by Hagen, Casey
Collapsing half on, half off me, he scooped his arms under my back and hugged me to him as though anchoring himself to me, to this moment. Tremors rocked through him, leaving him shaking and spent in my arms.
“Shhhhh,” I whispered into the darkness as I dragged my fingers through his hair over and over.
I wanted to reassure him he was okay. We were okay. Memories couldn’t haunt him here in my arms, but I’d be lying.
The dread rolled off him as if they still lingered in the shadows, waiting to suck him back in.
“I love you, too, Emory,” he said, his voice breaking on the words. “I’ve loved you for so damn long I don’t remember a time when I didn’t.”
25
I leaned against the dresser and took a sip of coffee while I watched more and more skin disappear with each button Emory fastened. My mind immediately began flipping through the demands of the next few days, trying to figure out how soon I could get her right back into bed.
Hers or mine, it didn’t matter.
Now that I’d been with her, really been with her, I couldn’t fathom being anywhere else.
“Mmmm, give me,” she said with a flirty laugh as she snagged the cup right out of my hand, effectively hijacking my coffee.
“What’s the plan when you get home?” I asked, reaching around and sliding my hands over her round ass, finding the edge of her dress where I dove for soft skin.
She swayed on her feet, her fingers digging into my shoulder to steady herself, as her eyes drifted shut with each of the lazy circles I drew, drifting closer and closer to—she gasped—there.
Right there.
Fingers shaking, she set the coffee down. Those glistening aquamarine eyes of hers closed and her knees buckled as my finger reached even further into her wet heat.
A bit swollen, definitely tender, she whimpered right before her eyes shot open again.
“Oh, no,” she said with a ragged half moan, half laugh. “If we start this we won’t stop. I have to pack. You definitely need to pack,” she said with a glance around the room even as her fingers moved of their own volition, betraying her words, and she closed in on me, scraping her nails over my chest.
Curling around her, I reached between her soft thighs even deeper, her ragged breath in my ear the whisper of success. “Packing will take five minutes.”
“No, it won’t,” she said on a gasp. “You have to pack your gifts too.” Her mischievous laugh tickled over my ear.
My finger froze. “I’m not getting on a plane with a duffel bag full of sex toys.”
Pulling out some buried mom voice I didn’t even know she had, she stared me down. “To leave them would be insulting. So, yes, you are.”
I kissed the underside of her jaw, the taste of her skin on my tongue better than any coffee. Dustin and Sierra were good, but not this good. “You can’t make me.”
She patted my shoulder and laughed. “There are so many things I can’t make you do, but I’m pretty sure if you want to go head-to-head on that one, I’ll win. Try me.”
“I don’t like the confidence in your voice,” I mumbled as I stepped back.
“I thought you’d see it my way,” she said, cupping my cheek before turning for the door.
The minute she opened it, sunlight flooded in, lighting up the room and the toys she and her friends scattered on random display like some impromptu sex museum.
Most of the shit looked ridiculous with flashy colors, shiny coatings, and unnatural shapes. Personally, I’d rather watch her get off against a wine bottle again instead.
There was something animalistic, a little desperate, and a whole lot clever about using what you had.
I reached for her hand and gave it a quick tug, turning her around for one more kiss.
Pressed against the doorjamb, the sunlight poured over her skin, highlighting the smattering of light freckles almost impossible to see unless you stood right here, a breath away, worshipping every last inch of her lying before you.
Did any of the fuckers before me have one clue what they held in their hands when they had her?
Burying my fingers in her hair, I dragged her in for one more taste. I poured everything into the deep, raw, unapologetic assault on her mouth.
Just like everything in her life, she met me head-on, turned the tables, and left me reeling with every brush of her tongue over mine and every clutch of her fingers on my arms.
“Well, well, well, look at you two bringing the heat.” Cory’s snarky lilt cut through the haze and I froze.
A rumble deep enough to rival a barreling freight train roared through my ears. My sharp intake of breath was enough to break the seal of my lips on hers. The panic spiraling through me reflected in her gaze.
No.
Not like this.
I was supposed to be the one to tell him.
I grasped onto a shred of hope that maybe she was alone, but deep in my gut, I knew I’d waited too long.
The pattern never changed, because I didn’t change. Couldn’t change. And one more person would bear the brunt of my deceit.
Emory’s eyes saw everything. I’d never been able to hide from her. The look full of love and heat seconds earlier turned wary, angry even, with a hint of doubt.
With nowhere left to hide, I looked in Hawk’s eyes, the shocked recognition as the pieces fell into place for him, the distance growing between us with every new second of understanding, and the void left behind filling with distrust.
Fate dealt a final blow, sinking a razor-sharp knife right into my jugular, leaving me bleeding out, my skin hot and tight with my racing heart echoing through the hollowed out pit of my stomach.
Every lesson I’d learned in adulthood was no match for my beginnings. Instincts ingrained before I was old enough to understand the treacherous dynamic of my family marched right to the forefront to skew the way.
I could almost hear the echoes of old ghosts and their mocking laughter as they watched something I finally dared reach for sift helplessly through my fingers.
The long-hidden bruised and battered boy lurking inside stepped out of the deep shadows and did the only thing he knew to do.
Brick by brick his skinny arms moved by rote and built the walls to protect himself while warily watching the cast of characters around him.
“How long?” Hawk said, his voice low and hard.
“What’s going on?” Cory asked, glancing between Hawk and I.
Emory took a step between us. “Hawk—”
“This isn’t about us, Emory. We talked. We’re square. It’s about me…and him,” he said, enunciating the words while spearing his finger in my direction.
This was what I did to people. I lied, I hurt, I destroyed.
My parents.
Ethan.
Ethan and Emory’s parents.
Now Hawk.
And eventually Emory.
How high would I take her before I crushed her too?
What if I brought a wave of pain so devastating to her door she couldn’t claw her way back to her feet after like Graham said?
But I could stop it. I’d been plunging knives in the people I loved for years. I might be running low on supply, but I had one more.
Hawk stepped up, his elbow bumping into Emory. “I asked you how long?”
Keeping my shoulders pulled back and my chin up, I stood tall and defiant even as I knew I was in the wrong. “She’s Ethan’s sister.”
Hawk’s eyes widened with surprise and he stepped back, his gaze darting between us. His hands curled into fists and he gave me a hard nod of acknowledgment, but not forgiveness.
Pain lanced my stunted heart. I’d lose them. I fucked up and couldn’t go back to change it. I wouldn’t make Penn take a side, and I wouldn’t put him in the position of intermediary.
I’d be forced to sell my interest in Hawk Air. And why not? I didn’t deserve it.
“Let’s go, Cory,” Hawk said, taking her elbow.
“But—”
“Leave it alone,” Hawk warned her as he guided her away.
Emory rounded on me. “He knows about my brother, then?”
“Yes,” I said, the chill creeping into my voice as I slowly died inside.
She reached for me and instinct and fear of causing any more destruction or hurt collided making me taking a step back.
I couldn’t let her touch me. Not after witnessing how I betrayed my friend.
Not while with every beat of silence I continued to betray her.
“So that’s how it’s going to be?”
I watched Hawk’s retreating back. “Maybe it’s better this way.”
“For who? You? The truth is out there. It’s hard, it sucks, but this is the point where you do the work to fix it. You know how, Falcon.”
“You don’t know shit about the truth,” I bit out as what was left unsaid still burned in my gut. With my defenses crumbling around me, my control snapped.
She stiffened, the guarded look in her eye clashing with the strength in the set of her shoulders as she faced me head-on. “You have secrets,” she said quietly.
“Sweetheart, you have no idea.”
Vibrating with growing rage, she glared and got right in my face. “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that when you’re getting ready to break me again.”
With the knife firmly in hand, I aimed for the heart and went deep. “I killed Ethan.”
Her mouth snapped shut and she stumbled back. The blood drained from her face and her lip quivered. “Why—why would you say that?”
Tears filled her eyes. She whipped her head back and forth, taking in everything around her, like she didn’t recognize her surroundings.
God, how I wanted to reach for her.
I curled my fingers into my palm, anguish filling me as I watched her spiral.
Her raw voice wavered with doubt. “It’s not true. You were with me. Why would I believe—”
“Was with you, until I got back to the party and was with him again.”
“You saw him after? I don’t understand.”
“I told you your brother wasn’t stupid. We fought earlier that day. He figured out how I felt about you and hated it. I couldn’t lose him. He’s the only brother I—” I shook my head, the words lodging in my throat, refusing to break free. “When I got back to the party, I told him the truth. About picking you up and bringing you home. About what happened there.”
With both hands she shoved at my chest. “Why would you tell him? It was none of his business,” she growled.
“He was my best friend. You’re his little sister. I had no right—”
“Bullshit,” she bit out, seething with fiery rage. “If you taught me anything the night it was this body is mine and I choose,” she said, her tone scathing as she jammed her thumb against her chest. “Not you, not my brother, not some asshole who thinks I owe him something for taking me out. Me.”
“I didn’t stop him. When he went off half-cocked—I didn’t stop him.”
“Couldn’t stop him, you mean.”
She wanted me to confirm my innocence...how the hell was I supposed to do that when I was drowning in guilt?
The silence stretched between us. The divide widening every second we refused to bend.
“So you let him go, hoping he’d die? Is that what you’re trying to make me believe? Because I don’t believe that. I’ll never believe that, Falcon.”
“I should have known. I should have stopped him the minute he took off.”
“This is why you left us and never came home. Why my parents lost two sons that day. Why I lost the man—” Her words died and she shook her head.
I held my breath, hoping, waiting. My selfish ass wanted the words one more time.
“My brother got drunk and got in a car,” she said, her voice firm, inviting absolutely no argument. “He’s the reason he’s dead. There’s nothing you can tell me about that night powerful enough to change the way I feel. You thought you were going to toss out some nugget of truth, some hidden detail, and I was going to write you off and walk away. Well, I’m not making it so easy for you.” Derision curled her lip and she glared at me, her look so fucking hard I fought the urge to take a step back. “If you want to walk away, you can damn well be man enough to say it, since you’re so big on honor and all.”
* * *
“I can’t lose another friend,” he said, his gravelly voice quiet.
Resolute.
I glanced away, giving myself a minute, absorbing the blow, and only when I was confident my voice wouldn’t wobble, did I speak. “And what am I?”
He finally moved. Finally looked as though maybe his heart hadn’t completely hardened to steel in his chest and was going to take a step toward me. “Emory—”
Backing away, I held up my hands to stop him.
Don’t let him touch you. Don’t do it. If he does, you’ll let him in, and this cycle won’t stop.
It has to stop. For me, and for him.
“No. Message received loud and clear.”
His voice turned flat, his dark eyes always full of overwhelming dark passion dulled, and the fight completely left him while emotions spiked through my veins, threatening to blow me apart where I stood.
“The ghosts won’t let you go, will they? You turn away from one and there’s another right there, ready to condemn you for what? Existing? Living? Loving me?”
And there were the tears…and the horrific ache I could never shake. A living and breathing hunter, it found me in my weakest moments, ready to turn me inside out and leave me hollow.
“My God, you’re really going to walk, aren’t you? After one bump in the road, you’re going to give up.”
“It’s not one bump,” he snarled. “It’s every time I should have said something and I didn’t. It’s lie after lie after lie.”
I glanced away, my eyes roaming over the landscape I’d grown used to seeing every morning, but nothing looked the same. “You keep breaking me. Every time you take a piece of my soul and walk away, you leave me more incomplete. You have no right to keep doing this to me. Has taking my jagged pieces made you whole?”
“No.” One word, full of longing, tight with the agony. “I’ve hurt every last person I’ve loved a hundred times over.”
“Yes. Yes, dammit,” I said, stomping my foot. “We’re human. It’s what we do. But we don’t give up.” I squinted against the harsh light of the sun and got ready to drop the words that might divide us for good. “I won’t live in the past with you.”
“I’m damaged goods; I don’t want that for you.”
“That’s your father talking and fuck him Falcon. If he were here, I swear to God, fist raised to me or not, I’d tell him right to his face what a hideous human being he is. He doesn’t get to steal more of you from the grave,” I said, my words a quiet but blunt promise. “He doesn’t get to steal more from me…unless you let him. You’re the gatekeeper. You’re the only one keeping the ghosts here. You’re the one who needs to let them go…for both of us.”
I cupped his cheek, but this time, he didn’t lean into my hand.
His eyes filled with resentment and shame.
“I can’t remember a day when I wasn’t in love with you, either,” I said quietly, my words thick and rough. “But God, I wish I did. I wish I had something to go back to rooted in something other than pain.”
He turned away, his back rigid, the cords in his neck tight with so much agony I had to fight every instinct to keep from wrapping my arms around him, always trying to heal him from the outside.
His healing, if he ever let it come…it had to start from the inside.
Alone.
“I’m not strong enough to pull you out of your past. I thought I was. God, I thought I was, but I’m not.” The whisper broke on my lips, and my throat grew so thick I almost choked with the despair of it all. “If you want out of your prison, it has to come from you.”
I stepped up to him, letting his heat
wash over me for what may be the last time. My fingers itched to brush over the tattoo on the back of his forearm, and finally, I gave myself permission to take that much.
One last intentional touch.
I traced my finger over the dagger where it pierced his heart. “This is us, isn’t it?”
With one jerky nod, he confirmed what I suspected from the very first night we saw each other again.
“You thought it was a representation of our past, of what you think you did to me, when really it’s been a self-fulfilling prophecy all along.”
His chin dropped forward to his chest and his shoulders slumped as he succumbed to some invisible agony.
The sight stole the air from my lungs and shredded my heart.
This war wasn’t with me, and I couldn’t be on the battlefield at his side as much I wished I could. Whatever held him back, whatever he needed to finally move on, I didn’t have it.
I had a precious few seconds to find the will to walk away from the shadow of the boy I fell in love with so many years ago.
This time would be so much worse. I knew the comfort of sleeping in his arms. I knew opening myself completely to him, letting him see all of me. What I would miss wasn’t rooted in leftover teenage fantasies, but a real living series of memories so strong they had nerves, veins, blood, and life.
I dropped my forehead to his back, my lungs shuddering, the loss already looming, waiting to swallow me whole. “I’ll always love you…and as much as I hate it, I’ll always want you,” I whispered. “But not like this. Never again like this. I have to let him go, Falcon. All these wasted years. Years he doesn’t have anymore. It’s the worst kind of disrespect the way we’re wasting time being only half of who we could be.
“You’re searching for absolution I can’t give you. I hope you find it. I hope you find peace.” I pressed my mouth to his skin, and he trembled under my lips. “Maybe I’ll find some too.”
I closed my eyes, fought to drag air into my aching lungs, and tossed what was left of my heart right on the dagger with Falcon’s by walking away.