Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Athena
“ Y ou’re back.”
His scent. His steps. They were all familiar at first. But now, there was a shadow to him. A kind of phantom darkness that took over the foggy screen of my sight.
I couldn’t believe it when I woke up earlier and saw…light. It was fuzzy. Like cotton or wool pulled over the sun, but the total darkness was gone, replaced by a cloudy reality of light and shadow.
And Dare’s shadow was big—big and suddenly still as my head followed his movements.
“You can see.”
“Shadows.” But it was something. Hope . And then he was in front of me, the whole of him still invading the rest of my senses like they’d never get enough. “Dare…”
His hand pressed to my cheek, holding it like I was something fragile—a flower to be crushed if he wasn’t careful. And there was something about his touch that was familiar in a way it hadn’t been before. Something that went deeper than this moment, all the way down to the depths of a memory. But of what?
I was going crazy. Foolishly burying the seeds of his tenderness and hoping he’d let them grow into something more.
“We just got back from Ivans’s house.” Straight to business.
The first thing Rob told me this morning when she’d come was that Dare and Ty had gone to the address on the invoice. I wanted whatever answers they’d uncovered, but for some reason, not as much as I wanted answers about last night.
Had he left because of what he told me? Because he thought I would see him differently now, knowing what kind of betrayal he suffered? Or was it me that kept him away—was it what happened afterward that brought his barbed-wire walls back up?
Whatever the answer, it would have to wait until he said what he came here to say—something I should be more concerned about considering it was my life in jeopardy.
“Was he there? Do you know why he wants me dead?”My heart thudded, as I was able to discern how he lowered his head. “What is it?”
“We found him,” he said slowly. “Brandon, too.”
My jaw slackened. The idea that my ex-husband had been so easily swayed to try and kill me was still a hard pill to swallow.
“They’re both dead, Athena.”
Dead. For as prone to earthquakes as California was, none of the numerous times the ground had shaken were felt by anyone but me—because the quake belonged inside my mind. A boom that rippled through the thick shadows. Brandon was dead. My heart leaped into my throat.
Dare’shands bracketed my arms, and that was when I knew I’d started to sway. “Athena. ”
“He…I never…” A hot tear sped over my cheek. “I never…would’ve wanted this.”
Even after everything, I never would’ve wished him dead.
“I would,” Dare declared without missing a beat, his hand leaving my arm to brush off the droplet from my cheek. “For hurting you. For trying to kill you.” He exhaled forcefully, continuing to guard my cheeks from the second charge of tears.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who had the willpower to walk away last night when I’d asked him to stay.
I tipped my head, the shadow of his face so close. The dark dips and lighter swells. I could almost…
He moved away, taking his hold with him.
“What happened?”
“They were both at the house.”
“So, it was Rich—Ray—who helped Brandon escape, and then he killed him?” I shook my head, trying to unscramble my thoughts. “Why?”
“To tie up loose ends.”
My nod turned into a steady bob as thoughts tipped my head back and forth like a buoy caught on the tide.
“Athena…”
“They’re both gone…the men who wanted me dead,” I said weakly.
“Ivans was the root of all of this—the bomb, the money—” Dare huffed. “You’re safe.”
“Safe,” I repeated slowly. Funny how one four-letter word could change so many things.
I was safe from the men who wanted me dead…but ironically, I was also now safe from needing Dare’s protection. The one thing I no longer needed but wanted.
“So, what happens now?”
His shadow turned to stone, and we stood there, letting the seconds stretch into silence as though the weaver of time needed a head start before we could move forward again.
“You don’t need to stay a prisoner here any longer.”
Prisoner. What a word to use when the only thing he’d ever made me feel, truly, was precious.
“I see,” I muttered and winced, realizing too late how tongue-in-cheek my reply was.
“You’re safe. Free…”
Free from everything but wanting him.
“I know…”
“Don’t you want to go home?” he asked low, the question driving the wedge deep he wanted to use to separate himself from me.
He knew I couldn’t say no…because to say I wanted to stay meant I’d have to ignore all the signs he wanted me gone.
“Of course,” I answered, feigning a small smile as though home was the only thought on my mind for the last four weeks and not him.
I wouldn’t ask about last night—not after the things he’d shared with me. The man who’d saved my life was tortured and wounded. And since when did any wounded creature let someone close because they demanded it or because they were backed into a corner? Never.
I wanted him to trust me again with his vulnerability, not to have to beg him for it. And if that wasn’t possible, then I’d learn to live with it. I’d learn to live without my sight for weeks, and if I could do that, I could certainly learn to live without the desire he ignited.
“Rorik—Dr. Nilsen said being home might help your brain heal faster. Something about being in a safe space.”
“That’s good.” Where was all my hope? All my optimism? Why couldn’t I seem to care about anything I’d just gained when it came with the price of losing him ?
“I’ll help you get your things.”
My mouth felt like a funnel piled high with emotions, but my tongue wouldn’t let anything except a thank you pass.The shuffle of clothes and belongings set the shadows in my sight to music. A crescendo of connection that would quickly fade into the soft silence of separation.
“Oh.” His footsteps came closer. “We found your paintings at the house.”
“Oh, good.”My art. My show. The future I’d started to create. For some reason, it didn’t seem real. Like a painting with a tear in the canvas. No matter how I tried to paint around it, there was something unalterably changed by what had happened. Something I couldn’t gloss over. Because I’d met him.
“When they finish with the scene, I can take them to your house or the gallery.” He could return all the pieces of me back to the way he’d found them.
“The house is fine. Thank you.”
He grunted.“I think I have everything.”
“There wasn’t much,” I said, unable to keep the sadness from my voice. It felt like I’d lived a whole other life here in this safe house, but in reality, it was nothing more than borrowed time with a broken brain.
His shadow loomed closer, and his arm reached out and then dropped. He struggled to reach for me, and he either forgot or didn’t realize that I could see enough now to make that out.
“Are you ready?”
When I nodded, he reached for my hand and guided me from the cabin like before—a steady touch to let me know he was there, murmuring instructions or warnings when we approached any stairs or steps. He made it easy to rely on him— too easy to trust him to take care of me even in my most vulnerable moments.
And all I wanted was to make it that easy for him.
The concrete echoed our concerted steps, but this time, he led me in a different direction through the garage.
“Put this on.” He released my hand, only to slide something heavy and thick over my shoulders. A leather jacket. My fingertips crept over the firm fabric, the worn creases, and the emblems stitched into the sleeves.
“What is this for?” I slid my arms into the sleeves.
“We’re taking my bike.”
I’d never been on a motorcycle before. For all the risks and gambles Brandon liked to take, motorcycles had never been one of them.
But sitting on the back of the massive bike, holding onto its equally massive driver, I never felt safer. Maybe safe was a relative term. My life was no longer in danger; my heart, though, remained in the greatest peril.
I closed my eyes behind the helmet, my body moving and swaying with the meandering shape of the roads, the bike like a rubber-coated paintbrush, bleeding a soot-streaked path back to my house.
I could tell when we got closer. The familiar pattern of turns off the highway. The slower speed. The heartbeat-like reel of shadows blurring through my broken brain. It wasn’t only the jacket he’d given me—there were also the large aviators underneath the visor of the helmet. Now that I had a vague distinction between light and shadow, the temptation to look—to stare—was even greater.
My body pressed to the back of his as we slowed, and I knew we were at my house. I felt it—that coming home feeling like a warm quilt over my shoulders.
Once he’d parked, his hand found my waist and guided me off the bike first, following himself a second later. I prayed he didn’t feel the flutter of my pulse as he undid my helmet.
“Thank you,” I murmured, his shadow blurring across my vision. “For everything.”
“Please…” Don’t thank me went unspoken.
It hit me when he guided me through the front door how glad I was to be home. It was the same feeling when I’d walked through the door after leaving Brandon and Sacramento.
“Athena?” He stepped in front of where I’d stopped. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just…happy to be here—to be back.” There was no place like home.
“I’ll set your things in your room,” he muttered and carefully placed my hand on the wall to guide me.
His shadow disappeared, and I took a deep breath, cinnamon and must filling my nostrils.Blindfolded or just blind, I’d never not know this place, and it was the same way I felt about him.
Gingerly, I moved toward the kitchen. The pulse in my head warned I was straining my eyes—my brain—too much; the shifting shadows I’d clung to all day were now less distinguishable.
I heard him make a noise down the hall, and when my head turned, my foot caught on a stack of boxes, and I cried out.
“Careful—” He was there, steadying me in an instant.
“Sorry, I should’ve unpacked these long ago,” I chided myself .
“It’s hard to go back to a place you know when you’re no longer the person you used to be,” he replied so easily, as though the thought came from his own experience and not just an interpretation of mine.
“Yeah,” I murmured, scrambling to say more when my stomach let out a growl.
“Shit.” He led me to the kitchen table and tucked me into a seat. Seconds later, I heard him rummaging through the kitchen.
“It’s okay. I’m?—”
“Hungry,” he finished. “I’m going to run to the store down the road. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh—” I broke off when his hands cupped my face.
“Please, don’t move.”
My jaw slackened, but the nearness of him made it impossible to do anything but nod. And then he was gone, the sound of the door locking almost as loud as the beat of my heart.
“Oh, Mom.” I sighed with a sad smile. “If you only knew.”
Carefully, I stood and used my hands to guide me around the table and chairs to the kitchen.At least, I’d managed to unpack all of the kitchen before the accident, so there were no boxes to worry about.
The boxes…
Since I’d moved home, I’d had plenty of time to unpack everything I’d brought back from Sacramento and everything I’d never taken with me—“ We don’t need your mom’s old things, Athena. We’ll buy new.” Brandon’s voice echoed in my head. God, I couldn’t believe he was gone; I hadn’t even truly gotten through believing he’d tried to kill me, and now he was gone.
Like Mom.
Everything here reminded me of Mom, and I thought it was guilt that kept me from unpacking and settling in. As though I were taking over her space— her memory. But coming back like this— blind— made it clear that Dare was right.
I wasn’t afraid of losing her memory because I didn’t need sight to hold on to it. I was afraid of facing the person I was now…because she certainly wasn’t the same Athena who’d left here all those years ago.
Was I smarter now? Stronger? Or was I broken, too, for putting my love and trust in someone who’d betrayed me?
Would I ever be able to trust and love someone again?
Had it already happened?
I gripped the edge of the counter, my head lowering, just as I heard a noise outside. I stilled. Was that footsteps out back?
My heart instantly vaulted into overdrive. Oh god. What if I wasn’t safe? What if there was something else—someone else?
I sank down onto the floor, banging my back against the handle of the cabinet. I bit into my lip hard enough to prevent a sound but not enough to stop my tears of pain. Of fear.
What if this was it?
What if, after all that—everything we’d been through—I never got the chance to tell Dare how I felt?
The patio door handle jiggled. I swore it did. Or was it the front? Because a second later, the front door opened.
“I’m back,” Dare called.
“Dare!” I cried out—choked out. I couldn’t even tell.
Heavy footsteps brought him to me in an instant, and the grocery bag landed with a thud beside me.
“Athena— Jesus. ” Dare lifted me up and pulled me against him.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry?—”
“What is it? What happened?”
“I thought…” I inhaled a big breath. “I’m sorry. I thought I heard someone at the back door, and I panicked.” For no reason, because everyone who’d tried to kill me was dead. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong?—”
“Don’t,” he warned. “Stay here. I’m going to make sure everything is okay.”
I nodded, listening to the mixed sounds of footsteps and metal and the sliding door opening and then closing. For however long it took him, time had a sound. A pulse. It beat like a living drum until I heard the door again.
“Just me.”
My exhale whooshed from my lungs. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, shaking my head. “I don’t know what came over me. My mind got carried away.”
“Don’t apologize.” His low voice was close, and then his hand was on my shoulder.Fear brought the darkness back, but his touch felt like light trying to break in. “Hang on.”
“Why—oof.” I hardly processed what he said before strong hands lifted me by my waist and hoisted me onto the counter.
He paused, holding me there for extra seconds like there was something that rooted him in place.
“You’re safe,” he rumbled low, the warmth of his breath close enough to reach my cheeks. And then it was the warmth of his hands that I felt framing my face and the press of his forehead to my own. “I promise you’re safe.”
There was no room for fear when he held me like this—imprisoned between wanting to push me away and needing to pull me closer. But there was something…something nagging my mind like a loose string begging to be pulled. A string in which my mind tangled.
Memories from high school bombarded this moment in an attack I hadn’t expected. Memories of how Darius would hold my face. How he’d smile and promise me his love and then kiss me until up was down and down was up and we were kissing on clouds .
“What is it?” Dare rumbled, breaking me from my thoughts.
I reached for his wrists, anchoring myself to the present, and let out the last of the tension from my lungs, along with the memory trying to hold me in its net.
“I had my first kiss on this counter, like this.”
He shuddered, and I knew I’d lost him. “I’m going to make some food.” And then he pulled away.
My eyes drifted shut, letting the sounds he made paint a picture in my mind of his big frame moving through the small kitchen. I heard the ding and clatter of the toaster oven being set. The sound of plastic unwrapping. The steady in and out of his breaths.
“What are you making?”
“Grilled cheese.”
I shivered, feeling the urge to protest tie a knot in my chest. Grilled cheese was a gateway to more fond memories of my high school boyfriend, who’d make us grilled cheese on the nights when Mom worked her second job.
Why was I thinking about Darius so much?
Was it being back at Mom’s house? But I’d been here for months. Was it because of Brandon? Losing another man who promised to love me…but didn’t?
Or was it because I was afraid of losing this man? Dare. A man I hadn’t seen but knew his scarred face better than I knew my own. Was it because I was afraid of losing one more person I cared for without understanding why?
I swallowed down those thoughts, and instead, shared a different memory.
“I used to sit on the counter while my mom cleaned the kitchen floors every week. She’d band towels around her feet, step in a bucket of soapy water, and then shuffle them over the floor.
“And then you’d do the same to dry.”
My breath caught as my heart faltered. “How did you know?”
He hesitated. “Lucky guess.”
The toaster dinged. A few seconds later, I bit back a smile at his low curse of pain. He’d tried to grab the molten sandwich with his bare hands.
“Tell me a story about your friend,” I murmured as he moved in front of me, his chest brushing my knees.
A deep noise groused from his chest, and I could practically hear the muscle of his jaw locking as he reached for my hand. But he had no choice; it was the only way to give me my food.
“Eat,” he instructed as he stepped back as I brought the sandwich to my mouth.
I shivered as I inhaled a deep breath of the warm, cheesy goodness. Scent and taste went into overdrive as I took the first bite, the taste so familiar it was like my tongue was set on a memory.
“Dammit.” His angry curse brought me back to the moment.
I swallowed the bite and asked, “Are you okay?” Had I been moaning?
“Yeah.”
I took my second bite more carefully, opting for a straightforward compliment this time. “This is amazing. Thank you.”
He grunted, “You’re welcome.”
Another few seconds passed, and I found myself returning to the question he’d left unanswered—wanting him to trust me with a little more of the good now that he’d laid out the whole of the bad.
“My mom had cancer—died of cancer. I knew it was coming; we both did. I thought knowing…would make me ready for it.” I sighed. “It didn’t. ”
“I’m sorry, Athena.”
I took another bite, and when I finished, I said, “When it got close to the end, I was…a mess, but my mom, she had this way of making painful things bearable. Even little things like…”
“Cleaning the kitchen floors?”
A laugh bubbled through my lips. “Yeah, like that. I swear she could turn anything for good.” My inhale was cut short by the brush of his thumb on my cheek; I didn’t realize I was crying.
“That sounds like…quite a superpower.”
“She was quite a superhero,” I returned softly, taking another bite as I fought the urge to cry. “At the end, I begged her not to leave me, and she told me that everyone dies twice.”
“Twice?” He drew his hand back.
“The first time is when our life ends, and the second…is when people stop sharing our stories.”
His chest inflated sharply, loading oxygen into its chambers and waiting to fire. But would the sound be of defense or of surrender?
“Ryan loved karaoke. Our buddy, Rhys, would strike up a tune, and he’d sing at the top of his lungs even though his voice was terrible,” he said, his low chuckle accompanying my own laugh. “And motorcycles. Anything fast and dangerous, really. It was all he talked about while we were away—coming home to buy a damn bike.”
“Did he convince you to get one?”
“His death did.”
“Dare…”
“He convinced us to get other things.” He cleared his throat and then rumbled, “Like piercings.”
My mouth formed an “o.”
“You have something…”
I licked my lips and heard his approaching groan. “No. Here.” The pad of his thumb brushed right at the corner of my lips. “Athena…”
“I don’t want this to end,” I murmured. “Us.” As though I could be talking about anything else.
Air hissed through his lips, betraying the mounting pressure in his chest. “I can’t…he’s gone…because of me.”
“So, you died along with him?” I murmured, feeling him tense. “Because it seems like that’s when you stopped telling your story.”
“I should have. I deserved to,” he rumbled, the heat of his breath fanning my cheeks.
“No, you don’t.” I lifted my hand. My fingertips bumped the hard edge of his jaw, but he didn’t pull away, so I moved them higher. “How mad would he be to see you like this?”
He shuddered against me. “Athena…”
“He’s gone, but without you, who will tell his story?”I cupped his cheek. “If you want to punish yourself, then do it for the good. You owe him his story.”
“I owe him my life.”
“Exactly.” I pulled my face to his. “So, stop giving him your death.”
I would’ve wished to savor his sharp inhale of breath for longer—the sound of my pleas finally piercing to the core of him. But I wished for his kiss more.
His mouth crushed mine with the kind of harsh hunger that gnawed at the inside of my chest. Within seconds, the thrust of his tongue pushed through my lips, punishing me and praising me for daring him to take what he wanted. I clutched his head, holding on like I held him above water. Above grief. Above guilt. And with every stroke and lick, he came to life against me.
His arms banded around me like the roots of a tree, pulling me right to the edge of the counter, where the hard length of him wedged between my thighs. I shivered, recalling the feel of him in my mouth. Long and thick. My core clenched, aching to feel him there. Every hard inch all the way to the metal knobs of his piercings.
With a growl, his fist curled in my hair, tipping my head so his next kiss could go deeper.Deeper and longer and harder.
He kissed me until my body was on fire and my mind was spinning like a top out of control.
“Dare,” I panted, locking my legs around his waist as I tried to grind on him, needing more. Needing everything.
“Athena…” He broke away with a groan, his chest heaving. “I can’t.”
“Why?” The heat coursing through me melted all of my resolve, leaving nothing but Jell-O-ed desperation in its place. “I want this—I want you, Dare. And if it’s not me, and it’s not Ryan, explain to me what it is?—”
“It’s me,” he said roughly and then groaned. “It’s me.”
“Tell me,” I begged. “Please.”
My heart pounded into the front of his chest, or maybe it was his hammering into mine. Either way, neither of us moved, our bodies riveted to one another in an unbreakable moment. His silence was the torture he imposed on himself, and it was more painful than his words.
“I haven’t…been with a woman since…”
My lips peeled open in shock, setting them apart in slow motion.“Dare…”
“I haven’t fucked a woman since her. Hell, I haven’t let a woman touch…”
Electric heat warmed over my skin. “Until me.”
Another pound. Another heavy breath. All stepping stones through the flurry of facts. Once more, I saw so much in the darkness. So much pain. So much loyalty. So much tenderness. And it broke my heart .
“All I want is to protect you,” he rasped.
“From you?”
“From everything. Including me,” he rasped. “You deserve better—you deserve everything, Athena.”
“Then stay and treat me like I deserve, or walk away and don’t look back like the first man who kissed me on this counter.” I didn’t know where the strength of my charge had come from—where any of it had come from—but I couldn’t take it back. The gauntlet was on the ground in front of it, everything I had—everything I wanted—spilling from its rim.
Dare’s inhale was as sharp as a knife. His hand tightened its hold, pinning me in front of his hot stare as though he believed some part of me could see him right now.
“He wasn’t a man,” he growled low, the edge of murder in his voice. “He was a boy. A stupid fucking boy.”
His lips were right in front of mine. I could feel them even though I couldn’t see them. We traded breaths, like what was left in our lungs was the only oxygen left on the planet.
“And what about you?” I gave him one more of my breaths, hoping he’d let me breathe him in one more time. “Are you the man who stays?”
He stilled, his breath clutched tight like stolen treasure in his chest. And then he exhaled softly and warned, “No, I’m the villain who can’t leave.”