by Jolie, Mika
Sometime in the night, they’d eventually collapsed in bed half-delirious with pleasure and completely satiated. He slept hard, and no dreams, at least not the kind that left him covered in sweat. In fact, he remembered nothing from the moment he kissed her goodnight.
Trusting, warm Lily had brought him peace. He loved that too.
Love. There was that word again. Lately, it had become synonymous with Lily. From the way she smiled, her touch, her resilience. He’d known for a while his feelings ran deeper than their physical connection, but like any other man not looking to put his heart on the table, he fought. And it worked; at least until the moment he chose to walk down the Lily path naked and exposed too much of his heart, his mind, and what existed on the inside. He showed too much of himself; surprisingly, that was when he started to get it right. To think, only a week ago, she told him she wanted nothing but mad, passionate love. Slowly, but surely he had given up control and surrendered to her wishes. And she had become his deepest, most desperate desire.
She stirred and his arms automatically tightened, holding her close to his heart.
“Adam,” she called his name, eyes still closed.
“Yeah…”
“Did you sleep?”
“Yeah.”
A smile touched her lips. Eyes still closed. “Good. I’m tired.” The words were a slur of exhaustion.
“Then sleep.”
“Hold me.”
“I am.”
He drew her naked body closer and she snuggled against him, still sleeping, breathing softly, cozily installed in his lair. Skin on skin. He glanced down at her body; his gaze rested on her stomach, and became overwhelmed with a sensation that went beyond anything he ever experienced. The fire in him that only she could ignite flared up. His first thought was to roll her on her back and spread her legs. He wanted to hear her cry out his name again and again, but damn it, there was no need to wake her up. Come to think of it, he’d been rather on the selfish side for beating her body so much. He’d make sure they took it easy today. No sex; well, at least nothing rough, or hard as she often requested, and who was he not to oblige?
Adam grabbed the comforter and yanked it over them. He placed his free arm under his head and fixed his eyes on the ceiling while Lily’s head rested on his chest, one of her legs slung over his Tonight was dinner with her family and his. That ought to be fun. Because he cared for the woman in his arms and knew deep down she’d want her pain in the ass brothers to get along with him. He made a silent vow to be at his best behavior.
During the football game and even at the bar, he’d caught Lily smiling a few times while he interacted with the big goofs. As long as Lily didn’t expect him and the knuckleheads to break out into Kumbaya, the evening would be a success. To be fair, Zander and Max seemed to have warm up to him. Rafa, on the other hand, was still a fucker. His bad attitude made it easier for Adam to dislike him. But then again, he detected the feeling was mutual. A vision of his mother sitting across from him, giving him the now-Adam-behave stare down flashed before him. He smiled. How many times in his life had she whipped him into shape with only that look?
The morning slowly drifted. Adam lost track of how long he lay there with Lily in his arms. It wasn’t until she stirred and mumbled, “I can stay in your arms forever” did he make any attempt to move, but even then, he stayed still until she broke their contact and sat by his side. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands.
“Do you feel sick?” He was constantly worried about her health, whether she was consuming enough food.
“Nope.” She stretched.
Adam gaze rested on her perky breasts. “Stop doing that.”
Her eyebrows squished together in confusion, then she realized his eyes were on her breasts. She laughed breathlessly. “Oh, I was stretching.”
But the twinkle in her eyes told him she enjoyed torturing him. Well, two could play the game. He chafed his thumb over her dark pink areola. She immediately stopped laughing and moaned instead.
He lifted his weight enough for his lips to touch her stomach, circled his tongue over the tip of her navel ring then kissed the spot below. “Hey, little guy.”
He felt her body freeze. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice filled with emotion.
“I’m saying hello to our son.”
Her fingers slid into his hair, giving him a shiver. “Or daughter,” she added, her voice hoarse.
“It doesn’t matter to me.” He kissed her belly again, circled her waist and fell back on the bed, bringing her along with him. Her breasts crushed against his chest. “What time do you have to meet Minka today?” he asked, trying to figure out if they had time for a quickie.
“What time is it?”
He grabbed his phone on the nightstand. “Eleven.”
She froze, jerked upright and leaped out of the bed, gloriously naked. “Shit. I’m going to be late. How did you let me sleep that late?”
There were a few reasons. He wanted her to rest, had no clue at what time she was supposed to meet with Minka, but most importantly, she had felt so damn good in his arms. “I like the feel of you against me.”
She looked down into his face for a long moment.
Enjoying the view, he leaned back with his hands behind his head. “What?” He laughed, feeling light-headed and…Adam searched his brain for the appropriate word. Happy, he was happy.
She shook her head. “I’m going to shower.” She stopped by the door and looked at him. She looked relaxed and happy. “Any nightmares?”
“No.”
She smiled and disappeared into the shower. Adam lay there with his hands under his head, smiling for a few minutes. His phone beeped on the nightstand. Barely moving, he reached for it and answered his mother’s call.
“Are you in front of a television?”
The panic in her voice cause his gut to tighten and his smile faded. “Do I need to be?”
“Does Liliana know everything?”
“Yes,” he answered without a beat. There was nothing else to tell, so much so that at this point he didn’t even care if Souza dug deep enough.
“What about her family?”
He froze. He never gave her family much thought about his violent past. Shit.
“Adam?”
He shook himself and rolled out of bed. “I’m here. What’s on the news?”
“Souza found your trial. The shooting. It’s in the news.”
He closed his eyes momentarily. This meant Lily’s parents and brothers were probably aware of everything. He swore. He didn’t like being bamboozled or cornered. Not that his past was still that anchor holding him back, he was learning to let go with Lily, for Lily, for them. But fuck, even unexpected as the pregnancy was, everything that happened so far had been on his own terms. “I have to go.”
“What do you need us to do?” his mother asked.
What his mother didn’t say was Do you want us to sue Souza’s ass? We can find a way. “Nothing,” he answered without a beat, no longer caring about Souza. His mind was on Lily and her family. They had to get to them and put everything on the table. “I have to go.”
“Adam.”
He paused.
“We love you.”
“I know. I love you too. See you tonight.”
For a moment he stood in the middle of the room, waiting for Lily to come out of the shower, contemplating his next move. His phone vibrated in his hand.
What do you want me to do?
He read Jason’s text. Jason was the first to befriend him when he started coming to the Vineyard with his adoptive parents. He hadn’t bought the chip Adam carried on his shoulder. Because of that the two had become friends since the age of ten. The following summer, he met Blake, Forrest, and Claire. Since then, they’ve become inseparable, family. They had each other’s back.
I’m sure there’s a law somewhere this asshole has violated. We will get him.
He glanced at Blake’s text and would ha
ve chuckled if he wasn’t too fucking riled up. The only law that was broken was exposure. Last time he checked, that wasn’t a crime.
Surfing tomorrow? Whatever…I’m available.
Forrest was always up for an adrenaline rush.
Adam…Does Lily know all of this?
He could sense the shock in Claire’s text. For some reason he and the boys had shielded her from his past. For no particular reason, except when he did open up and confessed, she had not been around. After that night, the topic was never discussed again.
Lily stepped into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, her hair slicked back. She took one look at him and stopped.
“We’re going to Martha’s Way to see your parents.”
Her brows furrowed. “What’s going on?”
Before Adam could answer, her phone chirped. She walked over to retrieve it, looked at the screen then back to Adam. “That’s Rafa asking me to come to Martha’s Way. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Apparently I made the news. I take it your brother caught my face plastered all over.”
Lily exhaled a deep painful breath. He watched her type away on the phone then placed it back on the nightstand. She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “We’re in this together.” She repeated the words he once said to her. “I’ll get dressed while you shower.”
* * * *
Rafa’s dark expression confirmed what Adam had told her. She studied Zander and Max. They surprisingly looked calm. Her parents were sitting holding each other’s hands, their faces crammed with concern. She captured Adam’s hand in hers.
“Mom, Dad.”
Her parents glanced at her, then at Adam.
“How can you feel safe with him?” Rafa spat.
“Come on man, don’t be a dick,” Zander said, surprising Lily.
“Sorry,” Max said to his parents, “but boys curse. So there’s going to be a lot of cursing going on here.”
“He’s a murderer,” Rafa continued.
“You’re out of line, Rafa,” their father said sternly.
“Adam was a child,” her mother pointed out.
“Seriously, man.” Zander shook his head.
“For Christ’s sake, Rafa!” Lily’s voice shook.
“Lily,” Rafa warned, glaring at his sister.
“Liliana,” Adam said, his tone telling her he had a handle on the situation.
Both men called to her with barely a glance. She squared her shoulders and stood firm. “I’m not a child,” she said between clenched teeth and whipped her head back and forth between the two. “You,” she glared at her brother. “Stop treating me like I’m a child.” One finger hit Adam’s wall of a chest. “And you stop treating me like I’m a fragile little thing. Haven’t I proven to you that I’m not?”
Neither man spoke.
“I trust Adam with everything. My life, our baby’s. Why are you so against our relationship?”
Rafa’s eyes snapped around the room. “So you’re all comfortable with her marrying this guy.” He chuckled. “Well…”
Silence. The atmosphere saturated with disaster.
“It was self-defense,” Adam’s voice cut through the thick air in the room.
“Premeditated,” Rafa scoffed.
Adam released her hand and buried them in the pockets of his sweats. “I didn’t catch the news, but did it mention that my birth parents were both drug addicts?”
“It touched on that,” Max responded.
In other words, Souza made Adam out to be the crazy kid. Adam fixed his eyes on Lily’s parents. The expression on their faces silently telling him they were willing to listen. One of the many reasons she loved her parents. They taught her to always give everyone a chance and now they were demonstrating it as well.
Adam ran a hand through his hair and moved forward in the room. “My mother was a prostitute, my father was her pimp.” He paused, giving them a chance to digest that little bit of information. “They were drug addicts, and abusive to one another and to me.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to take a life,” Rafa said thickly.
“Rafa,” Lily interrupted. “Adam is not responsible for Lea’s death.”
Another heavy silence filled the room. The air grew thicker with tension. Adam looked at Lily then Rafa. Her brother’s face was a dark mask of anger.
“We can’t bring her back,” Lily said, sadness heavy in her voice. She knew the words hurt Rafa. Lea was a fragile topic that hadn’t been touched or discussed since her unexpected death. She was all too familiar with her brother’s pain of losing his wife. But as much as she wished she could take away the guilt, agony, it wouldn’t bring Lea back.
“Your brother is right, Liliana.” Adam’s spectral voice interrupted her thoughts. “I was eight, and I made a mistake.”
Rafa sneered. “It’s bigger than a mistake.”
“I can’t edit or erase my past. I can only accept it. Liliana has helped me a great deal with that.” He paused. Another wave of silence filled the room. All of the Serrano eyes stayed on him, waiting to hear his side of the story. “I was born an addict.”
“Dios mío,” her mother whispered.
“For eight years, violence and drugs were my normal,” Adam continued. His gaze swept over each one of her brothers. “You’re lucky to have never lived through that. You’ll never know what’s it’s like to not want to come home because you may catch your mother with a needle up her arm, or a client walking out of the dingy house with his fly still open.”
“Why did you shoot him?” Max asked.
“You need more reasons,” Zander spat.
“I came home one day and found my mother on the floor dead with a needle in her arm, gun by her side. It’s easy to give a reason or to hide behind the fact that I was eight, but…” he released Lily’s hands and shoved his own into his pockets. “I became a product of my environment for a while. I was angry, tired of being abused. It wasn’t until later did I find out that my father had held a gun to her head and tried to sell me off. As crazy and sick as she was, she refused to do it.”
He walked over to where her parents sat. “I care a great deal for your daughter.”
Lily watched her parents stand up. Her mother took his hand in hers. In her loving way, she touched his face. The gesture made Lily’s heart squeeze. “We know you do. We wish you and Lily had told us everything.”
“Me too,” Adam answered thickly.
“Do you love her?” good ole Rafa asked, his gaze intensely fixed on Adam.
Because she’d learned so much about Adam in the last two weeks, Lily was able to detect the muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed. Time seemed to have stopped, waiting for Adam to answer. Lily stood still, heart thundering.
Adam said nothing for a long moment. When he spoke, it was in a voice of breathtaking, ice-cold venom. “Love is a word used too much, too soon, and too carelessly.”
Her heart jumped. But she dare not move. Rafa shook his head, gave Lily a long look, glanced at Adam, then back at his sister. “You asked why I’m so against your relationship and this is why. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t know how to.”
The words stabbed her in the gut. Pain as strong as one hundred daggers sank into her stomach. She met Adam’s gaze and searched, pleaded for some indication that the last two weeks were not a figment of her imagination. Adam’s jaw clenched. He stood rigid. Unwavering. And her heart dissolved to her toes.
“You’re an asshole,” she heard Max say to Rafa.
“Fuck off,” Rafa replied.
She stood still in the room; tears, large and profuse, flowed down her cheeks. All the faces around her blurred.
“Adam and Lily need time to talk. Let’s give them that.” Her father extended his hand to Adam and the two shook hands. “Our hearts tell us you’re a good man. Thanks for coming to us today. It meant a lot.” Reaching for her mother’s hand, the two stopped to give her a hug then walked out of the room. Her brothers followe
d.
Once alone, they stood in silence for what felt like hours. Her eyes fixed on Adam’s face.
“Let’s go home.”
Adam reached for her, but she took two small steps backward.
“Liliana.”
In her heart of hearts, she knew he loved her. She’d seen it in his eyes on many occasions. Yet, he stood there in front of her parents and acted so cold. “I love you so much that it hurts my heart,” she said, her voice breaking as she did so.
A frown fell upon his lips and she let out a soft bitter laugh. Her gut wrenched in pain for him, for her, and their baby. “I thought you loved me. I thought,” she paused, fighting back the cascade of tears she met his gaze and let out a low bitter laugh. “I saw it in your eyes.” Adam walked over to the large bay window. Gray clouds blanketed the earth. He turned his back to her, shoved his hands into his pockets and focused his gaze into nothingness.
“You’re scared to love me, or at least to say it, because if you say it then it becomes real.”
She waited for him to say something. Anything to prove her brother wrong and confirmed everything she thought she saw in him. He said nothing and the blow of defeat painfully clobbered her heart against the cage of her ribs.
“I can’t settle, Adam.” She took a deep breath to stop herself from breaking down again. “I love you too much to ever give you just a portion of me. It’s all or nothing.”
From the sheltered corner where he stood, Adam turned to meet her gaze. His expression told her once again he’d had shut down. With her emotions strangling her whole, she dragged herself away from the scene, with a broken heart and a battered soul.
Chapter Twenty-Eight