Loved Either Way, page 18
“That must have been scary.”
Lucas wet his lips, laughing a sad note. “Fucking terrible. It was terrible. But he got a sponsor and worked the Narcotics Anonymous program after that, and he found the gym, so I got him into school again because it seemed like he found a real passion in that too … things have been good. I really—really—thought things were good.”
The biggest lie of all.
Clearly.
Delaney, who had stayed mostly quiet during the duration of his jumbled story that jumped back and forth, seemed to piece something important together that he had yet to fully explain. “You said he started wearing sunglasses and long sleeves, or something?”
God.
Why did his chest have to hurt so much?
Couldn’t he just breathe?
Lucas leaned back in the chair to stare up at the ceiling. “In every picture he posted for the last two months, actually. I tried to check his place when the paramedics were trying the Narcan on him, but I was just panicking because I couldn’t stand there and watch them, so I couldn’t even do that properly. I don’t know how long he was using again, or why.”
The real question he wanted answered.
Among so many others.
Lucas had questions.
It killed him to think he might never know the truth.
“I didn’t call back on Monday because my phone did fall in water,” Lucas told Delaney, sighing as his head fell forward and their eyes locked together. “He’d been running a bath … he liked those in the mornings, but he nodded off on the toilet and the water overflowed to the floor. That’s how I found him.”
“Lucas—”
No, he had to get it out.
Every last bit of it.
“The ER doctor amused me, at least. Bad word choice, maybe,” he told himself, cringing. “Anyway, he hadn’t been breathing before I got there in the morning, and nothing they did changed that fact until they put him on a ventilator. They gave me a few hours until the scans and tests came back, but … well,” Lucas finished lamely, shrugging.
All of the sudden, the woman across the way didn’t seem to know what to say. Her wide hazel gaze, wet with unshed tears, watched him, unashamed.
“I spent Tuesday making what arrangements I could for his cremation—there’s a small service to celebrate his life next week,” Lucas explained, the numbness seeping back into his fingers and toes even though he wasn’t cold anymore. “And I sat there after in my place feeling like the silence kept screaming at me, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay.”
It took one pill to kill somebody.
The next hit could be the last. To an addict, it wasn’t until it was, but then would always be too late.
Jacob was proof of that.
It took Lucas until that moment to realize his pain and grief was the unintentional consequence of his brother’s decision. One he would live with forever.
“I’m so sorry,” Delaney whispered from the couch, the tears freely falling down her cheeks.
“Yeah, me, too,” Lucas uttered, standing from the chair, and grabbing his unfinished plate. The food didn’t hold much appeal. “To rub salt in the wound, I have a few hours left to write my brother’s obituary if I want the paper to run something that wasn’t written by some fuck in a cubicle.”
“It would still be appropriate and respectful,” Delaney tried to assure.
Lucas scoffed on his way to the kitchen where he dropped the plate unceremoniously to the island before moving to the cupboards to find a glass for water. “But it wouldn’t be meaningful.”
That held more weight to Lucas.
The end of Jacob’s life couldn’t be for nothing.
Lucas wouldn’t allow that to happen.
“I need this to do something … mean something,” he attempted to explain.
“I could help you write it?” Delaney asked from the sitting room.
At the sink, Lucas ran himself a glass of water while her selfless request tugged at his sore heartstrings. “Would you?”
Her voice was a lot closer the second time. “I’m here, and I have nothing else to do. Nothing else I want to do,” Delaney clarified at his back. “And thank you.”
Sipping from the water, Lucas turned to face her as his back leaned against the sink. She placed her plate next to his on the island.
He eyed her. “Why are you thanking me?”
“For asking me to come here. I don’t need you to say it to know this place is special. And besides that, it takes a lot of courage to admit you don’t want to—or can’t—be alone, Lucas, never mind telling it to a stranger.”
He tried to smile.
It felt miserable like him.
“You’re not so strange,” he offered back.
The best attempt at humor he could do.
Delaney leaned against the side of the island. “Yeah, well. I’m not sure how exactly you’re going to send the obituary out if we do get something written that you like,” she said, making a face. “I can’t get a single bar of service on my phone here.”
Ah, that little troublesome detail.
A minor inconvenience of Birch Ridge.
No service.
Lucas waved it off. “There’s a booster upstairs. Your phone has to stay on it, but it works.”
“Oh. There’s also twin beds up there.”
“Mmhmm. I prefer the couch.”
Delaney nodded. “I wondered …”
“What?”
“If we could just shove the two beds together?”
Lucas welcomed the directional change of their conversation, if only for the moment. “To keep warm, I imagine?”
Delaney grinned.
The sight sped up his heart rate.
“That’s a bonus, too,” she agreed.
“I can shove ‘em together, no worries there.”
Her expression turned somber. “I wish I knew what to say about your brother. I’m sorry doesn’t seem like enough, does it?”
No, it wasn’t.
It barely scratched the very tender surface.
Lucas sighed. “I guess, it’s the best we’ve got, huh?”
Chapter 19
There was something to be said about a person waking up in an unfamiliar place without a sense of fear. Delaney blinked awake to consciousness with warmth wrapping her tight, focused more along her front, and a heavy weight resting across her body. She didn’t start awake by the fact that she couldn’t move, or that the gentle rumble of a snore coming from somewhere above meant she wasn’t alone in the bed, either.
And she knew instantly …
They hadn’t moved once in the night.
Delaney did her best to stretch under the heaviness of Lucas’ arm wrapped around her back to keep her tucked close to his bare chest under the quilt, but it only served to jostle the sleeping man enough that he pulled her tighter. His snoring, a sound she hadn’t heard throughout the night, cut in and out for a choppy couple of seconds until he settled into sleep once more, satisfied with his shifting.
Delaney peeked up to find Lucas’ lax profile sunk into a pillow. Her arms, tucked up in around her head, had acted as something to rest on because she hadn’t wanted to move. Not after the big bear of a man had slipped under the quilt with her the evening before and found her shivering in the bed.
It wasn’t from any chill.
Even if he had taken it that way …
His arms and the quilt had become the cozy cave wrapping around Delaney, keeping her warm and shut out from the new surroundings and the faint smell of firewood burning in the cabin. Why would she want to move?
His chest, dusted all the way down a toned belly with dark hair, lifted and fell rhythmically with steady breaths and snores. Delaney, the type to curl into a ball with her knees pulled high, had somehow gotten her lower limbs entangled with his during the night. The cotton fleece of his sleep pants were soft, but heavy, around her legs as she tried to unweave the two of them enough to get the sleep out of her lower half.
It didn’t work.
He kept her caged in like his own personal teddy bear, but Delaney kind of liked it. It didn’t escape her thoughts that Lucas, the same man who shared the bed so intimately with her while she wore nothing more than an oversized T-shirt and boy shorts to sleep, held her like he might for a lover.
Yet, he’d not even asked her for a goodnight kiss.
She’d been the one who pulled him closer to her under the quilt to shorten that gap between them, needing to feel the plush softness of his lips pressed to hers. If only for a few seconds. Oh, she’d certainly wanted to kiss him, but she had also desperately wished that kiss would wipe his sad frown away.
It had.
For a moment.
Delaney understood his deeply rooted pain, though, so she didn’t hold his quietness against him when all he had seemed to want and need was to hold her tight. She let him do that, too.
She did manage to wriggle one arm out from beneath the quilt. Only to instantly find the chilly air waiting to kiss her skin the minute she was free from the warmth their close bodies provided. A chill raced through Delaney.
“Oh,” she breathed, quickly jerking her arm back into the safe, cozy confines of the quilt and Lucas.
That time, she did wake him up.
His snores stopped.
She peered up to watch his brown eyes blink away the dreams—good ones, she hoped; he deserved those. Lucas let out one hard breath before his chest tightened and so did his arm around her.
Delaney laughed as he crushed her into his warmth once more. The sound caught his attention, and that dark stare of his found her safe in his arms with only the top of her head peeking out from beneath the blanket over top of them. Recognition bloomed in his features, and all at once, he seemed to understand that he had kept her tangled with him all night. Not that he did anything about it.
Their legs remained interlocked.
His arm didn’t loosen.
Her perfect cave stayed intact.
“Good morning,” he grunted out.
Not unhappily.
That, at least, gave Delaney some joy.
She didn’t think he shouldn’t be sad—especially about his brother—but a part of her couldn’t help but try to put a smile on his handsome face or light happiness in his eyes all the same. Anything at all to take his mind away from that dark, lonely place. If just for a moment …
“Morning,” she whispered back, grinning. “It feels a little cold?”
Lucas’ brow lifted, and his head rolled back on the pillow while he stretched the arm high that he’d slept with it tucked under his head on the pillow. “Fuck, let’s hope the fire’s not all the way out, huh?”
Oh, yeah.
There was that.
“Don’t tell me you can’t build a fire,” she joked.
Without warning, the hand that Lucas had been stroking up and down Delaney’s spine jumped to her side where he tickled her mercilessly under the quilt until she squealed for peace. The second she said stop, he did, replacing his palm flat over her sleep shirt at her spine.
“Mean,” she gasped, “that’s so mean!”
“Can too,” he muttered, using his thumb and forefinger to rub his eyes until he blinked down at her again. “I can build a fire, thank you.”
Oh, he took that personally.
Delaney snickered. “Got it, big man.”
“Mmmhmm,” he rumbled in a deep, sleepy hum that did wonderful things to Delaney’s body. “And don’t you forget it, either.”
How could she possibly forget?
She figured out exactly why he preferred the larger couch downstairs when the size of him practically swallowed both of them in the combined twin beds. If he wrapped around her, she didn’t think she would need a blanket in bed with him. And there was the not-so-little matter of the thick ridge bulging in his sleep pants that she had felt pressed against her belly from the time she had opened her eyes that morning.
Even if she was trying to ignore it; his very large, and prominent, erection made that hard. No pun intended.
Lucas came to the same understanding of his predicament from his close quarters with Delaney at the same time—by chance, he’d stretched, and the movement drove their bodies firmly together. Her wiggle, and shift against him, brushed her hand along his drawstring pants, and erection.
“Jesus,” Lucas breathed, his eyes flying wide as he instantly tried to put distance between the two in bed. Not that he went far before almost toppling off the side of the bed. He caught himself—barely—but the sudden movement tore the quilt off enough that there was no mistaking the cold in the cabin.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Give me the blanket, you’re gonna freeze me out,” she demanded.
His morning wood was the least of her concerns.
And the easiest thing to deal with, being honest.
Lucas reduced himself to embarrassed chuckles as the two resituated in the bed, protected from the cold and comfy tucked together under the quilt. In the same position as before; Delaney demanded that, even reaching to pull Lucas’ arm back around her.
“Warm cave,” she mumbled into his chest, tucking herself there like a kitten in a ball while her legs slipped in between his as they had been before. “Not moving.”
His laughter rumbled like thunder.
“I can’t believe I was awake for at least two entire minutes before I figured out I had a hard-on,” he grumbled from outside the quilt.
Delaney grinned wickedly. Maybe she liked the disbelief and awkwardness coloring his voice, if only because he missed a bigger part of the picture that she saw just fine.
“Or sex isn’t the first thing on your mind in the morning—even if that part of you thinks differently,” Delaney returned quietly.
Not so low that he couldn’t hear it.
Lucas inhaled deep, and let out an equally slow, trepid exhale. “And as you say that very thing to me, I feel every word coming out of your lips brushing against my chest, and I can’t say you’re right at the moment. My dick’s still hard, I know it now, and—”
That was okay, too.
Delaney showed him why without saying it by tipping her head up to watch his face while her hands went down. Not under the stretchy waistband of his sleep pants, though. Her fingers curled around the band first, and she asked the man who suddenly couldn’t look away from her, “Can I make you feel good?”
Lucas swallowed hard, saying only, “We both know you will, please fucking do.”
His lips captured her smile when she tried to reach up for a kiss, but couldn’t quite reach. He did the hard work for her in that regard. Delaney did the rest by getting her hands inside his sleep pants, and shivered when she found the silken flesh that wrapped his hard erection hot and sensitive to her touch. Both her hands circled his shaft, one on top of the other, but she still had at least three inches of him to stroke, eliciting the sweetest hiss from Lucas that whooshed along Delaney’s forehead.
“Kiss me again,” she said, pouting.
She stroked him tight with both hands, from root to tip, and demanded, “Kiss me and show me how you want to come, Lucas.”
“Fuck, woman.”
Why did that sound like a warning?
Why did she like it?
Delaney pushed him a little harder, lust swimming in her veins and pooling low between her thighs where she felt a pulse in her clit with every beat of her heart. “You can even use me—would you do it?”
She’d let him.
She’d do anything for him, right then.
His gaze blew with, and the darkest pools of desire landed on her in the bed a second before his mouth slammed down on hers. He devoured her with firm sweeps of his lips coaxing hers apart until their tongues tangled. She tried to keep the tight strokes going along his shaft, but he made that hard for a brief second when he pushed Delaney to her back and climbed on top of her. The change in positions came so abruptly that Delaney felt swallowed by Lucas when he suddenly loomed over her in the bed.
But in the best way.
The quilt fell down around their bodies as he fit between her widened thighs. His hips pumped his cock into her tight grip while his weight pressed Delaney into the bed as he leaned in for another kiss that left her breathless, and her lips tingling. His hands, so much larger and rougher than hers, slid under her shirt, bunching the fabric higher until he had her small breasts firm in his grasp as he worked for his pleasure.
That got Delaney off.
She didn’t like to be treated as glass.
Every rock of his body into hers drove her a little crazy, and a bit closer, to the heaven of her own, but it wasn’t quite enough to get her all the way there. She didn’t mind, more enraptured with the way his lips trembled along her jaw with husky words that coaxed her into a pleased desire that she was doing it for him.
“Oh, my good girl,” he told her, “fuck, Delaney, let me do it just like that, huh?”
Could he feel how shameful wet she already was beneath the thin cotton of her boy shorts as she fruitlessly tried to find some relief rubbing into him? She could feel every thread of the damp fabric tugging and pressing with the shifts of her hips. It just wasn’t enough.
Yet.
She kissed the underside of his chin. “Come. Won’t you come, Lucas?”
“Christ.”
His left hand found purchase on one of the posts of the combined twin headboards as the thrusts of his hips came faster and harder. She felt the pulse in his cock, how it started at the base and moved up, before warm semen spilled over Delaney’s fingers and dripped down to her stomach.
A sticky mess she didn’t mind.
His relief came with a low groan of her name.
So pleased.
It shone in his eyes that stared down, awed and blissed, at her.
