Chapter 55
CHAPTER
FIFTY-FIVE
ELODIE
His fingers gently drag along my spine. We fell asleep last night. No more words were spoken, but that doesn’t mean that Alex’s words didn’t play on a loop inside my head, even as I slept.
My hair is damp still, probably tangled and without a doubt a mess. I don’t think I care, though. I have a feeling I’m probably late for work, too. Luckily, today I don’t have anything that I’ll be under a time constraint on.
“Good morning, beautiful girl,” Coast murmurs against my shoulder.
Turning my head, I open my eyes and look up at him. He’s watching me, and instant embarrassment washes over my skin at the memory of what we did in the shower last night. It was amazing, but I’m not sure I should have liked it.
“Want to talk about Alex?” he asks.
And that’s when my embarrassment instantly fades to shame, rage, and anger. That asshole. Coast shifts closer, and his lips touch the center of my forehead. He reaches beneath my arms and drags me up the bed. I rest my back against the headboard begrudgingly.
“I don’t,” I whisper. “But I need to.”
“No, you don’t,” Coast murmurs.
I feel his hand against the center of my chest. My heart races, slamming against my chest as my gaze searches his. He knows more than I care to admit about my past, about my childhood.
They’re all things I wish I could forget ever happened, and Alex knows that. He also knows that I would do just about anything to ensure that I never, not ever, turn into my mother.
That was the biggest insult he could ever sling at me, and he did it.
“I should.”
“Baby,” he murmurs.
I like it when he calls me baby. I love it when he calls me Elodie, and my world explodes with fireworks when he calls me Haze. So I shut up, and I let him talk. Because he calls me baby, I let him talk.
“The past is fucked up. My sister lived a nightmare, and I couldn’t save her. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t save her. I wanted to, and I lived with that for a long time.”
“I don’t want to be my mother,” I whisper.
He hums. “Judging by what I’ve found out about her, you’re nothing like her.”
“I’m not,” I snap.
His lips twitch into a smirk. “And I’m not my sister. Our relatives’ lives do not mirror our lives. Even if we’re raised by them, or they’re raised with us, we make our own choices and decide our lives. They don’t make them for us anymore.”
His words flow through me. I don’t know if they should, but they do anyway. Pressing my lips together, I roll them a few times as my gaze searches his. I cup his cheek, my thumb sliding across his bottom lip.
“He knew what to say to make it hurt. He doesn’t want you with me.”
“He doesn’t want us involved in whatever that was on the news,” I murmur.
I can’t look away from him. He’s so damn beautiful, his light-brown eyes consume every fiber of my being. I don’t know how the hell he wants anything to do with me, but I’m not going to ask, either.
I don’t want to.
Because if I ask, then maybe he’ll realize he doesn’t actually want me.
“It’s too early for us to talk about weddings and shit,” he murmurs, “but I didn’t wait almost fifty years for you, Haze, to just let you walk away because of a fuckin’ fire.”
I almost laugh, because it’s not just a fucking fire, and he knows that. It’s so much more than just a fire. It’s an event center that I cleaned just a few days ago. It burned down, and I think I should get some answers to that.
“Just a fire?” I ask.
He arches a brow, his gaze searching mine. I watch as his lips twitch into a smirk. “Babe,” he murmurs. My nose scrunches at that. I don’t think I like babe so much. I like baby, Haze, and Elodie. I don’t care for babe.
“Just a fire,” he murmurs. “You’re committed?” he asks. “You’re my old lady.”
My nose scrunches up again at the sound of those two words—old lady. I don’t want to be that at all, but he doesn’t say it in a way where it’s a bad thing. In fact, it almost seems as if it’s some kind of endearment. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“Old lady?” I ask.
He chuckles. “It’s what we call our women. You would be like a wife to me as far as the club was concerned, more than a girlfriend.”
His hand wraps around the front of my throat, my eyes slide closed as his thumb makes firm circles there, and my belly dips at the touch. I want those circles from that thumb to circle my clit.
“Then I guess yes, I’m committed,” I exhale.
My thighs press together, clenching tightly as I try to calm myself down. I don’t think there is any calm happening in my life right now, though. I feel the exact opposite of calm. I’m a bundle of pent-up energy, and I only know one way to get it out.
“Yeah?” he asks. “You gonna be my old lady and wear my mark?”
“Your mark?” I ask.
He hums, leaning forward, his fingers still around my throat as his lips brush across mine. “My mark, Haze.”
I don’t know what that means, and he’s not explaining it to me. Sucking in a breath, I break the kiss, shifting back slightly, my head gently hitting the headboard with a thud. My gaze searches his as I wait for him to tell me what exactly I’m agreeing to.
“A tattoo. My name.”
“Coast?” I ask on a hiss.
I’ve never imagined myself getting a tattoo of any kind before, and now he’s telling me that I’m going to get one with his name on it. He must be completely fucking insane. But as I look into his eyes, I realize that I would get a tattoo with his name. I would do just about anything for him.
“I’ll be your old lady. I’ll get your tattoo. Are you going to tell me what is going on with the fire?” I demand softly.
I don’t think demanding anything loudly would go over well when it comes to Coast. I have a feeling that he’d have something to say about that, and I would not like it in the slightest. So I take the soft approach and wait for him to answer me.
Thankfully, he does.