And so it is, heaven, a moment or an hour lasting forever, or maybe it’s five minutes, who knows. Because it’s my entire world, nothing more in it, no more pain, no more sadness, no more loss, no more questions, no more hate. No more anger.
No more Fear.
It’s me, it’s Declan, it’s the man I love and the man who loves me and it’s the way it’s meant to be. It’s love, it’s peace, it’s two souls, caressing, touching, feeling and being there, in each other, for each other, with each other. And on his face, an expression of peace.
There is no heaven (but if there is, this is it), no hell, no world, no war no crime no loss. No suffering.
Just us.
There’s rhythm, hot breath, grinding thrusts into a narrow need, and there’s music. Ever, constant, wonderful music. In this room.
Our music.
And then there’s more:
The filling pulses build into a pressure at my stomach, an almost-touched nerve that’s never quite reached, never quite soothed. The pressure mounts to a barometric tonnage like butterflies gone mad and my tightness screams from the sheer physical impossibility of growing any narrower. Deck’s hot breaths become pants, growls, powerful bursts of manly power into me and my body rocks from the ferocious need as wanton greed fills his eyes and demand takes over him. And then, like a wayward child, his eyes change, to yearning, to begging, to a moment of complete and utter defenselessness. I’m coming, they say. I’m coming, I’m yours, you have me.
My hands—those things of their own mind and will that travel and move without my knowing control!—glide on thermals, over onto his cheeks, and my fingers trickle his rosy skin, his blood-filled face. They linger gently over his ice-blue eyes, his lashes.
He cringes, he stops thrusting, he pauses, his face tells me he’s mine, all mine, no lies, only truth. And then those eyes shut, his lips twist up into a rictus of neverending craving, a hunger that feels like it will never be filled. He gasps once. Opens his eyes. And then he says, slowly, as if these are the last words he’ll ever utter, “Oh. God. ... Blaze.”
His head drops, his hands slide to below my shoulders and he pulls me up and squeezes me to him. I know it’s about to happen for him...
And then it does.
For both of us.
-3-
The clarity of his outright vulnerability in front of me, of the complete honesty in his eyes, of him giving himself utterly to me, undoes me. And when the spasms and jerks and leg-thrusting waves of galvanic contractions take over my legs and crotch and butt and stomach and my entire body, my eyes water. Tears pour from them as Declan holds me tight and bursts into me, filling me with his everlasting seed and warmth. My eyes water as I clutch his neck close to mine, holding him as if we were in a hurricane and the rocking waves of terror that have attacked us to this day, are suddenly over. I hold him tight and feel my tears mar and spread onto his shoulder while lightning rocks my insides, detonates under my legs, and snaps my heels into his lower back. Somewhere in the confusion, I hear myself telling him I love him, that I never want to let him go, that he’s mine, that I’m sorry, that we’re meant for each other. And all the while I’m rocking, pulsing, he’s thrusting and we’re both writhing, feeling it, feeling it to the end and just riding that wave, baby, up and down and up and oh yeah I love you, too. I love you with all my heart and I’m sorry and you’re sorry and we’re sorry and—DAMN—I love you, Blaze. I love you, Declan. I love you. I love you. I love you!
Thunder cracks—real thunder!—and lightning washes over our bodies and I’m never letting you go even when the cosmic orgasm is over because I love you, I love you, I love you endlessly and we need to always be there for each other and never let each other go and hold each other and be held by each other and—
Wetness mars my own shoulder. Teary wetness. And one shudder rips through Declan’s massive body, this granite-monster above me, this pro NFL player.
Precisely one.
Tears escape him as well. Lightly, secretly. But that’s OK. He can cry in front of me.
I hold him, squeezing his neck for dear life, hurting him no doubt, never willing to let him go, never never never. Never!
I cry some more, stifled tears embarrassedly shed onto his briny skin.
Deck’s long since stopped. Maybe he cried only one tear in each eye. But he holds me as well. We hold each other, he stays inside me, and we hold each other some more. He never pulls out of me, and we stay there, for God knows how long, a minute, a month, a year, a lifetime. We stay, we hold. For what feels like forever. And all of that time, he never lets me go.
He never lets me go.
And that says it all.
Poetic.
TWENTY-FIVE
A POSSIBLE FUTURE
~ ONE YEAR LATER ~
-1-
Blaze Ryleigh
We’re on the west coast, Deck’s second home, looking out at the curling combers of the living Pacific. It thunders against the beach. I’m on a beach chair, lying back, Deck on the chair to my left. We’re on a wooden patio, staring out into the sun, shades on our eyes.
Our hands are held.
House music plays behind me, inside. Around us are various well-to-do peeps, some of our friends, everyone either chilling, drinking cocktails, smoking or not, sitting or standing. But all of them relaxing.
My LP is a hit. It hit ninety-two on the Billboard charts four weeks ago, and hit seventy-one this week.
That’s a big deal.
Randy’s here, excited, holding a Margarita in his hand, his pony tail bobbing wildly behind him, sporting a grin like no other I’ve ever seen on him before. And he’s clean. We got him through rehab, got him to talk about all those horrible things his father did to him as a child and which, up until a few years ago, only Deck had had the patience to listen to and help him get through.
And Randy’s made it through. He’s dropped the drugs, the illicit parties, the self-destructive path he’d embarked upon to destroy himself.
I stayed with House Market, Randy’s small label (not so small anymore since my record broke the Billboard Top 100.) I stayed with him even after Ministry of Sound offered me a deal in the seven-digit area. Randy could never offer me that back then, and it wasn’t certain that he would ever be able to. But I was making a good living with him, had more than enough, more than I needed. And Randy is a friend. He’d been there for me, boosted my spirits, spoken about my music in ways that had kept me confident enough to keep experimenting, to keep playing, to keep creating.
He had my back.
On the corner of the patio, being pressed against her man’s powerful body and weakly pretending to try and get away, is Vikki, enwrapped in the arms of Sebastian Kade Darby II. Skate. She has a ring on her finger, sparkling and brilliant. Golden sunlight gilds her hair as she smiles and her neck is nuzzled and kissed by him. “That thing” she’d wanted to tell me about a year ago when I’d called her, was that he’d asked her to move in, not to marry her.
But that changed into a proposal not long after. And I didn’t even need to threaten him to do it.
Skate rubs her back, and the nuzzles graduate up to sensuous full-mouthed kisses, her waist inching closer to his. His pressing harder against hers.
I can almost hear the upcoming words, “I do.”
Their wedding is in three months, in New York. And the combined wealth of their two families means it will be a Who’s-Who event. Both Deck and Trev are Skate’s best men—Skate couldn’t pick one over the other. But I’m my girl’s only Maid of Honor.
On my left, far in the corner, is Trevor Man-of-Every-Girl’s-Dreams Perkins. He’s in slacks and a sports shirt, his chest large and powerful underneath. Cyiarra isn’t here, but I’ve met her. She’s tall and refined and has thighs and calves made of rock. She’s a high-profile lawyer, and dating a jock is difficult for her. So, even after all this time, their relationship is still secret. But Deck hopes it won’t be a secret much longer, and that there will
be a ring involved there as well.
Trev doesn’t go more than five minutes at a time without some prospect coming over to him, trying her chances, resting her hand on his shoulder, and then, finally, getting turned away by him. “I’m taken, sorry,” he says always, with a grin, and a Panty-Melting smile, and sends them on their way.
He toasts his glass at us, leans out over the railing, and watches the rolling thunder of the waves.
Jacinta isn’t here. But Trev’s an uncle now, and her baby boy is pushing one year. She told me I’m technically Denzel’s aunt, but Deck has to marry me in order to be his uncle. “I don’t give a shit what Trev says. I’m the mother! And if Deck wants dibs of Uncle-ship, he better come up with the goods!” she said.
I chose the name Denzel. “Boris” and “Will” and “Jamie” just didn’t sound cool enough, regardless of how cool their current limelight owners are.
Gina Moretti is now Gina Kinkaid. Deck and I were invited to the wedding. Deck didn’t want to go, but I convinced him we should go together. Gina was grateful. Karma, I’d thought. At one stage you just gotta let go, and you just gotta trust people. Her included.
Clarissa was her Maid of Honor, and even though she of course wasn’t waitressing, she did manage to somehow spill coffee on Skate’s trousers “by mistake.” Again.
Clarissa left with the Best Man. Early.
Dino Moretti was out of prison by then. “Rehabilitated.” He was also at the wedding. We didn’t talk to him. He didn’t talk to us. And, if my perception was correct, I think his Joizy Shore mother would’ve taken a shoe to him if he’d started anything. She’s tougher than any correctional facility he could have ever been sent to.
She and I still don’t get along. I’ve tried to apply my “Forgive and Forget” policy even to her, for the things she said to me when Deck had been in hospital after Dino had hit him, but she doesn’t return the sentiment.
But her husband’s still cool. He was grateful for Deck being there, shook our hands, smiled. A proud father. Gina was happy about it. I warmed to her a little. Just another girl finding love, and being swept off her feet. I couldn’t stay mad at her, even if her mother and brother are certifiably insane...
When we’re on the East Coast, back home, I visit Melissa Lerrington. She and I have become good friends. She’s taught me how to ride a horse and, poetically, how to fall off one properly and get back on again. I visit her every time I’m in the states, and then I visit Mr. Bernstein in the same trip. She’s a wonderful lady, a proud lady. I’ve met her children, all of them, and made acquaintances with them. But she’s the only one I consider a true friend. She did indeed tell Frankie Lerrington that she had known about his affair, even though, after Tatiana had passed, it was technically already “over.” She told him just so that he knows he can’t pull the wool over her eyes.
I can’t tell you if he’s faithful to her now or not (probably not), but I can tell you that I’ve got her back if he isn’t!
I’m still trying to get Mamah back to the USA. Mr. Bernstein still has a place for her in his heart. Gramps is not doing so well, he hasn’t been for several years. I think she wants to be there with him when he goes, in his own home, in his own country. I can respect that. Mamah has her life, and she’s made her own decisions. Love has never been a major necessity for her, I think. Or, should I say, it’s taken second place to other things like caring for her father, and even caring for me. I can respect that, too.
A hot wind gusts past me. Someone laughs in the back and glasses clink and tingle. Chill-House plays in sync to the waves.
Deck squeezes my hand tighter.
Deck’s career with The Giants has rolled forward relentlessly. The papers take cuts at him, and at me. But he’s old news since a guy called Eduardo Mendez made it into the NFL last year. Eduardo is single, inked to the kazoo, hard, and sexy.
And he’s a Bad Boy to the core. We’re talking Bad Boy. I know this because Deck’s filled me in on some of the escapades Eduardo’s gotten into on their away games. “The papers don’t even get half of it down,” Deck told me once. But Eduardo also wins games. And Coach doesn’t give a shit what you do (so long as you’re within the law) provided you win games.
Deck is only second-page news these days due to Eduardo’s newsworthy efforts.
Deck likes it that way.
The road here has been painful, hard, filled with losses and sadnesses that few people encounter in an entire lifetime, not to mention even before they’re thirty.
But we have friends, we have each other, we have love in many forms—Deck’s love for me, the passionate kind. Trev’s love for us, our love for him and Skate. My love for Vikki.
We’ve had support, and we have support, ongoing. Skate and Trev will never leave our side, will always be there for us, will always help us. Just like Trev helped Deck get back on his feet after he fell to the booze and drugs. Deck would’ve fallen completely if Trev hadn’t been there. Just like Skate had my back when Laz came for me. Just like he had my back when Dino Moretti and my ex, Tolek Two-Face, were on the loose. (Tolek’s another guy I never heard nor saw any more of since he, Skate and Deck had a little “exchanging of fists” with each over at Pier Six all those years ago.)
Vikki had my back with her bodyguards. Mostly she had my back when the clouds of the past had made me almost ruin any chance of happiness with Deck. She had my back when all I needed was a shoulder to cry on. She had my back when Xavier was wielding a flying gun at anything in his way—the day he almost killed himself in his apartment and I stopped him.
And we have their backs.
Other stories, other times, other things that happened that I haven’t told you about, but where each of them needed our help, and we did what we could to be there for them. Maybe, I hope, they’ll tell you Deck and I are the greatest friends they could ever have. I hope so. Because the only way to repay a true act of friendship, is with an equal act in return—or an act ten times greater.
And what Deck and I owe these three people is immeasurable.
We owe our lives to them. We owe our happiness to them. And we will always be there for them.
It’s not about the money you make, it’s about the friends, the relationships. The blood and sweat and the pain and suffering. It’s about who got you through, and who had your back.
It’s about who you owe.
Deck holds my hand even tighter, turns his head, looks over at me.
Trev, behind him, leans out and smiles at us. I turn to my right, see Skate and Vikki. They each raise a glass to us. A lump rises to my throat.
Skate says, loud enough so I can hear him, “Cheers.”
Vikki joins him. “Tvajó zdaróvye!”
Trev nods at us, smiles coolly, smoothly.
I grab a glass from the floor, Deck does the same. We hold them up. I say to him quietly. “To you, my baby.”
He swallows. “To us.” And we drink. To us.
When I met Deck, oh, six years ago it is now—when I met him, I had nothing, no one, no best friend, no real friends, no boyfriend, no hope.
No will to live beyond the music.
Now I have it all.
And I’m not talking about money.
But I have that, too.
EPILOGUE
THE MIRACLE
Declan Cox
Nothing is over. It all continues. Life continues. Pain continues. Joy continues.
There is no beginning, no middle, no real end. The beginning of one thing is the middle of another, or the end of something else.
Every day with Blaze is a new beginning, a new middle, but never an end. There will never be an end with Blaze, only new beginnings, every hour, every day, every morning when I kiss her, when I hold her, when I thank the Karma gods for bringing me to her once again.
The ring I’m about to buy for her, and getting down on my knees for her at MetLife Stadium after tonight’s game, is a new beginning.
I’m nervous.
I�
�m afraid.
But I’m gonna do it.
MetLife stadium is known for its miracles.
This will be the third one.
Wish me luck...
THE END
POSTSCRIPT
~ THE COMET ~
Blaze Ryleigh
They walk away from us, they leave us, they hurt us, they disappear. For them, it’s easy, the ones that die, that move on, that leave us be. And what were their choices, their reasons? Did they think of us? Did they think of their own lives? Did they think of the final moment? Did they suffer? Did they not? Was the smile a convulsion? Were they really smiling, or grimacing? Did they care for us? Did they know they would hurt us?
And, most of all, were they even friends in the first place to have done this to us?
The Great Unknown. The Forever Unanswered Question. The Final Goodbye which Never Could Be.
It is the unanswered question which keeps the pain alive. The inability to ask, to go out for coffee, to speak, to communicate with the dead.
Is it their fault? Was it Savva’s fault what she did? Did she know that, on moving on, on leaving us be, that she would, inevitably, be taking two lives instead of one? Because I died the day she died. I died and never came back, until Declan Cox brought me a little back.
Music brought me back some more.
Viktoriya Golovkina brought me back all the way.
Skate and Trev bring me back. My friends bring me back. But I will always be dead a little, the little which passed and withered away with the hope and joy which was my best friend.
She hurt me. She hurt me eternally. Did she know? Was she thinking only of herself? Was it for the best?
She hurt her friends, she hurt her boyfriend, she hurt her brother. She hurt everyone she left behind.
Do I hate her? No. Do I forgive her? Yes. Am I angry at her? I always will be.
Always.
The worst is she’s not here for me to be angry at. I can’t tell her “You’re just being a stupid bitch!” or “What the fuck did you go and do that for!” and we can’t thrash it out and fight and then cry. And then hug.
Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three) Page 38