by Piper Lawson
Her half laugh eases the ache in my gut.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she murmurs, and my chest cracks.
“Me too. I’m sorry I’m late.” The breath trembles from my lips, and I stare through the darkness around us, the breeze whipping through my wet shirt. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”
Before she can respond, a light cuts though the darkness from the direction of the sea.
“Let us know how she’s doing,” Jax says at our door, the mask of concern and exhaustion on his face probably matching mine.
I nod as he and Haley turn to leave. At first it seems Jax might not be willing to go, but his wife catches his gaze, and they communicate without words. I pull the door closed as I step back into our villa.
It’s been a long-as-hell day. After the boat with Jax, Haley, and our friends arrived and took us back to the resort, the staff doting and worried, we had a doctor check out Annie’s ankle. He confirmed it’s not sprained or broken, but she’s likely to develop an impressive bruise.
Now it’s after midnight, and we’re finally alone.
“How’s it feel?” I ask as I cross back to the living room.
Annie’s in the middle of the couch, her leg elevated in the same position as when she hobbled in fifteen minutes ago.
Her face tips up, the lamp in the corner casting a soft glow over her pale skin as her eyes widen. “Terrible. I sprained my wrist falling during rehearsals for the show last year, but this feels worse.”
I shift onto the couch next to her, brushing the hair behind her ear, and my lips curve.
She frowns. “Why’re you smiling?”
I cut a look toward the clock on the wall. “Because we’re getting married today.”
Her expression softens, those amber eyes warming.
“Did you finish the deal?” she asks softly.
I bend over to her bare feet, running my thumb along her arch and brushing off the sand that stuck there after she took off her sandals at the door.
“No.” My hands move up to the swollen ankle that was wearing an ice pack until a few minutes ago. “Our exclusivity expired tonight, but it doesn’t matter.” I skim up her calves, the hem of the wet dress.
I work the dress up around her hips, one tiny fraction of an inch at a time, while she sits there, watching me. Her fingers find my jaw, stroking.
She starts to rise, and I shake my head. “Sit.”
I reach behind her to the zipper, my gaze on her lap while I work it down. The zipper reaches the bottom, and I slowly tug the dress up over her ribs. She lifts her arms, and I draw it over her shoulders and head, carefully moving her hair when it catches.
“I’m sorry about Wicked.”
I fold the fabric and set it on the end of the couch. Underneath, she’s wearing a simple bra and panties that match her skin. I reach back for the clasp and unfasten it.
Annie’s gaze is heavy on me, and I feel her emotion from here. It radiates off her in waves, the love, the reluctance. I hate that I’ve made her question her feelings for me or mine for her.
She’s the greatest treasure I’ve ever found, the person who made me believe in dreams. Each time we were separated was a wound that never quite closed. Remembering is painful, but it’s right.
“I won’t regret losing Wicked. Not like I’d regret losing you.”
I finish removing her bra. Then I work her panties down her hips. I lay both on top of the dress.
I don’t linger on her skin, how beautiful she is. The hint of dampness turning into a chill is my concern now.
“You can’t lose me. I’m part of you, like you’re part of me.” Her low voice strokes along my skin, reminding me so much of the words I said to Beck on the plane.
But then I took her for granted. I won’t again.
I will spend my life making this up to her. No expense will be too great. Anything this woman wants, she will fucking get.
Before she even asks me, it’s hers.
She reaches for my hair, threads her fingers through it, and lifts my face to meet her gaze. What I find there humbles me.
No amount of adoration from fans, no success, can compare to the love in her eyes.
“You’d love me like this if I was still playing studio gigs and struggling to pay the rent, wouldn’t you?”
“Every bit as much. And we’d have more time for making Rice Krispies squares.”
I reach under her and lift her into my arms. She grabs for my neck in surprise as I carry her to the bathroom.
The huge rain shower is cold, and I step inside to turn on the water and adjust the temperature until it’s warm enough to steam.
“You’re still dressed,” she protests as I help her step inside.
“It’s fine.”
I wash her, warm her, my hands careful and patient on every inch of her as if all we have is this moment.
Because we do.
When my gaze meets hers as I wash her back, there’s understanding in it and a little awe.
I need to do this for her. To be here for her in every way, like I haven’t been.
She reaches for my shirt buttons, but I brush away her hand.
“Stop,” she murmurs.
I ignore her, continuing my task.
Until she speaks again, her voice commanding enough to make me still. “Tyler. Stop it.”
23
All I wanted was a weekend with our friends and family on an island where Tyler and I could tie the knot in peaceful bliss. I pictured walks on the beach, romantic dinners, couples’ massages. Instead, I’d found myself staggering up a beach alone, the rapidly fading sun at my back as I called after a bird as if he knew his own name.
It was dark for a while, but when light cut through the blackness, I nearly sobbed in relief. Tyler was there.
But now that we’re back in our villa safe and sound, something’s still wrong.
“Stop it,” I say again, pushing away his hands.
Since the second he found me, he hasn’t strayed an inch. It’s as if he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he stops watching me, stops touching me.
“This? What you’re doing right now? I don’t want it,” I tell him.
His hands fall to his sides. His clothes are damp from the ocean and from the shower. They cling to every inch of his hard body, the normally proud shoulders slumped. Even in defeat, the man I love is strong and stoic. Tyler’s throat bobs, and the emotions fighting behind his eyes make me go on.
“I don’t want your guilt,” I murmur.
My ankle throbs, but I ignore it as I reach for the buttons on his shirt, unfastening the first. My fingers slip a little, and it takes a second before the fastening gives and I move on. The next button is easier. The third is the same.
“I want your love.”
His eyes soften, and the breath that escapes his tense chest wavers at the edges.
When I’m finished unfastening all of them, I spread the shirt wide, pressing a hand against his chest, dark with swirls of ink. My palm lies over his heart as if that’s where it’s meant to be.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”
Tyler’s throat works, his eyes shining with emotion. He covers my hand with his. “I will be here for you. I’ll swear it tomorrow, but I want to swear it tonight.”
His words, the low voice, make me tremble. But not with weakness. With conviction.
“I don’t need you to be here for me,” I murmur. “I need you to be here for us. I love watching you create music, and teach, and find your way in the world. But I love you most when you’re here with me.”
Tyler’s thumb strokes the back of my hand. “I want to give you and our children the things you deserve because it’s easy to lose everything in a heartbeat.”
My gaze drops to his chest. “We haven’t yet. And if we do, we’ll figure it out.”
I lace my fingers through his scarred hand. “We always do. Growing up, I dreamed of being on stage. But mostly, I dreamed of finding somewher
e I belonged. I dreamed of you. You’re my home.”
Water runs down his nose and jaw as my hands skim up to cup his face.
He’s had to be hard, the man I love. Even as a boy, he had to do things to take care of the few people who broke through his walls.
No more.
We undress him together. The tension that’s always between us is beneath the surface, but for once it’s content to simmer there.
When we’re both warm, he turns off the water and we towel off. He carries me out into the bedroom but doesn’t pause there.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“You wanted to see the stars.”
He kicks open the patio door and crosses the stone before setting me on the double-wide chaise lounger and returning to the bedroom to grab a light blanket. Tyler slides in next to me, not hesitating before pulling my body against his.
My forehead rests in the hollow of his chest, and I breathe him in.
“The first time I slept next to you,” he murmurs against my hair, his touch stroking down my back, “it felt so fucking right. Nothing in my life ever felt as good as holding you in my arms.”
My heart melts. I love him with everything in me.
“I wanted it forever, and I was rocked with the possibility I couldn’t have that. It made me keep my guard up, even when we were friends.”
I snuggle closer, tracing a finger over the lines of his tattoos. The ship, the compass, the rose.
His lips brush my ear, sending shivers down my spine. “When I thought I might have lost you, I was gutted. I thought I was fucking smarter than that by now. Because if you haven’t figured it out… you’re it. You’re everything. Where I’m going. How I fight to get there. The reason I try.”
We lie like that for a breath. Two. Ten.
The darkness surrounding us feels warm, instead of earlier at the cove, when it was cold.
“They’re always there, even when you can’t see them,” he murmurs. “I used to tell myself that when we were apart. That you were looking up at those same damn stars as me. I didn’t know, so I had to believe.”
“Now you know it’s true because we’re together.”
I used to lie on the patio at home and wait for the sun to come up. It would warm the stones while I lay there, sending prickles and tingles through my body in a gradual awareness that eventually had me sighing in pleasure.
Now, Tyler’s cedar scent invades my senses, and I drink him in. My hands graze across his pecs, carved from hours of the physical work of being a musician.
I sense the moment he feels it too.
“Annie…”
“Shhh.” I press my finger to his lips. In the shadows, his handsome face is a dark outline.
I’ve wanted him my entire life, but the past week has been torture. A never-ending ache just below the surface of my skin. The need for completion, for absolution only he can provide.
We don’t need light. It’s inside us. Between us.
I lift my mouth to his. I kiss him with everything I am and everything I have—with acceptance, forgiveness, love.
Tyler stiffens a moment as my lips wander, my tongue brushing.
I’m asking him a question I already know the answer to, asking him to want me.
Except he surprises me once again.
Tyler rolls me on top, and my breath catches at the sudden shift. He presses up on his elbows, kissing me back.
Yes.
It feels so damn right.
Here with him, halfway across the world, he’s my family, my future. The commitment I’ve made, the one I will make again.
I trust him to the end of this world and the next.
“Six…” He brushes my cheeks with his thumbs. “What the fuck did I do to deserve you?”
His hands skim down my sides, reverently touching the same places he touched in the shower. This time, his fingers linger. He wants me, and I feel it. He’s still holding himself back, his pace steady even as his body hardens under mine.
I let him kiss me and touch me, treat me as if I’m precious.
But it’s not what I want.
“Every time you open your eyes, you deserve me,” I whisper. “Every time you take a breath. Now show me what you’d do if you believed it.”
He stills a moment, then his hand sinks into my hair and he draws me against him, groaning. My hips writhe over his, seeking out friction. He’s slick between my thighs because I’m slick, and my head swims at the idea of feeling him inside me.
I try to slip down onto him, and his fingers dig into my legs, holding me off him.
“Not yet,” he murmurs, flipping us.
His mouth moves down my body, over my breasts, sucking my nipples until I’m writhing, over my stomach and my thighs, down my calves.
“You’re enjoying the stargazing too much?” I tease breathlessly.
“Nah. Let them envy us for a change.”
He swallows my laugh as he presses inside me. The moment he does, my humor is eclipsed by something bigger, more profound.
Being connected to him like this, face-to-face, chest to chest, him as deep in me as he’ll go, is the closest I’ve felt to another person. We’re so different and so similar, and the contrast is the most fucking exquisite thing I’ve ever experienced.
My breath mingles with his as his hips pin mine. He rocks inside me, each stroke a chord he’s devoting himself to, part of a song he’s been writing forever. One I’d trade eternity to listen to.
I want to draw it out. I need to. But the dreamy haze has its own mind, and it drags me toward a crest I can’t fight off. Not even when I wrench my mouth from Tyler’s, our lips brushing as we gasp.
“I’m close,” I whisper, and his half laugh in the dark makes my heart explode.
“I know.”
I know.
He knows me. He knows my body, my mind, my heart. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s that thought that has me crying out, arching shamelessly against him as if I can draw out every sensation between us, make it a little brighter, a little bolder, a little longer.
He stills inside me, his shoulders flexing, his ass clenching under my calves wrapped around his hips. When he says my name in that beautiful, raw voice, it sends me spinning.
I lock my limbs around him as we tremble together. It’s an ode to us.
To yesterday, to today, to always.
24
The Wedding Day
I wake before dawn.
Tyler’s still wrapped around me, and for the first time since we arrived, I’m awake and he’s still here.
It takes until I shift off the chaise to notice the pain in my ankle has gone down. I carefully put weight on it, pleased that it can bear almost all of me, and go to get dressed.
Excitement shivers through me as I leave the villa, pulling the door quietly shut, and head to the beach behind our villa, needing a moment to myself.
The sunrise turns the sky soft pinks and golds.
It’s early, and today is my wedding day.
The anticipation has my lungs nearly bursting. I can’t believe it’s here.
A man in black is walking barefoot down the beach, but otherwise it’s deserted.
A spike of pain shoots up my foot—not my ankle, I realize when I curse and drop to my knee. Just a shell in the sand, scratching enough to leave a tiny white line on the side of my big toe, next to my pedicure.
“You’re up early,” a rough, masculine voice says.
Harrison King is standing over me, wearing black shorts and nothing else save a faint sheen of sweat as if he’s been out for a run. The casual dress contrasts with his perfect cropped hair. His bone structure looks as if it could cut more than the shell I stepped on.
“So are you.”
He holds out a hand, and I take it, rising gingerly.
Whatever he does for fitness, he does it with admirable dedication. You don’t get in that kind of shape without rigor.
My gaze dro
ps to an outline across his pec—not a tattoo, but a scar. He clears his throat, and I force my attention up.
“I heard about your adventures last night,” he says. “Admittedly, I’m surprised Tyler pulled out of the acquisition. The man has resolve.”
I start along the beach, the sand spreading my toes, and he falls into step next to me. “I’m sorry he lost the deal, but I’m relieved there will be no more lawyers on our wedding or honeymoon.”
“Deals aren’t made by lawyers. They’re made by humans. Good ones. Bad ones. Every kind in between.”
“What kind are you?” I hear myself ask. I’m thinking about Rae and the fact I didn’t tell her who Harrison was at the first opportunity.
Harrison turns to face me, the breeze blowing his shorts. The corners of his eyes crinkle, making their blue depths more piercing. “Haven’t you read a tabloid? I’m the rich, self-indulgent, fucked-up kind.”
Before I can decipher the emotion on his face, he turns and starts back down the beach.
“You’re probably wondering why I called you here,” I say when everyone’s gathered around a long table at breakfast.
“You want to make sure no one’s late today,” Beck jokes, and Elle shoves him.
Dad, Haley, Sophie, and Mason are at the end. Beck’s got a shoulder slung over the back of his chair, Rae and Elle on either side of him. Pen’s chewing on a piece of pineapple. Harrison’s next to Tyler near my end of the table. Even Finn and the other two Wicked artists are here, which is the point.
Tyler shifts out of his chair and crosses to me, his dark brows pulled together. “Six, what’s going on?”
“I have an idea. Trust me.”
He nods before taking his seat again.
I clear my throat. “We’re here together. We’re in all of this together. We don’t know what will happen with Wicked. But the least we can do is give these artists a chance to do what they do best.”
I round the table, stopping in front of them. “Tyler and my dad invited you here because they wanted to convince you they were the best people to take over Wicked. They wanted you to invite them in, but we haven’t invited you in, not really. I want to ask if you guys would play at the wedding today.”