Chapter 8
You Can’t Fix Me
Clay
By all accounts, my hands are in respectable places.
You just wouldn’t know it by the thoughts racing through my head right now.
We’re standing in the living room, fully clothed, nothing remotely sexual happening, and I can’t shake the image of spinning her around and taking that sassy mouth of hers with mine. Claiming her once and for all.
My dick responds every time I inhale her sweet scent.
Whatever perfume or body wash she uses always has an underlying smell of lilacs to it, I want to lose myself in it.
I didn’t expect to have such a visceral reaction to her.
Where the hell did she come from? Barging into my life after I’d worked so hard to put up walls between us.
Where do we go from here? Is this something she even wants?
Could it be that easy for her to forgive me for everything?
I don’t have any answers where Leni is concerned, and that scares the hell out of me.
She deserves the fucking world, and I don’t see what I have to offer her.
Maybe this is enough, for now at least. Maybe we can take this time to get to know each other again.
I don’t know everything about her anymore, but I want to know every little detail there is to know about her and make up for all the years we’ve spent apart.
She sighs, letting her head loll back into my shoulder. I can see her pulse beating out a steady rhythm, and I can’t help but press my lips to it, wanting to savor the feeling of her wrapped up in me. Hating the way, she tenses when my lips meet her skin.
“Do you hate me?” I whisper, my lips brushing the shell of her ear, using every single ounce of control not to kiss her again.
“Sometimes I wish I did. I think it’d be easier to hate you.”
I tighten my arms around her and nod. I know exactly what she means. “I think I might hate me a little.”
For the first time since the hug started, she moves to reciprocate, letting one hand sink into my hair, the other wrapping around my neck. Pushing her hips into mine, she buries her head into the crook of my neck. Her right hand squeezes my neck while the nails on her left scrape my scalp.
“I think we all hate ourselves a little.”
“You don’t hate yourself, do you?” I tighten my grip on her, a possessive kind of protectiveness swelling up inside of me.
“Sometimes,” she breathes, her voice barely audible after what feels like the world’s longest pause. I tuck her in closer, dropping my head to her shoulder.
“Talk to me. What’s going on with you?”
She stiffens in my arms, her back going ramrod straight, arms fighting to come down.
I go to pull away, every fiber of my being repelled at the thought of making her uncomfortable.
She grips my wrists, keeping my arms around her, loose enough that she can turn in them.
“You’re gonna have to hold me through this, if you can.
” Her sweet voice is muffled by my chest.
“I can.” I tighten my hold on her, one hand pressed against her back, pulling her close. “I won’t let go.”
“I lost my job...and my housing.”
“Lost your job?” I rear back, looking down at her. She keeps her face pressed into my chest, nodding. “How? Didn’t you build that creative writing program yourself?”
It’s her turn to rear back, pretty green eyes widening as she looks at me. “How did you—”
“You realize you’re the only exciting thing your family talks about, right? They were so proud of you for creating that program.”
She shakes her head, pressing it back into my chest.
“You seem surprised.”
“I am,” she sighs, letting her hands wander up my back. This tank top is not nearly enough fabric between us. I can feel the warmth emanating from every one of her fingertips. The heat of them branding my skin, making me want more.
“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what happened with you and the family?”
“You,” she whispers.
“Me?” I pull back, sliding a hand onto the side of her face, forcing her to look at me.
“I went to see you. I…I didn’t have a phone when I was on my way back, and something…happened.” A shaky breath leaves her lips, her eyes squeezing shut.
A moment passes, her silence killing me. I know she got hurt, but I need to hear it from her. “What happened?” I beg. The eagerness in my voice snapping her eyes up to meet mine, fear creeping back in.
I’m about to apologize, worried she won’t continue now that I’ve interjected. But she sighs, her shoulders deflating as she continues. “I was mugged.” Her head drops, then lifts back. Her eyes meet mine with something hidden beneath them.
“I had to call my dad to come get me. No one trusted me after that. I was basically kept in lockdown.” She takes a deep breath, shoulders slumping.
Her backs tense beneath my hand. There’s something she’s not saying.
Her words are too rehearsed. I want to call her on it, dig until she tells me the truth, but at least she’s talking.
I don’t want to ruin whatever truce we have tonight.
Hoping that maybe, down the line, she’ll be ready to tell me everything.
“The only reason they let me leave for school in Benson is because they had no legal grounds to stop me. They tried everything else to get me to stay. Ethan told me I wasn’t ready.
Brooks said I’d never make it on my own.
And mom,” she chokes on a sob. My heart shatters at the thought of her going through this without me.
“She told me if I disobeyed them and left, they’d cut me off. Told me not to bother coming back.”
“Jesus.” I tug her back into me, wrapping her in my arms like a shield.
“She was just scared,” she justifies. “She called me a few days later to apologize, but the damage was done, you know? I didn’t come home that summer.
Miya and I stayed in Benson. She went to school year-round, and I worked a shitty part-time job.
Tried to keep busy. That’s the longest I’d ever been away from the ranch, from all of them. ”
“Oh, Leni.” I cradle her head, stroking her hair, trying to comfort her. “Have you tried talking to them? Do they know you feel this way?”
A sharp, sardonic laugh shakes her shoulders. “Yeah, because that will help.”
Her voice is brittle with a bitterness I’ve never seen in her before. Leni was the glue that held the family together. The boys were always using her as a personal therapist. There was no problem, bad day, or argument that Leni couldn’t fix with her eternal optimism.
“How do you know, if you haven’t even tried?”
She scoffs, pushing out of my arms. “You’re hilarious, you know that? Coming in here after ten years of acting like I don’t fucking exist, and now you want to be a part of my life? Now you want to tell me how to fix things? Why Clay? Why do you want to fix things?”
“Because it’s not right. I broke something between you all that night.” My fists clench at my side, shame filling me when her eyes track the movement. I force myself to stretch my fingers out, grinding my molars together.
“You don’t want to feel guilty anymore. News flash, not everything is your fault.”
It’s your fault. My dad’s voice echoes in my brain. The feeling of his fists ramming into my ribs over and over sends my shoulders up toward my ears. It’s your fault she left. You’re weak. You’re nothing.
My heart thunders in my chest, lungs suddenly starved for air. What the fuck is happening to me? I’ve had my panic attacks under control for years. I’ve never even had one connected to my dad before. They’ve always been about my deployments, this is…this is fucking stupid.
“Clay,” Leni’s voice comes out hard and commanding. “Hey.” She grips my face, her hands pressing hard on my cheeks. Her eyes bobbing back and forth. “If you want to kiss me again, just say it. You don’t have to be so dramatic about it.”
I gasp out a laugh, disbelief coursing through me as she beams at me. I want to scoop her up into my arms, hug all the air out of her, and tell her how goddamn much I’ve missed her.
“There you are.” Her smile softens, eyes sweeping over my face as she slowly pulls her hands away from me.
“Fuck,” I sigh, dropping onto the world’s most uncomfortable sofa. “I don’t know why this is happening. I haven’t had an attack in years. I got better.” I look at her, knowing my eyes are pleading for her to see I worked on myself and I am better.
“I know.” She gives me a gentle smile, plopping herself onto the oversized chair in the corner. “Mercer told me all about his trip to knock some sense into you.”
“I thought he did that because you told them what happened.”
“Nope.” She leans back onto her palms, her chest arching out towards me.
It takes everything in me to keep my eyes on her face.
Leni has the most perfect tits. Teenage Leni did not have the same chest back then.
Knock it off, I chide myself. This is not the time to be ogling her. “That was all you, bud.”
“Huh.” I sink down further into the sofa, trying to remember what happened when Mercer came out to babysit me. I called him when she didn’t answer, told him I was in the hospital, that I was being investigated, and potentially going to be court-martialed for trashing a hotel room.
“What did you tell them?”
“That I didn’t find you,” she sits back up, looking down at her hands.
“Why didn’t you tell them the truth?” The words come out more harsh than I intend. Leni never lies. She was never mean, but she would always give it to us straight.
Green eyes burn into mine, some of that fire banking in them again. “I wasn’t going to turn them against you.”
“Maybe you should have,” I mumble, gripping the back of my neck.
“You don’t mean that.” She leans forward, her eyes wide.
“I do. Because maybe if you’d have turned them against me, you wouldn’t be pushing them away. Punishing them for caring.”
“Fuck you,” she forces out, her voice more water than venom.
“Leni.” I reach for her, my heart shattering when she recoils, her eyes full of fear.
I pull my hand back, curling my fingers into a fist. I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t just me that scared her.
She says she’s not afraid of me, but her body is.
I would never physically hurt her. “What happened to you?”
“You fucking happened,” she cries. The brokenness in her voice rips me in half. “I thought you wanted me. How stupid is that? You ghosted me, and I still thought you might want me. Need me even. So, I ran to you. I came to help you, and I’ve been paying the price ever since.”
“What price, Leni? Tell me what happened, what really happened. Tell me how to fix it.” I collapse off the couch, begging on my knees. My voice is desperate, pleading.
“You can’t fix this.” She takes a step backward, a chasm opening between us wider than that night, wider than the ten years we’ve spent apart. “You can’t fix me. You were right not to want me,” her voice cracks at the end, eyes overflowing with tears.
I try to reach for her, but my arms are too heavy. Helplessness glues my knees to the floor below me.
I’ve felt this dark, hopeless anguish twice before in my life.
Tonight makes it the third time that a woman I love has walked away from me, and like with my mom, I know it’s my fault.
She doesn’t trust me. Not with the truth, and not with her heart.
I made sure she knew that I’m not built for love.
It’s not in my genes. I know, my mom knew, and Leni…
Leni knows it now, too.
I wanted this. I wanted her to realize I wasn’t the right one for her. Only I didn’t realize it would hurt so damn bad.