“Jesus, Mia, you should have called me.” I pulled my shirt over my head and wrapped it around her open palm, pressing to stop the bleeding.
“I didn’t cut, Ridge. I swear. I was just holding the razor so tight, I didn't even realize that it cut me.”
“I know, baby. I'm so proud of you.” I rained kisses across her forehead.
“I wanted to so bad.” A soft sob escaped her throat.
“I'm so proud of you, baby. If it happens again, call me. Talk to me. Cut me. Please don’t cut yourself, take it out on me, baby. I’m here for you. I know this is so fucking hard but you’re not alone, I’m here, My.”
She licked her lips and her deep green eyes turned up to me. Silent tears fell as I held her cut hand in my own.
“Christ, come here.” I heaved her into my arms and carried her out the door and laid her on the bed.
“Listen to me. I’m taking you somewhere tomorrow. Therapy, whatever you need. Take the time off work, you went back too soon, I shouldn’t have left you alone, fuck.” I was rambling, but I was terrified. I’d never seen her like this. Despondent, empty, numb. Jesus Christ, my beautiful, fiery girl was numb.
“Losing her, it just brought me back. After Josh killed himself, they disappeared. They were there, but they weren't, and the cutting helped me feel. Helped me escape what I couldn’t control, it soothed me. I know it’s fucked up, but it eased the ache.”
“I know, baby. I know.” I rocked her across my lap on the bed.
“Let me be strong for you. Let me take the pain away. Remember what we used to do, baby? The pain, the pleasure? I’ll be that for you, again. Take it out on me.”
Her eyes held mine, passion surged before she straddled my waist, wrapped her fingers in my hair and pressed her lips to me in a punishing kiss.
My dick hardened, ached against my zipper as she ground her body against mine. The towel fell away and I wrapped her in my arms, smoothed my palms over her flesh as she moaned and rocked.
Her damp hair fell in a tangle over my shoulder as she leaned in and sucked at my neck. She ran her tongue across my collarbone, nipping at the flesh over the inked words.
She swirled her tongue along the hollow where neck met shoulder before sinking her teeth in. I jerked and my heart sped before she released. My cock pounded in my pants and suddenly I wanted her. Inside her. On top of her. Owning her. Owning me.
“Fuck,” I growled before she smoothed her tongue over the fiery welt that I was sure she’d left. “Jesus, fuck,” I moaned and threw back my head when she sucked and bit at the other side of my neck.
“I want to hurt you,” she grit between her teeth. I tensed my arms, held her so tightly to me I might crush the air from her lungs. Fuck, I wished my pants were off so I could thrust up into her. Pound my way home, the only place I ever wanted to be.
She sucked my skin between her lips and nipped, pinching and causing my jaw to clench, and my fingers to tighten around her hips.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I thrust my denim-covered dick between her legs. She sucked with her lips and ground her core into me. She pressed as hard as she could, circling and seeking release until she pulled the flesh at my neck through her teeth, scraping along the erogenous zone she’d targeted, before hot spurts of cum shot out of my dick.
I sat panting and trembling until my eyes opened and I focused on her vibrant smile perched above me, her eyes shimmering with amusement and sex.
She was fucking intoxicating.
And she’d marked me.
My girl had dug her teeth into me and fucking marked me and I’d told her to.
I fucking loved it.
“Dad’s selling the house.”
“Where’s he going?” I fiddled with a milk ring on the counter in my kitchen as I held the phone to my ear.
“He mentioned something smaller. He doesn’t want to leave Rock Island. I think the house has too many memories. That’s where my brother . . . and now Mom.”
“Yeah.” That was where her brother had taken his life. Turned a gun on himself so horrifically. I was surprised they hadn’t left then. But they loved it there. They’d moved when Mia started high school, were only there for under a year when he’d done it.
“Will you help me?”
“With anything,” I agreed.
“I have to go up and clear out some stuff. He wants me to go through everything. Take out what I want and maybe garage sale the rest.”
“Okay.”
“Can you go this weekend?”
“I can.”
The silence stretched between us. The words died on my lips. I wanted to tell her. Needed to tell her. I’d been tossing it around for weeks. But she was so overwhelmed; she’d shut down a little since her mom had passed.
“My?”
“Yeah?”
They were right there. So close. I was choking on them. “See you this weekend?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Maybe I’ll pick you up.” I chuckled when I heard the sweet tinkle of her laughter over the phone. It was great to hear, caused my heart to swell with happiness.
“See you, Ridge.”
“Later, My.”
Saturday afternoon, a dreary, windy, rainy November day and we were camped out in her parents’ attic, digging through boxes of old schoolwork, family albums, dress-up clothes and toys, and countless boxes of magazines and newspaper clippings.
“Jesus.” I swiped at the puff of dust that shot into my face as I opened the flaps of another box. “More newspapers.” I dropped the box on the floor to dig in the next.
“Wow.” Her voice was soft beside me. She sat cross-legged, her hair in a messy bun, wearing an old shirt and faded jeans. She held a yellowing newspaper between her fingers.
“What?” I asked as I opened the flap of the next box. “What’s with all the Time magazines? It’s like an episode of Hoarders up here.”
I turned after a few silent moments and caught the distraught look in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I turned and plopped down on the floor beside her.
“Isn't Crest Hill the detention center you were at?”
I scrunched up my eyes in distaste. I hated those words. All the horrific memories of the detention center where my fate had taken me down an impossibly darker path.
“I wonder why my parents kept this?”
“What is it?” I leaned over and caught the headline of the article.
Guard at Crest Hill Dies in Accident.
My heart shot into my throat. My eyes skimmed the article as I saw the picture of the man who’d crept into my room that night. November 22, 2002. November 22, 2002. The date tattooed in my brain, and on my arm.
“Jesus Christ,” I gritted, and shot up, shoving my hands in my pockets and stalking to the window that overlooked the water. Dust shot up in my wake and Mia coughed behind me.
“Ridge, is this . . .?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.”
“Why do they have that?” I turned and stared at the paper in her hands. It was the obituary for the man I’d killed in juvie. But I hadn’t known Mia then, didn’t know that she even had a connection to Crest Hill.
“I don’t know . . .” She frowned and then launched herself down the stairs before I even knew she was leaving.
“Daddy,” she called through the house before she found him in the kitchen, making tea. I trailed in after her, the moldy smell of old paper lingering in her wake. “Why did you keep this?” She thrust the newspaper in his hands. He glanced at the headline before his face blanched.
“You want some tea?” He turned and continued with the mug on the countertop, as if she hadn’t even asked a question.
“No, I want to know why you kept it.”
“Ridge, you want some tea?”
I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth. I didn’t know why they’d kept it, but my curiosity was piqued.
“Sit down.” He sat at a chair in the sm
all kitchen and Mia relaxed next to him.
“Do you remember him?” He nodded at the picture.
“What? No, why would I?”
“He was our neighbor in Augusta. Before we moved here.” He looked up at me, to explain.
“Oh.” She tilted her head as she looked at the photo. “Yeah, I guess. I never really paid attention to him.”
“He's also the monster that raped your brother.”
“What?” she shrieked and the newspaper fluttered out of her hands. My fists clenched at my thighs as I stood rigid in their big Maine kitchen. My heart roared in my ears, my palms sweaty, and the hackles rising on my neck.
No. No. No. No.
He’d gotten hold of her brother too.
He’d done it to her brother too.
No. No. No. No, Mia.
My eye glazed as I looked out the window, not hearing any more of their conversation as I was thrust back to the nights when moans and sobs echoed down the wide hallways of the detention center. Her brother was one of those boys. He wasn't there that night, or any of those nights, but he'd suffered at that evil bastard’s hands just like they had.
Like I almost had.
The thought shattered me wide fucking open.
“Ridge.” She clutched at my hand as if her life depended on it.
“He moved into that big yellow house next door when Josh was ten. I think it started from the beginning.”
Her brother had killed himself when he was fourteen. Christ, four years. He’d been doing this to other kids, kids in the neighborhood. I was so fucking stupid to think he was only preying on boys in the detention center. We were easy targets, but that evil cocksucker had probably been doing it his whole life.
“After Josh . . . after what happened, we knew. There were so many signs: he would tense up and shudder whenever he walked by that house. It was awful. I blame myself. Your mom blamed herself too. He left a note . . .”
“Josh left a note?” Tears ran in streaks down Mia's cheeks.
He nodded and ran his hand over his face. The pain radiating out of his deep, soulful green eyes. The same eyes that Mia had. “He hinted that things had happened. He didn't come out and say it, but he didn't have to.” He put his hand over his mouth as if to hold back a sob.
Mia stood and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“When we found out he was killed in that accident, we were so fucking relieved. It was too late for Josh, but . . . if another child was spared . . .”
“Daddy.” Tears ran down Mia’s cheek as she reached for his hand. “Daddy, it wasn't an accident. I mean, it was, but . . . he did it to other boys. Ridge was at that detention center.”
The old man’s head looked up from her to me, and back to her.
She trailed a thumb along his old weathered arm. “He came to Ridge one night, tried . . . Ridge killed him.” She turned to me, her eyes searching out my own, tears burning between us.
I didn’t have words, couldn’t say anything. This was all so fucked. I didn’t know what was right and wrong.
Christ, I’d killed the guy that had hurt her brother.
What did this mean?
What could I say?
I was so fucking lost.
I’d lived with this secret for years. The guilt. The pain. The regret. The shame.
Guilt for the drugs.
Guilt for stealing and going to juvie.
For killing that prick.
For stealing my brother's fiancée .
Using Amy to numb myself.
Getting Amy pregnant. Causing her miscarriage and infertility. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
Did this change anything?
Suddenly, somehow, it did.
In some fucked up way, without even knowing it, I’d avenged her brother’s death. Taken the life that had taken her brother away from her.
Taken the life that had been the start of all the pain and devastation for her and her family. The reason she'd started cutting. Probably the reason she’d even cheated on my brother. Why her parents had turned her out, lost forever inside themselves.
“Jesus Christ, son.” Her dad jumped up and wrapped me in a hug.
“We were so fucking happy that day, he got what was coming to him.”
“No, I . . . I killed him. I took his life,” I croaked as I stiffened in his embrace.
“He took my son’s life.” The man pulled away from me and made eye contact. Tears watered his green irises.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I need . . . I need . . . to go.” I turned and walked straight out of the house, without a coat, down the road and along the shoreline. With my hands thrust in my pockets, I kept walking until my calves ached and I sat down on a large slab of granite that thrust out into the angry November Atlantic.
I stayed there until my fingers were numb, my hair was wind tossed, and my cheeks burned with the cold.
I stayed there until I didn’t feel anymore.
Because that one small revelation had turned everything on its axis again.
“Ridge.” Her soft voice echoed on the wind and I wondered if I was dreaming. Was this it? Please don’t be a dream. Please let it be real. Let it be Mia.
My eyes finally fluttered open. It was late, so late, pitch black, and I wasn’t sure when I’d gotten back to her dad’s house. I was sprawled out on the couch, freezing fucking cold in this old house as the wind whipped the old panes and whistled through the cracks.
Mia laid herself across my body, draped her arm around my neck, her face to mine, her lips just a hair’s breadth from my own.
I remained still, unable to move, could hardly breathe.
In and out. In and out.
Deep breaths.
“My?” I croaked as my brain finally registered that she was real and my hands ran around her torso to lock at the small of her back. I ducked my fingertips under the soft cotton of her shirt to touch her skin.
She shivered and dug herself in closer to me.
“Come to bed?” she murmured against my neck where she’d tucked herself.
I kneaded at the soft skin at her waist, stroked along her waistband, and sucked in a breath of her soft, scented hair.
“Mmm . . .” I hummed in her ear before she pushed off me, my hand locked in hers. She pulled me up to sitting, then pulled me up behind her on the stairs. I had a fantastic view of her ass and, all of a sudden, all I could think about was losing myself in her.
“I’m glad you’re back.” She tucked herself into my arm in her small twin bed. I’d been out walking the shoreline for hours; until my fingertips were frozen and, I think, my brain lost the ability to think. I wasn’t entirely sure when I got back to her dad’s house, but I stumbled in, all the lights out, and not willing to wake her up, flopped on the couch.
I was so lost inside my own head that I had a flash of guilt that I hadn’t even asked how she was. That her brother had been abused. That I’d been the one that had killed her brother’s perpetrator. It was horrific, and it could shatter her. People didn’t always come back from that; her brother hadn’t. And I wasn't even sure I had.
“I’ll always come back, My.” I dusted my nose along her skin.
“I miss you.” She trailed her palm up under my shirt and traced it along the ridges of my stomach.
“I’m right here.” I felt my dick growing in my pants and willed her to let me lose myself, just tonight, just one night. One more night. I knew it wasn’t healthy, replacing one obsession with another, drugs or Mia, booze or Mia, but I was at the end of the road. I need solace. Comfort. And only she could give it to me.
“I miss this.” She groaned and then ran a hand down the front of my pants and pressed against my erection. I sucked in a quick breath and clutched at her waist.
“I miss that too,” I grunted as she worked the zipper down on my pants and then palmed the searing hot flesh of my cock. “Fuck, My.” I threw an arm over my eyes and thrust my eager hips into her small palm.
> “I want to get lost in you.”
“Fuck, I want that too.” I groaned again as she started to tighten her fist, push and pull, flicked her thumb over the tip and back down again.
“Do you want me?” She caught my ear between her teeth.
“Always,” I whispered through clenched teeth as my other hand fisted at the mattress. I was losing it. I hadn’t gotten off since the night I'd blown in my jeans when she rode me shamelessly. And before that it'd been with Amy.
“Stop holding back.” She positioned herself over top of me and rubbed her cotton-covered pussy against my dick. A low moan escaped my throat as I twisted at the sheets. “Come on, Ridge, take me like you want to, like you’ve been begging to. Ravage me.” She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Make it hurt.”
I swallowed and my eyes shot open.
“Fuck.” I clamped my teeth so tightly together that my jaw fucking hurt. “Get off,” I growled and threw her off my torso. She landed on her knees next to me and I shot up, spun her away from me, and yanked down her sleep shorts. I thrust my hand in her pants, bit at the flesh of her neck, and ran one long finger down her wet slit before I thrust it inside.
“God, so fucking sweet.” I pulled my finger out again and spread the moisture around her hardened clit. She sucked in deep breaths as her body stiffened.
“I want inside you. Now.” I fisted at her tits through her shirt. I tore the cotton over her head and threw her back on the bed, pulling the shorts down her smooth legs. I dropped on my knees to the floor and pulled her ass to the edge of the mattress. Hauling her legs over my shoulders with her knees at my ears, I pressed into her pubic bone with my palm and took one long swipe up her length with my tongue before nipping at her clit.
She moaned and arched and threaded her fingers in my hair and tugged. A grin tilted my lips as I placed a soft kiss along the curve of her body, where thigh met torso. I teased with my tongue as she urged my head back to her cunt. I resisted before nipping at the skin, sucking it between my teeth and leaving a love bite. She whimpered and I moved across her pelvis to leave sweet kisses and nips on the other side. I pulled away and admired the flaming red trail of welts that decorated her pelvis, hipbone to hipbone.
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