I rubbed my hand over my beard stubble and squeezed my eyes shut. “Maybe she would have stayed if I’d been different.”
“Do you think you’re different now?”
“I do not know if I am different. I cannot imagine ever raising a hand to Chyna now, but I felt the same before, too. I would rather rip my own arm off. I would rather die than hurt a single hair on her head.”
“And you learned to cook and clean for her.”
“But none of that really matters.” I looked up at the darkening sky. “She does not want a mating with me. Maybe sex, but perhaps not even that or she would not have left. She has probably found someone else.”
Remy laughed. “That hurt you to say, didn’t it?”
I just groaned.
“Fight for her. If she is your true mate, there is no one else for either of you. And it is meant to work out. Fate made one female who is perfect for you, brother. One. Are you willing to let her go?”
“What would you have me do, Remy? Tie her to my bed?”
“I wouldn’t suggest it, but it’s not too late to figure out something that will work. She’ll be back. Figure it out, brother.”
I glared at my twin. If only it were that simple.
22
Chyna
There was something majorly wrong with me. I’d flown home with the intention of getting into my car and driving straight over to see Cherry. Instead, I’d driven home and gone straight to my boat. I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in and flown in. I needed a shower and a change, yet I was speeding to Blaise’s castle. I needed to see him. I couldn’t stay away any longer.
I didn’t even know what I was going to say. I didn’t have anything to say. Nothing had changed yet—lord, help me, I had to see him.
I noticed the improvements to Blaise’s house as soon as I got close enough to see the exterior. Everything was neat and tidy. There were more chairs and a table set up outside. There was even a potted plant. A plant. I tied up my boat and walked up the dock. The damaged sections had been repaired, and those that had been under construction were now as good as new. The place looked beautiful without the holes in it.
The closer I got, the slower I moved. It threw me off to see so many changes. My stomach roiled, and I couldn’t help but think the worst. Since Blaise hadn’t shown up by the time I got to the door, I knocked.
Waiting for the door to open was excruciating. On one hand, I wanted to turn and run, but on the other, I had an overwhelming desire to see him. I needed to know that he was still there and that everything was still as it had been when I’d left. Had he sold the place and moved? I’d only been gone for a few days. He couldn’t have…
When the door was opened by Blaise, I felt so relieved to see him that I threw myself against him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. It took me a moment to realize that he was not hugging me back.
I forced myself away from him, even though my body was screaming not to break physical contact, and forced a smile. “I thought you might’ve moved. Everything’s…”
Seeing that I’d trailed off and was staring behind him, Blaise stepped aside and let me enter. The place was spotless. Not only was it spotless, but it also smelled nice. The piles of dishes and takeout containers and dirty laundry were gone. The boxes of new plates and new clothes were gone. The place smelled sweet and delicious like cinnamon buns. My heart sank.
“What happened?” I jerked around to face him and gestured to the beautiful interior of his home. “Did you hire someone?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out before talking. “Why have you come here?”
I stammered. “I just…I’m back early, and I thought I’d come and see you.”
He nodded and crossed over to a chair. “Things are different, Chyna. I have changed.”
Hearing that statement, spoken so matter-of-factly, felt as though I’d been dealt a physical blow. It was what I had feared from the moment I first saw the new and improved exterior. “You met someone else? Another mate? One who wants to clean up after you?”
He snorted. “No.”
“Then…what?” I wrung my hands together and bit my lip hard before meeting his sad gaze. “What we had was okay, right? We can still do that?”
When he shook his head, I felt his pain wash over me. His, mine, I wasn’t quite sure whose. Maybe both? “I want all or nothing, Chyna. I cannot keep doing that. I cannot be with you for only a short time and then watch you leave.”
“Well, I can’t stay permanently, Blaise. It’s not like that.” My voice had gotten sharp, and I tried to get it under control. “I can’t do that kind of relationship.”
“You do not have to clean or cook if you do not want to. You do not even have to stay here at my castle.” He held his hands out to me. “I can compromise. I can meet you in the middle. But I cannot allow you to keep pushing me away or treating me as though I mean nothing to you. As though I am nothing more than a means to scratch your itch when you are in need. I deserve more.”
“Don’t do this, Blaise.” I sounded desperate, even to myself. “What we’ve been doing…it’s all I have to offer.”
“No.” He stood up. “I want you more than anything in this world, or any other world, Chyna. I crave you. Without you, I am only half of who I was. I cannot continue with what you want, though. I cannot sleep with you and then not hold you. I cannot be denied having a simple conversation with you. I cannot keep my feelings for you hidden for fear of you running away. I want you more than I have ever wanted anything, but if you cannot be my mate—for real—I will have to either find a way to survive without you or, more likely, I will perish.”
Perish? My stomach turned, and I felt like throwing up. Everything he was saying should’ve been music to my ears. It was, deep down, what I wanted to hear. That he hadn’t found someone else and moved on. But I could not seem to get a handle on the panic. He was offering me forever. He was holding out a silver platter with the future on it: family, kids, minivan, the whole nine yards. He was offering me everything. Yet, I was terrified.
What if I kept giving more and more until he slowly controlled me? What if I gave him my all and he left me battered and destroyed? Like my mother.
“Please, Blaise.” I gripped his shirt to feel some kind of stability and blinked back tears. “Don’t do this. Don’t make me choose.”
“If you are not willing to talk to me and love me back, I cannot do this. You must leave. It is too hard with you here.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but no sound came out. The light touch of Blaise’s hand on my back was a light in the darkness, a sign to turn back and rush into it. My feet moved without my mind’s okay. Toward the door, we both went. Blaise stopped at the threshold and my feet carried me out, past it.
When I turned to try to say something, the door was already closing. “Wait, Blaise. Wait a second. I need a second.”
“Go home, Chyna.” He sighed. “Or go see your sister. She misses you.”
The door shut and I just stood there, feeling my own pain consume me so entirely that I wasn’t sure how I was still standing. I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to lash out and kick at his door, demand he face me and fight. I could feel his pain, too, though. He was crushed that I’d walked out. Because, if I was being honest, that’s what it amounted to. I’d walked out. I’d had one foot out the door the whole time. He’d given me every chance to stay with him, to make a relationship work. I’d chosen not to.
Eventually, I turned around and staggered through tear-filled eyes back to my boat. I got home, somehow, and hurried into my house, just to grab my car keys and head to Cherry’s. I needed my sister.
23
Chyna
“Chyna, you’re back!” Cherry threw open the door and was smiling until she saw me. “You’re crying.”
I walked into her arms, her protruding belly pressing against my stomach. Somewhere along the way over, I’d let the floodwaters loose, and I wasn’t sur
e I’d ever stop. “I’m a mess.”
“Come inside. Come on. Let’s get you settled on the couch and then we’ll figure out what’s happening, okay?”
I let her lead me inside, but I was already spilling my guts. “I’m miserable. I’ve been trying to fight this situation with Blaise, but I can’t. I went to him, and he told me he wants all or nothing, but I can’t give him all because…what if he turns into his father? What if I turn into our mother? And I can’t give away who I am. He made me leave. He made me leave his house, and I feel like I’m dying inside.”
I spit it all out on a wail, and by the time I was finished, I was on the couch with my head in my sister’s lap. She stroked my hair while I sobbed against her pregnant belly. Mid sob, I stopped to pat it and say hello to my nephew.
“This is big. I can’t even remember the last time I saw you cry, even when we were children. You don’t cry.” Cherry pressed her hand to my head. “Nope, no fever.”
A hiccup escaped before I sat up and wiped my face on my sleeve. “There’s something I never told you.” I took a deep breath as I contemplated where to begin. I wasn’t sure how Cherry was going to take what I wanted to say.
“Sis, not long after we turned eighteen, I…I went to look for our mother.” I waited to see how she would react to that statement.
“Don’t tell me you found…” Her words trailed off, and her face became ashen.
“She’s dead. She died when we were small children. But I learned a lot about her from people who knew her.” Gauging Cherry’s reaction, she was stunned but curious. I had decided at the time that I would wait for a good time to tell her, but then there just never seemed to be a good time.
“I know this is going to be bad,” Cherry whispered. “If it was good, you would have told me a long time ago.”
“After our dad died, our mother was just in a string bad relationships, one after another. Cherry, it sounded like she was a magnet for loser men and dysfunctional relationships. The state took us away from her because she was so beaten and broken by men that she wasn’t able to stand on her own two feet and take charge of her own life. She was literally controlled by one man after another until she was destroyed. She couldn’t even protect her own children.” Cherry had tears in the corners of her eyes as she absently caressed her belly.
Cherry swallowed hard. “Well, it’s not like it comes as a great shock. We knew we were removed from her home by the state.”
“Ever since I found out, I think I’ve been terrified that I would somehow follow in her footsteps.”
“Like how? You thought you’d abandon your kids because of a man?”
“Well…”
“Are you serious?” My sister’s jaw dropped. “Chyna! You are nothing like that! There is zero chance of you abandoning your children because of Blaise. Zero. And there’s no chance Blaise would ever do anything but try to build you up. He’s a good guy. He just wants to protect and love you. And for fuck’s sake Chyna, you deserve that! It feels good. What I have with Cezar feels amazing. I want you to have it, too.”
We were silent for a few minutes. It made sense when she put it that way. Blaise may have some old-fashioned ideas about gender roles, but he never tried to tear me down no matter how I treated him or what I said to him.
“I don’t know what to do now. He made me leave. He kicked me out.”
“Didn’t you tell him how you feel about him?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t. I was terrified, Cherry.”
“Cezar vouched for him, and he’s known him for centuries. I’ve spent a lot of time with him lately, too. He’s nice, Chyna. A little rough, but his heart is definitely in the right place. He’s good to Sky’s nephews, and he built me a crib because he wanted to thank me for teaching him how to use the washing mach—” She stopped and covered her mouth. “Oopsie. Anyway, he’s nice.”
“You taught him how to use a washing machine?”
“Oh, crap. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. With this baby brain, I can’t be trusted. He’s been coming over here every day. Ever since he got kicked out of his cooking class.”
“Cooking class?”
“Oopsie, there I go again. He enrolled in a class at the Lafourche Parish Community Center. Then, he got expelled when he had a little mishap and almost burned the place to the ground. So, Cezar taught him to cook. Sky’s nephews, Nick and Casey, helped teach him how to clean. I’ve been showing him how to work the washer and dryer, separate whites and colors, and fold things so they don’t wrinkle. And, really, isn’t it just like a man to need lessons on that? Pick up the clothes, put the clothes away. You’d think it was rocket science to these dragons.”
“He cooks?”
“Yeah, and he’s pretty good.” She took my hand. “He learned all that for you. He wants to be a good mate for you. He calls you his queen. It’s so cute. He is not a loser. He’s a keeper, Chyna.”
My mind was racing. I felt like she’d just dropped a bomb on my already war-torn world. “But…I don’t understand.”
“He doesn’t just want to be with you. He wants to please you. He learned how to do all of that stuff because he wants to be better for you.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why he sent you away after all of that. Something must be wrong.”
“I do. Because I wouldn’t commit to him. I wanted it to stay no strings. I wanted to keep him as my booty call.”
“Oh, Chyna.”
I sat up and curled into myself in the corner of the couch. “He said all or nothing. I just couldn’t make myself say yes to ‘all’, so I let him think I wanted nothing.”
“But you don’t want nothing, do you?”
“No. I feel like my insides are being ripped apart constantly, Cherry. I killed plants while I was in Florida. I got fired. Fired. Me. I can’t eat right, and I can’t sleep. I dream of him when I do sleep and...”
“And?”
“And I could feel how much it hurt him every time I walked out the door. I felt it and I left anyway.”
“So, apologize. Make it up to him. He’ll forgive you, Chyna. You’ll forgive yourself. I was terrified of being with Cezar. I’m sure you remember. And you had such great advice. Thank god I eventually took it ‘cause look at us now. We have a baby coming soon. We’re a family. It’s time I gave you back your own advice. You were right. It doesn’t matter how broken we are, we can have happy endings.” She stood up suddenly and planted her hands on her hips. “You’ve been miserable for weeks, and I’m not going to sit here and watch you suffer because you’re chickenshit. Go and get your happily ever after.”
I gaped at her.
“Yeah, I’m getting my mom voice ready. So, you’d better listen. You can sit here on my couch and cry until we all float away, or you can go back to Blaise’s and tell him how you really feel. You can have amazing makeup sex, and you can start your life with him. You get a man who can cook and clean and, more importantly, a man who’s willing to work on himself for you—because he loves you. It all starts with telling him the truth.”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t love me. He barely knows me.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t love him?”
“I—” I stopped myself from giving the automatic answer and unfolded myself from the couch. “Oh, gawd.”
“Say it. Say that you love him. I know you do because I know you. You wouldn’t act this way if you didn’t. You’ve probably loved him since the first time you saw him. This whole mate thing is a real doozy.”
“I…I...” I swallowed. “I have to go.”
She smiled. “Damn right. Go get your dragon.”
With tears still streaming down my face, I opened the door to find a heavy rain shower had started outside.
“Chyna, before you go, I just have one question…Mom was an exotic dancer, wasn’t she? I mean, that explains our names, right?”
Leave it to my sister to make me laugh. “Actually, there’s no explanation for her giving us stripper names. None t
hat I could find.”
24
Blaise
“I’m sorry!” The pouring rain battered the slick dock and ran in rivulets down her face.
I’d opened the door, expecting to cave to whatever Chyna wanted. I’d made my demands, but if she came back telling me that she still only wanted sex, I was going to agree to anything. I could not turn her away a second time. What I hadn’t expected was to find her standing at my doorstep, soaked to the bone, screaming at me over the storm.
“I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I treated you the way I did. I was scared. I was scared of you hurting me, so I hurt you first. I was afraid of being the woman my mother was, so controlled, so damaged by a man that she abandoned her children and never looked back. I’m sorry, Blaise.” Her voice was getting eaten up by thunder, but I could make out the words she was saying. “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you.”
Shocked, I just stood there.
“It was wrong.” She jumped when a flash of lightning struck too close to us and then looked back at me with fear in her eyes. “I can finish talking out here if you don’t want me to come in…”
I jerked into action and grabbed her shoulders to bring her inside. Slamming the door shut, I grabbed a towel from the load of clothes I’d been folding and wrapped it around her. She was shivering so much that her teeth were chattering.
“Thank you.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “I can’t say that I’m sorry enough. I messed up. I was awful. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I have to tell you that none of it was because I don’t want you.”
“Chyna, I—”
“No, let me explain. Please.” She waited until I nodded to keep talking. “Cherry and I never knew the man who impregnated my mother. He left before we were born. My mom died. We were dropped off one day in this horrible orphanage run by this horrible woman who would tell us that no one wanted us. She was right, to an extent. We were shuffled off to many foster homes and, even then, they only tolerated us.
Fire Breathing Blaise (Dragons of the Bayou Book 3) Page 10