Always: A Legacy Novel (Cross + Catherine Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  “Oh, babe, you don’t want me to get mean,” he teased.

  “What in the hell is at your back?” Catherine asked, her hand sliding down his jacket.

  “Careful, it’s a holster.”

  Catherine’s hand snapped back up to his neck. “A gun?”

  “I slipped the holster back on when I changed at home, didn’t think about it.”

  He was used to needing it on, now. It was second nature, although he wasn’t supposed to be taking weapons to school. He didn’t trust anybody, so the gun went.

  “Oh.”

  Cross came to their room, slid the card through the reader near the handle, and listened to the hinge pop open. He didn’t bother to sit Catherine to her feet once they were inside and he had the door kicked closed, instead waiting until he was close enough to the bed to drop her on it.

  Like a cute kitten, she stretched out on the bed. And then that cuteness left, leaving her sexy grin in place as she showed off all kinds of leg, arched her back, and flashed her teeth at him.

  Cross pulled her red-soled Louboutin’s off her feet and dropped them to the floor. Catherine immediately turned over and reached for the bottle of wine in a waiting stainless steel chiller. The wine came with the room, or so Cross found out when he asked for his step-father to book the place—it was standard given the hotel and cost, but that didn’t matter to him. He snatched it out of her hands before she could even turn back over.

  “Fuck that,” Cross said, setting the bottle aside.

  If she opened that bottle, she would empty it. Cross was not playing that game with Catherine tonight. She would drink until she was out of it, or she wanted to pick a fight, and he would be the one taking care of her until she was sober and apologizing. She didn’t seem to know her limits, and he didn’t mind controlling whether or not she even started trying to find her limit, if he could.

  Catherine pouted. “That’s not fair.”

  “We’re not doing that tonight,” he said, shrugging.

  She huffed, moving off the bed, and yanking the chiffon of her dress to make it go with her. “Fuck you, Cross.”

  “Catty, come on.”

  “Why would you want to pick a fight tonight? It was a great night.”

  Cross folded his arms over his chest. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I took that away to prevent a fight. You drink, you rage, we fight, we fuck, and then one of us bolts for a while. That’s how it’s been going for the last, like, eight months. I’m tired of that bullshit.”

  Catherine’s gaze darted away from his. “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, no. I was actually giving you some credit there, babe. I didn’t even mention the shit you pull when you do bolt and how I’ve pulled you out of really scary situations, or the nonsense I keep having to hide from your parents, or how about—”

  “Just … stop.” Catherine frowned, her green eyes finding his. “I get it.”

  Cross sighed. “I don’t want to fight, Catherine.”

  He fought with her a lot.

  Too much.

  Sure, after they took a short break and then came back together, it was fantastic. Her, him, and them. She’d calm down a little, laid off on the nonsense, and he’d stop worrying for a bit, but it never lasted. Something else would come up, another fight, and then there they would be, fighting, fucking, and running

  It was exhausting.

  Cross moved around the bed, caught Catherine’s wrist in his grasp as she tried to pull away, and dragged her into his chest. She tucked her arms up in between them, and hid her face under his chin. He kissed the top of her head, and just held her there for a moment.

  “You’re tired of me?”

  Her voice was small.

  That killed him.

  “I said I was tired of bullshit, not you.”

  Catherine’s shoulders lifted with a heavy exhale. “I miss being younger—shit was easier. Beaches, leather, conch shells, abandoned roads, and all of that. It was easier.”

  Cross’s brow furrowed.

  Everything she said had something to do with them.

  “Catherine,” he murmured.

  She didn’t answer.

  He slid his hands under her jaw, and tipped her head up so he could see her eyes.

  “I’d give you all that shit again, Catherine. If beaches, leather, conch shells, abandoned roads, and whatever else is going to make you chill out and be happy, I’d give it to you a thousand times over. Don’t you know that?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s never going to feel the way it used to, though, because we’re not the same,” he said.

  “It might be better.”

  Cross smiled. “It might.”

  “You’re something else.”

  “I try.” He let her go, and waved a hand around. “You’ve got a Jacuzzi bathtub in the bathroom, a private balcony, a hot tub out there. This massive suite to do whatever you want in for the night, babe, so just be happy.”

  “And relax.”

  “And that,” he agreed.

  Catherine turned to the glass doors that led to the balcony, and winked over her shoulder. “Balcony and hot tub?”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  Cross followed after his restless-in-her-heart first love.

  Shit, he was always following her.

  Catherine tipped her head back, and stared at Cross upside down. He leaned on the balcony railing and exhaled a heavy drag of smoke. “I hate that, you know.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The smoking thing. It’s new, and I hate it.”

  Cross had picked up his new habit a few months back when he needed an outlet for stress, and his hands needed a break from beating the hell out of a punching bag. Weed and drinking was a no for him, given he had enough shit going on, and didn’t need to add on those to it. Smoking worked, for the most part.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

  Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know; why would I?”

  Cross dropped the cigarette to the silver tin at his feet. It would be the last one he ever lit in his life, guaranteed. “Because, Catherine, it’d be gone. And now it is. That’s why.”

  She rolled over in the hot tub, all naked shoulders and breasts peeking out of the steaming water.

  “So … that’s it. You’re done because I don’t like it.”

  Cross leaned on the balcony, overlooking the city and enjoying the movement down below. “Yeah, babe. Whatever.”

  Splashes made him look over at her again, only to find Catherine was crawling out of the hot tub, and wrapping herself in a towel. His towel still hung tight around his hips, and he was enjoying the chill racing over his skin after being in the too-hot water for a half of an hour. Catherine tucked herself into his side and back, resting her head on his shoulder blade in silence.

  “Come here,” Cross said in a murmur, wrapping an arm around Catherine to pull her in front of him. He hugged her there, before falling back onto one of the over-sized wicker chairs. She rested in his lap, straddling him naked under a towel, with damp hair and glittering eyes. “Love you.”

  Catherine smiled. “Always.”

  Her mouth found his, all lips and teeth and tongues warring while her teasing hands shifted towels and found his cock to stroke him hard, until he was groaning into her mouth and reaching for his pants. He couldn’t get the condom out and onto his length fast enough.

  Not with Catherine whispering into his ear, breathing the same word over and over and over. “Please, please, please, please.”

  She only settled—quieted—when he was buried deep inside her. His fingers dug into her ass, and her bottom lip was caught between his teeth. So sweet and lovely and fucking perfect. It never changed. It really only got better, he thought.

  A shift of her hips, the squeeze of her thighs, her shaky sigh, her fingernails digging into his chest, and her head tipped back … perfect. The rhythm was all too familiar, and he rarely needed to urge Catherine on to do anything when s
he was riding him. She had her way. How she grinded her hips and took him deeper. How she held her breath and squeezed his cock when she was getting closer. He could feel the shivers racing over her skin and her green eyes darken … so wild.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Cross breathed into her throat.

  Harder.

  Faster.

  Deeper.

  He couldn’t breathe, and she was heavy lidded and whispering again.

  Please, please, please, please …

  She came with clenching fingers, trembling thighs, and the softest cry, all content and relieved at the same time. She tucked herself closer into his body, hiding her face in his neck as he dragged her harder into his body, so close to that goal himself, and wanting it bad.

  Dopesick, he thought.

  On Catherine, he was always fucking dopesick.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Cross mumbled into her hair as he finally felt that tightening in his groin and the heat in his spine release. He was so damn deep in her and breathing. There was his breath again. “Christ, yeah.”

  Catherine kissed his throat. Cross kept his face buried in her hair and scent, refusing to budge an inch. This was a good place to be, anyway.

  “You’re the only one I let touch me,” he heard her say, though her words were so soft. They traveled away with the city noise down below. “I don’t let anyone else, ever. I can’t. I’ve tried when we’re not doing our thing, and it’s like my whole body just goes into a shutdown. I don’t know how to stop it. It’s like there’s this disgusting feeling crawling all over me.”

  Cross tightened his embrace, holding a trembling girl tighter, who never said what was really wrong, and always made him figure it out himself in the end. He’d long suspected that what happened months ago with Derik had been a start of a downward spiral for Catherine, and he wasn’t sure if she was coming to the end of the fall, or was still in the middle of it.

  How was he supposed to catch her if he didn’t know when she was going to come crashing down?

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before now?” he asked.

  “Not with you. Never with you.”

  “Catherine.”

  “You’re safe to me. You’ve always been safe to me.”

  Safe.

  Right.

  He killed a man, got his dick sucked in a car, took his girl to prom, and fucked her on a hotel balcony all in the same day. The night was still goddamn young, so he had ample time to find more trouble, yet.

  He screamed safe.

  It was almost like Catherine could read his mind when she said, “You are safe to me. You’re mine, Cross.”

  Yeah … maybe.

  Her lips ghosted along his jaw and up to the shell of his ear. “Please, please, please don’t ever get tired of me. Give me you and us, and make me happy. I’m so sick of being on and off, and running. Be safe, and hide me when I’m tired of everyone else, and just … please, Cross.”

  “Always,” he promised.

  Catherine rested back into his embrace, set her chin on his shoulder, and settled … for now.

  How long would that last? How long before the next upset, the next run because she was restless? How long before he was picking up pieces again, or pulling her from something else she couldn’t handle to keep her from getting hurt?

  Why the hell couldn’t he stop it from happening to begin with?

  Cross was starting to think there were certain things he couldn’t save Catherine from. Like herself. She was running from shit in her head, and he wasn’t loud enough in there to stop it from making her bolt again.

  She was her own worst enemy. She just didn’t know it. He couldn’t make her be happy, when she wasn’t happy with herself, but fuck him if he wasn’t going to at least try.

  Because he would try.

  He would keep trying.

  Until she put one of them in a grave.

  Catrina’s voice carried down the hall, albeit quietly, making Catherine slow in her walk. She was late as it was for her first day of school, but the conversation happening in the kitchen was apparently about her, and so she wanted to hear it.

  “She’s calmed down, Dante, especially this past summer,” Catrina said, “and I’m not sure about you, but I would give him a hell of a lot of credit for that.”

  “You don’t know that it’s because of Cross. It could have been a lot of things that did it, Cat.”

  “I know that nothing we did worked, bello. I know that the more you took from her, or punished her, or caged her in, the worse she became. I know she wouldn’t talk, and when she did, she raged. I know that she could look me in the face, and not look at me at the same time. I know she was … she was not her.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “She is a lot more like the old her when she is with him than when she is not,” Catrina said softly. “So, perhaps you should take another step back here where he and she are concerned. Give it some more time.”

  “How much more can I step back?” Her father scoffed. “Jesus Christ, Catrina, I can’t step back more than I already have, honestly. She runs the roads with him. She’s out all damn day and night with him, and she’s only seventeen.”

  “Eighteen in a few months.”

  Dante grumbled at that. “Listen, I can’t do more, amore.”

  “You could,” her mother insisted, “like being pleasant when he’s here with her, or trying. You could keep your opinions quiet because sure we’re not real pleased with the freedom she has. Still, we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, but here’s the thing, Dante. Either we continue like we have been with her, and we still get the phone calls about where she is. We get to see her in the morning either because he brings her home, or she sleeps in her own bed, and we know what is going on. Or … we go through what we did with her last year again, and once she turns eighteen, she’s going to bolt. She will run, and you will not be fast enough to catch her. Mark my words.”

  “I’m trying. Cat, I tried, and I am still trying.”

  “Yeah, I know, but give her a bit more legroom to move and give him the credit that he’s kept her a little closer to the ground this summer.”

  “Yes, but the summer is over,” Dante murmured, “so what now?”

  “She smiles. She’s happy.”

  “With him, you mean. That’s what you’re not saying.”

  “Trying not to because it upsets you.”

  “Because it’s always something with him,” Dante muttered heavily. “And I am not interested in waiting to see what will come next.”

  “Dante, she—”

  “Smiles. Happy. I got it, Cat. I don’t understand why she stopped being those things to begin with, but that was probably him, too.”

  “No, I don’t think so, if anything, his influence might have kept her from completely going off the deep end last year.”

  “Really? Because what I saw was my daughter partying on weekends, and getting dropped off by him in the mornings. I saw her sneaking out and fucking off, and most of the time, he was usually involved by the end of the day. How many times did they break up and get back together over a period of a few months again? How many, Cat?”

  Catrina hummed a disagreeing sound. “You’re assuming because of circumstance, but we don’t know for sure that he was the cause of all those things.”

  “I have seen enough and I know enough to—”

  Catherine walked into the kitchen, deciding she had enough of eavesdropping, and wanted the conversation to be done with. Her parents both made an effort to step away from one another and both grabbed different things to make it appear like they were doing something.

  Smooth.

  “Morning,” Catherine said, shifting her messenger bag on her shoulder.

  “Morning,” her parents echoed.

  “You hungry?” her father asked.

  Catherine shrugged. “Sure, but I don’t have time to eat.”

  “This good?”

  Dante held up an appl
e.

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  Catherine caught the apple her father tossed across the kitchen. She took a bite, mumbling a thanks as she gathered the rest of her shit for the day.

  “Last first day of school,” Catrina said, coming up beside her daughter. “It’s hard to believe you’re a senior and you’re never going to have a first day again after this.”

  “She still has college, Catrina.” Her father chuckled. “And you’re already working on being late, Catty.”

  Senior year was sure to be fun if she started it out on the wrong foot by being late.

  Catherine gave her parents a dirty look over her shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. Ha, ha. Keep laughing.”

  A horn blared outside, making Catherine peer outside the kitchen window that overlooked the front drive. “Shit, I got to go.”

  “Is that—”

  “Cross,” Catherine filled in before her father could finish. “Yeah, he’s taking me this morning. I asked, so.”

  Dante passed Catrina a look that was returned with a shrug. Catherine didn’t have time for her parents’ silent conversations. She had settled down a lot over the summer, giving them less anxiety and heartache than she had for nearly the entire previous school year, but she knew they still worried.

  It had gotten to a point where her parents just took a step back, and waited her out. It worked, for the most part, but not because of them.

  She was doing better, mentally and emotionally. Her anxious spells and darker thoughts were easier to work through, or sometimes she had long periods where they didn’t bother her at all. She didn’t explain that to her parents, though. Just like how she never explained to them that for almost an entire year, she had done everything possible she could to get rid of her anxiety and depression that never seemed to wane for very long.

  And in the process, terrified, angered, and disappointed her parents. Over and over and over again.

  Catherine sighed loudly. “I do have to get going, so if you have something to say, now would be the time to do it.”

  Her father glanced to the window, and then back to Catherine. “There’s nothing, dolcezza. Have a good day.”