by Anne Malcom
The steam from the shower swirled around me, beads of moisture erupting on my exposed skin as the tee mingled with Luke’s shirt on the ground.
He let out a harsh sound from between his teeth as his eyes went to my half-naked body.
Despite the heat in the room, I felt a chill, my nipples hardening from that and the raw, carnal look on Luke’s face.
“You’re beautiful, Rosie,” he said. That time, his gaze wasn’t on my breasts—which I’d always considered my best feature—but my eyes.
The way he said it, declared it, somehow told me that statement had nothing to do with my great rack. That it somehow had to do with whatever tarnished and broken soul I had left.
He kept his eyes on me as he lightly grasped my hands and brought them to his belt, undoing it using my fingers as puppets.
Flush warmed my cheeks as an uncertainty I didn’t recognize blew through me when I started to unbutton his jeans.
I wasn’t modest.
Far from it.
Physical nakedness was something I was completely and utterly comfortable with, something I didn’t blink an eye at.
But peeling off his clothes wasn’t just exposing his magnificent physical body. It was peeling off the clothes we wore over top of our souls every day. Exposing both of ourselves emotionally.
Stripping myself bare.
That, I was about to blink an eye at.
I wasn’t physically modest, but I was sure as fuck emotionally modest.
And I was terrified.
Somehow the most terrified I’d been in this whole twenty-four hours.
Because maybe violence and death and pain were all familiar. Somehow comfortable. But showing myself, utterly and completely, to the man I’d been trying to hide my truth from, that was one of the scariest things I’d done in my life.
I itched to flinch away. To cover myself and my soul.
But I kept looking into Luke’s eyes. Saw what he was giving me.
And I kept going.
Until he was completely and utterly naked right in front of me.
I stared at every inch of his chiseled and lean physique. The one I dreamed about and envisaged every time I had another man inside me.
And it was even better than imagination.
Because it was real.
“You’re beautiful,” I rasped, looking into his ocean eyes, communicating the same thing as he had to me. I didn’t just mean the V pointing to his amazing erect penis. Or the powerful thighs. Or the sculpted biceps.
No, it was that thing inside him. The soul that wasn’t all good, like I’d thought it was. The flecks of black that rippled through it somehow made it more than pure innocence and goodness could.
He reached out to trail across my collarbone and then downward, tracing down the side of my body until he reached my panties on my hip.
“Been dreaming of doin’ that for as long as I care to remember,” he whispered.
I swallowed the sandpaper of desire at my throat from not just his touch but from his admission.
That I wasn’t the only one battling this, thinking about this for years.
The desire that threatened to overwhelm me was polluted the second his finger hooked into the edge of my panties, intending to bring them down.
My hand was a blur as it moved to circle his wrist in a violent grip.
Even though I was strong, that movement in itself wouldn’t have stopped Luke. But the gesture did.
His hand stopped moving and his eyes locked on mine.
Filth settled over me as I remembered the last man who forced his way in there. The knowledge that my most private place wasn’t my own. I wasn’t my own gatekeeper anymore. I didn’t have control over who went inside my body.
I nearly collapsed under the weight of the memory. Of that realization.
There had never been a wider chasm of how dirty I was and how clean Luke was. Because I was now. Because of the choices I’d made in a man, in a life, I’d dirtied myself, inside and out.
Luke went granite as I spiraled and started to shake.
I waited for anger, fury, as I could taste it in the air. And even though I was used to anger and fury, I was terrified of the onslaught. I’d never survive it. I’d shatter in a thousand pieces if I had to face that.
So I braced to be shattered, and then he pulled me gently into his arms. Like he knew how close I was to breaking. Like he would never let that happen.
And I let him. I burrowed into the safety of his embrace.
“He didn’t r-rape me,” I stuttered, my voice weak and foreign.
Luke’s body was marble beneath me.
“Just so you know. He didn’t rape me,” I repeated, either to Luke or to myself, I wasn’t quite sure. “He didn’t quite… get there.”
Then my body, like my voice, started to shake.
He kissed my hair. “You’re okay, Rosie. I promise. You’re okay.” He stroked my back, his touch light. Then, carefully, he pulled me back just enough so our eyes met. “I know what he did made you feel like you’re not clean. Gave way to some fucked-up reasoning that it’s somehow your fault. I’m here to tell you, to promise you, that none of that shit is true,” he said. “I’m here to remind you that you’re beautiful and clean on the inside. Always have been. Always will be.”
He let go of me with one hand to open the shower door.
“I’m gonna get you clean on the outside first,” he said, walking me into the shower with my panties on.
The hot spray burst onto my chilled skin, shocking it numb for a second until Luke stood under the bulk of it, pulling me into his arms.
We stood like that for a while. I didn’t know how long.
Then he cleaned me.
On the outside, at least.
And that was the only place he could.
Because no matter how certain he’d sounded before, I wasn’t clean on the inside. Not after what happened. Not before, either. And before the story of us was concluded, I’d be tarnished more than ever.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke feeling like shit. Not an unusual occurrence since I liked to party hard, and partying hard meant hangovers.
And I also had experience of being punched, being in a car accident, and almost being blown up—and I knew waking up the day after was not fun.
But that morning was like all of those experiences packaged into one. Everything hurt. My eyeballs hurt. My ribs screamed. My cheek was on fire, the skin stretched uncomfortably tight over the bone, pulling at my face.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was the wounds inside that worked to push against my lungs, chain me to the bed with the force of my pain.
My shame.
Kevin’s fingers were inside me once more, shredding me, dirtying me, defiling me.
I clenched my teeth against the tears that wanted to fall, the scream yearning to escape from my throat.
I didn’t for a lot of reasons, a big one being the smell of coffee and the sound of life coming from the direction of my kitchen. My kitchen rarely had sounds of life coming from it, unless it was the blender making margaritas. And since Bex moved out, there was never sounds of life coming anywhere that wasn’t from me.
Luke was here.
It wasn’t the cliché rushing of the events of the night before that came with waking. I knew what happened the second I opened my eyes. I didn’t have a luxurious second of ignorance. My gaze wandered to the space where my rug used to be.
Luke hadn’t left.
Luke was in my kitchen, presumably making coffee. By the sounds of the clanging of metal, breakfast too.
He was doing that because he was a good guy. And that was what good guys did for the women who they’d held in their arms the entire night, not letting go, giving them silent strength. Giving them silence.
My eyes went to the pinkish stain once more. Then, with pain, I craned my neck to my bedside table.
His badge was still lying there. I had a terrible premonition, looking at
it, that it wouldn’t be going back on him again.
Because of that stain.
Because of me.
He wasn’t blaming me. He hadn’t left. Escaped. He’d made a choice to pull the trigger. To dump the body. To take off the badge. To stay the night. To make me breakfast.
It was the choice I’d wanted, been waiting on for years.
But it was a forced choice.
I’d killed a man. In front of him. Forcing that choice.
Then I’d forced it even more by making him kill someone too.
My violent life caused this.
I yanked back my covers, intending on just as violently getting out of bed, forcing myself to stomp into the kitchen and end this beautiful thing born out of violence before I could make it ugly.
But the pain hindered that.
So I was forced to gently and gingerly get myself up, tiptoe to my robe, every step, every movement a jolt to muscles and bones that resented me for it.
The time it took me to get to the kitchen was also time for the smell of bacon to drift through my house. I followed it to see Luke’s corded and muscled back, bare, in front of my stove.
I froze, all intentions forgotten with the picture of Luke shirtless in my kitchen. The back of his hair was still mussed from bed. The one he’d woken up with me in.
For a second, I entertained the idea that I could have this. That I’d wake up without all these injuries and pain, step over carpet that wasn’t stained with blood, find Luke in the kitchen and not have to expel him from it. From my life. I could live it with him inside it. That we could somehow fit.
But when you loved someone, truly loved someone, you’d never shave away parts of who they were, cut them up. Which was what I’d have to do if I was to make Luke fit in my kitchen, my life. Cut him to be able to somehow slot into my life. Take away things that made him him.
I couldn’t do that.
I wouldn’t do that.
Because he was an alpha male, and a cop to boot, he sensed my presence.
“Rosie!” Within seconds he was in front of me, hands resting lightly on my hips as if he expected me to topple over. “You’re not meant to be out of bed.” He frowned at me, anger glittering as his eyes went over my face. Featherlight, his touch followed the pattern of what I guessed was an epic shiner. “If I could kill him all over again, I’d make it much slower,” he gritted out, the fury and violence in his voice utterly foreign.
I flinched at that, the readiness to once again unleash something that wasn’t meant to be inside him.
Because he was Luke, the good guy—kind of—he immediately pulled his hand back, fear that he was hurting me filling his eyes.
“Sit down, Rosie. Where does it hurt?”
He gently placed me in a chair and I let him.
He pushed the hair from my face, his own expression granite. “You need a hospital.”
I frowned. “I don’t.”
He glared at me. “I hate that that’s a fucking lie, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to go to one, does it?”
I gave him a smile. It was faker than the Chanel bags sold out of trunks in the Valley.
He frowned deeper. “Remember what I said last night, Rosie. You don’t have to be okay here. You don’t have to be strong for people. You don’t need to shield your feelings from people who you’re scared of hurting or burdening more. I’m not here because you need to protect me from shit. I’m here for the opposite reason. I’m here to be your fuckin’ shield.”
The intensity of the words stole all my oxygen, stole even my heartbeats. There was a second where it all hung on the edge and I almost did it. Let go of everything, let it overtake me, let Luke do that for me. Showed him the Rosie no one had ever seen me be.
Almost.
“Your bacon’s burning,” I said instead.
His face flickered with a lot of things, but then he turned, because his bacon was indeed burning.
He didn’t rush toward the burning bacon. No, Luke didn’t do such things. He purposefully turned his head back to me as he sauntered toward the smoking pan.
“This isn’t over,” he promised.
I waited until he had his back to me to reply, whispering, “It has to be.”
I waited until after we ate, maybe because I was a total fucking masochist. Or because I just wanted one memory to hold onto. Eating the breakfast that a shirtless Luke made me. Chewing on bacon with him across from me.
I could sink into a fleeting fantasy that we were that simple, breakfast and snatched glances.
Granted, he was watching me like a hawk, his eyes haunted as my bruises stared at him harder than my eyes did.
But it was all I could have.
So we ate.
He washed up.
I stayed sitting, watching him.
He sat back down. “You haven’t called Cade,” he said, observation more than a question.
I shook my head.
“You’re not going to.” Another observation.
Another head shake. “I’m not dragging them into this.”
He regarded me. “They’ll be upset, to say the least, if they find out about this. If they find out you didn’t tell them,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Since when do you care about my family being upset?” I snapped.
“Since I realized they’re an extension of you,” he said quietly. “So them being upset is hurting you.”
“You just realized that? It’s not been a secret,” I said, my voice harsh. “Especially not in the years that you tried to destroy everything I know and love.”
His face was blank. “Yeah, and that’s something I’m going to have to pay for. Rest of my life.”
“What is this?” I whispered, not understanding where these forever promises were coming from.
His face was no longer blank. It was so full of something I thought I’d dreamed up. It hurt to look at. “You know what this is, Rosie. What we’re meant to be. What we should’ve been all along.”
I let those words swim in my soul for a little before I hardened myself. “It can’t be. We can’t be,” I said, wishing my voice was firmer, more resolute.
His jaw hardened. “Yes, we fuckin’ can. We tried it that way, that other way, for all these years. That way, that’s what we can’t be. Not anymore.”
“What? So you bury a body for me and that counts as going steady?” I snapped.
He grinned. “You could say that.”
I let the grin bounce off the shield I’d constructed in those moments, the one I had to construct or else I’d melt, thinking pretend promises and grins were all we needed to make things right. “It’s not that fucking simple, Luke. I pushed you into this choice. You’re here because I fucking trapped you. Stopped you from being who you are.”
“That’s bullshit,” he growled.
I tilted my head. “Is it really? Because I don’t know what the truth is anymore. All these years, you were so blinded by hate that you didn’t see….” I caught myself before saying ‘you didn’t see I loved you.’ “Me,” I finished lamely instead.
He pushed out of his chair, kneeling beside me so his hands were clutching either side of my neck. I thought he was going to speak some more. Say those beautiful words that hurt so much.
He didn’t.
Instead he did something much worse.
He kissed me.
Years of running around each other, of lies and pretending and other people who meant less than nothing. That’s what that kiss was.
And so much more than that. So much more painful than anything he could’ve said. Because it was magnificent. Perfect. Taunting me with what I couldn’t have.
“Yeah, I was blind,” he said huskily, pulling back. “Don’t think the phrase is ‘hate is blind,’ though.” His thumb moved over my bottom lip. “I see you, babe. I saw you. In black motorcycle boots at five years old. Beautiful and unique, even then. I watched you blossom into an incredible beauty, the most spectacular individua
l. But in the middle of something I could only see as violent and bloody and dangerous. Something that endangered my spectacular individual.” He paused, watching me, drinking me in. “And I hated that,” he continued. “Hated my visceral reaction to that. Because the idiot boy inside me thought that gave me purpose. To be the hero. And to be a hero, I had to create a villain. And I did that. Just didn’t realize it would turn out to be me in the end.”
I blinked rapidly, trying to recover from the life-shattering words. The life-shattering kiss. Trying to gather all the broken pieces of me together so I could make my escape.
“And that’s just it, Luke,” I whispered. “You’re not meant to be the villain. We’re not meant to be anything, period. I’m not living my life blaming myself for turning you into that. I can’t.” I shoved my chair back, ignoring the hurt in my body and my soul as I did so. “I don’t know what this is now, this change of heart.” I waved my hands between us. “But it won’t last. You’ll stop seeing me as the victim the second my bruises fade, and then you’ll see me for what I am, or what you’ll come to think I am. Just like my family. Which is something I’m proud of. And you’ll make me ashamed of that.”
I sucked in a breath, waiting for him to say something, to tell me I was wrong, anything.
The words didn’t come.
“La douleur exquise,” I whispered, almost to myself, in the moments that came afterward. “The heart-wrenching pain of loving someone completely unattainable.” My eyes met Luke’s.
And then I walked out of my own house, barefoot and bruised.
Hotwired my own car and drove around for hours.
I was hurting, hungry and exhausted when I got home.
To an empty house.
Though it wasn’t empty. The emotional muscle memory of the past twenty-four hours pulsated from the walls.
So I packed a bag.
And left.
And ran.
Again.
Luke
He let her leave.
It would haunt him for two hundred and forty-four days.
That knowledge.
Knowing that while he stood paralyzed by her words, shocked at the pain in them, he’d missed the pause. That moment, that lingering moment every woman gave the man she loved before she left him. Truly left him.