by CC Monroe
“Nick. No. Don't lie to me. He can’t….”
He is. I feel it. Everything around me feels different, a loss of something. That something is him. My bones and all the blood in my veins chill and ache.
“No. Damn it. No!” I cry, dropping my head and sobbing into the room that’s now flipped on its axis. Eric’s loss has the impact of a thousand crashing waves, and I feel crushed under the weight, dragged into the undertow.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Nick’s words drown out, and the ringing in my ears grows to a deafening pitch.
How can he be gone?
“Did he die alone?” I finally speak, the tears now rolling down my neck and soaking the collar of Nick’s shirt that adorns my body.
“Kitten. You can’t—”
“Did he die alone, Nick?” I ask more sternly this time, my hands shaking and my lip trembling.
“Yes, he did. Overdose.” The words are vile-sounding—repulsive.
“Gone,” I whisper, bringing my shaky hand to my stomach, where I feel the biggest ache, more than the one in my heart.
“What? Kate, talk to me.” He moves the hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear, and I shake my head. I can’t.
Our child feels the loss too, that ache pulling and churning in my stomach coming from the broken heart both my baby and I are feeling. I may have fallen out of love with Eric, but I will always love him. But now our son or daughter will never get to love their father. One day, I will have to tell the stories of who Eric was and what took him away from his child. I have to live this life knowing Eric left this world without knowing what he had waiting for him.
Eric was alone in the end, no one there to hold him when the life left him. I remember all the years he told me how his biggest fear was the feeling of being alone. But he never was, and no matter how many times we tried to be there for him and let him know he wasn't alone, he didn't listen. He had us all. He had a family, one that was growing, but it wasn't enough. Eric succumbed to his demons, and they took everything from him, his art, his friends, his girlfriend, and his baby. It took it all, and he left behind a world of hurt, and that hurt starts from within me and pours out into everyone in this room.
I sit up straight and wipe away the tears, coughing to clear my throat, and I speak. “I will plan everything. I’m not hungry. I’m going to shower and go to bed.” I stand on sturdy legs thanks to the great amount of effort I’m putting into it.
“Kate?” Nick stands and calls after me.
“What?” I turn, my voice low and without pause.
“Don’t shut me out. I want to be here for you. You don't have to be strong all by yourself.”
“I’m fine. I just want to go to sleep.” Everything inside me feels numb. I don't really know how to react or what to feel. But it’s all I can do to keep myself from falling apart.
“Baby, come on. Give yourself to me. I need it.” He places his hand over his heart and squeezes, and I feel that.
“I’m hurt. I’m broken and afraid. I don't have anything to give right now.” I know what he means when he says to give myself to him. He wants me to open up to him instead of shielding myself with a wall of exile.
“You don't have to say anything. Just let me fucking hold you, baby.” He calls me that, and the guilt digs the knife in my heart a little deeper. I left Eric, and he lost control to the point of no return, living and dying in his fear of loneliness. And here I am, surrounded by love and support—so far from loneliness. I can’t help but feel the guilt.
He walks to me before I can say anything and wraps me in his warmth. “I know you’re hurting, I know you’re blaming yourself, and I know you’re broken inside. And I won’t sit here and try to convince you not to feel what you need to feel to get through this, but I can be beside you and help you through it,” he whispers in my ear, and my arms work against me, my body caving into him.
I wrap my arms around his midsection and cry. I go against all my instincts, and I let go of everything. “Unbreak me. Make this go away.”
“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.” Nick lifts me then, another night where he carries me after a day filled with hell and heartache.
“I’m so angry at Eric. I want to scream at him for doing this to himself. But he's not here for me to do that.”
He doesn't say anything as he sets me down on the bed and lays me back to cover me up with a blanket. Once I’m settled in, I curl onto my side and bring my knees to my stomach and let all that’s left of me out.
Climbing in behind me, he holds me, envelops me with his scent and strength, and I steal every ounce of that strength that I can. Because I just lost Eric. It was one thing that our relationship ended, but to know everything I feared would happen to him happened and I will never be able to see his face again—that is earth-shattering.
“Mourn and lean on me. For once, give in to yourself and lean on those who love you.”
I nod, my tears soaking the pillow under me. “He may have been a mess, but he didn't deserve this,” I whisper, my hands fisting tight and digging into my chest. It’s an effort to ease the pain welling in my chest.
“I know.”
“I feel like every time I get one step ahead, I’m pushed twenty steps back. Then I feel overwhelmingly selfish for even caring about how this hurt me. When really, he was the victim here. I hate there is this part of me that I despise and am ashamed of.”
“You have to be softer on yourself, Kate. You don't think what he did was selfish? You don't believe he didn't think about how this was going to impact others? You're wrong, Kate. Being human doesn't mean you're selfish. You think you’re hurting just for you, but you are hurting for him and for your child. That makes you selfless if you ask me.”
“Then why does it feel like it’s not?”
“Because that’s not who you are, Kate. You are a martyr. And I think that right now, you need to heal and mourn in a way that is about you and your child. You can’t take back what’s happened, but you can feel it and heal yourself. You don't need anyone to heal you but you.” He peppers the back of my neck with whispers of sorries and mingled kisses.
“Nick,” I say gently sometime later. After the tears and sobs have subsided, the night has fallen around us, and the room has grown dark.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for being here and for lifting me up when I need it. I know I’ve been a lot to handle lately, and I was so mean to you the other night. But it hasn't gone unnoticed—your support and friendship. I love you. You're my best friend, and I’m sorry I’ve abused that friendship so much lately.”
“I love you too, Kate.” Nick doesn't argue my point, and I appreciate it. He lets me have that.
“Can I plan everything? For his funeral?”
“No one else should do it but you. He would want that.” Nick rubs his large calloused hand up my chilled arm, and it warms me instantly.
“I couldn't do this without something strong and stable in my life. Everything else is so muddy and unclear, but the one thing that isn’t is you,” I admit, turning in his arms, seeking more comfort in this fragile time.
Once I turn and our eyes meet, I see the man who has looked at me the same way consistently the past four years. Those beautiful eyes hold so much knowledge, experience, patience, and love. Nick doesn't have to say it, but I know he's been in love with me for years, and I love him too.
“You don't see your own strength, and it’s both beautiful and heartbreaking to see you let others take credit for something you are. I only hold your hand, but you keep yourself standing, kitten.”
“I feel guilty.”
“Why?” he questions, moving my hair and tucking it behind my ear before dropping his forehead to mine.
“Because I want you. To touch me. To take away all the pain from today. I want to feel your weight on top of me.”
I don’t miss that thick knot in his throat move with his deep swallow or the way his hand moves to my hip and squeezes. “Y
ou want me to make you forget everything? I will do anything you ask, Kate. You have no idea the power your words and needs have over me.”
“Nick, I need something to make me feel like I'm really here on this earth. My heart is empty, and the only things that give me breath are my baby and—” I lean in close, kissing his bottom lip gently, the skin warm and soft. “—you,” I whisper against his mouth, and he doesn't hold back.
We’ve all been broken and jaded by a love we thought was real. Branded by pain and persistent letdowns, we come to a place in our journey where we can either leave and hope to find a safe place to heal, or we can find someone else just as beautifully damaged.
He was the last man I thought I would ever be with, but the exact one I needed from the beginning. The taboo story of him and me is a rush of lonely nights wishing there was an escape from what I had.
“You're so good for me. God, I have envisioned your body under me for years.” Lying under his intense eyes wakes up the old Kate. For years, I was never enough for the one man I tried to be everything and more for. Now, with little effort, more damaged than I’ve ever been before, Nick is looking at me like I’m a vision he dreamed up in his mind.
“Even with my scars?” My hand travels to the scars branding the skin of my hips and sides under the fabric. When Eric and I would make love, he did it with pain and bondage. Sometimes, his harsh touch left scars, ones he always regretted when he grew sober. But those scars are reminders of not only how sick Eric was, but how incredibly out of my mind I was. Who I am, broken yet healing, hates every part of who she was the past four years. Eric’s death wasn't just a death of him; it was a final goodbye to what we were. It’s maddening, heartbreaking, and devastating that this is the way we would say goodbye to a past that will forever haunt me.
“I couldn't truly love you without your scars. I have mine too, Kate.”
“Can I kiss them?”
He looks me over, hesitating before his next move. But after a few moments, he stands with his feet planted on the wooden floor in a dominant pose. He doesn't answer, and I linger before him for a few more moments. His nostrils flare as he moves to stand. With a quick tightening of his fist, he slowly curves his arm and lifts it within touching distance. The four thick black tattooed lines decorate his inner arm, right in the crease where his track marks are.
The ink only covers some of his scars, but not all of them. Hesitantly, I sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed where I touch my lips to the skin. He hisses, and my eyes squeeze shut as I let my lips linger. The one tear I had cascades down my cheek. How heartbroken we both are in the most peril state we’ve ever been in.
I’ve never felt so connected to someone in my life, and to know I could have had this all along crushes me. I spent years with the wrong man, when the right one was within touching distance. What I wouldn't give to stop time and turn around.
“Kate, stop.” He lets out a strangled growl. Looking up, I keep kissing up his arm, standing as I go. Nick isn't crying, but his eyes are pinched, and his lips are sealed tight. This is too intimate for him. Opening his scars to me is like letting me be a part of that past he has tried to forget, but no matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to. I’ve shared my battle wounds with him, and now he will bare his. And together, maybe we can learn to heal, to retrieve the parts of us we lost in the darkest hours of our lives.
“No. I don’t want to stop. Don’t you want to have someone who knows what broken feels like? Don’t you want to feel the touch of someone who has felt close to death in their darkest days? Just like you did, Nick?”
“You’re like a hurricane, Kate. If I don't put a stop to us, you could fucking destroy everything I worked hard to build. I can fall in love with you easily, but surviving you if this ever ended? That wouldn't be possible. You're hurting, and you will wake up tomorrow marred with regret, and I can’t do that.” He grips my face when his words end, squeezing my jaw and making me immobile—with no way to look away from his green eyes.
“Do you fucking understand that?” His voice is sterner, and his hand shakes my head a bit.
“I may be a hurricane, but you're a tornado. We’re both disasters, but when we meet, we can take on the world. Tell me how anything can stop what we have. Try it, Nick,” I threaten, challenging him to keep trying to push me away. We’re here, and there isn't a chance in hell that we can back out now. Doesn't he see that—in a moment I should be far removed from everyone and everything—I’m clinging to him for dear life?
Nothing is between us but the sounds of our broken hearts and the scars of our flesh. We are flawed in our skin, which was once innocent, but made to become something indestructible together.
“We may end in shambles, but you fucking got me. I hope you know what you're doing, Kate.” Without another word, he rips the shirt off over my head and removes my panties in record time. He lifts me up, briskly sweeping me off my feet and laying me down on the bed. Dropping over me, he grips my neck, tightening his hand and taking my lips in a searing kiss, our body heat growing enough to burn the sheets under us.
“If you hurt me, hurt me for the last time,” I cry against his mouth, just a breath apart as he reaches his free hand down to push two thick fingers inside me.
“I won't hurt you. I’m a man, and real men don’t do that, Kate.” As he releases my neck, I steal a full breath, my vision finally less foggy. I’m used to the rough, so asking for gentle would be foreign to me.
Curling his fingers up, he finds my G-spot without having to try. Eric hardly ever let me come. It was a fetish for him to only let me come every once in a while—a selfish lover’s game is what he called it.
“Fuck!” I gasp, my back arching off the bed, to the point of snapping if I went any farther. I’m being touched by a man, a broken man, who uses sex in a powerful way. It’s the touch of a real man. Twenty-year difference in age, twenty more years of experience that I still have yet to learn, and I know I can learn a lot of it after only one time with him, because he is that strong, that powerful, that giving as a lover.
“How could he have hurt something so precious?” He circles his fingers inside me before dropping his mouth to my tight nipple. Sucking nearly my entire breast into his mouth, he marks me with bites. Before I can respond, his actions do everything he knows they will, and I explode.
“Ahh!” I sound pained, like a wounded animal, as my orgasm rips through me at a lightening pace, starting at the top of my head, peaking in my core, and numbing me from the waist down. I shiver, my whole body in a fit of nerves. “Nick, stop!” I cry out, trying to escape the strong sensation overtaking me.
“Never.” Removing his fingers, I moan as he stands and starts to undress. My core is clenching still, pulsing from his expert touch. I’ve never been touched that way, and it weakens me. This is the rawest sexual encounter I’ve ever had, and it’s only just begun. I lay bare, my body still aching for him while surviving his last touch, and his eyes look me over in a ravenous, dangerous haze of lust and desire.
“That pussy. Those tits. I’m dying to make you come for hours, Kate. I haven't been inside a woman like you before. I haven't been in a woman in years.”
My eyes widen as he removes his boxer briefs and see his large cock lined in veins of male arousal and reddening at the tip from the strain and desire to fuck. I choke out my next statement. “You… you haven't?”
“No. I don't fuck random women just because I'm a red-blooded male. I have an insatiable appetite, and I only give it to women who can handle it. Who deserve it. You deserve this cock, kitten. Because I've lusted after and desired you for years, so be prepared to be fucked like it. I can last… a long time, Kate. Now is the only time I will let you back out. Say it now, or lie back and be a good kitten for me.”
“Oh,” I moan, biting my lip, my core clenching at the thought of being made love to for hours by Nick without a stop insight. I want it.
“Please.” That’s all I have left to give. The only wo
rd my brain can formulate. My mind and body are numb to everything but him and our hunger for each other.
Bending down, he hovers over me, both his fists on either side of my head. Thick veins line his tattooed arms, and he closes in on me, taking my lips in another soul-stealing kiss, my breath against his and his cock nudging my entrance. “Nick, please.”
“Put me inside at your pace, kitten. Foreplay will come next time. Right now, I need you.”
“What?” I ask breathlessly, my brain foggy with desire.
“You heard me, baby. Take it at your pace and put me inside.”
I let out a whimper but reach for his cock, taking his smooth, hard length in my hand, and I cry out, because I know what is going to happen. I can’t hold off the need any longer.
“You’re so big.” I don't mean to say something so cliché in a passionate moment like this, but he really is.
“Thanks, baby, now focus. Put me inside you. I’m not going to wait any longer.” Nodding, I bring his head to my entrance, and when the heat of our skin touches, we both let out a moan. His low and throaty—mine high-pitched and needy. “You are irresistible, Kate Beckett.”
I reach around with my free hand and place it against his taut ass, which is partly covered in the large intricate tattoo starting from his waist and traveling to his midthigh. I grip a handful and pull him toward me, and he inserts the first inch. I’m stretched wide already. Eric wasn't small, but he wasn't like this. The men before Eric were not even in the same category as Nick. I look down between us and watch him slide in inch by painful and beautiful inch.
“You are killing me. You're going so slow. You are so tight and wet, Kate. Fuck.”
“I want it hard, Nick.”
“No. You let me take care of you and give you what you need.” He bites and sucks along my jaw, my neck, and my collarbone.
“That’s what I need.” I scratch up his back and move my hands through his hair.
“No, you don’t. It’s what you think you need. What you have only ever had. I will give you hard. But I will give you slow and steady and show you what you've never had before.”