Chapter Twelve #2
The same hands that touched her waist in an alley and stopped.
“The kid,” she says.
I go still.
“August gets to you,” she says. “I see it. Everyone sees it. You act like he annoys you, but when he asks if doors lock, your face changes. When he talks about Jeremy, you look like you want to kill someone.”
“I usually do.”
“No.” Her eyes lift to mine. “Different.”
I let out a breath that feels like it has rust on it.
Of course she sees that.
Women with bruises know how to read a room. That is the part men like Jeremy never understand. They think fear makes women stupid. It doesn’t. It makes them observant as hell.
“I had a mom,” I say.
Amelia’s mouth curves faintly, confused. “Most people do.”
“Mine was pretty when she wanted to be. Mean when she was scared. Funny when she was sober. In love with love the way some women are in love with poison because at least poison pays attention while it kills you.”
Her expression shifts.
She sets her unopened beer down.
“She had men,” I say. “Always. Some stayed a week. Some stayed a year. Some bought me ice cream and stole from her purse. Some bought her flowers and put holes in the walls. Some were fine. Some weren’t. The bad ones all had the same smell.”
“What smell?”
“Too much cologne over rot.”
She swallows.
I ain’t looking at her anymore. I’m looking at the window over the sink, at the dark reflection of my own face. I look older in it. Meaner. Like the man those bastards probably thought I would become.
“There was one named Ray,” I say. “Big talker. Worked construction when he felt like it. Drank bourbon like rent was paid in empty bottles. He called me boy like it was an insult.”
My fingers tighten on the sink.
“I was nine when he moved in. Ten when I started sleeping outside my mother’s bedroom door with a baseball bat.”
Amelia makes a small sound.
I keep going before I lose the nerve.
“It was a cheap aluminum bat from a yard sale. Had a dent in it. Grip tape peeling off. I thought if I held it right, I could stop him if he came out mad. Stupid kid shit.”
“It wasn’t stupid.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No.” Her voice gets sharp. “It wasn’t.”
I glance at her.
Her face is pale. Angry. Not at me.
For me.
I look away again because that is harder than pity.
“First time I swung it, I missed,” I say. “Ray didn’t. Threw me into a coffee table. Broke two ribs. My mother screamed at him, then screamed at me. Not because she didn’t love me. Because loving me meant she had to make a choice, and she was too scared to choose right.”
The kitchen goes silent except for the refrigerator hum.
“What happened?” Amelia asks.
“She sent me to my aunt’s for a while. Said it was safer.”
“For you?”
“For everybody, probably.” My mouth twists. “I came back three months later. Ray was gone. Another man was there by Christmas.”
Her eyes shine now. I hate that too. Not enough to stop.
“I quit sleeping outside doors after that.”
“Why?”
“Because I learned a door don’t mean much if nobody on the other side is willing to open it for you.”
The words sit between us.
Amelia steps closer, then stops herself like she is afraid of spooking me now.
Funny.
Maybe we are both skittish animals tonight.
“Then when I was thirteen, a man hit my mom too hard. Put her in the ground. He got life. I got life without my mom. Wished I’d not missed.”
“You were a child,” she says.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice trembles with anger. “You say it like you were already supposed to be a man.”
That hits.
Hard.
Right under the ribs Ray broke twenty-something years ago.
I turn to face her. “I was the only man in the house some nights.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You were the boy in the house. The adults failed you.”
My jaw locks.
Those words should not matter. They do. They land somewhere deep, somewhere I thought I had paved over with motorcycle oil, club loyalty, and enough violence to scare most memories quiet.
The adults failed you.
Not you failed. Not you missed. Not you were too small to swing right.
The adults failed you.
I look at her, and she looks back with tears in her eyes like she would fight a dead man and a scared mother and time itself if it gave that boy a different night.
Don’t look at me like that, Amelia. Like I’m not ruined in all the places I know I am. Like some part of me can still be handled without gloves.
I push away from the sink. “That’s enough.”
She doesn’t flinch.
Good.
Bad.
I don’t know anymore.
“No, it isn’t,” she says.
My eyes narrow. “Careful.”
“Why? Because you told me something true and now you want to scare me back a few feet?”
I laugh once, low and mean because she has me nailed to the wall. “You got bold after one dance and some experimental cornbread.”
“I got tired.”
That stops me.
Her voice drops. “I got tired of men bleeding in front of me and calling it strength.”
The kitchen feels too small.
She is too close now, though she has barely moved.
Or maybe I’m the one who stepped closer without noticing.
There are only a few feet between us. The stove light paints her skin gold.
Her hair falls over one shoulder. She has changed out of the green top into an old T-shirt she found in her bag, soft and thin from wear. No bra, if I’m guessing right.
I’m definitely guessing right.
My eyes know it. My blood knows it. I force my gaze back to her face. She notices. Her breath changes.
Not fear.
Not exactly.
Heat and nerves and the terrible knowledge that we are alone in a kitchen while her kid sleeps down the hall and the whole damn world waits outside to break us.
“You should go to bed,” I say.
“Probably.”
“You don’t sound like you’re going.”
“I’m not.”
My hands curl at my sides.
“Amelia.”
“I don’t want to talk about tomorrow.”
“Good. Tomorrow’s a bastard.”
“I don’t want to talk about Jeremy.”
“Better. Another bastard.”
“I don’t want to talk about Sophie and Legend or fathers or secrets or Pearly Gates.” She takes one step closer. “I want one thing tonight that doesn’t belong to any of them.”
My whole body goes still.
The air between us turns electric.
“Think hard before you say that to me,” I warn.
“I have been thinking.”
“Not enough.”
“Too much.”
Her eyes drop to my mouth.
I feel that look like hands.
“Amelia.”
“I know now,” she says.
My chest tightens. “Know what?”
“That this part isn’t pretend.”
Hell.
Hell and every fire under it.
She closes the last bit of space and touches my chest with both hands.
I stop breathing.
Her palms are light at first. Testing. Her fingers curl into my shirt like they did in the alley. Only tonight there is no bourbon to blame. No crowd. No Ruthanne. No performance. No need to make anybody believe a lie.
Just her.
Choosing.
My voice comes out rough. “You sure?”
“No.”
I freeze.
She looks up at me, honest and shaking. “I’m not sure about anything except that I want to kiss you, and I want to be the one who decides that. Is that enough?”
It should not be.
It is.
Because wanting and deciding are the two things Jeremy tried to take from her.
Because I ain’t that man.
Because if she is brave enough to ask messy, I can be decent enough to answer clean.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s enough.”
She rises on her toes and kisses me.
For one second, I don’t move.
Not because I don’t want it.
Because I want it so damn much I have to make sure I don’t turn into a flood and drown her.
Her mouth presses to mine, soft at first. Careful. Almost questioning.
Then I kiss her back.
And careful goes to hell.
She makes a sound into my mouth, small and shocked, and the leash inside me snaps tight enough to hurt.
I grip the counter behind her instead of her body.
Wood digs into my palms. My mouth moves over hers, taking the kiss deeper, hotter, but I keep my hands off because if I touch her wrong, too fast, too hungry, I may never forgive myself.
She doesn’t appreciate my restraint.
Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, onto the back of my head, and she pulls.
Christ.
My control nearly dies right there on the kitchen tile.
I groan against her mouth, and she answers with a shaky little gasp that goes straight through me.
I catch her waist.
Just her waist.
Both hands.
She melts forward like she has been waiting for permission from her own body, and now that she has it, she doesn’t know where to put all the wanting.
I do.
Against me.
I pull her in.
Not hard enough to scare.
Hard enough to make the truth obvious.
The being my hard cock.
She feels it.
All of it.
The way I want her.
The way one kiss has me half-crazed.
The way there is nothing fake in the thick ridge pressing against her belly.
She breaks the kiss with a gasp, eyes wide.
I go still immediately. “Too much?”
Her face is flushed. Lips wet. Hair messy from my fingers even though I don’t remember putting them there.
“No,” she whispers.
That one word almost finishes me.
Then she kisses me again.
Not careful this time.
No hesitation. No question.
She kisses like a woman who has spent years being touched wrong and finally wants to find out what her own hunger feels like when it ain’t punished for existing.
It’s messy.
Hot.
Desperate.
Her teeth catch my lower lip. I hiss. She pulls back.
“Sorry.”
“Do it again.”
Her eyes flare.
Then she does.
I lose the fight with my hands.
They slide from her waist to her hips, gripping, learning the shape of her through soft cotton and denim. She is warm and curved and real under my palms. A thousand filthy thoughts hit me at once, all of them bad, all of them mine, all of them kneeling at the same altar.
Her.
Bent over my kitchen counter.
Spread across my bed.
Mouth swollen from mine.
Voice saying my name like it’s something she chose instead of something she fears.
I turn us, walking her back until her hips hit the counter. She gasps, and I stop.
Her fingers tighten on the back of my neck. “Don’t stop.”
“Bossy.”
“I’m trying it.”
A laugh breaks out of me, rough and stunned.