by Bromberg, K.
“You mean from her voodoo pussy?”
“Fuck no,” he chuckles. “You, baby—you’re my voodoo pussy. Bailey? She’s more like a piranha pussy.”
We laugh a bit more as his analogies get funnier and funnier and then he says, “Okay, so...” he trails a finger down the bare skin of my arm leaving tiny sparks of electricity in its wake “...Ace?”
I was waiting for the question, and I just pull back from him and shake my head. “You’re going to waste your next question on that? You’re going to be so disappointed.” I twist my lips and look at him. “Don’t you want to know something else?”
“Quit stalling, Thomas!” His fingers dig into my ribs, and I squirm trying to evade them.
“Stop,” I tell him as I keep wriggling. “Okay, okay!” I put my hands up and he stops right before I shove his shoulders. “Tyrant!” He tickles me one more time for good measure and then grunts as I try to explain. “Haddie tends to have a ridiculous penchant for rebellious bad boys.” I stop mid-sentence as he raises his eyebrows at me.
“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, huh?” I can see him trying to keep the smile off of his face.
“I told you that night at the carnival that I don’t do bad boys.”
“Oh, baby, you most definitely did me.”
I don’t even fight the laugh that comes out because the cocky, mischievous grin is back on his face, lighting up his eyes, and solidifying the theft of my heart. “I sure did, but you were most definitely the exception to the rule,” I tell him with a smirk.
“As you were mine,” he says, and I think back to how easy it seems for him to say these things now when a month ago I never thought it would be a possibility. He leans forward and brushes his lips against mine, his tongue delving between them to taste and tantalize. I groan, unsatisfied, when he pulls away. “Now give me answers, woman. Ace?” he says with the raise of his eyebrows.
“Okay, okay,” I relent, although I’m still very distracted by how close Colton’s lips are to mine and how much I crave just one more taste even though my lips are still warm from his. “Like I said, Haddie goes for tattooed men destined to break her heart. Some are good for her, most are not. Max and I used to always laugh at the revolving door of rebels that surrounded her. In college she dated this guy named Stone.” I just nod when Colton shakes his head, making sure he heard me correctly.
“Yes, Stone was in fact his name. Anyway, the guy was a jerk but Haddie was madly in lust with him. One night he stood her up for his boys, and as we sat with a bottle of tequila and a bag of Hershey kisses, I told her he was a “real ace in the hole” she’d picked this time. One thing led to another shot, and then another shot.” I laugh at the memory from all those years ago. “And the more we drank, we decided to make ace stand for something … we thought we were hilarious with our guesses and once we decided on the perfect one for Stone, we couldn’t stop giggling. Later that night after he’d been out on the town with his buddies, he showed up at the door and when Haddie answered it, she said “Hey, Ace!” and the nickname stuck. He thought she was telling him he was an ace in the sack when she was really telling him he was an arrogant, conceited egomaniac.” Colton’s eyes meet mine when I finally give him what he wants to know. “And from there on out, every time she dated a guy who was like Stone, we called him Ace.”
He just stares at me for a second before nodding his head subtly. “Hmpf,” is all he says after a beat, his expression stoic and unexpressive. I worry my bottom lip between my teeth as I wait, and then a slow, lazy grin curls up one corner of his mouth. “It’s still a chance encounter to me, but I guess I earned that title the first night we met.”
I snort. “Umm, yeah, you can say that again.”
“Don’t kick an injured man when he’s down.” He pouts in mock sadness, and I lean in and brush my lips against his.
“You poor thing,” I croon.
“Yep, and just because you feel sorry for me, you’re going to let me ask another question. What other memory am I forgetting that you’re not telling me?”
I swear my heart skips and lodges in my throat. I try to not falter. Try not to show the break in my figurative stride, which would most definitely let him know that I know something he doesn’t. “Nice try, Ace,” I tease, swallowing hard and figuring distraction is key at this point.
I lower my lips and kiss little pecks down his neck and chest and then instantly know my next question. I probably shouldn’t ask it—know it’s a no-go area and I really intend to ask about the knock four times on the hood of the car thing—but the question is out of my mouth before I can stop it. “What do your tattoos mean?” I feel his chest hitch momentarily as I look up and meet his eyes. “I mean, I know what the symbols represent … but what is their meaning to you?”
He stares at me, tumult in his eyes and uncertainty in his grimace. “Ry … ” My name is an exhale on his lips as he tries to find the words to express the warring emotions dancing at a rapid pace through his irises.
“Why’d you get them?” I ask, thinking maybe I’ll switch gears, anything to get rid of the fear flickering in them.
“I figured I was scarred permanently on the inside—live with it every day, a constant reminder that never goes away—I might as well scar myself on the outside too.” He shifts his eyes away from mine with a deep breath and looks out toward the ocean. “Show everyone that sometimes what you think is a perfect package is filled with nothing but damaged goods, scarred and irreparable.” His voice breaks on the last word and with it so does a little piece of my heart. His words are like acid eating at my soul.
I can’t stand the sadness that overtakes him so I take the reins. I want him to see that whatever the tattoos represent, it doesn’t matter. Show him that only he could take what he deems an invisible disfigurement and make it visibly, beautiful art. Explain to him that the scars inside and out are meaningless because it’s the man that wears them—owns them—who is important. Is the man I’ve fallen in love with.
And I’m not sure how to show him this, so I move on instinct, touching his arm so he raises it up. I very slowly lean forward and press my lips to the uppermost one, the Celtic symbol representing adversity. I feel his chest vibrate beneath my lips as he tries to control the rush of emotion swamping him when I move ever so slowly down to the next one: acceptance.
The notion that anyone should ever have to scar themselves permanently to accept horrors I can’t even fathom hits me hard. I leave my lips pressed against the artistic reminder and close my eyes so he doesn’t see the tears pooling in them. So he doesn’t mistake them for pity. But then I realize I want him to see them. I want him to know that his pain is my pain. His shame is my shame. His adversity is my adversity. His struggle is my struggle.
That he no longer has to battle it alone, body and soul stained in silent shame.
As I lift my lips from the symbol of acceptance and move it down to healing, I look up at him through my tear blurred eyes. His eyes lock on to mine and I try to pour everything in myself into our visual conversation.
I accept you, I tell him.
All of you.
The broken parts.
The bent parts.
The ones filled with shame.
The cracks where hope seeps through.
The little boy cowering in fear and the grown man still suffocating in his shadow.
The demons that haunt.
Your will to survive.
And your spirit that fights.
Every single part of you is what I love.
What I accept.
What I want to help heal.
I swear neither of us breathe in this silent exchange, but I can feel walls crumbling down around the heart that beats just beneath my lips. Gates that once protected are now forced apart from the rays of hope, love, and the trust breaking through. Walls collapsing to let someone else in for the first time.
The absolute impact of the moment causes the tears to fall over and tr
ail down my cheek. The salt on my lips, his scent in my nose, and the thunder of his heart breaks me apart and puts me back together in a magnitude of ways.
He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting the tears, and before he opens them, he’s reaching down and pulling me up so we’re at eye level. I can see the muscles in his jaw tic and see the fight over how to verbalize it in his eyes. We sit like this a moment as I allow him the space he needs.
“I …” he starts out and then his voices fades, lowering his eyes for a beat before raising them back up to mine. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet. It’s just too much and as much as it’s clear in my head—in my soul and my nightmares—saying it out loud when I never have, is just …”
My heart splinters for the man I love. Fucking shatters into the tiniest shards possible from the memories that just put that lost, apologetic, shameful look in his beautiful eyes. I reach out and cup his jaw in my hands trying to smooth away the pain etched in the magnificent lines of the face.
“Shh, it’s okay, Colton. You don’t need to explain anything.” I lean in and press a kiss to the tip of his nose as he does to me and then rest my forehead against his. “Just know I’m here for you if you ever want to.”
He exhales out a shaky sigh and pulls me tighter against him, trying to make me feel secure and safe when I should be doing that for him. “I know,” he murmurs into the darkening night. “I know.”
And it’s not lost on me that he let me kiss all of his tattoos—express love for all of the symbols of his life—except for the one denoting vengeance.
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
Where the hell am I? I jerk awake and sit up. My heart’s racing, head’s pounding, and I’m out of breath. Sweat beads on my skin as I try to wrap my head around the jumbled images floating, then crashing through my dreams. Memories that vanish like goddamn ghosts the minute I wake up and leave nothing but an acrid taste in my mouth.
Yeah, the two of us—nightmares and me—we’re tight. Thick as motherfucking thieves.
I glance at the clock. It’s only seven-thirty in the morning, and I need a drink already—screw that—a whole damn fifth to deal with these dreams that are going to be the death of me. Talk about motherfucking irony. Memories of a crash I can’t remember are going to kill me trying to remember them.
Can you say fucked up with a capital F?
I laugh out loud only to be answered by the thumping of Baxter’s tail against his cushion on the floor beside me. I pat the bed for him to jump up on it, and after a bit of petting, I wrestle him to lie down, laughing at his wildly licking tongue.
I lie back on my pillow and close my eyes trying to remember what I was dreaming about, what empty spaces in my mind I can try and fill. Absolutely fucking nothing.
Sweet Jesus! Throw me a goddamn bone here.
Baxter groans beside me. I open my eyes and look over at him, expecting puppy dog eyes begging for attention. Nope. Not in the slightest. I can’t help but laugh.
Fucking Baxter. Man’s best friend and shit and also comedic relief when needed most.
“Seriously, dude? If I could lick myself like that, I wouldn’t need a woman.” My words don’t even make him hesitate as he finishes cleaning himself. After a beat Baxter stops and looks at me, head angled, handy tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. “Don’t give me that smug look, you bastard. You might think you’re top dog now with all that flexibility and shit, but, dude, you’d hold out too for Ry’s pussy. Fucking grade A voodoo, Bax.” I reach out and scratch the top of his head and laugh again with a shake of my head.
Am I that damn desperate that I’m talking to my dog about sex? And the doc says my head’s not screwed up? Shit, I think he’s taken one too many right turns on an oval track.
Baxter stands and jumps off the bed. “I get it, use me and then leave me,” I say to him, and Rylee’s words to me the first night we met resurface. Fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Fucking Rylee. Pure class, gorgeous with a defiant mouth and feisty attitude. How the hell did we get from there to here?
I swear to God life is a fucking series of moments. Some unexpected. Most not. And very few inconsequential. Hell if I would have ever expected a stolen kiss to lead to this. Rylee and me.
Motherfucking checkered flags and shit.
Blowing out a breath as the headache starts, I roll over on the bed to grab my pain meds from the nightstand. It feels like my head explodes with a bright burst of white—a flash of memories from the drivers’ meeting hits me like a fucking sledgehammer—and then disappears before I can hold on to more than a tenth of what flickered.
“Goddamnit!” I shove up and out of the bed, the dizziness not as bad as yesterday. As the day before yesterday. I feel restless as I try to force myself to remember, to make my jacked up head recall all that I’d just glimpsed. I pace, my mind drawing nothing but blanks. I’m frustrated, feeling confined, unsettled.
More fucked up than not.
I don’t feel like me anymore. And I need that right now more than anything. To be me. To be in control. To be on top of my game.
To still be Colton fucking Donavan.
“Aaarrrrggghh!” I shout because fucking is most definitely what I need right now. What will help me find the fucking me I need to be again. I may be pacing in front of my bedroom window, but my dick is hard as a rock and my balls are so fucking blue I’m gonna turn into goddamn Papa Smurf if the doc doesn’t clear me soon.
Pleasure to bury the pain, my ass. When you can’t have the pleasure, what the hell do you do with the pain?
And fuck me if it’s not the worst—sweetest—torture sleeping next to the only woman I’ve ever ached for. I can’t take another damn day of this. Even though it aches like a bitch, just the thought of her has me reaching down to palm my dick, make sure it didn’t shrivel up and fall off from lack of damn use.
Yep, still there.
And then my hand trembles. Shakes so that my fingers can’t even hold my own dick anymore.
Motherfuck, cocksuck! I’m shaking with frustration right now. At me, at Jameson for crashing into me, at the damn world in general! This confinement is suffocating me. Making me lose my shit! I’m going fucking crazy!
I pick up the pillow next to me on the couch and chuck it at the wall of glass in front of me before flopping down into a chair. “Shit!” Squeezing my eyes shut, I suddenly feel like images zoom and collide at a rapid pace slamming against the front of my mind. The bright flash of white returns with a vengeance, crippling and freezing me at the same fucking time.
Go, go, go. C’mon, one-three. C’mon, baby. Go, go, go.
Too fast.
Fuck!
Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.
I jolt my eyes open as memories lost to me rush back in high definition color.
My stomach tumbles to my feet as the forgotten feelings hit me. Fear strangles me as I try to piece the crash together from the Swiss-cheese sized holes still in my memory.
The anxiety attack hits me at full force and I can’t shake it. Dizziness. Vertigo. Nausea. Fear. All four mix like a Long Island Iced Tea I’d kill to gulp down right now as my body trembles with the tiny bits of knowledge my memory has chosen to return.
I feel like I’m on a roller coaster, mid free fall as I struggle to draw in a damn breath.
Suck it up, Donavan. Quit being such a pussy! Fuck me because all I want right now is Rylee. And I can’t have her. So I rock myself back and forth like a goddamn puss to prevent myself from calling her on her first full day back with the boys.
But hell if I don’t need her, especially because I get it now … get her now. Understand the claustrophobia that cripples her, because right now I can’t even function. All I can fucking do is lie flat on the floor with the edges of my vision blurring, the room spinning, and my head pounding.
And in a moment of lucidity amidst the strangling panic, my mind acknowledges that if I didn’t feel like myself before, then I most definitely hate this pussified version of myself
—falling to pieces, lying on the floor like a little bitch because of a few memories.
I close my eyes as my mind swims in a goddamned fog.
… If it’s in the cards …
More memories graze my mind, but I can’t reach them or see them long enough to hold on to the fuckers.
… Your superheroes finally came …
I push the memories back, push them down into the blackness. I’m so useless right now. As much as I need to remember, I’m not sure if I can handle them. I’ve always been a balls-to-the-wall kind of guy, but right now I need motherfucking baby steps. Crawl before you walk and all that shit.
I close my eyes to try and make the room stop the fucking Tilt-A-Whirl it’s become.
Thwack!
And another flash of a memory hits me. Five minutes ago I couldn’t remember shit and now I can’t forget. Screw being broken or bent, I’m a motherfucking scrap yard of parts right now.
Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe.
Thwack!
I’m alive. Whole. Present.
Thwack!
I take in a couple of deep breaths, sweat staining the carpet as it pours off of me. I struggle to sit up, to piece together the parts of me scattered all over the damn place to no avail, because it’s gonna take a whole hell of a lot more than a torch to weld me back the fuck together.
And it hits me like a motherfucking freight train what I need to do right now. I’m on the move. If I were more coherent, I’d laugh at my naked ass crawling across the floor to reach the television’s remote, at how low I’ve stooped.
But I don’t give a flying fuck because I’m so goddamn desperate.