Hope (Things That Matter Book 2)

by Casey Diam

  “So full of you. I—”

  Before she could finish, I plunged inside again, feeling as her muscles relaxed, stretching around me and letting me in deeper.

  “That’s it. Just keep relaxing and I’ll fuck you, really good,” I murmured, feeling her wetness spread, making the dive smoother, sweeter. “Oh, fuck.”

  Her legs curled around my hips, and I sank into her, going deeper with each thrust. I could feel the sharp edges of her fingernails over my back. She never used to have nails, but the bite of them in my skin was encouraging. So, I fucked harder, faster, feeling as her nails dug deeper and hearing as her moans grew louder. Her teeth bit into my shoulder, and I groaned, continuing to ride the wave of tightening muscles around me, fucking her like I’d wanted to for weeks. Fucking her like she was mine.

  “Caleb,” she whimpered, eyes closing as she threw her head back and contracted around me.

  Her body stiffened and quaked, and I let go, indulging in the pleasure of our bodies mending. I was the only one who could fix her, and she was the only one who could make me feel like this. I collapsed onto her, burying my face into her neck.

  What is this feeling? Happiness, wholeness?

  I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted more of it. I was not done being selfish. I wanted her, and I didn’t care how long I would get to be with her before I was thrown in jail. Because, until then, she was fucking mine.

  Easing off her pliable body currently melted into my sheets, I kissed her cheek. “You’re done talking shit about sleeping with other people. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  Moving to the edge of the bed, I was about to stand when Paige said, “Caleb, your back.”

  I twisted around and saw her peering at her fingernails.

  “Oh my God, I...” She looked up, eyes wide before staring back at her nails. “I never grew them when I used to spar with the athletes, but now, I don’t do much kickboxing, so I haven’t thought about cutting them or filing them or something. I’m sorry. I didn’t know they would do that.”

  Her enthusiasm for sex made it so easy to forget how much she really knew.

  A salacious grin formed on my lips. “I liked it.”

  “But you’re bleeding,” she said, her innocence blinding.

  “I know, and you should do it again. Tonight even.” My eyes wandered over her body.

  I’d never experimented with anything besides what was considered normal sex, but with Paige, something more forbidden had been pulling at my insides ever since she held that knife to my throat.

  As I rose from the bed, her eyes scanned my body, and I let her curious eyes watch as I removed the condom. When she saw me watching her, she blushed, averted her eyes, and curled a finger over the smile stretching across her lips.

  Mine.

  After we were both cleaned up and I settled behind her, Paige said, “I need to know, Caleb.”

  I knew what was coming, but I asked, “What do you need to know?”

  “Why you pushed me away. It bothers me, being with you like this now, not knowing if tomorrow, you’ll push me away again.”

  I thought about calling on our long-established TTM rule of the things we didn’t want to talk about, but she deserved to know what was coming.

  “Alex Connor is my father. And, depending on what the FBI finds, I could be in jail for a long time.”

  She stiffened in my arms, and I bit my lip, squeezing my eyes shut in the darkness. She was going to be the one to pull away this time.

  “What did you do?” Her voice was a whisper, almost like she didn’t know if she could ask, or she didn’t know if she wanted to know the answer.

  “It’s more like what I didn’t do.” I sighed. “The bottom line is that I won’t push you away again if you want to be with me. I did it before so you could heal, so you could be happy even if it meant you were with someone else. Because, at the end of the day, I know you and me—we’re heading in two different directions, Paige. And what I just told you has everything to do with any decisions I make when it comes to us. Because, before I even met you, I knew where I was heading. That path has been carved out for me a long time ago.” I thought about the evidence Alex Connor had against me beyond what I was already guilty of.

  We remained quiet for a while, her back still pressed to my front, each of us lost to our own thoughts.

  Then, she said, “TTM.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it, which made me curious. This wasn’t her issue to flag as things that matter. It was mine. I had all the facts, and it would be my tarnished future, not hers. She finally would be free to do whatever she wanted.

  I turned my face to the shadowed ceiling.

  What is she not telling me?

  “I want to be with you.”

  Her whisper seized the tension gathering inside me, and for a moment, it felt like things were really that simple.

  ❧

  Paige was in the fetal position facing me, loose curls obscuring her face. Reaching over, I swooped a hand beneath the light waves, picked them up, and gently tossed them back. My cock was awakened, ready to be inside her, but she was wrapped in my sheets and sleeping so soundly that I couldn’t wake her.

  By the time she’d fallen asleep, it had been close to six in the morning, and I knew firsthand that she didn’t get much sleep on her own between her nightmares and anxiety attacks.

  I traced the tips of my fingers over an exposed shoulder, needing to connect with her. I didn’t know how she could be this close, yet it still wasn’t enough. She stirred, and I pulled my hand away, but she kept moving until her eyes fluttered open. For a brief moment, I feared she would remember our conversation last night, come to her senses, and run for the hills.

  “Good morning. I didn’t mean to wake you. I forgot how calloused the tips of my fingers are.”

  “My dad—” She smiled and closed her eyes as she corrected herself, “Your uncle’s fingers were like that. But my fingers were always bruised. He had to get me those little rubber caps for my fingers when I began to play. They were so frustrating at first. They felt like little rubber duckies on my fingertips.”

  I laughed. She’d never openly spoken about her past before unless it was tied to something we were trying to figure out. Her talking about something I was so passionate about made me want to grab my guitar and shove it into her hands. But there had to be a reason she hadn’t picked it up. It’d been lying around the apartment most days where she had easy access to it, but she hadn’t touched it.

  “The Sawyers might not have been your biological parents, but you can still call them Mom and Dad, Paige. They raised you. They are your parents.”

  She looked away. I knew this topic was a sore spot for her.

  Leaning over, I kissed her cheek. “Happy birthday.” I feathered more kisses across her cheek. “Do you know how beautiful you are when you’re sleeping?” Lifting my head, I found her softer, less troubled eyes. “Are we okay?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Good, because you’d have a hard time explaining a hickey on your neck this weekend.”

  “What?” Her hands flew to her neck.

  I grinned, lowering my head. “It isn’t there yet.”

  “No,” she shrieked, drawing her shoulders up to her neck while trying to push me away. She giggled as I brought my lips to her shoulder and sucked on the skin there. “Caleb, no.”

  The buzzer sounded from the living room, jerking me out of the mind of this person I wanted to hold on to when I was with her.

  But reality awaited, even when all I wanted to do was lay in this bed with her and forget about everything outside these walls. I couldn’t believe she’d agreed to go to this end-of-summer-party thing. It was the worst timing, and I was going to be on edge for the time I wasn’t there. Calvin wouldn’t be there either. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the other guys to have Paige’s back should anything go wrong, but Calvin was the only one besides Paige who knew what Brad looked like. He
was also the only other person besides myself who knew Paige, especially if it had to do with an anxiety attack, which she barely even wanted him to know about, much less anyone else.

  I pressed my lips to hers and brushed a hand down the side of her face as I pulled back. “I won’t be at the lake house for the whole time this weekend, and Calvin won’t be able to make it at all.”

  Her lips turned down, forming a small pout. “What? Where will you be?”

  “With Alex Connor.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Paige

  Extending one of my arms out of the passenger window, I leaned my head back against the headrest. The sun warmed the hand I had outside the window, and I could feel and hear the rapid wind swishing against my face and chest. I turned my palm to the onslaught of the wind, but at the same time, the thought of something popping up and snapping my arm caused me to yank my hand back inside. Heat spread through my body, and suddenly, I wasn’t getting any oxygen into my lungs.

  I counted in my head, willing myself to stay calm, and fumbled for the buttons on the door. I pressed down until the window wound all the way up. My eyes caught the hair tie on my wrist, and I focused on it until my chest expanded with a rush of air. As soon as it happened, the loud music in the car rang in my ears. I peered at Mackenzie, but she was focused on the narrow road she was turning onto from the main street. Relief washed over me. She hadn’t noticed, and since Amber and Lisa were in the backseat, they wouldn’t have seen when it happened either.

  “It’s a bit windier up here,” Mickey said, her head turning to me. “You should see your hair now.” She giggled. “It’s too late to put up your window.”

  I gave her a half-smile before rotating my head to the woodland surrounding us.

  I looked down at the hair tie again, the one Caleb had given me, and I hoped I wouldn’t lose it with the way these things tended to disappear.

  A foggy image of Alex Connor came to mind.

  I didn’t even know what he looked like, and not from a lack of trying. Even his own luxury hotel downtown didn’t have pictures of him or his sons on the company website. But I supposed he would look like Caleb and Brad. Dark hair, tanned.

  I had found that Stacy nurse without any difficulty. She was an older brunette who was all over social media. Well, until recently, at least.

  Shit, I shouldn’t think about this now.

  When I looked up and saw what Mickey referred to as her parents’ lake house, my mouth dropped. A tall, luxurious four-story property made of cream-colored stones was ahead of us with two wide staircases on either end of the building, leading up into a second-floor balcony. A giant statue stood front and center of the building and the same stones on the building covered the grounds around the property. It was bigger than the mansion Mackenzie had lived in back home. Bigger than the mansion I’d once lived in.

  A few college-aged students were hanging around outside, some running around the lawn as a bright orange Frisbee soared between them.

  “Mickey!” I exclaimed.

  “I told you,” Lisa said from the backseat as Mickey turned down the music.

  When I’d mentioned the party to Lisa, it had come as a surprise that she and Amber had already been invited. Apparently, Calvin and his friends had also partied here two summers ago.

  “It’s still a lake house, sort of. It was renovated three years ago, and it’s more of a retreat now,” Mickey explained, pulling onto a paved area where at least ten other cars were parked. “But, each year since then, a fraternity from St. Andrews pools money to rent the property for the four weekends. And so was born the—”

  “FWS Party,” Amber, Mickey, and Lisa said.

  Grabbing my backpack from my feet, I placed it in my lap, and I could feel the hard metal of my 9mm at the bottom pressing into my thigh. It was comforting. It used to be all I needed.

  Swiping the unlock code on my phone, I typed a text to Caleb.

  Me: I feel naked.

  Mickey put the car in park, and we got out into the beautiful weather. There was a breeze but it wasn’t too bad, it was the perfect balance to the sun gleaming down on us. Shoving the straps of my backpack over my shoulders, I walked to the trunk and grabbed two bags of groceries. As I strolled with the girls to the property’s main entrance, I felt like I was on some exclusive compound hidden on the lake.

  The main foyer was as majestic as I’d expected. Italian tiles overlaid the expanse of the entire flooring, and two large columns mounted from the first floor to the ceiling of the second. As my phone vibrated, I looked down to the text message I received.

  Caleb: Have you started drinking already?

  Me: No.

  I grinned as I hit Send. These days, I couldn’t even say I recognized myself. Partying, drinking, taking the weekend off work to hang out.

  Caleb: Mmm, are you all the way naked?

  My cheeks burned.

  Me: No.

  Caleb: Are you getting naked?

  Me: What?

  Caleb: Wait, we’re not sexting?

  Me: NO.

  “Oh my God.” I laughed, covering my face with one hand, and as it slipped down, I realized my friends were looking at me.

  I had friends. Yes, things were kind of awkward with Amber, but still, I had friends. I grinned even wider as Amber’s and Lisa’s eyebrows crinkled. Mickey was smiling, but I was guessing she knew why there was a stupid grin on my face. She was the only one I’d told about what had happened between Caleb and me last night—well, excluding the dirty details. It was still so weird how natural it felt to confide in her.

  “Are you gonna be okay there?” Lisa asked.

  “Uh, yeah. Caleb—” I covered my mouth to suppress a laugh as I thought about his text. “He’s being funny.”

  “In what universe is Caleb funny?” Amber asked. It came off as sarcasm, but her eyes held genuine interest.

  “Um, I don’t know. He makes me laugh,” I said, watching as Lisa peered over my shoulder.

  I followed her gaze to find Rob and Luke approaching, definitely not fitting in with their over-six-foot, all-muscular physique, commanding the attention of students wandering in and out.

  “Holy shit,” Mickey muttered. “Are they in college?”

  “No. That’s Rob and Luke. Two of the friends I was telling you about.” I looked at the text Caleb had sent while I was distracted.

  Caleb: Then why do you feel naked?

  Because you aren’t here.

  Me: I sort of miss you already.

  Caleb: Sort of?

  I grinned and sent him a smiley face.

  Me: I do. And why are two of your most intimidating guys here? They kind of stand out in a we-don’t-bullshit-or-party kind of way.

  Rob and Luke surrounded us like wild beasts out of a cave as they took all the grocery bags from our hands.

  “Where do you want them?” Luke asked, his voice rough and his attention on Mickey.

  I watched her mouth form a little O, and then words like ah, um, uh, ah followed. I pursed my lips, wishing I could help her, but I didn’t know where the bags went either. Also, this was too entertaining. I’d never seen her like this. I was starting to think these were the moments I might have missed out on over the years.

  “I think I know where they go,” Lisa offered, but Luke didn’t even bat an eyelash.

  “Mickey,” I said.

  Her gaze dropped to the tight-fitting black T-shirt stretching across Luke’s chest to the colorful sleeves of tattoos down his arms before she looked over at me.

  Taking a few short steps to stand next to her, I gave her a devilish smile and looped an arm around her elbow before pulling her in a random direction.

  “Are we putting these in the main kitchen?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied and then whispered, “Oh my God!”

  “Mickey,” I whispered, “I’m pretty sure he heard that.”

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  “He heard that, too.”


  She groaned. “I need a drink. What do you like to drink?”

  It was my turn to curse, but only in my head because I wanted to drink, even knowing the consequences. I had friends, and it was my birthday. Besides, I had been fine after that one drink I had at the club with Lisa and Amber.

  As we turned the corner into a large, open kitchen, I saw Miller tilting a red cup to his mouth, downing whatever was inside of it.

  He lowered the cup and slapped a hand over his chest. “Lisa, you brought my girl! See, that’s why I love you.”

  Uh-oh.

  I stopped in my tracks, causing Amber to bump into me. I turned my head. “Sorry. Hi, Miller.”

  “No one’s here for you, Miller. Get over yourself,” Amber said, shocking the heck out of me. For some reason, I thought she would have wanted me out of the way so she could have Caleb to herself.

  “Sorry, babe, it’s her birthday, and she’s ours,” Lisa added and then cursed under her breath as Miller’s interest was piqued. “Crap, I’m not helping, am I? Heeyyyy, cool! It’s just like the last time.” Lisa started forward. “Luke, there’s tape somewhere to label our own cabinet if one’s still available, or we can share one with someone else. That’s where we keep the groceries. All the alcohol goes in the fridge.”

  Trying to make a quick exit while this was being sorted out, I said, “Lisa, I’m going to go check out where I’m sleeping. I know you and Amber have to meet with the girls you’re staying with—”

  “Come on over here, birthday girl,” Miller coaxed, pulling a red cup from one of the few stacks on the counter and then reaching into the cabinet space over the fridge. “I’ll make you your first drink. On the house.” He turned around and winked, displaying a bottle of Grey Goose. “Only the good stuff for you.”

  “And that’s why I love you, Miller.” Lisa grabbed a cup for herself from the stack. “You always bring the good stuff.”

  “What can I say? You bring the girls, and I bring the drinks,” Miller bantered, letting his eyes suggestively roam over Lisa.

  Her tight-fitting crop tank showed off her cleavage, and Miller made no attempt to hide that he was checking it out. When she looked at him, even I could feel the heat between them, and I was clear across the room.