Chapter Seventeen #2
When I pull into the driveway, my house is lit from inside.
Truck is there.
Amelia’s truck.
Porch light on.
Curtains crooked.
A small shadow moves behind the front window.
For one stupid second, everything in me calms.
Then I remember I’m coming home with blood on my hands.
I kill Widowmaker and sit there for half a breath, staring at the door.
Oaks pulls in behind me but doesn’t get out. He waits. Gives me space. Maybe because Legend told him to. Maybe because he knows if one more man gives me advice tonight, I may start biting.
I climb off the bike.
The door opens before I reach the porch.
August comes out first.
He stops when he sees me.
Not because of the blood. Not all of it, anyway.
Because kids can feel when adults bring storm inside their skin.
I crouch.
No joke.
No grin.
No pretending.
“I’m back, kid.”
He runs.
Hits me hard enough to knock air from my lungs.
I catch him with one arm because my other hand is swollen and throbbing. He wraps around my neck and holds tight.
Too tight.
Or maybe not tight enough.
“You went to jail,” he says against my shoulder.
“Yeah.”
“Because of Jeremy?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hit him?”
Amelia is in the doorway now.
Pale.
Still.
Her eyes on me like she already knows the answer and hates that part of her wants it too.
I set August back enough to see his face. “Yeah.”
His little jaw sets. “Good.”
That word should not come from him.
Not about blood.
Not about violence.
Not because of me.
Something twists in my chest so hard I almost lose my grip.
Amelia closes her eyes for one second.
There it is.
The damage.
Not from the hit.
From the lesson.
I swallow. “It wasn’t good.”
August frowns.
“It felt good,” I admit. “That ain’t the same.”
He studies me with serious little eyes.
I don’t know if he understands.
Maybe he will later.
Maybe that is worse.
Lottie appears behind Amelia, her face unreadable. “Come on, sugar. Janie’s got cartoons queued up.”
August hesitates. “Derby’s staying?”
I look at Amelia.
She looks at me.
“Yes,” she says softly. “He’s staying.”
The word hooks into me.
August lets Lottie take him.
The door closes halfway after they go inside, leaving Amelia and me on the porch with rain smell, porch light, and every wrong thing waiting between us.
Her eyes drop to my hands.
“Your hands.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That isn’t the point.”
I almost smile because she said the same thing last night. Or this morning. Time has turned weird since a dinosaur became a threat.
She comes down one step and reaches for my wrist.
I let her.
Her fingers are warm. Gentle. She turns my hand palm up, and I watch her look at the split knuckles, the dried blood, the bruising already rising.
Some of it’s mine.
Most of it’s Jeremy’s.
Her mouth trembles.
“I told you he wanted this.”
“Yeah.”
“You did it anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he said he plans to take August from you.”
Her face changes.
There it is.
That dark flash.
The one she tries to hide because good mothers are supposed to want justice clean and legal and safe. But I saw it. The same part of her that said Jeremy cheated court. The part that knows not every monster stops because a judge asks nicely.
“He said that?” she whispers.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes fill.
I expect fear.
I get fury.
For one second, Amelia looks like she could walk to Paradise herself and finish what I started.
Then she blinks, and the fury folds back under grief.
“You can’t put yourself in trouble like that,” she says.
“I’m already in trouble.”
“Not like this.”
“No. Not like this.” I step closer. “But don’t stand there thinking you brought trouble to my door and I was innocent before you.”
She looks up.
“My hands weren’t clean before you, Amelia.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Not all the way.”
“I don’t want blood on them for me.”
“Then don’t look too close at what was already there.”
That hurts her.
I see it.
I hate that I said it.
I’m still too full of rage and jail and Jeremy’s smile to soften anything right.
She releases my wrist. “That’s not fair.”
“No.”
The front door opens wider, and Lottie looks between us. “You two going to bleed feelings on the porch all night or come in before the neighbors learn to read lips?”
I glare at her. “What neighbors?”
“Exactly. Get inside.”
Lottie leaves not long after.
She says she is heading out and tells Amelia to straighten up before bed. I don’t know what the hell that means, but Amelia goes strange when she hears it. Only for a second. A flicker. Then gone.
I’m too tired to chase it.
Too wired not to notice.
Janie takes August to the small room I cleared earlier, the one that used to be full of parts. I moved enough pieces to the garage to fit a spare mattress because August kept asking if Derby’s house had another cave. Apparently now it does.
Janie says she will sit with him until he falls asleep. Lottie says she will check back in the morning. Oaks waits outside until she pulls away, then leaves too after giving me a look that says he knows I ain’t okay and is smart enough not to say it.
Then the house is quiet.
Just me and Amelia in my kitchen.
Me at my own table.
My hands in her lap.
She cleans my knuckles with a tenderness that should make me feel better and instead makes me want to tear through my own skin.
Because she is too soft.
Not weak soft.
Good soft.
The kind that makes a man understand exactly how unworthy he is while still wanting to crawl closer.
She dabs antiseptic over a split, and I hiss.
“Baby,” she mutters.
My eyes snap to her face.
She freezes.
So do I.
She did not mean it like that. Maybe. Maybe she did. Maybe it just slipped out because she is tired and scared and I’m bleeding on the kitchen towel.
Her cheeks turn pink.
Not the time.
My body disagrees.
My body is a bastard.
“Sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t.”
She looks up.
“Don’t apologize for that.”
Her throat moves.
The room changes.
I feel it before she leans in.
Before her fingers tighten around my wrist.
Before her eyes drop to my mouth.
I should stop this.
She is scared. I’m half-feral. Jeremy has poisoned the whole day. August is asleep in the next room. Lottie just left, and something about her leaving feels off even if I can’t name it.
I should ask questions.
Instead, Amelia lifts my bandaged hand and kisses the gauze over my knuckles.
My brain goes white.
“Amelia.”
“I don’t want to talk anymore.”
Her voice is too soft.
Too thick.
There is something underneath it I can’t read.
I should read it.
I don’t.
She looks up at me, and all I can see is the woman who chose me on the counter, the woman who asked me to kiss her while she was scared for reasons that weren’t me, the woman who stood in my kitchen with keys in her hand and came back.
My woman.
No.
Not mine.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
But tonight she is looking at me like she wants to be.
“You’re shaking,” I say.
“I know.”
“Scared?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
“Of what happens after?”
Her eyes flicker.
There.
Something.
“Yes,” she says.
I lean back slightly. “Then we stop.”
“No.” Her hand tightens on mine. “I don’t want to stop.”
“Want and fear are both loud right now.”
“I know.”
“Then I need you clear.”
Her eyes shine.
“I’m clear.”
I don’t believe her enough.
Or maybe I believe her and that’s the problem.
“Amelia.”
She stands, moving between my knees before I can stop her. Her hands go to my chest. I can feel the tremor in her fingers through my shirt.
“I want one night that is mine,” she whispers. “No Jeremy. No jail. No club. No court. No fear making the decision. Me.”
The words sink in deep.
Me.
That’s what she is asking for.
Not rescue. Not distraction. Not a man taking what she is too wounded to name.
Herself.
My voice comes rough. “You got me.”
That almost breaks her.
I see it.
Her face crumples for half a second, then she kisses me like she is trying to stop herself from crying with her mouth.
I should go slow.
I try.
For about one breath.
Then she makes a sound, and my hand goes to her waist, and the chair scrapes back hard enough to hit the wall. She doesn’t flinch. She steps closer, thighs pressing between mine, hands sliding up my chest, over my shoulders, to the back of my neck.
She pulls.
My control burns.
“Careful,” I warn against her mouth.
“I don’t want careful tonight.”
Every muscle in my body locks.
I pull back enough to see her face. “You sure?”
Her lips are swollen already. Her eyes are wet but steady.
“No,” she says. “But I want real.”
Christ.
That answer is better than yes.
Messier. Truer. Hers.
I cup her face with both hands, knuckles screaming under the bandages. “Tell me yes when you mean yes. Tell me no and I stop breathing before I keep going.”
Her breath shivers.
“Yes.”
I stand and kiss her hard.
She wraps around me like she has been waiting all day to come apart and finally found the place. My hands go to her hips, pulling her flush against my cock. She gasps when she feels me, and I swallow the sound because if I hear too much of it, I will lose my mind on this kitchen floor.
I lift her onto the table.
She laughs once, startled and breathless. “The table?”
“Closer than the bed.”
“Romantic.”
“I’m bleeding and recently incarcerated. Adjust expectations.”
She kisses me again, and that is answer enough.
My hands slide up her sides, over the soft cotton of her shirt. I pause at her ribs.
“Still yes?”
“Yes.”
I push the shirt up.
Not off yet.
Just enough to touch skin.
Warm.
Soft.
Alive under my hands.
She arches into the touch like she forgot her body could ask for something without being ashamed. That movement nearly kills me. I lower my mouth to her neck, and she grabs my shoulders, nails digging in through my shirt.
“Derby.”
My name sounds intoxicating.
Good.
I want her drunk on me.
I want Jeremy’s name burned out of every place he left it. I want her body to learn a new language, one made of yes and stop and more and mine only if she says it first.