Barely Breathing (Keep Breathing Book 1)

by Erica Marselas

  I'd had tried to move past her for two years. I went on dates and even tried to fuck them, hoping I could wash away the memories of River, but each time, it felt wrong. I would feel as if I was dishonoring my vows, even if she had, and I would kick them out before anything happened.

  My left hand is a hell of a lot stronger than my right now. At least, it was worth it in the end because I have her in my arms again. Where she belongs.

  After I had her for breakfast, I yanked her to the couch where she promptly curled into a little ball on my lap.

  For six months, this was what Saturdays were always like with my wife. We’d spend our mornings cuddling on the couch, watching ID channel reruns before I had to go to work at the tattoo parlor.

  This feels normal, even if it’s everything but.

  "Hey, you've drifted away again?" River's sweet voice, and her fingers brushing through my hair brings me back to now.

  "Sorry, I'm thinking about how to destroy your father with my bare hands."

  "I have it under control."

  "And I want in." Her mouth opens, and I cover it with my hand. "I want in," I demand. "He took my family's livelihood away, and he took you away from me. I want my revenge too. This isn't just your fight."

  She nods, and I remove my hand. “Alright. You need to talk to Sam. She’s the lead on everything I have going on."

  “What do you have so far?”

  “Not as much as we would like.” She sighs and looks up to the ceiling. “There is enough to get him some jail time, but more than likely he could weasel his way out of it. He’s covered his tracks well and has money stashed in enough places to make it look like the investments are covered if anyone comes looking to cash out. Harry is a bit sloppier though, and I think he’ll lead us to what we need. We just have to keep digging through the paperwork.” She rubs her forehead with the pads of her thumbs. “I wish I could get more hands on this, but I don’t trust anyone else at the company to do any extra digging and to hire anyone else is too suspicious without having Harry ask a million questions. It’s hard, but it’s not impossible. It’s the going through every financial paper, every investor, every account, and investment that’s exhausting. It’s been slow moving with it only being me and Sam. Well, mostly Sam.”

  “You have me now.”

  “And you.”

  "You can trust me, you know." I place my hand around the back of her neck, asking her to look at me. To trust me. She glances at me, and it’s easy to see she’s fighting every doubt and worry she has.

  "I know," she whispers. Her eyes dart down to the ground as she chews on her finger, clearly showing she doesn't yet, but she's giving me a full look into her plan, and I have to remind myself, that is a start.

  “Why haven’t you gotten in touch with the FBI yet? I’m sure they could help.”

  “I’m not ready yet. I’m worried my father or Harry will find out we're snooping around, and they’ll run. I just want to have everything in place and enough to bury them before I turn them over.”

  “I guess I can understand that.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. Their help would be great, but she’s right, the last thing we would want is for Jeff Graham to run and take all the money with him.

  “Good,” she snips and crosses her arms over her chest.

  "Now there's one bigger issue at hand," I continue, ignoring her little sassy attitude.

  "What's that?" she huffs, pushing out her pouty lips.

  "The idea of you going back to him doesn't sit well with me. The thought of him touching you." My temper flares at the memory of that asshole’s hands on her. I had gotten in touch with my friend, Dara, who works at the town hall. I’ve given her a few tattoos over the years, and she had a plus one, so I asked to join her. I had too many doubts running through my head after watching how the “couple” acted together in the conference room and then how River behaved with me in my office. Also, I needed to see how Harry operated because I wasn’t finding any dirt on the little weasel.

  Dara was the first to notice how Harry was handling River. That every time he touched her, she would cringe in pain. Then I saw it, his hands aggressively on her, and something inside me snapped.

  It's why I grabbed her in the hall. Though what I really wanted to do was throw her up against the wall, fuck her hard, so she could remember what she was missing. But at the same time, I wanted to shake her and ask how dumb she could be to leave me and then go to such a piece of shit. Then when she broke down, telling me she deserved what was happening to her, I came back to reality, seeing that my girl is in fact broken.

  She rolls her eyes. "Nothing is happening with me and Harry. I told you that. It's only a title. He hates me as much as I hate him."

  "Yeah, I got that vibe.” My jaw ticks. “But I'm not talking about touching in a sexual way." I roll up the sleeves of the shirt she's wearing, revealing the fingerprint bruises on her arms. Seeing them again, makes me even more tempted to return the favor to Harry. "These."

  "Oh." Her eyes dart away from me, ashamed. I don’t understand how she would let this asshole do this to her.

  "Oh? Rivs, why do you let him touch you like this?"

  "Last night you said I deserved it—" I clamp my hand over her mouth before she can finish.

  Smooth Jax. Now I feel even more like shit, letting my anger control me.

  "I was a dick, and I apologized right away. You don't, you know you don’t, so why? The girl I knew wouldn't put up with this." She shoves my hand away, and fire shoots from her eyes wiping away the sheepish look.

  "You’re kidding, right?” she shouts. “I was a punching bag for years at my dad's hands. For fuck sakes, what Harry does is a cakewalk, and I deal with it because I got myself into this. You were right when you said I deserved it. But I figure it's like an acting gig. This isn't real. What he does and says can't break me."

  "That sounds like a bunch of horseshit."

  "Well, that horseshit helps me survive. I'm not going to let these fucking demons win, no matter how much some days I’m tempted to let them. In six months, I’ll be on a beach, with my hair dyed and with a name most people can't pronounce."

  The thought of her leaving again is like a kick in the groin, but I keep the thought to myself. I’m still fighting with the reality of everything I learned. Trying to wipe away all the things that made me who I was the last two years. Especially when it came to her.

  “The thing is, Rivs, this is real. What if everything your working on backfires?”

  “It won’t,” she snaps and wiggles out of my lap. She stands and moves to the balcony window. She stares out into my crappy view of another apartment building as she wraps herself in her arms. She turns back to me her chest heaving as her breathing increases. “I get you're worried, but I had all of this under control before you came back. I wasn’t doing all this just for me. I’ve made sure no matter what, my dad will pay one way or another. Now can we just put this to rest for now?” She chokes on the last words and I’m on my feet moving to her.

  I know what she needs.

  I grab her right hand and lift it to my chest, placing it over her tattoo. Her eyes close as she takes several shuttering deep breaths. I comb her hair back with my hand and press a kiss to her forehead as she calms.

  “I missed this,” she mumbles softly.

  “I’m just glad it still helps you.” I lift her chin with my finger, making her look at me. “Listen, we can drop it. Just promise you’ll be open with me. We’re a team in this.”

  “That scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think we both trust each other fully yet. I’m afraid of hurting each other again.”

  She’s right, but we’ll get there as long as the end result is her father getting his dues.

  I lean down and plant my lips on hers. We can’t fix everything between us right now. There’s plenty between us that isn’t broken that we can start building on till we repair the others. “Let’s start working on so
me trust building practices. Like, can you trust me to give you an orgasm right now?”

  “That’s not trust.” A smile curves on her lips, and that’s something I would pay to keep on her face forever. “That’s called experience.”

  “Would you trust me not to drop you?”

  “What?” She doesn’t get the word all the way out before I’m picking her up around the waist and tossing her over my shoulder. She’s kicking her legs and laughing up a storm.

  “Jax. Stop.”

  “So, do you trust me?”

  “Hell no,” she giggles, and I slap her ass, making her squeal.

  “Now?”

  “Nope….” I slap her ass again and let her slip further over my shoulder. “Jax! Cut it out.”

  “Tell me you trust me not to drop you, and I'll let you down.”

  “I trust you not to drop me on my head. Now, let me up.”

  I swing her back and cradle her in my arms. She’s all red in the face and still laughing hysterically. “Better?”

  “Yeah,” she snorts.

  “Good. Because.” I send her flying to the couch and she lands on the cushions with a little bounce. Her chestnut hair splays over the sofa pillows and my dick strains in my boxers. I’ve made love to her and fucked her countless times on this couch. This same couch, where days before she left, we talked about starting a family. Where I finally convinced her on a timeframe to get her IUD removed so we could start trying. It was another red flag I ignored that something wasn’t right that day, but I attributed it to thinking she had gotten scared; I knew the idea of having kids had always freaked her out. She had worried about being a good mom, which is why it took lots of convincing on my part for us to start trying. I’ve always trusted her to be the best mother when it’s time.

  I pepper kisses all over her face, wordlessly telling her I’m sorry, then pull my shirt from her body and fuck her again.

  Sunday morning arrives, and my wife has gone missing from my room. I bolt out of bed and throw on a pair of boxers before darting into the living area. I hear her voice, but it’s faint, and I can’t make out what she is saying.

  “River?” I call out, moving towards my office.

  I find her standing in front of my desk wearing a pair of my blue Calvin Klein boxers and a shirt I gave her yesterday. Her hair is tossed in a messy bun, and she looks incredibly sexy. I’d be tempted to bend her over my desk and take her from behind if I wasn’t curious to know who she is whispering to this early in the morning.

  “Rivs?”

  Her back stiffens, and she turns around to face me. She smiles nervously and then she bites her bottom lip, her eyes glancing at her phone. “Um…I gotta go,” she mumbles to whoever is on the other line before pulling the phone away from her ear and hitting the end button. “Morning.”

  “Who was that?” I point to her phone with a no shit attitude.

  “Sam,” she says simply with a shrug.

  Sam? At this hour?

  I squint, trying to get a read on her to tell if she’s lying, and she rolls hers in reply. “You can look at my phone if you don’t believe me.” She offers me her phone, and I glance at it, but I don’t take it. I don’t need to.

  “I believe you.”

  “Hmm. Okay.” With another annoyed flutter of her eyes, she glides to the other side of the room where I have a couple of bookshelves lined up. She lays her phone down on one of the shelves and runs her fingers along the spines of the books I’ve collected throughout the years.

  “You just hung up when I walked in here. It’s fishy, but I believe you that it was Sam.” I do. Even if she didn’t offer to give up her phone. The eye roll told me everything. She’s a terrible liar when it comes to certain things, but when she rolls her eyes annoyed with me, it’s not a lie. River gets more timid, fidgety, and can’t even look at me when she’s hiding stuff. Or at least, old River did.

  “Alright.”

  Once her finger finishes gliding over my books, she comes across a silver picture frame. She picks it up and brushes her finger over the faces staring back at her, and slowly, a smile draws onto her beautiful face. “I can’t believe you actually have this.” She shakes her head, her eyes remaining on the old photo. “And it’s on display.”

  “Somethings you can’t ever get rid of. Especially ones that are a part of us,” I tell her as I slip in to stand beside her, and sling my arm around her shoulders. It’s one of my favorite pictures, taken on one of my favorite days; our wedding. I could never put it away as hard as I tried. Everything else of hers, I stored away, but that picture remained.

  We’re standing under the garden arch, sharing our first kiss as man and wife. A perfect moment captured in time before everything went crashing to our feet. "I think my ego tried to hate you more than my heart could. It’s why I couldn’t ever get rid of it. Or hide it away."

  "Wow.” She looks up at me with those big doe eyes of hers in awe of my words. “That's super poetic of you."

  "It's what my mom tells me. I didn't want to believe her before, but who would have known she was probably right.”.

  She places the frame down and leans up to kiss me. “If anything, I think this helps show me we can work as a team. And speaking of Sam, she will meet you on Monday morning. Then we’ll talk afterward in my office. That’s what I was chatting with her about. To give you full access to everything we’ve been working on. I didn’t want her to know that I was here with you. She’ll give me shit.”

  “Are you sure you can trust Sam? She did hire me after all.”

  “I trust Sam implicitly. My first week as CEO she met with me and was threatening to turn the company in. I was blown away by her balls, but I guess she thought I would be easier to break than my father. I asked her what evidence she had, and if she could pin anything to my father. Soon we started talking, and I told her what was happening. We’ve been working together since then. I had trusted Sam to pick the best of the best, but her mistake wasn’t checking the background on your mom’s maiden name.” She glares at me playfully as she tries to contain her smile. “Asshole.”

  “Hey, I did what I had to do. Liam knew who I was, but to be taken seriously in his company, I needed a different name.”

  “Anyway, I laid into her, but after seeing your credentials, I can see why she hired you. I always knew you’d be good at that computer stuff.” She reaches out and runs her hand down my bare chest.

  “Yeah, well, someone once said I was wasting my life coloring on people.” I chuckle. The words used to sting, but I made peace with it ever since I started working with Liam. Tattooing wasn’t wasting my life, but I was missing out on something I really wanted to do, and that was network securities.

  Her face pales, and her hand drops back to her side. “Oh my god. I did say that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I swear.”

  “Well, you were right. It was time I did something I wanted to do.”

  “I’m glad then.” She cups my face with her tiny hand, pulling me down to her. “I always knew you were amazing, and from the little I’ve seen you do for me, I’m glad to have you. Oh, and by the way, thanks for not fucking me over.”

  “Don’t worry, I really did plan to save the fucking over for your father.”

  After River leaves for the evening, I’m left feeling—empty. You could feel the facade that we were living in disintegrate, and reality set back in. We might still be legally married, but we had two years and a whole lot of baggage sitting between us that still has to be sorted.

  As much as I wanted her to stay despite all that, she didn’t have clothes with her, and I don’t think her walking into Dolson in my clothes would go over well.

  I settle into my office and open my laptop, thinking I can do some digging around while my mind is wired. Though the one place I could get the best information from is my father.

  My father and hers were friends all the way back in their high school days and my dad was the head accountant for Dolson Investments. The day t
he shit hit the fan was because my father didn’t want to live by Jeff’s bidding anymore. It destroyed him and everything he ever worked for.

  It’s clear that Jeff is a psychopath, and how my dad didn’t see that until he was framed is beyond me. Then again, I missed the signs the day she left me.

  Clearly, the ability to deceive the people closest to them is a skill that runs in the Graham bloodline since my dad and I both fell victim to it.

  My dad was broken for years. Turned to drinking and buried himself in his depression. I ended up having to take odd jobs to take care of the family and did what I could for Scarlet. Thankfully, there were still funds for her. When River’s mom died, she left my family a trust in my mother’s name that helped get us back on our feet. It gave my dad a little hope to put the bottle down and try again. It’s also the moment I realized I couldn’t hate all the Graham’s, especially a little fiery bombshell named River. That day she walked into the tattoo shop it was hard not to want to get under her skin. I had always loved driving her insane. It gave me a sick thrill when we were younger, and though I never admitted it to her, she was cute when she got all flustered, but I also knew then when she walked into my shop, like a little lost kitten, that I didn’t have that same underlying distaste for her anymore.

  Funny how history repeats itself.

  I pick up my cell and dial my dad’s number. He answers on the second ring, with the TV blaring in the background.

  “Yeah?” he yells. My head shakes. The old man never looks at his caller ID.

  “Hey, Dad,” I yell back, and he finally gets the hint to turn down the television. “Do you have a moment?”

  “Oh, hey, Jaxson. What’s going on? I feel like we haven’t talked in forever.”

  “I know, I’ve been busy. Listen, I was wondering if you could give me some information on Jeffery Graham? Anything that maybe I could dig further into.”

  “No. I’ve told you to stop digging into that shit. Let it go,” he growls, and I should’ve known this wasn’t going to go over well.