Chapter 32
The car stops outside her house as the dawn breaks through the midnight black.
I type her another message. Trust me…Penn nothing else has ever mattered but you...
Her home is dark, the little garden for her baby girl is lit up in dancing warm lights.
Her bedroom window has the soft rose hue of her bedside table lamp.
The one that casts light over the room so light and beautiful, like her skin when the moonlight hits it.
I can envision her now wrapped inside her grey cardigan, holding her pillow like a life raft as she floats through her mind, trying to not drown herself in her over thinking of what ifs and maybes.
Looking at my screen, it’s six-eleven in the morning, exhaustion creeps over my skin. My eyes heavy, my phone vibrates in my hand, she finally messages me.
I just want to dance with you. I wanted you to just call, not ask. But just call me because you need to hear my voice as much as I needed to hear yours.
That one message breaks my soul and has me running up her steps and into her home.
Breaking through the threshold of her safe haven to take her in my arms and look in her ocean blue eyes and tell her all the reasons why she makes me happy and how much I want to kiss all the things that make her sad away.
Running through her home and into her room, stopping as I breach the threshold of her bedroom, her body curled up her eyes red from crying and no sleep.
Her eyes meet mine and the broken silence between us as we both try to breathe her shock at my sudden intrusion and my hammering heart, seeing the pain of loneliness and heartache that is dancing over her aura.
“Peach, I wanted nothing but to call… but I always didn’t want to push.” Falling to my knees at the edge of her bed.
My hands press on the bed, inching towards hers. Her eyes met mine. Pain and desperation swimming in them.
She opens her mouth like she wants to tell me something, something sharp, something that tastes like regret, but she swallows it, her throat bobbing like the words scrape on the way down.
“Peach?” I whisper.
Her eyes flick away for a fraction of a second, just long enough for guilt to bloom across her face like a bruise.
She shakes her head. Not now. Not yet. But I feel it. Something happened. Something she’s punishing herself for.
I want to ask, to drag the truth out of her, but she’s already drowning in enough pain to swallow a city whole.
So I let it go. For now.
But a cold thread of fear coils under my ribs. Whatever she’s hiding… it’s about him. It has to be.
And it makes me want to burn the world down. “Peach.” My voice cracks, matching the pain in her eyes.
“I’m not used to feeling jealous.” She whispers to me.
Taking her face in my hands, pressing my body against the bed so she feels me. Looking deep into her eyes that look like rain falling on a gloomy day. So much sadness inside, so much beauty, it’s disarming.
“Can you give me twenty seconds of you Penn, just you. Not thinking, not analyzing, not worrying, not pushing me away. Not talking about Blake at all. Just me and you here in this room as the dawn of a new day kisses the dark night away. Can you lay it all down just for me. Can you do that Penn?” “I’ll try.
” She stutters out quietly I watch her eyes search mine.
I get lost inside her rain cloud orbs and just pray in this moment between us, the one coming and the ones after this that I don’t lose her.
She’s been my lifeline for so long. I don’t know how to survive without her.
“Not try. I want you to do it.” “Okay.” She slowly smiles at me.
“But only if you get me a salted caramel latte after and cuddle me till the jealousy leaves my body.” “Shhhh . . .”
Before she even has a chance to think, I press my lips to hers, so soft and lingering. Touching, then not touching.
“Oh, God. Don’t think, don’t think Penn.
” I feel her mummer against my lips, so I take the kiss further, pressing deeper into her, wrapping my fingers in one hand in her hair, pulling slightly, and caressing her cheek with my other hand.
I need to anchor her to me. She pulls away slightly, but I lean forward and press deeper into her.
To meet her full soft lips again, and that’s all she needs to kiss me deeper, her tongue slowly sweeping over mine.
A small gasp escapes her. Don’t think. My mind begs her to let go further.
To melt away all reason and just give in to this.
I become breathless as she does, drowning in this kiss.
Pulling my body from the floor and up over hers, straddling her, she twists under me.
Our lips never leave each other’s. It’s been far longer than the twenty seconds I asked her for, and I have no desire to stop.
Her hands go up to my neck underneath the hair tied at the back of my neck, holding me to her.
I need so much more of this, so much more of her.
Moving my hands, I grab hers and pin them both down on the pillow over her head.
Her hair fans over the bedding like wildfire, licking at the dried fall leaves.
She drives me crazy. My eyes search hers as they flutter open for any reason to stop, for any flicker of regret, for any shard that this maybe scaring her.
But all I see is lust and hunger driving me wild for more.
I move my lips closer to hers as her tongue pops out and licks my taste from them.
A small groan of delight growls inside her throat as my cock reacts, as does my heart.
I’m made for her, and she’s fucking made for me.
Finally, I have her attention, her desire and I vow to never let her ever feel any emotion other than desire again.
Never loneliness, never pain. I won’t be the one to make her sad or cry.
No, I will forever make it my mission to make her happy and feel love.
Lowering my lips to hers as she lifts her hips to meet mine, a feeling I never knew I wanted to devour till now.
I kiss her wildly, devouring her mouth with mine.
Pulling away slightly, I stare down at her, breathing heavily.
I have to stop as she wiggles under me, begging without words for me.
To take it further to allow her to feel me and forget, but I can’t do that, not today, not in this way.
When I take her, it will be for us both, not for her to replace pain with a fleeting feeling of euphoria.
I keep my hands wrapped around hers, holding her in place.
“I’m going to stop now,” I say between heavy breaths.
“But I want you to do one more thing for me.” I mouth into her lips as I kiss her softly again and then pull back.
“I want you to think about the idea of us. But not until I leave. I’m going to stay here today with you and tonight.
I need to tell you so many things and I need you to be ok with it all, so for today and tonight, I need you to be open-minded and not overthink.
I also need you to know, Penn, that I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole life.
I will not kiss or touch you.” Looking down at her enormous eyes swimming with emotions and questions.
The ocean meets the rainforest. Her eyes change with her feelings and fuck me, I can get lost for eternity and never would I complain.
I can’t help myself, just one more. I lower my lips to kiss her neck, my teeth grazing her sweet flesh.
My cock quivers in response to the way she moans, and I know I’m fucked.
Penn
Dane rolls from my body and pulls me back against his chest. His legs wrap around me, as his arm pulls the blanket up and over us, cocooning us inside this heaven of our breaths and each other’s smell.
He smells of scotch and tarmac meshed with my vanilla and jasmine.
My eyes close, delirious with pleasure from Dane’s kiss, his words, his silent promises to me.
My heart soars and I can feel a strange feeling of love cells growing for Dane, for him, his words and his kiss.
This is what I want, finally smacking me in the face, him, Dane, in my bed, wrapped around my body.
My eyes grow heavy, and the warmth from his body lulls me into a slumber.
In the haunting depths of the night, my world twisted into a kaleidoscope of torment.
Dreams shattered into shards of heartache, the ache of losing Grace, the haunting spectre of Blake’s departure, leaving me stranded in a house constructed upon the fragile scaffolding of our love.
Its once-solid walls now echoed with the hollow whispers of betrayal.
Tears cascaded down my cheeks, each droplet a testament to the anguish etched upon my soul, staining it with a searing agony.
My body convulsed, ensnared within the merciless grip of the nightmare’s clutches, then like a lifeline in the darkness.
Warmth enfolds me, lips tenderly kissing away the tears that mark my cheeks.
A steady voice, like an anchor in a storm, penetrates the chaos within.
“Penn, wake up, Peach. It’s just a bad dream.
” The voice soothes, though my heart races like a thundering stampede. Everything feels achingly real.
Then, like a celestial whisper, warm hands enveloped me, tracing delicate patterns upon my skin, lips brushing away the rivers of sorrow with a tender, soothing touch.
“Peach, come back to me. It’s just a dream,” his voice, an anchor in the storm, steadied the frantic palpitations of my heart. But it all felt too real, too raw.
“Dane,” I whispered as my eyes fluttered open, lashes heavy with the residue of saline despair. His gaze, a sanctuary, met mine, his lips edging closer to my jaw, igniting a fire within me that banished the remnants of the nightmare to the periphery of my consciousness.
“I wish I could shield you from this pain, Peach, but some wounds must bleed and seep through the carved marks left from such pain.” His fingers combed through my hair, drawing back the wet strands, peering into the depths of my desolation.
“This is one of those sorrows. But Peach, believe me, I will be there to gather your broken pieces and kiss away every tear.”
“I’m so lost just floating above it all because he was home, he was what home felt like for so long. He was home…” My chest tightens, the memory clawing its way up my throat like it wants to drown me from the inside.
“Dane…” My voice cracks. “There’s something I didn’t, didn’t tell you earlier.”
His arms stiffen around me, just for a second.
Enough.
I look away, shame burning my cheeks.
“Blake… he invited me to that masked party,” I whisper, the words trembling. “But he didn’t invite me. He invited Pandora. He didn’t even know it was me. Not until…”
I swallow hard.
“Not until I kissed him.”
The silence between us fractures.
“I needed to,” I choke out. “I needed to finally get him out of my system. Out of my bones. Out of my fucking soul. I needed to see if there was anything left of us. If I’d feel something good or something bad or something familiar, anything.”
Tears burn hot trails down my face.
“But all I felt was wrong. Sick. Like I was kissing a ghost of everything I lost. I pulled away and I left him there and I made sure he knew exactly who I was before I walked out.”
I force myself to keep going.
“I hated myself on the way home. I hated that I let him touch me. I hated that I let him take even one more second from my life. I hated that I was still trying to cut him out of me like a tumour I didn’t even know how to reach.”
My voice breaks.
“I’m telling you now because… I needed it to be done, Dane. I needed him gone. Finally. Completely.”
I finally meet his eyes, terrified of what I’ll find.
“It didn’t mean anything. It meant the opposite of something. It was me burying it. Burying him.”
The confession slipped past my lips, heavy with regret, the moment it escaped me. I knew it would cut Dane deep, but the pain of having home ripped out from under me hurt so much more.
“Unlock that door that you’ve locked Peach and let me in. I’ll show you what home really feels like and just how a home should be.” His resolute words stole the breath from my lungs.
Perhaps Dane could be that home. That haven my body so seeks, to feel like it belongs and not just floating somewhere waiting to find something to anchor it home.
“Have you ever listened to Taylor Swift’s song You are in love?” he inquired, cocooning us deeper under the covers, his embrace an embrace of solace. His hand found the curve of my hips, drawing me closer into his warmth.
“No, I haven’t,” I confessed, acknowledging she wasn’t typically on my playlist.
“Listen, Peach just listen,” he murmurs, reaching for his phone, coaxing the song to life. “These lyrics, Penn, they speak of us, of my love for you, yearning for you even when you seemed out of reach.”
As the melody filled the room, enveloping us in its poignant embrace, I listened, feeling the weight of his emotions interwoven with the music, painting a canvas of love and longing that transcended the boundaries of dreams and reality.