On Her Terms (The Arrangement Duet Book 2)

by Madison Quinn

  “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “No, it’s understandable why you would. I’m sure you weren’t expecting to wake up in my bed, wearing my shirt with me sleeping next to you.”

  “Yeah… about that. Can you clue me in as to what happened last night and how I ended up in here?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  I search my memory, trying to pull the bits and pieces of last night to the front of my mind. Unfortunately, there is so much still coming through from the nightmare, that I’m having trouble deciphering between last night and many years ago.

  “The elevator… the foyer… we were… kissing,” I blush saying the words. We did a lot more than kissing—we were practically making out like two horny teenagers if I’m remembering correctly.

  “We were,” he chuckles, but seems relieved that I remembered that. “I think I’m the cause of your nightmare.”

  “You? How could you have caused my nightmare?”

  “I… Fuck, Kenzie...”

  “We got off the elevator…”

  “I wanted to… we were both into it... At least I thought you—”

  “I was,” I assure him, not wanting him to feel guiltier than he already seems to feel.

  I don’t want him to think that he misread something last night; I may have had a little too much to drink but he wasn’t acting alone on the dance floor, or when we came here last night. Just remembering how it felt to kiss him and to have his arms around me, raises my body temperature even now. Never did I think that he thought of me like that; we’ve had a few kisses here and there, but nothing that comes close to comparing it to last night.

  The day he me horseback riding, the kiss we shared after that and when he proposed was… amazing but last night it was on a completely different level. Dancing together, being with him like that, just felt so right and… natural. It felt natural to have his arms around my waist, my back pressed to his chest and his lips on my neck. It was as if the contract didn’t exist between us and we were just a normal couple.

  I thought it was just me, but when I felt Nicholas press against my ass, I knew I wasn’t the only one caught up in our dance. I expected it to end there; that he would pull back when we arrived back at the condo, but the moment we entered the elevator everything heated up between us again.

  “I… you went to unbutton my shirt and your fingers brushed against my chest…“ Nicholas pulls me from my heated memories of arriving home last night.

  “Okay?” I’m not understanding what the issue is.

  “I knew if you touched me, things would be over before they even started. I wanted you so much last night… but I wanted to take my time with you.” He blushes and looks away, something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him do before. “The last thing I wanted was to end things too quick, so I stopped you…”

  “You held my hands,” reality and the nightmare are starting to make sense in my head now.

  “Yes,” his eyes are on the floor, and he is shaking his head no almost as if he is trying to erase his actions.

  “Nicholas…”

  “I’m so sorry, Kenzie. I… I didn’t know—”

  “Of course, you didn’t know—you have nothing to apologize for. You didn’t do anything wrong—”

  “How can you say that?” his eyes finally meet mine, and I can see he is angry, but I don’t think for a second that his anger is directed at me.

  “I fucking did that,” he gestures toward the bathroom, “to you! I… God, Kenzie, you scared the fucking shit out of me last night. I fucking did that to you!”

  “Nicholas…”

  He is back to pacing the floor of his bedroom and running his hands through his hair; he doesn’t even respond when I call his name. I watch him going back and forth, not sure what I should do. I know I need to tell him what happened and why I reacted the way I did, but I’m scared to. I’m scared that if I tell him he is going to decide it’s all too much.

  This whole thing was supposed to be simple; we weren’t supposed to even get this close. I never thought when Bridget approached me that I would develop a friendship with someone she set me up with. I never considered that my past would have any place in the dates she would set up. I can feel myself almost start to panic when I think of the possibility that Nicholas might want to cancel our new arrangement once he realizes that I’m too much. It’s not even the thought of losing the financial security, a safe place to live, a college education… it’s the idea of losing him and this friendship…

  “Kenzie, if you want to… if I… if you don’t want to live here any longer. I’ll understand,” once again his eyes are on the floor.

  “Do you… do you want me to move out?” my voice is barely above a whisper. I’m almost afraid to ask the question, not knowing what his answer will be.

  “Fuck, no! Of course, I don’t want you to leave!” his voice leaves no doubt in my mind that he is being honest. “But after what I did… I… I can understand if you want to leave.”

  I stand up from the bed and meet him halfway through his next pace; I take his hands in mine and squeeze them. Of all the things to happen the day before our wedding, this was definitely not one of them. I didn’t expect Nicholas to be standing in front of me with so much guilt over something he had no control over.

  “I don’t want to move out,” I say firmly hoping that my words sink in.

  “You don’t?” I see the surprise in his eyes when he looks up.

  “You didn’t do anything, Nicholas,” when he opens his mouth to disagree, I quickly continue without giving him a chance to argue with me. “My reaction last night? That was all me—that wasn’t about you. I didn’t think you were going to hurt me last night, not once. When you held my hands… it brought back…”

  “I get it,” he wraps his hands around my waist and slowly pulls me toward him.

  He watches my reaction, I guess he thinks I’m going to push him away or stop him. I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him close to me so I can kiss him. The kiss is gentle and soft but instantly has both of our bodies relaxing. I can feel the tension leave him as he begins to rub circles on my lower back.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” he whispers.

  “Will you tell me about your nightmares?” I ask in return.

  “I… yes, I will,” he sighs.

  “Okay,” I agree.

  “Let’s try to get a little more sleep before we…” he suggests.

  “I don’t know that I can. I usually can’t fall back to sleep after a nightmare.”

  “I know; I can’t usually either. But we have a long couple of days ahead of us, and it’s only four o’clock in the morning. Even if you just lie down, you might feel better.”

  “Okay.”

  I only have a moment to wonder if I should return to my bedroom to try to sleep, not sure what Nicholas was suggesting before he leads me back to his bed. In a weird way, I’m sort of relieved that he didn’t suggest I go upstairs to my bedroom. I guarantee I wouldn’t have been able to go back to sleep if I were up there by myself. When my head hits the soft pillow, I realize just how tired I really am. Whether it was from staying out late last night or the nightmare, I’m not sure, but surprisingly sleep easily finds me once I close my eyes.

  I wake up some time later feeling incredibly hot; it takes me a few seconds to realize the reason I’m so hot is because his arms are wrapped around me, and his chest is pressed against my back. I quick glance at the clock tells me we’ve been sleeping for almost six hours now, which surprises me because I can’t remember the last time I slept in so late.

  And then there’s the fact that Nicholas is sleeping in the same bed with me… again. He told me a few weeks ago that he doesn’t sleep with women because of his nightmares, yet this is the second time he slept next to me. Last night I kind of understand, given the apparent mess I was, but I’m not quite sure what to think about him wanting me to sleep in his bed after my nightmare. Regardless of wh
atever his reason was, I have to admit it feels nice to have his arms around me. I feel safe and protected; neither of which I have felt for a very long time.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “I didn’t realize you were awake,” now I have to wonder how long he was lying there watching me.

  “I just woke up a few minutes ago,” that makes me feel a little better.

  “What time do we need to leave today?”

  “We need to be at the airport by two; we should arrive by three-thirty or four o’clock depending on how quickly we are approved to take off. My parents are meeting us at the airport but everyone else is flying in tomorrow. I have the entire floor of the hotel reserved for the night, so we have plenty of rooms for everyone.”

  “You reserved the entire floor of the hotel?”

  “It was better for security purposes,” I feel him shrug against me as if it were no big deal.

  “I should get up.”

  “Stay, I want to talk about last night.”

  I nod, knowing that we can’t avoid this conversation forever and roll over so we’re facing one another. His arm remains around my waist, while the other is under my head acting as a pillow. Our legs are intertwined and only a few inches of space separate us. I expect to feel awkward lying in bed this close to him, but surprisingly I don’t. It kind of just feels right…

  “Nicholas… I—”

  “Before I was adopted by Theodore and Vivienne, I had a pretty rough time,” Nicholas decides to start with this story first, which is more than okay by me. “I was born to a young, single woman, who was a high school dropout and couldn’t maintain a job. I don’t remember much about my time with her… some images here and there of the shitty apartment we lived in, memories of a neighbor who used to watch me on the rare occasion she actually had a job… and the bathroom…”

  “You don’t—” I can tell how hard this is for him.

  “I do,” his eyes meet mine briefly before looking somewhere over my shoulder. “She used to punish me by putting me in the bathtub filled with hot water. I don’t remember when it started, but I still have memories of being forced to sit in the tub with water burning my legs. I suppose I was fortunate, I don’t think the water was ever so hot that it caused blisters since I don’t have any scars from it.”

  “I…”

  My heart breaks for him as I picture a small, scared little boy being forced into a hot bathtub by the woman who is supposed to protect him.

  “Anyway…” he clears his throat before continuing. “One day… I was five, almost six, she picked me up from the neighbor’s apartment and brought me home. She brought a happy meal home—you have to understand, for me, that was a true rarity. I think it was the second time I ever had one; she always said she didn’t have extra money for it. Afterwards, she told me it was time to get ready for bed and that I needed to take a bath. I still remember the smile on her face when she said it, because it was so unlike all the other times she would bring me in there… to be punished.

  “When I didn’t get in the tub right away, she put her hand in the water and told me that it was perfect—not too hot and not too cold. I remember being so relieved when I stepped into the tub and it wasn’t hot. I played for a little while before she told me to lay on my back so she could see me float. I did as she asked, closing my eyes… the next thing I knew… her hand was on my chest pushing me under the water—”

  “Oh my God,” I gasp.

  His hand grips my hip tightly, as if he needs to hold onto me. I wrap my arm around his waist and tug him a little closer to me until there’s no space left between us. I want to say something, but how the hell do you respond to someone telling you that their mother tried to kill them?

  “I remember fighting against her hold… taking in gulps of air and hearing her yell when I was able to get to the surface… she kept pushing me back under. I remember watching her from below the water… she was screaming, but then would smile down at me,” he shudders against me.

  “She must have been yelling pretty loud because the next thing I knew I was being lifted out of the water. The neighbor had heard her screaming about releasing the devil or something like that. She had to break into the apartment because the door was locked. My… birth mother… she kept trying to grab me and put me back in the tub. She kept screaming that the devil was inside of me and needed to be released.”

  “Nicholas…”

  “The cops came and brought me to the hospital, I was released that night into the Parker’s care. They had been approved as a foster home and were willing to take in emergency placements. It was supposed to be temporary, just until they could find a permanent placement for me.”

  “But they decided to adopt you.”

  “Despite my recurring nightmares that kept everyone up at night, they did,” he finally looks at me and smiles sadly. “I celebrated my sixth birthday with them only a few months later, during which they asked if I wanted to stay with them forever.”

  “What happened to her?” I whisper, almost afraid to ask, but at the same point needing to know.

  “She killed herself in a psychiatric facility a few months after…” he pauses. “From what my parents were able to find out, she had severe post-partum psychosis. I don’t remember, but they said she had been pregnant. About a year before… she… the baby was stillborn. She didn’t have any prenatal care before… they don’t know if she even knew she was even pregnant. They think that triggered the psychosis…”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It is what it is…”

  “When I was thirteen, we lived in this crummy run-down trailer,” I begin after a few minutes of silence. I need him to understand that my reaction was not to him necessarily, but was because of what he did.

  “My… mother had moved us to Georgia to live with some guy she had met in a bar somewhere. She… my mother had a lot of problems with drugs and alcohol… and men. She jumped from guy to guy, bed to bed, house to house. We never stayed in one place for very long—when she got tired of a guy, she found a new one to move on with. Anyway, she moved us to Georgia with… Brett,” I cringe saying his name again. “He creeped me out from the day I met him. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. It was like he was imagining what was under my clothes. I avoided being there alone with him: I stayed after school as late as possible before walking home. They both worked odd jobs, so it wasn’t always easy to know when someone would be home or not home. He didn’t do anything… until one night—”

  “What. did. he. do?” Nicholas’s teeth are tight together, and I can hear the anger in his voice.

  “I was asleep in bed when they got home—it was really late, and they were drunk or high. I eventually fell back to sleep after I heard them go into their bedroom. When I woke up,” I take a deep breath and close my eyes, not wanting to say the words. “He was on top of me. My hands were… he held them above my head with one hand; the other was covering my mouth. He had my legs pinned with his; he was too strong for me to push him off of me.”

  “Did he…”

  “No, thank God,” I answer his unasked question quickly. “Although I have no doubt he was going to. I bit his hand, he yanked it back and slapped me. I screamed as loud as I could; finally my mother came to the room. It wasn’t until she asked him what he was doing that he finally got off of me. I crawled to the corner of the bed, against the wall, trying to get away from him.”

  “What did she do? Tell me she kicked him out—”

  “No, I wish. She told him to come back to bed so she could take care of him. I’ll never forget the look she gave me when she said that: she blamed me for what he did—”

  “You were a child!”

  “Before he left my room, he warned me that she wouldn’t always be able to protect me.”

  “Did he come back into your room again?”

  “No, in fact I never saw him or her again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I came home from
school the next day, they were gone. I didn’t think anything of it because it wasn’t unlike them to disappear for days at time. After about a week, I began to wonder if they were coming back. When I went into their room and saw that most of their things were gone, I realized they wouldn’t be coming back.”

  “They just left you?”

  “They did.”

  “Kenzie… God, I’m so sorry,” he pulls me even closer to him. He just holds me and rubs my back for the longest time. “The nightmare last night… it was about that night?”

  “Yes. I haven’t had that nightmare in years, not since right after they left.”

  “I’m sorry, I had no idea—”

  “You had no reason to think that holding my wrists would have caused… my reaction last night.”

  “I’ll never do that again, I swear to you—”

  “I trust you, Nicholas.”

  Chapter 10

  Nicholas

  I wake up drenched in sweat with the blankets wrapped around me. I’m breathing heavy, and my heart is pounding; I fucking hate these nightmares. I hate that I can’t sleep through the night except for the rare occasion they don’t haunt me. The fact that I can’t share a bed with a woman has never bothered me, it’s just something that has always been a part of my life.

  But now… I can’t help but think back to how it felt to sleep with Kenzie last night. Not after her reaction to… to what I did of course, but after we talked and I brought her back to my bed. She fell asleep so fast—I laid there watching her sleep for the longest time. I wanted to know what happened to her. I wanted to wake her up and demand she tell me. When she asked if I would tell her about my nightmares, I knew I had no choice if I wanted her to be open with me.

  When she reacted to… to what I did, I assumed it had something to do with that shithead ex fiancé she had who enjoyed hitting her. I was floored by what she had told me about her mother’s ex and even more shocked by her mother’s behavior. I wanted to ask so many more questions, but once she told me that she never saw them again, my mind was immediately eased. There are still several that remain unanswered and unasked: how did she survive after they left? Who raised her if she never saw her mother again? What happened to her mother? Do we need to be concerned that her mother will try to find her once our marriage is announced? Yet, after we traded stories, I asked none of those questions. I didn’t want to press her too much, she always shuts down at the mention of her past or her family, so I figured it was best to table the conversation for another day.