Love, Unwanted (Discovering Love #3)

by Ra'Chael Ohara

  I suck in a breath when he aims the gun at my head. “I think you’ve said enough.”

  I squeeze my eyes closed when I see his finger squeeze the trigger. There’s a loud crash that follows, but it doesn’t come from the gun.

  My eyes shoot open when I feel a burst of cold air. I have to be seeing things. I’m dead or dying and my mind is concocting this image.

  I don’t know what’s happening, but I refuse to believe Phoenix just crashed through that barn door. It’s easier to believe he’s a figment of my imagination when the whole room pauses. No one says anything. Not even him. I watch as he surveys everything.

  He looks at Marcy and takes in her busted up face. His eyes go to Mick and the gun and last his eyes come to me. I watch as he looks at my hands and feet. I see the pain written on his face when he looks at my bruised and battered face.

  It’s that pain in his eyes that tells me this is real, he’s really here. For the first time since waking up tied up in this barn, a tiny flicker of faith ignites inside of me.

  I don’t think he understands right away what’s happening because his eyes bounce around the barn again at all of us, but when he looks at Mick the third time, he gets it. He knows what’s happening, and I swear I see fire in his eyes.

  He never says anything. Instead he releases a loud roar and takes off running full speed at Mick. I scream, “No!” when I see Mick turn the gun and point it at Phoenix, but he pulls the trigger too late.

  Once Phoenix reaches Mick, he grabs the arm holding the gun and pushes it upward, sending the bullet Mick fires through the roof. I pull in a relieved, shaky breath when I see Phoenix is not hurt.

  They both struggle to get control of the other, but before Mick can aim the gun back at Phoenix, Phoenix lands a punch to his face and the gun falls and skids across the floor.

  Mick stops to look at the gun, but Phoenix doesn’t waste any more time. “You son of a bitch! How could you do this? You’re sick,” he screams as he continues to deliver blow after blow.

  “I was doing it for you, Phoenix! I’m doing this for the band. You think that whore really cares about you? No. I was trying to protect you!” Mick sputters out through the blood pouring out of his mouth.

  “You’re crazy,” Phoenix says in disbelief. “I’m going to fucking kill you.” He rears his fist back to land another hit to Mick’s face, but the sound of the gun going off makes all of us stop.

  In the commotion, we all forgot about Marcy. I was so engrossed in watching Phoenix I didn’t see her grab the gun nor walk toward me and aim it at me. “Marcy! What the hell are you doing?” Phoenix asks after seeing her and throwing Mick to the floor.

  “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago,” she says. “We belong together and I’m sick of her keeping us apart.” When she shakes the gun at me, I can’t help the whimper that escapes me.

  “What are you saying?” Phoenix asks. He’s in shock. It’s written all over his face. He’s feeling exactly how I felt a moment ago, completely and utterly confused.

  “I’m saying I know you love me!” she screams as desperate tears cascade down her face. “I know you love me and we can be together now. You don’t have to hide your feelings anymore. I’m going to get rid of her for us and we can be together.” She smiles.

  “No,” Phoenix says sternly.

  “What?”

  “I said no, Marcy. I don’t love you. I love Caroline.”

  I love Caroline.

  I love Caroline.

  Even in this crazy situation, I feel his confession in my soul. My eyes leave Marcy and go to him, and I’m surprised to see that he’s already looking at me. “I love you, Caroline.”

  “No! No, no, no! You don’t love her!” Marcy shouts. She’s losing what little control she has left as she carelessly slings the gun in her hand around.

  Phoenix and I both know we don’t have a lot of time before she fully and completely loses it and I’m gone. He takes a step toward her to presumably calm her down, but it only serves to bring her that much closer to snapping.

  “Marcy…”

  “Don’t come near me!” She aims the gun at him. “You’re a liar. I know you love me. You always have. I gave you the time you needed to come to terms with it, I let you be with all those women because I knew, in the end, you would end up with me.”

  I must be going insane. This woman has kidnapped me and wants me dead, but the desperation on her face and in her voice has me feeling sorry for her. She looks at Mick, who has remained quiet, but managed to stand up and get a little bit of his strength back.

  “You told me he loved me,” she screams at Mick. “You said he wanted this, that he wanted me to get rid of her so we could be together.”

  Now it makes more sense why she’s obsessed with Phoenix. Mick has been feeding her all of this; I can only imagine for how long. It was all for his personal gain. He knew Marcy would get nothing from this. Mick would reap all the personal benefits. Marcy was just his goon.

  “What are you waiting for, you stupid bitch? Shoot her!”

  “You lied to me!”

  “Yeah? So what! You were an easy target. I needed someone to help and I knew you were just stupid enough to do it. So what? I lied to you, I used you, and it would have fucking worked if you weren’t such a goddamn idiot. I mean, really? Who would love you? You’re useless—”

  I scream when Marcy aims the gun at Mick’s head and shoots.

  He falls in a heap to the ground and I know instantly he’s dead. I hated that man, but the fact I just saw someone get killed right before my eyes makes what little strength I had left crumble. I scream a blood-curdling scream.

  Marcy hasn’t stopped looking at Mick’s body on the ground when she whispers, “He never shuts up. I just needed him to shut up.”

  Phoenix runs over to me and quickly unties my hands and feet.

  It’s the worst time, but he grabs my head in his hands and starts peppering kisses all over my face. “I love you, Caroline. I’m so fucking sorry I was too scared to say it earlier. I promise you, I’ll never let you get hurt again. I’ll never hurt you again. I love you so fucking much.”

  I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing those words. I swear I cry more tears in that moment than I have my entire life. “I love you too, Phoenix.”

  “You love her.”

  I jump when I hear Marcy’s voice. The fear comes back when I see she’s turned back to us and just heard what we’ve said to each other. I have no clue what she’s about to do to us.

  “I’m in love with her, Marcy. I’m sorry.” There’s nothing in her eyes after Phoenix’s confession. They’re so empty. I imagine it must be the way she feels inside.

  “Then I have nothing to live for.”

  “Marcy! No!” I scream and jump to my feet when she puts the barrel of the gun to her temple. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling or what would drive her to be like this, but I can’t see her give up.

  I don’t see her as the bitch I’ve known her to be since I met her. I see her as someone who is sick and in desperate need of help. When her eyes wildly snap to mine, I put my hands up and slow my steps toward her to let her know I’m not a threat to her.

  “I know right now you may think this is the only way out, but it’s not.”

  “You don’t know anything!” She tightens her finger on the trigger. Inside I’m freaking out.

  “I know you’re hurting right now and I know you’re sick, but we can get you help, Marcy. This doesn’t have to be the end. Please, let us help you.”

  I feel that amazing relief again when she lowers the gun and starts to sob. “I just want someone to love me.” I don’t waste any time grabbing the gun from her hand and handing it to Phoenix, who’s behind me.

  Then I do something I thought I’d never do. I grab Marcy and hug her to me. “I just want someone to love me,” she whispers.

  “I know.” I look at Phoenix and his eyes are trained on us. They hold sadness for h
er, but when he looks at me…I see nothing but love.

  Epilogue

  Phoenix

  I didn’t know what I was getting myself into the night I walked in that storage unit and first laid eyes on Caroline Taylor, but even before we really exchanged words, I knew she was different.

  She’s beautiful, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but it was more than that. I walked into that closet and it felt like there was an invisible string between us pulling me toward her. That’s how I knew when she left me that first night standing outside the pub that it wouldn’t be the last time I saw her. It couldn’t be.

  I had to beg almost on my knees before Violet finally cracked and gave me the place where she worked. I wasn’t surprised to find out she worked at a library. She’s intelligent. I learned that within the first minute of our first conversation.

  She’s also shy and sweet. I was almost convinced she had some kind of magical power. I would do anything for her. That’s why, when she looked at me that day in the park and told me about all the things she wanted to try, I jumped at the chance to help her. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to help; but I had my selfish reasons for it as well. It was my way of keeping her in my life for a little while longer.

  I could have never known what she would come to mean to me over the next few months. I never wanted those feelings. I never asked for them. After seeing how hard my dad broke after Mom passed away, I didn’t want to love someone like that. Love destroyed him. I would be damned if I let it do the same to me, but it happened.

  Sometime in those months, I fell in love, but I did my best to ignore it. I tried to fight the feelings, but it was useless. Every kiss, hug, simple touch, and then the night I made love to her pulled me closer and closer to her. She embedded herself in my soul and it scared the shit out of me.

  The night she whispered the words, “I love you,” to me in her sleep, I froze because she said what I was thinking. I loved her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to leave.

  Caroline Taylor is an amazing, beautiful woman and she didn’t need an ex-alcoholic rock star anchoring her down. I thought it would be best if I left her and let her move on, give her a chance to find someone worthy of the kind of love she had to give.

  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The kind of pain I felt was unbearable. She was on my mind 24/7. I couldn’t shake the thoughts. It was like a knife going through my heart every time she would call and I hit ignore. Staying away from the suite was torture when all I wanted to do was be in my bed with her in my arms.

  I didn’t even want to be at the pub the night she showed up. Shaun dragged me there. I was bored and had a headache from listening to some ditzy girl go on and on about anything to do with her. I was two seconds away from leaving when I felt Caroline there.

  I just knew, when I turned my head, I would see her. I was sick to my stomach and internally fighting between walking away and looking at her. Of course I had to look. I hadn’t laid eyes on the woman I was in love with for a week. I needed to see her and it was so fucking excruciating.

  I saw such heartbreak in her eyes and I knew I was the cause of it. I put that hurt there. I was blind. I couldn’t see the pain was because I walked away from her, betraying the trust she put in me the night she allowed me to make love to her. I didn’t deserve her, and I knew it was best I stayed away from her. That’s why I flirted with that girl in front of Caroline.

  I don’t know why I followed Caroline out into the parking lot. I just wanted to make her understand why I left. I wanted to try to convince her she deserved much better than me.

  I didn’t get that chance. She let me have it and every word she spoke was pure truth. I was a coward. I was running away from the only person in my life who ever meant something to me, the only person to have loved me for me, not for my fame, not for my money, but for me.

  Why? Why would I give that up? Because I was scared. That night I realized I would rather have but a few moments, days, weeks, months or years of love from her than nothing at all. I would do anything to get her back, but I was too late.

  I thought I could go to her house and tell her that I loved her, make her see that I realized I was wrong about everything. I thought I could assure her I would never make a mistake like that again if she would just take me back.

  I didn’t get the chance. It seemed like every word I spoke that night just made the situation worse between us. I know she wanted me to leave, and I finally did, but I wasn’t giving up. I would come back every damn day for the rest of my life if that’s what it took to make her listen to me.

  Then I got that call from Violet and my world stopped. Someone took my baby. What if I never got the chance to tell her how I truly felt? What if someone took her away before I ever really got the chance to have her completely? That’s all I could think about.

  I wanted everything I never thought I’d want. I wanted to marry her, I wanted her to have my babies, I wanted to grow old with her and just spend the rest of my existence loving her and the life we would create together.

  I wasn’t going to let anyone take her away from me. It was by chance Mick popped into my head. I didn’t want to believe he would do something to her, but he was always just so against her from the start. He never took the chance to get to know her.

  Then he started acting weird a few weeks before Caroline was taken—disappearing at odd hours and for days at a time, taking secret phone calls. It wasn’t until after I received the call from Violet and remembered walking in on Mick and Marcy talking secretively a few weeks before I put two and two together.

  I drove all the way out into the country to an old property Mick told me long ago that he owned, the entire way thinking my imagination was running away from me. I was just desperate to find her, so I was suspecting anyone. Mick was a creep, but he wouldn’t have kidnapped her, right? Wrong.

  When I crashed into that barn and saw him with a gun aimed at my birdie, getting ready to end her life, I knew there were two options—I had to stop him or he had to kill me too because I wasn’t living without her.

  I saw our future and I was going to fight for it. I could have killed him. I could have put a bullet in him and never felt a lick of remorse over it and I would have if Marcy hadn’t gotten the gun.

  I held as much hate for her as I did for Mick until I got a glimpse of the woman slowly dying inside of her. She was going crazy and Mick was behind it, pulling the strings on his puppet and dragging her deeper and deeper.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to say when she told me I loved her. I’m sure any other person would have lied. They would have said anything to get out of that situation, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie about my love for Caroline a second longer.

  It’s a miracle she didn’t kill Caroline and I both. Actually, no, that’s not right. It was Caroline who stopped her. Even after everything Marcy had done to torture her, Caroline still had a heart of gold.

  She didn’t see the Marcy who just had a gun pointed at her not moments ago or the Marcy who just shot Mick. She saw a broken woman, a desperate one, a girl who craved love and never received it. My baby saw an enemy on a ledge, but instead of turning her back on her and letting her jump, she talked her down. She held her and told her it would be okay. I didn’t think it was possible, but in that moment, I fell in love with her a little more.

  That’s how they stayed, both rocking on the floor until the police showed up and took Marcy away. Marcy was later sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping of Caroline and the murder of Mick.

  Caroline and I? Well, we started living our future. We could have let those events shape us into different people. We could have let it hold us back from ever really being together, but we took it, dealt with it, and moved on…together, falling more in love with each day that passes.

  “Smile, birdie,” I whisper in her ear as the photographer points his camera at us. I know what he sees through his lens—me standing behind Caroline with my arms wrap
ped around her middle. She looks beautiful today. She’s wearing the most beautiful wedding dress.

  We’ve been married less than an hour and I already can’t wait to have her to myself again, to bring her home, not as Caroline Taylor, but as Caroline Castle.

  “I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” I say in her ear before placing a soft kiss to her temple. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  “Honey…I’m pregnant.”

  THE END

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  Acknowledgments

  Limitless Publishing—Thank you for taking a chance on The Discovering Love Series and me. Your company has been so amazing to work with. I feel so blessed to have met such wonderful people.

  Scott and Bree—Thank you for loving me through my craziness and supporting me on this silly and fun ride.

  Mom and Dad—I love you! Thank you for procreating such an awesome child!

  Tiffany—Thank you for sticking with me even though I tend to go MIA a lot of the time. And thank you for always having the best synonyms for the dirtiest of words. You really are the best editor. Thank you for being so patient with me. Love you!

  Boom—Seriously, I’d be lost without you! Thanks for the brutal honesty. I love you!

  Lori Whitwam—You’re amazing! Thank you for answering all my questions and not thinking I’m crazy for asking them.

  Sabrina Owensby—You are a blessing. You just don’t know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done and continue to do for me. You’re my PA but you’ve also become a great friend!