other day.
“Got it.” I went to let us inside, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“My senior year, I snuck out to watch a meteor shower with my boyfriend.” She started to reminisce, her soft voice catching the memory inside me like bait on a hook, reeling a fresh burst of heat through my veins. “We watched the sky fall for what felt like hours, and when we got back, my mom had locked the door.”
“So, you climbed in through a window?” I asked like I didn’t already know the answer, shoving the spare key into the door against the protest of the old, rusted lock. I was going to replace the whole damn thing before I let her go home for good; this deadbolt was garbage.
“No.” I heard her smile. I hated when she smiled and it was because of me, the boy who’d left her. “My boyfriend insisted he could pick the lock.”
“Yeah?” The door gave way, and my relief blew through my lips. “Door’s open.”
But she didn’t budge. Instead, she finished the story, not realizing it was my memory, too. “We were out here for forty-five minutes until he got it open.”
“Sounds like picking locks isn’t in his skill set.”
“I didn’t have the heart to tell him there was a spare key hidden under the flowerpot.” The left side of her lip curled into the same smile she’d had that night, and my gut tightened. She was so damn beautiful. Then. Now. Always.
And the words were out of my mouth before I could stop them—before I could think. “Maybe he knew and didn’t have the courage to tell you he didn’t want the night to end.”
Her breath caught, and my body snapped taut. That was my problem around Athena. I acted before I thought. I acted on what I felt—what I didn’t deserve to feel.
“Let’s go in,” I muttered, and because my brain still hadn’t caught up to my racing heart, my hand didn’t land on her shoulder to guide her inside but on her lower back. And once it was there, the only thing worse would’ve been to yank it away.
She shivered at my touch but, thankfully, didn’t say anything as we stepped over the threshold.
“I’m sorry for the mess,” she apologized instantly like she could see. “Everything has just been in chaos since I moved back, and I’m trying to get on my feet…”
The house was an obstacle course of furniture and boxes. Maybe some would’ve called the place a disaster, but all I saw was the disorder that came when someone started their entire life over.
Like the start of a puzzle when all the pieces are strewn over the table. They all belonged. They all had a place. They would all fit together as she figured out how her new life was going to look.
When I’d been here the other day, the first thing that struck me was how little the home had changed. All her mother’s furniture and decorations and photographs…it was all still th ere. A time capsule from the year I’d left…but then there was also all the evidence of the years that had gone by since. The boxes and boxes of the life I’d left her to—a life with a man who’d tried to kill her.
“You don’t need to explain,” I said, the house feeling different from being inside it with her.
My eyes roamed the familiar landscape. The yellow floral couches were tucked against blue wallpapered walls. Vibrant and vintage and homey all at the same time.
“Was this all your mom’s?” I fed into my persona like I didn’t know.
“Mm-hmm.”
Pictures of the two of them were interspersed with some of Athena’s artwork from high school. Sketches. And some of those watercolor paintings of the beach.
I jerked my head away, practically propelling her into the living room, where I’d found a box labeled Invoices the other day, but it hadn’t contained anything for Iverson.
“You have a box here for receipts, but I didn’t see anything for Iverson.” I thumbed through the handwritten papers again like I’d find something different; I didn’t put it past myself to have been so distracted by the memories that I missed what I was looking for.
When she didn’t respond, I looked up and found her standing in the center of the room, her fingers pressed to her mouth.
I was in front of her in a blink. “Are you alright?”
“There’s something…” She trailed off, lifting her hand and pulling my sunglasses off of her face.
“It’s okay?—”
“No, it’s not.” She huffed. “I’m trying to be patient with myself, but I feel like it’s right there—like the answer is right in front of me.” Her head tipped up, and I couldn’t help but stare into her eyes. Like those twin blue pools were clear enough to wash all my sins clean. “It feels like there’s something right in front of me. Something I know—something I’ve known…” My jaw worked tighter with her every word. “Something familiar.” Her voicewent quieter. “The truth.”
Me. I was in front of her. Cloaked in all my lies.
“Athena…” I rasped, lust punching me in the gut when her tongue slid over her lips.
She stilled, and it was like we both realized how close we were at the exact same moment. My hands on the sides of her arms. Her head upturned. Our breaths colliding in the narrow passage between us.
Color rose in her cheeks—a bright, beautiful warning for what came out of her mouth next. “Dare…about the other night.”
Fuck.
“Don’t,” I begged. “Please.”
Pleasuring her—and myself—had been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it swiftly severed the idea that I’d ever be able to want any other woman—a boon for someone who’d sworn himself to celibacy. But on the other hand, it cut me deeper every moment I had to be around her and keep my distance.
“No, I need to apologize.”
“Apologize?” I gaped, stunned, and blurted out. “For what?”
“For guilting you into touching me.”
I reeled. Was she—she couldn’t be fucking serious. I’d never heard something so… wrong… in my whole goddamn life.
“You wanted to walk away—to be a gentleman because of my condition,” she went on, forcing me to realize she was serious. “And I used that to beg you to touch me?—”
“ Absolutely fucking not.” I knocked over a box as I spun her back to the wall, my mouth claiming hers in an all-too-familiar yet downright dangerous way.
Her soft sound of shock was gone by the time my tongue delved between her lips, meeting hers with hungry strokes. She opened underneath me, like a taste of heaven in the midst of my own personal hell. I could take anything—bear anything—except her believing I didn’t want her.
Anything except that.
I licked and tasted every corner of her sweet mouth. For all she’d given me the other night, I still felt the same as I did those past-curfew nights all those years ago: that I’d happily agree to live a life on her kisses alone.
She pressed against me, her soft curves fitting too perfectly along all my hard edges.
“Dare…” Her soft moans were my small mercies. Her little pants, my penance. If only I could pay her in pleasure for the cost of my cruelty. My lies.
Dammit .
I tore my mouth from hers and dragged in a deep breath.“Just because you begged doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”
“Then why are you avoiding me?”
“Because wanting to doesn’t mean I should have—and not because of you,” I added quickly before she went back down that path. “There are things…about me…”I went silent and exhaled my frustration.
She slid her hand up my neck to cup my cheek, her thumb finding purchase on the seam of my scar. “You can trust me.”
I jerked like she’d pulled the pin out of a grenade. Trust her. It wasn’t warning bells that went off but more like an air-raid siren that rang through my skull.
Trust .
I turned my head away—out of her hold. I couldn’t trust anyone. Not anymore. Not after Amira, and especially not Athena. She could promise it now and mean it, but not once she learned the truth.
“We need to keep looking. It has to be here somewhere.” I backed away from her and the temptation, returning to our task. “When I got here the morning of the explosion…you were rushing out. You had a gym bag?—”
“Wait.” She spun in the direction of the hallway but only made it one step before her knee banged into the corner of another box, and she cried out.
“Dammit,” I muttered and took her arm, needing to help her. Hating to have to be close to her. Hating to want to be close to her. “Where do you want to go?”
“The bedroom.”
I moved before she could feel me tense, guiding her through the stacks of boxes and down the hall to the master bedroom. I’d already looked there, but maybe I hadn’t been fully focused on my task because I’d been trying to avoid my past.
“Wait, sorry. I meant my old bedroom,” she said as soon as I angled her to the left, so I immediately course-corrected to the right, and she stopped, forcing me to stop behind her.“How do you know which room it is?”
I stilled as my heart slammed to the front of my chest. “I checked every room the other day.” I brushed off the question easily enough.
Another lie.
I hadn’t gone into her old bedroom. Stupid, I knew, since it could’ve held the answer. But I couldn’t. Maybe I was afraid of what I’d find. Maybe I wanted some justification for needing to be here with her today.
“Oh.” Her cheeks colored.
I moved in front of her to open the door, ignoring the dangerous contact of my body against hers as though it wasn’t as dangerous as sparks to dry kindling.
Thank God, she couldn’t see me. Because walking into that room was like having a bullet dug straight out of my heart—one that had been embedded there for almost two decades.
The same floral bedspread. The yellow sunflower lamp. And the Polaroid photo of us from her eighteenth birthday at the Hibachi restaurant. They’d given her a massive hat and me a ridiculous gong to hold for the picture.
I didn’t remember much about the meal, but I did remember dessert; that night was the first time I tasted between her thighs.
A deep sound slipped through my defenses and escaped from my chest.
“What is it?” She searched for me, worried.
“Just some dust in my eye,” I said quickly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. There should be tissues on the dresser.”
Nothing was in my eye, but I needed space, so I used the excuse to move to the other side of the room, keeping a careful watch on her as I did so.
“Why do you keep apologizing for things—things that aren’t your fault?” I wondered and grabbed two tissues from the box.
“Habit.” Her tone was sad as she walked her fingers along the edge of the bed. “I never seemed to be able to do the right thing for Brandon. Even little things—too much mayo on his lunch sandwich, but if I added more, it was too much—so apologies became a habit. I didn’t realize how bad it was—how bad it had gotten—until after I left him.”
I wished we’d never let that fucker go. Jail would’ve been a welcome consequence for being able to return the weight of those unwarranted apologies to him in the form of my fist.
“He didn’ t deserve you.”
“Well, you know what they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.” A half smile tugged the corner of her full lips. “Ironically, it’s the only sight I have right now…”
I looked away for a second and noticed the top drawer of the dresser was partially open. But it was what was inside that caught my eye: a stack of envelopes banded together, my name printed on the front. They looked the same as what she’d sent to me.
I glanced at Athena before carefully sliding my hand inside and pulling out the pile. There were at least two dozen here.
“What did you say I had that morning?”
My attention snapped to her. “Your gym bag.”
“A duffel bag?” she corrected.
“Yeah.” I’d assumed it was for the gym. “Navy-blue one.”
Her head swiveled to the closet, her hand on the bed keeping her oriented to the space. “I kept that bag in there, but I wouldn’t have used it for the gym.”
I could see her frustration all over her face, her brain trying to recall the details of that morning.
“But if I came in here to get it…with all the boxes…” Her head angled to the left. “Can you check the nightstand? Or maybe I can?—”
“Let me—” I had a split second to decide—and in that split second, my bad intentions got the better of me. Instead of returning the envelopes to the drawer, I tucked them into my back pocket to read later. They had my name on them, after all.
“Here,” she exclaimed, finding a folded piece of paper on the nightstand just as I made it to her. “Is this it?” The desperate hope in her voice was gut wrenching. “I must’ve set the invoice down in a rush…” She trailed off, trying to jumpstart her memory that refused to cooperate.
I took the paper from her and opened it, my exhale rushing through my lips .
“Dare—”
“Richard Iverson. 224 Cliffside Court.” I read off the information at the top. “You found it.” I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo of the address, sending it immediately to Ty.
Her brows pulled together. “I think…I think I took the paintings to him that morning.”
“We’ll figure it out?—”
Her hand flung out, colliding directly with my chest—directly over my heart. “Wait…”
Wait? I couldn’t fucking move. Her small palm stopped me in my tracks like an arrow through my breast.
“What do you mean?” I rasped.
“There’s more…I can almost remember more.” Her chin dipped, and she bit into her bottom lip. Hard. Too hard.
“Athena.” I tried to caution her, but not in time. She cried out, and I caught her as she started to crumple forward.
“Enough.” I pulled her to me and steadied her. Her deep, gasping breaths of pain cut right through me. “Don’t force it. You don’t need to force it,” I begged, but the damage was already done.
I slid my hands to the side of her head, slowly massaging her scalp.The tension released from her shoulders after a minute, her breathing more even as she lifted her head.
“Shit,” I murmured. She’d broken the skin on her bottom lip, blood pooling on the surface.
“What—”
“Don’t move,” I ordered, the blood already smearing from that one word.
Fuck. I tried to focus on the injury, but what the hell was a little blood compared to the feel of her soft lip under my thumb.
“Your lip is bleeding.” There was no hiding the sudden roughness of my voice. Not when my thumb pressed to the fullness of that bottom swell, the edge of it just inches from the sweet haven of her mouth.
A little closer, and the tip would be between her lips. And if she sucked on it, my fantasy could easily exchange my finger for the head of my cock.
Motherfucking fuck—I was going insane.
“I need a tissue,” I ground out and started to pull away, but she clutched my wrist. “Athena?—”
“It’s okay.”
Too late, I saw the tip of her head. Too late to avoid being at the mercy of her tongue as it darted out and licked my finger.
I wasn’t going insane…I was going straight to hell.
I couldn’t move as the velvet tip of her tongue stroked over my skin, warm and soft and absolutely fucking sinful. I wanted to feel that tongue everywhere. In my mouth. Along my chest. Around my cock. Fuck… my heart rammed against the front of my chest. It wasn’t her blood that stained the pink of her tongue red, but the blood of my breath as she licked the very life from me. Again and again and again.
“Athena…” Her name came from some part of me that acted on its own—that begged with my very last breath to release me.
My finger was clean almost from the very first swipe, but she didn’t stop—and it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t see the blood was gone, so only I was to blame.
I should’ve stopped her. I should be stopping her.
But I wasn’t.
The sight was too mesmerizing. The fantasies it inspired were too fucking addictive. And my cock was so fucking desperate for her, I swore I felt every lick along its throbbing length.
My eyes started to drift closed. This was it. I was too fucking weak to resist her. Too fucking deprived to have the strength to withstand this torture. I was going to give in to what we both wanted and fuck her on her childhood bed and make a twenty-year-long fantasy come true.
And then a crack of thunder boomed so loudly outside, the windows shook, and Athena jumped back.
Air hissed through my lips like a punctured balloon.
“Did I get it?” she murmured and slid her pink instrument of torture along her lips.
You got me. Straight to the chest. Center mass. One lick and I was a dead man walking.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I managed to grind out in response, hating that it sounded like I was scolding her, but all of my strength was currently channeled much lower in my body to keep my dick from fucking exploding in my pants.
“It was my wound to lick.” The softness of her voice let me imagine for a second that she was talking about me—like I was the injured, broken piece of her she had the power to heal.
“We found what we came for. We should head back before it starts to storm.”
She nodded gingerly and let me lead her out of the room. Now that we had the invoice—the information we needed—being in the house felt like being held underwater with no oxygen—with nothing else to focus on except the past and the truth I’d hidden from her.
“If you find him…”
“This’ll all be over,” I promised.
And I’d have to find a way to walk away from her all over again.