Chapter Forty-Seven
Ayda
The place was a mess, but I’d expected no less. The sheer noise coming from the room had made Deeks sigh and Kenny curse up a storm under his breath. Tate was leaning against the wall, looking pale and completely drained, while I paced like a caged animal.
I’d shrugged off reassurances from both Kenny and Deeks, both of them feeling the need to defend Drew’s actions to me of all people. All the while, the noise in the kitchen raged on, sounding like a tornado had been set loose in the room.
I finally managed to get Deeks to leave and find a place for Tate to sleep, while Kenny stepped out to make a call, check the van and lock it up.
It was only when the silence became piercing that I ventured inside, my hand on the door as I stared at the skeleton on Drew’s back that almost looked like it was breathing with the breaths he was heaving in and out.
I trusted Drew with my life. I knew it the moment I saw it was him on that bike, and though he was volatile and unpredictable, I approached him anyway, not caring what happened to me.
I saw this formidable man with so much strength in him, and I knew what I had to do.
I knew that I had to show what I couldn’t say with words, because what did you say to someone after something like that anyway?
I knocked a pan with the tip of my toe as I reached him, ignoring the metal scream as it coasted over the tile, and pressed my front against his back, my arms sliding around his waist and my cheek resting against the cool leather.
I needed him to understand that I wasn’t upset, that I wasn’t judging him for what had happened in that room, that I understood because I’d tasted that rage myself.
As his breaths slowed, my courage grew, my hand pushing up over his abs to where my palm rested against the hammering muscle in his chest, waiting for it to slow to somewhere closer to normal.
Fear and anger were borderline emotions.
They ran the line of our consciousness and manifested in different ways.
Drew’s came in the form of destruction. He needed to see his rage, watch as it became palpable and tear apart anything that stood in his way.
That night, there wasn’t anything to receive his wrath, but he needed an outlet and Deeks had given it to him, no matter how much he loathed himself for having needed it.
Me? I understood it more than he probably realized.
I’d felt it the day I hit Maisey Sutton in a rage of anger, and if I had to admit it to myself, jealousy.
I wanted her to feel what I was feeling, to feel the darkness I felt when I imagined her with Drew—to feel the hurt she’d caused my brother by keeping Sloane away.
More than anything, though, I needed Drew to understand that I knew he wasn’t perfect and I loved him more for those imperfections.
It was in the van that I realized what I felt about him.
I had an epiphany as he rode ahead of us, his muscles tight from the undirected rage driving him forward.
It seemed like it was an inappropriate time for my head to have a discussion with my heart.
The adrenaline was still flooding my veins and I could barely sit still, but no matter how many turns we took, my eyes sought him out, and I knew.
“Time to let it go,” I finally whispered, turning my head to kiss the patch on his back before resting my other cheek there.
He flinched at first, almost as though the sound of my voice breaking through the quiet had caught him off guard.
The muscles in his chest tightened before his hands reached up to grab my wrists and pull me farther into him.
His breaths were ragged and I knew the words he thought he should be saying were rolling around on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't quite find the traction to push them out.
“Just let the guilt go,” I whispered again.
The warmth from his hands around my wrists and the beating of his heart under my palm had me closing my eyes and breathing him in. There wasn’t so much as daylight between our bodies as I stood there, and I didn’t want there to be. I wanted to be what he needed.
Something must have clicked inside him, because the second I spoke again, his body turned in my grip, his hands reaching up to my face quickly. “They tried to hurt you,” he whispered shakily.
“I can see where you’re going with this,” I said a little louder, my hand sliding back and reaching up to cup his cheeks.
He did it to me all the time to keep my eyes on his, but this time it was my turn to keep his attention on me.
I needed him to see how serious I was. There was no blame, not from me, and there were no regrets.
Drew's head shook slowly as he tried to hide his swallow. “You have no idea where I'm going with this. I've never wanted blood on my hands more than I do right now.”
“I know you do. Believe me, I do. That house was the only thing I had in the world that was worth anything. Every memory of my past was contained in those four walls. Yet, I know that blood will never change that. It will never sate that hunger, and it would take you away from me. I can’t be okay with that, Drew. ”
His eyes fell to my mouth, pausing briefly before they shone back up at me, filled with nothing but sadness and confusion. “Don't ask me to walk away from this.”
“I’m not,” I said, realizing how much I meant it. “I couldn’t do that to you, but I’m asking you to be smart about it, Drew. I…” I sucked in a breath and looked down at my feet. I knew the next sentence was probably one of the most selfish I would utter in my lifetime. “I need you.”
“I'll get you killed,” he whispered softly.
My eyes scrunched together, my hands moving down to cup his neck as the crown of my head fell against his chest. I felt as though my own chest was cracking, my ribs being pried apart.
The words weren’t there yet, but they were on the rails in that direction and I couldn’t, and wouldn’t accept them. “Don’t. Please. I need you, Drew.”
“Your home has been ruined, your brother hurt. There's a difference between need and want. There has to be.” I was almost convinced that he was trying to push me away until I heard the wobble of his voice and the way he was so obviously trying to convince himself more than anyone else around him.
I’d never been much of a crier in my life.
I could count on one hand how many times I’d felt so broken that I just let myself go.
I felt broken in that room, standing there with him.
The thought of having to give him up made that ringing in my head start and the dread pool in my gut until the tears slowly gathered, resting on my eyelids as I tried my hardest not to blink.
Even looking at the floor, I knew once the first tear fell, I wouldn’t be able to stop and the inevitable shake of my body as the sobs broke would give me away.
“Drew…” I sucked in a deeper breath, the sound of the tremble making my thumbs rub the skin of his neck until I threw caution to the wind and looked up, meeting his gaze. “This isn’t about just want anymore. Can’t you see? Can’t you feel it?”
He closed his eyes, taking himself away from me for just a moment, and even that was too much. When he opened them up again, they were filled with unshed emotion, just like mine, and that caused me more pain than anything that was about to pass his lips. “You know I can.”
“Then don’t say what you’re about to say.”
“This isn't the right life for you.”
My hands squeezed his neck. “Do you remember that conversation you and I had about choices?”
“Ayda...”
“I choose you, Drew. I choose you.”
His forehead crashed to mine, his hands taking their place in the back of my hair, his fingers curling inside it, tugging hard enough to pull my face up to his. “Why me? Why now?”
Pushing up on my toes, my legs trembled, but I wouldn’t be deterred.
“Because I love you. Because I have never met a man like you in my life. You make me feel alive, you make me feel beautiful and you give me something to fight for. And now was the moment you chose to show up. I think I would have loved you in any time or place, but this is the time and this is the place, Drew.”
Pulling back, his hands remained in place as his eyes met mine and he gifted me with a new, lost look I'd never seen before. “You love me?”
For some reason, that was the moment the tears chose to break free, the heated weight of them tracking down my cheeks, even as I nodded emphatically.
He was searching my eyes, but I knew what he would see there.
I knew all of the answers he was looking for were so close to the surface I might as well have been wearing my heart as a button on my chest.
“I really do.”
Sliding his hands down to the nape of my neck, he pulled me impossibly closer, and even though his body was moving, his face remained completely still, torturing me as I waited for something.
.. anything. Then I saw it, the slow smile that started to creep on one side of his face as he tilted his head and repeated in a raspy breath. “You love me.”
“How could I not?” I asked, pressing my chest against his.
“Jesus, Hanagan.” Drew worked his fingers and thumbs into the back of my neck, massaging me without even realizing what he was doing as he held my gaze. “We need to work on your choices, sweetheart.”
“Shut up and kiss me, Tucker.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He smirked, right before he closed the distance, his smile disappeared and he melted into my lips.
Drew being Drew, I was waiting for him to make his usual dominant move with every twist and turn of his mouth that sent my mind into another universe, but it never came.
He never pulled away. There wasn't a fiery explosion of need or anything that matched up to the rage he'd shown us all just moments before.
No picking me up and slamming me against a wall or planting my ass on the nearest hard surface.
There was nothing but an eerie stillness in him that I hadn't known he was capable of holding before now.
As soon as his shoulders relaxed and his body sank into mine, it felt like a new, defining moment between the two of us.
He didn’t need to say the words. The gentle but firm way he was holding me, mixed with the passionate way his tongue massaged mine with such tenderness and assurance was more than enough. He was showing rather than saying. He was making everything palpable again. He was being my Drew.
I meant what I said to him. It was said in the heat of the moment, but that didn't make it any less true.
I chose him, and I would choose him every time when faced with this situation.
If someone had asked me six months ago if I could see myself in love with Drew Tucker, I was pretty sure I would have laughed at them.
But back then, I hadn't known the person behind all those walls he’d put up.
Now I did. I knew him and I was smart enough to hold on with both hands, literally and figuratively.
He pulled away from the kiss slowly, his thick, muscular arms circling around my neck and pulling me close where he buried his face in my hair and growled under his breath.
I'd never been so relieved to hear that sound, because for me, it was him coming to the realization that I wasn't going anywhere.
Breathing him in, I relaxed against his chest, my hands hooking around his biceps as I lowered my feet flat to the floor and let him keep me upright. The adrenaline that had been keeping me going was waning, and the safety of being in Drew's arms spoke volumes.
“Please, don't count me out when things get difficult or scary.”
“Please, don't ask me to make promises I don't know I can keep,” he breathed back against me.
“I’m not asking for promises. Just remember, as fragile as I look, I’m tough under that. I’ve had to be. All I’m asking is that you don’t give up on me. I can’t lose you, too.”
Drew didn't answer right away, instead lifting his head away from mine as he carefully brushed my hair back and looked down on me.
The sound of others approaching the door had him looking over me, before he turned back to assess all the damage that surrounded us.
“I'll see what I can do,” he said through a heavy sigh, his eyes darkening as the shame he so obviously felt took over.
I smiled and nodded in agreement. For now that was good enough. I’d bought myself enough time to prove I could handle what was thrown at me. I just had to not think about what I’d lost in that fire and I’d be fine.
Wrapping an arm around his waist and moving to his side, I nodded at the door. It was better we go out there than them come into the kitchen. We needed to come up with some kind of plan, which meant the mess, and the aftermath of it, could wait.