“ARE YOU SURE YOU’LL be okay?” I clutched the phone to my ear where I sat on the edge of my bed. Just the haze of morning teased at the windows, and Charlie’s voice was groggy with the sleep my call had pulled him from.
“Come on, sugar. You really think I’m that helpless?” he teased, and I could almost see him on his back in his bed, tugging at the end of his ratty beard, looking to the ceiling with a smile. Wouldn’t be all that surprised if five seconds from now he showed up at my door to help me pack my bags.
“I just don’t like the thought of leaving you in the lurch. You know that’s not my style.”
“Yeah…know exactly what your style is. Holing up behind my bar, pretending like you’re happy there. Like you belong there. When you and I both know that’s the farthest from the truth.”
“Charlie…” I begged. A shiver raced down the skin of my bare back, chasing after Lyrik’s callused fingertip that traced my spine.
“Go, Tamar,” Charlie urged quietly. “Haven’t ever seen you light up the way you do around him. Not ever. Not once. Not gonna act like I know all the details of your story, sugar. Your secrets. But I’m no fool, and I know they’re there. Also know when that one’s around, suddenly it doesn’t seem all that important for you to hide behind them anymore. Go. Find out if he’s the one you’ve been looking for.”
Gratitude became one with the lingering fear concealed beneath my ribs. “Thank you.”
“Family first, Tamar.”
Did Charlie have the first clue what his words did to me? The way they made my insides leap and soar, memories abounding in my mind, spurring me forward.
Toward home.
God, I missed them. Missed their faces and their laughter. The way my mother would look at me as if she already knew what I was thinking before I ever said a word. As if she understood what was happening inside me before I recognized it myself.
The need to be brave had grown so acute, I could feel the faint grasp of the hands of time dragging me back. But once where I’d feared they would hold me down, I now somehow knew they would set me free.
But it was taking the first step that was the hardest.
It was the idea of standing in front of Cameron again that had me drowning in a spiraling wave of panic.
Swiveling, I looked over my shoulder at Lyrik. The gorgeous man was on his back.
In my bed.
That shock of black hair was unruly and wild where he rested on my pillow. My sheets were a jumble of twists and knots where we’d been tangled for the couple hours of sleep we’d managed throughout the night.
Now, in the early morning light, they barely covered his slim waist, revealing his torso and arms and neck where bold ink scripted his fathomless story.
And I wondered…I wondered if there was room for more.
If he had a waiting, unmarked space for me or if all his pages had already been written.
Because I ached to fill him the way he had filled me.
“Is it weird we’re doing this?” I asked.
Shifting, Lyrik curled his arms around my waist and brushed a kiss to my hip, before he turned that haunted gaze up at me. “Weird? No. Stupid? Yeah.”
I blinked through a new onslaught of confusion. “Stupid?”
He hugged me tighter. “Blue…being with you…it’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve done in a long, long time. Reckless. Just begging for trouble. So fucking selfish. Taking more of you when both of us know I can’t keep you. But right now, I don’t know how to stop.”
I moved to straddle him, my hands on his shoulders, our bodies aligned.
Lyrik grunted and gripped me by the hips as he guided me onto him.
“I don’t want you to stop,” I whispered down to him.
Never, never stop.
Even if it was stupid.
Because love makes you do stupid things.
An hour and a half later, the car pulled up to the private terminal at Hilton Head Airport. The sun climbed the eastern horizon, rays stretching out to embrace the top of the lush copse of trees outlining the area, the green leaves dusted with dew sparkling like Christmas lights.
Everyone else was already there, gathered around the small chartered jet waiting on us.
I pushed out a nervous breath and glanced at the dark, foreboding man sitting at my side, that delicious mouth quirked up in a knowing smirk, before returning my gaze to the ridiculous show of money flaunted in front of us.
Butterflies assaulted my stomach.
I got the distinct feeling I was about to enter the world of Lyrik I knew nothing about, other than those few glances I’d been granted. The few fans who’d recognized him at the bar. Anthony’s beachside mansion. The magazine stories I’d read and the entertainment headlines that had caught my eye.
“Do you guys always go overboard like this?”
Lyrik laughed lightly. “Nah…but it sure is nice when we do.”