Scarlet Stone, page 24
I don’t deserve her.
“But not forgotten,” I whisper. She’ll never forget what I did. It’s not humanly possible. Sometimes I want the impossible.
Her expression doesn’t change. “My head is undiscriminating with the memories it keeps, but my heart has already forgotten.”
I don’t want to move. Hell, I don’t want to blink. I think if I could stay lost in her long enough, I could let go of everything and my past would truly not matter.
“Let’s go.” I bite her bottom lip, tugging at it until she laughs.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” I grin and shut her door.
*
Scarlet
“Where are we?” I look around at the tall, tangled trees and overgrowth of weeds hiding the gray-sided two-story house.
“This is where I grew up.” He turns off the truck and stares out the window as if he’s waiting for something. Courage?
“Who lives here now?”
“No one.”
“Who owns it?”
“I do.” He frowns, eyes still trained straight ahead.
“Are you trying to sell it?”
Theo shakes his head and then gets out. I follow him as he plods through the tall grass that’s overtaken the brick walk to the front porch.
“Siblings?”
He shakes his head.
“How old were you when you moved here?”
“I lived here my whole life until I moved into an apartment my first year of college.” Resting his boot on the first porch step, he shifts his weight forward like he’s testing it. The white paint has weathered leaving rotting planks with cracks and holes. It creeks when he steps up.
“When was the last time you were here?”
Gripping the column at the top of the porch, Theo releases a sigh. “The day I found my father’s body.” He lowers his head while his knuckles turn white with his tightening grip on the column. “His face was unrecognizable,” he whispers.
The bottom step creaks again as I step onto it.
Theo turns and holds out his hand. “Here. Careful. The place was in need of renovation before they died. The years since haven’t done it any favors.”
We test each of our steps until we reach the door. Theo fishes his keys from his pocket and unlocks the front door. It, too, whines as he eases it open.
“Oh, wow.” The inside of the house doesn’t match the outside at all. The dark wood floors have a layer of dust blanketing them, but it’s easy to see that beneath the dust, they are flawless. The elaborate trim work of the stairway bannister, crown molding, and built-in bookshelves in the study to our left all scream Theodore Reed.
“My father and I were in the process of remodeling the whole house when …”
I nod. “Is that how you learned to do this? Your father?”
“Yeah.” He takes my hand and leads me up the solid stairs, not one single creak. Theo wraps his hand around the doorknob on the right but his gaze drifts to the closed door at the end of the ginger-painted hallway adorned with black frames—the Reed family story in pictures.
I imagine that story ended in tragedy in that room at the end of the hall.
“Is this your room?”
His head jerks back to the door before us, back to the present. “Yes.” He opens it.
With one step, my mind is blown by what I see. This isn’t a lie. This is real. This is Theodore Reed.
“My mom decorated it after I moved out.” He laughs through the palpable pain in his voice. “I’m not this vain.”
Who is the boy in all of these pictures? Shaggy, blond hair and a smile that could light an entire universe.
Theo as a baby in the arms of his beautiful mum. She was truly stunning.
Theo holding his first hammer as a toddler, standing next to his father, both wearing overalls and tool belts.
Theo riding horses.
Theo playing American football in school.
Theo in a deep red suit with a black tie, standing next to a girl with long blond hair, dressed in a strapless black dress. Maybe a school dance. I smile.
“Your band,” I whisper as my fingers wipe away the dust from the black and white photo of The Derby performing on stage. Just like the video Nolan showed me, Theo is zoned into his guitar.
He wasn’t always the law. Theo lived a normal childhood. He had girlfriends, loving parents, and a beautiful life. It’s so perfectly … heartbreaking.
I turn and study the vulnerable version of my Theodore Reed perched at the end of his bed, hands fisted on his jean-clad legs.
“You had a normal life.” I exhale a whisper of a laugh. “I think. Actually, I’m not sure I know what that means. I never had normal. Nothing about me has ever been relatable. Oscar told me to just be me. I’ll be thirty-two next month, and I still haven’t got a clue who I am.” I roll my lips between my teeth, easing my way to Theo. His mouth stays firm; his eyes sparkle with something hopeful.
He grabs my hips and straddles me over his lap. I lace my fingers together behind his neck.
“Maybe you could just be mine—the naked body I worship, the mouth that sucks my—”
“Stop!” I pinch his lips together like a duck’s. His grin makes my grip on them slip.
“No gag reflex.” He shakes his head.
I shove him back on the bed. His body vibrates with laughter. I’ll let him make crude comments all day if it means I’m rewarded with smiles and his endearing chuckles—so uncontrolled and innocent.
My face hurts. I think my grin could crack it.
Theo squeezes my legs with a firm grip. “Scarlet Stone?”
There it is again.
His voice.
My name.
It forms a lump in my throat and makes my eyes burn with tears.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t deserve you.”
My grin chases the tears away. “You really don’t.”
“Can we keep that little secret just between the two of us?”
Twisting my lips, I cock my head to the side. “Yes. But I’ll need it in writing.”
“In writing?”
I nod. He interlaces his fingers behind his head. It makes his white T-shirt pull up just enough to expose a few centimeters of his abs.
“Like a contract?”
I shake my head. “Something more permanent.”
His right eyebrow peaks. “Such as?”
I trace my finger along the wide waistband of his black briefs, to the left of his happy trail. His erection grows firm, inching closer to my finger. My lips curl into a smirk that matches his. His muscles tense, tipping his pelvis up a bit as if he thinks I don’t already see how turned on he is right now.
“Right here.” My finger dips under the waistband.
He groans as I tease his skin so close to where he’s most begging for my touch.
“This is where I want you to put in permanent writing that you don’t deserve me.”
Theo’s eyes narrow. “You want me to get a tattoo?”
I nod.
“About you?”
I nod.
“Right there?”
“Yes. Right here. My name in red, everything else in black.”
Stealing my breath, he sits up, stopping when the tip of his nose touches mine. “We’ll see,” he whispers.
“Will we?” I breathe back, a little more breathless than intended. I’m rubbish at hiding how much he affects me.
“Yes. Now … what else do you want from me?”
Forever. I want all the days. All the smiles. All the breaths.
“I want to hear you play.”
His gaze goes through me. A contemplative side I’ve seen a million times.
“There’s one of my first guitars … in the attic. I think.”
My eyes roll to the ceiling. “How do we get up there?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Theodore
The pull-down attic ladder is right outside of my parents’ bedroom. I haven’t opened their door since my dad was taken out in a black bag. The room was cleaned. I know behind the door there no longer exists a drop of blood, yet I can’t open the door. Not today.
I pull on the chain and bring the ladder down. Scarlet focuses on the closed bedroom door. She’s smart. I don’t have to tell her why it’s shut and why I have no intention of opening it.
“Don’t stare at my ass. It makes me feel violated,” I say as I climb the ladder first to turn on the light and access the attic that’s been undisturbed for years.
She laughs. “But it’s such a lovely arse.”
“Arse? Really? How long before you stop fucking up the English language?” As I stretch up to reach for the string to the single light bulb, a sharp pain radiates from my junk to my stomach. “Mother fucking hell!” I bend at the waist, pressing my hands to the unfinished wood floor to keep myself from falling down the ladder and landing on her. But holy fuck, my knees feel weak.
Scarlet has part of my junk clawed in her hand, squeezing it like she’s trying to extract my dick and at least one testicle from my body. I’ve underestimated her size and her grip.
“Sorry? Could you repeat that?”
Once I can find a full breath, I reach down and grab her wrist, prying her hand off me. “Only one person on the ladder.” I pull her lithe body up next to mine and set her ass on the floor of the attic, her legs dangling down the hole.
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I speak the English language.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
It squeezes her breasts together, pushing her cleavage up a bit. I don’t mind at all.
Her finger lifts my chin up an inch. “My eyes are up here.”
I shrug. “For now.”
“For now?” What’s that supposed to mean?”
I lean in until she holds her breath. This is my favorite part. The high I get from stealing her complete attention should be illegal. “It means later your eyes will be looking up at me while I fuck your mouth.”
She gasps. I like her gasp. It relaxes her jaw even more, making my dick hard and ready to slip inside that sexy mouth of hers.
“Crude. Beyond crude.” Her eyes narrow. “Touring with your band … ‘getting laid …’ Did brash comments like that really work for you?”
I lean in closer. Her breath hitches again. Full lips part. That cherry tongue of hers makes a lazy swipe along her bottom lip. Why do I do this to myself? I’m fucking hard right now.
“OW!”
I grin with my teeth still clamped around her nipple, my tongue leaving a wet mark on her shirt. “Yes, it does work for me,” I whisper after releasing her nipple.
“Not for me.”
“Liar.” I climb the rest of the way up then grab her waist to pull her to her feet.
She winces, a quick breath seething through her teeth.
“What’s—” It hits me like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest. I release my grip on her waist and slide up the back of her shirt, revealing the cut on her back where I cut her.
“It’s fine.”
It’s not fucking fine. I cut her. It wasn’t an accident. Nothing about that is fine. Even as she says the words, the look on her face contradicts them.
It’s not fine.
“Why?” she whispers. Her gaze lowers to her feet as she drops her chin.
I knew it was coming. Scarlet Stone is a lot of things, but she’s not stupid. It wasn’t domestic abuse. I didn’t hit her in a fit of rage then fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness. The sex. The apologies. Even her willingness to forgive me can’t replace what she deserves most—an explanation.
“I hated life—my life.”
She looks up, disbelief morphing her face in tight lines and a painful frown.
“I wanted you to hate me. I thought I wanted you to hate me.” I shake my head and turn toward the wall hidden behind piles of boxes covered in dust and cobwebs. “Ames stood at his window, probably a dozen or more times. The shot was there. All I could see through the scope was you. I’d close my eyes, trying to erase you from my mind, that’s when I’d hear the click.” I brush my hand along one of the boxes, dispersing the dust into a thin cloud.
“What click?” The defeat in her voice resurrects the pain I’ve tried to suppress for the past twenty-four hours.
“You.” Something between a grunt and a laugh rips from my chest. “You pulled the fucking trigger. Click.” I close my eyes. Click. I can hear it as clear as I did the moment she did it. Scarlet lived. I died that day. “I didn’t know about the cancer. You…” my eyes pinch shut “…you made me pause. It was a long blink, a deep breath, a spark of doubt. Our nothing was that pause, a glimpse of an alternate future, a breath of hesitation.”
“I made you question your purpose,” she whispers.
“Yes.” Opening my eyes, I swallow past the constricting pain in my throat. “You were this light. Warm. Blinding. Breathtaking. For an incredibly short moment, I thought you could…” I clear my throat “…save me.”
Her body presses to my back, hands sliding up my chest. I hug her hands to me. There’s that warmth. She’s alive. I don’t ever want to let her go.
“But I pulled the trigger.”
Click.
I nod. “My father said when he found my mom there was so much blood. Her head was just—” Fuck, this is still so raw. “I imagine it was very much like how I found my father after he—”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “I never really understood why my dad did it. He had me. He had something. You shattered my whole fucking world when you pulled the trigger.”
“Theo …” She hugs me tighter, her body shaking in silent sobs.
“I knew what made a person want to kill another. I lived and breathed that hatred every day. But I never could understand the amount of self-loathing that brought someone to take their own life. Until …”
Scarlet releases a strangled sob. I squeeze her hands and press them firm to my chest.
“Until Daniel told me you were dying.”
*
Scarlet
Love is a brutal emotion. That’s how I’m certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, it’s our sole purpose in life. Love is the heartbeat of our existence—the essence of humanity. In every life we try to do it better.
Harder.
Longer.
More completely.
Unconditionally.
Love is maddening. It robs all reason and leaves us drowning in desperation and fear. Desperate to hold on to everything that makes each breath worth taking. Fearful that the very air that fills our lungs is that love. One cannot live without air. Can one live without love?
The reason there is such a fine line between love and hate is because both require a deep emotional investment. Both emotions make us feel very deeply.
Theo loved me.
Theo hated me.
I will accept both his love and hate, as long as he never stops feeling so deeply for me.
“I didn’t pull the trigger because I wanted to die. I pulled it because I was no longer afraid of not living.”
Releasing my hands, he turns toward me. I’ve never seen so many unspoken questions in his eyes.
Fear. Regret. Love. It’s all there in a chaos of emotion that makes me love him that much more.
“And yesterday?” He cradles my face, erasing my tears with the pads of his thumbs. “No more lies.”
I’m not sure if I’m more afraid to admit the truth to Theo … or myself. The truth is in the tears that continue to slide down my face. “Yesterday … I wanted to die.”
There are two options: I can be fearless and steadfast in everything I do. I can wear the illusion of a strong, independent woman like a merit badge, priding myself on being the woman whom all women should strive to be. Or … I can love Theo. Navigating a minefield with my unprotected heart.
For thirty-one years, I was strong and independent. Oscar built me up. He gave me a suit of armor and told me to conquer the world. I did. I owned it. Now? I want my greatest strength to be letting go of control. Giving my heart to another. That takes courage and fearlessness.
“Truth.” I fight to give him even a hint of a sad smile. I am only weak if I can’t admit my imperfections.
Theo’s posture is stiff, jaw clenched, eyes glassy. “Why?” He shakes his head.
“There were just…” my unfocused gaze slips to his chest “…too many emotions—all at once. Life and death. Love and loss. Anger and regret. Too much to feel. I just…” I shrug “…broke. And in a blink, all feeling disappeared. It was like finding sleep after a lifetime of insomnia.” My eyes shift to his again. “The only thing I truly felt was the arms of death. Weightless. Peaceful. Silent. Perfect.”
He swallows over and over, maybe searching for the words to say or the strength to say them. I’m not sure they exist. Theo struggled with loving me and hating me. He wanted to take a life. I wanted to let one go. It’s a million ways of fucked-up. There’s no explaining that.
“You…” he tightens his grip on my face as he presses his forehead to mine “…are mine now. I build you. I give you life. I make you perfect again.”
“You are the law,” I whisper with a smile growing along my face. It feels good. Feeling feels good.
He smirks. “Damn right.” His lips make a firm claim to mine.
His hands slide down my neck, pausing with his thumb pressed to the side of it. My heart constricts. He’s feeling my pulse. I’m counting breaths … Theo’s counting heartbeats.
I moan when his tongue plunges deeper into my mouth while his hands move over my breasts, continuing on to my jeans. He fumbles, tugging hard at my button, his moves growing impatient. I push his hands away and unfasten them before he rips them apart.
He growls and squats in front of me.
“I’ll get—”
He cuts me off with a firm look. Shoving my hands out of the way, he yanks down my jeans and knickers like he’s bloody pissed off that I’m even wearing them. One shoe gets pulled off, then the other. I grab the edge of the box behind me to steady myself as he tugs my jeans and knickers the rest of the way off.
My ribs tell my heart to calm the fuck down. I’m in humming-bird mode as Theodore Reed stands, eyes filled with a hunger for me like a lion mere inches from its dinner.
“But not forgotten,” I whisper. She’ll never forget what I did. It’s not humanly possible. Sometimes I want the impossible.
Her expression doesn’t change. “My head is undiscriminating with the memories it keeps, but my heart has already forgotten.”
I don’t want to move. Hell, I don’t want to blink. I think if I could stay lost in her long enough, I could let go of everything and my past would truly not matter.
“Let’s go.” I bite her bottom lip, tugging at it until she laughs.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” I grin and shut her door.
*
Scarlet
“Where are we?” I look around at the tall, tangled trees and overgrowth of weeds hiding the gray-sided two-story house.
“This is where I grew up.” He turns off the truck and stares out the window as if he’s waiting for something. Courage?
“Who lives here now?”
“No one.”
“Who owns it?”
“I do.” He frowns, eyes still trained straight ahead.
“Are you trying to sell it?”
Theo shakes his head and then gets out. I follow him as he plods through the tall grass that’s overtaken the brick walk to the front porch.
“Siblings?”
He shakes his head.
“How old were you when you moved here?”
“I lived here my whole life until I moved into an apartment my first year of college.” Resting his boot on the first porch step, he shifts his weight forward like he’s testing it. The white paint has weathered leaving rotting planks with cracks and holes. It creeks when he steps up.
“When was the last time you were here?”
Gripping the column at the top of the porch, Theo releases a sigh. “The day I found my father’s body.” He lowers his head while his knuckles turn white with his tightening grip on the column. “His face was unrecognizable,” he whispers.
The bottom step creaks again as I step onto it.
Theo turns and holds out his hand. “Here. Careful. The place was in need of renovation before they died. The years since haven’t done it any favors.”
We test each of our steps until we reach the door. Theo fishes his keys from his pocket and unlocks the front door. It, too, whines as he eases it open.
“Oh, wow.” The inside of the house doesn’t match the outside at all. The dark wood floors have a layer of dust blanketing them, but it’s easy to see that beneath the dust, they are flawless. The elaborate trim work of the stairway bannister, crown molding, and built-in bookshelves in the study to our left all scream Theodore Reed.
“My father and I were in the process of remodeling the whole house when …”
I nod. “Is that how you learned to do this? Your father?”
“Yeah.” He takes my hand and leads me up the solid stairs, not one single creak. Theo wraps his hand around the doorknob on the right but his gaze drifts to the closed door at the end of the ginger-painted hallway adorned with black frames—the Reed family story in pictures.
I imagine that story ended in tragedy in that room at the end of the hall.
“Is this your room?”
His head jerks back to the door before us, back to the present. “Yes.” He opens it.
With one step, my mind is blown by what I see. This isn’t a lie. This is real. This is Theodore Reed.
“My mom decorated it after I moved out.” He laughs through the palpable pain in his voice. “I’m not this vain.”
Who is the boy in all of these pictures? Shaggy, blond hair and a smile that could light an entire universe.
Theo as a baby in the arms of his beautiful mum. She was truly stunning.
Theo holding his first hammer as a toddler, standing next to his father, both wearing overalls and tool belts.
Theo riding horses.
Theo playing American football in school.
Theo in a deep red suit with a black tie, standing next to a girl with long blond hair, dressed in a strapless black dress. Maybe a school dance. I smile.
“Your band,” I whisper as my fingers wipe away the dust from the black and white photo of The Derby performing on stage. Just like the video Nolan showed me, Theo is zoned into his guitar.
He wasn’t always the law. Theo lived a normal childhood. He had girlfriends, loving parents, and a beautiful life. It’s so perfectly … heartbreaking.
I turn and study the vulnerable version of my Theodore Reed perched at the end of his bed, hands fisted on his jean-clad legs.
“You had a normal life.” I exhale a whisper of a laugh. “I think. Actually, I’m not sure I know what that means. I never had normal. Nothing about me has ever been relatable. Oscar told me to just be me. I’ll be thirty-two next month, and I still haven’t got a clue who I am.” I roll my lips between my teeth, easing my way to Theo. His mouth stays firm; his eyes sparkle with something hopeful.
He grabs my hips and straddles me over his lap. I lace my fingers together behind his neck.
“Maybe you could just be mine—the naked body I worship, the mouth that sucks my—”
“Stop!” I pinch his lips together like a duck’s. His grin makes my grip on them slip.
“No gag reflex.” He shakes his head.
I shove him back on the bed. His body vibrates with laughter. I’ll let him make crude comments all day if it means I’m rewarded with smiles and his endearing chuckles—so uncontrolled and innocent.
My face hurts. I think my grin could crack it.
Theo squeezes my legs with a firm grip. “Scarlet Stone?”
There it is again.
His voice.
My name.
It forms a lump in my throat and makes my eyes burn with tears.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t deserve you.”
My grin chases the tears away. “You really don’t.”
“Can we keep that little secret just between the two of us?”
Twisting my lips, I cock my head to the side. “Yes. But I’ll need it in writing.”
“In writing?”
I nod. He interlaces his fingers behind his head. It makes his white T-shirt pull up just enough to expose a few centimeters of his abs.
“Like a contract?”
I shake my head. “Something more permanent.”
His right eyebrow peaks. “Such as?”
I trace my finger along the wide waistband of his black briefs, to the left of his happy trail. His erection grows firm, inching closer to my finger. My lips curl into a smirk that matches his. His muscles tense, tipping his pelvis up a bit as if he thinks I don’t already see how turned on he is right now.
“Right here.” My finger dips under the waistband.
He groans as I tease his skin so close to where he’s most begging for my touch.
“This is where I want you to put in permanent writing that you don’t deserve me.”
Theo’s eyes narrow. “You want me to get a tattoo?”
I nod.
“About you?”
I nod.
“Right there?”
“Yes. Right here. My name in red, everything else in black.”
Stealing my breath, he sits up, stopping when the tip of his nose touches mine. “We’ll see,” he whispers.
“Will we?” I breathe back, a little more breathless than intended. I’m rubbish at hiding how much he affects me.
“Yes. Now … what else do you want from me?”
Forever. I want all the days. All the smiles. All the breaths.
“I want to hear you play.”
His gaze goes through me. A contemplative side I’ve seen a million times.
“There’s one of my first guitars … in the attic. I think.”
My eyes roll to the ceiling. “How do we get up there?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Theodore
The pull-down attic ladder is right outside of my parents’ bedroom. I haven’t opened their door since my dad was taken out in a black bag. The room was cleaned. I know behind the door there no longer exists a drop of blood, yet I can’t open the door. Not today.
I pull on the chain and bring the ladder down. Scarlet focuses on the closed bedroom door. She’s smart. I don’t have to tell her why it’s shut and why I have no intention of opening it.
“Don’t stare at my ass. It makes me feel violated,” I say as I climb the ladder first to turn on the light and access the attic that’s been undisturbed for years.
She laughs. “But it’s such a lovely arse.”
“Arse? Really? How long before you stop fucking up the English language?” As I stretch up to reach for the string to the single light bulb, a sharp pain radiates from my junk to my stomach. “Mother fucking hell!” I bend at the waist, pressing my hands to the unfinished wood floor to keep myself from falling down the ladder and landing on her. But holy fuck, my knees feel weak.
Scarlet has part of my junk clawed in her hand, squeezing it like she’s trying to extract my dick and at least one testicle from my body. I’ve underestimated her size and her grip.
“Sorry? Could you repeat that?”
Once I can find a full breath, I reach down and grab her wrist, prying her hand off me. “Only one person on the ladder.” I pull her lithe body up next to mine and set her ass on the floor of the attic, her legs dangling down the hole.
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I speak the English language.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
It squeezes her breasts together, pushing her cleavage up a bit. I don’t mind at all.
Her finger lifts my chin up an inch. “My eyes are up here.”
I shrug. “For now.”
“For now?” What’s that supposed to mean?”
I lean in until she holds her breath. This is my favorite part. The high I get from stealing her complete attention should be illegal. “It means later your eyes will be looking up at me while I fuck your mouth.”
She gasps. I like her gasp. It relaxes her jaw even more, making my dick hard and ready to slip inside that sexy mouth of hers.
“Crude. Beyond crude.” Her eyes narrow. “Touring with your band … ‘getting laid …’ Did brash comments like that really work for you?”
I lean in closer. Her breath hitches again. Full lips part. That cherry tongue of hers makes a lazy swipe along her bottom lip. Why do I do this to myself? I’m fucking hard right now.
“OW!”
I grin with my teeth still clamped around her nipple, my tongue leaving a wet mark on her shirt. “Yes, it does work for me,” I whisper after releasing her nipple.
“Not for me.”
“Liar.” I climb the rest of the way up then grab her waist to pull her to her feet.
She winces, a quick breath seething through her teeth.
“What’s—” It hits me like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest. I release my grip on her waist and slide up the back of her shirt, revealing the cut on her back where I cut her.
“It’s fine.”
It’s not fucking fine. I cut her. It wasn’t an accident. Nothing about that is fine. Even as she says the words, the look on her face contradicts them.
It’s not fine.
“Why?” she whispers. Her gaze lowers to her feet as she drops her chin.
I knew it was coming. Scarlet Stone is a lot of things, but she’s not stupid. It wasn’t domestic abuse. I didn’t hit her in a fit of rage then fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness. The sex. The apologies. Even her willingness to forgive me can’t replace what she deserves most—an explanation.
“I hated life—my life.”
She looks up, disbelief morphing her face in tight lines and a painful frown.
“I wanted you to hate me. I thought I wanted you to hate me.” I shake my head and turn toward the wall hidden behind piles of boxes covered in dust and cobwebs. “Ames stood at his window, probably a dozen or more times. The shot was there. All I could see through the scope was you. I’d close my eyes, trying to erase you from my mind, that’s when I’d hear the click.” I brush my hand along one of the boxes, dispersing the dust into a thin cloud.
“What click?” The defeat in her voice resurrects the pain I’ve tried to suppress for the past twenty-four hours.
“You.” Something between a grunt and a laugh rips from my chest. “You pulled the fucking trigger. Click.” I close my eyes. Click. I can hear it as clear as I did the moment she did it. Scarlet lived. I died that day. “I didn’t know about the cancer. You…” my eyes pinch shut “…you made me pause. It was a long blink, a deep breath, a spark of doubt. Our nothing was that pause, a glimpse of an alternate future, a breath of hesitation.”
“I made you question your purpose,” she whispers.
“Yes.” Opening my eyes, I swallow past the constricting pain in my throat. “You were this light. Warm. Blinding. Breathtaking. For an incredibly short moment, I thought you could…” I clear my throat “…save me.”
Her body presses to my back, hands sliding up my chest. I hug her hands to me. There’s that warmth. She’s alive. I don’t ever want to let her go.
“But I pulled the trigger.”
Click.
I nod. “My father said when he found my mom there was so much blood. Her head was just—” Fuck, this is still so raw. “I imagine it was very much like how I found my father after he—”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “I never really understood why my dad did it. He had me. He had something. You shattered my whole fucking world when you pulled the trigger.”
“Theo …” She hugs me tighter, her body shaking in silent sobs.
“I knew what made a person want to kill another. I lived and breathed that hatred every day. But I never could understand the amount of self-loathing that brought someone to take their own life. Until …”
Scarlet releases a strangled sob. I squeeze her hands and press them firm to my chest.
“Until Daniel told me you were dying.”
*
Scarlet
Love is a brutal emotion. That’s how I’m certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, it’s our sole purpose in life. Love is the heartbeat of our existence—the essence of humanity. In every life we try to do it better.
Harder.
Longer.
More completely.
Unconditionally.
Love is maddening. It robs all reason and leaves us drowning in desperation and fear. Desperate to hold on to everything that makes each breath worth taking. Fearful that the very air that fills our lungs is that love. One cannot live without air. Can one live without love?
The reason there is such a fine line between love and hate is because both require a deep emotional investment. Both emotions make us feel very deeply.
Theo loved me.
Theo hated me.
I will accept both his love and hate, as long as he never stops feeling so deeply for me.
“I didn’t pull the trigger because I wanted to die. I pulled it because I was no longer afraid of not living.”
Releasing my hands, he turns toward me. I’ve never seen so many unspoken questions in his eyes.
Fear. Regret. Love. It’s all there in a chaos of emotion that makes me love him that much more.
“And yesterday?” He cradles my face, erasing my tears with the pads of his thumbs. “No more lies.”
I’m not sure if I’m more afraid to admit the truth to Theo … or myself. The truth is in the tears that continue to slide down my face. “Yesterday … I wanted to die.”
There are two options: I can be fearless and steadfast in everything I do. I can wear the illusion of a strong, independent woman like a merit badge, priding myself on being the woman whom all women should strive to be. Or … I can love Theo. Navigating a minefield with my unprotected heart.
For thirty-one years, I was strong and independent. Oscar built me up. He gave me a suit of armor and told me to conquer the world. I did. I owned it. Now? I want my greatest strength to be letting go of control. Giving my heart to another. That takes courage and fearlessness.
“Truth.” I fight to give him even a hint of a sad smile. I am only weak if I can’t admit my imperfections.
Theo’s posture is stiff, jaw clenched, eyes glassy. “Why?” He shakes his head.
“There were just…” my unfocused gaze slips to his chest “…too many emotions—all at once. Life and death. Love and loss. Anger and regret. Too much to feel. I just…” I shrug “…broke. And in a blink, all feeling disappeared. It was like finding sleep after a lifetime of insomnia.” My eyes shift to his again. “The only thing I truly felt was the arms of death. Weightless. Peaceful. Silent. Perfect.”
He swallows over and over, maybe searching for the words to say or the strength to say them. I’m not sure they exist. Theo struggled with loving me and hating me. He wanted to take a life. I wanted to let one go. It’s a million ways of fucked-up. There’s no explaining that.
“You…” he tightens his grip on my face as he presses his forehead to mine “…are mine now. I build you. I give you life. I make you perfect again.”
“You are the law,” I whisper with a smile growing along my face. It feels good. Feeling feels good.
He smirks. “Damn right.” His lips make a firm claim to mine.
His hands slide down my neck, pausing with his thumb pressed to the side of it. My heart constricts. He’s feeling my pulse. I’m counting breaths … Theo’s counting heartbeats.
I moan when his tongue plunges deeper into my mouth while his hands move over my breasts, continuing on to my jeans. He fumbles, tugging hard at my button, his moves growing impatient. I push his hands away and unfasten them before he rips them apart.
He growls and squats in front of me.
“I’ll get—”
He cuts me off with a firm look. Shoving my hands out of the way, he yanks down my jeans and knickers like he’s bloody pissed off that I’m even wearing them. One shoe gets pulled off, then the other. I grab the edge of the box behind me to steady myself as he tugs my jeans and knickers the rest of the way off.
My ribs tell my heart to calm the fuck down. I’m in humming-bird mode as Theodore Reed stands, eyes filled with a hunger for me like a lion mere inches from its dinner.
