All of Me: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  Well, the two of us and Sophie who’d fully wrapped her little arms around my neck.

  “I don’t think I’ve slept so well for as long as I can remember. Thanks to you. Thanks to your family. You’re right, they’re the best people I could ever meet.”

  I’d started to sway.

  That’s the way whirlwinds were. You were caught up and spinning and getting tossed into a realm you’d never expected before you had the chance to prepare yourself. To stop it.

  Just like right then.

  Because I let my nose drop to the delicious slope of Grace’s neck.

  I inhaled.

  Sweet, juicy plum that I’d come to realize was just an overflow of her heart.

  I wanted to suck it down and keep it forever.

  She took in a sharp breath before she leaned back into me.

  Flesh searing into mine.

  I wanted to wrap my arm around her waist and hold her there. But that was just foolishness.

  I forced myself to take a step back. That was when I noticed Jace watching us from across the room. I thought he might smirk. Rub it in that he was right again. Instead, he sent me a sympathetic smile.

  Like he got that, no matter how this turned out, it couldn’t turn out in my favor.

  One way or another, I was going to lose, and I was pretty sure that was going to hurt worse than anything else had in all my life.

  Thirty-Three

  Grace

  “You love him?”

  Faith’s soft voice broke into my thoughts where I was sitting on the porch. I was watching my children play on the back lawn with Ian and his brother and his sweet little girl, Bailey, this family so wonderful I was having a hard time processing all the emotions threading through the middle of me.

  Stitching and binding.

  I glanced over at her. The gorgeous woman was holding a bouquet of fresh-cut roses that she’d harvested from the rose garden off to the side of her magnificent house.

  Everything about her screamed beauty.

  Her face and her home and her spirit.

  While mine swam with turmoil. I tried to swallow around the surge of it that was threatening to wash me away, and I cast her a weary smile. “I’m trying not to.”

  She grimaced and came to sit on a chair next to me. “Not so easy to tell love what to do, is it?”

  A weak sigh blew from my lungs. “No, not so much.”

  Rambunctious laughter rolled through the cool air, and Ian chased after Thomas, who was running with all his might, Ian just barely missing him as he reached out to tag my son.

  It seemed crazy that just last night Ian had swept into my home. A dark savior. Today, it felt so much that way.

  As if we’d been rescued.

  Lifted directly out of the storm.

  “Ah, man, Thomas, you’re way too fast for me!” Ian hollered, his smile freer in that moment than I’d ever seen him wear.

  My chest stretched tight.

  Squeezing and binding.

  Silence spun between Faith and me as we watched them play.

  Sophie Marie tottered around, trying to keep up, while the rest of the kids ran circles around her. Jace was holding their son again, so protectively, as if the man refused to let him go.

  Faith finally broke our quiet bubble. “Ian is . . . complicated.”

  I almost laughed, my gaze flitting to her before it was back on Ian, who’d swept Sophie back up into the strength of those arms. He ran with her, chasing after Bailey, soaring Sophie through the air as if she were flying since she now was “it.”

  As if the man was her champion.

  Her hero.

  She kicked and flapped her arms and laughed.

  “That much is plenty obvious,” I said, looking over at her, my lips pressing into a grim line. “But he also might be the most transparent man I’ve ever met. He’s so fundamentally good, but all the fear and regret he carries around makes him believe he’s someone bad.”

  Faith nodded slightly, contemplating, not sure what she wanted to confide in me. Her voice dropped, so low I had to struggle to listen. “The first time I saw Ian, he was stuffing a sandwich into his mouth, crying because it hurt to eat since it’d been so long since the last time he had.”

  Agony cut me right in two.

  Physical.

  This pain that took me over at the thought of this powerful man a boy.

  Scared and hungry and afraid.

  All those scars that covered his body.

  I didn’t have the first idea of what he’d gone through. The only thing I knew was I wanted to go back and wrap him up and stop it from ever happening.

  I wondered if he knew that was exactly what he was doing for my children.

  Protecting them from torment.

  Different than his, but the kind that would leave scars all the same.

  “Jace had stolen it for him,” she mused quietly, rocking on the porch rocker, as if she’d been taken back to that time. She glanced over at me, tears shimmering in her dark eyes. “They took care of each other that way. Their childhood . . . it was a battle. A warzone. One they were forced to fight even though they’d never enlisted. The aftermath left them completely different and so intrinsically the same.”

  Her throat bobbed when she swallowed. “Fearful. Scared. Thinking they have something to prove. And really the only proof they need is for someone to show them that they deserve to be loved. Not because they earned it, but because of who they are.”

  Hesitation buzzed around her, and she glanced away, her words careful. “But I think Ian’s wounds go deeper than either Jace or I can see. The man’s terrified of loving or being loved in return, so that heart of his doesn’t know what to do. How to give or how to receive. It’s grown dark and bitter. That might be the greatest tragedy of all.”

  Mallory’s squeal broke through the air, capturing our attention when she was tagged. “No fair! No fair! You’re a superhero, and I’m only a princess!”

  “What are you talking about, Mal Pal? I thought you were a magic princess?” Ian bounced Sophie. “And your little sister is a magic princess, too. That’s how she caught you, isn’t it, Soph?”

  Sophie clapped. “Sophie win!”

  My heart went crazy. Shaking and shivering and stretching out. Because the risk I had wasn’t in not being able to love someone.

  It was in how desperately I did.

  I knew it from the start. Even being in his space was dangerous.

  That I was going to fall.

  Hard and fast and completely.

  But none of that seemed to matter because I stood anyway when Ian gestured for me to come and join him.

  Rays of wintery light streaked through the sky. But it was the light radiating from Ian that speared me. The man’s presence a force I didn’t know how to stand under.

  It only shivered brighter the closer I came, and he tugged at my hand. “You’re it.”

  God, just the rough cadence of his voice sent me into a swoon.

  Somehow, I let myself laugh as we ran and played, darted and diverted and tagged.

  I lost my breath when Ian tackled me. His big body pressed against mine where he had me pinned on the ground. The pants from his mouth rough and his heart racing. With my eyes, I silently begged him to kiss me. To show me why he’d run from me when we’d been in the bathroom.

  Faith’s concerns remained fresh in my mind. Though they didn’t scare me. They felt like a buoy.

  As if I’d gotten one step closer to this man when I already felt lost in the middle of him.

  He froze for a moment, those eyes so tender yet confused as they flicked between my unwavering gaze and my mouth.

  The air shivered and shook.

  Kiss me.

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he dipped his head before he peeled himself away, stretching out a hand, refusing to meet the silent questions rushing from me as he helped me to stand, though I could feel the torment in the squeeze of his hand.

  “You’
re it, Momma! Ian Zian caught you, you’re it!” Mallory shouted.

  Oh, God, did he catch me.

  I darted for my daughter. She squealed and ran.

  We spent the day that way.

  Together.

  Faith and Bailey and Jace took us to their favorite stream at the back of the property where the kids splashed and played, and Thomas looked as if some of the weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  Only because Ian was holding some of it.

  In the late afternoon, we returned to the house, and Mallory pulled out our big book so we could add a new chapter. The great escape that had turned into an adventure where we’d all been whisked away to a secret castle hidden in the sky, her little mind running wild as we continued our story and new characters were introduced.

  Faith and I made dinner while the guys played a board game with the kids, and I was sure that my life had never felt so full.

  So right.

  As if I were coming up on eternity.

  We ate and we laughed and we talked, and I quickly fell in love with the people at the table.

  Ian’s family so fundamentally a part of him. The devotion between them all so distinct.

  The kids had baths, and we tucked them in, and then Ian and I went back into the kitchen to do the dishes together, telling Faith and Jace to take the night for themselves.

  It was the least we could do for their hospitality.

  I got the stupid inclination that this was the way it was supposed to be. Ian and me, side-by-side.

  Then my phone buzzed in my pocket at the same time Ian’s buzzed in his.

  Still wearing a satisfied grin, I pulled it out and thumbed into the messages without giving it any thought.

  That was right when my heart that had grown too big cracked right down the middle.

  Speared.

  Spliced and split into a million pieces.

  Ian went pale when he looked at his screen. No question, his exhibited the same images.

  Ones of Ian with a woman in a dark, depraved room. Those big hands were on her bare breasts as the woman straddled him on a chair.

  A prostitute.

  The same one I’d seen Reed with.

  The tattoo on the back of her shoulder was exactly the same. A broken ring with the number 7 in the middle of it.

  I could only see it from behind, but it was clear what they were doing.

  But it was the time stamp on the bottom that sent me reeling. Hot knives driven into my flesh. Splaying me open wide.

  I might as well have bled out right there on the floor.

  Sickness twisted through my stomach. Speeding out to saturate every cell.

  A cold, lonely disease.

  It was the day I’d first gone to Ian to beg him for help. The very next day after I’d gone to his apartment and spent the night.

  Where he’d fucked me, just like he was clearly doing here.

  Reed: This is who you have my children with? I’d think you’d be smarter than that. I told you, you’d regret this. I expect you and my children on my doorstep within the hour. I’d advise you to have every dollar of that money, too. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

  Grief climbed into my throat, and I couldn’t even look at Ian.

  Couldn’t meet his face.

  Couldn’t fathom the pain that gripped and tore and shredded my insides.

  So, I fled, not even saying a word when I pounded up the stairs and into the room where I was staying.

  Because Faith was right.

  It wasn’t so easy to tell love what to do.

  And mine had just been slaughtered. Left for dead where it’d just spilled out all over the floor.

  Thirty-Four

  Ian

  I stood gaping at the bullshit that lit up my screen from the unknown number. Blood draining from my face. Rage flooding out of my soul.

  Unknown: You fucked with the wrong person. Did you actually think I’d let you get away with it? Do you actually think you have the power to go up against me? I’d think again.

  Coming in right behind it was a grainy picture of me with that stripper at the club. It was captured right in the moment she put my hands on her breasts, right before I’d pushed her off my lap after she’d propositioned me.

  Most likely nabbed by a security camera.

  From the angle, it looked like I was balls deep and having the time of my life rather than being completely disgusted.

  Rage clamored through my being. Like a ship tossed from side-to-side. Rocked in an unstable ocean.

  I didn’t even have time to process what was going down in front of me until Grace tried to smother a shocked sob behind her hand.

  Oh, fuck.

  She darted for the swinging doors of the kitchen, her feet pounding down the hardwood floors of the hall, leaving a trail of that energy hammering the walls behind her.

  Consuming in its disorder.

  Fire and lashes.

  Hate and heat.

  I tried to force myself to stay rooted to the spot. I’d done enough damage. But there was no resisting the riot that spun, barbs and wires that hooked into my chest.

  I flew out into the hall to the weight of her footsteps and the slam of her door.

  The girl a turbulence only I could feel.

  Let her go.

  The rational part of my brain shouted it, but my heart wasn’t fucking having it.

  There was no slowing, nothing I could do but go after her.

  I bounded upstairs, my heart beating a million times a second, right out of my chest. I didn’t even hesitate when I burst into the first room on the left where Grace was staying, coming up short when I found her standing at the big window that overlooked the rose gardens below.

  Moonlight streaked in and cast her in a milky halo. From behind, I watched as her shoulders heaved, her face in her hands, heartbreak radiating from her body.

  My broken angel.

  I clicked the door shut behind me and flicked the lock like it could keep out the rest of the world.

  I eased into the unrest that spun through the room.

  Slowly.

  Like if I gave her enough warning, she wouldn’t startle. Or maybe it would offer me a little more time in her presence before this all came to an end.

  All that intensity rippled back, and her spine tensed in awareness. Our bodies recognizing the other.

  “I told you I’m not a good guy,” I finally forced out, voice nothing but grit.

  The sob she was trying to contain finally made a break for it. She hugged herself tighter, looking out over the beauty of the yard like if she wished hard enough, she might get swept away.

  Disappear.

  She’d wake up and all of this would be a bad dream.

  Problem was, I knew that was exactly what I was.

  I took another step deeper into the room. Wisps and shadows stroked and whipped across the floor, a moon dance colored on the wall.

  “I did go to that strip club that night. It’s where men like me belong, Grace. Where our sick hearts and our depraved spirits feel most at home.”

  Another step closer.

  Swore I could feel her spirit tremble.

  “But I didn’t fuck her. I wouldn’t.” The last cracked. Like just the word split me open.

  This girl was the only one who’d ever managed to get inside me.

  Her head shook. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  It was a brush off.

  Chains and armor to shut me out.

  I was behind her in a flash, our bodies separated by a mere inch, that tiny sliver charged.

  A live wire ready to burst.

  “Bullshit,” I hissed. “I owe you everything.”

  Goose bumps prickled across her flesh, and she slowly spun around to face me, stirring the air up more.

  Sadness streaked across that face. There was nothing I could do but reach out and hold it, pray I could somehow erase the hurt.

  My thumb stroked across her cheek. �
��I’ve never lied to you, Grace, and I’m not going to start now. I went to that club thinking I might be able to outrun what you’d made me feel the night before. What you’d made me feel when you’d come into my office. As a reminder of who I was, and where I belonged. But I promise you, that picture? However the fuck Reed got ahold of it? It’s a lie. I was pushing her off my lap. Nothing more. I’ve never paid for a woman, not once, and I never will.”

  A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and landed in the web of my hand.

  Grace’s mouth trembled. “I hate all of this, Ian. I hate that Reed has this control. That I’m living in fear constantly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But maybe what scares me most is how badly it hurts to see you with someone else. After you’d touched me. I . . . why does the thought of you touching someone else destroy me?”

  My thumb traced the angle of her cheek.

  God, why did she have to be so pretty?

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t want to hurt you. It’s the last thing I want to do.”

  Soft sorrow moved across her face. “I’m the one who dumped my mess at your door. I’m the one who didn’t listen when you told me not to fall. I’m the one who wants all the things you promised you could never give me.”

  The rawest vulnerability took hold of her expression. “It’s me who wants more.”

  More.

  The idea of it shivered beneath the surface of my skin.

  So intense.

  Overwhelming.

  “I want to. I want to so goddamned bad that it physically hurts, Grace. It’s killing me, wishing I could be the kind of man who could hold you. Protect you.”

  I gulped down my reservations. Or maybe it was just the girl who’d scaled right over the top of the hundred-foot wall surrounding my heart. Toppling it. Nothing but rubble at her feet.

  I grabbed her hand and splayed it across the erratic drumming of my chest.

  “Do you feel that, Grace? It doesn’t fucking beat right, but still, it beats for you.”

  Those eyes blinked up at me in the softest kind of affection. She splayed her hand out wider, eyes tracing over my face when she whispered, “I feel it, Ian. The way it beats. Can you feel the way it beats perfectly with mine?”