Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  His thumb drew over every arch and detail as if he were committing them to memory. “I’m going to kiss you now, Raquel.”

  My consent was a feeble nod, because regardless of what words poured from my mouth, my heart wanted the catastrophe that would ensue, despite knowing full well that I was about to undo all Rosa’s efforts without regard. I was about to destroy all of my progress with one fatal kiss.

  He slanted his mouth over mine, featherlight and familiar. A warmth suffused my insides at the reconnection, the void from his absence being filled. It was an instinct that had my arms twining around his waist, holding him close. We remained there, fastened by the mouth, clinging to one another in an unspoken fear that one of us would disappear.

  And then I did the unthinkable.

  I parted my lips for him.

  Why the fuck did I open my mouth? Why did I give him this invitation? He didn’t hesitate; his deft tongue met mine and his fingers slid into my damp hair, cradling the back of my head, drawing me closer.

  The groan escaped me.

  I was so unbelievably fucked.

  My arms moved to curl around the strong curve of his shoulders, my legs swaying backward as I drew him in. He held me tightly, his mouth conjoined to mine. He had me against the door, his groin hot and hard against my ribcage.

  “I miss you,” he said against my mouth. “I miss you so fucking much that sometimes I think death would be easier.”

  Tears sprung to my eyes, the back of my lids burning. I forbid myself from saying it, but my tongue escaped me. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  “I love you, Hemingway. I love you so much and I wish I could change it. It would be so much easier to hate you, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  Sean’s confession burned as it resounded through me.

  “Do you love me, too?” His question came out sounding like a plea. “Or did you really forget about me already?”

  “I wish I could,” I whispered.

  He stiffened against me. “Wish you could what?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to clarify. The tears crashed through the safety net of my lashes, coasting down my cheeks. He thumbed them away, our eyes falling shut when he leaned his forehead against mine, neither one of us bothered that the proximity blurred our vision. He pressed his lips against the tip of my nose, his body trembling against mine.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured, but his voice said it was anything but.

  I didn’t want him to see me this way. I didn’t want everything I’d done until this moment to come apart, but it was. It unraveled like a cinched rope, a house of cards that collapsed alongside my willpower.

  “Why did you have to come here?” I cried, slamming my palm against his chest. “Why?”

  He cupped my hand with his big palm, keeping it pinned to him. “I don’t know how to stay away from you. I tried.” His voice broke, “You think thirty-one-hundred miles is going to make a difference? You are my magnet. The unexplainable pull to you will always exist, no matter where you are.”

  “I can’t be with you. I don’t trust you, Sean. You tricked me into believing in fairytales, and I can’t see past that. This was never kismet.”

  At that admission, he sagged against me. “Tell me you’ll try to look past it,” he hoarsely said, a small sound of agony escaping him. I knew that sound better than anyone. It was the encumbered sound that came when the ground beneath your feet was about to fissure and the earth was going to swallow you whole again, right after you had finished clawing yourself out of its clutches to begin with. “If you can learn to forgive me, we can make this work—I know we can.”

  “Sean, please,” I begged, peeling my fist out of his grip. I caged his face in my palms, trying to ignore how we fit together like two puzzle pieces, fighting the security the scruff of his beard against my palms created. I leveled his broken stare on mine. “Please don’t make this harder. Let me go.”

  “I fucking want to, and I can’t.” He pressed his lips firmly against my own. I felt his hot tears against my cheeks, the salt from our tears pooling against our locked lips, the brine living on our tongues. “All I want is to hate you so badly. Damn you.”

  He drew me closer to him, like he could meld our bodies together in a suffusion of limbs and blood and energy. “I can’t bring myself to hate you, because you made me realize that I’ve been asleep all these years. I’m awake now, Hemingway. And I don’t want to close my eyes if you’re going to disappear when I open them again.”

  “I can’t be that person for you, Sean. I can’t.”

  “You can. It’s just that you won’t,” he uttered, as if pronouncing a death sentence. A coup de grâce, a punishing blow. “So, say that instead.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to. I broke down against his chest, my cry ripping from beneath my ribcage. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I fucking love you, and beyond all that hurt and anger that blinds you and drives your stubbornness, you love me, too.”

  God, I did. I loved him so much that I would sooner choose death over having to imagine a world where he didn’t exist in it.

  But pride was a precarious thing, and to go back on my word now would be a slight against me. The fear of the unknown would always exist in our relationship like an interloper. The combination of the three would act like a fast-spreading cancer on any relationship. It just wouldn’t survive.

  “You’re making this so much harder.”

  “Good,” he grunted. “Because my life has been hell since you left.” He slid his fingers under my chin, tilting my head upward. His eyes locked onto mine, searching for the truth. “You can’t accept my proposal, and I won’t accept not being with you.”

  “You gotta go.” I broke our connection, pushing against his chest, staring at where my hands fastened. “Just go.”

  “Look at me and say that,” he whispered.

  My mind screamed at me, but I couldn’t do it.

  “C’mon, Raquel. You’re trying to convince me you don’t love me, that you don’t want to be with me, so look me in the eye and say it.”

  “Get out.” My blood was a churning stream in my veins, pumping hard and furious until the sound in my ears was nothing more than a buzz of deafening white noise.

  “Do it,” he taunted. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Get out.” I struggled to think straight. Meeting his eyes would be a mistake unlike any other. I didn’t want to see what lived in the depths of his dark pools.

  “You don’t love me? Tell me you don’t love me. Own it,” he growled, the timbre rattling behind the cage of his chest. “Tell me to my face you don’t love me. Do—”

  What came next happened so fast, I had no time to consider the ramification of my actions. I watched in slow motion as my hand cut through the air like an out-of-body experience and my open palm clapped across his cheek. The slap resounded in the room, an ache setting off in my palm. Horror swam through me as my gaze affixed to my hand, now suspended in the air between us.

  My fingers curled into my palm as I clutched the appendaged weapon against my chest.

  Did I really just hit him? There was no further evidence required to prove that this was wrong. This thing between us was toxic; it brought out the worst in us. It turned us into people we weren’t and had right from the beginning.

  Now I hit him, and that made me no better than my ma. I was exactly who I had been trying to avoid becoming. Didn’t he see that? Didn’t he realize we were no good for each other?

  My cheeks flushed crimson; heat licked up my spine. “I’m sorry.” My bottom lip trembled until I bit down to still it. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  His jaw constricted, and his concentration seemed to be focused on the sliding door in the back of the room. “Did that make you feel better?”

  Tears burned the back of my lids. “Please leave.”

  Sean didn’t move, and I had had enough. I felt the last thread of my rationale give way, unleashing unbrid
led rage.

  Realization dawned on me. He wouldn’t stop until he broke me all over again. “Get the fuck out!” I screamed, shoving him. I barely budged him. In my anger, I lunged forward to strike him again with full awareness this time, but he thwarted me. He caught my hand, pulling me into him until his biceps circled around my upper body, pinning me against him. “Get out, get out, get out!” I repeated. I didn’t believe myself any more than he did, my breathless sob betraying me.

  His mouth found the shell of my ear, making my skin break out into goosebumps. “I fucked up. I lied to you. I deserve it all, but you don’t. Let me spend the rest of my life making it up to you, okay, Raquel? Let me do that.”

  “I don’t want fuck all from you.” I pushed against him, but he tightened his vise hold on me. I felt the tip of his nose in my hair, felt his deep and ragged pulls of breath while I wrestled against him. “I don’t want you; I don’t need you. Do you hear me? I don’t need anyone.”

  Sean pulled back, looking down on me. “You need me,” he said, his breath fanning my face. “You need me like your next breath, and that scares the hell out of you. You don’t trust me not to hurt you again, I get it. Maybe I don’t deserve you, and that makes me a selfish bastard, but you know something?”

  I stilled, oxygen catching in my chest. He uncurled my palm and placed the ring in the center before forcing my fingers to close around it. “I will spend the rest of my life chasing you. Waiting for you to give me the chance to make it right, Raquel. Maybe it’s not today, maybe it won’t be tomorrow or next week. Maybe it won’t even be in this lifetime, but I’ll wait.”

  He shook against me as though collecting himself. “So, you hold on to that ring.” His voice cracked, lips brushing against my cheek. “You hold on to it until you change your mind. I’ll be here, okay?” There was something finite in his words that left me enervated.

  My body trembled in his grasp, my determination to keep him at bay leaving me. I was a brokenhearted puddle of boneless limbs in his arms, my forehead pressed against his shoulder.

  “I’m not going to change my mind. We’re bad for each other, don’t you see that? We’ve been bad for each other all along.”

  “Don’t say that. You might.”

  I heard the desperation in his voice, setting off an ache that robbed me of all cognizant thought. The way he said it brooked no argument, and despite my need to not foster false hope, it rendered me speechless.

  “Sean,” I began once I found my voice.

  “Raquel, don’t.” I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to shatter any further, but I was wrong. Dejection left him clenching his jaw, his eyes glossing though his lids worked to bat away the tears that shone in the surface.

  Sean cleared his throat three times, then made a brief sniffle. When he released me, I stepped away from him, planting myself against a wall a few feet away. He straightened, running his hands through his hair as if he was self-soothing, then drove the heels of his palms into his eyes. I watched him as he stood in front of the floor-length mirror by the bathroom door. He ignored my prying and focused on the red rims of his eyes when he lowered his hands to his flanks.

  “I’m going to go.”

  The notion of him doing the very thing I had repeatedly demanded he do had panic kicking me into overdrive. I reached for his wrist, my fingers curling around the thick circumference to still him.

  Sean glared at me. The husk of the man I’d destroyed evaporated right before my very eyes. What slid into its place was my creation.

  His heartbreak.

  His revenge.

  He shook off my hold on his wrist. “This is what you wanted, right? For me to go, so I’m going.”

  I reached for his hand once more. “Stay.”

  Sean snapped his arm back. “No.” He chuckled with no humor. “You don’t get to tear me down and then ask me to stay. This isn’t a fucking game, Raquel. You want to strip away my dignity and then bask in it. You can’t jerk me around like I’m a dog on a fucking leash.”

  “Sean.” This time I reached for his hand with both of mine, pulling him away from the door. Maybe I didn’t mean any of those things I said to him. Maybe it was anger impairing my judgement. Maybe we did have a fighting chance, and we needed to break again, together this time, to create something new with those shattered bits. “I need to figure out what I want. I just need time to think.”

  That was the wrong thing to say to him. His expression became murderous. “You should have thought about that before I fucking fell in love with you,” he snarled, stabbing the air with his pointed finger.

  My neck jerked. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” I volleyed back.

  The loud thump of the base of his fist colliding with the wall stilled me. I’d never seen such a display of aggression from him. He rested his forehead against his sleeved forearm, his balled fist still trained against the wall. His trembling shoulders kept me rooted in place.

  No, my judgement was sound. We excelled at hurting one another. We were wrong for each other. The proof of it existed in this room. I’d been right to leave, and he’d been mistaken to come.

  “Are you happy now?” he choked out. “You broke me, too. You did this. I’m not a guy who flies across the country to propose to a woman who won’t accept. You made me into this unrecognizable person who I hate.” Every word from his mouth dripped with venom, its poison leaking into my veins.

  His self-abhorrence was suffocating, and it was all my fault.

  “I-I can’t accept your proposal right now.” It was all I could think to say. I should have let him leave the room when he tried. Asking him to stay had been a poor choice.

  “Fuck you,” he spat, pushing off the wall. He was red in the face as he descended upon me, the glassy stillness of the tears in his eyes evaporating. My legs jerked me away backward, but his eyes never left mine. The man who had been professing his love had gone. All that remained was his rage.

  “This was never about you marrying me, moving in with me, loving me. This was about you. The entire fucking time.”

  My ass collided into the credenza, the flat-screen television upon it teetering behind me. I didn’t have time to react.

  “It was always about you. Everything has always been about you.” His hips caged me against the stand, his hands bracing against the hunk of particleboard.

  “Look at me.” Sean hooked his fingers under my chin, fastening my stare on his. I tried to look away, but his grip tightened. “Don’t hide now, Raquel. Am I to your satisfaction?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.” But some part of me had always known I would.

  “You’re so fucking full of shit that I have no idea how you’re not choking on it.”

  I reached for his hand, and he offered no resistance when I unglued it from my chin.

  “You know what the worst part is?” He drew in a sharp breath, his hands planting on either side of me. “I should despise you, especially right now, and I still can’t seem to bring myself to.” He leaned forward, brushing his lips across my temple. “How fucked up is that?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “You want to punish me for all the things you did. You want someone to blame, and I’m the poor fucking bastard who got caught up in the crossfire.”

  My voice returned. “I told you this wouldn’t work.” I flattened my palms against his chest. “I told you—”

  Sean interrupted me by slamming his mouth against mine in a bruising kiss, his fingers fisting my hair, holding me in place. There was no permission about the kiss. He was through with asking, and I was done with arguing. My greedy mouth complied before my brain could reconcile what I was doing. Drunk heat slammed into me when he pulled the knot of my sash free, his hand parting the folds of my robe. A burst of cold air from the window air conditioning unit hit my skin, pebbling it into painful goosebumps as he slid the robe from my shoulders. Hooking his hand under my thighs, he hoisted my weight up on the credenza, the stand creaking a protest
at my addition.

  With his mouth still affixed to mine, I worked at his belt, jerking the leather free from his waist. Sean ran his curious index finger along my seam, a joyless laugh sliding out of him that made me shiver.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised you’re this turned on.” He pinned me under his stare. “Tearing people down always got you off, didn’t it?”

  “I never—”

  He pulled me closer, stealing the words from my mouth. “Spare me your self-righteous speech, Raquel. We can just keep this to fucking. We always got that part right, didn’t we?”

  My tears came hot and steady, shame blanketing me as the rhetorical question settled in the recesses of my mind. I wanted this, so why did it hurt so badly?

  I barely recognized the shell of a man who was touching me, the tenderness gone from his caresses. How had things gotten so bad, so fast? How had we both fallen without warning, with no chance of resurfacing for air? We lost ourselves to the merciless tide that pulled us both further and further out to sea until the undertow claimed us, leaving us with nothing but water in our lungs.

  And now we were drowning in each other’s sins.

  I didn’t want to be weak; I couldn’t afford it anymore. I sucked back the last sob I promised myself Sean would ever get from me.

  With a renewed focus, I pinned him under my stare. “What are you waiting for then, Slim?” I parted my legs roughly. “Fuck me already.”

  He laughed at the brazen display, the sardonic smile not reaching his eyes. I barely noticed the scratchy material of the itchy duvet when he picked me up from the credenza and laid me flat on the bed, my fingers curling into the stiff material as anticipation kicked off behind my chest.

  Sean didn’t waste time with his pants, sliding them over the curve of his ass and halfway down his thighs. He was on top of me within a beat of a second, his hand sandwiched between us, guiding the tip of his cock inside me.

  There was no sigh of relief at the invasion as he pushed into me with a hiss escaping through his clenched teeth. Pain glistened in his gaze as he watched me absorb and rock under each frantic jerk of his hips, one arm propped on the bed, his free hand gripped around my waist.