Chapter 3 #2
"I know." Her eyes are filling. Not spilling over…
just filling, the tears sitting right at the edge, held there by the same force of will that's keeping her standing in front of me instead of running the way she ran before.
"And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Harlan. I know that doesn't fix it.
I know sorry doesn't give you twenty years back. But I am sorry."
"Sorry." I say the word like it's poison. "You're sorry."
My hand comes up. Not to hit. I've never hit a woman in my life and I won't start now, no matter what she's taken from me.
My hand comes up and cups the side of her face, thumb on her cheekbone, fingers in her hair, and the contact is a detonation.
She inhales. Sharp. Her hand comes up to grab my wrist, to pull me away or hold me there, I don't think she knows which.
Her skin is warm under my palm. Her hair is soft between my fingers, and the freckles. God, Presley has these same freckles, my daughter has her mother's freckles, and the fury and the want tangle together into something I can't separate and don't want to.
"I should throw you off this ranch," I say against her mouth. Close enough to feel the words land on her lips. "I should let you walk out that door and never look back. The way you did to me."
"Then do it." Her voice is barely a sound. Her fingers tighten on my wrist. Not pulling away. Holding on. "If that's what you want. Throw me out. But I came here for Presley, and I'm not leaving without my daughter."
"Our daughter."
The word snaps something. In both of us.
I don't know who moves first, but it doesn’t matter.
My mouth is on hers and her hands are in my shirt and years of fury, want, and grief pour out of both of us in a collision that has nothing to do with tenderness and everything to do with punishment.
I kiss her like I hate her, because I do.
Because she lied. Because she took my daughter.
Because she married someone else and let him be the father I should have been.
Because she disappeared and I spent twenty years pretending I didn't care and I cared.
I cared every goddamn day.
She kisses me back like she's been starving.
Like she's been carrying the taste of me in her mouth for two decades and the memory is nothing compared to the reality.
Her hands fist in the front of my shirt and pull, and the buttons give, and her palms are flat against my chest and the touch is gasoline on a fire that's been burning underground since I was in my thirties.
I walk her backward. Three steps to the wall.
Her back hits the plaster and she gasps and I swallow the sound because it belongs to me.
Everything she's given to other people for all these years—the sounds, the gasps, the way her body arches when someone presses her against a flat surface—all of it was mine first.
She was mine first.
“I hate you," she breathes against my mouth, her hazel eyes flashing with that same fire that burned me twenty years ago.
"Good."
"This doesn't fix anything."
"Ask me if I give a damn."
My hands clamp onto her hips, those curvy swells fuller now, rounder, softer—the hips of a woman who's lived, who's carried secrets and lies.
I dig my fingers in deep, bruising the pale skin under her clothes because I need to mark her.
Need proof that she's here, back at my ranch, letting me claim what's mine again.
I want evidence on her skin that I was here.
She yanks at my belt, furious and precise, no bullshit, just raw need driving her fingers.
She's always been like this—direct with her body when her words failed.
Her body never lied. It told me everything her mouth hid.
The buckle clinks open, and she shoves my jeans down, her hand wrapping around my hardening cock, squeezing hard enough to make me grunt.
I hoist her up, her thick thighs locking around my waist, her arms snaking around my neck.
She's trembling, and fuck, so am I, rage and hunger shaking us both.
This is so fucked up.
She betrayed me, vanished for over two decades, and instead of demanding answers, I'm slamming her back against the living room wall, my mouth devouring her neck, sucking hard enough to leave red welts.
But I can't stop.
Her scent hits me—richer now, like expensive spice instead of that cheap vanilla from before, but underneath it's her, that addictive pull I've chased in every pussy I've fucked since she left.
And I need her silent, need her paying for the years she stole from me.
No tenderness here. No savoring the reunion.
This is punishment, a brutal clash of bodies ripping open old scars.
I tear her shirt up, exposing her heavy breasts, nipples already stiff and begging.
I pinch one roughly, twisting until she gasps, then latch on with my teeth, biting down as she arches into me.
She claws at my shirt, ripping it off, her nails raking bloody trails down my back. "Harlan," she moans, wrecked and desperate, her voice mine to break.
I shove her skirt up, fingers finding her soaked panties, ripping them aside to plunge two digits into her dripping pussy.
She's tight, wet, clenching around me like she never left.
"You left me hard and empty for years," I growl against her throat, pumping my fingers faster, thumb grinding her clit. "Now take it back."
She bucks against my hand, her curvy body grinding down, auburn hair wild as she bites my shoulder, drawing blood.
Her free hand strokes my cock roughly, jerking me from base to tip, pre-cum slicking her palm.
I pull my fingers out, slick with her juices, and shove her higher against the wall.
With one thrust, I bury my cock deep inside her, no warning, no easing in.
She cries out, legs tightening, pussy walls gripping me like a vice.
I fuck her hard, slamming up into her with every ounce of pent-up fury, the wall shaking with each brutal drive.
Her breasts bounce against my chest, nipples scraping skin, and she meets me thrust for thrust, nails digging deeper, urging me on.
"Harder," she demands, voice hoarse, hazel eyes locked on mine, full of anger and possession.
I oblige, pounding into her relentlessly, the wet slap of our bodies echoing in the room.
Sweat slicks us, mixing with the metallic tang of blood from her bites.
I grab her ass, spreading her cheeks, fingers teasing her tight hole as I rut deeper, claiming every inch.
She's close—I feel it in the way her pussy flutters, milking my cock. "Come for me, you lying bitch," I snarl, biting her earlobe.
She shatters, screaming my name, walls convulsing around me, juices soaking my balls.
It pushes me over, and I thrust one last time, flooding her with hot cum, marking her inside as mine.
Her back presses against the baseboard, my shirt discarded across the room.
We're both panting like animals, chests heaving, but the fire's not out—it's just banked, waiting to ignite again.
Both of us are breathing like we just ran a mile.
The living room looks like a crime scene—bar cart shifted, a picture frame knocked off the end table, the leather chair shoved sideways from where she stood up.
Marlena has her head back against the wall, eyes closed, hair wrecked, and I can see the marks I left on her throat.
Red.
They'll be purple by morning. Good.
I sit on the floor beside her, not touching.
There’s a foot of space between us that feels like a canyon.
The bourbon glass is on the bar cart, half finished.
The ice has melted.
The house is quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of a horse in the barn.
"This doesn't change anything," I say.
"I know."
"You still lied. You still took her from me."
"I know."
"And I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about it."
She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at me.
The tears she was holding earlier are gone.
What's left is exhaustion and something else—something quiet and resigned, like a woman who just gave herself to a man she wronged and knows it solved nothing but couldn't stop herself any more than he could.
"What do you want me to say, Harlan? That I regret it?
I do. Every day for twenty years I've regretted it.
That I wish I'd told you? I do. That I know sorry isn't enough?
" She pulls her knees up. Wraps her arms around them.
Makes herself small in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the weight of what she's carrying.
"I can give you all of that and it still won't give you those twenty years back. "
"No," I say. "It won't."
Silence. The kind that lives in old houses after something irreversible has happened inside them.
"Where are you staying?" I ask. Flat. Presidential. Like I'm asking a stranger about logistics.
"I don't know. I drove straight here. I don't—" She stops. Regroups. "I'll find a hotel. Or a rental. I'm not leaving Sharp until I know Presley is—"
"Presley stays on the ranch. She's got a job and living quarters. She's doing well, and I'm not punishing her for what you did."
"I'm not asking you to punish her."
"Good."
Another silence.
I stand up and find my shirt.
I put it on even though half the buttons are gone.
She watches me from the floor, and for a second—one second—she looks exactly like the girl in the dive bar.
Sitting on the floor, looking up at me, uncertain and certain at the same time.
I kill the thought before it grows.
"Get a room in town. Come back tomorrow. We're not done talking."
"Harlan—"
"We're not done, Marlena. Not even close. But I can't look at you right now without—" I stop. Because the end of that sentence is either wanting to kill you or wanting to touch you again and I don't know which one is true and the fact that I can't tell the difference is the whole goddamn problem.
"Come back tomorrow," I say again. "And bring everything.
Every document, every record, every photograph of my daughter that I missed.
Every birthday, every school picture, every—" My voice gives out.
I turn away from her so she doesn't see what's on my face.
"I want to see what I missed. All of it. "
I hear her stand, hear her gather herself. The sounds of a woman reassembling her composure out of wreckage.
Keys. Purse. The soft pad of her shoes across my floor.
The screen door opens.
"Harlan."
I don't turn around.
"She's incredible," Marlena says. Quiet. "Presley. She's the best thing I've ever done. And I know you're furious at me, and you have every right to be. But she's incredible, and she's yours."
The screen door closes.
I stand in my living room with the marks of her nails on my back and the taste of her still in my mouth and the ruins of twenty-one years scattered across the floor.
I pour another bourbon, and I drink it alone.