by Caisey Quinn
Sweeter words were never spoken.
I’m hot. Burning up and sweating.
I try to kick the blankets off me but something is holding them down. The harder I fight, the tighter they seem to pull in around me.
Blinking myself awake, I see Gavin’s body draped around mine. As gently as I can manage, I ease myself out from under his large frame. He makes a small noise of complaint but eventually rolls over so I can get out from under the covers. God, he’s like a human furnace. There is literally heat radiating from his skin.
A gentle pulsating throb alerts me to my never-ending need for the man in my bed so I kiss him softly on the back of his right shoulder.
It’s been such a rough few days, I know he needs his rest. We both do. And yet, he’s here, exposed and, for the time being, all mine. Our time together always feels so rushed, so temporary and frantic. I want to take my time exploring and savoring.
Running my fingers across his back and down his arm, I feel my need for him becoming more and more pronounced. Any physical contact with him whatsoever awakens every cell that makes up my being. I can’t help but wonder if it’s like this for everyone.
I scoot closer to his back, allowing my bare breasts to absorb his warmth. My hand trails lightly to his well-defined hip bones, dipping into the V just before his pelvis. I feel a bit like a pervy creeper, taking advantage of the access I have to him at the moment, but I can’t stop myself.
When I let my wandering hand venture to the patch of hair between his hips, he twitches and groans lightly. Stroking downward, I feel him rousing to meet my hand and then I am encircling him.
He’s already half-hard as it is, but a few slides of my hand and his erection springs to full mast. Being gentle in my ministration of his most important body part is obviously frustrating him, judging from the small exhalations of breath he begins releasing.
“Looking for something, Bluebird?” His voice is groggy but amused.
I duck my head against him when he rolls back slightly. “Nope. Found it.”
“Did you now?”
My mess of hair falls forward as I lean forward to kiss his mouth.
He captures my wrists in his hand and slides me gently to the side. “We should talk first.”
“Okay, then. Me first,” I say quietly, overwhelmed by the sense of vulnerability I’m feeling. “I love you, Gavin Garrison. I love the feel of you, the taste of you, the scent of you. I love the way you touch me and the way you make me feel.”
His eyes are on fire when they lock with mine. “I love you, too, Bluebird. More than should even be possible. More than I ever knew I could be capable of.” His hands grip my waist tightly, denting the flesh and claiming me as his.
His fingertips drift lazily up the backs of my thighs, tracing the lower curve of my backside, causing me to twitch in response.
“Can we stay like this while we talk?” I plead weakly.
With a low chuckle, he gives my ass a squeeze. “We could. But we probably shouldn’t. Wouldn’t get much talking done.”
“You couldn’t just let me lie here and die happy?” I tease. Truthfully, despite how aroused my naked body is, my heart is hammering into my skull with an urgency demanding I do whatever is necessary to find out what happened the year I was in Houston.
Gavin is a vault; he always has been. A beautiful, bruised vault hiding the world’s darkest secrets. Secrets I am equally terrified of knowing and not knowing.
He’s not Clark Kent or Captain America. I always knew that. Gavin is much more of a Bruce Wayne minus the money. He’s a dark hero fighting to be good when we all know he could go either way.
“I mean . . . I can,” he answers, stroking my hair and then my back. “If that’s really what you want.”
I sigh in his arms, soaking up the last ounces of vulnerable intimacy while I can.
“I’ll make some coffee,” I announce as I peel my reluctant body from his. Something about our closeness without having had sex seems more . . . primal. Or intimate. Or . . . I don’t know. It’s just more. “Sun will be up soon.”
20 | Gavin
I’VE BEEN IN a lot of tough and precarious situations in my life. Hell, my life is one big, complicated situation. But none have been daunting to the point of debilitating the way facing Dixie Lark is about to be.
It’s as if I’m about to face a firing squad and I’m the one supplying the ammo.
Once I pull on a pair of Dallas’s old gym shorts and a T-shirt featuring the name of our high school football team, I make my way to the kitchen, where I can hear Dixie making coffee. My feet are lead weights as I move, begging me to slow down and reconsider before I ruin everything good in my life only moments after finally getting it back.
For a moment, I just stand there, watching her making coffee.
What would life be like if I were normal? Would it be like this? Waking up to her, morning coffee with her, holding her in my arms every night—it sounds like Heaven on Earth and like a life I could never begin to be worthy of.
“Hey. You want it black as usual?”
I blank out for a second staring at her full mouth.
“Gav? Coffee?”
I shake my head. “Black is fine. Like my soul.”
She gives me a pointed look but doesn’t comment on my mood. I take the mug she hands me and lower myself into one of the wooden chairs at the table.
“So what did you want to tell me?” she asks tentatively, eyeing me carefully while sitting in the seat adjacent to mine.
I take a long swallow of hot coffee and then a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”
Something flashes in her eyes. Intrigue? Worry? I can’t tell for sure.
“Everything,” she whispers softly. Then a little louder, “And nothing.”
I force a half smile. “Oh, that’s all? That I can do.”
Neither of us speaks for a few minutes but then she sets her mug aside and clasps her hands together on top of the table. Her stare meets mine, an immeasurable number of emotions swirling in her eyes, and I know this is the calm before the storm.
Maybe we should take cover, have this conversation beneath the table or locked in a bunker somewhere that we can’t escape, can’t walk out of until our issues are resolved.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were home? Even if you didn’t want to see me, it would’ve been nice to know without finding out like . . . like I did.”
Man up and tell her the truth, Garrison. Before someone else does.
I stare at my coffee mug, realizing it says WORLD’S GREATEST NANA on it. Dixie’s has sheet music printed across it and the words DEAR MUSIC, THANKS FOR THE THERAPY.
I spin mine in my hands a few times before answering.
“I didn’t call you when I first came home because I needed time. There were things—like the probation situation I told you about—that I wanted to get handled and squared away before contacting you. There was some jail time involved and I didn’t want you coming to that place, though eventually I guess you had to anyway.” Or she chose to. Whichever.
“Okay,” she answers slowly, tracing the rim of her cup with one finger. “So let’s back up. How did you end up on probation to begin with?”
And here we go.
Deep into the year that I think of as my dark period, which, with my life, is saying something.
“The year you were gone wasn’t a great one. I wasn’t making very good choices. I was using . . . and then I was in an accident. One that was my fault.”
I see the ripple of disappointed sadness that crosses her features. No matter what I do, I will always hurt her in one way or another. The knowledge settles onto my chest like a ton of bricks.
Dixie looks momentarily like she can’t decide which part to question first. “Using what exactly?”
I rub my fingers over my eyelids. “Coke mostly. It was around all the time. Guy my mom was seeing wasn’t shy about sharing. I’d drink a little, do a few lines, and go play my drums u
ntil I couldn’t move my arms.”
She frowns. “Were you addicted?”
I nod. “I don’t know. Sort of. It was like . . . like I was trading one addiction for another. Losing you and filling the void with getting high.”
“I see.” But I know her tone. She doesn’t see. How could she? Dixie doesn’t understand living a life of crime to make ends meet because she’s never had to and she probably never would. She’s moral and good and pure. “So you got caught? How?”
I sigh because this is the beginning of the end and I don’t know what I thought but I’d hoped I’d somehow figure out a way to avoid this part. I didn’t.
“I got busted for possession in a back alley behind a bar a few towns over. Got a suspended sentence, days on the shelf basically, court-ordered addiction counseling and community service for it because Ash—uh, my attorney—was able to plead it down. But I’d no sooner finished the court-mandated program than I got into an accident. I was high and it showed in the tox screen. Since I already had one major strike against me plus a few minor arrests for assault for petty bar fights and other BS, the punishment was a little heavier that time.”
She sits there processing for a while and I sit there hating myself for tainting her with my fucked-upness.
In a way, I’m glad that much is out there. I feel like I can breathe a little easier. But in my heart I know I’ve glossed over the most painful details of that year and my Bluebird isn’t stupid. She’ll catch on and demand the full story.
It doesn’t take long.
“Were you alone in the back alley? When you got busted?”
I shake my head but don’t answer.
“So . . . did the other person get arrested?”
I nod.
“Gavin, don’t turn mime on me right now, please.”
I swallow hard and choke out a quick “Sorry.”
God, I am so fucking sorry.
“They got arrested for drugs, too?”
I shake my head, and she narrows her eyes at me. “For performing a lewd act in public, Dix. That’s what she got arrested for. Is that what you want to know? That I found the only peace I could with other women?” She flinches and a white-hot blanket of shame covers me. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean anything right now, but for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
I’d say it a million times if I could. More if I thought it would help.
“That’s why Dallas got so mad when he caught us behind the bar in Nashville. Because he thought maybe we were . . .”
“Yeah. Probably,” I answer shortly. It still pisses me off that he thinks I would’ve been doing anything like that with Dixie, but I try not to dwell.
“Jesus.” She’s quiet again, contemplating her next question, I assume. I’d rather be questioned by the FBI, by people I don’t give a flying fuck about, instead of by the woman I love more than life itself. But she deserves the truth and it’s time she got it. “The accident . . .”
My chest constricts as if she’s placing cinder blocks squarely on it. “Yeah. It was bad. Nearly totaled Dallas’s truck and gave both of us concussions and severe whiplash.”
Dixie’s eyes are wide when they meet mine. “Both of you? As in, you drove high with my brother, with my only fucking living relative, in the truck?”
Her arm swings left and takes her coffee cup off the table and onto the floor. She barely glances down at where the handle now lies broken.
Technically Dallas wasn’t her only living relative at the time, but this hardly seems like the moment to mention that. I clean up the mess quickly and efficiently setting the cup and its handle back on the table while she continues gaping at me and waiting for her pound of flesh.
“Yeah, Dix. I did. And I’m sorry. God, I am so fucking sorry that happened. He’d been drinking Robyn off his mind and called me for a ride. I didn’t realize how messed up either of us was until it was too late.”
Dixie buries the palms of her hands into her eyes and remains still for several minutes before talking to me again. “So you got charged with all kinds of stuff from the accident then. How’d you get out of it?”
One hard question after another. “Ashley. The attorney that you met.” And wanted to murder, from the looks of it.
“The attorney . . . Ashley,” she begins, and I can hear the venom and hurt in her voice. “How’d you afford her?”
There’s no way to sugarcoat my answer so I give it to her as gently as I can manage.
“Pretty much the same way I’ve always afforded things I wanted and couldn’t pay for.”
“Wow. Okay. I guess I kind of knew that, but hearing it . . . from you . . . Just . . . Wow.”
Her chair scrapes the floor as she moves it back. She shoots upright and takes the two pieces of her glass to the sink, but I know what she’s really doing. She’s disgusted and she needs space from me. I can’t blame her. I’m jealous. I wish I could get away from myself.
I hang my head and wait for the interrogation to continue.
Dixie busies herself using some type of glue to repair her mug and I finish my now cold, bitter coffee. She takes my cup and washes it before returning to sit down. “So you got help because the court made you, but it didn’t work?”
I nod. “Pretty much. Mandatory rehab is kind of a joke. It doesn’t take until you’re there because you want to be, because you want help and you want to change.” She nods as if this makes sense so I continue. “That time I was just going through the motions, complying with whatever simply to stay out of jail. But after the accident, I hit rock bottom. I was the worst off I ever was and Dallas dragged me out of my house, beat the hell out of me, and brought me here to dry out. I did and then I started trying to get some real help. It has helped and I still see an addiction counselor.”
“What were you addicted to?”
Now there’s the million-dollar question. Most addicts have a drug of choice. Heroin. Meth. Coke. Narcotics. Alcohol. Not that some people won’t just take whatever for the hell of it, but actual addicts tend to have a preference.
Mine was none of the above.
“I don’t know that I was ever actually addicted to one particular substance. My addiction issues were more . . .”
“Let me guess. Complicated?”
I nod. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
Dixie hates the generic use of that word and I don’t blame her. It’s vague as hell and basically a cop-out.
“That still doesn’t answer my question. What exactly were you addicted to then, Gav?”
A dull throb begins at my temples and lands in the center of my forehead. She waits patiently for my answer.
“Oblivion, Bluebird,” I finally answer. “I was addicted to anything and everything that helped me to check out, to escape my reality, to forget.”
“Forget what?” Her eyes are wide and round and shining with the promise of tears. Answering will only cause them to fall. But I have to. She deserves to know the truth.
“You.”
An hour has passed since I answered her final question and she went outside to get some air. She must’ve needed a lot of air.
I step out onto the front porch but she’s nowhere to be seen. Walking around the side of the house, I’m reminded of playing hide-and-seek as kids, of me and her and Dallas running and laughing and daring each other to do ridiculous things like mix Pop Rocks into a bottle of Pepsi and drink it all at once.
This house has been my safe place since the day I met the Lark siblings on the worst day of their young lives.
I’m so lost in memories, I think I see a younger version of myself sitting on the cracked concrete garden bench in the backyard.
He’s got dark hair like me, ill-fitting clothes like I did at that age, though at least his are clean, and I can see from a few steps away fingerprint bruises around the back of his neck. I sported those once or twice in my childhood as well.
I glance around but there is only me and him. The overcast day makes it seem like a dream or
maybe a hallucination.
“Hey there,” I call out to make sure I’m not crazy.
He flinches and when he turns I know why. The last time this kid saw me I was beating his dad half to death right in front of him.
“This bench taken?” I ask, pointing to the other half.
He doesn’t answer, just returns his gaze to the empty field behind the house.
I take that as permission to sit.
Well . . . this is fucking awkward. Dixie was wrong, I’m not kid friendly at all.
A small flock of birds take off nearby as if we have offended them with our presence.
“Guess the birds didn’t want to hang with us,” I say, hoping to show him I’m not the monster I probably seem like.
He turns dark eyes briefly on me then goes back to staring. “They’re blue finches.”
“Yeah, I know.” I remember a day when Dallas and I found one by a pond where we mowed grass for summer money. It was beautiful and delicate and despite seeming as if it was done for, it eventually chirped loudly at us and flew off. That day I understood something, something about myself and about Dixie.
As long as she had hope in me, I would have hope in myself.
I’ve called her Bluebird ever since.
I tell my unexpected company the story about the bird and when I’m finished he actually looks slightly interested.
“What do you think happened to it? After it flew away?”
I think on this for a long minute. “I think it explored the world for a while until it met another bird to explore the world with it.”
“Or maybe it died. Everyone dies. My mom died.”
Fuck. Me.
I suck at kids.
I have no words for this. Except, “I’m sorry to hear that, man. That was probably tough to handle.”
He doesn’t respond. Taking a closer look, I realize he can’t be more than six or seven or so. I try to remember what that is. First grade maybe? Second?
“Hey, what grade are you in?”
“First,” he says quietly. “But I don’t really go to school much. They don’t like me there.”
I remember that. Being the addict’s kid, being dirty, being made fun of. You learn how to use your fists instead of your words pretty quickly. “Well, I like you. And I know Miss Dixie likes you. Maybe we can just have school right here. I bet she could teach us some stuff.”