by Ace Gray
“For what it’s worth, thank you.” His voice wasn’t quite grateful.
He slipped from the room and his loud footfalls banged down the stairs. When they faded from earshot, only a heavy silence hung between Cole and I. He hadn’t made a move toward me, leaving the small kitchen and so much more unsaid as an awkward gulf between us. His face added to the weight resting squarely between us.
“Who else did you tell?” His voice was dark and dejected, his hands flexing at his sides.
“Tell what?”
“About the ledger.” His shoulders fell as if the air whooshed out of him.
“No one,” I said as vehemently as possible. “I swear. Not even Horse.”
“You’re sure?” His voice softened the tiniest bit.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Why?” I pushed off the counter and walked closer.
“He knows. Or suspects. I’m not sure…” Cole’s muscles flexed taut beneath his still damp shirt for just a second before he let the fury loose and smashed into the countertop. “He sent Horse to be tortured for its whereabouts and called it a fucking loyalty test.” He twisted and pounded his other fist into the cabinet. The wood splintered with a giant crack and pieces flew, falling then plinking against the tile.
“Horse was my fault?” My hand came to my mouth, hoping to keep the disgust from adding to the floor-littering shrapnel.
“No.” He shook his hand as he closed the last two steps between us. “No, this is my fault. All of it.” He went to hug me, but I pushed against the solid sculpt of his chest.
“I can’t right now.” Guilt was strangling me, I didn’t need him adding to the confinement. “He’s down there, almost dead, because of me?”
“Elle…” Cole started, but I spoke right over top of him.
“I didn’t say anything. I hid it.” I gulped for air. “Is my room bugged? Or the shop?” Horror balled in my throat and I stumbled back. “Did you say something?”
“Me?” His face contorted and for a moment, I remembered exactly what it looked like when Mickey had turned the knife in his thigh. “You really think that I could do that. To either of you?”
“I don’t know. I just… How could he…?” I gasped for words.
“I’m not sure. I’m going to go find out.” His whole body went a little rigid and my blood ran cold. “I came up here to tell you about it. And that Mickey can’t know about this, about us. He’d use it. So I’m going to have to keep being horrible and you’re going to have to keep hating me.” He swallowed loudly. “I guess it won’t be as far from the truth as I thought.”
Wordlessly he turned and started back down the stairs at a clip.
The only other time he’d walked out on me angry, he’d been beaten to a pulp. The last time he’d walked out period, he’d almost died. I started sprinting after him before I even thought about it. The front door slammed shut just as I skidded across the tile. I barely let it stop me, instead whipping it open and bolting after him, barefoot and all.
“Cole!”
He didn’t stop or turn as I screamed after him.
“Cole!”
He hesitated long enough up against the door of his car for me to make it to him. I shoved against his shoulders with all my strength, then did what I could to push him up against the metal. I rose onto tiptoes as he flattened to the driver’s side door.
Then I kissed him. Hard.
As if my life depended on it.
My lips roamed over his, noticing the faint taste of Horse’s saltiness across them. It made me purr as I took a deep breath and threaded my tongue in between his lips. My arms slid up around his neck and I let my hands wander up into the edges of his blonde locks.
He didn’t kiss me back.
My stomach clenched, and I kissed him all the harder. Something twitched beneath me and automatically my hand reached down between us to his growing erection.
“Stop, Elle.” He pulled away as best he could.
“I got scared in there, I wasn’t even thinking. I know you’re with me.” My hands worked furiously against his skin, begging him to understand.
“That’s not the point,” he growled.
Tears came to the corners of my eyes as I dropped my hand and stepped back from him.
“I broke us.” He looked away. “And you said to fix it but, just now, in the kitchen, I got the feeling, I can’t. You won’t let me.”
“I will. I swear to God.” The tears broke loose and streamed their way down my cheeks.
“You say that but I think this wound cut too deep.”
I slumped my forehead against his chest. In some ways he was right, but in other ways, in the ways that mattered, he was wrong. He had to be wrong.
“Make me one promise,” I murmured. “You’ll try and stitch me up the same way you did Horse.”
My tears were warm against his cool chest. Finally his hands wrapped around me, pinning me to his perfectly cotton-coated chest.
“I’m good with blood and cuts, but this? I’m lost when it comes to this…” His hands curved around me like he knew he had to hold the pieces of me together. “What’s a stitch equivalent for your heart?”
I sat for a little while, relishing the feel of him pressed against me, wrapped around me. I had to get back here. To this being the home that shielded my heart from everything. I had to find a metaphorical thread.
“A date maybe? Friday?”
“Friday it is, Ladylove.”
I was drumming aimlessly on the desk in front of me, pencil bouncing wildly against the white lacquered wood grain of my desk in the tattoo shop. Cole had been missing all week and today—Friday—was no different.
The first day it freaked me out, my heart had sat in my throat and threatened to burst, and I tossed and turned all night.
Had I pushed him away? Had I hurt him? Should I have forgiven him no matter the personal cost?
The questions ran rampant through my head, all swirling violently with the want to feel him beside me. The phantom of him, his hard muscles, was real next to me. His musky, manly scent hung on me, and more than once, I buried my nose in his stolen shirt.
I had pushed him away.
Panic had me running to his apartment, not the tattoo shop in the dusty pink of sunrise. He didn’t answer my frantic banging on his door and in when I felt like I would collapse from pure emotional exhaustion, I slid into the shop.
My breath caught.
What had to be a hundred golden origami paper cranes covered my desk like a shimmering blanket. They shouted you are my everything and I’ll fucking prove it. After all, I’d told him those things first.
I had folded one for him what seemed like ages ago on one of those perfect mornings before shit went sideways. With each fold, I had explained that cranes were thought to mate for life so they symbolized honor, loyalty and everlasting love. And that after folding a thousand, any wish could come true. I vaguely remembered seeing my lone little crane in that box of trinkets that finally chiseled at his dark facade.
And now I was so frustrated, my need for him so consuming, and my drumming so furious that my pencil finally split on the edge of my desk, a small portion of it flying from my hand to the floor to where some of the cranes circled me.
“Shit,” I swore as I folded in half to gently push my cranes aside to find my broken pencil.
“Well, that’s a fan-fucking-tastic view to come home to.” Cole’s voice rolled along my spine, leaving goose bumps as it went.
I snapped up and turned to see him. I couldn’t help but scan every inch for blood or bruises, so sure that was the way he’d come home to me.
Not a hair was out of place on his head, perfectly slicked back on top and shaved close and clean on the sides. He was wearing a perfectly tailored white button-up, and his tattoos were slightly visible through the fine fabric. Strong, sculpted arms were highlighted by the holster that hugged his shoulders. His sleek pants hugged his strong thighs and fell perfectly across his shiny wingtips.
I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.
“Hi.” I barely breathed the word.
“Hi.” He smirked for a moment but then rubbed his cheek where his dimple used to be and his face fell the slightest bit. It tugged at my heartstrings.
“Are you okay? Is everything okay?” I tiptoed out from the origami snowfall and over toward him, stopping a few feet away.
“Better now.” His hand roved to rub the back of his neck.
“Where have you been?”
“Did you miss me?” The smirk was back along with vague pain behind his eyes.
Despite the scar that replaced the dimple and the miles of shit that churned between us, I couldn’t help but bite my lip and nod. My smile spread despite where I pinched on it.
“Good, I missed you too.” He closed the space between us but he didn’t reach for me. Instead, there was barely a paper thin sliver between us.
Heat radiated off him, heat that threatened to burn me and my doubts whole. He studied me intently, a slow smolder replacing the pain and worry that had been clouding his eyes a moment ago. He arced down to me the slightest bit and my heart ratcheted up. His tongue slipped out and slowly wet his lips, making them shiny and oh-so kissable. My breathing picked up.
Cole shifted enough that his front barely pressed against mine. He bent down lower and let his nose skim my earlobe before whispering, “I’m gonna go get changed. Still on for a date, right?” Then in one fell swoop, he stepped away, leaving me breathless as I wobbled on my feet.
I blew out a deep breath as soon as he slid out of the now silent door. My blood boiled beneath my skin all the same, my heart still hammering Cole instead of an actual beat.
I was supposed to be mad. I was supposed to force him to piece my broken soul back together slowly, steadily, and without my help. Too bad no one told my soul about that. It was healing too quick, sealing over seamlessly with the glue that was paper cranes and whisper touches.
Make him prove himself.
The words repeated on a loop in my head and only took a slight walloping from the memory of how palpable lust and love was between us. I twisted to sag up against the wall behind me and blew out a deep breath. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. Cole was seared there too. He had been since the first time I saw him.
Don’t cave. Don’t cave. Don’t cave.
Repeating it like a mantra was really my only hope against the man that oozed raw sexual attraction, animal magnetism. The man that owned my body and soul.
The man that almost fucking broke you.
My internal voice was going to war.
The man that has always healed you.
“Shut up,” I snarled at myself.
“Hadn’t said anything yet.” The smile was thick in Cole’s voice as I snapped off the wall.
His hands were poised to wrap around my waist where I reclined against the wall. The nutty voice inside me wanted to bat his hands away and shove my hips up into them all at the same time. I swallowed the giant lump of… of I didn’t know what then held my breath.
As if he knew his hands redirected to my forearm. I’d still been faithfully tracing it every spare moment, now with a smile on my face instead of tears in the corner of my eyes.
“When you’ve forgiven me, I want to ink you.” His fingertips traced the outlines of my words so delicately that chills shot through my body. “I want to be worthy of it. I want to earn the right to mark you.”
His words knocked the air right out of me. All I could manage was, “You’ve already marked me. Many times.”
Cole dropped my arm and stepped back like my flesh had burned him.
“What? No!” I started backpedaling. “I meant the hickeys and the belt and your hands. I fucking love seeing where you’ve been.” I blew out a deep breath. “Sometimes I wish you could see the way you’ve tattooed all these beautiful things on my heart. Someday I’ll find a way to show you.”
“I broke your heart,” he said matter of factly.
“Some things get more beautiful after they’ve been broken,” I answered softly as I reached out my Ladylove arm.
He studied it then me for a moment. This time, it wasn’t pure lust radiating from his watchful stare, but rather a shock and awe that mirrored something deep inside me. When he wove his fingers into mine and brought my hand to his mouth, flame erupted in my belly. His lips brushed against my skin, barely more than whisper touches, and my skin turned the same furious red that my insides blazed.
“I’m gonna make it up to you. I’m going to earn that tattoo.” He leaned in and wrapped his body around mine, his hug firm and his hold on my hand unwavering. “I’m gonna get through hell with you and I’m going to make the other side worth every awful step.” He bent down and kissed the tip of my nose.
Swoon. Fucking swoon.
I was a goner.
12.
Cole
What had I done to deserve her?
I mean, I knew the answer. Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. But somehow, I still had her. And she had drawn all kinds of beautiful things on my heart too. I made a vow to fold a paper crane for her every single day until I died. When I reached a thousand, I’d simply wish for her everlasting love.
Because that’s what I felt for her whether I wanted to or not. Whether it put her in danger or not. Was it selfish to choose to stand together against death and destruction rather than wither and die alone? Or was I simply embracing fate and reinforcing my defenses, preparing to fight the battle with the stone pillar that held me right side up, firmly in place?
I had to believe the second one. I had to believe she was my missing half—no, more than that—she was my fate.
This date better be fucking good.
Prying myself from her, from how I enveloped her was as painful as prying the fingernails from my body. I was going to drop her hand, too, with every intention of giving her space, but she wrapped her other one around where we were threaded together. It turned her body, so my arm was nestled between the perfect valley of her tits.
It wasn’t just my dick that twitched in response. Ice was melting from my heart, letting it loose to thump all the more wildly.
I leaned into her as we left the shop, barely pulling away as I stopped to lock the door. She snuggled in closer as we crossed the sidewalk and I was glad I’d thought to bring a blanket. I’d hoped to have her naked on top of it, but now, the idea of it wrapped around our shoulders didn’t seem so bad either.
She slid into the passenger side door the moment I opened it for her but she didn’t let my hand go. I pulled gently but she squeezed again and I knew it was a request to stop, to listen.
“I don’t want to do anymore should’ves or could’ves tonight. I don’t particularly want to do them again ever.” She lifted my hand to her lips and brushed them gently across my tattoos. “Tonight, it’s just us? Who we could be again?” Her voice turned up, her question so unsure.
“I’d like that, Ladylove.” I smiled wide and it tugged on the scar in twisted, painful way it had. I tried not to falter with her beautiful blue eyes fixed on me.
I couldn’t quite wrangle it though. It would always be painful to smile. I’d taken it as a sign that I wasn’t meant to. But with her here, and just us on the table, maybe it was a reminder how hard I’d fought to find and keep us. Elle barely smiled back but her eyes started to shine in a way that told me she understood. She’d fought a battle and won too.
She finally let go of my hand and reached to pull her door shut. For a second, I was going to stop her, but at the last minute I stepped out of the way and prowled around the car. What I wanted to do to her, what I needed from her, wasn’t fit for the middle of the street anyway.
The second I was in the door I lunged for her. My hand found the crook of the back of her neck and pulled. She crashed into my lips and her hands flew to my chest. For a second I thought she was going to push me away. Instead, her hands curled into the soft cotton of my t-shirt and she used her g
rip to pull herself up from her seat a little so she could press her chest to mine.
“Fuck,” I breathed in between tongue tangles.
“I know,” she gasped as she pulled away and let herself crash back into her seat.
Her beautiful breasts were riding along on her ragged breaths. I stared unabashedly at her body for just a moment before I shoved my hand into her satin soft hair and yanked her head back. That perfect throat was on full display, begging for my hands to be on it, caressing it, owning it. My fingertips made their way to the pale flesh and skated ever so gently over the contours of her throat.
Woo me.
Her challenge rang in my ears and kept my fingers moving in gentle exploration. Win me was different than own me. So I leaned over and pressed my lips firmly to her skin. She shuddered and her hands flew to my shoulders. I moved only far enough to find new skin to taste and touch. I let go of her hair and she simply rolled away so her neck was even more open to my kisses.
I couldn’t keep it up. Any more tastes of cherry on my tongue and date was going to turn into fucked in the backseat. I wouldn’t even bother getting her upstairs. With an absolutely whipped sigh, I slid back into my seat, my eyes staying fixed on Elle. Her eyes stayed closed as her fingertips trailed across the skin I’d helped myself to. She started pressing her knees together as her fingertips roamed. Her hips started their telltale rock and I had to clear my throat.
“Dinner,” I blurted out. “First, dinner.” I tried to cover up the blatant lust thick in my voice.
She blushed as she dropped her hand to the leather upholstery.
“Sorry.” She bit her lip and I gritted my teeth, desperate to be the one biting her.
“Don’t be. Don’t ever be.” My voice was rough and husky. I couldn’t hide it anymore.
She watched me for a minute, studied my mouth, my chest, then devoured lower, letting eyes rest where I definitely pressed against my denim fly. Crimson bloomed across her cheeks and chest but she didn’t look away.