by Kira Blakely
Shit, no way. She was too old for that.
In spite of everything, my heart skipped a beat, and I stalled in front of Olivia’s door.
She was the only one who did this to me.
Cops on my ass? Didn’t bother me. My father’s displeasure? Fuck him. But Olivia… She’d already made it clear she was ready to move on. She’d regret that decision sorely. She’d regret ever imagining that she could walk away from our little whatever-the-fuck-it-was unscathed.
My resolve iced over, and I turned the crystal knob on her door and let myself inside.
Stars blinked down from the ceiling—hundreds, perhaps a thousand, luminous plastic stars arranged in constellations. They cast an eerie yellow-white light on the desk in the corner, the carpet, the bed, its sheets, and the figure lying atop them.
Olivia’s hair was spread across her pillow, a book clutched to her chest. She breathed evenly, deeply, peaceful in sleep.
Well, that’ll have to change.
I snapped the door shut behind me, and her eyelids fluttered open. She blinked, her brow wrinkled, and she sat up. She spotted me and let out a tiny yelp.
She didn’t scream. Good girl.
“Beckett?” she whispered, voice hoarse, eyes wide and green-blue as the ocean. I couldn’t make out their color, but I’d memorized it, so that they glowed in the dark, just as much as the stars above did.
“Up,” I said.
Olivia shifted the book, and her frown became a scowl. “What the hell? Get out of my room. You have no right to be here. You have—”
“Get up, now.”
She leaned forward, no doubt with another choice bit of vitriol hovering on the tip of her tongue, then froze. “What happened to you? There’s blood on your—Beckett. What happened?” She was off the bed in seconds, the book dropping to the carpet with a dull thud.
She practically floated across the room and halted in front of me, her fingers dancing up my face to the cut along my cheekbone.
I inhaled at her touch, not from pain, but from the sheer need that coursed through me. Never had we touched like this. We’d never held hands. We’d only written letters, only fantasized, pretended we could be together when in truth, we wanted different things.
I didn’t need a woman around, holding me back, ruining my best-laid plans. I was on a warpath—to destroy my father’s dream for my future, to get out of college.
And she wanted to study for real, in spite of what her family had told her she should be doing. Another reason she’d attracted me.
Spoiled Olivia from high school had become Spoiled Olivia who was driven, too. Driven and stunning, with lips that quivered each time they spoke my name.
Her fingers dropped from my cheek, and I watched her reactions, the concern that flickered there, then confusion, frustration. The myriad emotions I made her feel. No one else would ever compare.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You really don’t know?” I said, and the smirk leaked into my tone. “Poor Olivia.”
“Don’t start with that. You can’t. I know who you are inside, Beckett. You can’t hide from me.”
She was wrong, of course.
“It’s the last night,” I said, after a second of silence, punctuated by those distant sirens. They drew closer now, grew louder. My time was almost up.
“Huh?” Olivia clicked her tongue. “You don’t always have to speak in riddles, god dammit.” But her breath caught in her chest.
We were so close. The closest we’d ever been. I’d never come up here in all the years I’d been friends with her brother. Not once. It would’ve violated the rules—Mike would never have approved, and I’d tried to respect that.
She made to step back, and I caught her wrists.
“Beckett.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Beckett, what happened to your face?”
“Life. You.” I dragged her to my chest, cupped her cheek, and brought my lips down to hers. It was a hard kiss. Rough as my personality, as the raw feelings that dangled between us, which had tortured me for the last five years.
She moaned against my mouth, and I was lost.
I parted her lips and tasted the sweetness of her mouth, of her tongue. I claimed her, every inch of that soft warmth, then pulled back and stepped out of reach.
Olivia sagged, pressed two fingers to her lips, and stared at me, wild-eyed. She didn’t say a word, but the desire radiated from her. Waves of need.
I wallowed in this moment, pulsed for her, then turned and walked for the door, powerful strides carrying me to whatever fate waited at my house next door.
“Beckett, wait,” she said, her voice thick. “Please.”
I left her there. I left her there, and I’d have done it again, given the chance.
*
“Fuck,” I muttered and leaned my palms on the bathroom counter. I reached up and loosened my tie, stripped it free, and tossed it on the counter. How was I supposed to concentrate, now?
Seven years and I still thought about that night. I’d avoided her ever since. I’d never touched her. I’d fantasized, sure, but I’d taken out those fantasies on other women. We’d never been a real thing, and that had suited me just fucking fine.
Except that it hadn’t.
Seven years and my would-be college obsession was stuck looking after a kid, way in over her head, probably tottering around her apartment in Louboutin heels with Penny on her hip.
“Fuck!” I growled and slammed my fist down on the counter. I relished the pain, savored it, used it.
It didn’t work.
The guilt over Mikey’s death, and the memories of O in her cute little camisole and distressed jeans, lying asleep, a book on her chest, tortured me.
I’d abandoned them both.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I whipped it out, glaring at Kayla’s number flashing on the screen. I rejected her call and tossed the cell on top of my tie.
I needed to exorcise these demons.
To eradicate thoughts of Olivia—my girl, my woman, always—before it was too late and I lost all focus. She couldn’t become my centerpoint again.
Before, it’d been her brother who’d stalled me, now it was my own reputation—my business couldn’t suffer a setback. Never mind the fact that I’d witnessed enough to affirm the belief that love wasn’t real. It was bullshit. It was an excuse to do dumb shit and to let someone else do dumb shit right back.
I unzipped my pants and drew out my cock, already thick from the memory of that kiss. I spat on my palm and smoothed it over my head and down the shaft, growling low at the thought of Olivia in her starry bedroom, the glow reflected in her eyes.
But it was a tired fantasy.
A fresh image popped into my mind.
O in her stained silk robe, her nipples pricking at the fabric, her gaze pleading with me, begging me to help her, and then to make her mine all over again.
“Yes,” I grunted and worked faster, a slight twist to my movements, a steady pace. My dick swelled further—Olivia did this to me—and I jerked my hips at the sensation, shut my eyes and pictured my woman in that living room, pressed against the window.
Her nipples against the glass, still captured by the silk, but the back of her robe lifted, exposing the supple curves of her ass cheeks, and my dick, wet from hilt to tip, sliding in and out of her.
“Beckett, please,” she moaned. “Fill me up with your cum. Make me yours.”
“You’re already mine,” I said and quickened the pace. “You always were.” The words echoed from the letters I’d written, from the words I’d spoken to her years ago. “Always.”
“Oh, god, baby, I’m going to come,” she whispered, and her hot pussy shuddered around my dick, clenched tight and sent me to nirvana. “Beckett, I’m coming. For you.”
“That’s right.” I pounded into my fist, and my climax came fast, rising from the base of my balls and streaking through me. Five, no six, long squirts aimed in
to my fist, and I roared for her. For my Olivia.
The reality of it settled around my shoulders and they sagged, fast.
I washed my hand under the faucet, dried off, then tucked myself away. I checked my watch—still thirty minutes until the meeting—but those thoughts hadn’t been scraped away.
I’d come for Olivia, but she still dominated my thoughts.
And I would be dominated by no one.
This had to end, now.
Chapter 6
Olivia
I held the silvery flat slab in one hand and stared at the drawer in front of me, the gentle cooing sound of Penny in her playpen the backdrop for the biggest challenge I’d met so far.
“You are my Everest,” I grunted and lifted the contraption. I tapped my heel—a designer pump—and sighed.
This… this thing was a magnetic drawer latch. Supposedly, it was possible to install this thing without using a screwdriver or any tools, but I was still at a loss. College educated, book reader, and totally flummoxed by a bit of metal that’d come without instructions.
This called for a seriously bad review online.
Who was I kidding? I was the type who’d write up the one star, feel terrible about it, and change it to a more moderate three star before submitting the review.
After all, someone had spent time designing this labyrinthine creation.
I sighed and fiddled with the drawer. I tried affixing the latch to its front and it flopped off and slapped to the tiles with a dull thud.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I muttered and scooped it up again. I had to figure this out.
There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ask anyone for help, least of all Beckett.
Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about him.
But it was already too late.
One mental mention of the man’s name, and he swam up from the past, taunting me with his hot letters, his cold attitude, and then that final night before he’d practically disappeared and started ignoring me.
“Focus,” I grunted and fiddled with the weird clip on the slab’s side. I pressed a button and turned it upside down, got a better look from underneath. I was primordial man figuring out how to make a fire.
And failing at it.
I huffed and clunked the latch down on the counter then pinched the bridge of my nose.
Okay, so Mikey didn’t want me to have full-time help, but surely he wouldn’t mind if I hired a part-time handyman to babyproof my ridiculously opulent apartment, which had gone from bachelorette pad to baby playpen in the span of a month.
Penny cooed again. “Glub-blub,” she said, and I smiled, in spite of my ineptitude.
At times like these, when she was calm and happy and playing on her own, my heart swelled by ten times.
I walked over to her pen and gripped the railing, looking down at her as she paged through a thick book of pictures with first words in them. The ends of the pages were ratty, and little tooth marks peppered the card, but she loved that book the most.
Dark curls, cute blue-green eyes—she reminded me so much of my brother it hurt.
She should’ve been with him now. She should’ve had her daddy to read her stories, but she had me instead.
I gulped down emotion before it overwhelmed me and ruined Penny’s good mood.
It’d only been a months, but I had to deal with losing Mikey or it’d affect her, and that I couldn’t allow. He’d trusted me. I would never break that trust, not in a million years.
“Hungry, sweetheart?” I asked.
Penny stuck out her bottom lip. “No.”
“You sure? You don’t want some yogurt?”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head and continued paging through her picture book. She didn’t speak all that much, and that was OK. I’d give her the time she needed to open up to me.
I’d spent the past months researching everything I could on toddler sleep and eating habits. Some websites suggested a routine for feeding, obviously, and others suggested that kids self-regulate. I had tried both and settled on a weird solution: I’d offer food at routine times, but I wouldn’t force Penny to eat.
The one time I’d tried, I’d ended up covered in pumpkin pieces. Also, Penny didn’t much like pumpkin. Two lessons learned in one day, joy of joys.
“All right, if you—”
A knock rattled at the front door, and I frowned. Who the hell would that be?
This was the second time today someone had come right up to my door. What, was it security’s practice to let anyone in? I chewed my lip and considered calling downstairs to complain, but the knock rat-tatted again.
“No,” Penny yelled.
I strode across the living room, thankfully, without having to dart around piles of clothes or toys since I’d managed a brief tidy-up, then halted with my hand on the doorknob.
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“Olivia?” A voice, kind of worn and thick, came through muffled. It triggered familiarity, but I couldn’t place it. “Olivia Abbott? This is George. Uncle George.”
“And Aunt Nicki,” a woman followed up.
I blinked—holy crap, I hadn’t heard from either of these two in years. The last time I’d seen my dad’s younger brother—way younger—was shortly after dad’s funeral. And then, they’d hardly been sympathetic.
There’d been such a huge age gap between my dad and George that they’d never been super close.
“Olivia?” Uncle George’s voice again.
I unlocked the door and opened up.
A man, just past fifty with a few streaks of gray in his hair and wrinkles that looked more from work than age, grinned at me. His ears were too big. His nose was too small. He was strangely put together, like Humpty Dumpty—god, I’d been reading way too many nursery rhymes—but he was definitely my uncle.
My father’s polar opposite in most ways.
“Uncle George,” I said and forced a smile, then nodded to his wife—a redhead with dark circles under her eyes and a sharp nose that would’ve looked normal on the Wicked Witch of the West. Seriously, too many kid’s stories. “And Aunt Nicki. I—sorry, I haven’t seen you in years. This is a serious blast from the past.”
The two middle-aged folks exchanged a glance. “We thought it was past time we pay you a visit,” Uncle George said. “After everything that’s happened.”
Everything being my brother’s death, and the funeral, which neither of them had attended.
“May we come in?” Nicki asked and clasped her hands in front of her belly. “It’s been a long trip to get here.”
A long trip, and they hadn’t even called first. Before Penny, this wouldn’t have bothered me.
“I—sure,” I said. “I’m sorry, if you’d called before I would’ve been better prepared for a visit.” I stepped back, and they shuffled across the threshold. They were dressed plain, in clothes that definitely weren’t designer and didn’t carry a brand—which I felt snobby for noticing.
“There she is,” Nicki squeaked and pointed at Penny, who’d risen from her book to clutch the rail of her playpen and stare at the strangers. “There’s the little cutie.”
“Penny,” I said, in case they’d forgotten.
“Of course.” Nicki wended her way across the living room, past the sofa with its new stains, ones I’d chosen to ignore during my cleaning spree. My aunt crunched on a crayon, yelped, and looked down at the red mess on the rug. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, Olivia.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I—everything’s a mess at the moment. I don’t mind.” I’d add it to the list of things I needed to clean or have cleaned. It was already extensive. I was on page twenty-seven of that particular litany.
“Everything’s a mess?” Uncle George asked. Ugh, it felt weird to call him that, even mentally. He’d never been around that much.
My dad had been way old when he’d had my brother, and even older when he’d had me and Nathan. Sixty years old at
my birth. My mom forty-five. They’d passed away within a few months of each other, and I firmly believed that my mom had followed him to the afterlife because she’d missed him too much to continue.
Their romance had been… June Carter and Johnny Cash-style. They’d been soul mates.
And they’d kept mostly to themselves.
That was probably part of the reason we’d hardly been in contact with Uncle George and Aunt Nicki.
I chose to ignore the comment from George and double-checked the lock on the door instead.
Nicki cooed at Penny then lifted her out of the playpen. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m your great-aunt Nicki.”
I bristled a little. I should’ve been happy they were here. And jealousy? Ridiculous. Penny was firmly under my care, and if relatives wanted to stop by and see her, that was fine. It was totally fine.
“How are you holding up, Olivia?” George asked and placed his sweaty palm on my shoulder.
I barely hid a grimace. My skin crawled. Damn me for choosing a sleeveless blouse today. “I’m fine. It’s been difficult without Mikey, but I’m fine, now. I’m surviving.”
“And Penny?” Nicki asked, holding the little girl on her hip, then tickling her tummy.
Miraculously, Penny giggled.
So, it was just me who irritated her then. Don’t. You don’t need to put pressure on yourself like that. Penny likes you. She’s just getting accustomed to new surroundings.
“She’s fine,” I said.
“That’s one fine too many,” Uncle George replied and finally slid his sweatiness from my shoulder. “And that’s exactly why we came to visit. When we heard you were granted custody, well, not to be hurtful here, Olivia, but we were a little concerned.”
“Concerned about what?”
Nicki bit her bottom lip and focused on Penny instead of on me.
“Concerned about what?” I asked, again.
“Just that you’d be in over your head,” George replied, with what he probably thought was an avuncular smile. It wasn’t. It made me rage on the inside.