Glancing his way only for a moment, I quickly begin to make my way into the master bedroom, attempting to escape a conversation I know needs to take place, but one I am not yet ready to have. I hear the beer bottle hit the wood on the kitchen table, listen to his footsteps cross the floor after me and hear him make it into the room mere seconds before he is behind me and closing the door.
I turn once I have crossed the room and put some distance between us. “Rose,” his voice is low, just like it was on the front steps a few minutes ago. His face is full of fear, heartache, as he begins to take a few steps towards me, and I stiffen.
You know what comes next, what always comes next. You think this time will be any different?
I close my eyes again and shake my head. When I open them Justin notices. He always notices, and I know it will only be a matter of time before he realizes what I have known these past few months. That it is no use. That I am not free. That I will never be, even if I tried to fool myself that he could maybe by some grace of God help me.
“Don’t do this.” His voice is low, begging, as he takes a couple more steps in my direction.
“Do what?” My defenses kick in although my mind knows exactly what he is saying.
“Shut me out. Shut everyone out. When all we want to do is help. But we can’t help if you…”
I laugh nervously and try and push past him. “I’m not shutting everyone out, just a choice few.” But he grabs my wrist as I walk past and pushes me back up against the wall.
My mouth falls open at his use of force and I look in his eyes confused. See. What did I tell you? It always comes next. He doesn’t speak, but just holds me still and refuses to let me go.
“Don’t do this,” I beg as my voice breaks and my insides quake with memories I haven’t thought of in so long.
“Do what?” He questions, repeating my line back to me as his eyes dance over my face and I see him completely at a loss for what I am pleading for. There is no hate, no evil in his eyes. Just love. “I didn’t do this Rose.” I hear him whisper and God, my heart knows he is right although I can’t help the way I’ve been putting up a damn guard and shutting him out. Needing someone, something else to kick when I am down instead of myself. But hell if the voices are proof that isn’t entirely true. “All I want, all I’ve ever wanted,” he begins to say, “is to keep you and those two kids safe. I promised you we’d get him back and we will.”
I close my eyes and shake my head a few times as tears threaten. He tightens his grip on my wrist and grabs out, holding my chin in place with his free hand. “Look at me Rose.” He demands, and I wait. Draw out time. Need my own space on my side of this wall between us for just a few seconds longer before I obey. Because I always will, always have. And that is the scariest part. “Look at me.”
Slowly my eyes drift open and catch his in the darkness of the room. “We’re going to bring Liam home. And when we do, this wall you’re building, it won’t be enough to push me away.” He releases my chin as his hand drops, slowly falling down the center of my chest before he takes a step closer and forces me tighter against the wall. He roughly palms my breast in his hand, making me forget about my fight, forget about everything for a brief moment, before he reaches around me and grabs me off the wall forcing me into his embrace. “It never will, Sunshine. I’ll always find your light. Always come back to you, and always bring you back where you belong.”
“And where is that,” I groan, desire taking over as he pulls me further into the room and walks with me towards the bed.
“Right here,” he whispers, as his face lowers to my neck and he grabs my ass forcing my lower stomach against his growing length. “With me.” He growls, as my head falls back and his lips, his tongue, his teeth continue to fall down the center of my chest. The back of my legs hit the bed behind me and he lets go as I effortlessly fall against the sheets. “Forever, Sunshine.”
The voices, the thoughts, the memories and current feelings of fear leave me for a moment as I stare up in his eyes and find myself smile. “Is that so?” I tease, feeling some of the weight lift off us and letting myself drown in the way we were before all of this happened.
He just nods his head as his hands fall to his belt and he begins taking off his jeans. My face bolts to the door, to the outside world, Erica, Olivia and everything that we should be concerned about instead. Looking back, he shakes his head at me and smiles. “Right now,” he says, kicking his jeans to the floor and pulling his shirt over his head. “It is just you, and me.” He climbs atop my body and I bite my lower lip knowing I need this, he needs this. We haven’t been together since the morning of the abduction. Our connection has been overshadowed by everything that has happened and if we are going to get through this, if it is really going to be OK, we need this. I know we do.
The only way to fight anything in life is when we are joined together. We can’t move forward if we lose each other.
He parts my thighs before raising my dress over my head. Throwing it to the floor, he trails kisses down the center of my body before reaching my center and greedily sucking my clit in his mouth through the lace of my panties, wasting no time in getting what he wants and giving me what I need. I let out a moan before I feel him pull the fabric aside and plunge two fingers inside me. I gasp, but his hand comes up and covers my mouth as his warm chuckle fills the room.
“How I do love the sexy sounds you make, Rose,” he whispers, before licking up my slit. “But you’ll have to be a little quieter. Remember, this is a heaven only we share Sunshine.” He retracks his fingers from inside me before licking up my center one more time. He begins to rise and I look down at the mischievous look in his eyes seconds before the lace fabric between my legs is ripped and I have to fight myself from releasing another loud noise of pleasure into the room.
Backing away, I see him pull out protection and roll it on his length before coming back and positioning himself between my thighs. My heart hurts, stings a little, because we didn’t use protection before and I worry why he finds the need to do so tonight.
Because he doesn’t want forever. He only wants now. He’ll help you find Liam, out of duty, before he leaves. Or before he finds satisfaction, happiness, somewhere else. Something you’ve never been able to give. Not before. And definitely not fucking now.
I close my eyes once again as the voices take over before I feel his body press tighter against mine and feel him breach my entrance. “Look at me Rose.” And this time I do, instantly, needing to feel that hope, that peace I’ve been avoiding. The feelings he always gives me. “Always have. Always will.” He whispers, a line from the first night we were together, as he slowly pushes inside me. I wrap my legs around his middle and release a low groan of the utmost pleasure when he pushes himself all the way into my heat.
“Make love to me, Justin,” I whisper, as his hips start to move and he thrusts, slow, steady, forcibly inside me. “Take away my darkness.”
His eyes look at me confused as his face hovers above mine. But he doesn’t respond, he doesn’t say a word. Just holds my stare for a few moments before his head lowers, he takes my lips in his and rocks us towards a heaven that will only ever be ours, forever.
Rose
Two years ago
Totally not fucking happening right now, I think as Liam cries in the backseat of the car. I know I should move. I know I should press on the gas and get the hell out of here. But I can’t. Frozen. Numb. I stare at the scene across the street and feel the bile rise up in the pit of my stomach.
Michael. With another woman. Kissing. Fondling. Groping each other in fucking public with no care who the hell sees. In broad daylight!
What the actual fuck?
I take out my phone and dial his number again. It rings. Once. Twice. Before I see the bastard pull it from his pocket, shake his head at the girl in front of him and then shove it back where it came from. The fucking prick!
I didn’t want to believe it. I told Erica she had to be wrong.
Michael wouldn’t cheat on me. He couldn’t. We had been high school sweethearts. He was my everything. Up until the exact second I found out he wasn’t!
Like when I came across a note in his pants pocket with a number written on it a few months back. Or when he started working longer hours at the fire station, even though he had just returned home from another three month tour. Or when I found lipstick on his damn collar yesterday when I went to do another load of laundry, my hands started shaking and I realized Erica may be right. Because shit, it might have been some time since I have worn lipstick, but hell if I have ever picked out a fuchsia pink shade only good for one type of woman, a damn whore!
Liam begins to settle in the seat behind me. His crying easing as I hear him find his pacifier and hear the sounds of him snuggling his face tighter into his blanket.
I should move. I should go. But like a stunned scorned wife I continue to stare at them across the street as tears threaten the back of my eyes and my hands shake as I grip the steering wheel.
“It’s a guy’s number at work,” I remember Michael saying when I found the paper in his pocket. “We had our hands dirty working on an engine, so the receptionist wrote it down for me. Shit, I fucking promise Rosie.”
Or…
“They need me to work tomorrow,” I remember his voice as it came through the phone the first time he started working extra nights at the station. “I told them I needed to be home with you. I leave again in a few days, but they promised extra pay and I want to make sure you and Liam are taken care of.”
By the time the extra check was supposed to hit our account he was gone again, overseas, with minimal service and we never did discuss just what happened to the extra money when he got back.
Or…
“I must have spilled something,” he said, last night when I held the shirt up for him to see after he got home, four hours later than usual and then had the nerve to tell me he had to report again the next day to work for Chief Case. “Lipstick? God, Rosie. You need to get out more. That isn’t lipstick. All this time at home is making you damn crazy. Maybe you should get a job. Fucking contribute too, so I am not the only one bringing in a damn paycheck.”
I still remember the way my heart hurt as I lay there and let his words eat me alive while he turned his back and began to snore next to me. Not a care in the world, and definitely not one about me, or Liam, or the future.
One quick call to the Chief this morning and I knew. Hopping in the car I made the hour and a half drive to a few towns over where Erica moved a while back and waited.
“He always meets her on the corner of Main and Walnut,” I remember her saying. “I swear it is him, Rose. I know I could be wrong, but I am 99 percent sure it’s Michael. He wears his hat low and they always meet up quick before running off towards the alley, his car, hell I don’t know. But you have to trust me.”
Trust. I was supposed to trust the man in front of me. The man that I promised my life to. Liam’s life to, when I became pregnant and then gave birth to his son! The fire inside me burns as I watch him look over his shoulder, scan the street and then pull her off the damn wall he has her pushed up against and hurry along his way. Down the fucking alley. To his damn car I circled around and saw before parking across the street. And far away from ever letting me trust him again.
I don’t even look over my shoulder as I pull away from the curb and hear a loud honk from a car behind me. Running a red light, I feel myself dazed as I speed my way across town. Liam has finally fallen asleep as I look in the rear view mirror and take in his peaceful face and then, finally, let myself fall apart for the almost two hour drive home.
Rose
The next day
“I wasn’t supposed to report for two weeks but they called and pushed it up,” I hear Michael say over the noise of the shower. Liam is down for his afternoon nap and my husband only pulled himself home an hour ago from “working all night at the station.”
I sit on the toilet. My hand nervously playing with the hand towel from the counter. “When will you be back?” I hear myself say over the beating of the water. I raise my head and will the tears back. The ones that fell all night long as I lay in bed alone and knew where he was.
With her. Away from me. From his family. And not caring about anything but himself.
“Remember, it’s twelve months.” I hear him say as he shuts off the shower. The door opens and more steam billows into the space.
Well at least he comes home and washes her off of him first thing before pretending to have a life with me. I know it is a morbid thought, but hell I am grasping at straws here and I still don’t know if I should tell him that I saw. That I know. That what we have, all we have built, is a fucking joke.
He wraps a towel around his waist and walks to the sink. My gaze falls low. To the half hard length I can make out underneath the terry cloth fabric and I scowl before I bite my bottom lip and wonder just how the hell he can still be hard after a night with her.
“See something you want, Rosie?” He has the audacity to tease, as my eyes raise and lock with his. I swallow over a lump in my throat and rise to make my way out of the bathroom and back into our room.
“Not hardly,” I whisper, but he hears it and catches me, flinging me back around to meet his stare.
“You know, if I didn’t know what you liked, a man fucking taking charge, I would think you meant what you said,” his breath feathers across my lips making me sick. How can this man that promised me forever be standing before me now and pretending, playing a damn part, acting like what has been happening didn’t really happen?
I think about not saying that I know where he has been again for all of two seconds before he pushes me up against a wall and I feel more hatred for him than I ever have before. “I know, Michael.”
He cocks his head to the side and stares at me. “Know what?”
“Her!” I yell, stepping into him and catching the way his face falters slightly before he masks it again. “Your late nights, extra shifts. Notes. Lipstick!”
He walks away from me and shakes his head before looking back in my eyes with an annoyed expression. “Here we fucking go again.” He strides into our bedroom and I follow.
“And once again, you’re fucking denying it!” I yell louder, before he whips around and motions for me to be quiet because of Liam. But hell, I don’t care if I wake our son. I don’t care if he screams and forces the bastard in front of me to run, like he always fucking does, away from us. Away from responsibility. Away from it all and back into the arms of his fucking whore.
“I’m not denying anything,” he says, as he flings the towel off his hips and starts to walk back towards me. I steal a glance low, I can’t help myself, before looking back up in his eyes and seeing a twisted humor there. “I’m not cheating on you, Rosie.”
“I saw you, Michael.” That causes him to stop walking towards me for a moment, before he shakes his head and continues. “I saw.” My voice is a shaky mess as I try and stand my ground between us.
“Bull shit,” he grates out as he takes a couple more steps towards me and I am forced up against a wall. “You saw nothing.” He demands as he stares into my eyes.
I shake my head and close my eyes, but he cups my chin in his hand and I force them back open as fear rises inside me. “I know what I saw,” I whisper, trying to be assertive. Trying to make him come clean. But he cocks his head to the side and glares at me.
“Just like your fucking mother,” he whispers and I feel the pit of my stomach turn at his words. “You going crazy on me, Rosie,” he says, not a question but a statement of fact, as his face comes closer and I turn mine to the side before he forces it back painfully against the wall and makes me look in his eyes. “Your father warned me about this shit. Told me Fuller women, they’ll turn on you in a damn second. It’s no wonder he locked her up in that asylum and then took off, never wanting anything to do with you and making me have to take care of what was his for the rest of my fu
cking life!”
I shake my head and close my eyes again, but he forces my head back against the wall and I gasp from the pain as it hits the wood before my eyes open again frantically. “You saw nothing,” he whispers, before glaring in my eyes and releasing me with a forceful push. He strides across the room, back to his dresser, and I fight the urge to drop to my knees and cry. Let it all out. The hurt. The pain. The memories his words dragged up.
My mother was not fucking crazy.
But even as I focus on that, even as I try and keep myself present to continue to hate him, denial sets in, a want to believe him if only to take away some of the sting of rejection and I find myself wondering if maybe he’s right. Maybe that wasn’t him. But the truth, the facts I am trying hard to suppress fight with me as I try and push them away and I force myself off the wall and into the room. “What about another child?” I hear myself say, changing the subject and making him look up at me startled. I have no damn clue where that came from. Maybe a cheap attempt at getting him to come clean by pestering him for something I know he doesn’t want to give me. “You said we’d try. You know I get lonely when you are gone. We’ve only tried a few times since you have been back and I…”
He laughs as he turns completely to face me and palms his length in his hand. “You’re telling me you want this, Rosie. Shit a few seconds ago you were accusing me of cheating. Telling me ‘not hardly.’ Fuck you’re crazy, aren’t you?”
I try and stop the whiplash. The back and forth and the way he drives me almost insane with the way he can play my mind and make me feel like I am totally losing it.
“I want another child!” I demand as I take a step towards him, standing my ground and not letting him control me, my mind, what I know to absolutely be true. “Something you are not giving me.”
“Shit, I work my ass off to give you the damn world, Rose! I put my fucking life on the line, and it still isn’t enough?” He takes a step towards me and I watch as he smiles. A genuine smile. One that reminds me of the beginning, when we first met, and my heart softens slightly at the sight of it.
Awakening Page 3