Pieces of Us: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  It was the last time he’d climbed that tree.

  Like he’d just told Ian, don’t draw attention to what you wanted to keep hidden.

  To what was important.

  To what was good.

  And Izzy Lane was the only good thing in his life.

  Sean started to pull her through the crowd in the living room and through the kitchen, smug smirk on the bastard’s face as he was leading her outside.

  Izzy’s attention was locked on Mack the whole time.

  Uncomfortable and scared.

  She cast him one last glance over her shoulder as the door shut behind them.

  That was all it took to send that whole philosophy flying out the window.

  “Off,” Mack demanded.

  Clarissa clawed her way closer, pouting like she thought it was sexy. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Don’t worry about what I do,” he grated, shoving her off.

  Rage buzzed from Mack’s body when he stood.

  He might as well have been on autopilot with the way he moved, no sense or reason, just one destination.

  Pushing through the crowd, he ignored anyone who tried to get his attention, and the second he had his hand on the door handle, he flung it open and surged out into the deep, black night.

  A firepit blazed in the distance, the heavens dense and darkened.

  His gaze scanned the silhouettes of couples and groups that were sprinkled throughout the yard.

  But there was only one who mattered. The one who’d gone off the far side of the deck with that asshole, over by a hedge of overgrown shrubs, close to out of sight.

  Didn’t matter.

  Mack was sure he could find her blind.

  “Sean, don’t. Let’s just go. I want to go home.”

  “No, you don’t. You want to stay.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Let me go.”

  Fury split through the middle of Mack.

  A physical rendering.

  He ran across the deck and hurled himself over the railing, dropping to the ground, a rampage of violence skating through his veins. Every muscle hard. Possession riding high.

  Fucker was so invested in defiling his Little Bird, he didn’t even notice when Mack streaked up behind him, unaware Mack was even there until he had an arm around his neck and was yanking him back.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted, hands scratching at Mack’s arm and trying to get loose.

  “Did the girl tell you she wanted to go home?” It was nothing but a threat at the prick’s ear.

  “Mack.” Izzy sagged forward, pain and relief in his name.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded, fear slicing through him, a hot, jagged knife at the thought of what might have happened had he not been there to protect her.

  And he’d promised that he would always, always protect her.

  Hurt and disbelief churned through her features, and Mack’s stomach was twisting in that fucked-up way that he couldn’t let it.

  “You don’t get to tell me where I can go.”

  “So what, you want me just to let this skeeze touch you when you don’t want to be touched? Turn my back? Is that what you want?”

  She slipped out from the spot where she’d been pinned. Mack kept Sean locked, dickbag kicking and flailing like he thought he stood the chance to bust free.

  Izzy spun on her heel to face him. The tears streaking down her face glimmered in the light. Torment was written on every inch. “No, Maxon. That’s not what I want at all.”

  She started backing away, moving for the deck stairs, her head shaking. “But isn’t that what you already did?”

  Mack watched as she turned and fled. He kept hold of the prick until she was safe and out of sight. Mack tightened his hold, kid choking, Mack’s threat low at his ear. “If I ever see you anywhere near her, they will find your body buried in the forest. You got me?”

  Mack released him, and Sean surged forward, whirling around and holding his throat. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  He guessed he’d always been when it came to Izzy Lane.

  “You get one warning.” He pointed at the asshole who was still choking, and Mack backed away before he turned and jogged back into the house, his eyes darting everywhere.

  But Izzy was gone.

  Mack killed the engine of his car outside the shack that he called home. It plunged his world into darkness. Into an unbearable silence.

  Just the whoosh of the trees and the howling of ghosts.

  His mama’s voice in his ear.

  Vapor and mist.

  “You are better than the world you were born into.”

  Groaning, he rocked his head back, squeezing his eyes closed before he forced himself out of the car.

  It was a car that had been bought on the solid. Too bad every penny funding it had been dirty money.

  Guilt lanced through his spirit, and he dragged his feet toward the house, only to freeze when that feeling rushed him from behind.

  Overwhelming warmth.

  A cold that chilled him to the bone.

  Each sensation at odds.

  Every muscle in his body hardened in awareness, and his guts tangled when he slowly edged around to find her hidden in the shadows.

  He moved that way, until her face was coming into sharp, plain view.

  Cheeks blotchy and red, eyes so big and round, mouth quivering.

  “What are you doing here?” The words were grit. Fear and need.

  Fuck. He wanted her so bad he could taste it on his tongue.

  “I miss you,” she whispered. “I miss you so bad it hurts. God, it hurts.”

  Tears streaked down her face, her lips wet with them, and she angled her head as if she was begging him to look closer at her. “Do you have any idea how horrible it is to be waitin’ for you to come, and you never do? Night after night, lying there, my heart so empty? You left a hole inside of me, Maxon, and that hole just keeps gettin’ bigger and bigger every time I see you with her.”

  Mack dug deep to find the strength he was going to need to get through this. To keep himself from hurtling himself at her. Sweeping her up and holding her close and taking her hard.

  She was better than all of that.

  Still, emotion raced his throat. Thick and needy. As desperate as his hands he was curling into fists. “I’m no good for you, Little Bird.”

  “And she is? Good for you? Meant for you in a way that I’m not?”

  Shame and regret crawled beneath his skin. “She’s nothing to me.”

  Izzy choked over a gasp of pain. “If she means nothin’, then what does that make me?” She was pleading, taking a step toward him, her trembling hands pressed in petition to her chest. “I wanted it to be me, Maxon. I wanted to be yours. Your first and your last and your everything. You are my best friend. You’ve always been. But I can’t go on pretendin’ that I don’t ache for you. Need you. Want you in a way that has only ever belonged to you.”

  She was killing him.

  Word by word. Breath by breath.

  “I’m in love with you, Maxon. Don’t you see that? I love you so much. So much that it is ruinin’ me. Tell me that you feel the same way.”

  Her confession penetrated like spears. Stakes of grief. He nearly broke beneath the weight of it. Mouth dry, no words on his tongue because he couldn’t form a lie that big.

  He just stood there like a bastard, watching heartbreak crack across her face.

  She barely nodded, crushed by the understanding.

  She shifted her attention to the shed for the barest beat before she looked back at him.

  Her voice shook with its own sort of ferocity. “No matter what you feel for me or not, I need you to know, you are so much better than this. You have always been destined for greater things. I hope one day you realize that.”

  She pointed her finger at the ground.

  At his world.

  At his life.
/>   Then she turned around and disappeared into the trees.

  Agony clutched his spirit, driving a knife right into his soul.

  Empty and vacant as he watched the only person who could ever fill it walk away.

  Her presence fading.

  He tried to force himself to go into his house. To turn his back. But panic was taking over. He couldn’t stand for her to leave with that look on her face.

  He needed . . .

  Fuck, he had no clue what he needed. The only thing he knew was he started running, dodging trees and branches as he cut through the forest. He burst through the thicket and out onto the meadow.

  He skidded to a stop, chest heaving from the exertion. From the turmoil. From wanting something so bad and not being able to have it.

  Izzy whirled around, and those mesmerizing eyes went wide with surprise.

  “Maxon,” she rasped.

  He hesitated, torn, but then he found he was unable to stop the words from bleeding from his heart. “I feel it, too, Izzy. I do.”

  Pain followed the admission. “But this can’t work. You know that it won’t. We come from two different worlds. Are two different people.”

  She blinked at him through the wetness in her eyes, and she started to move back in his direction. “Two people who belonged together. It doesn’t matter where we come from just as long as we end up in the same place.”

  He swallowed around the thickness in his throat. “I’ll ruin you.”

  “You already have.”

  He started moving for her, drawn, unable to stop. “I’m terrified of this, Izzy. Of what it means. The only thing I know is my life means nothing without you in it.”

  She started running for him, and he was running for her, too.

  They met in the middle, and he swept her up.

  Relief.

  He pressed his face into her hair as he spun her around. Breathed her in. Wild jasmine and the sun. “I love you. I love you so fucking much. So fucking much.”

  He held her close, listening to the rapid beat of her heart. The fluttering that promised to carry him away.

  “My dragon,” she whispered.

  “Little Bird,” he murmured back, chest stretched tight as he stared up at her. “Let’s fly away.”

  “Just tell me where you want to go.”

  And he was taking her mouth, kissing her soft and slow and with everything he had.

  Twirling her around.

  Together, they soared.

  Twenty-Five

  Izzy

  With a dull lamp lighting my way, I sat at my desk, hand brushing in frantic strokes over the paper in the notebook I was drawing in. A jumble of designs were bleeding out, all my confusion and hurt and anger at odds with the massive amount of need and want the man had evoked in me.

  How could I just let go?

  Believe?

  Chewing furiously at my bottom lip, I colored and shaded, slashed and sketched and hoped that the images would come to life.

  That a story would arise.

  Make sense.

  Give me an answer.

  Gasping in surprise, I nearly fell out of my chair with the light tappin’ that came at my window.

  It was a sound that was so familiar but I hadn’t heard in so long that for a moment I was wondering if I were imagining it.

  But I knew. I knew because it resonated like a drum in the depths of me.

  A call.

  A plea.

  Heart stampeding, I slapped shut the notebook and lifted my head.

  A dangerous, darkened silhouette came into view out in the tree.

  Massive and distinct.

  Beautiful and destructive.

  So compelling that I could do nothing but push off the chair and lean over the desk, my hands shaking like crazy as I fumbled to release the latch and slide up the window the way I’d done a thousand times before.

  In all of a second, Maxon had pushed through, and I was stumbling back, struck by the force of his blistering presence as he climbed over the desk and onto his feet.

  Body towering. Expression fierce.

  Overwhelming.

  For a moment, we just stood there staring at each other, pants heaving from our lungs as our spirits caught up to the point of the meeting.

  An intersection.

  His eyes pinched in despair.

  “You think I don’t know what a family is? That I don’t understand what love is?” he demanded in a desperate sort of disbelief, voice rough and raw as he took a step forward, every word scraping with the magnitude of what he was saying.

  My spirit clenched, and I sucked in a shattered breath as I stared up at the devastation written in his expression.

  There I was, right back at that fork in the road.

  Only now, it felt like there was only one direction I could go.

  Reaching out, he took me by both sides of the face, those big hands stretched across my cheeks and dipping under my jaw.

  Forcin’ me to look at him.

  As if I could look anywhere else.

  A shudder ripped down my spine, and need rushed like wildfire through my body.

  “Loving you was the only truth I knew,” he grated. “The only thing I ever did right. The only thing that has ever been real.”

  I could feel the thunder of his heart, this rioting pound, pound, pound that ricocheted against the frantic beat of mine.

  Oh God. I didn’t know if I could handle this. What he was sayin’. What he was implyin’.

  “I don’t want to go on living this life without you in it.” There he went, tearing me up more, his tone deepening in emphasis. “Don’t want to spend one more day without you by my side. One more night without you lying next to me. Let’s love again, Little Bird. Love me, the way I love you. And I promise, I will never let you go.”

  I was nothing but a shaking mess at his admission. All those broken pieces he’d left me with toppling to the ground.

  “Maxon,” I whimpered.

  He tugged me forward. “Do you love me? Do you still feel the same, or am I too late?”

  My attention raced across his face, looking for any trace of insincerity. For any reason not to believe this man. To keep on fighting what clearly was a losing battle.

  Because this man had won me over long, long ago.

  My soul shivered in awakening.

  Reservations sheared away.

  The cold eclipsed by the heat of the flames that came alive between us.

  There were no boundaries left. No barrier so high. No fear so great.

  None that could compete with what was taking me over.

  “Tell me,” he demanded low, his nose brushing mine.

  My hands curled around his wrists, hanging on for dear life, and I let the deepest confessions of my heart pour out.

  “I have loved you since I was a little girl and you came runnin’ to rescue me. I have loved you since I first saw that tender smile and had the honor of meetin’ that fierce, brave heart. I loved you when I didn’t really know what it meant, and I loved you even more when I grew into the fullness of it.”

  My voice slowed in significance. “Never for a day did I stop. I love you, Maxon Chambers. I’m so in love with you.”

  His kiss was swift and all-consuming.

  Dizziness swept through my mind, knees going weak. It didn’t matter at all, considering the man was sweeping me into the security of those sure arms and pulling me to the warmth of his rock-hard body.

  His tongue stroked mine, and my arms locked desperately around his neck.

  “Every day, I loved you,” I muttered into his mouth, and he grunted back, splaying a big hand over the small of my back and sliding down to grip me by the bottom.

  The other wrapped up in my hair in the same moment my legs were wrapping around his waist.

  Basic instinct.

  Belonging there all along.

  Never breaking that kiss, he carried me across the room, keeping hold of me as he crawled with me on
top of my bed and laid me down in the middle of it.

  The springs squeaked, and Maxon cringed with something that looked close to guilt, as if he were remembering all the times he crawled into this bed and tried to stay quiet, and I was somehow grinning against his mouth.

  Lost to this moment. Lost to this man. All sanity given, offered to his willing hands.

  Because in that moment, nothing else in the world mattered.

  Nothing but us.

  “What are you grinning about?” he asked with a quiet, playful huff, the man grinning, too, though there was so much affection woven in it that the force of it was stretching my chest tight.

  Joy pressing full.

  “At you. That you’re here. That you came back to me.” I reached out a trembling hand and stroked across his gorgeous face. “That you’re lookin’ at me that way.”

  He grabbed my hand and pressed my knuckles to his lips, mumbling at the flesh, “And how am I looking at you?”

  “Like you love me. Like you’re gettin’ ready to devour me. Like you’ll be all too happy to do it again.”

  Rising up higher, he planted his hands on the mattress as he dipped his face down to whisper his mouth across mine. “Again and again. Forever.”

  “Endless,” I murmured back at his lush lips, so soft, so sexy in their pluck and pull as he kissed me slow.

  Reverently.

  His hand slipped over my cheek, cupped my jaw, my chin. Maxon glided it down to palm my breast over the fabric of my shirt, chills spreading in the wake of his adoring touch.

  I arched. Released a tiny moan.

  “God, I love the sound of that,” he rumbled, getting onto his knees and sitting back so he could reach down to gather the hem of my tank in his hands. He peeled it up, cool air hitting my flesh, goosebumps flashing across my abdomen and scattering over my arms as he tugged it over my head.

  I wasn’t wearing a bra, and my nipples were tingling, pebbling to hard, needy peaks as I sank back onto the pillow.

  Maxon stared down at me.

  Desire sparked. Little bursts lighting up in the space. Excitement and greed.

  “Shit,” he hissed, and he leaned forward onto one hand so he could trace the tip of a finger around the aching flesh. “So goddamn sexy, Izzy Baby. You have any idea what you do to me? Years I spent dreaming about you, fantasizing about this body. No memory could ever do you justice.”