“What do you want me to say to that? That I should never have bought it for you?”
“I’m saying you might hurt me over and over again, but I’m strong enough to keep coming back for more.”
I eyed the storm whipping and howling through the front door. My pipe would’ve vanished into the mud by now. I’d have to survive the night with a screaming woman who made my body do things it shouldn’t and a heart that begged for things it could never have.
I’d be better off sleeping on the beach and hoping a lightning strike put me out of my misery.
I stepped forward, intending to shut the door on the wild weather, but my toe nudged her phone. The phone discarded on the floor. And I remembered why she’d left in the first place. “Who did you call?”
Her entire demeanour changed from attack to defence. “No one.”
I laughed. “Yeah, right. You want me to believe you stood on the deck in a monsoon to call no one?”
“No one you need to know about.”
“Great. Not like you to be cryptic, Hope.”
“It’s none of your business.” She crossed her arms, hugging herself as tears trickled down her face. “I hurt someone I cared about. That’s all.”
I frowned. “Hurt them how?”
She bit her lip, shaking her head. She couldn’t reply as she fought another wash of sadness.
Her grief made my fury teeter. I wanted to push her for a change. To make her understand just how difficult it was to stay civil when someone backed you into a corner, but I also couldn’t kick her when she was down.
I sighed. “Look, let’s just get some sleep, okay? I’ve had a really long day and—”
“You think you can sleep this away?” Her melancholy switched again, catching fire with anger. “You can’t just ignore this. Ignore me. Drugs and dreams won’t protect you from the fact that I flew halfway across the world to find you.”
“Yes, let’s talk about that, shall we?” I stepped toward her, doing my best to hide the heaviness in my swimming shorts. I should’ve changed. I should’ve put something tighter on so the rapidly hardening disaster didn’t do something irreversible.
“Okay, let’s.” She met me in the centre of the room, chest to chest, nose to nose. “Ask away then.”
“Why are you here?”
“I came because Cassie is worried about you.”
“I sent her a letter. She didn’t need to be worried.”
“And that letter had an address…ta-da.”
“So that’s how you found me.” I nodded as it made perfect sense. Why hadn’t I scribbled out the hotel stationery watermark?
“That’s how I found you. And thank God I did if all you’re doing is sitting in a boat getting sunburned and smoking pot. Are you trying to give yourself cancer? Because you’re doing a damn good job.”
“God, you’re annoying.”
“So you’ve told me.”
“Like I said before, I can do whatever I want to my body.”
“You’re right. You do whatever you want apart from give it what it truly needs.” Her eyes drifted to my hands clenched in front of my erection. A snide little sneer made me come so, so close to snapping. “Seems you like fighting with me, Jacob Wild. Not that you’ve ever given in.”
“Given in? Fucked you, you mean?”
She gasped. “If you ever touched me in that way, it wouldn’t be fucking. There is far too much between us to be so crude.”
I bowed my head, moving much too close to her lips. “You need a good fucking. Perhaps it would teach you your place and that you can’t boss me around.”
“And you’d know because you’ve been with hundreds of women by now?” Her question dripped with acid, but her face blazed with vulnerability.
“Just like my body is none of your concern, what I do with it with other people isn’t either.”
“So you’ve figured out a way to be close to people and not get attached?”
“Attached?” I snickered with all the ice she injected me with. “Attached? You think I just get attached? That I sent you away because I was attached?”
“Yes.” She nodded firmly. “That’s exactly why. We only kissed twice, Jacob, but I fell madly in love with you. If a kiss has that much power, imagine what sex would do. I’d probably propose to you the minute you climbed on top of me.”
A full body shudder epicentred in my heart and quaked through my limbs.
She stunned me silent.
Shocked me stupid.
I had no reply.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish caught in my net, shock turning her eyes wide. “Um, forget I said that.” Turning around, she buried her face into her hands. “God, what is it about you that makes me so angry?”
I still couldn’t speak. The pot in my system highlighted the shivers she’d given me. Every inch of me felt foreign and alive and no longer in my control. My arms wanted to hug her. My legs wanted to go to her. My cock wanted to sink inside her and see if she truly would propose.
I should be fucking terrified.
I should bolt out the door and never come back.
But the damn weed mellowed my normal triggers. It muffled the coughing memories. It muted my phobia of affection.
And I moved toward her, hand outstretched to catch a few damp strands of her chocolate hair.
She tensed as I tugged the length. Even tangled from a raging monsoon, it was soft and silky, and the urge to press them to my nose and drink in her scent made me stumble.
“Wha-what are you doing?” She spun slowly, facing me, removing her hair from my grip.
“Nothing.” I blinked, doing my best to eradicate the foggy lies that everything was okay. That there was nothing to fight or fear. I’d sought this kind of high. I’d begged for it to survive her company.
But now that I swam in serenity, it took away my power to run.
Why should I run?
What would I run from?
This was Hope. She knew me. She understood me.
She won’t hurt me.
“I’m sorry.” I stared into her beautiful green eyes. The colour reminded me of the ocean offshore where the depths flickered between turquoise and emerald.
She exhaled heavily. “No. I’m the one who should say sorry.”
“There we go again.” I chuckled. “Damn apologies.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever have a conversation where we don’t use that word?”
“Doubt it.” Her hair fascinated me again, dragging my attention to the slivers of fire dancing amongst copper and chocolate. The light bulb above crackled and flickered, shutting off as another boom of thunder punched the walls.
Darkness threatened to surround us, only held at bay thanks to the solar lantern and candles. The light turned buttery soft and sensual, adding another element to the drugs in my system. Layering heat to the overriding, overpowering need I had for this woman.
The nauseating need of wanting to kiss her so damn much.
My body swayed, my tongue licked my lips, my entire existence hinged on touching her.
But beneath the haze was horror. Recurring nightmares of corpses and funerals and caskets. Images of her dead and me alone, and the sick, sick sorrow it would leave me with.
Love had killed my parents.
Love was not kind.
To anyone.
Sighing heavily, I backed up and pinched the bridge of my nose. My erection throbbed, and the lust that had been absent in my travels compounded until my entire nervous system demanded I take her.
I hated the sensation of not being in control.
I hated Hope for the loss of it.
Turning away, I murmured, “Electricity is out. The storm will stick around for a few hours at least. I’m not suggesting we sleep to avoid talking; I’m suggesting we sleep because I’m tired and need to rest.”
My back prickled as she came closer, stopping just behind me. “It’s early. Don’t you want to talk, just a little?” Her awkwardnes
s pinched between my shoulder blades as she inhaled nervously. “I-I missed you, Jacob. Not a day went by that I didn’t wonder if you were okay or where you were.” Moving around me, she stood between me and the bed. “I want to know about your travels. Where did you go? What did you see?”
I didn’t like her in the same vision as my mattress.
I didn’t like the fantasies I suffered of tossing her down, kissing her deep, and peeling off that intoxicating white dress.
Shaking my head, I brushed past her, sitting heavily on the bed, hoping she’d take the hint and use the chair by the tiny table beneath the window.
Instead, she bit her lip, hesitated, then sat beside me.
The mattress creaked under our weight, and I remembered another bed a long time ago where she’d sat so close and berated me with questions about my concussion. She’d put up with my bullshit to drive me to the hospital. She’d cared so much even then.
Goddammit, why did she have to be so real?
Why did she have to affect me like a punch to the goddamn heart?
We sat stiffly side by side.
She gathered her hair over one shoulder, twisting the dampness into a rope. When I didn’t speak, she whispered, “I haven’t been on a horse since Cherry River.” Her eyes caught mine. “You?”
Horses. The one subject I was happy to discuss.
“No.” I shook my head. “I miss Forrest like hell.”
“You could go visit him.”
“No. He’s not mine anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Cherry River should be Aunt Cassie’s. I don’t deserve it.”
Hope stiffened. “Of course you deserve it. You’ve worked that land since you were born.”
I meant to stay silent, but my drugged consciousness decided to throw me under the bus. “I can’t ever go back.”
“What? Why?”
“Because death exists there.”
She sucked in a breath. “There is also life. So, so much life. I know your parents dying left you with a—”
“New subject.” I wedged my elbows on my knees, raking hands through my hair. “What have you done for the past four years?”
I expected her to be chatty and ease into stories that would lull me into exhaustion.
She didn’t.
She sat silent and harsh, fingers plucking her dress. “Oh, you know. Not much.”
Her resistance made me twist to face her. Our knees touched, and I shuddered at the contact, cursing the snarling desire for more. “Not much? What does that mean?”
“Just the usual. Working.”
“Working on what?”
“I became a scriptwriter. On a small show in England.”
“So no acting then?”
She chuckled. “I tried. Turns out, I’m not exactly talented like my father.”
“I already knew that.”
She glared. “Excuse me?”
“I knew you were terrible the moment you tried lying to my mother about my fall off Forrest.” I smirked. “It was obvious.”
Talking about my mother wasn’t as hard as it should’ve been. Time had healed my wounds to scars, but I didn’t deserve the pain to fade.
It felt wrong to move on.
But out here, living within the sacred grounds of a temple dedicated to the dead, my agony was easier to bear with her gone. And that made my guilt doubly cruel because I shouldn’t feel any sort of relief. I shouldn’t indulge in the fairy-tale she once had—that she was happy with my father in the afterlife.
The pressure was gone to be a good son.
And I was alone to fail, fall, and fake my way through life with people who didn’t know me.
Hope’s sudden smile made my heart beat hard, fast, and painful. “You put me in an uncomfortable position. I didn’t want to lie to her.”
“It wasn’t lying. It was keeping my secret.”
“Same thing.”
“Not the same thing at all.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from her lips. Why couldn’t I look away? Why did the air feel heavier and the light softer and the rain louder all at once?
Weed was supposed to dull the senses, not heighten them. “We all have secrets that need keeping, Hope.”
She flinched, looking at the floor. “Do you have secrets?”
“Hundreds.” My voice was as coarse as coral and just as poisonous. “All the time.”
I want you.
I dream about you.
I’d give anything to be brave enough to claim you.
“Care to tell me any of them?” She blinked, her eyelashes painting spider webs on her cheeks. She’d never been so pretty, so innocent, so enticing.
She’d been seventeen the last time I’d seen her. She’d driven me insane back then. Now, she drove me out of my goddamn mind.
“Tell me one of yours.” My voice was no longer coarse but gravel.
She blinked. “I don’t have any.”
“Sure you do. Everyone does.”
“Nothing I want to share.”
“And that’s why they’re called secrets.” I sat taller, intrigued by her refusal. “You wanted to talk, Hope. So talk.”
She looked away, staring at the door we still hadn’t closed. Rain puddled on the floor, and I took the excuse to get away from her. Standing, I crossed the small space and wedged the exit shut.
Our eyes locked as I turned around.
Her cheeks pinked as she scanned my body. She jumped upright as if sitting on my bed had become quicksand into hell. “Um, you know what? I think…I think I’d like to sleep somewhere else.”
My heart stopped beating. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t think I can do this.” Rubbing her face with her hands, she nodded to herself. “This was a mistake.”
“What’s a mistake?” I stepped toward her. “Flying across the world to find me? Why exactly did you, by the way? I don’t believe Cassie was just worried about me. Or is the real reason a secret, too?”
She shrank into herself. “It’s not a secret. It’s just…hard to tell you.”
“Hard?” Another step toward her. “Why?”
“Because you’ll never speak to me again if I tell you and…” She shrugged. “I don’t want you to cut me from your life again. But then again, I can barely be in the same room as you, so what’s the difference?”
“Why can’t you be in the same room as me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Jacob. Don’t be stupid.”
“Stupid?” I poked a finger in my chest. “Did you just call me stupid?”
“Yep, just like I told you to grow up.”
“Wow, the insults just keep coming.”
She curled her hands into fists. “Not insults. Secrets. You wanted to know mine? Well, now you do.”
I nodded condescendingly. “Ah, great. So all this time, while pretending to be my friend, you thought I should get my head out of my ass, grow up, and stop being stupid. That about right?”
“Don’t forget about accepting death as a part of life.”
“Ah, right. Can’t forget about that one.” My breathing was short and sharp. “I thought we agreed no more fighting. Why are you being like this?”
She winced. “I told you. I can’t sleep in here with you. You want to go to bed. You want to rest. Well, I won’t be able to do either, and it’s too small for the both of us. I…I need some space.”
“Space away from me?”
“Exactly.”
“You just found me, and now you’re running away?”
“Guess it’s my turn to run this time, huh?”
“Wow, you really are on form tonight.” I stalked toward her. “What the hell changed? We were having a normal conversation. We were getting along. Now you’re jumping down my throat for things that aren’t my fault.”
She vibrated with temper. “That’s the thing, Jacob. It is your fault. All of it is your fault. It’s your fault I can’t be around you when that’s all I want to be. It’
s your fault I’m afraid of talking to you when I have so much to say. It’s your fault I can’t just be your friend when I tried so, so hard to be.”
My feet locked to the floor. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I came here, all the while knowing this is how I’d react, and thought I’d be able to handle it. That I’d see you again and could ignore how I used to feel about you. Oh, who am I kidding? How I used to feel about you? It’s more like how I still feel about you. It doesn’t go away. As much as I wish it would, I’m still stupidly in love with you, and just being in this room is killing me because I know you’ll never love me in return. It’s torture living like this. I-I don’t want to keep doing this to myself.”
Everything inside me locked down. The weed no longer affected me. The gentle buzz evaporated thanks to rage and fear and temper. “What happened to your ‘I’m strong enough to deal with being hurt’ spiel?”
“I lied.”
“You didn’t lie. You’re lying now.” I studied her. “You’re being weak by running. Which isn’t happening by the way. I didn’t ask you here, Hope. But I’m not letting you run around like a moron in an electrical storm. I’m sorry you can’t stand the sight of me, but that’s your issue, not mine. You’re staying here until the weather clears and then I’ll drive you back to—”
“No, I’ll walk. I’ve walked home after a bad date before. I can do it again.” Barging past me, her feet stomped the bare wood as she beelined for the door. Her hand wrapped around the handle, and something broke inside me.
Something splintered and shattered. The thought of her walking away crippled me. It crippled me worse than the thought of her staying.
Crossing the room in a few fast strides, I grabbed her shoulders, spun her around, and pushed her against the door. “I’m not a bad date you get to abandon.”
“You’re right. You’re not a date at all.” She squirmed in my hold. “Now, let me go.”
“No. You’re not leaving.”
“I am. Call your aunt. She has something important to tell you.”
“I don’t care what she has to say.”
“You will. Believe me.”
“Wrong.” I brushed my nose against hers. “All I care about right now is keeping you safe from the rain.”
The Son & His Hope Page 43