18. Winter
EIGHTEEN
WINTER
F or the first hour, I kept saying three phrases.
I can’t believe this motherfucker locked me in this room.
I wish I never met these people.
He killed for me, and he’ll do anything to make me feel safe.
As hour two rounded into hour three and the shadows on the floor started to get longer, I slowly devolved into the weepy, heartsick Winter that I’ve come to despise. I don’t think too deeply about the fact that I’ve since put on his hoodie and snuggled into his pillow like a psychopath.
I wish I never met Hunter Brigham.
I wish I could stop loving him.
I wish I could believe the lies I tell myself.
Burying my face into Kitty’s fur, I let his warm body and the vibrations of his breathing lower my anxiety and absorb my sorrow. Hunter and I both said and did unacceptable things in the heat of our argument. How...flat of a word. Argument. More like a soul-shattering, heart-breaking rending of our relationship.
The end of Hunter Brigham and Winter Vaughan.
A fresh rush of hot tears spill over my lids, and I feel like I’m about to suffocate. This is the end. Even beyond the fucked-up reality of his father’s actions, what happened here in this fight is not okay.
Therapist Winter knows this to be true.
So we have to end, because how could we possibly move forward from here?
Nausea wells and I want to howl with the force of my grief.
Kitty nestles into my side, his soft whimpers harmonizing with my cries.
I cry and cry until I fall asleep.
The sound of the mechanical lock whirring on the door has my eyes snapping open and I sit up in Hunter’s bed.
I stand as the door opens. Hunter looks beaten down, like it’s been days since I last saw him, not hours.
We look at each other in silence for several moments. I decide to break it.
“Did she really gun down the guards at the gate?” I say, trying to go for a light, unaffected tone.
I’m not sure it works.
“Yeah, she did,” he replies.
“And are they...” I can’t say the words because it’s so incredibly insane that she shot our guards to bum-rush her way into the estate.
“One is dead. One is in critical condition. The other has a flesh wound to the thigh. It could have been bad if they’d hit his femoral.”
Hunter relays this information with such detachment it sends a shiver down my spine.
“That’s terrible,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” he replies.
More silence, but as the moments move on, the warmth returns to his face.
“You must be hungry,” he says. He at least has the good sense to look contrite—to look as devastated by our breaking apart as I am.
Breaking apart.
We’re breaking apart.
I’m breaking apart.
Kitty decides to jump into my arms, and I catch him, holding him close and burying my unsteady hands into his fur.
“I know you’re still mad, but I don’t want you to go hungry. I’d like for you to come down for dinner. I got us dim sum.”
Tears fill my eyes, and I remember our conversation about our favorite food.
“It will be just the two of us. Ella and August are in the media room and pretty much all the security who aren’t staffing the perimeter of the property are in the tactical room researching what the hell happened.”
He blows out his breath and blinks hard a few times. Then the mask settles back on his face.
“I don’t want to eat with you, Hunter.” My face feels numb, but I force the words past my lips anyway.
“Winter, please,” he says on a breath. His eyes close as he leans against the doorjamb. With his hands in his pockets, the stretch across his cock makes my mouth water.
The thought is enough to shake me out of my stupor.
“Okay, H,” I say in a measured tone. His head pops up slowly. Disbelief is plain in his slitted eyes.
“Okay?” His eyebrow quirks.
“Yes, okay. You know I love dim sum. But after that, you leave me alone,” I say.
He’s silent for a long moment before he says, “Okay.”
“I actually need some stuff from my room,” I say, hoping to keep my tone on the edge of aggressive and acquiescing.
“Well, let’s go get it.”
“No, it’s actually—I need tampons!” I blurt out. His lips press together, and he stares at me for a long moment, his eyes searching my face.
“Okay, Winter,” he says, taking a single step back. “Get what you need and meet me in the dining room.” He looks at me for another moment before I’m alone in the room with the door left open.
I count to fifty before I head over to my suite. I don’t actually need tampons. I grab my backpack, piling a few days’ clothes, medicines, extra shoes, and toiletries.
I can’t go to my apartment.
I can’t go to Veronica’s house.
I’ll have to go on the run. I shift my shoulder. I’ll find a place to take this tracker out of my back. Then I’ll run. I’ll run and never look back at this godforsaken place.
I’ll never look back at Hunter and August and all I’ve lost.
Hysteria threatens to explode out of me, but I swallow it down.
I look at Kitty as he mirrors the directions my feet move. He whimpers at my obvious distress. Pure madness threatens to overtake my brain, but the truth breaks through. I can’t be on the run with him.
I just can’t. Tears fall in earnest now, my nose clogging.
What the fuck am I doing? Am I really about to do this? Am I really about to leave everyone I love behind?
You never would have been in this position if it weren’t for him.
...Right?
I kneel to Kitty, giving him one final kiss on his smooth head.
“I love you so much, Kitty. You’re a good boy. The greatest boy. But I need you to stay here, okay? You’ll have Ella and Hunter and August here with you, or maybe you’ll live with Auntie Veronica.”
The tears come forth now, the force of my grief burning in my throat .
“But you’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. But I can’t bring you along from here.”
I kiss him again and he whimpers, his cries turning into quick barks.
“Shhh, lovebug,” I say. I pull out a treat from the drawers near his dog bed.
“Here you go,” I whisper, clearing my throat and wiping my tears. I smile at him.
He ambles over to the bed, and I give him the treat.
“Stay,” I command.
His eyes follow me to the door, and he cries when I shut it.
I pull my backpack up on my shoulder and make my way toward the front of the house. All my thoughts are a jumble, weaving in and out. I can’t make sense of anything except I probably should leave.
I should leave.
I need to leave.
I’m in the foyer, almost to the front door, when a short sigh from behind causes me to stop.
“I knew you’d run.”
I take my time turning back around, squaring my shoulders as Hunter looks down at me from his place on the stairs.
“I’m leaving, Hunter. I need to go.” I’d almost believe myself if my throat didn’t burn with the force of holding back tears.
“Why?” he snaps. “I love you, Winter. I shouldn’t have—” He breaks off, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
“I shouldn’t have locked you in the room. That was fucked of me to do.” He visibly swallows. “I should have told you everything earlier, but I was afraid. I was afraid to hurt you. I was afraid of my worst nightmare coming true. The nightmare that we’re standing in right now.”
He starts to pace, and I bite my lip to keep from wailing.
“Winter, what do I have to do to get you to forgive me? Tell me and I’ll do it. Just don’t leave.” He stops his movements, and I’ve never seen a human look so devastated. His face moves through so many emotions—sad, lost, resolved.
“Winter, stay,” he says in a firm voice. The pure strength and determination radiating off him scrambles my synapses and shoots a bolt of desire to my dormant parts.
“Hunter, we can’t do this anymore. We’re hurting each other. It needs to stop.” I say the last part in a whisper. I don’t even believe my words.
I just know that at this point, I’m more broken than ever. Even with all my training, I think I finally cracked.
Adam Collins officially killed me. He won.
“No.” He walks closer to me. His crisp button-down shirt is open at the collar, his tie long gone.
“H. Hunter?—”
“Do you remember what I said that night, Sunbeam?”
He doesn’t have to say which night. I know he’s talking about the night we made love, real love, back at the country club. I close my eyes as tears continue to rush forward. I nod, and a tear drops onto my chest.
“You think you can end this?” he whispers.
Only a foot separates us. I squeeze the strap of my backpack to anchor myself to this moment, and with all the strength I have left in my soul-worn body, I open my eyes and face him.
With every second that passes, his resolve firms in his gaze. He stands taller. Hunter Brigham—the one who is dominant and assured and loving and gentle—is back. And he’s focusing all that energy on saving me. Saving us.
“Even when we are both deep in the ground, dead for centuries, our children’s children will talk about our love. I love you, Winter.” He puts my hand on his chest. His heart races, but his face is like stone.
“H, you know this isn’t healthy.” My lips tremble.
“We’ll get healthy together, my love.” He steps closer, his lips whispering over mine. There is an edge of desperation in his breath. “What we do, we do it together. Your pain, your suffering, is all for me to carry. Your happiness, your joy...you will experience all that again. And because I’m a selfish motherfucker, I want to be there when you do. My soul needs to be right beside you,” he says.
He presses me against his body as if his hands can’t help but trap me close to him. He kisses my neck, pressing his face close to my skin.
In this embrace, I feel like I can breathe for the first time in months.
“Forgive me, Winter,” he whispers, pressing into my neck. He leans back and grabs my face in both of his hands. “Forgive me,” he insists. His embrace is gentle, but his eyes blaze.
I shake my head, and the tears continue to fall, one racing after the other.
“Hunter,” I say. “I don’t know if love is enough.” The words make me nauseous.
“Please,” he whispers. He presses us so close together it’s as if our heartbeats and breaths could merge into one.
“Please, Sunbeam.”
He presses kisses on my closed eyelids, my cheeks, but when he hovers his lips over mine, barely an inch between us as he waits, I say, “Help me, H.”
I release the shuddering breath that I’ve been holding since the moment I looked at Hunter in that diner outside of Asheville. “Help me, H. I’m so, so hurt.”
His lips crash against mine, understanding what I mean, even though I can’t voice it.
We’re all hands, lips, and tongues then. He lifts me, and I wrap my legs around his waist. I bounce a little when he drops me onto the couch across from where I sat all those months ago with Ella.
We’re in the front sitting room where Ella first interviewed me.
This feels like a perfect circle. It’s fitting .
One last time, Winter. One last time.
I rip my sweatshirt off, taking my sports bra with it. My breasts bounce, and Hunter groans when he sees them.
Unbuttoning his shirt all the way, he loses patience and rips the wrists free.
“I need to be inside you again, Sunbeam,” he says, and I almost lose my composure at the cracked way he says the endearment.
“I need you inside me too,” I say. Lust thickens my voice, as does the grief of us ending.
He leans over me, kissing me roughly, and I push my leggings down, and then I’m naked. I reach for his belt buckle, undoing everything in an instant. I drop to my knees.
“Not right now, baby. I’m too angry at you right now to be gentle with your throat.”
I startle. “Angry at me ?” I say with heat.
“Yes, Winter. At you.”
I feel indignation rise, and he pulls me off the floor and folds me over the back of the couch.
He slaps my ass. Hard.
“Hunter!” I say with a gasp. I reject the embarrassment that ekes out as a gush of cum starts to leak out of my poor, neglected pussy.
“You really thought you could end us, Sunbeam?” He rubs circles over my sore cheek. Then he slaps me three more times on the opposite side.
This time, when I say his name, it comes out as a moan.
He chuckles. The sound is as dark and foreboding as the lead up to a jump scare in a horror movie.
“Ending us is impossible.” His voice is as soft as the caress of his hand over my flesh. “Not because you’re trapped. You are free, Sunbeam.” He runs his hand up my back, and I can’t help but arch into his touch. “Ending us is impossible because we were always meant to collide. We’re two parts of the same soul. There is always supposed to be a Hunter and Winter. ”
His words. His words will be my undoing. The story he weaves about our love—I feel it too. My soul knows the refrain.
“Hunter, please. Inside me.” I need the distraction of him filling me, taking me, to complete this. To end this. To shut him out.
“Patience, love,” he says, and I have a memory shoot through me of the night we declared that we would be together forever.
How naive we were.
He reaches down to my weeping pussy and, with both hands, spreads my lips apart. The pure eroticism of the act has me shaking and moaning into the back of the couch.
“God, you are so beautiful. Your pussy is so beautiful. I’ll never get tired of seeing you spread out for me.” He licks me, tonguing my hole, then he licks up to the tight ring of my ass.
“Hunter!” I push my ass back into his face.
“This is my pussy, Winter,” he says in a tone I’ve never heard him take with me.
He slides a long finger into me, and tears leak from my eyes. He reaches another hand up, grasping my throat. When he squeezes, I see stars, and my breaths rasp in and out against the pressure.
“H,” I say through my restricted airway. I get an instant flash of the night Adam took me, but it’s quickly washed away when my senses register Hunter’s warmth. Hunter’s smell. Hunter’s presence radiating from behind me. I don’t feel fear.
I’m caught up in the whirlwind that is everything Hunter Brigham.
“Say it,” he says again, his voice ramping up.
“Say what?” I choke out.
“Say this pussy is mine.”
I hesitate, and he pulls his fingers from me and slaps his hand hard over my clit. I damn near fly off the couch at the move, and he presses his fingers back inside me, rubbing to soothe away the hurt and stoke my desire.
“Say it, Winter. Say, ‘this pussy belongs to you, Hunter.’”
I’m incoherent, overcome with lust and sorrow, which is the only reason I can think of as to why I pledge my body to this man.
“My pussy belongs to you, Hunter,” I pant out. I expect him to slam into me, to fuck me hard into the sofa until we both come. Instead, he moves his hand from my throat and cups his hand over my heart.
“Say, ‘my heart belongs to you, Hunter.’” When his tired voice cracks with the delivery of the words, I let out a choked sob.
I have no problem saying it because it’s true.
“My heart belongs to you, Hunter.”
Forever.
With incomprehensible slowness, he slides the tip of his cock inside me, and the burst of pleasure from his dick rubbing back and forth past the sensitive mouth of my sex has me quaking in seconds.
“I will always take care of you, Winter.”
In and out. So slow. Not enough.
“I will keep you safe. There’s no one I wouldn’t kill just for hurting your feelings.”
In and out, and then he presses so deep his balls kiss my clit. He holds himself there.
“I need more, H.”
“I know what you need, Winter,” he says. His forearms shake as he holds himself up, bracketing my arms on the couch. I rock back and forth, setting my own pace, and he grabs my hip, stilling me.
“ Hunter, ” I whine.
“No, Sunbeam. Because you don’t get it yet.”
And that’s when I get angry because he is the one who doesn’t get it .
I pull myself up and whirl around to sit on the sofa. Then I push him. Hard. He stumbles and goes down to the ground. A glass vase falls off the side table and crashes into shards.
I hover over him, sliding my tongue from the base to the tip of his dick. His head drops back.
“You think I’m safe with you, H?”
His eyes are hard as he focuses on my face.
“Here’s the thing, you macho asshole. I keep myself safe.” I straddle him, taking him in to the hilt in one smooth movement.
I set a furious pace, punishing him, punishing myself, as I slam down on his hips.
“I take care of myself,” I say. A snarl accompanies my words as I roll over top him.
“I saved myself.” My throat burns, seconds from losing it. It being my mind. My soul. My heart.
“Yes, you did, Sunbeam.” His eyes glitter in the darkness.
I can’t look at him.
“I killed him. I stabbed him over and over,” I say through gritted teeth.
“And I’m so proud of you for it, baby.” His voice is harsh, raspy, and when his hands reach for my waist, I slap them away.
“I needed you. I cried out for you. I prayed for you to save me. And you didn’t. ”
A single tear falls from his eye, and I refuse to allow myself to be gutted at the sight.
“I don’t blame you, H. You didn’t do it to me, but you sure as fuck put me in the position to be ruined.” Sobs cause me to shudder as they drag the oxygen from my body between my words. “You and your fucking father and your fucking games that you’re playing into. If you’d just chosen me first, then....”
I want to collapse over him, let him hold me as I utter the truth that has been tearing me apart inside.
“Sunbeam, you know I chose you. I was trying to keep you safe. I was wrong. I’ll never forgive myself for the fact that I was wrong. It will never happen again. I’ll be dead and in the ground before anyone touches you again,” he pledges.
“I don’t know that I can forgive you. I’m scared that I can’t forgive you, Hunter!”
There. The truth is out. The ugly, painful reality that we may be broken beyond repair. Grounded before we could ever take off.
“I’ll never forgive myself, Winter!” he says with just as much energy. He grips my hips, and I let him this time.
“Give me your hate. Give me your anger. Hit me, Winter.”
I slow down slightly as his words stun me. “What?”
“Hit me. Hurt me.” I stare at him, shaking my head. “Fucking make me bleed, goddamnit!” He reaches behind his head, grabbing a shard of glass. “Make it hurt, Winter. Carve me up so I can be scarred—so that I don’t carry this fucked up shit only inside my body. Make it ugly. Make it hurt. Give me some of your pain, baby.” His hand covers mine, and he’s already cut his palm. He bleeds, the dark crimson stark against his tanned hand and my darker skin.
He jerks up, pulling my head down to his lips, and kisses me as if he could pour all of his love, all of his devotion, all that he is inside me through our mouths.
It’s a mindless action when I take the glass and slash across his chest. I wouldn’t have realized I’d done it if he hadn’t pulled in a slight inhale.
“More, Sunbeam. Take it out on me,” he whispers against my mouth. He shifts his body, pressing against the makeshift blade. I cut him again and again. Together, we mark his flesh. When I look at it, I feel a deep, quaking start when I realize I’ve made a crude W in his skin.
He exhales, sighs. “If you need more, take it. I’ll bleed for you, Sunbeam. My heart will bleed for you forever. Whether you walk out that door or you work with me and fight for us. Work for us. ”
We’re still connected but barely moving, just a slight rock back and forth of our most intimate parts. I hold the edge of the glass over his chest again. Our gazes clash, and in his eyes...I see everything. I see the truth. I see his love. I see that he’s just as much a pawn in his father’s fucked-up games as I am. I see his hope.
I drop the glass to the side.
“Forgive me, Winter. It doesn’t have to be today. But please, for the sake of how much love we have for each other, let your heart be open to me. Because you have mine. Completely. Transcendentally.”
I can’t say anything. So I nod my head, the surety of the action settling in my soul.
He sits up fully, pushing a hand in the tight curls at the base of my neck. “Can I make love to you now, Sunbeam?”
I kiss him in reply.
He moves so that my back is flat on the soft rug. Then he’s back inside me. He whispers words of love and commitment as his rock-hard dick drags in and out of my sensitive slit.
He rocks into me with such assurance that everything will be okay, that I come.
I come apart. Fractured. Splintered. His name on my lips is a prayer as I sob and ride the wave of pleasure.
And when Hunter whispers, “It’s okay. We’re home,” as he comes so deeply inside me, I know for the first time that I’m safe to come back together—and we are safe to come back together.