But as much as I hated what was happening inside of me, I couldn’t deny him, pulling our mouths together and nodding into his lips. No one else would ever kiss me there. That secret spot would always belong to Declan Davies, even if none of the rest of me ever did.
He kissed me slowly, bending me backwards, cradled in his arms until the back of my head was pressed into the mirror and I was half seated on the sink.
God, I could kiss him all day.
The thought jarred me. It was only one of the many warnings signs I could no longer ignore. It had happened so slowly, each small movement forward, tricking me with its insignificance, until I found myself caring deeply for this man, looking around with no idea how I’d gotten there.
Separating only our lips, his forehead rested on mine as he spoke softly, “Where are you right now?”
I nipped his bottom lip to prove that I was right here with him and not lost to my worries.
He didn’t give in to me, waiting for an answer I’d never give.
“I know a way to get your attention.” His accent only grew more pronounced as a dangerous look split across his face.
The symphony of emotions that smile evoked almost made me miss the sneaky dart of his eyes towards the shower only a step away from us.
“Oh no you don’t.” I clamped both hands on the ceramic beneath me. There was no way he was getting me into that shower. Not in the middle of the day when an AD could come call him to set at any moment. He’d have to drag me kicking and screaming.
“Oh yes I do.”
I saw my mistake then, as his face grew exuberant at my challenge. I really never stood a chance as he overpowered me easily. That didn’t mean I didn’t put up a hell of a fight though, wiggling against him (which only made things worse, inviting both our libidos to the party) and trying to use the ticklish, weak spots I’d discovered against him.
“But you’ve been such a dirty girl. A good washing is just what you need.” He pouted like a child, even when his man-sized body held me captive.
I got ahold of my laughter enough to glare up at the Aussie caveman pressing me into the wall. His legs were between mine, preventing me from kicking him or fleeing, but also granting me the feel of his growing erection at our playful struggle.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned him. His hand lingered dangerously close to the nob that would shower us both – fully clothed – if he turned it.
“Declan!” It was all I could manage to squeal in my disbelief as we were blasted with water. It was freezing, not having time to warm up yet, and the spray hit me right in the face.
He howled with laughter as I sputtered against the liquid pouring into my mouth. He was getting just as wet as I was, his black shirt darkening into a slick layer against his skin. I looked down at the pinkish white top I was wearing, and found that our impromptu shower was having the opposite effect on me, lightening it to a translucent shade that plastered to my body.
“What I wouldn’t pay for a picture of you right now.” His eyes glued to the change in my attire, as he shook his head in depraved delight.
“Well, you look like a wet dog,” I lied with a snarky smile.
He looked like something that had been dreamed up in every woman’s universal fantasy. The water pulled his dark hair loose until the ends curled on his face and neck. It made me wonder if all that usual messiness wasn’t hiding a hint of curl.
I reached up to twist one of the freed locks around my finger.
“I do…” He trailed with a sharp intake of breath, as my hand slid away from his hairline and down his jaw.
I watched, mesmerized, as silky water droplets followed my lead as I pointedly detoured just before his birthmark to trail down the muscles of his neck that flexed as he swallowed under my attention. I took my time with each button down the long line, enjoying every new bit of damp skin that came with it. His sculpted chest melted into a defined torso, and my greedy hands were always quick to seek out the subtle V at his hips that led me below his jeans.
The water pouring down us was warm by the time his shirt made a heavy splat onto the floor at our feet. He grabbed for me, but I placed a hand on his bare chest, stopping him. I wasn’t done enjoying the view.
“You’ve had your time to play, now it’s mine,” he said.
I couldn’t argue with that. He scooped me up, treading his arms around my waist and lifting my legs clear off the ground so I would wrap them around him. Pushed back up against the wall for support, his hand went straight for the button on my shorts.
I heard the distinctive sound of a footstep on the wood flooring in the kitchen area, and my head snapped up. From my position, I could see clearly over Declan’s shoulder. The glass shower door wouldn’t have done much for privacy, but we couldn’t even close it with two people inside the space meant for one.
Nothing was blocking me from the perfectly clear view of Cam stepping around the corner and stopping with dumbstruck confusion at the sight that was laid out as wide open to him as it was to me.
I shoved Declan away hard, ignoring the fact that he was holding me. He skittered backwards while I nearly lost my footing in the standing water clogged by Declan’s discarded shirt.
“I’m back early,” Cam said numbly, his stare blank. “Surprise.”
Chapter Fifteen
Adley
Declan shuffled beside me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Cam, not even to see what the half-naked man was doing. The shower trickled off until nothing but the tinkling pings of hesitant droplets filled the tension. My body begged to dissolve into shivers, whether from the cold or fear, I couldn’t say.
Not because Cam seemed mad. He didn’t look angry or sad or hurt. I was terrified because for the first time, I couldn’t read his expression at all.
Our silent standoff went on for an eternity before Declan cleared his throat, sounding more uncomfortable than I’d ever heard him. He was polite – formal even – as he excused himself to go find some dry clothes.
And then there were two.
My mind sputtered like a helpless engine, turning over again and again, each time coming up blank. Cold eventually permeated my senses so fully I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I stepped out of the shower, and he moved backwards in retreat. As afraid as I was to confront him, I was even more afraid to let him walk away. I followed him, leaving a puddled map of my movements in the water left in my wake.
He stopped in the kitchen as if suddenly realizing he had nowhere to go. Where do you go to escape when you’re running away from the one person who had always been your escape?
I felt the barrier between us. Betrayal and distrust and a sense of not really knowing each other at all; stacked brick on top of brick, erecting the grandest of separations.
His laugh was unrecognizable as he dropped his head shaking it. Bitterness was a concept so foreign to Cam, that I almost mistook the ugly chuckle for actual amusement.
“And here I was, thinking how great it was going to be to surprise you, and damned if you don’t go and shock the hell out of me.” There was no mistaking the bitterness that time. It bled off of him, the same way water dripped from my soaked clothes.
“What the fuck are you thinking, Adley?”
I was ‘Addy’ and ‘Ads’ no more. I’d earned rage, not pet-names.
His anger didn’t frighten me. I wasn’t used to it, but in the back of my head, I’d always been waiting for it. I’d always known that one day he’d hate me. But I never thought it’d be that day for that reason.
Standing there, shivering, feeling as small and worthless as a piece of dirt, the only place I had to turn was anger.
“It’s really none of your business,” I lied.
Our lives were tangled – thoroughly twisted. The webs spun by our existence had gracefully overlapped and knotted until you could not have one without the other. We were infinitely intertwined. Cam owned me as much as I owned him. My business was his business and the like.
A scoff co
ncaved his cheeks and destroyed the dimples I loved so much. “The spot you left in my bed isn’t cold yet, and you’re off hooking up with some hotshot actor.”
“How can you even think that what you and I share compares to a few harmless mistakes with some guy who won’t even remember my name by the time he starts production on his next movie. He’s just a silly fling.” The words I’d thought I’d meant felt dirty and wrong as they slithered like worms from my mouth. It was worse than licking an ashtray, worse than a mouthful of gasoline.
His unmoving brown eyes watched me with building trepidation, until a look of equal parts horror and realization weighed down his handsome features like drying concrete.
“You actually have feelings for him, don’t you?” he spat the words with disgust.
“I don’t!” My denial was quick, but only stout with volume as I begged my tone for the conviction I didn’t feel.
With the staggering grace of a man who’d been shot, Cam sank into an armchair, his head folded in his hands.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way…You’re supposed to love me,” his words as defeated as his stance.
“I do love you,” I insisted. At least I could pour honesty into that. “We’re family. You’re all I have.”
“But when did you stop being in love with me? I didn’t agree to that…” His face was lost in a puzzle beyond his comprehension. “I let you go. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? If you love someone, then let them go. You were supposed to do what you needed to do, to move on from what happened, and get back to being who you are.” He took a ragged breath. “You weren’t supposed to fall in love with someone else!”
You were supposed to do what you needed to do, to move on from what happened, and get back to being who you are.
But didn’t he know that I’d never be that girl again? I didn’t want to move on. I wanted to carry it with me always, because it was all I had of her. It had just never occurred to me before, that by letting go of the girl I’d been, it also meant letting go of Cam.
“Cam,” I said, my calm sadness contradicting the panic darting in his eyes. Sometimes there was so much to say about something, there was nothing really to say at all. “The girl that you fell in love with – she’s gone. I’m not her, and I’m never going to be her again. You don’t want me, Cam. You want her.”
“We are meant to be together. It’s the closest thing to soul mates I’ve ever seen.” He grasped my forearms viciously, moving close to my face. His voice was strong, unwavering, unquestionable. “Tell me it would be easy for you to watch me move on – to fall in love with someone else.”
It would have been miserable. The impulse confused me because he was right. It would be one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, watching him fall in love with someone else. Could I really be that selfish? I didn’t want to be with him, but I didn’t want him finding happiness somewhere else? That didn’t seem right.
“Do you even know what you’re fighting for, Cam?” I deflected, using the irritation I felt towards myself to power the accusations rallying in my head. “You wrote this book for the girl in the yellow dress, but that girl never even existed. You romanticized our relationship. There was nothing grand or epic about it. I was a seventeen-year-old girl who got knocked up and couldn’t deal. All I’ve seen in this movie is you making me into something better, braver, purer than I ever really was.”
“If seeing you as pure and brave, and if seeing the best in you, are the wrong things to see, then what does he see in you? What am I supposed to see?”
The answers rushed into my cheeks where I trapped them, fighting to swallow them all back down. Declan saw me as imperfect. He knew I wasn’t brave, but he found the good intentions behind my cowardice. He saw all of my faults. I was different, unique to him, but he saw me as more than that too. When he looked at me, he saw me for exactly who I was, someone worth chasing, even when they walked away.
I might not have uttered a word, but I knew it was written all over my face from the betrayal shining in Cam’s russet irises.
“He’s wrong for you, Adley. At the end of this, you’re going to be left even more broken than before, looking like an idiot. It’s not the best thing for you, and you know it.”
Embarrassment burned me. He wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know, but hearing the words come out of his mouth made me want to refute them. I wanted him to be wrong. I wanted to challenge him.
“Who are you to say what’s best for me?”
Rage struck his body rigid as he shot up, towering over me.
“I’m the person whose life has been defined by choices that you made because you decided they were right.”
It felt like a slap in the face. I think I actually would have preferred that he had hit me instead of saying those indisputable words. The pain didn’t fuel my anger; it couldn’t, not when he was right.
I’d been making decisions for Cam since that day in the park, when I’d decided we all deserved a better life than we could have with each other. I’m the one who got to say what was best.
When we’d laid in the hospital bed together, only moments after bringing a new life into the world, and he’d been shaking with the effort not to move, not to leave me, not to stand up and go to the only other person in the world that was completely his; I’d labeled him as weak. I was convinced if he saw her then he’d want to keep her.
I’d always decided what was best for him. He hadn’t agreed because he thought it was for the best; he’d agreed for me.
In that moment, Cam was telling me what was best for me, and I couldn’t do him the same courtesy. My rebellious heart hammered against the notion. It told me he was wrong. I knew what was best for me.
Something horrible and ugly, like a festering blister, bubbled up inside of me. What if I had been wrong about all the things I’d been so sure were best for Cam? The strong foundation of conviction I’d always stood on grumbled beneath my feet, warning me of its collapse. What if I’d destroyed all our lives?
I’d just been a girl, not even old enough to legally drink. How could I have possibly known what was best for three people?
“I…I…can’t.”
It had been a long time since I’d run away. At some point over the summer, I’d stopped needing too. But the technique came back to me flawlessly as I fled the magnitude of what I’d just had to consider.
My clothes had dried stiff in the places they weren’t still damp, but I had no thoughts for comfort. I only wanted to get away. I used the front exit, bypassing the security guard standing at the fence without a word.
A sharp flash of lightning struck right in front of my face, and I took a dazed step backwards. And then another disorienting flash slapped me. I staggered to the side as the light hit me again and again.
They were photographers, an entire horde of them, and they were all focused on me.
I tried to get my bearings enough to tell them they had the wrong person. I was nobody, but then they began calling my name.
“Adley!”
“This way, Ms. Adair!”
“Adley!”
“Adley!”
“How does your ex feel about your new movie star beau?”
“Ms. Adair.” This one came from right in front of my face. I swatted at the camera after it rammed into my nose. “Are you going to try and get custody of your child, now that you have the financial means to support it?”
They prodded me at all sides, moving like a swarm around me, as I tried to navigate back towards the gate. Tripping over a curb, my knees scraped raw against the concrete.
“Have you set a date yet?” “Are you still in contact with the author of The Girl in the Yellow Dress?” “Do you have a cameo in the movie?” “Adley!” “Is it true you’re planning a line of baby clothes?” “Ms. Adair.”
I knew, at that moment, how it felt to be the victim of a piranha attack. They picked at you from all sides, little by little, until there wasn’t enough of
you left to care. I was a second away from curling up in a ball right there on the street, and letting them turn me into a skeleton.
Like Moses parting the Red Sea, a giant bulldozing body swept through the crowd. He lifted me easily, tucking my head into the cushion of his chest and away from the hailstorm of flashes.
“I’ve got you, Makamo.” Alfred’s exotic dialect soothed me.
Inside the safety of the gate, he placed me back on my feet, but there was no time to recover as we took off again, Alfred dragging me briskly in a new direction.
There were things I needed to say – to ask – but my brain had been invaded by those flashes, preventing me from forming any line of sensible thinking.
Declan was waiting at the back exit, his shoulders tense, even though the rest of him looked laid back. He was leaning against the wall, just a short ways down from where a few guards stood stern in front of the private entrance.
He charged towards us, catching sight of my limping approach, unable to wait the few seconds it would have taken us to reach him.
“What the hell did they do? Beat her?” He grabbed my hands, bringing them up for investigation and drawing attention to the blood smeared in my palms. “Fucking animals!”
“They knew my name.” The first sentence I managed to string together was alarmingly calm. I could have been talking about the weather or a new pair of shoes.
“Do you think anything’s broken? You didn’t twist your ankle again, did you?” He dropped down to his knees to inspect the injuries that marred the skin of my legs. They were just scratches and scrapes, all superficial wounds.
“They knew who I was,” I tried again, thinking maybe he hadn’t heard me.
He continued his examination, mumbling about killing the lot of them.
“She should put some Neosporin on those cuts, Mr. Davies, but I think she’s fine otherwise. Maybe in a little bit of shock,” Alfred tried to calm him.
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