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Man of the law. Man of law. Man. Men. All men. All men thought they were special when, in fact, they were the problem. Men took Layla. This man was doing nothing to help find her. A man named Tommy targeted me for a reason no one could figure out. All men were the fucking worst. All men except Dominic.
In that faint miracle of a second, the nightmare melted away, and I saw a glimpse of a dream. My mom. My real mom. She was here, and she was even better than a dream. She was everything she used to be: protective, a little frazzled, and a lot messy, but loving above all else.
“You are strong. You’re so strong,” she pressed on, balling her hands up. “You carried this family when I couldn’t, and you’ve raised your sister so beautifully, and I…” Her voice cracked and she dropped her chin to her chest, noticeable tremors shaking her pointed shoulders.
“I’m just so proud of you and so sorry I let it get this bad,” she sobbed, and that thing in my chest gripped itself hard. “I’m so sorry, baby. So so so sorry.”
I was drowning. My mom was proud of me. Proud of me for everything I’d done for her and Charlotte. Maybe she was even proud of me as a daughter, and that gripping thing in my chest wanted so badly for it to mean something. Her pride.
“Can I take you somewhere?” “Where?” I breathed, resigned to say yes wherever it was. His voice got real low, secretive and intimate. Just for me. “Somewhere I can kiss that frown off your lips.” I think I started nodding before he finished speaking, fast and needy for him to do just that.
He could fuck his name into my walls and leave fingerprint bruises all over my body so I could shove it in Heather’s face that he was mine, and that he knew what I felt like inside and out.
positioning me in front of him before he turned the knob. And my breath left my body. Rose petals as red as the blood rushing to my cheeks littered the entire space, spilling across a bed that was the only furniture set up in the whole room. In the whole house, for that matter.
“I couldn’t believe the store had a cat themed card.” A lopsided grin peeled up his face, and it was deadly just like the card. “It was fate.” Fate. Sadistic fucking fate.
Then, I wasn’t suffocating anymore. I was drowning. I was fucking drowning in that roaring, soul-stealing ocean I’d been fighting through this whole time as warm lips caressed the shell of my ear, his voice of thunder rumbling against it.
Our heroin chemistry burned so hot in my veins, scorching, flooding my blood full of flames that licked with razored tongues until the chemistry became something else entirely. It wasn’t a drug anymore. It had gone past addiction and straight to something worse, something truly and utterly inescapable.
“Why do they even call it falling when it’s jumping? It’s jumping from one death-defying stunt to the next and just praying you land on your feet.”
“It’s safer hating the villain than falling for the hero,” I whispered to no one.
“Do you want to know the first time I fell in love with you?”
“The first time?”
“I’ve fallen in love with you several times since I met you, Ms. Sanders,” he spoke, tender and so sure.
“Sometimes I fall in love with you when I’m just thinking about you. Sometimes you’re standing right next to me when it happens.”
“I’ll burn down anyone who tries to hurt you.” “Maybe you’ve got it backwards,” he heartened, face lowering to mine. “Maybe you’re my hero.” “I hate maybes.” “And I love you,” he hummed. “Deeply and wildly out of my control.”
He was stupid enough to love me, and I was stupid enough to love him back. We were stupidly in love, and the perfect storm we forged roared with life in my new heart.
I was all out of that, nothing but needy and in love and scared as fuck about it all. Aw, fuck. In love. I was so sick in love with him.
“Why’re you looking at me like that?” Knowing in his brilliant eyes, he asked, “Like how?”
“Like you…” “Love you?” he finished, the words an affectionate murmur he passed over my parted lips.
“I guess,” was all I could say, was all I could think.
“Because I can, and because I do.”
My eyes were everywhere over his naked body, drinking him in like I’d never been closer to perfection. Because truthfully… I really didn’t think I had. This was perfection. It had to be.
The heroin chemistry wasn’t supposed to morph into this. It wasn’t supposed to malform into fairytale love that made this moment feel so monumental. It felt like nothing had ever felt before as I stared up at him and he stared down at me, his eyes cusping diamond-like quality they shined with a love so bright.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly swollen and thick. “I—’’ My voice broke in half. Audibly.
My stupid fucking weakness over three little words.
My heart that loved him. My heart that was fighting with my terror-struck tongue to say the words. I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m so fucking scared to be in love with you. Except the words didn’t translate from my mind to my mouth.
Understanding passed over Dominic’s eyes, and he nodded, squeezing my hand. “I love you too,” he whispered.
I wanted to create a brand new color on the spectrum of filth, and I wanted to name it after us.
The burn was beginning to build in my core, getting hotter each time Dominic rammed himself into me like he needed to fuck me to stay alive. No. Like he needed to love me to stay alive. This wasn’t fucking. This was loving. This was loving so purely and vulnerably, I was sure of it. I understood it now. Making love and fucking? There was an emphatic difference. Fucking was all lies, all selfish, and all shallow. This? This was not that.
And then more silence. How was it possible for so much silence to exist between two people? Two people who used to love each other endlessly? Maybe that’s why I hated silence so much. It was the loudest reminder of what wasn’t there.
I was lying, he knew it, and I knew he knew it.
“There are only two things that feel better than your mouth on me,”
chest. “What
“Being inside of you.”
list shining bright in his stare. “And being loved by you,” he told me, as serious as the heart attack in my chest. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
This woman did lethal things to me. She had from the day I met her.
“Wear the red dress.” Then he spun around and left. TWENTY KAT I specifically did not wear the red dress. How dare that bastard use my best color against me.
Even as a boy, I couldn’t wait to be in love and married. Next to being on the force, becoming a husband and a father were all I wanted. I wanted a family like the one I grew up with. I wanted the dream, and I wanted it badly. The idea of being in love had always been so romantic to me, and perhaps that’s why I married Heather as young as I did.
“The girls here are more than just their job. Just like I’m sure you’re more than just a pain in my ass.”
“I also happen to be an excellent karaoke singer.”
“I like calling you daddy.” Before I could stop it, an anticipated flash of vixen green eyes blurred past my mind. You’re not the only one.
LAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKAKA
“You and I are not getting back together.” I switched my eyes back and forth between hers, a finality settling in the surrounding air. “No matter what.”
WELL NEVER EVER EVEEEEEEER GETTING BACK TOGETHER
Not bad flames. Not good flames. Blake’s flames. They didn’t hurt. They didn’t soothe. They just felt.
“He was a hopeless romantic.”
“Does that mean you’re a hopeless romantic too?”
“No. I’m just hopeless.”
“But we have to set boundaries.” Brightly, I nodded. “You got it, roomie.”
