by Lexi Ryan
I hug her back and my eyes lock with Mia’s. I hope my message got through to her. She’s not the one who did wrong, but I know she carries the weight of that night on her shoulders. I know Brogan wouldn’t want that.
Mia stands and comes to the stage as Mrs. Barrett releases me. The women look at each other, and Mrs. Barrett gives a sad smile and nods before turning to the mic.
“Now, Mia Mendez is going to sing for us. Brogan always loved to hear her sing.”
Mia avoids my gaze and stiffly takes her place behind the mic. I take my spot next to Chris as the organs plays the opening chords of “Amazing Grace,” and Mia opens her mouth and sings for the first time since New Year’s Eve.
* * *
The house is milling with guys from the team who wanted to hang out rather than go home after the funeral, but the only one I want to talk to right now is Coach.
I lock eyes with him and nod toward my dad’s study. I don’t wait for his response before I head down the hall and wait in there.
Less than a minute later, he joins me, closing the door behind him. “You have a houseful of people, and I’m not going to talk about this now.”
“We’re going to talk about it. I can’t keep this secret anymore. I tried. For you. But you cornered me. You put me in a horrible, unthinkable position by covering it up.” God, I wish he’d just understand. “It’s too heavy,” I say. “I can’t hold it anymore.”
“Is this about Mia?”
“No.” I grimace then shrug. “Yes. Kind of. It’s about everyone. It’s about doing the fucking right thing.”
“Arrow, I know you think going forward is the right thing—”
“It is. We can do it together. I’ll tell them. We’ll explain you were trying to protect me.” My voice squeaks. I’m a little boy begging for some attention from his father. “Don’t you understand? The only reason I haven’t gone forward is to protect you. I didn’t ask you to do what you did, and if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be carrying around this unbearable . . . Please. The truth is the only way I can get out from under this.”
He looks over his shoulder at the closed door of the study, as if someone might be standing there listening in to our conversation. “I know you think it’s the right thing,” he says when he looks back to me. “But it’s not. You have to think of the big picture here. You feel a little guilt off your chest, and then what? Everyone you love will know what you’re responsible for.”
“Would you stop acting like you’re doing this for me?”
“Fine, then. I’m not. This isn’t about you, Arrow.” For the first time in our long relationship, there’s derision in his voice when he says my name. “But if you care about me at all, you’ll keep your mouth shut. I am a father. Trish doesn’t have anyone else. Maybe I’m selfish for doing what I must for her, but so be it. Make it about me, Arrow. Shut the fuck up about this for me.”
Mia
The house is quiet. Too quiet. Suddenly, I wish for the clamor of the BHU O-line gathering around the patio, even Trish’s drunken screeches of delight when one of the guys throws her into the pool.
I stand in my room for a long time, lost without the nightly tasks of taking care of the baby, doing the laundry, and preparing Uriah’s meals.
There’s a chill on my skin that feels like New Year’s Eve, and I know if I let it, it’ll take over, and I’ll stand here—shivering my way to numbness.
It’s dark outside. It’s dark inside.
I want to pull the curtains wide and open the windows and let the humidity of the Indiana summer seep into the room. I want it to wrap me up. I want the sticky air to cling to me. To hold me here so I can’t get sucked back there. I need the heat to remind me the chill is only in my head. To prove to me that night has passed.
I go to the window and pull it open, leaning my head against the screen. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The night had an end, but I’ve trapped myself inside it and pretended there was no way out. The night of the accident was a cliff, and I let myself believe there was nothing beyond it. Because I was too afraid to jump.
I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of him getting ready for bed. A drawer opening, the rustle of clothes as he changes, the click of a lamp.
A rush of heat climbs up my neck, warms my cheeks. The thought of Arrow climbing into bed in cotton briefs. His strong legs between the sheets. His bare chest. His big hands.
I’m alive.
I press a hand against the wall. Heat swells in my belly and swirls to a tight knot between my legs. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the backs of my lids are painted with the image of him with his hand between my legs, and my mind is full of the sound of his breath against my neck as he slides his finger inside me and tells me I’m beautiful. His fingers slip over me. Heat pools in my belly, and that coil pulls tight between my legs.
I want to go to him, tell him he’s the one I want, tell him that today when I sang, I let go.
There’s a knock on the door, but I don’t turn as it creaks open. The only other person in the house is Arrow, but this house could be full of people and I’d know that it was him standing behind me. When he’s close, I feel him like the beat of my heart.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is low, husky.
Slowly, I nod.
“Are you okay?” he asks again.
“I’m alive,” I say softly. Maybe it’s the first time I’ve actually believed it. The sticky air on my skin, the heat of summer curling the tendrils of hair at the nape of my neck. “I’m alive.”
“Fuck, Mia.” He doesn’t come closer.
I wait, staring out into the dark night, watching the reflection of the moonlight bounce off Arrow’s car and remembering the night at the lake, jumping into the water wearing nothing but starlight. He doesn’t come closer.
“Mia?” I turn at my name. He’s in nothing but a pair of boxers, and my gaze lingers on his strong, bare chest. “We didn’t get a chance to talk after the funeral. I wanted to check on you. Are you doing okay?”
In my stomach, butterflies flurry from side to side. “No.”
His face falls and he steps forward. “What can I do? Anything?”
Taking two steps toward him, I draw in a long, slow breath. “What are you offering me, Arrow?”
His breath catches, and his eyes rake down the length of me and back up. “Anything I have.”
“I don’t want to be alone.” It’s a simple sentence, and I realize it’s what I haven’t allowed myself to admit during these months of grieving.
“Then you can sleep with me.” He’s so matter-of-fact. So sure that he can hold me and never cross the line I so badly need him to cross.
“I don’t want to sleep with a man who doesn’t want to touch me, Arrow.” I release a dry laugh. “But I only want to sleep with you. And there’s the rub.”
“Mia . . .” He takes a step forward before stopping himself. “If you think I don’t want to touch you, you have it all wrong. I’ve even told you . . . sometimes touching you is all I can think about.”
My breath catches at that thought—Arrow imagining how he’d touch me. “You think about it?”
His gaze drops to my mouth before returning to meet mine. “I think it might bother you if you knew how much. Or if you knew that touching you has been my primary fantasy since the day we met. Even when you were his, my imagination always made you mine.”
My body seems to hum at his confession, a taut string on a cello rubbed long and low with the bow. Stepping forward again, I bring my hands to my shirt. I undo one button then the next then the next and his eyes follow my fingers. My hands drop to below my navel as I release the last between his eyes and my bare flesh. I let the shirt fall from my shoulders and slide my hands beneath the waistband of my skirt to push it from my hips.
The phrase turned on gains new meaning. I’ve been walking around shut down until he came home and turned me back on. Right now there’s nothing that could make me fee
l as alive as his eyes on me, and I have it.
He’s staring at me. His eyes ask a thousand questions. The thrumming pulse in his neck and the accelerated rise and fall of his chest give me all the answers I need.
I step closer, and my nerves are no fight against my need. Another step. His eyes skim over my breasts and over my simple black satin bra. Another step. Now I could reach out and touch him.
I take his good hand and press it against my chest. “I’m alive.”
He drags his bottom lip between his teeth and nods. “You are. And so beautiful.”
I trail his fingertips over my bra and down over my stomach, bring his hand back up, and guide it to cup my breast. He doesn’t resist but he doesn’t initiate a single touch. I lead his hand to explore my torso, the dip above my hipbone, the curve of the bottom of my belly, the hardening swell of my nipples.
He stares at me with parted lips and pupils so wide there’s nothing but a thin line of honey brown left of each iris.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and I press his hand flat between my breasts so he can feel my beating heart. “I didn’t die that night, but until you came back into my life, I wasn’t living. Every breath hurt until it didn’t hurt at all. Until I felt nothing. You make me want to breathe when before I just wanted any excuse to stop.”
He slides his hand out from beneath mine and lifts it to cup my jaw. I lean into the heat of his touch, and he lowers his parted lips to skim over mine in a movement that is less kiss than it is sharing air. Tilting his head, he follows a path over my cheekbones and down my jaw, then shifts his hand aside to give my neck the same treatment.
I draw in a ragged breath and another. “Arrow.” His parted lips skim over my collarbone, and I shudder. “Touch me. Please. I let go today, and I’m alive and free, and I can’t think of anything I want more than for you to show me what you think about when you imagine touching me.”
He lifts his head and looks into my eyes, and I don’t know what he sees there, but it must be the answer he needs. His hand slips off my jaw and behind my back to release my bra. He watches it fall to the floor then dips his head again, barely skimming each breast with his mouth before he sinks to his knees before me and hooks his thumb under the band of my panties.
His touch is life. Heat. And every cell in my body feels like a blooming flower craning its neck to be closer to the sun. I slide my hand under the lace.
“Don’t.” I freeze at his words, and he nods. “Let me take my time.” Gazing up at me from his knees through those thick, dark lashes, he looks less like a lover and more like a man at worship. “Let me love you, Mia.”
At the sound of my name on his lips, I shudder. The muscles between my legs tighten in a pleasure and ache so intense, I sway toward him without meaning to. He gives each leg the same torturous treatment he gave my breasts—a skimming of his lips. A tease. He’s sampling me like wine, and I want him to swallow me whole.
With nothing more than the slight pressure of his fingertips, he leads me to turn so my back is to him. I feel him at the backs of my thighs, the wet heat of his breath followed by lips so soft my knees buckle and he has to tighten his grip on my hip to help me steady myself. Then slowly, so slowly I want to beg, his lips follow the path halfway up the back of one thigh and then the other. He’s not kissing me, but his lips move against my skin, and gentle puffs of air lead his mouth one aching centimeter at a time, as if he’s whispering his way to the top of my thighs.
Only when he reaches the lace of my underwear does he finally use that hand at my hip to draw my panties down. They drop to the floor, and I step out of them, but before I can turn, his hand returns to my hip, his grip more aggressive than before. This time his mouth is open—hot, wet, and firm at the top of my thigh. He sucks, and I cry out. In pleasure. In pain. In desperation. He releases, then sucks again harder—marking me and ruining me in ways that go far deeper than this skin.
When he pulls back, my skin feels cold where his mouth was. He turns me slowly and rises to stand in front of me, releasing my hip and holding his good hand up for my inspection. His fingers tremble like every inch of me, inside and out.
“Do you see what you do to me, Mia?” he asks, and a surge of power rushes through me. “Do you understand why I can’t walk away from you, even when I should?” His eyes are heavy with lust, his words laced with something else entirely—that desperation I’ve gotten used to seeing. That fear of hope.
Instead of letting my heart crumble for him, I focus on his shaking hand and bring it to my mouth. I press a kiss against his open palm. “I don’t want you to.”
His hand finds my jaw again, then his fingers thread into my hair. He tilts my head to the side, studying my face.
I suck on his bottom lip and push his boxer briefs down over his thighs. His hips buck toward me, and I’m filled with such a rush of power, practically dizzy with it. I find him between our bodies and wrap my hand around his length. He gasps against my mouth. It takes my breath away to be this close. To touch him like this.
He cups my breasts, squeezes, teases one nipple, then the other, until I’m making sounds I don’t recognize—moans, whimpers, pleas for more. He lowers his head and draws me into his mouth sweetly, sucking softly. I tunnel my fingers through his hair and let my head fall back as the heat takes over my body like liquid that starts at my fingers and toes and fills inch by inch inward. I’m nothing but heat, and the need to be more, to feel more, pulls low in my belly and presses against the muscles between my legs.
He guides me to lie back on the bed and follows me, resting on his elbows and framing my face with his hands. When he settles between my legs, I gasp and swallow hard. We’ve been here before. Done this before. And yet this is all new. We’re both bare tonight, our excuses left behind in the back seat of his Mustang. Our defenses have been left at the gravesite where we watched Brogan lowered into the earth.
He shifts his hips, stroking against my entrance. His neck strains and his jaw tightens. “You’re sure?” I lift my hips in answer and he pulls away. “I’ll be right back.”
He leaves the room and returns with a condom. He stands beside the bed and rolls it on before lowering himself back onto me. When he slides into me, I wince, and he stills before retreating.
“You were a virgin that night.” He grazes his knuckles over my cheek and swallows. “I wish I’d known.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t touch me. Afraid I’d never have the courage again.” I lift my hips. He gasps as he sinks deep.
“Christ, Mia. It’s—”
“I know.”
I stroke down the side of his jaw, trail my fingers over his shoulders and chest, stopping to press my open palm against his beautiful beating heart. Something changes in his face. He drops to his elbows, trapping my hand between our bodies and burying his face against my neck.
He trails kisses along the side of my neck and over my shoulder while he moves inside me, and he seems so sad. Like this isn’t the beginning of something new but the end of something treasured.
“Roll over,” I whisper.
He rolls to his back and watches me with awe-filled eyes as I climb to straddle him.
“Watch me.”
“I couldn’t take my eyes off you if I wanted to.” He skims his hand down my chest and over my stomach and lower to find the sensitive piece of me where our bodies meet. My back arches and I move my hips faster. I’m so full. So aware of every touch. Alive.
I rock into him, letting him fill me and stroke me, and when my muscles coil and squeeze, I hold his gaze for as long as I can, feeling the pressure build until I liquefy and explode, and he comes with me.
Bringing me to rest against his chest, he knots a hand in my hair and I count his slow, ragged breaths.
I am alive, but today killed Arrow a little. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs answers about that night. Maybe answers will bring Arrow peace as well.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Tomorrow Sebastian’s going to get me the pol
ice reports. I’ll follow every clue I can until I find the truth.
Part VIII: Before
New Year’s Eve, the night of the accident
Arrow
It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’ll be fucking glad to say adios to the year from hell. I shouldn’t feel that way. Not everything about this year sucked. Football was good, so good in fact that Coach wants me to enter the draft this spring—take an offer while I’m hot, because next year’s never a sure thing. But everything with Mia leaves all that in a shadow of loneliness and frustration that makes me feel like a fool.
You know how I want to spend my New Year’s Eve? I want to spend it with Mia. Just the two of us in my car by the lake. I’d let it idle for hours so we could sit in the back together, watching the stars twinkle across the ice.
Instead, I volunteered to help set up for the party at West High School. There’s a big initiative to keep students off the roads on New Year’s Eve, and the high school is hosting an overnight party as part of the effort. I don’t have to be there all night, but I promised to help set up the food stations. I’m borrowing Coach’s SUV so I can pick up the ice and root beer keg, and I should be done by nine, ten at the latest.
I pull on a hooded BHU sweatshirt and shove my keys into my pocket to head out the door, but when I step into the common space, I hear a weird sound from Brogan’s room and stop. It sounds like someone crying. A girl.
“This is the last time,” Brogan says. “I mean it. This is a mistake I’m not making anymore.”
“What makes her so much better than me, huh?” the girl asks. The voice is familiar, but I can’t place it.
Brogan murmurs something I can’t make out.
“You never complained when my mouth was on your dick,” she says, and I know I should leave but I’m frozen in place, rage dripping into my blood like so much potent poison.