27 Lies

by Mj Fields

  “Ava, they are. They are beautiful, and happy, and healthy. Now, what about you?”

  “That’s enough for me. They are enough.”

  ***

  Logan is sitting on the floor, surrounded by packages in a sea of wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows when I walk down the stairs after putting the kids down for the night.

  “Why is Dad avoiding me?”

  “He’s not avoiding, Ava. He’s trying to let you figure it out. But that all stops tomorrow at nine thirty in the morning. We’re going to get a tree at Morris’s.”

  I laugh, knowing how much Logan hates all the Christmas “nonsense,” and how he is trying his best to pretend he’s enjoying this.

  “Laugh it up. He is hell-bent on getting the biggest tree on the farm,” he says as he cuts a piece of paper far too big for the tiny box he’s attempting to wrap.

  There is a knock on the door, and then it opens. Luke.

  “Logan?”

  “In the living room,” Logan calls out, and I start to stand up.

  Logan grabs my knee. “Oh, no. You stay put.”

  “Could use your help,” Luke grumbles, sounding strained.

  Logan stands up and walks to the entry around the corner. “What the hell do you have there?” He laughs.

  “It’s a tree,” Luke answers.

  “You trying to get higher on Dad’s shit list?” Logan continues to laugh.

  “Because I got a tree?”

  “He planned to take Ava and the kids to the farm to cut one down in the morning,” Logan explains from over his shoulder as they carry in a gigantic box.

  “That can happen a couple years down the road. They don’t need a real tree yet. Could be allergic.”

  “Allergic to trees?”

  “You never know,” he says, and then he sees me. “Ava.” He nods.

  “Luke,” I return as I stand up. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

  “Oh, no, you’re helping. I’m going out,” Logan says as he walks quickly to the door.

  “Logan...” I warn.

  “Don’t wait up,” he says, and then he’s out the door.

  I just stand there, looking at Luke, and he at me.

  He clears his throat and pulls a knife out of his pocket. “I can do it. You do whatever it is you were doing.”

  I don’t listen to him. Instead, I pull the top apart as he slices down the middle.

  “You upset the tree’s not real?” he asks as he kneels down to cut the rest of the box open.

  “No,” I answer as I look at the fake tree.

  “I got colored lights, even though I know you usually do white. Thought it would give them more to look at,” he explains as he pulls out the instructions.

  I nod as I pull my cardigan closed around me.

  He looks at the instructions for a minute then shrugs before he reaches in and grabs the bottom of the tree. “You wanna grab the base?”

  “Sure,” I say, grabbing the green base from the Styrofoam it’s packed in.

  “Put it where you want it,” he tells me, and I place the base next to the front window, where our tree has gone up every year since I can remember.

  When I look up, he’s watching me, not saying a thing, and he’s not moving. Then he shakes his head.

  “Ava, stop looking at me like I’m going to hurt you. My actions may be harsh, but they are necessary.”

  “Why, Luke?”

  “Let me ask you a question before answering yours. If you had to choose who hurt you worse, would it be the man in jail, the man in the sky, or the man standing in front or you?”

  I start to tell him it’s him, but he holds up his hand.

  “Think harder, Ava. Honestly, you don’t need to answer. I know it’s not me.”

  He brings the tree over and puts the bottom in the base. “You wanna hold this still while I screw it in?”

  “Sure,” I say, thinking about his question.

  The man in the sky, he’s talking about Thomas. Thomas did everything out of want for happiness, his and mine. Did the things I learned hurt me? Without a doubt. However, I understand his reasoning. I’m not saying it’s okay, it’s not, but I know the man he was, and he was trying to protect...all of us.

  Luke, the man before me, was hurting me worse, pushing me to face a future without Thomas, where I am up against an enemy I once loved. Still...love? But he, too, is doing what is best for my children, and I suppose...me.

  The man behind bars took Thomas away. He took Thomas away from me, from Hope, from Chance, from the millions who loved him. He stole Thomas’s happily ever after. Accident or not, he stole that, and he stole Hope’s daddy, and I hate him. I will hate him forever.

  I watch Luke kneel down and wince.

  “Why don’t you hold the tree, and I’ll screw it in,” I offer.

  “I got it,” he says, already tightening the base. Then he stands up and looks at me. “Now, the next piece.” After putting the three pieces on top of each other, he stands back and nods. “It’s good, right?”

  “Yes, it’s beautiful,” I admit.

  “Mom and Lauren are making bows. You want some?”

  “Sure.”

  We look at each other, him looking at my eyes then my mouth and back again.

  “They’re like a light in the darkness.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your blue eyes. Every time shit got deep, or I got banged up, or the pain was too damn much to take, I closed my eyes and counted...”

  “Five, four, three, two, one,” I finish.

  “The pain was gone, and there you were—eyes being the light in the darkness, lips being home. First thing I ever wanted to do when I came home was kiss you. Never felt like I was home until I did.”

  I stay unmoving as he keeps looking between them.

  “Every damn time I saw your pictures on Instagram or Facebook, and especially the ones when you were with him or someone else, I would tell myself it was what we decided, what we wanted, that it didn’t matter because we were just fucking. We, Ava Links and Luke Lane, could never be together because of where we came from. It was tainted.” He shrugs and takes a deep breath. “Yet, every damn time I was going to come home and say, ‘no fucking more,’ I couldn’t do it. Being the selfish prick I am, I wanted inside as deep as I could get. I wanted to just feel you. You feel so fucking good, Ava.”

  I close my eyes, unable to take the intensity of his stare.

  “And now you close them to me. Hurts almost as bad as the day I pushed you away, because all of my fears came true. I hit you. I hit you because you touched me during the wrong fucking dream.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Imagine if you had hit one of them and bruised them, Ava, someone you love with everything you are; would you be okay with it being an accident?”

  I’m afraid to answer him, afraid that there will be no stopping what happens next if I do.

  “You wouldn’t,” he continues. “You beat yourself up over what two selfish fucking assholes did to put you in this place you are now, and it’s not your fault. Imagine if it was a choice you made. You decided to become a warrior so that you could feel like a man and not a shadow of a man. And you chose that over the person who never treated you like a shadow, who knew who you were and loved you, anyway. Unforgivable, so I pushed you away. I pushed you to him.”

  He takes a very slow step toward me like he doesn’t want to spook me, but he already has. “I loved you before that, Ava. And now, I can love you, and me, and them. I love you even more now. I can’t walk away. I won’t walk away. So yes, I have to be harsh, because you are worth the war.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I deserve this. - R. Parrish

  LUKE

  Christmas Eve

  I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her, get lost inside of her, and take her to that lost place where nothing means a damn thing except her and I feeling each other. I want to take her to that lost place and take my fucking time because I ca
n now.

  I can.

  Yet, she’s not ready. I know it. I sense it. I see it.

  She’s not ready, but she wants it, too.

  I kiss the side of her head then use every ounce of strength I have to step back.

  She looks confused, shocked...beautiful.

  “Can I help wrap?”

  She nods. “Yeah, of course.”

  When we sit on the floor, she sighs. “I’m mad at you, so mad at you, but it’s Christmastime, so...I guess we’ll call a truce.”

  “Yeah?” I ask with a light smile.

  She looks at me again, like she expects more of a fight.

  “So, does this truce last through the New Year, or is it strictly a Christmas thing?”

  “Depends on you, I suppose,” she says, trimming a red shiny paper to match the box she has between her legs.

  “So, there are rules to the truce?”

  She nods. “Don’t take them from me again.”

  “Ava...” I sigh.

  “Just...I don’t know, Luke, but I can’t.” She pauses. “You can’t.”

  “So, if I want them, I have to do it here?” I ask, grabbing a box to wrap.

  “I don’t know, but—”

  “You told me to lawyer up, Ava.”

  “Yes, and today I listened to a little girl spout fairy tales about a dead man and her conversation, and I believed it.”

  I can’t help laughing. “Apparently, she has dreams where she talks to him. Tessa used to have dreams, too.”

  She looks up at me. “Really?”

  I nod. “Dreams of my father’s accident and the birth of a boy”—I point to myself—“before the accident.”

  “And they didn’t know she was pregnant until after your father—”

  “So I’ve been told a million times.” I half-laugh.

  “Death and life,” she whispers.

  “And everything in-between.” I nod. “We had one hell of a year, blue eyes. We did it alone. Next year will be different.”

  “Luke, don’t,” she whispers, but I see an ease in her words that hasn’t been there since before we got home.

  “I won’t lie, and you know it’s true. This year, lives were changed forever.”

  “That they were,” she says, holding two little boxes.

  “What do you have there?”

  “The only things I picked out in this whole mess.” She smiles a little, and there is that same ease I saw in her voice now.

  She holds up the boxes. They are ornaments.

  “ ‘His First Christmas,’ and ‘Her First Christmas’,” I read aloud and nod. “So all these others?”

  “Have a look. Easiest Christmas shopping I’ve ever done.” She smiles fondly at them.

  I look through all the ornaments as we wrap them. When I come to the last one, my gut twists at wondering if it’s for him or me.

  She snatches it out of my hand. “Pretend you didn’t see that.”

  I want to ask if it’s his or mine, but I just nod instead.

  She grabs the ones she wrapped. “You want to take these with you and put them under your tree?”

  “What are they?”

  “Aunts and uncles, and grandparents’ ornaments.”

  “For my family?” I ask, confused.

  She shrugs and acts like it’s no big deal. “Yeah.”

  “Ava?”

  “Luke?”

  “I’m gonna kiss you.”

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  I shake my head as I lean in. She doesn’t lean away.

  I should not be doing this. I should not be doing this, repeats over and over in my head, but she’s not leaning away, and I’m not listening to my fucking head. I’m listening to my heart.

  Her lips are warm, wet, and sweet. I press my tongue against them, and she parts them slowly. I grip the back of her neck as I lean in until she is lying down, kissing her softly, gently, unhurried.

  “I want you so goddamned bad,” I tell her, pulling away before I kiss her cheek, her jaw, her throat.

  “I can’t,” she whispers, yet her hands find their place in my hair.

  “I know,” I say, kissing down her neck, down between her tits.

  “You can’t,” she warns.

  “I know.”

  I kiss down her waist, lifting her shirt and exposing the flesh. I lick and kiss every inch of her, tasting her skin, feeling her squirm, listening to her breaths hitch. Then I hook my thumbs in the waistband of her yoga pants and pull them down just enough to expose her hip bones and the scar from where I assume her cesarean was performed.

  Hungry. That’s the best way to describe how I feel right now. No, not hungry; fucking starving.

  I grip her hips as I settle between her legs, kissing, licking, tasting. And she is moaning, squirming, thrusting.

  “Luke, I can’t.” She whimpers her pleas that go unanswered.

  I lick her pelvic bone, dipping my tongue slightly lower because, if she stops me, I at least want a taste. Just a taste of her pussy.

  She takes in a deep breath, trying not to move, not to breathe, not to make a damn noise. However, if she feels half as good as she tastes, she’s going to do a hell of a lot more than hold her breath.

  I kiss up her hip as I hook my thumbs again in her waistband, and then lower her pants and underwear.

  “Luke,” comes out in a gust of held in air. “Can’t.”

  “Shh...” I say against her skin. “I’m not gonna fuck you, Ava. Just a taste. Just a fucking taste,” I groan out as my lips and hands move down her body.

  I pull her leg free from her clothes then kiss from her knee up to her inner thigh. Then I go back to her hip and slowly, very fucking slowly, move down.

  She shutters. “Oh, God.”

  I blow over her pussy, and she grips the plush gray carpet she is lying on. I let my tongue softly slide down her hip, her thigh, and then I kiss and lick up her again.

  “Luke,” she pants, anticipation dripping in her voice.

  I use the tip of my tongue to lick her lips softly, and she holds in a breath and slowly lets it out with a throaty moan.

  Fuuuuck.

  I kiss and suck on them, driving both of us wild. When I can’t take it anymore, I spread her with my tongue and lap at her as she cries out my name, fisting my hair.

  I lick her, placing my tongue flat, and then suck as she grinds against my face.

  When I can’t take teasing her or myself anymore, I shove my tongue inside her and use it the way I would use my cock with Ava, my fucking Ava.

  Her body tenses, her breaths come faster, and I look up to see her nipples sticking up in her shirt. She’s going to come, and she’s going to do it on my fucking tongue.

  I run my tongue up her slit, circle her clit, put my mouth around her, and flick my tongue quickly up and down, side to side, and around, while her orgasm builds intensity. Then I suck. I suck her hard, and she feeds me. She comes for me. She falls apart beautifully the way Ava has done a hundred times on my cock. For the first time, though, there is no fucking hurrying, and she does it the way I dreamed she would a thousand times.

  I can’t stop watching her come. I can’t stop sucking and licking. I can’t stop feeding on her beautiful body, and listening to the noises she makes as I do.

  When she is spent, when she is done, when she is no longer crying out and is trying to catch her breath, I kiss up her body until I am hovering over her.

  “You feed our kids with your tits, Ava.”

  She nods.

  “You fed me with your pussy.”

  She blushes and closes her eyes.

  “Open them up, Ava.”

  She slowly opens them.

  “Get some sleep, blue eyes. I love you.” I kiss her nose, and she sighs.

  ***

  I lay in bed after a shower and making myself come since she’s not ready for me to be inside her yet. Funny thing is, I already am, and by the look in her eyes tonight, I’m in deeper than I have ev
er been.

  Christ, she’s beautiful.

  I text her goodnight, and she replies.

  Fucking progress.

  The next morning, after a workout and a shower, I pace, waiting for the right time to go over. I want her to go with me to church with the kids tonight, but I don’t want to push. With her, though, there is no other way.

  At her door, I knock once then walk in.

  “Hello?”

  Logan yells, “We’re in here!”

  I walk in to find him holding Hope on his lap. They are watching those videos of Ava’s, the ones of Burning Souls’ last tour. I have to stow the annoyance. Fuck, I don’t have to do that. I have to accept it. For her, I will.

  “Saw Liam’s truck outside; he here?”

  “Yep, upstairs. Ava had to give Chance a bath. He got in a bit of a food fight with himself.” Logan chuckles. “You two good?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I laugh to myself, thinking of how I left things last night. “But you never know.”

  “She seems happy today, so I’d say you’re safe.”

  I know he’s Ava’s brother, and I know he means well, but I don’t like him picking on her. I also know it’s not my place to say a word, so I keep my mouth shut and head upstairs where I hear Chance laughing. It’s my second favorite sound in the world.

  “Oh, God,” I hear and freeze.

  Typically, that’s my most favorite sound in the world, but right now, I’m not in her.

  I push the door open to find Ava sitting on the counter, and Liam is...

  “Get your fucking hands off her!” I am ready to snap.

  Ava pulls her arms that were in the air straight down and crosses them over her chest. “Luke, what are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” I huff. “What the fuck is he doing?” I point at Liam.

  Liam sighs. “I’m a doctor.”

  “You’re a fucking vet!”

  “Luke, that’s enough.”

  “That’s enough? Is it, Ava? I fucking tell you I love you, and—”

  “He told you he loves you?” Liam asks Ava.

  She nods and rolls her eyes. “Because he has to.” She nods at Chance, who is in his bath seat.

  “Fuck this,” I grumble as I look for the towel, the one with a hood. “Chance, bud, you and I are going to church tonight. Maybe your mother should consider—”