I faltered to a staggered stop.
That dark, foreboding boy stood at the edge of the graveled drive. Tattooed hands stuffed in his pockets. Hair wild as it whipped around his head.
My mouth went dry and I took a single step back.
He took a pleading one forward. “Blue.”
My head shook as another gust of wind blasted through.
Those dark eyes swallowed me whole, his voice hard. “Been sittin’ in that hotel room for the last three days, since the moment I saw you on the stand. Being brave.”
My face pinched. As if it could protect me from his words. From this boy who held the power to desolate and destroy.
To build me up or break me.
“All these months…” His head shook, as if he were trying to make sense of it. “The way I felt? Feeling like I wanted to wrap you up and protect you? Hunt down that bastard and make him pay for what he did to you? Didn’t get it, Blue. Didn’t get what it meant. Not until that night back at my place in L.A.”
I took another step back. Wanting to run. To him. Or away. I didn’t know.
“I can’t let you do this to me, Lyrik. Not again.” I fisted my hand at my chest. “I can’t take it…you drawing me closer before you push me away. I don’t know what you want from me.”
He laughed this bemused sound, mouth pulling up at the side. “You know…when I first met you…thought that was what I liked about you most. The push and the pull. All that attracting and repelling. That crazy contradiction I felt around you. Was something I just couldn’t resist.”
His expression turned somber. “But it was so much more than that. And as much as I wanted to launch myself across that courtroom and tear that piece of shit to shreds, I knew you sitting up there on that stand, doing it yourself? It’s what you needed. Even when I knew I wanted to be the one there if you needed me. To catch you if you fell, even when I knew my girl was gonna stand.”
My girl.
The air whipped into a frenzy.
And that feeling blazed.
The thrill.
I shivered as it rolled over me.
Wave after wave.
“I need to tell you something, Blue.”
“You can’t—” I attempted.
He edged forward, so damned tall and strong and so ridiculously soft. Those dark eyes were tormented as he reached out and grabbed both my wrists, hauling me forward.
And I felt so small and vulnerable.
Caged.
“Please…listen to me.”
I struggled and he held tighter though his tone softened. “Listen to me, Blue…I need you to hear this.”
I gave. So fucking weak. Because that’s the way this boy made me.
He gathered me closer and his voice dropped to a whisper as he uttered the confession at my ear. “I have a son.”
His words slammed into me like a freight train that had no time to slow.
They just blew straight through me.
Impacting everything.
“Brendon.” It scraped from my throat as that awareness took hold. The name woven through his song. The heart of his story.
The word was reverent when he murmured it back. “Brendon.”
He shifted, still holding me tight as he stared down at me. “Told you I fuck everything up, Blue. I take the good things I’m given then crush them. First day I met him? That was the day I had to tell him goodbye.”
Pain radiated from him. A crestless wave. Endless. “I got to hold him once. Once, Blue. I didn’t get to keep him. Fuck, I wanted to so bad…but I had to give him up because it was the only thing I could do. The best thing I could do for him.”
Tears soaked my face as he kept talking, “I made him a promise…I promised him he’d be the last person I ever fell in love with. In some twisted way, I thought it’d make up for something, condemning myself to my own personal hell.”
I was shaking. Shaking all over.
My heart breaking.
For him.
For the child.
For the girl in the photo.
Just the same as it swelled with jealousy.
“You have a son,” I whimpered.
He tried to draw me closer, as if that might be the only way he could get me to understand. “How could I go and find happiness after I’d left him? How could I, Blue?”
Edging back, his brow twisted and pinched, gaze relentless. “But then there was you. This beautiful, bold, brave girl. Think I knew from the get go you were off limits. That I shouldn’t touch you. That I should stay away. Because I knew if I did, I wasn’t ever gonna be the same. And I’m not, Blue. I’m not. Because you changed everything.”
My spirit thrashed, stirred by a sudden gust of wind. Tension winding fast.
His expression locked in sorrow. “Look at you…”
He brushed his knuckles across my cheeks, sending a rush of chills spiraling through my senses.