by Elise Faber
“Good,” Rob said, the word sounding like broken glass cutting its way up his throat.
“I don’t disagree with you,” she told him. “But it left me in a pickle. I wasn’t any use to the FBI anymore, my protection detail ran out, and I had no family alive left to take me.”
His breath caught.
She squeezed his arm, the strong muscles beneath his skin feeling like absolute steel. “The agent who found me took me in, adopted me.” Her lips turned up. “I became part of the Jacksons—a self-described nosy, pushy family who folded me into their crew and sheltered me under their respective wings, just as their father had in the hospital. In one day, I became a distant cousin whose parents died in a car accident and was adopted by Ben, rather than a damaged drug lord’s daughter who barely knew how to make a peanut butter sandwich, let alone how to be on her own in the world.”
She ran her fingers up and down the tanned skin of that forearm, tracing the occasional scar, feeling the slightly coarse hair against her palm. “My story, as outlandish as it is, has a happy ending. I got to be part of a good family, and my chosen career means I can take care of them like they once took care of me. It’s just . . .”
His hand traced up and down her arm, but he waited for her to get her thoughts together.
“They treated me like one of them. They loved me. But I’ve always kept this barrier between me and them, part of me thinking that they would eventually look at me and realize I wasn’t . . . worthy, I guess.” She sighed, avoided his gaze when he sucked in a breath. “I know that’s bullshit. Logically, I know that. But for many years after they adopted me, I did everything I could to test them, to test the bond between us. And it didn’t matter what I threw at them, that I refused to go to therapy when I moved in with them, and then only begrudgingly attended the sessions when they forced me to.” She made a face. “I certainly didn’t get nearly what I should have out of them. And they didn’t care that I fought them, that I kept them at arm’s length, refused to let them in.” Swallowing hard, she said, “They didn’t care that I left for L.A. as soon as I could, that I hardly returned home for years, that I slept with more people than I should have because I didn’t value my body, didn’t value myself after what had happened to me. They didn’t care about any of that. Instead, they were proud of me.”
She cleared her throat.
Rob laced his fingers with hers. “You survived. That is a big thing to be proud of.”
“That’s something Ben would say.” A slow breath. “And felt. Because they were so freaking proud when I landed the cheese commercial, even more so when I was in my first movie and the part got left on the editing room floor. They were proud of me for building a life, even though I wasn’t proud of myself. I just wish I’d had it in me to be proud of myself, too. But it didn’t matter. I did survive. I did make that life.” She forced a smile. “See? Happy ending. Not every kid in my situation gets to be with a family who loves her unconditionally.”
But her shame wasn’t so easy to shed. It had taken years for her to understand that she didn’t need to use sex to fill that void in her, to make her feel something, years to understand that all the random encounters with strangers—none of whom she’d ever let touch her back, to be so close to the thing that made her most vulnerable—were hurting her instead of making the past disappear.
Thankfully, she’d come out of that time without an STI, without an unplanned pregnancy, and with some measure of self-worth that had convinced her that fucking around wasn’t the way.
She’d taken a time out from intimacy, from sex, had given herself an opportunity to make it not about hurting herself.
Instead of trying to fill that abyss with unhealthy, harmful interactions, she’d refocused, redoubled her efforts on her career.
And she’d landed the role with Finn.
That was what she meant about the happy ending. She was lucky, and she knew it, and with that, she ran out of steam, her heart thudding, sweat prickling on her forehead.
She’d told him everything.
Now, would he make her biggest fear come true?
Would he know the truth, believe it, look closely, and would he leave? Oh, he might walk her down the hillside, drive her back to her rental because he was a good man, but he’d drop her off and never come back and—
“Soph,” he whispered hoarsely.
She managed to meet his gaze.
“Will you let me—” He broke off, reached for her. “Come here,” he growled, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping his arms tightly around her. “Just . . . please, just let me hold you.”
She didn’t fight being cuddled against that muscled chest, held by those strong arms. Because it was Rob, and it felt incredible to be so close to him, embraced so tightly, hugged like she was wonderful and precious and not fragile exactly, but like she was something valuable and cherished.
“Fuck, Sophie,” he said, burying his face in her neck.
Hot breath puffed on her throat, his pulse thrummed against her skin, and his hands were careful, but his hold was inescapable.
Good thing she didn’t want to escape.
Good thing she wanted this man to hold her forever.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” He released her enough to meet her eyes. “I want to murder your father, to kill the man—no, to fucking shred the man who thought that it was okay to buy you, to rape you, to hurt you, even though they’re dead already. I want—”
His words faltered, and he just buried his face against her, just held her tight, all over again.
It took a long time for his breathing to slow, for him to not hold her quite as tight.
Eventually, though, he straightened, loosened his grip, and leaned back. “I’m sure you’ve been told this before,” he said. “But it’s not your fault. None of it. What happened to you is fucking unforgivable, and”—his fingers came to her chin, clasped it lightly between pointer and thumb—“I am so fucking proud of you for surviving that, for somehow becoming a functional adult. I cannot believe how strong you are. It just . . . I am in absolute awe of your strength.”
Her pulse had long since slowed, an edgy sort of tension filling her, slowly freezing her heart, her limbs, her entire body until she felt like some sort of statue—granite like the boulder behind her.
But his words . . . his words made her feel.
“I don’t see myself that way,” she whispered. “I feel so weak all the time, so closed down and incomplete, like something was broken and I’ll never be normal again.”
“But something was broken,” he said, running his fingers through her hair. She loved when he did that, almost haphazardly caressing, only half paying attention as he gently untangled the long unruly locks. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just that something was stolen from you, and a life you thought was one thing turned out to be completely different. Your expectations were shattered and no matter how you tried to piece the shards of your life back together, it will never feel exactly the same again.” His hands moved to her arms, rubbing up and down lightly. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t build something better, something more.”
“Rob.” Her voice broke. “I haven’t even been able to talk about this before.”
“And you think that just because it took you a long time to take the first step that it’s not of worth?”
“I—” Well, put it that way. “No.”
He smiled. “Good,” he said, cupping her cheek. “Because as a person who just took a first step into sharing his own feelings, his own hurt—even though it cannot begin to compare with what you have been through—I can tell you that the first step is the absolute worst.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” A kiss to her lips—short, firm, dizzying, and wonderful.
“Does that mean the rest of it will be easy?” she asked when they broke apart.
He rested his forehead against hers, chuckled. “Fuck, no.”
Laughter bubbled up in her throat, and
she found herself throwing her arms around him, hugging him close. He returned the favor, and they stayed in that embrace, chuckling and holding on tight for a long time.
And somehow, after she had just exposed her deepest, darkest hurts, she was laughing.
On a cliffside.
With a wonderful man running his fingers through her hair.
Fifteen
The Great Debate
Rob
“You absolutely cannot be serious,” he said, sitting back in the chair on Sophie’s porch cradling his mug of tea and moving his gaze from the shoreline—in which he couldn’t see anything anyway—and turning it to the far more interesting woman next to him.
The delicate features of her face were partly shadowed in the moonlight, but she was somehow even more beautiful than he’d realized.
Steel tempered in fire.
She crossed her arms and glared back at him. “I am certainly serious. As thus, I can confidently say that Star Trek is far superior to Star Wars.”
“That is blasphemy.”
One brow lifted. “The Enterprise.”
“Is that supposed to be evidence for Star Trek’s superiority?”
She just shrugged.
“Because if it is, then I’ve misjudged you greatly.”
“Oh?” she asked archly, sipping from her mug of tea.
“Yes,” he said. “I only have to say Millennium Falcon to give you my far superior superiority.”
“It’s a junk heap.”
“It made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”
She snorted. “And Rey called it garbage.”
Shit. She had him there. “Still better than the Enterprise,” he muttered, but he wasn’t upset. Not in the least. It was fun to banter with her, especially over what nerdy stuff they enjoyed.
“Jean-Luc Picard,” she declared. “That is the single thing I need to say to win this argument.”
She had him there.
Except, “I preferred him in X-Men.”
“Professor X,” she said. “Yes, total BAMF.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Is that some new-fangled Hollywood phrase?”
“Prof—” She shook herself. “Oh, you mean BAMF?”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t heard it, but then again, aside from the things he nerded out about, he didn’t pay much attention to pop culture.
“No, it’s what all the cool kids say nowadays,” she told him. “BAMF stands for bad ass motherfucker.” A grin. “As in Jean-Luc Picard.”
“As in my Luke.”
She scoffed. “God, no. He’s too whiny for my tastes.”
He set down his mug, straightened in his seat.
Soph immediately rose to attention. “What?”
“Them be fighting words.” He rose, moved toward her.
“I—” She put her cup on the table, lifted her hands as though she were trying to placate him. “Now, no need to be hasty. Star Wars has plenty of good things going for it.” She hopped to her feet when he got within arm’s reach. “I even—oh!”
She squeaked when he scooped her up.
He ignored her protests and squirming. Instead, he tossed her over his shoulder and carried her into the house.
Rob wanted to head down the hall, to carry her into the bedroom and worship her like she deserved. But . . .
She deserved care and fun and teasing.
She deserved everything he’d had with Carmella—friendship and passion, laughter and kissing.
So, he veered left and carried her into the family room, plunking her onto the couch and tickling his fingers up under her ribs. “Take it back,” he demanded, though he couldn’t summon up any real force, not with how good it felt to be holding her so close.
She shrieked and batted at his hands. “Never! I will never take it back.”
Then she proceeded to find a ticklish spot of his, just on the left side of his torso, one that had him squirming just as much as her.
Which made him forget any real thought of the Star Wars vs Star Trek Battle Royale. Instead, he relished the feel of her in his arms, the warm press of her body to his, the laughter filling the air, the joy in her pretty gray-blue eyes.
Eventually, though, they broke apart, breaths mingling, his hands in the hair that he couldn’t stop playing with, hers on his shoulders, drawing him near.
“I’ll never—” she was saying then seemed to recognize how close they were because her lips parted, her breathing sped, and her body drifted even closer. A heartbeat later, her mouth found his.
And perfection.
Heat, blistering heat mixed with the gentle prick of her fingernails. Soft moans breathed from her mouth to his as she kissed him until his lungs screamed. His cock felt harder than steel, his control completely frayed and one caress away from snapping, from surging up like a rogue wave and sucking them both under.
Only then did he set her away from him and stand.
His fingers trembled, his pulse pounded, but he forced himself to walk out to the deck, gather up the mugs, and bring them to the sink.
Then took a few seconds to rinse them and set them on the drying rack.
Control somewhat restored, he returned to the couch, the wonderful woman pushing mounds of brown hair out of her face, her eyes heavy-lidded, her mouth deliciously swollen from their kisses.
And he found he couldn’t resist the temptation of her lips.
One more blistering kiss that obliterated that newfound control.
This time when he broke the embrace, cupping her cheek and studying those tempest blue-gray eyes for a heartbeat, Rob knew that control wasn’t the only thing obliterated.
He was.
Shorn down and regrown.
Reborn for this woman.
“Star Trek is still better,” she said, her breaths coming in rapid gusts, desire heavy in her gaze that was burning through him.
He laughed, even though his cock felt like it was going to break in half.
Because he knew, as he said goodbye, told her he’d see her the following day and forced his feet in the direction of the door, that he was the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
Because he’d found his soul mate.
Twice.
Now, he just had to convince Soph to let him keep her.
“Sundaes?” he asked as they were packing up their knitting materials.
It was after class the next night, and he’d worked all day on a shitty job. Literally, shitty since he’d been repairing a cracked sewer pipe that had come in on an emergency call that morning, forcing him to delay his scheduled job for that day.
Which meant he was now going to be working Saturday.
Which also meant that he needed to get around to hiring an assistant contractor who could help him with just these types of situations.
Especially, if he was going to proceed with his Operation Soph plan.
At some point, she would need to go do Hollywood things—go shoot a movie or film some TV segment, but perhaps he could convince her to take a page out of Finn’s book and make her home base here in Stoneybrook.
Here . . . with him.
For now, though, he just needed the woman to agree to sundaes.
She’d been jumpy from the moment she’d seen him in the parking lot. He’d been rushed, hair still damp from his shower, dumbass knitting bag glittering in his hand as he hurried to Misty’s shop.
But there she’d been.
Walking with her head down as she moved toward the store.
And everything inside him had just . . . settled.
The crazed day had fallen away, the rushing, the irritation.
Because she was there.
Now, after most of the class, including Soph he was proud to say, had completed their second panel with the slightly more complicated stitch, she still wasn’t looking at him, even though she’d accepted his help during the session with nary a complaint.
“Um,” she murmured, eyes darting to something over his shoul
der.
His heart sank, and he took her tote bag—seeing she must have repaired the strap—lifting it off her arm and setting it on the table, then drawing her to the side.
She brushed her fingers over a display of yellow yarn, nibbling at the corner of her mouth, still not looking at him.
His heart skipped, adding to the sinking.
Instead, it plummeted straight down to his toes, crawled under his boots, attempting to pummel itself for good measure. “Did I do something?” he asked, covering her hand where her thumb was rubbing back and forth across that yarn. “Did I hurt you?”
Her eyes finally found his. “Yes.”
Fuck.
He staggered back a step.
She might as well have stabbed him in the heart, or he supposed he had done that himself. Because if he’d hurt her—
“You’ve made it impossible for me to think of anything except you,” she whispered, taking his hand, drawing him closer when he would have retreated. “I have this ache inside me that only seems to be assuaged by you.”
“Oh.”
The response not remotely charming, not even in the realm of charming, but Rob was alternating between panic and relief, and he was too fucking out of practice with the female psyche.
“So, yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I want to go to get sundaes with you.”
“You do?”
She stepped close, ran her finger down his chest. “And yes, afterward, I want to invite you back to my place.” A smile. “Or go to yours.”