With Helen.
But Serena was so bloody insistent. “Do you trust me?”
He came up short.
“Of course.” More than he trusted himself.
“Then trust me.” The heat of her palm seeped deep into his heart, melting layers of ice and scar.
Maybe she didn’t only fill the empty places there. Maybe she was making new ones. Better ones.
Maybe he’d thought that once before.
The seed of doubt came out of nowhere, but before it could take too deep of root, Serena pulled him back to her. She drew her hand from his heart to rest against his cheek, directing his gaze until he was staring, lost, into her eyes.
“Cole, I—” She cut herself off, words hanging heavy and unspoken in the air.
He could imagine them, though, and she was right to keep them in. Some things he still wasn’t ready to say or to hear.
Desperate, he covered her lips with his own. In the span of a breath, she caught right up with him, and he could nearly taste the relief in her kiss.
Without hesitation, she opened for him, dragging him in closer. He rolled into her until they both lay on their sides. The cold press of the floorboards bit into his shoulder and hip, and fuck, shite, he should have listened to her after all about hauling themselves onto the bed, but it was too late now. He let his hands roam over soft skin, and his body couldn’t help but respond. Her breasts pressed against his chest were tight, her mouth lush, and when she hitched a leg over his, he groaned aloud.
There were things they still couldn’t say, but they could communicate all the same. He kissed her with all the passion she awoke in him, all the hope she had taught him he could feel again. The head of his cock grazed the hot flesh of her thigh, sending lightning up his spine until he had to pull back.
Desperate to give her at least some fraction of what she gave him, he slipped a hand between her legs to find her soft and slick. He rubbed at her clit and probed inside, devouring the sounds of need falling out of her lungs. He chased her pleasure, stroking faster and harder. Soaking his fingers, she tightened around him, so close, and he was blind to everything. Could think of nothing but taking her past the edge once more.
“Come on, beautiful,” he all but growled, “give it to me.”
But she shook her head, nudging his hand away. He missed the hot clench of her immediately, wanted more of her little whimpers and the tensing of her body, the rhythmic pulses as she squeezed him.
Until she curled her fingers around his cock.
“Serena,” he groaned. She’d made him come so hard not an hour ago, but it felt like days, he needed her so badly. Her touch felt so good.
She gazed clear into his eyes as she directed him home. “I want you.”
How could he resist?
Poised at her entrance, the head of him snugged up against wet heat, he threaded his fingers through her hair. Angled his neck to kiss her deeper.
He pressed inside in one long glide that stole his breath away. She accepted him so easily, took him in so readily. She gave him things he’d thought he’d never have again.
She was a miracle.
With all the reverence and awe a miracle deserved, he moved inside her. She met his every thrust, one hand at his jaw and the other at his hip, urging him on. With pleasure a brilliant ember, a glowing coal, they rocked together in rolling motions of spines and hips. He couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t seem to keep himself from falling into her mouth, and it was too intense. Too much like those words she’d scarcely stopped herself from saying.
And it was impossible to picture—far-fetched to the point of insane—but it came to him all the same.
What if, someday, he said those words to her?
His heart threatened to pound clear out of his chest. As if she knew, she pressed her palm to the aching center of his ribs, and his gaze went blurry and damp.
Because she didn’t try to cover that star. That symbol and that reminder that was sewn deep beneath his skin. She touched him right beside it. On clean and untouched flesh, and for a moment, he felt just that innocent. That clean.
He sped the pace of his hips, her name a prayer on his lips as the feeling threatened to crest over. She ground against him harder, and he snuck a hand between them to touch her where she needed it. On the precipice, he hovered, staring deeply into crystal eyes as her whole body went taut, spine arching.
“Cole, I—”
She clenched around him, slick pulses that dragged him right down after. As she shook apart in his arms, he let the pleasure take him. The connection to this woman who accepted him. Who loved him. He thrust deeply into the hot, wet clench of her until it overwhelmed him, fire spreading from his balls through every inch of his skin. He emptied himself into her with a force that left him shattered. Gasping against her mouth, he drove home one final time and stilled.
When he came back to himself, his breath was ragged, his heart racing. Serena’s chest heaved as she lay there surrounding him, as close to him as a person could possibly be.
He forced his fingers to uncurl, letting go of the grip he had on her hip. Then slowly, trying to say the things they hadn’t yet, he placed his palm flush over hers, right next to his heart.
He still didn’t know if he could give her what she deserved. But with all the strength he had left, he held on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
At first, Serena thought it was her alarm. She groaned, half sitting up, but the warm, heavy arm draped across her waist had her pinned. Blinking against the darkness, she furrowed her brow. Huh. For once, Cole was passed out in the bed beside her as opposed to wandering her kitchen. She nudged at his shoulder, but he just snuffled deeper into the pillow, tightening his grip. It would be adorable, except the alarm was still blaring.
Only...She tilted her head, craning her neck to listen better.
That wasn’t her alarm.
Confused, she glanced toward her clock.
“Crap.”
She was used to getting up early, but this was ridiculous.
“Cole?” She swatted harder at his arm this time, and he finally budged, sleep-heavy voice mumbling something unintelligible as he rolled off.
Funny—she’d never pegged him for a cuddler, but in his sleep, apparently he clung on like a limpet.
Free to do so, she sat up and rubbed at her eyes. The blaring of the buzzer for the door downstairs didn’t so much as pause. With a sigh, she threw off the covers and rose. She gave a full-body shiver when her feet touched the floor. Going to bed naked had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was freaking freezing now. She grabbed her robe off the back of the door and drew it on.
Cole’s voice followed her as she stepped into the hallway. “What—”
Beyond what had been necessary to extricate herself, she’d tried not to wake him—he got so little sleep as it was—but apparently, that was a lost cause.
“Heck if I know.”
If this was some jerk randomly pushing buttons, he was getting a piece of her mind.
Flicking on the hallway light, she made her way to the intercom and pressed the buzzer. “For God’s sake, what?”
“Serena?”
Not some random idiot, then. “Yeah?”
“It’s Penny.”
Serena’s eyes snapped the rest of the way open. An icy hand reached its way into her heart. “Penny?”
What on earth was her sister doing here?
“Can I come up?”
“Of course.” Scrambling, she stabbed at the button to unlock the door downstairs. She heard it unlatching and made a beeline for her own apartment door, throwing the bolt and tugging it open. An even colder gust of air met her on the landing.
Too late, it struck her that she was naked under this robe. Her hair was probably a bird’s nest, and she was freezing in her bare feet. She saw her sister so rarely these days, and there was just something about your big sis. Serena had looked up to her for so long, even after she’d fallen apa
rt. There would always be this part of her that craved Penny’s approval. That wanted to impress her. For half a second, she seriously considered running back inside to try to make herself presentable.
But then Penny was there, trudging her way up the stairs.
“Oh my God.” The words just came out, much louder than she’d intended, considering she hadn’t meant to say them at all. She slapped her hand over her mouth.
Back when they’d been kids, people had often commented on how similar the two of them looked—the same blond hair, green eyes, and pale skin. Most of the time, when Penny was healthy, she’d worn her looks with grace, caring more about style and clothes than Serena ever had. But now, Penny’s hair was dull, the ends ragged against her shoulders. Her eyes were bloodshot, and dark circles made them look sunken. Her paleness pointed more at blood loss than a northern European heritage.
One corner of her bitten, chapped lips pulled upward. “Well, if it isn’t my baby sister.”
With that, she stumbled and nearly went careening down the stairs.
Snapping into action, Serena threw the door wider and hustled down the couple of steps to meet her. Penny fell into her arms, and Serena’s stomach sank further. She smelled like two days on a bus—and that wasn’t really all that far-fetched, was it? Beneath the leather of Penny’s jacket, Serena could feel ribs.
“Come on.” She fought to steer her toward the apartment.
Together, they managed to get to the top of the stairs and through the door. Serena led her to the couch, where she all but collapsed. Serena stood up straight again, chest tight.
She could handle this, though. She’d get some coffee going and definitely some food—even she could scramble a couple of eggs. And then she’d sneak into her room to get dressed and call her mom.
It was the first idea to offer her any consolation at all. Mom. Mom would know what to do.
Resolved, she turned. Only to find Cole standing in the doorway, looking all of his six-foot-something.
And suddenly she could imagine what it must have been like to be one of those muggers he’d chased down—to have all of that glowering at you from across a crowded train station.
He’d warned her about it so many times. But for the first time, she felt this tiny, shivering tickle of fear.
She shook it off. But that didn’t mean she had any idea what to say. Lost, she glanced from Cole to Penny and back again, hoping the uncertain expression on her face said it all.
Cole deflated by a fraction. He was still clearly on high alert, but he softened his shoulders, cutting slightly less imposing of a figure. He’d dragged on his clay-spattered jeans from the night before, but other than that, he was naked, too, those bold, beautiful, painful designs on his chest and arm on stark display.
Leaning into his crutch, he stepped to the side. “I’ll get some coffee going.”
A warmth lit off inside Serena’s chest, nearly as bright as the spark she’d had remembering her mother.
She didn’t have to figure this out alone. Whatever this was, she had her family to lean on. She had Cole.
Then one member of her family groaned. “Shit. Rena. I didn’t know you’d have someone—”
“It’s fine.” It was pretty darn crappy timing, was what it was. After the intensity of last night, Serena had drifted off with plans for what she was going to do with Cole this morning. But that was all right. She angled herself so she could see them both. “Penny, this is...” God, it was so middle school to be stuttering over a word like this—and she would know. She rolled her eyes at herself and soldiered on. “This is my boyfriend, Cole. Cole, this is my sister, Penny.”
“Charmed,” Cole said from the other room, managing a tight smile.
It was way too early for any of this.
She sighed. “Look, let me go get dressed real quick. Just—” A little bit of the desperation clawing at her chest leaked through. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
The wry tilt to Penny’s mouth made her look at least a little bit more like herself. “Like I have anywhere else left to go.”
Serena cast one last glance Cole’s way. He nodded at her, and she mouthed a silent Thank you at him before retreating. He hadn’t signed up for any of this, and yet here he was. Gratitude had her blinking hard.
With her bedroom door closed behind her, she headed straight for her phone to text her mom. It was too early for her to be awake, but she’d kill Serena if she kept this to herself.
Don’t panic, but Penny just showed up at my apartment.
Setting her phone down, she shucked her robe. If she was planning to go to work, she’d have to change again in an hour, but for now, she tugged on jeans and a sweatshirt and called it good.
Her phone buzzed.
WHAT???
Serena’s thoughts exactly. She texted back quickly: I don’t know what’s going on yet, but I knew you’d want to know.
She’d barely fired it off before her phone vibrated in her hand. I’m coming right over.
No, she replied, you’re not. She came to me for a reason. She bit her lip as she glanced toward the door. I’ll let you know as soon as I have a clue, but for now sit tight. Get Max off to school and then we’ll talk.
Heck. Max. What a mess would it be if her mom showed up with him in tow?
Switching her phone to silent, she stuffed it in her pocket and headed back out.
It shouldn’t have been such a relief to find Penny still on her couch, but she let out a deep breath all the same.
Penny had curled in on herself while she’d been gone. She fluttered her eyes open as Serena approached and flashed her a weak but all-too-familiar smile. “What? Did you really think I’d disappear?”
“No.” Not really. But maybe a little.
In the other room, Cole was a silent presence manning a couple of frying pans, and the well of gratitude burned even brighter in Serena’s chest. He caught her eye as she glanced in on him and gestured with his head toward her sister.
And it wasn’t really that Serena had been stalling, but maybe, just a little bit, she had.
She took one last detour, stopping to fill a couple of mugs with coffee and doctoring them up before taking them over to the couch. She passed one to Penny, who took it with that same exhausted smile.
Serena second-guessed herself, hand still outstretched. “Do you actually want that? If you just want to crash or something...” She gestured toward the bedrooms, but Penny shook her head.
“Nah, I’m gonna need it before Mom shows up anyway. Is she on her way?” The look she shot Serena this time was pointed.
Serena swallowed, but she refused to feel guilty. “I think I convinced her to wait until she gets Max seen off.”
Penny closed her eyes, cradling her mug close to her chest. “Well, that’s something at least.”
“I couldn’t not tell her.”
“No,” Penny said. “I guess you never could.”
Serena was not going to get defensive. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” Penny opened her eyes again. “Just you and Mom. Always in cahoots.”
What? They’d been close enough, sure, but Penny had always been her favorite.
She stopped. This was her letting herself get distracted and defensive.
Forcibly relaxing her shoulders, she perched on the other end of the couch. She hesitated, entirely too aware of Cole listening in from the other room, of the distance between her sister and her.
She ignored it all, though, and reached out to rest a hand on Penny’s ankle. “What’s going on?”
Penny’s eyes shone. Her coffee threatened to splash over the side with how hard her hands shook. “Rena. I think I made a really big mistake.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The first time Penny got sick, she was thirteen years old. Serena had been just shy of her tenth birthday—just a little bit younger than Max was now. Amicable as it was, her parents’ separation had still been fresh. Her sister had been a
moody teenager, dealing with honors classes that actually challenged her for the first time, way more stressed than a kid her age should really be. Between that and the divorce, everybody had ignored the signs.
So many times, later, they’d wished that they hadn’t.
Penny had woken Serena up the day after her birthday, crying uncontrollably, the floodgates opening. She’d been so stressed, she couldn’t focus, she couldn’t sleep, she was worthless and she wanted for it to all be over.
And Serena had felt like she’d been the one watching her life flash before her eyes.
She still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to talk her sister down enough to get their mom involved. But suddenly, sitting there on her couch with a much older, more bedraggled Penny before her, Serena felt like she was right on the cusp of being ten years old all over again. And just like then, she didn’t have a clue what she was doing.
Struggling to keep her voice even, she asked, “What do you mean?”
The misting in Penny’s eyes spilled over, twin droplets trickling silently down her cheeks. “Everything, Rena. My whole life. I think it was a mistake.”
Oh, God.
The thing was, Serena had done all the reading back when she was a kid. She’d done even more as a teen when things had hit a crisis point again. You couldn’t rationalize with depression. You couldn’t just tell someone to cheer up or to look at all the good things in her life.
Wishing she’d managed to get a little bit more of the caffeine into her bloodstream before they’d started this conversation, Serena set her mug aside, scooting closer on the couch until she could tuck her sister under her arm. Penny went easily enough, resting her head on Serena’s shoulder and curling into a ball.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Serena said. A fierceness overtook her as she pressed a kiss to her sister’s brow. She was glad Penny was here in this room, glad she was still here and breathing on this earth. “You were right to come.” She blinked hard at the shudder of a sob that racked her sister’s frame. “Now tell me everything.”
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