by Sara Cate
After that tryst in the doorway, it’s become very clear that Murph and I have a physical attraction. It doesn’t do much to solve the problem of his attitude or personality, but I still think I could easily sink my teeth into him and come out on the other side feeling exactly the same emotionally. He’s one more roadblock on my journey to freedom. So what if we sleep together? I’m not falling in love with him. And I’m certainly not planning a future around the possibility of a relationship. No way.
“I see your shadow under the door,” he mumbles from inside the room. My heart nearly races out of my chest. He must think I’m a stalker, some crazy lady ready to pounce on him in the middle of the night.
Gently, I turn the handle and peek in, only slightly hoping he’ll be half-dressed in his bed.
But he’s not. He’s sitting in the single chair in the corner of the room. The lights are off except for one small lamp on the nightstand, creating a very intimate glow between us. For the first time I get a look at the space. It’s definitely a man’s room, minimal decorations with the scent of cologne in the air. I want to crawl into that bed with its thick black comforter. I imagine him sleeping in it, and it makes my stomach tighten.
“I just wanted to check on you,” I whisper, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind me. My heart won’t stop hammering in my chest.
“I’m fine,” he lies. He’s watching me from the chair, his legs spread and his arms draped across the arms of the chair. Even his posture is intimidating.
I keep waiting for him to get up, flirt a little, say something vulgar like he did at the sink, but he doesn’t. He’s not the same guy who had me pressed up between him and the wall.
“Why morning glories?” His deep whisper stops me from turning to leave the room. The question catches me off guard, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s talking about the tattoo I want.
I clear my throat and step in a little farther. “That scar was the last bad thing to happen to me before everything started going good, before she took me in. It’s her favorite flower—”
“I know it is,” he says, interrupting me.
Fidgeting in my spot against the footboard of his bed, I keep waiting for him to make a move.
“Do you have siblings?” he asks.
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“But I thought…”
“Who, Ryder? He’s not my brother. He’s just a piece-of-shit pretty boy who fucked over the only person I cared about. We’re not related.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble with my fingers against my lips.
It’s quiet for a moment before he finally stands up and walks toward me. He stops when he’s standing next to me, and I keep waiting for him to touch me, feeling like I might crawl out of my skin. Finally, he reaches forward and grabs the doorknob behind me.
“Thanks for checking on me.” Then he holds open the door for me, and my heart is fucking raw when I look at his face in the dim light. He’s tortured. In pain.
“Anytime you need to talk, I’m right across the hall.”
He nods at me, his eyes meeting mine for the first time.
When his light goes out under the door, I tip-toe away. This dark room version of Murph has me feeling shaken. Part of me wants to walk back in, find that mischievous smile I know he’s hiding.
Instead, I walk quietly to the office to finish filing away the extra paperwork Hazel had pulled out for me a few weeks ago. It was piles of old tax returns and investment documents from almost a decade ago. She wanted someone besides her accountant to have access to it...just in case. It sounded like real old-lady paranoia to me, but I didn’t complain. It was very boring work, but I’d been hacking away the progress bit by bit. I hadn’t touched the room since Murph came back, not wanting him to get all suspicious about what I’m doing in there.
My eyes drift back to the papers on the desk, and I realize they must be Murph’s. They’re the same initiative documents that they spoke about a few days ago.
I find myself lifting the papers to my nose, searching for that familiar musky scent of cologne that seems to follow him wherever he goes.
After a few more minutes of silently looking through his papers, I get back to work on the stack of boring old financial documents. After about an hour of filing away papers into three different folders, I nearly give in. But just as I file away another statement balance, I spot something out of the ordinary.
It looks more official than the rest of the documents. This one is a deed. It has the thickness of a deed, and when I open it, I find it paper-clipped to a few other papers. These papers also don’t feel or look as old as the rest. They are still white, not bent or faded. A quick scan of the top of the paperwork, and I realize I’m looking at the deed for the tattoo shop. My breath hitches in my throat for a moment as I read the details of the deed. The address, property type, name, value, and more.
Holding them makes me feel powerful. This is everything Murph wants to control right here. I could have him eating out of the palm of my hand if only he knew what I held.
Hazel must have pulled this deed out to prepare her will, giving the shop officially to Murph, I’m sure.
Flipping through the documents behind this one, I notice one is a printed email to her attorney. The next is a photocopy of her will, and the last is a scribbled note in Hazel’s handwriting. At the top of the note is my name.
I almost close it to avoid reading it too early. Did Hazel want me to read this now? She left it for me on purpose?
Quickly, I open the pages back up and read through the notes, taking a deep breath to prepare myself.
Savannah,
You’ll find this all very alarming, but please trust me and my intentions. When I first met you, I knew your walls were up, almost as high as his. My hope with this plan is that you will help each other tear them down. Give him a chance. He may seem cold and scary at first, but I’ve seen the sweet boy underneath, and I think you could find him too. You have the guts to crack him open. Please do.
Thank you for a wonderful last year.
Hazel
Moisture fills the brim of my eyes as I read, and I have to scan it over to absorb what Hazel is saying. He may seem cold and scary at first...well there’s no doubt who she’s talking about. When did Hazel write this letter? Did she always have me pegged as a match for Murph?
None of this makes any sense. Why is this letter here? Was she holding onto it for me? And what exactly is with the cryptic first line?
I flip back through the other documents. My gaze freezes on my own name on the printed email.
This is to confirm that your request of changing the beneficiary on the document, Wicked Hearts Ink, shall be transferred to the beneficiary, Ms. Savannah Young.
Wait...what?
I toss and turn for at least three hours before I finally decide to get up. Having Savannah in my room, if only for a moment, won’t let me drift off to sleep. I don’t fucking know what came over me, why I was so goddamn serious. Why did I ask her all of those questions? Why couldn’t I just kiss her, tear off her clothes, slam her onto the mattress like I wanted to earlier? Fuck, the walls in this room are closing in on me. In nothing but my basketball shorts, I quietly pad out of the room and down the hallway.
As I pass Hazel’s room, I can’t help but think about her quickly slipping away. She has never called me Ryder before. It stings a little, to look into her eyes and know she doesn’t recognize me. But Ruby warned me of this. This is a natural part of the process. The body and the mind slowly slipping away, and it just pisses me off.
I need to let out some aggression, in a serious way.
I could go for a midnight ride. Those are always nice for distracting me when I’m wound tight as a knot. I could even stop by the bar; there’s at least an hour before it closes, which is plenty of time to pick up one of the lingering girls there waiting for a guy to come and take her home. But that’s not right for this feeling either.
&n
bsp; It’s like I’m being torn in two. Grief over Hazel. Aggravation over Savannah.
After sifting through Hazel’s old liquor stash, I pour myself a small glass of Jameson. It goes down easy...too easy. So I pour another.
Drinking is never really my go-to stress relief, but tonight it hits the spot. The spreading warmth is like a warm embrace that eases the tension in my back.
Once I’ve poured my third, I find myself feeling more and distant, ready to crawl back into bed. Then a silhouette on the patio snatches my attention. I stare for a moment, trying to decide which of the women I’m currently living with it is.
But then she turns her head, and her perky ponytail gives her away. Quickly, I slink outside, being as quiet as I can as I pass through the open door and onto the rugged porch. She tenses when she hears me step nearer. If I hadn’t just downed three glasses three fingers full, I would have announced my presence or sat down, teasing her about being awake so late, but the alcohol gives me an edge that doesn’t make me filter my words or my actions. It has me feeling invincible and without a fuck to give.
“Can’t sleep?” she asks in a whisper, turning her head toward me.
“No,” I growl. Our eyes linger on each other for a long moment. It’s like we’re meeting somewhere sacred, where consequences don’t exist. Where whatever happens in this moment only exists in this moment. This space is safe, silent, ours.
I step up behind her, putting my hands on either side of her body. She shivers against my arms. When I lean my head closer to her face, she looks away. Just when I think she’s resisting the contact, she presses her back against my chest instead. My face falls into the crook of her neck, breathing her in. She smells like the beach, salty and sun-kissed.
The fingers of her hand run along my arms, sending goosebumps all over my skin. The other hand reaches behind her and runs along my stomach. I’m breathless, waiting for her to make contact with this part of me so desperate to know her. When she pulls away too soon, I let out a desperate moan and press her body against the railing, grinding my hips against her backside.
Bracing her hands against the railing, she pushes back. I run my tongue along the skin of her neck, tracing it all the way up to her jaw, where I scrape my teeth against the edge.
We’re both lost in the heat of the moment, our heavy breaths drowning out the sound of the waves across the sand. Neither of us have the guts to take this too far, but when she presses her hips back against my dick again, I can’t resist shoving my hand down the front of her pajama pants.
Her lips find mine as I stroke her, dipping my fingers between her warm folds, soaking her underwear, the scent of her arousal filling my nose and driving me forward.
When I lay pressure into her clit, I feel her tense, barely on her feet now but flat against my body, dangling on her tip-toes. She clings to me as she lets out a strangled gasp, squeezing me so tight it almost hurts.
I push her closer and closer to the edge, burying my face in her hair. My other hand drifts up her stomach, under her shirt and squeezes on her tits, making her whimper into the cool sea air.
She melts into my hands, and I almost carry her into the bedroom. Or fuck it, I could pull down her pants right here. There’s not a soul around.
Just as I have her to the brink, she tenses. “No,” she whispers as she pulls away, slipping out of my grasp so fast it makes my head spin.
“What?” I stutter.
“Good night, Murph,” she says, her voice rushed as she disappears into the house through the patio door.
I’m left feeling stunned and still a little buzzed. It takes me a few minutes before I finally pull myself away from the patio and go back inside. I can only assume she got spooked that we were basically recreating the scene in the tattoo shop. Maybe she was embarrassed. Who the fuck knows.
As I make my way to my room, I pass by hers. The door is closed and the lights off. I hope we can leave this little secret here and wake up to forget it ever happened.
When my head finally hits my pillow, I’m only awake long enough to replay the whole thing in my head once before a heavy sleep carries me under.
It was another nightmare about Hugo that kept me up last night, like it does almost every night. This time, he was holding my face under the water, only letting me come up for enough air to keep me alive, but suffocating me until I wanted to die. It’s not like he ever actually did that, very metaphorical my dreams. But that’s exactly what he did when we were together. He only ever let me have enough freedom so that I didn’t leave him. But for every other moment, he kept me in hell.
There is no recovering from a dream like that. His cruel, spitting voice in my ear wouldn’t let me just roll over and go back to sleep, hoping for a more pleasant dream. Instead, I had to get out of bed. Sometimes I walked down to the beach. Other times, I got drunk on Hazel’s bourbon.
Tonight was one of those nights.
It wasn’t only my cruel ex haunting me tonight but also the image of my name printed on that paper, sealing my fate and damning me altogether. There was no room in my brain to contemplate what this meant for Murph or his friends, and there certainly wasn’t any room to predict what this would do to our strange and charged relationship.
The only thing I could contemplate was how this would work out for me. This equation was too easy, it practically solved itself. I could sell the shop to whoever those douchebags from city council wanted to replace it with—and at a competitive, desperate price.
With that money, I’d be free. More free than I’ve ever been before. I’d fly across the country, start up somewhere new, maybe enroll in art school, start my life. Never look back. Never dream about Hugo almost drowning me again.
This vision of a happier version of myself was exactly what I was picturing in my bourbon-soaked mind when Murph approached, his strong arms framing me like the walls of a house, welcoming me, keeping me safe.
And just like on that first day, I clung to him because somewhere deep down, I figured that if I could touch him without seeing him, my body would find its mark without my heart getting involved. I wanted to let him touch me without letting him get to know me.
But the closer he pushed my body toward ecstasy, the farther away my future felt.
I hope we can wake up and pretend it never happened.
Ruby swiftly parades through the door with a ball gown enclosed in plastic wrap, draped over her arms. “She wants me to give you this dress,” she says, clearly irritated with something. “It must be thirty years old.”
“What is it?” I ask, stretching and climbing out of bed.
“This is what she wants you to wear tonight.” Ruby looks at me, her lips tight and an expression on the brink of a major eye roll.
It takes me a moment to put it together.
The gala is tonight. I nearly forgot with the emotional iceberg of what happened last night, but now I remember that there was more than the deed on my mind keeping me awake. The gala is not my scene, at all, and something about being out of this house, cavorting with the wealthy business owners and city council members makes me nervous.
There is no chance of Hugo being there, but we really aren’t all that far from Newport, and if I left this house, drawing attention to myself, he would find me like a shark finds blood.
“This is really what she wants?” I ask, hoping Ruby will find a loophole in Hazel’s wishes.
“You know she does.”
Knowing what I know about the deed, Hazel’s plans of pushing me and Murph together makes so much more sense. She’s sending us off to this gala, and she probably orchestrated that whole thing too, pulling out the invitation like she was putting on a show.
I should be angry about it, but her heart is in the right place. And I hate to break her heart, but this love connection isn’t going to happen. Especially now with the keys to my future in my hand. Letting her down breaks my heart, but I don’t have much room for that either.
“Is she awake?” I ask, as I he
ad toward the hallway, eager to greet her, maybe to let her know I know the truth. That I found her cryptic letter.
“No, she’s still out,” Ruby answers, avoiding my eyes. “Hospice nurse is coming in an hour.”
My feet stop on their own accord. The hospice nurse feels like the grim reaper. She comes more and more frequently, a constantly returning omen that the end is near, and the feeling of giving up just makes me irritable. I can only imagine how this will go over for Murph.
“Maybe you could occupy Mr. Murphy today?” Ruby says, her tone half-joking. She must have read my mind because she’s clearly nervous about his reaction too.
“Occupy him?” I ask, turning my nose up.
“You know what I mean,” Ruby answers, the lilt in her voice teasing.
“If he misses the hospice nurse, I’m afraid there’s nothing either of us will be able to do to make him happy.”
It’s quiet for a moment as Ruby finishes doing whatever chore she’s currently working on. “I wouldn't be so sure about that,” she mumbles.
“There is nothing between us like that.” My voice comes out bolder and harsher than I mean it too. It gets very awkward after that, and I almost feel bad, but the events of the evening have me on edge. I cannot—cannot—get romantically involved with anyone right now, most of all, the person that’s about to despise me very much.
“What time did you say she’s coming?” I ask to fill the silence.
“About an hour.”
“I’ll get him ready.” Then I leave the room. I can't be in the room with her anymore.
“Savannah,” Ruby calls, stopping me again. I pause, begrudgingly. “I think you should prepare him for the worst.”
Tears fill Ruby’s eyes and I can’t take it. Emotion doesn’t even register in my mind. All I can think is that I can’t tell him. I can't be around when he finds out.