The Fishermen (Infidelity #2)

by C.P. Harris

“You scare me,” I admitted, closing in on him with purpose. “But I want to face you anyway, because you make me want to face everything that terrifies me.

“Truth is, the only time I’m not lost, the only time I have a clue about anything, is when I’m with you.”

Your foul moods are equivalent to a fucking earthquake, and all I can do when you’re experiencing one is hold on to something and grit my teeth until they pass. You’re a category-5 shit-storm on a good day, Franky, but on a bad day? God, on a bad day, I wanna be the thing you take it all out on.

“I love your darkness, Franky. And I would take being in the eye of your storm over being on the edge of it any day.

“Everything in me wants to tear you apart, Leland. And I’m sorry,” he said, with a hard thrust between my spread legs, “but I don’t think I can hold back.

big, bad, Franky had a thing for being the little spoon. He’d said it was a new phenomenon he couldn’t quite grasp. I said it was because he’d always had to be the one to protect, but here, safe with me, he now got to be the one protected.

“Don’t you lay a fucking hand on me.” My hiss clashed with his scream as my back met the wall. His hands, ready to lacerate anything in their way, froze near the buttons of my shirt. “This isn’t our summer of love, Franky. Those days are over. You touching me now without my explicit consent will not be the turn on it once used to be. I won’t be yielding to you this time.”

“I won’t be the thing you release your self-hate on. Not anymore. I’ve already endured you rage-fucking me and then leaving me in a heap to recover alone. Once was more than enough. And more importantly,” I said, driving him back with my intensity, “you don’t want me. Not if it means hurting Cole in the process, even though no one hurts him quite like you do. And isn’t that some tragic, fucking irony.”

As the months passed, I understood that trauma was a cancer of a different kind. It ate away at everything good, and it blocked any attempts made at refueling my life with additional good. I’d been more than willing to let it eat me alive before, but now I wanted to starve it.

“God, Leland. If I could slam you against that wall and take you right now, I would. I would fuck you for all the years I hadn’t been able to. For all the years I loved you and wasted that love on my pain. I would fuck you until you couldn’t see straight.”

Stop looking at this in terms of what you and I will be to each other, and start thinking about what you need to be free of the secrets and lies holding you prisoner. It’s a burden, and it’s killing you. It’s killing me too.”

“I was your first,” I started. “It shouldn’t mean that much to me, but it does. It did. And you were so fucked-up for so long that I assumed I’d be your last too. I thought it would be impossible for you to feel your way through the dark to someone else, especially when I was right there in the dark with you. Waiting for you. Why didn’t you just say the right things to make us better? Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Where do you see yourself in this lifetime, and every lifetime after, Leelee Bear?” I swooped in impossibly close, holding his face and his gaze the way he held mine, and I gave him the same answer I’d given him all those years ago. I gave him the truth. “Somewhere still wanting you, Franky.”