Текст книги "Back To Back"
Автор книги: Chelsea M. Cameron
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
“Fuck, Saige. You’re making me hard again,” he says. My head rolls back and I move my hand faster, pressing harder and harder on my center.
Just a little more…
“Oh God,” I moan, throwing my head back as my body throbs with the orgasm. It goes on so long, I can barely stay in the chair. When it’s over, I nearly melt to the floor in a puddle of post-orgasmic bliss.
I open my eyes to find Sylas working himself again. We could go like this all night long. He comes again and then runs his hand through the cum on his stomach.
“I should probably shower,” he says. “Join me?”
I do, and I come two more times before I fall into bed.
I’m almost glad now when I wake sweating and shaking and crying. It means that another piece of the puzzle is given to me from my own mind. I have to endure the pain to get another bit. A sacrifice for my secret.
I assemble the parts, but they still don’t make a whole. There isn’t a complete picture. There’s only the trunk, my small hand releasing the trunk, blood on a linoleum floor and now scratches on my arms and legs from a prickly bush. Little slashes of red all over my pale skin. I repeat everything in my head so I don’t forget it. I’m still worried that they’ll vanish from my brain if I don’t work hard to remember them.
“Maybe… Maybe you’d want to talk to my therapist? I hate the way that sounds, but it might help,” Sylas says. I know it might, but I don’t want to share this with someone. Not even a professional. I want to be the one to unlock the secrets of my own brain.
“I’ll think about it,” I say as I get up to take yet another shower and rinse off the sweat. This has become my nightly routine and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. Not until I can figure out this entire nightmare and what it means.
Twenty-Four
Over the next few days I finish the drawing of Sylas, which actually turns out okay. He declares that I’m a brilliant artist and I just tell him he’s biased. I slog my way through the rest of my finals. Sylas is usually gone during the day, but he doesn’t tell me what he’s doing. I figure he’s earned the right to keep a little bit of mystery and since he seems happy when he comes home, I don’t bug him to tell me about it.
I redo drinks with Lo on Friday and it’s nice to have some girl time. I’ve missed her. Just as Sylas needs to spend time with his friends, I need to spend time with mine. I make plans to go out with the group the following Friday night to keep checking off the bars on our list. Lo asks if I’m going to bring Sylas and I ask him, but he says that he already has plans with the guys, which makes me happy.
Saturday I get to reunite with Lizzy and it’s every bit as fun as I thought it would be. I don’t think of anything bad when I’m with her. She’s better than any sort of stimulant.
The visit is going perfectly until one of the nurses knocks on Lizzy’s door and says she has another visitor. I give Sylas a look and he doesn’t seem surprised.
“Who is it?” I ask, but then my question is answered as my father walks in the room.
I want to curse and scream at him to get out, but I won’t curse in front of Lizzy, or make a scene.
“What are you doing here?” I say, trying to keep my voice level. He has his hands behind his back and takes only two steps into the room, still hovering near the doorway.
“Hi!” Lizzy says, waving and then going over to him. I reach out to stop her, but Sylas grabs my shoulder and forces me to stay sitting on her bed.
“Did you plan this?” I hiss at him as Dad and Lizzy start talking. He brings out some flowers from behind his back and she squeals in delight. I can’t help but notice the look on his face as he stares at her. Pain and longing mixed together. He’s never looked at me like that.
“He contacted me. I thought it was time and that it might be good for the two of you to talk.” I’m so angry with him for doing this without asking me.
“You should have said something,” I whisper as Lizzy throws her arms around Dad. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.
“We’re going to talk about this,” I say to Sylas before getting to my feet and walking behind Lizzy, putting a protective hand on her shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” I say, keeping my voice pleasant and a sweet smile on my face. Good thing I’ve had enough practice pretending I feel one way when I actually feel something completely different. I slip into my old role like putting on a comfortable pair of boots.
His eyes flick down to my hand on Lizzy’s shoulder. That’s as clear a signal as anything.
“I came for a visit. And to talk to you.” Well I sure as hell don’t want to talk to him. He burned that bridge.
I’d be lying if I said a part of me didn’t want to throw my arms around him and hug him like when I was a little girl. Cry and tell him I love him and that I’ll always be his little girl.
But I’m not going to do that.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I say slowly, making sure my voice doesn’t tremble.
“Hey, Sister, how about we go and see if we can talk one of the nurses into giving you a popsicle, hm?” Sylas says and Lizzy gets totally distracted by the promise of popsicles. He leads her out of the room, leaving me and alone with my father.
I drop my smile on the floor and want to smash it under my boot.
“What are you doing here? Why the fuck are you here?” I ask. I want to punch him. I want to shove him out of the room, out of this place.
“I came because I don’t want to lose you. You’re my daughter, Saige. I can’t lose you.” Should have thought of that before he decided to choose his work over me.
“It’s too late. It’s already done,” I say, spinning around and going back to sit on Lizzy’s bed. “I want you to go. You don’t deserve to be here.”
He doesn’t deserve to be around Lizzy. He hasn’t earned the right.
“I know I’ve made mistakes, Saige.” His voice breaks and I’m glad to finally hear some emotion from him. He seemed so callous last week. So cold.
“Some mistakes can’t be undone,” I say.
I hear his footsteps and then a hand rests on my shoulder.
“I love you so much, Saige. You’re one of the only things I don’t regret. I can never regret marrying your mother because then I wouldn’t have you.” His words stir anger and pain in me, but I can’t just let it go.
“I can’t do this,” I say. It would be juvenile of me to go into the bathroom and lock the door and wait for him to go away, but I’m really close to doing just that.
“I’ve talked to the rest of Sylas’ team. I told them that if they wanted to work for me, they could. And if they didn’t, I would let them go. They all decided to stay. I’ve given them contracts and now there’s nothing over their heads. I’m going to do the same for Sylas,” he says and I finally turn around.
“Just like that? You’re just going to change your mind? What happened to all of the things you said the other day?” I’m not trusting this. Not until I know why.
There are tears in his eyes and he still looks haggard. I can’t help but be touched at how destroyed he seems. It tugs at my sympathy. Despite everything he’s done, I still love him. I’ll always love him, in some capacity.
“I knew the second I left. The second I closed the door. I’ve spent the past few days thinking and thinking and going over and over everything. I’m not the kind of man who changes his mind, Saige. I’m old and slow to learn.” He chuckles a little, but I don’t find it funny.
“You expect me to believe you had some sort of epiphany and now you’re just going to let go of everything? I don’t believe you,” I say. I can’t figure out what his angle is, other than getting me back into his life and putting himself back in my good graces.
“It’s not easy to admit my daughter is smarter than I am. That she’s right. I’ve made all my decisions without input from someone else. I weighed the good and the bad and acted accordingly. Everything was black and white. It wasn’t easy, but it was clear. I’ve lived my whole life this way and no one has challenged me. Not the people I hire, not my wife, no one. She used to challenge me. Marina.” The way he says her name is like a prayer. Her name is holy coming from his mouth.
“I know my path would have been different if she had lived.” So would my path, as a result. So would Sylas’ and Lizzy’s. So many lives affected by one death. Links in a chain.
“I can’t think about ‘what ifs’. It won’t change the path I’ve taken. But I can change now. Change where I’m going. I’m not going to stop my work. I can’t. I’ve come too far. But I am going to change the way I do things. No more secrets. No more blackmailing and torture and deals made in dark rooms. It doesn’t serve the greater good like I thought it did. You made me see that. You made me examine my life and how far I’ve come. I don’t like the man I am right now, Saige. I don’t like him.”
My father is a good liar, but I know the exact tone of his voice when he’s telling the truth. These words are all true. He’s being honest with me. Maybe more honest than ever.
“How can I believe you? What assurance do I have that you’re not going to go back on this?” He’s silent for a few moments and then he holds his hands out in front of himself.
“Only my assurance. Only my word. I know it’s not worth much, but I love you and I’m making a promise to you, my daughter, and this isn’t the kind of promise I break.” He’s got me there. Every time he promised me something when I was a kid, whether it was that he’d be there for my piano recital, or that if I snuck out he would ground me, he followed through. That’s one of the reasons I always trusted him, believed what he said. Because my father never lied to me.
But Grayson Beaumont isn’t just my father. He’s a lot of other people and those people don’t owe me promises.
“I need to think about it,” I say. He clasps his hands together, almost as if he’s praying.
“That’s fair. I need you to know I’m doing this for you, and I love you. I want things to be like they were between us.” They can never be that way again. He broke my trust and now we have to repair it.
My relationship with Sylas has been the same way. We both broke the other one’s trust and we’re still working on getting to a place of security again.
He reaches out and I let him take my hands.
“I promise you, Saige Juliette.” After giving my hands a squeeze, he turns around and leaves. I hear him run into Sylas and Lizzy in the hallway. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but a few minutes later Sylas and Lizzy come back. Lizzy’s mouth is red and there’s also a spot on her shirt. She’s holding something out to me.
“I brought you a popsicle,” she says. I blink a few times and it takes me a second to process her words. I look down at the object and take it from her. It’s cold.
“She wanted to bring you one,” Sylas says in explanation.
“Thank you,” I say, removing the wrapper from the half-melted popsicle. It’s red, the same flavor Lizzy had. I lick it and it makes my teeth hurt. Lizzy hops back on the bed and Sylas gets a movie going for her before jerking his head in direction of the bathroom. I follow him, the popsicle dripping onto my hand and running down my arm.
Sylas closes the door of the bathroom behind us.
“How did it go?” he asks as I toss the popsicle in the sink. I’ll clean up the evidence that I didn’t eat it so Lizzy doesn’t know.
“I’m sure you already know because you talked to him,” I say, fixing him with a level stare. He doesn’t even try to deny it.
“Yes, I did talk to him. He called me and said he wanted to work things out. That we could put the past behind us and move forward. He said he wanted to have a good relationship with me, with you and eventually with Lizzy. He claimed he was just desperate to get to know her and scared of losing her.” His voice is level and even, showing no emotion, no indication of how he feels.
“And you believe him?” I ask. A sigh comes from his mouth and he pulls me into a hug, as if he needs to anchor himself to something. Me.
“I don’t know, Saige.”
He starts rocking me back and forth and I find comfort in him. In the way he holds me. In the way his body molds to mine. In the way our breath matches.
“I don’t know either. I want to believe him. He promised. He’s never broken a promise to me that he made as my father. Ever.” I hear Lizzy cackling in the next room. I almost envy her. She doesn’t have to worry about any of this.
We’re interrupted by a knock at the door.
“What are you doing in there?” Lizzy whines. Sylas and I freeze, as if we’ve been caught doing something wrong. It breaks the tension of the moment and we both laugh softly.
“We’ll be right out, Lizzy,” Sylas says, letting go of me.
“What now?” I ask. He shrugs and opens the door.
“We keep moving forward. No going back now.”
He has a point. There is no going back. I don’t completely trust any of this, but there’s not a whole lot I can do except stay on my toes and keep my eyes open. At least I have Sylas to help me. We’re completely on the same page now.
We watch some more movies with Lizzy and then it’s time for her to go to dinner and time for Sylas and me to leave. I expect Dad to call me and reiterate everything, but he doesn’t. He’s leaving me alone to think everything over. I’m not even going to start that process until tomorrow.
“Do you mind if we stop at my place and get some stuff? I don’t know why I’ve been hesitant to completely move all of my things to your place,” he says.
“It’s partially my fault,” I say, rolling down the window. It’s hot today. Summer is definitely here now. I’ve got a few weeks off before I start my summer classes. In past years I’d spend that time going to the beach, shopping with Lo and generally frittering my time away.
This year I have Sylas and I’m looking forward to entire days spent in bed with not a stitch of clothing on either of us.
“I should have asked,” he says. We’re both to blame for not talking about moving in.
When we get to his place, he asks me if I’ll come up and help him. I agree and we walk into his place. It always shocks me when I come here because it’s not the place I thought he would live.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, going to the bedroom. I stand awkwardly in the shabby kitchen. This apartment looks abandoned. There are no knickknacks left out, no boxes of cereal, no coffee cups in the sink. It’s an anonymous place. Depressing, if I’m being honest. I walk into the living room and look at the coffee table. Yes, it’s definitely been in a fire. I rub my hand along one corner and my skin comes back stained with black dust.
“What are you doing?” Sylas says and I whirl around so fast, I smash my hip into the couch.
“Nothing,” I say. “I was just looking at your coffee table. If you want, we can bring it to my place. I have another spot I can put the one I have,” I say. He’s giving me a strange look as he holds a few photo albums in his hands.
“What?” I ask.
He jumps a little and shakes his head.
“Nothing. Um, can you give me a hand in here?” I nod and follow him into his bedroom and back toward his closet.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“We need to get that,” he says, pointing to a small safe, “into your car. If we can’t do it today, I’ll just get some of the guys to give me a hand another time.”
The black box is deceptively small, but I know that the thing must weigh a ton.
“We can try,” I say, feeling skeptical. Sylas grabs one end of the safe and I go for the other and we count to three and lift. It raises about three inches off the floor and that’s as far as we get.
“No way,” I say, setting my end back down. If I try to do any more, I’m going to tear or break something. Sylas sighs and sets his end down.
“Why don’t we empty it and then try again?” I ask. He does the combination of the safe and I look away to give him some privacy.
He pulls a few things out and then shuts the safe again. He sets the things on the bed and then we try again. No dice.
“If you want, we can stop and get another one, if you feel like you need it.” All of my secure stuff is at my dad’s house. He’d definitely have an extra one or two hanging around.
There’s no way in hell I’m calling him though.
Sylas gathers up the rest of his things and puts them in a duffel bag.
“Were you serious about the coffee table?” he asks.
“Totally. I want you to feel at home at my place. Our place, I guess.” The apartment is definitely decorated 99 percent me and 1 percent Sylas at the moment.
“But you’re a much better decorator than I am,” he says, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“That may be true, but I still want it to look like our apartment instead of just mine.” We haven’t discussed how rent or utilities are going to work yet, but we’re definitely doing this and I can’t help but feel giddy.
Commitment has always somewhat terrified me. I never thought I would want the kind of relationship I’m in right now.
“Let’s take this stuff down and then we can come back for the coffee table,” he says. I know the table will fit in the BMW since I’ve seen it crammed in before. That was so long ago. Feels like another lifetime.
The car is full when we go back to my place. Unloading the car seems to take a lot longer than putting the stuff in and by the time we’re done and his coffee table has taken its rightful place, I’m sweaty and exhausted.
I flop on the couch and Sylas joins me.
“I can’t believe we’re living together,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulder and lacing our fingers together.
“I know. I had no idea we’d be here, but I knew when I met you that you were going to change my life.” I turn my head and rest it against his chest.
“I knew, too. I remember seeing a picture of you Cash had given me. Your hair was all over your face and you were laughing. Your dress was black with little skulls all over it. I kept telling myself it was just a physical reaction. You were just another beautiful woman. It was so much more than that, though, Saige.” I know exactly what he means.
“I want to show you something,” he says and then motions for me to let him up. I move and he goes to get the duffel full of items he took out of the safe. He rifles around until he pulls something out.
“This was one of the only things that I was able to save from the house during the fire. Except for the coffee table, but I went back and got that later,” he says, holding the album on his lap. I scoot over and he opens it.
“Oh, Sylas.” The album is filled with pictures from his childhood. Birthdays and summers outside and school pictures. He’s in a ton of them, but then so is his mother. She really was a beauty. I’ve only seen the few pictures Dad was able to save.
He turns the pages and I drink in all the snapshots of his life before his mother died. There he is, missing teeth and grinning as he opens a Christmas present. And again playing t-ball in a blue uniform.
I stop when I get to one of his mother. She’s wearing an apron with little blue flowers on it as she looks up from a cake she’s frosting. It looks like one of the cakes from Sylas’ birthday. Her face is radiant with a smile, the sun streaming in from the window behind her, lighting her up.
“She’s so beautiful,” I say, but that’s such an understatement.
“I know. Too beautiful for this world. She was too good.” I don’t know about that, but it’s a crime that her life was severed by the one man who was supposed to protect her, take care of her.
I’m about to turn the page of the album when I notice something. The floor of the kitchen looks familiar, but I can’t place it. Huh. I discard the feeling and turn the page of the album, but something in the back of my mind flickers and itches. I don’t know what to do to scratch it.
“What is it?” Sylas notices my discomfort somehow. He really must be able to read my mind. Or I’m just not very good at hiding my expressions anymore. Out of practice.
“Nothing. I’m just sad for you,” I say. “That she was taken from you, taken from Lizzy.” He sighs.
“There’s nothing we can do about it now and the person responsible is dead. That’s the best we can do.” I suppose it is. The picture is still bothering me, but I keep going through the album until I get to the end. There are tears in my eyes and they finally spill over. I wipe them away and Sylas lays the album aside.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry.”
“It’s okay, Saige. I wish I could cry. It’s normal to cry. But I can’t.” I’ve seen him cry before, but only when he’s at his emotional breaking point.
“I can’t seem to stop crying,” I say. I never thought of myself as all that emotional, but maybe it’s because I bottled everything up for so many years and it’s all getting squeezed out of me now.
“I love you anyway,” he says, tickling me in my ribs and turning the serious moment into something much lighter.
“Stop it,” I say, collapsing as he attacks me. The assault ceases and he smiles down at me.
“Thank you for letting me share that with you. I’ve never shown anyone those pictures,” he says. I reach up and stroke his stubbly face.
“Thank you for trusting me with them,” I say.
I love him. I love him so much I can’t even comprehend it. Can’t hold it in my hands. It would spill over my fingers. So much. Too much.
“How about I make dinner for a change?” he says. Neither of us are very good cooks, but we do our best.
“Sounds good.” It get a kiss on my nose before he climbs off me and heads to the kitchen.
I pick up the album and go back to the page with the picture of his mother. I stare at it, but I can’t figure out what is sparking something in my mind. It’s going to bother me until I can figure it out, but then there’s a crash in the kitchen and I have to go rescue Sylas from a frying pan with nefarious intentions.
