Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
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Gabe
San Diego, California
What the fuck was that? Adrienne’s flying around the track like a pack of demons are on her ass and won’t let up. She’s driving like she has a death wish and I’m a fucking idiot.
I’ve seen this before on the battlefield—soldiers who no longer care if they live or die. Hell, I was there myself after Macy died and if it hadn’t been for Manny, I would have followed her.
With Adrienne, I thought God was giving me a second chance at life, but that was just what I wanted to see. I wanted her and I wanted to believe that she was mine for the taking. That we were right and real and that it would all work out.
But I know I can’t do this again. I can’t love someone else who’s on the fast track to dying and if she keeps acting the way she is today, she will.
I’d watched the sweetest girl I’d ever known wither before my eyes and die and there was not one goddamn thing I could do to stop it.
But this? This is a choice.
Without a doubt, she’ll rip my heart out one day if we keep going down this path, but it won’t be cancer this time, it’ll be these toxic levels of bullshit that tear us apart.
The smart thing to do would be to walk away, be done with her once and for all, but I can’t.
She calls to me like a siren, and it’ll be on the rocky cliffs where she’ll leave me battered and broken, if I let her.
I watch her come rolling to the side of the track and hop out of her car in time for one of the mechanics to rip her a new one. Honestly, I want to do the same. What the fuck was she thinking?
The harsh truth is she wasn’t. Because if she was, then she wanted to die and I can’t wrap my mind around that.
She looks spitting mad when she walks away from her friend. I get it, sometimes it’s hard to hear things we don’t want to hear.
I’ve heard everyone say that I didn’t die with Macy, that I could still have everything I’ve ever wanted, but that wasn’t the hard truth. I can’t have it all. And this isn’t healing, this is only hurting, both of us, and I can’t do it anymore.
But as I step into her path as she comes into the garage, trading more barbs with her, I realize something else.
I might not be able to have her forever, but I can have her one more time.
I can take one last hit of my drug, one last drag of that cigarette, and savor my addiction before I give her up for good.
I let out a breath and mutter, “Fuck it.”
“What?” she asks, taken off guard.
Good, I’m off plan too.
“You already hate me,” I tell her.
“I don’t hate you.”
Surprising because lately, I hate myself. And I hate her and how out of control she makes me feel, how reckless she can be with her safety, with my job, with our whole fucking lives.
“So it won’t matter if I fuck you now,” I tell her. “You can go back to hating me after.”
I kiss her, not giving her the chance to ask after what, because that issue is one we’ve been dancing around for days, weeks.
After.
After us.
She can, and most likely will, hate me when I’m gone and that’s fine. She’ll move on then and find some nice guy who will follow her around like a sappy puppy and pump her full of little race car loving babies.
I hate the thought of her with another man even though I’ll likely be drinking myself into an early grave back in Texas, while she’s making those babies with some boring halfwit.
So, with a growl on my lips still pressed against hers, I hoist her up, wrapping her legs around my hips.
I can feel the heat of her pretty pussy pressed up against my heavy cock, and she moans when she feels me between her legs.
That’s right baby, I have what you need, not some nameless dickweed.
I touch her all over, up and down the sides of her body, like a man possessed because that’s exactly what I am. That’s what she’s made me. She puts her hands on my face to return the kiss, to deepen our connection like she can’t get enough of me either.
I have to put some distance between us and finally give her a taste of the control that I need, what I want from her.
So I push back and lock eyes with her, letting her know that I’m about to lead us down a path we can’t come back from.
That now is the time to pull away, to put a stop to this and put us both out of our misery.
Only Adrienne has never done a goddamned thing that I’ve told her to, so instead of dousing the flames burning between us, she throws fucking gasoline on them by looking me in the eyes and nodding her head once.
Fuck. Me.
I wrap my larger, stronger hands around each of her delicate, slim wrists and lower them to hold them at her sides.
I don’t hurt her, I won’t ever do that, not like this.
But I will take what we both want from her here and now.
I want to restrain her, to tie her up and to have her open for me.
Begging me to have her, to take her to a level of passion that will wreck us both once and for all.
After watching her careen around the track at breakneck speeds with no care at all for her safety, I need to hold her at my mercy and show her that her actions have consequences.
I look around the garage and notice a length of tow rope coiled neatly on top of a work bench.
That is exactly what I need to get my head back on straight.
I grab it and spool it, letting it unroll in front of me, between us.
I take the end and wrap it around one wrist and then the other, binding them in front of her before raising them over her head to hang from a hook in the wall.
There’s enough length that her feet still touch the ground and she’s not in any danger… at least not from anything but me.
I watch her squirm for a second before I trace the hem of her tank top with my finger where it peeks out of her rolled down fire suit and slowly drag it up her body, over her taut belly and up over her small breasts to uncover her sports bra.
Then I pull the zipper down the front, parting the compression material so that her tits hang free.
Her pink nipples pebble under the breeze from the AC, and my mouth waters to taste them again. But not yet.
Instead, I tease her by trailing the back of my hand over her breasts and down her belly to where the arms of her fire suit are tied around her waist. There, I flip my hand over and slide it into her pants, her panties, and right between her lips to feel how wet she is for me.
She’s always ready and wanting, and the feel of her heat on my fingers makes my dick even harder. She tries to move, to force me where she wants me, but that’s not what this is. Her whine is my favorite song.
I kick off her boots and push down the fire suit along with whatever else she had on underneath, leaving her bare from the waist down.
Her shirt and bra are the only things she’s wearing, and they merely frame the most beautiful tits I’ve ever seen.
I look at her, like she’s the most stunning piece of art and I’m the artist.
I unbuckle my belt and lower my zipper. My cock so heavy and hard that it bobs in front of me, pointing the way to heaven and hell. I grab her by her thighs and hold her open for me, the crown of my dick pressing against her bare pussy.
“I shouldn’t want you.” I can’t help but growl because it pisses me off how out of control this is and my weaknesses where she’s concerned. “But I can’t stay away.”
“Then don’t,” she challenges and I drive all the way into her. All the way to the root where there’s nothing between us.
I’m like a man possessed as I plunge into her, taking her rougher than I usually do.
I hate feeling like this and as my spine tingles and my balls draw up, I know this will be fast and wild.
And before it’s even over, I know that I’ll want it again.
I’ll never not want her and that makes me even angrier.
“I can’t stay away.”
“I don’t want you to,” she moans against my lips as I lean in and take her mouth again.
She grips the ropes tight in her hands as I pump into her again and again before she bows her back and comes, her delicious cunt gripping me so tightly that I can’t help but drive into her one last time before she rips the orgasm from me.
And then I realize what I’ve done.
I should have handed this op over to Eli ages ago, but I needed my fix of her. I stupidly thought we could… I don’t know… be something to each other, but I have nothing left to give besides a decent fuck.
And one day, she’ll rip my heart out when she dies in a fucking crash just like her grandfather did because watching her today, I know there’s no other way for this to end.
Stupidly, I let her siren song call to my baser needs once more, but this is it. This is the last fucking time.
It has to be, for both of us.
“Fuck,” I bite out as I tuck myself back into my pants. I quickly unhook the rope from the wall and untie her, watching with my gut in knots as she shakes out her hands. I’m a fucking monster.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, but it’ll never be enough. It’ll never make amends for how I’ve treated her. “I never should have touched you.”
“Gabe—” she starts and I flinch. I can’t stand to hear her try to comfort me. I need to hold fast to my resolve to be done with us for both our sakes—but mostly mine. I can admit to myself that I’ve fallen for her, but what I won’t do is bury a second wife.
“I have to go. I won’t touch you again,” I tell her before I turn and head out of the garage.
I don’t watch her get dressed or offer her comfort. I can’t. If I do, I’ll fall back on my promise because I’m weak.
Instead, I find Eli and tell him that he’s in charge and to call Manny with updates.
When I’m done, I leave. I get in a car and head to the one place I never should have left. I’ve fucked up pretty bad and it’s time to start doing things the right way, not the cowardly way, and that means starting with an apology.
Ransom Falls, Texas
I ride Big John, my wife’s favorite horse because he’s as ridiculous as he is giant.
A goofy monster, he made her laugh even in the end.
He’s one of the last horses left on her farm and even though I have someone who cares for them, today it needs to be me.
As it has been for the last twenty-four hours.
Whether Eli believed my bullshit back in California about something coming up at base or he saw the wild look in my eyes and knew that I was about to lose my shit if I didn’t get out of there, is between him and God.
I jumped in my SUV and headed east on I-8. I drove all night, only stopping for gas, and watched as the highways changed to I-10 in New Mexico and then I-20 in Texas. I didn’t stop until I was home, only it doesn’t feel like that anymore and it hasn’t for a while.
I have a sinking suspicion that home is found only with Adrienne now. And that is so fucked up because Macy is my wife.
Macy was my wife.
She died.
She didn’t leave me for another man.
But I’ve been off, fucking a woman like she’s the only one for me. Adrienne has no idea that she makes me feel this way, so deeply… because she feels like so much more.
So I went straight to the barn on the old side of the ranch, the side with the house that no one lives in anymore, and I found Big John.
He gave me the cold shoulder until I offered him some peppermints and told him that I was sorry.
Sorry that he lost Macy, and I couldn’t save her.
Sorry that I couldn’t be out here because being near him reminded me of her.
Now how he’s probably the only one who can stand my company.
What I didn’t tell him was that I fucked a woman so wildly, and she let me.
She was there, right along with me the whole time, and loved every minute of it.
It wasn’t love-making it was raw and real and the most I’ve felt in a long time, maybe ever.
When I came inside her, harder than I ever have, my first thoughts were how much I loved that woman.
And then reality crashed down and I remembered. I remembered my wife and this farm and all the things I’d forgotten. I was so shaken, I’d come home.
I hop off Big John and lead him back into the barn, to his stall where we bunked together last night. It wasn’t in a big, lush bed with Adrienne in my arms, but it wasn’t the Middle East either, so I call it a win.
I’m not surprised to see Manny standing beside the stall door leaning against the rough wood of the wall with his arms folded over his chest. I knew he’d come for me eventually. He’s the best. I just hope he didn’t call my brother or my mom.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he says and I just nod before moving past him into the stall. I unsaddle Big John and begin brushing him out. “Fuck, you smell like horse shit.”
“Makes sense since I slept in it too.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks.
“Just making my amends to Big John.”
“I don’t think that’s really who you needed to make amends to,” he says. “I think you remembered and it hurt.”
“We don’t need to do this,” I tell him.
“I think we do,” he says. “You can’t bring her back and you can’t die with her.”
“Stop.”
“Everyone with eyes in their head knew how much you loved Macy Green,” he says.
“Macy Navarro,” I correct him.
“They could see it for miles.” He goes on like I didn’t say anything at all. “But now I think you remembered what it was like to live and love again, and then you remembered what you lost and you feel like you’re cheating on your wife.”
“Aren’t I?” I shout.
“No, hermano,” he says gently. “She wanted you to live, not to die but you did it anyway. Seeing you like this would break her fucking heart.”
“She broke mine.”
“And you’re breaking it on your own all over again,” he says. “But worse, you’re breaking Adrienne.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask.
“Make a choice and stick to it,” he says. “Live or die.”