Tainted Heartbreak

by Terri Anne Browning

  I sniffled against his shirt. “I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I just miss you already.”

  “I’ll stay if you need me. Just say the word, baby. That’s all it’s going to take.” I felt his lips at my ear, heard the roughness in his breathing, and knew this was just as hard for him as it was for me. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  I buried myself as deeply into him as I could, giving his offer serious consideration. I felt like my heart was being pulled from my chest just thinking of him getting on a plane without me. But I had to be a grown-up about this. He was a busy guy. For two weeks, he had put his entire life on hold for me, and his sick grandmother needed him. I couldn’t be selfish. I loved this guy, and if I was going to have a future with him, I had to share him with other people who loved him.

  Determined that I was going to let him go without shedding any more tears—that he could see—I lifted my head and gave him a weak smile. “No, babe. You go. I know this is important to your grandma.”

  His eyes darkened, his irises going completely black. “You are the most important person in my world. Just say the word, and I’ll call Gigi right now and tell her to fuck off. Say the word, Amara. Say it.”

  Those last two words sounded like a plea more than a command, but I knew I had to let him go. Unwinding myself from around him, I put my feet on the ground and stood on tiptoes to kiss him. “Take care of this for her, Cash. You don’t want to have any regrets where she’s concerned.” Stepping back, I walked around the van and opened the driver’s door.

  Riley blew me a kiss and waved as she took her case and wheeled it into the airport. Cash started to follow her, but I couldn’t let him leave. Not yet. “Cash!” I called and he turned.

  “Dreamer?” he asked when I hesitated.

  “I love you,” I called, and his face lifted into a grin. Before he could respond, though, I chickened out and jumped into Jane’s vehicle. I waved as I passed him and pulled into traffic. I gave up the war I’d been fighting to keep my tears at bay and let them pour down my face.

  Chapter 12

  Amara

  As sad as I was to see Cash go, I was glad I took the extra few days alone with my brothers and Jane. It wasn’t like any of us were magically going to be okay the day after we said goodbye to Dad. I knew it was going take all four of us a while before we were even marginally normal again, but that I was able to be there for them—and they were there for me—went a long way toward putting us on the right path.

  Still, I missed Cash so damn much it was like he took part of me with him. Jane and the boys dropped me off at the airport a day early with tight hugs and a few shed tears, along with my promise that I would be home for Christmas like always. Dad’s dying wasn’t going to change me spending time with the only family I had.

  Storms on the West Coast made for a bumpy flight and a rough landing, so much so that I was ready to kiss the ground once we were finally at the gate. My stomach was a mess, and I’d made good use of those little motion sickness bags during my flight, as had ninety percent of the other passengers.

  No one was there to pick me up. I wanted to surprise Cash, so I hadn’t told him or Riley I was coming home a day early. We’d talked every night since he left, and I could hear in his voice he was missing me just as badly as I was him. All I wanted was a night alone with him, and then I was going to dedicate the rest of the weekend to Riley and Lindsey before packing my things to move in with Cash.

  The storms were still making the world rumble as I caught a cab outside the airport and gave the driver Cash’s address. It was just past seven on a Friday night, and even the downpour that was practically flooding the city didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent. Traffic was a total bitch, and the driver could barely see through the rain, so it took nearly triple the time to get to West Hollywood.

  I paid the driver and made a quick dash for the front door as soon as the cab pulled up in front of Cash’s building. I was drenched as I stepped into the lobby. Wringing out my hair, I hit the call button for the elevators and wrapped my arms around myself to fight off the chill from the air conditioning.

  I stepped into the elevator and hit the button for his floor. Weeks ago, he’d given me a key, and I used it to unlock the door to his apartment. I had no idea if he was even home, but I could at least take a shower and get warm again while I waited if he was out.

  As I closed the door behind me, I tossed my key on the entrance table and started rolling my carry-on toward his bedroom. His apartment was pretty well-kept for a guy. He cleaned up after himself, and that was going to be in his favor in the long run. I would hate to murder him for making a disaster in the kitchen like Lindsey always did.

  Grinning at the thought, I slung my wet hair out of my face. Feet away from the door, however, I heard his voice and paused.

  “How about some coffee to warm us up?” Cash called out, and it was like someone hit the pause button on my heart.

  I heard a faint giggle, and my stomach actually cramped up. “Sounds like a plan. I’ll be right out.”

  Nausea started to climb up my throat, and I stumbled back a step as I heard footsteps coming closer. “I’ll just toss your clothes in the dryer when you’re done. I left you a T-shirt and a pair of my boxers on the bed.” The door opened, but Cash had his back to me as he kept talking to his guest. Dressed in a pair of sweats with his upper body bare and his hair wet, there was amusement in his voice. “How do you like your coffee?”

  “I’ll take mine with extra sugar,” I gritted out, fighting the urge to vomit.

  The defined muscles in his back tensed and flexed as he whirled around to face me. Every drop of color left his face. “Baby,” he breathed. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Out of all the reactions I’d expected to my surprise, this one was a hell of a long way down the list. I wrapped my arms around myself, but I didn’t feel the cold any longer. Now I was numb all the way to my bones. “I missed you, so I took an earlier flight.” My voice didn’t even sound like my own. It was robotic and completely foreign to my ears. The words didn’t make sense to my brain. All I could take in was the look in Cash’s dark eyes, the way his entire body seemed to jerk at my words. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Fuck, Amara,” he groaned. “Baby, this… It’s not what you think.”

  “What I think is that you have a girl in your bathroom right now.” I was breathing through my nose, fighting the urge to vomit with everything I had in me so I didn’t embarrass myself more than I already had. “Who is she?”

  He didn’t answer, just stood there, watching me with those dark eyes that just an hour ago I had craved to see.

  “Hey!” the girl called out, and I could have sworn I knew that voice. “Do you have any conditioner?”

  It couldn’t be her, I told myself. What the fuck would she be doing here? Yet, I knew in my bones it was.

  “Lin?” I cried and pushed past Cash, who looked about as sick as I felt. I stormed through the bedroom and threw the partially closed bathroom door open so hard it slammed into the wall.

  The room was full of steam from the shower, and I could smell Cash’s shampoo and body wash in the air. Those scents had haunted me the last few days we had been apart as they clung to my pillows. I’d hugged them tight every night, breathing in the lingering smell of him and falling asleep, only to dream of him.

  I grabbed the shower door and pulled it open. “Lindsey?” I repeated, my heart exploding in my chest as I looked at my naked friend and roommate standing there with my boyfriend’s shampoo in her hair.

  Her eyes peeked open. “Amara?” she cried. “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you that question,” I snapped as jealousy hit me like a ton of bricks. Lindsey was the picture of perfection with her flawless body, standing there unashamedly naked. “Why are you in Cash’s apartment?”

  “Cash?” She repeated his name like it was alien to her. “This is Harden’s apartment.”r />
  “Baby, I can explain,” Cash grabbed my arms, twisting me around to face him. His eyes pleaded for me to understand, but I couldn’t even look at him. I was breaking on the inside, shattering in a way I’d never allowed myself to break before. Losing my dad had broken my heart, left me feeling like I had a jagged tear in my heart. This? This was breaking my soul. I was fighting for every breath I sucked into my lungs, but I wasn’t even sure I wanted to breathe again. “This isn’t what it looks like. I swear to you, nothing happened.”

  I jerked away from him, tuning him out as I turned my attention back to my friend. “Did you say Harden? As in your boyfriend, that Harden?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she told me as her face bloomed with color, and she glanced at Cash.

  No, I corrected myself. Harden.

  “Amara, baby, just stop and let me talk to you,” he commanded. On shaky legs, I turned to face him. I didn’t know how long I had before my knees gave out and I fell on my face, but it was going to happen soon. I could feel it in the tremble of my entire body as I struggled to remain standing. “Lindsey and I got caught in the rain earlier. Since we were closer to my apartment than hers, we came here to get dry. Nothing else has happened.”

  “You were out with her,” I surmised in a voice that cracked. “On a date.”

  Guilt flashed in his eyes, but he didn’t drop my gaze. “Her dad is in town.”

  That didn’t explain shit to me. So what, her dad was in town? I didn’t give a fuck about Gerald Connors. He was nothing but a pompous asshole, just like Malcolm. Fuck, they were even friends because Malcolm had the kind of pull Gerald craved. My friendship with Lindsey had basically made the old fart cream his pants when he realized what kind of connections his daughter’s friend came with. But as soon as Malcolm was done with me, Gerald was too.

  “Amara, I told you I was going to introduce Harden to my dad. Why are you acting so crazy, and what the hell are you doing here?” Lindsey grabbed a towel, and even though there was still soap in her hair, she stepped out of the shower. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Oklahoma until tomorrow?”

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose, her voice grating down my spine more and more with every word out of her mouth. “Lindsey, get your head out of your ass for once and pay attention. Harden is Cash!”

  She laughed. “What? That’s crazy. Harden’s dad is a congressman like my dad. He’s not some tatted-up freak rocker like your boyfriend.”

  My eyes went to the ink on the inside of Cash’s bicep. The red clock was the only tattoo he had and was easily covered up by a shirt. To look at him, he wasn’t my idea of either a congressman’s son or a rocker. He was just a normal, hot as hell guy.

  Lindsey wasn’t usually an airhead, but right then, she wasn’t catching on enough for me to get any answers out of her. I forced myself to look at Cash. “Who are you really?”

  He reached for me, but I stepped back. If he touched me, I was going to lose the battle I had on my gag reflex and puke all over our feet. Or even worse, fall on my face sobbing. Clenching his jaw, he dropped his hands at his sides, balling them into fists. “I changed my name to Cash Graves when my dad gave me the ultimatum of going to law school or leaving. I left.”

  “So what was your name before?”

  “I’ve always been called Cash,” he informed me, his eyes bleak. “My name was Harden Cassian Mathias III. Everyone called me Cash because Harden is my dad’s name too. I changed my name because I didn’t want my career to touch my dad’s career, or his mine.”

  “How long has this thing been going on between the two of you?” I demanded, trying to digest his name change.

  “Two months,” he told me with a heavy exhale. “Gigi asked me to get close to Congressman Connors’s daughter and see if I could sway an upcoming vote on a bill in favor of my dad.”

  “What?” Lindsey and I both exploded at the same time. “Why would she ask you to do something like that?”

  “It’s what I’m good at.” He shrugged like it was nothing. “It’s always been my job to work on the people closest to my father’s rivals to get the results my dad wanted or influence a vote in his favor. When Gigi got sick, she used her cancer to guilt me into doing one last favor for her.”

  “And this favor was to take me out? To string me along like some little doll so I could convince my father to do what yours wanted?” Tears were thick in Lindsey’s voice, and she didn’t even bother to brush them away as she glared up at him. “You were using me?”

  “Yes,” he told her in an icy voice as he looked right through her. “You were a means to an end my family needed. Nothing more.”

  “And me?” I whispered in a tight voice. “What was I?”

  When his gaze shot back to me, it was like a switch flipped inside him. His eyes glazed with regret and guilt. “You are everything, Amara. Everything. Haven’t I shown you by now that I love you?”

  “Stop!” I cried weakly, my tears falling freely as my heart shattered a little more. “How can you say that to me? How… Oh God!” I bent in half and breathed deeply through my nose until the threat of vomit was gone.

  “Baby!” He touched my arm, and I jerked away from him.

  “No!” I screamed, thankful I could speak once again. “Did you fuck her?”

  “I’m not that kind of girl,” Lindsey told me in a hate-filled tone. “I don’t jump into bed with any guy who shows me the least bit of attention. I’m not you and Riley.”

  “The only thing we’ve done is kiss,” Cash tried to reassure me. “And not even that after you came into my life.”

  “But you’ve still been seeing her, right?” I shook my head, already knowing the answer to that question. “You’ve been playing us both all along. This was all just part of the end game for your grandmother.”

  All this time, I had been so concerned about him making sure he didn’t regret not helping out his grandmother. I pushed him to come home without me to take care of it—of this!

  “Not you!” Cash exploded vehemently. “This—what we have—isn’t a game, Dreamer. I love you.”

  “Don’t say that,” I screamed and pushed past him and Lindsey. “You don’t get to say those words to me now.”

  “I didn’t even know you and Lindsey were connected until after I got back from the festival,” he tried to explain.

  “You mean after you asked me to be your girlfriend, and you still kept seeing my friend on the side?” I laughed, but my tears made it crack. “Was that when you realized the hole in your plan?”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Amara, it wasn’t like that.”

  “That is exactly how it looks!” I glared from him to Lindsey. “I’m out of here. Are you coming?”

  She looked surprised by my question. “You’re leaving? Don’t you want to hear the rest of what he has to say?”

  “Nope. I don’t want to hear another word out of his lying, cheating mouth.”

  She held the towel closer against her. “Well, I do. I’m not leaving yet.”

  Jealousy burned through me, but I turned away from both of them. She was forgetting that I knew her better than anyone else. She didn’t just want answers. I’d seen the possessive look in her eyes. Maybe she was pissed at Cash, but she still wanted him. The whole conditioner ploy was just to get him to see her naked, because I’d left a bottle of my own conditioner there weeks ago. “Suit yourself. I’m done.”

  “Amara.” Cash followed me out of the bathroom. “Baby, don’t go.”

  In the hall outside his room, I swung around to confront him. “Out of everything I’ve been through, nothing has hurt as much as this,” I whispered. Tears blinded me, but I made myself meet his gaze, forcing him to see just how much pain I was in.

  This guy had held me through one of the toughest moments of my life. He was right there, taking care of me from the moment I called him, just like he promised. I saw a future for myself with him, loving him forever. Now, those dreams were shattered on the floor along
with my heart and the broken pieces of my soul.

  “I loved you,” I told him honestly, and he flinched as if those words physically hurt him. “I loved you more than I have ever let myself love anyone else in my entire life. I thought… I thought I found someone I could share my life with.”

  Strong fingers grasped my wrists and jerked me toward him. “Baby, I love you. Lindsey means nothing to me. The only reason I even saw her was because of Gigi. I didn’t touch her once you came into my life.”

  “You think that what you did still wasn’t cheating?” I tried to pull away from him, but he only tightened his hold on me. “When you weren’t with me, you were out with her. You took her out on dates. She fucking told me about them all the damn time. She was happy with you. Introducing you to her father means that she cares about you. That means you were emotionally present when you were with her. You made her have feelings for you, dickhead.”

  “I was only trying to help my dying grandmother out, baby. That’s it. You even pushed me to finish it.”

  When my pissed eyes met his, I saw he knew he’d fucked up. “So, this is my fault?”

  “No! Fuck, Amara, of course I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to explain. Baby, don’t let this come between us,” he pleaded.

  “You know what’s really funny?” I muttered, forcing my wrists out of his hold. The action was going to leave me bruised, but that was the least of my worries. “What really gets me?” He frowned in confusion, waiting for my reply. “You didn’t even need Lindsey to get your vote. All you had to do was suck up to my stepdad, and he could have gotten you any vote you wanted.”

  “What—” he started, but I spoke over him.

  “My stepdad is Malcolm McIntire, Cash.” It took a moment, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. Even if he hadn’t followed his own dad’s career since he said he left, everyone knew who Malcolm was. My stepdad might not have been a politician, but with all of his businesses in the public eye and needing government support for some of his drug research studies, he had a good seventy-five percent of Washington in his pocket. One whisper from him in Congress’s ear, and Cash’s father would have had his vote overnight.