More than the gut-punch at knowing she’s gone, it’s that single word that hits so hard. I know what she saw in my journal.
The darkest part of me, a part of myself I still haven’t reckoned with, a part I’ll never unload until the day I can find and confront my father’s killer, and find out if I have the strength to take another man’s life when he’s not an enemy combatant determined to kill me if I don’t end him first.
And Reb, little Reb...
Has been fucking protecting me all these years.
She isn't lying. I'm not sure if she's ever told a serious lie in her whole damn life.
I’ve hated that she saw that part of me. Hated that she knows what I’m capable of. Hated like I didn't know I could, knowing she’s been protecting me.
It's like I'm underwater. Lungs heavy. This crushing feeling bleeding inside me.
I can’t let her leave like this.
I have forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours till the end of next weekend, and my life belongs to Milah Holly and Dallas Reese.
Forty-eight hours to find that little cat of a woman, drag her back here, and set things right between us.
I rush through the next half hour. Put out extra food for the cats, make sure Milah hasn’t overdosed in some weird corner of my property, and lock up the house before I toss an overnight bag in my car and peel out.
L.A. isn’t a long drive, but she’s got a head start on me. I’m going to find Kenna.
We’re going to talk about this.
About what she saw in my journal.
About that kiss.
About everything.
And then, willing or not, I’m bringing my little Reb home.
11
Seeing Stars (Kenna)
The great thing about having a big brother is that he’s always willing to be a big brother, oversized puppy that he is.
And when I showed up at his doorstep all wet-eyed and sniffly, he didn’t even ask questions. He just hugged me tight, took my bag, and settled me down in the guest room with a pint of Rocky Road and his Netflix password.
His wife, Melanie, is just as kind and doting, inviting me out for a spa day and just hugging me cheerfully when I say maybe not today.
Today, I just want to be alone, and try to lose myself in the story I’m failing to write.
I don’t want to be me, right now.
I’d rather live in someone else’s head.
That’s why, stomach full of Rocky Road, I’m perched at the red-painted picnic table in Steve’s back yard. It’s quiet out here under the dappled shade of the trees, save for the distant shouts of someone’s kids at the playground down the street.
Steve’s settled so quietly into suburban life, with his sprawling house and fenced-in, manicured yard. He’s such a good guy, and the kind of hero I’d never write about. Or maybe I’m just not that into the Prince Charming type.
Maybe I should try to be.
Because staring at this freaking Landon standin jumping out from my pages, larger than life, has chased me right back to the hellish dungeon of shitty, awful writer’s block.
So much for not living inside my own head, when he’s everywhere. On my mind. On the page. Burned into my body, when I still remember the look on his face – devouring, blue eyes pure wildfire – when he smirked his devil’s smirk and talked so casually about fucking. Me.
I could feel it. I could feel it like the word fuck was a sick, sweet dirty violation sliding inside me.
This thickness. This heat, parting my flesh and filling up inside me until we locked together and I couldn’t feel anything but the deep hungry thrust of his cock inside me.
My face is burning, and it’s not the summer heat. Oh, God.
Maybe I should take a dip in Steve’s pool to cool myself off. I close my eyes and thunk my head against the blank pages of my journal.
I’m not like this. Not usually.
Sure, I have dirty fantasies about imaginary men and then put them on the page. I share what gets me off with the whole world, bestselling romance author that I am.
But it’s not like me to get this hung up on a real guy and sit here numb, suffering in my clothing with my nipples aching against my bra and my panties clinging to me in a sopping wet mess. Just thinking about that moment when, for just a second, I’d have sworn Landon was ready to pull me onto his lap with those big, coarse hands on my hips while I tore my clothing off and rode him.
It's never been like this. Not even when my hormones were exploding in puberty and he was the closest thing I had to a boy idol. But back then, I was young, and sex was just a nebulous idea in dirty books or on TV after my parents went to bed.
Now?
Now I know exactly what I want, and just the thought makes me throb.
Why can’t it be as easy as it is in my books?
Smoldering chemistry. Undeniable desire. That beautiful moment when they can’t resist each other. No words, no mess, just sudden perfect need.
Everything crashing together. Knowing what they want without saying a single thing.
If only real life were so magical.
I shrug, lost in my head. Maybe falling back on that trope is why my books have been falling flat lately.
I just plotz away there for hours. Hours where the misery and frustration of failure and no income do dark wonders to calm my reckless libido.
I’m watching a ladybug trundle its way across the picnic table in the waning twilight, the sun sinking just enough for the automatic sensors to trigger the flickering string lights Steve’s strung up all around his backyard like little bits of floating embers. I can’t help but smile, as I lift my head and look up at the tiny motes of light in the trees.
Steve is such a human cinnamon roll, I swear. All goodness, comfort, sweetness. Too pure for this world.
And being around him makes me feel so much better, even when he’s not here, away at his engineering job most days.
It isn't perfect. But at least I feel...home.
At least until motion catches my attention near the fence. I jerk, tensing.
When you’re home alone in a home that isn’t your own, it only takes a millisecond to ramp from peaceful solitude to masked stalker here to kill me.
Yet when I turn, it’s not a serial killer in a creepy hockey mask climbing over Steve’s fence. It's not Mr. Hoodie, the stranger who ambushed me at Landon's place, returning for a bad re-run.
It’s someone much better and worse.
Landon.
Cold jolts through me with surprise, followed by heat roaring through with the force of seismic waves so heavy they take my legs out from under me when I try to stand. I manage to rise about half an inch before I thump numbly back down on the picnic table’s bench. He looks like everything that’s been running through my head since I left: wild, primitive, this dark leviathan god full of so much primal energy it practically vibrates off him.
He also looks like every heartbreak I’ve ever known.
And I can’t have him here while I’m still breaking over watching Milah crawl on him this morning, after he found those words I’d never wanted him to read, every wayward thought I’ve refused to acknowledge since I was a teenager committed to incriminating paper.
He drops down lithely from the top of the fence, then just stands there, breathing heavily, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides. There’s something dangerous about him right now, something volatile, this vibrant dynamite that could go off anytime if I just light the match – yet he’s different, too.
The dark shadow, that haunted and cruel air that’s hovered over him for years, isn’t there when I look into his eyes.
We hold for long, breathless moments. My chest tightens. The silence hurts. Beyond painful.
“I...” I, nothing. I swallow, licking my lips. “There are doors, you know?” I offer weakly, my voice nearly drowned in the soundless thing building between us.
“Didn’t want to deal with Steve. Didn't need him knowing.” Low. Growling. Steady. Whatever he’s here for, he’s certain of it. He steps closer to me on prowling movements. “I came for you, Reb.”