I get the hood open and look over the engine, but my mind keeps taking me back to her. Noah and Henley are gone and I know they were with her just last night, but what if she needs something? Has anyone checked in on her today?
She’s probably having a shit time and who knows what happened with Spencer. Though, if anything, he’s got her wrapped around his litter finger and is with her right now.
Before I realize what’s happening, my phone is in my hand and I find myself hashing out a text, not knowing how this is going to go.
Rivers – Dude, where’s your sister’s place?
Noah – Fuck no!
I grin to myself. I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy, but if he’s using his phone, he’s not on the plane yet which means I still have time to twist his arm.
Rivers – You and Henley are gone for three weeks. Spencer fucked off during the wedding so who knows where he is now. What if she needs something or there’s an emergency?
Noah – If there’s an emergency, she can call mom and dad.
Rivers – That’s bullshit and you know it. That girl doesn’t rely on anyone.
Noah – She’s not the same girl you used to know.
Rivers – Come on, man. I just need to go and check on her.
There’s a short pause and I wonder if he’s going to reply at all or if maybe their flight has been called, but a moment later, my phone lights up and I find myself scrambling to open the text.
Noah – She’s in that apartment complex down behind the new mall. Apartment 308. If you so much as make her shed one fucking tear, I’ll end you. Got it? She’s fragile now. You can’t come at her like you used to. She won’t be able to handle it.
My heart shatters. Just from looking at her and listening to the way she speaks makes it clear that she’s not the same girl I once knew but having Noah confirm it is a whole new thing.
He’s even more protective of her than he used to be. At the wedding, he was chill, but something tells me that was a front so he didn’t ruin things for Henley, but now the wedding’s over and the real Noah has come out to play.
It probably kills him that he’s not here to warn me face to face. Either way, I hear him loud and clear. I’m not here to hurt her. I’m here to earn her forgiveness and give her everything she ever wanted.
I want to make her happy and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove it to her.
Rivers – I got it. I just want to check on her and make sure she’s doing ok. If she tells me to fuck off, I’ll fuck off, but just know, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to hurt her.
Noah – You’re not that fucked up kid you used to be, are you?
Rivers – Nope. I’ve put all that shit behind me.
Noah – You’re going to try and win back your girl, aren’t you?
Rivers – Only if that’s what she wants. I told you, if she tells me to fuck off, I’ll go.
Noah – Shit.
Noah – You’re going to have a hard time getting her to admit anything. She’s a closed book now.
Rivers – She’s a closed book to you maybe. Took me three seconds to work her out. She’s not happy with Spencer, she’s terrified of getting hurt, and she still fucking loves me. Besides, I have a lifetime of getting her to admit to shit that she’d prefer to keep hidden. Trust me, I’ve got this.
Noah – Do you still love her?
Rivers – More than you’re prepared to know.
Noah – And you’re here for good?
Rivers –Yeah, man. I’m on reserve now. I’m fucking home.
Noah – Fuck.
Noah – I know she’s with Spencer, but fuck it! Go get her back. I’m sick of seeing her hurting.
A grin rips across my face. I was going to get her back with or without Noah’s consent, but knowing that I have his approval to be with his sister just makes it that much better.
Now knowing where she lives, I find myself moving, I don’t even think that I locked up my house in my need to get to her. Hell, the door could be left wide fucking open for all I know, but I can’t find it within myself to care. I just need to check on her. I need to start working on this plan to win her back because fucking around doing nothing is only going to drive me insane.
I had the smallest taste of having her in my arms again and I need more. She’s my addiction and I’ve gone far too long without it.
I get to the entrance of her building before realizing that I don’t have a game plan. What am I going to say to her that isn’t going to have her kicking me out within seconds? She’s no doubt still pissed off. Out of all the chicks I’ve ever met, Tully Cage takes the prize for grudge-holding.
I pull open the door and look around in wonder. Tully lives on the outskirts of Haven Falls and it’s nicer than I could have possibly imagined. It’s not quite Broken Hill standards but for a kid from Haven Falls, it’s pretty fucking impressive. She must be doing really well for herself.
Pride surges through me as I hit the call button on the elevator. I always knew that she was going to succeed with whatever it is that she’s doing, but being able to afford a place like this at twenty-three is astounding. It’s an accomplishment that hardly any other people in Haven Falls would be able to achieve and seeing that she has it well within her grasp tells me that whatever she’s doing with her life, she’s kicking ass at it.
I make my way up to level three and over to apartment 308.
This is it.
This is either going to go really well or really bad. There’s never any middle ground when it comes to getting inside Tully’s head, but maybe I should be taking Noah’s warning. She’s not the same girl I once knew.
I come to a stop before her door and let out a breath as I clutch the frame with both hands and rest my head against the door. My future is on the other side of this door.
I pull my shit together. Tully needs a man, not a fucking pussy.
I knock on the door and wait patiently for her to answer. I wait a little longer and then some more before wondering if she’s even home. After all, it’s Monday. She’s probably at work.
I’m about to give up when the softest sigh comes from the opposite side of the door and I’d bet anything that she’s been watching me through the damn peephole.
Placing my hand on the door, I lean into it, knowing that only a piece of wood stands between me and my girl. “Baby, let me in.”
There’s a short pause, but I don’t dare move. I’m not here to pussy around. I’m here to check on her and win her back. The softest murmur comes through the door and despite her voice being muffled through the door, I know the sound of heartbreak, especially when it comes from her. “You need to leave, Rivers.”
“I can’t do that, Tullz. I’ll stand out here all day and night if that’s what it takes.”
A frustrated groan comes through the door and I don’t doubt she’s contemplating all the different ways to torture me, but she should know that just having this door closed between us is more torture than I’ve ever endured.
I’m just about to get down on my knees and start begging when I hear the little piece of metal siding along the lock before the sound of the deadbolt being released. The handle turns and the door begins to fall open and not a second later, my breath is taken away by the woman standing before me.
Four years really has changed her. The night of the wedding, she looked spectacular. She was radiant and looked like a fucking angel, but that’s not the woman I fell in love with. This is. The one who wears sweats and has her long hair a mess. There’s no makeup, no gown, no attitude, just her, all-natural just the way she was intended. It’s raw and those green eyes shimmering with years of memories is enough to draw me forward.
I don’t even realize that I’ve moved until she’s taking a hasty step back. “Don’t touch me,” she whispers. “You can’t be here.”
“There’s no place else I’d rather be,” I tell her.
Her eyes drop away and it nearly kills me. She takes anot
her step away from me and before I know it, she’s crossing the room and dropping down onto her couch. “What are you doing here?” she questions, watching me warily.
I close the door behind me before stepping around a big fucking box and walking deeper into her apartment. I can’t help but take it all in while looking around the huge room. “I just needed to check you were alright.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,” she says with a slow nod. “I’m fine.”
My eyes return to hers with a smirk playing on my lips loving that not everything about this little she devil has changed. “You’ve always been a great liar, Tully, but you forget that I can read you like a book.”
She lets out a slight huff and looks away. She’s never been able to handle being called out and I absolutely love it. Getting that reaction out of her makes teasing her that much better. “How’d you know where to find me?”
My smirk turns into a full-blown grin. “How do you think?”
“Fucking Noah,” she mutters under her breath. “Absolutely no respect for my privacy.”
“Chill out,” I say, making my way around her living room and checking out the life she’s built for herself. “He’s just worried about you.”
“He was here until two in the morning. I doubt he’s got himself all worked up about me over the past nine hours,” she explains, keeping her eyes on me as I start to wonder if winning her back isn’t going to be as hard as I thought.
“You know better than anyone just how quickly Noah can be worked up,” I say, taking in her bookshelf and admiring how she seems to have organized it by color. It looks fucking awesome, but wouldn’t it make more sense to arrange it by series or author? I could fix it for her, but that would probably get me killed. Tully’s books have always been precious to her and since the last time I saw her, the collection seems to have multiplied.
Tully doesn’t respond, but I don’t expect her to. She’s trying to show me that my presence doesn’t affect her and if I were anyone else, I would have bought the act, but I’m not and she can’t fool me.
I look back over my shoulder to her and watch as her eyes slowly meet mine. “You fixed up my house.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Yeah, that was years ago when I assumed you were coming home. It wasn’t just me, everyone chipped in. It’s no big deal just forget about it. I have.”
“Uh-huh. The fresh flowers on the dining table really show how you’ve forgotten about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmurs as I start walking down the hallway towards her bedroom and hear her flying up from the couch. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I want to see your place,” I throw back, not relenting in my way down the hall. “Why is there a moving box at the front door?”
“I uh…didn’t think you noticed that.”
“I’ve spent the past four years in the military, I notice everything. Besides, it’s not like it’s right in the doorway or anything. I had to step around the big fucker just to get in.”
I can practically hear her cringe already knowing the answer to my question. After all, I was listening in to her and Spencer arguing about it during the wedding. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was going to move out.”
“Past tense or present tense?”
“Seriously?” I don’t respond and she knows me well enough to know that I’ll keep asking until I get the answer I’m looking for. She lets out a sigh. “I told Spencer I’d move in with him, but I don’t want to leave my apartment. Not yet. This is my home and I worked hard for it. I’m not ready to give it up.”
I nod. Finally, a straight answer, though there might be a little more to it.
I walk into her bedroom and take a look around. It’s exactly how I pictured her to live. An empty ice-cream tub on her bedside table, cookie and cream flavored, of course. There are books everywhere with her Kindle at the end of her bed, clean washing piled high in a chair, and not to mention an old photo of our pack framed up on her wall right where it should be, right where she can see it, see me. Every fucking night.
I wipe the grin from my face before noticing a little black velvet box on her dresser. I make my way across her bedroom, unable to resist looking inside. “Rivers,” Tully whispers from the door of her bedroom, trying to save me from myself. “Don’t.”
I take the little box in my hand and open it up. A diamond ring shines up at me and I don’t doubt this is the one that Spencer has proposed with four times now. I feel Tully’s eye burning into the back of my head and I can’t help but wonder what things would be like if I never went away.
Maybe my ring would be on her finger and maybe that heaviness inside her heart would never have existed. But then, maybe that darkness would still be inside me and I would have ended up hurting her anyway.
The only blessing I can find in all of this is that Spencer’s ring is not taking up residence on her finger. For now, it lives discarded in this little box and that’s exactly where it’s going to stay until Spencer can find someone else to give it to.
I take the ring from the box before turning and walking towards Tully. Her eyes widen and she sinks away as I stalk her. I toss the empty box onto the bed as I pass before situating myself right before her and staring down into those beautiful, mesmerizing eyes.
I reach over and take her hand before placing the ring in the center of her palm and curling her fingers around it. “If you were truly his, if you’d have given your heart to him, then I’d let you go. But you haven’t. You’re mine, Tully. You always will be just as I’ll always be yours. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to make this right.”
Tully steps into me, raising her chin and looking up into my eyes just as she used to. Her hand presses against my chest and she melts into me as I take her waist. “You see that’s where you’re wrong,” she whispers. “I don’t know if I’m his but what I do know is that I’m sure as hell not yours. I’ll never go back to you, Rivers.”
Her words are supposed to cut, but the fight within her has a smile ripping across my face. I pull her in closer to my chest as confusion has her brows dipping low. “God, I fucking missed you.”
She fights against me for a moment before realizing she has no hope of me letting her go and then finally wraps her arms around me. I tilt my face into her hair and breathe her in as she finds comfort in my hold. “I was serious,” she murmurs into my chest. “I’m making it work with Spence.”
“You don’t really believe that, Tully. You’ve had three years to make it work with him. He’s been down on one knee four times and asked you to move in with him. If you wanted to make it work, you’d be married with a kid on the way. If you were in love with him, you would have thrown yourself into it just like you did with me, but you haven’t. You’ve been waiting, biding your time in case I was to come back to you.”
“You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”
I shake my head as I pull back and look down at her. “No,” I tell her, pausing to know she’s truly hearing every damn word that I’m saying. “I’m setting myself up for the most important fight of my life. So, understand this, baby. I’m all in.”
Her eyes widen just a fraction and before she can fight me on it, I lean back in and press a kiss to her cheek.
A breath escapes her and before I push her too far, I walk away.
Noah might think she’s a fragile little butterfly and at the wedding, I might have thought the same thing, but that fierce look in her eye that tells me she wants nothing more than to castrate me, says that tiger still lives within her and it’s getting ready to break free.
Chapter 7
Tully
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
What was I thinking letting him through the door? I stood on the other side of it, listening to the way his head fell against the hard wood. I could hear a rapid heartbeat and I'm still not sure if it was mine or his. All I know is that it's been three days and I still can't g
et him out of my head.
The words he was saying...they were the ones I've heard every single night in my dreams when I should be dreaming of someone else.
I'm in big fucking trouble here.
I tried to be strong. I tried to hold him off and throw as much attitude as I could find at his face and it seemed the harder I tried, the more he liked it. It was almost as though, for the shortest moment, that I had found my old fire. The one I lost when I lost him.
Rivers says he wants me back and the fire in his eyes tells me he means it and that scares the shit out of me. It's one thing dealing with the loss of Spencer from my life, but fearing that Rivers could play with my heart all over again, well, that's something that I couldn't possibly bear.
I haven't told a soul about Spencer leaving me and I have no idea why. It could be guilt over the fact that I've spent the past three days thinking about a guy from my past rather than the incredible man I just lost.
But what's worse is that heartache I've been fearing for the past three years and the terror I would feel over the thought of him breaking up with me simply isn't there. I'm not hurting and that must make me some kind of monster. I've just spent years with Spencer and after crying for about twenty minutes, I put the pain away and filed it for another day and have since forgotten about it.
Three years of my life with him and I didn't turn into a mess. Surely, he meant more than that to me.
God, I'm such a bitch. He was right to end it with me. I turned into more of a mess when I watched 'The Notebook' for the first time.
I should be sent straight to hell for this. Though maybe I shouldn't because I'm positive that I'll live out eternity with Rivers right there by my side and then I'll be as happy as a fat fucking pig in mud. I can't win. I don’t deserve to be happy.
When Rivers was at my place on Monday, I failed to tell him that Spencer had left me and I sat there wondering why I didn’t tell him. In fact, I haven’t told anyone. I’ve spoken to Henley at least four times since she left for her honeymoon and each time, the topic fails to get mentioned. She’d hate it and would constantly be worrying when she should be enjoying her honeymoon, so at least I have somewhat of a good reason.
Unstoppable: Haven Falls (Book 7) Page 7