Chapter 16
SIENNA
What a rush!
Just having Zane back already had my life force flooding back, making me feel alive like I haven’t for years.
Making me happy to be alive. But facing down three guys with huge black guns pointed at us and walking right past them, had my adrenaline pumping so hard I felt like my whole body was filled with those raging, crashing ocean waves I used to spend hours just staring at from the porch of my house.
It felt like my feet weren’t even touching the ground as I walked out of the house.
The look on Kurt’s face was priceless. He’s never seen the real me, the wild child, the woman who believed in herself and believed she can do anything.
But that’s who I was. Especially when I was with Zane.
And I can be that confident, strong woman again.
The last cobwebs of my non-existence that gathered while I was in a loveless, abusive marriage with Kurt are now well and truly gone.
And now we’re on Zane’s roaring motorcycle, flying down the oceanside road, his body so solid, so strong, so present and warm in my arms that I just want to scream for joy. And because I can, I do.
The whooshing of the wind swallows my joyful yells and whoops almost immediately. But they feel so good to be out in the world, no longer hidden and locked in some very dark corner of my mind.
The thick clouds rolling in from the ocean have completely obscured the sun now, there’s no more golden sheen on the waves and it’s starting to drizzle.
Zane pulls into a deserted lookout spot at the side of the road and my heart sinks just a little as he dismounts, takes off his helmet, and faces me. He looks so serious, his usually bright eyes a dull grey.
“That was incredibly stupid the way you just walked past those guys,” he says.
I grin at him, channeling the joy that’s still flowing strong in my chest despite the sudden gloom and the doom on his face. “But also very brave?”
A whisper of a grin appears on his lips, and some brightness returns to his face. “Yeah, that too. Truth is, I don’t know how else we’d have gotten out of that mess. Surprise and disorientation were good tactics.”
“Is that what I was doing?” I climb off the bike because I want to be closer to him. Kiss him. Hold him again. “I just wanted to get out of there. With you.”
We’re standing so close even the wind blowing in from the ocean has no chance of getting between us. Nothing does.
I stand on my toes and kiss him. And at first, it’s like kissing a stone statue. But then he grabs the back of my head with one hand, wraps the other around me and kisses me back. With a fiery passion I missed so much I used to cry about it.
The kiss lasts and lasts. Even as the drizzle turns to a downpour, fat raindrops drenching us. The wind is picking up too. But it’s a cleansing thing, washing away all the nastiness and dirt that’s been keeping us apart all these years.
“You always were full of surprises,” he says, pulling back from the kiss just a little. “Disorienting too.”
He kisses me again and I taste the rain on his lips, and the wind, and all the ways we missed each other.
“But it was dumb,” he adds as he pulls away from me again. “I could’ve handled those men.”
“I don’t doubt it at all,” I say smiling widely. “Now let’s get out of this rain. There’s a lovely bed and breakfast just up ahead.”
He shakes his head. “We need to put some distance between your husband and those guys. Where do you want me to drop you off? LA? Or somewhere else?”
My heart sinks like a stone. It literally drops all the way to the pit of my stomach and lodges there, taking most of my joy with it.
“What do you mean? I’m going where you’re going,” I say. “We’re together now.”
The grin on his face is mean. The light in his eyes is even meaner. Even though the raindrops rolling down his face look like tears.
“We’re not together, Sienna. We never will be again. You betrayed me,” he says, the words hitting me like hard rocks. “I’ll get you away from your husband if that’s what you even want, but I won’t be sucked back into you and your lies. Once was bad enough.”
I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to come up with something to say, some way to argue with him, some way to get back all the joy he’s now wiped away like it never was.
I really wish he’d just make up his mind and let me stay.
But I see now that’s it’s going to take a lot more for him to forgive me.
“Let me make it up to you,’ I whisper.
“There’s no going back.”
The finality of his tone feels like a slap. More painful than anything my step-father or husband ever did to me.
I deserve this. I know I do. But knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“I’m going to need a helmet if we’re riding all the way to LA,” I say. “And we need to get out of this rain. At least until the worst of it passes.”
“Fine,” he says. “We’ll stop to get you a helmet. But then we’re going straight to LA. No stops.”
These words and the kisses we just shared absolutely do not go together.
It’s like they’re a part of two different realities.
One in which we are madly, deeply in love and the other where he hates me…
but that’s not quite it. We’re truly madly deeply in love in all possible alternate realities.
Even the ones where this hate he has for me lives.
I’ve always known that and I know it still.
And if he thinks I’ll ever give up trying to make him accept that, he’s got another thing coming. He really should know better. After all, I did just walk past men pointing loaded guns at me.
I will do whatever it takes to win back his love. Because my life’s not worth living without him. If there’s one thing I’m sure of in this life, it’s that.