I should wake up and move, I think fuzzily, but I’m so comfy and snuggly, and it feels nice to have someone sleeping beside me for a change. So, I don’t move, just lie there and drift off again, comparing Rory, who hates cuddling because of the heat and doesn’t even do post-sex snuggling, to the man behind me.
I’d probably have freaked if I was awake enough to understand better, but I’m so drowsy and warm all I do is smile softly.
We can snuggle without guilt. I mean, we’re friends, and this is not even overly sexual or anything. And…
Well, I don’t have any other good reasoning to justify the way I settle in against him, but for now, I won’t linger on it, because I’m just happy and feeling good.
But I’m also not feeling so good because the longer I stay there in Lyon’s arms and allow the peace to tingle through me, the more it occurs to me that this isn’t a good idea.
Not because I have intentions of doing anything else with him, not because he’s doing anything other than sleeping—he’s gone lax behind me, and his breathing is deep and even.
No, I start feeling anxious because I really don’t want to move, and that just emphasizes how much danger I am in right now. From myself and the stupid idiot inside my head whispering insidiously, telling me that I shouldn’t fight it.
I should just give in and say to hell with the new and in with the old.
I want Lyon. I know, have always known, that I want him and will always want him. I could pick this man from a lineup with a blindfold on and only my senses to find him.
I would feel him, gravitate because we’re like magnets when we’re together and always have been.
Once, a long time ago, I knew Lyon was near because I’d feel it, like a force surrounding me when he came within miles of me. I was in the middle of a crowd, trying to break through the student protest to get to my class.
It was so bad I started panicking and would have had a heart attack, when suddenly I knew he was near. It calmed me enough that I could breathe, and by the time he reached in through the bodies and pulled me out, I was convinced I would never live without him. That’s how strongly connected we were.
But that was then, I think, shifting out from under his arm to slide off the bed. I can’t allow that connection ever again because losing it did things to me I don’t want to feel ever again.
Shuffling to the window, I stare out at the darkness and know that if I can’t stop thinking this way, we can’t be friends.
Chapter Nine
Lyon
I felt her slide out of bed hours ago, and despite the need surging in me to go to her and bring her back, I just stay where I am and silently watch from between my lashes as she stares out through the night, her profile turned just so and catching the moonlight.
It halos her head, the white mass of straight tresses gleaming and sparkling. I shouldn’t be anywhere near her right now, and trust me, I tried to stay away. I really did, but after hour two in my room, pacing like a caged animal, I couldn’t stay away a minute longer.
Not that I had a right to come in here, but I needed to. I miss Leila so much I don’t know how I have lived without her for this long. Eight years. Eight miserable, lonely years have passed, and not one day went by when I didn’t think about her.
It’s not easy walking away from the only person tethering you to the ground at a time when it felt like my sanity was a foregone conclusion, but I did it because when Bear and Wolf came to me, I knew the life I was about to embark on had no place in it for her.
She wouldn’t be safe, and besides, I was filled so full of hate I was terrified that I couldn’t love anymore. It was hard, harder than anything I have ever had to do, then or since, but I did it because I believed that she was better off.
After Sparrow died, I clung to Leila, her soft body the only reprieve I had from the grief and the gut-eating guilt I felt for not answering my phone the day before she died.
I missed her call by ten minutes at most and didn’t call back because I was late to fetch Leila from the hospital and I had a class to get to. To this day, I still wonder what would have happened if I’d called back.
Maybe we could have made plans to meet up and she wouldn’t have gone out with that Harrison kid. Maybe she would have anyway and was only calling to complain about Mom again.
I don’t know, but it was crippling to think of after we got the call and they told us Sparrow was gone.
Leila was there for me through it all, only leaving me when Mika got so bad the doctors said they should prepare for the worst. That too was not easy because I wanted to be with her, there for her, but I was also resentful that I couldn’t have all of her when I was falling apart.
Sparrow was not just my sister. She was my best friend. We partied together, grew up together, shared secrets, and snuck whiskey in the treehouse together when we were teens.
And then she was just gone, as if she never existed. I couldn’t deal with it, and the drinking, well, it helped a little, so I used it to numb the pain. Wolf was not in a good place then. I think he suffered a lot because he had to identify Sparrow’s body and the sight was too much for him.
He shut down, just going through the motions, keeping us all together, waiting for Bear to come home. The business went bust around a month after that, and things got really bad.
We still had some savings, but that was hardly enough to keep us solvent for long, and then it became obvious that we had to leave the apartment and school.
Not that I cared. Mom and Pop were broken, so complaining about losing material things was not gonna happen. Before it got that bad though, I already knew I couldn’t stay with Leila.
I was fast-tracking myself towards being a drunk, and she was falling apart, worrying about me and Mika and still trying to juggle school.
I don’t hate myself for leaving her. It was the right choice at the time in the state I was in. I do hate myself for hurting her though and being such a coward I had to get faced to do it.
Admittedly, I do not remember everything that I said to her or even everything she said to me. I remember the tears she cried though and the absolutely stark look in her eyes when she gave up trying to get through to me and walked away.
I drank more after that, so let’s not forget that everything around me was also going to shit. Dad was a lush. I drank. He DRANK. Mom was in bed most days, bombed off sleeping pills, and Hawk and Lynx just shut down completely.
Wolf was all that kept us fed—and in booze—and by the time Bear got back, we’d lost the house we lived in all our lives and had to go into a motel. I didn’t care and would have kept being a prick until Bear grabbed me and made some things pretty clear.
We were involved in a vendetta, and there was no place in his plans for a drunk. So, I quit right then and there, and once I’d sobered up, it was worse.
I missed Leila something fierce, and the grief I hadn’t worked through was clawing at my insides. But I got things done, and a year later, two years later, every day after that, I got shit done.
I don’t fool myself that I did any of this though. That’s all Bear and Wolf, but I was a part of it, and until the day I die, I will smile for the things we did to the men who killed Sparrow.
I don’t care if some Christian zealot says I’m a murderer. I did what I had to do, an eye for an eye, of sorts, and I sleep just fine at night.
The only thing that never left me, that I never got over, was Leila. That is more than understandable because, Leila, she was mine. The one. Everything.
And yeah, I didn’t go a day without thinking about her. I even went to her graduation and cried when I saw Mika up on stage with her, smiling and looking alive, if not healthy.
After that, I walked, because I knew if I didn’t, I would eventually tell myself a hundred reasons why I can have her when there were a million why I couldn’t.
But I never forgot her. It took two years before I could even look at another woman and feel anything. Not love. Never. But I res
pect all women, and I got to the point that I needed to move on.
The first time I did it, I saw Leila’s face the whole time. And cried like a bitch afterward. The second was a little easier, and by the third, I was able to detach and just take the physical release they offered.
Never love though. I have only ever loved Leila, and I will only ever love Leila, but she has a right to reject that love after I hurt her, and I get that. It won’t change it though. From the first look, I was hers.
I’ll die seeing her face. I know it because it’s all I ever see, all I’ve seen for years.
Hawk doesn’t understand why I’ve backed off though, and Lynx is like an old bitch nagging at me to just stop being such a pansy. They don’t understand that, to me, not being with Leila is not only painful but my way of making atonement to her.
If she wants friendship, I’ll give it to her because her happiness is more important to me than my own.
“Soooo, you gonna stare at me all night, Lyon, because it’s creepy,” she says through the darkness, turning to look at me.
“Didn’t want to interrupt your thoughts, Lay,” I say, still watching her. “What’s got you thinking so deep over there?”
“Nothing.” She shrugs. “Everything. I was just wondering how things would have been if not for…you know.”
I do know. I hate to say it because it won’t sound fair, but Sparrow tore us all apart, and part of me was angry at her for a long time because I finally accepted that she was selfish in her love.
She thought of nothing else for months after she met Harrison, and she wouldn’t listen to reason. She went into a bad situation she knew was wrong, with a guy she must have known by then she couldn’t trust.
I read her diary, still have it, and I want to shake her like a rag doll for not listening to her instincts at the end where that boy was concerned.
Her death was senseless, partly due to her own stubbornness, and it took something from every one of us. Mom was a wreck. Pop was…
The rest of us have lost eight years avenging her, and for what? Because she fell for a boy who didn’t treat her right and was too stubborn and prideful after all our warnings to cut him loose.
And yeah, I have thought a lot about how things would have been if not for Sparrow’s death.
I would have stood by Leila through Mika’s treatments and taken care of her. I would have brought her home to meet my family and spent the next three years in school because she was there and no military career would have taken me away from her.
We would have been engaged, married, and then I would have wanted children with her because that is what we both would have wanted. It may not have been this picture-perfect life, but we would have been together, and I would have never spent eight years mourning my love.
But Leila is right too. It did happen, and there’s no sense in mourning or rehashing what may have been but never happened.
“You’d probably have dumped my ass eventually and dated the jock guys who were always after you. I’d have went to the Army, and I’d be a knucklehead with gun-loving tendencies,” I joke, making her giggle.
“You are a knucklehead with gun-loving tendencies, Lyon.”
“See? I told you. Can’t change a leopard, Lay.”
It doesn’t feel right joking about something that meant and still means so much to me. Even if Leila and I remain friends and I have to watch her get married and have kids with some other guy, I won’t ever do the same.
I date, and I screw, and I do all the things a single guy should, but if it’s not her, it’s no one. No one can take her place, and I wouldn’t want them to. It wouldn’t be fair to do that to another woman, and the truth is I wouldn’t do it because I would feel like a cheat.
“After you left, Mika got so bad I thought she was lost too,” she whispers in the dark, staring out again because she can’t look at me. “I was so scared I thought I would die with her. It took months for her to recover after the treatments finally worked.”
“I’m sorry, Lay.”
“Not your fault. Things were just messed up. When the doctors gave her the all clear, I was so happy I actually danced. Mika still laughs about that day.”
And I do too. I laugh long and hard because. as perfect as Lay is, the woman cannot dance. At all. We tried once, but I laughed so hard she hit me and threatened to leave.
“You were happy.”
She snorts, and I hear the disbelief in her tone when she turns to stare at me. I can’t see her eyes, but if I could, I know they’d be filled with sadness.
“No. I was relieved. It took a long time to be happy again. Not just because of…” She waves a hand between us. “It was difficult for my parents to recover, and then Mika wanted to go to college, and we had to find a way to give her that. Things weren’t easy. But yeah, eventually I was happy again. I always wondered though, thought about you guys and hoped you’d be okay.”
Yeah. I wish I could tell her that we were, but that would be a lie. Wolf spent years not feeling anything, Bear was obsessed with making money and killing anyone involved in any way with Sparrow’s death, and my womb mates weren’t any better.
Not that I have room to talk. I was a heavy. Muscle. A shooter and an errand boy. That was it. I worked. I played. I didn’t give a damn. That was life, and the only thing I had was my family. After Sparrow and losing Leila, it’s all I gave a damn about, and I would die for any one of them.
“You hungry?” I ask when an uncomfortable silence drags and I can’t stay still anymore.
Leila snorts and starts laughing, coming over to me to punch me playfully.
“You’re a feeder, Lyon. Damn lucky for you I am hungry. Wanna go raid Rain’s fridge for leftovers and cake?”
I do, because it’s all I can do for her and I’ll take what I can get.
“Let’s go.”
Leila
I’m at work and poring over paperwork that’s piled up when Rory strides in, his usually calm face pale as he shuts the door and takes a seat. He’s never come over here without calling first, and the look on his face is enough to make me tense because the last phone call we shared was not good.
Things were said that I just did not take well, and I said a few things back that I regretted the minute I said them. So, we haven’t talked in about two weeks, and I have to admit, I was trying really hard to care.
I do care about Rory, but I have a lot going on right now. My job is important to me, and five weeks of forced recovery has left things in a mess. Top it all off with needing to be with Mika, who lost her job recently and moved in with me, and well…
And the Wylders do not make things easy either. According to Hawk, who calls me daily, Lyon and Lynx are away on a job that is likely to last a few weeks and Danny is on bed rest after taking a fall in the garden.
I’m busy with all the people in my life, my job, and trying to get over some of the things that have been cropping up lately. And now Rory, who doesn’t understand that I don’t just need to physically recover but also mentally.
“Rory.”
“Before you say anything, I want to apologize for my behavior and beg you not to break up with me. I love you, Leila. You know I do, and if I hadn’t lost it, being insecure about that Lyon guy, I would have realized what an idiot I’ve been and apologized sooner. I should have been a better boyfriend and taken your feelings into account. I know that. I’m sorry.”
I’m about to launch into all the reasons we should just break up. I close my mouth and blink, not sure what the heck to say.
“Rory, look, this has all been so much to deal with, and I understand completely why you behaved the way you did, but I’m not sure I can do this with you. I have a lot to deal with emotionally, and the more you push, the more I feel boxed in.”
“I know that, and that’s why I’m here to say sorry. I should have given you space.”
Well, no, it would have been nice if he’d actually been there and shown me some care, but I don’t sa
y that, because I feel so guilty about all of this. I shouldn’t have told him about Lyon, and it isn’t fair that I expect him to just accept a friendship with another man.
Plus, it’s not right to compare him to another guy. Before all of this, Rory and I were in a good place, and I know that if I hadn’t been taken, we’d be just fine, plodding along at a steady pace.
Is it fair of me to suddenly see everything he does as wrong? No. The truth is that, lately, I have been searching for flaws in a man who not only has stuck by me but also loves me.
So, no, I have not been fair, and with that realization, it becomes clear to me that I can’t just cut him loose. I wanted to do it because part of me was trying to be free. Just in case…
But that is not happening, Leila, so why ruin a perfectly good thing when you should be leaning on Rory and strengthening the relationship?
Shit.
“We both made mistakes, and I am not breaking up with you, okay, so don’t get upset.” Please, God.
He gets whiney and clingy when he feels less than appreciated, and I don’t have the patience to deal with it right now.
“Good. That’s good, because I was so sure we were perfect together, and I don’t want to lose you, Leila. I know things haven’t exactly been thrilling lately.”
Try never, I think uncharitably, hating myself for even thinking that way when Rory has only ever been good to me. But come on. He wears suits all the time. He doesn’t do anything adventurous with me. And he hates the clothes I’ve bought him. Hint, hint.
“Rory—”
“But I do love you, Leila! I do. You’re smart and sweet, and you’re pretty. You’re exactly right for me. And I can be right for you too. I can.”
“Rory, no, don’t, don’t say that. You are right, and any woman would be lucky to have you. Don’t short sell yourself because of the last few weeks. Look, I know we haven’t spent any time together and that it was partly my fault. I should have spent less time with the Wylder family and Meek, and made time for you. I know that. So, let’s promise to not do this anymore. I’ll make time, you make time, and we can have dinner and talk about things. How’s that?”
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