The muscles in his jaw pop, his eyes still pressing their displeasure into mine. There are many moments in life that you intrinsically know will change you, that have the power to alter your course, and Lincoln and I have reached a fork in the road. So many options, and each of them the wrong one.
Lincoln crashes his lips over mine, abrasive, angry, domineering, and chauvinistic in every sense of the word. My wrists struggle to break free half-heartedly before I open wide and let him fall into my mouth, washing away the sins of his brother, cleansing me with his deep-throated kisses.
Lincoln and I sigh into one another, a guttural sound you can only hear from the inside out. This is what it’s like to be desperate for a kiss and receive it, the sweetness, the roughness, oil and water struggling to mingle one last time.
His hands knead over my hips as his body presses into me hard. There’s something about the roughness that I need right now. I want Lincoln to have his coarse, broken way with me. Stab me in the night with his body over and over again, do to my flesh what he’s already done to my spirit. His mouth moves down over my face, my hair, my neck in a quick revolution. In a drugged moment of ecstasy, I roll my head to the side and catch a low-lidded glimpse of Leah, her body imprinted like a shadow, her budding disgust rising like vomit. Lincoln finds my mouth again, desperate, hungry, ravaging me with his tongue.
He pulls me up onto his hips and carries me out of the club that way, our mouths still fused as we bump and move through the tangle of bodies up the stairs, his heavy breaths pressing tight and steamy against my face.
“Shit,” he whispers hot into my ear. His angry panting rolls through me like thunder.
The cool night air licks over us with strong, billowy lashes as if chastising us for ever letting it get this far.
“Lincoln,” his name knifes its way out of that Leah-sized boulder sitting in my throat. The alcohol sloshes through my stomach in one hot wave as he sets me down onto the hood of a car, his own legs parting to lower his stance until we’re eye to eye. It takes a minute for me to realize this is Lincoln’s car, and the keys are already dangling from his hand.
His finger lands over my lips, silencing any protest I might be willing to give.
“Come with me.”
That sweet spot between my thighs sets in on an obedient series of spasms upon hearing that one simple word. Nothing compares to the volatile, charged frenzy his mouth can evoke.
I hop off the hood, and he helps me into the passenger’s seat. Lincoln gets behind the wheel and speeds us the hell out of there.
So much for teaching him a lesson.
Lincoln
A storm brews above, staining the dark sky with a boil of charred clouds. I race us up PCH, turning onto Arrowroot and into the driveway of my new home—our new home—at least that’s what it was meant to be. Kinsley put up a fight, and I spent a few more days at her bungalow than needed, not due to the fact I felt sorry for her—but because I could still feel Macy’s ghosts lingering in the hall, in the bed she defiled with all of Jackie’s things. Jackie. I submerge her in my thoughts, careful as closing a casket. There was a point between Macy and me when I felt comfortable sharing what happened, and then the moment slipped by, and, in truth, I hoped it would never come back. But tonight isn’t about Jackie or the tragic past we shared. Tonight is about Macy and me finding our way back. It’s about me convincing her that I’m the guy she needs to be with, never Luke. That I’m not the monster my brother set me up to be.
I haven’t sent up too many prayers, but I’ve been furiously begging God himself to not let Macy fall into that bastard’s bed. As soon as I found out she was living there, I wanted to drive the hell over and put her into my car and take her home with me where she belongs. I thought after enough time she might soften, want to talk, and when that didn’t happen, I enlisted Kinsley and Luke, unbeknownst to him, to get Macy to Gravity tonight. I couldn’t take one more second of her not in my life. My instructions were brief—do whatever is needed to get her to that club. Who knew her stepsister would show up, begging me to take her right there on the dance floor? No shame, no remorse.
Macy struggles to understand her surroundings as I help her out of the car. I pick her up and kick the door shut with my shoe.
“Is this your place?” She cranes her neck as the moon licks white the slicks over her eyes.
“How did you know?” I give a wry smile at the thought of Macy keeping tabs on me.
“Luke told me about it months ago. That you were looking.” She shrugs, swinging her feet lazily as I head straight to the double lounger on the sand that acts as a bed facing the Pacific. Kinsley’s good friend is a decorator, and I let her have at it both inside and out. My guidelines were easy—nothing too girly, but not a man-cave either. I wanted Macy to feel at home if she ever came back to me, and now she’s here, right where she needs to be.
I lay her down and slip in beside her, my arms still wrapped around her tiny frame. I would have gone straight to the bedroom, but we are too fragile. Words need to be spoken. I want her to feel safe, not hunted—or God forbid, haunted by Jackie.
“I love you.” Always a good place to start, so I do. “I’m insane without you. I can’t think or feel or breathe.”
Macy doesn’t say anything. She looks to my chest and flattens her hands against it as if coming to her senses and rebuffs me.
“Lincoln.” She winces as if the sight of me were repulsive.
It hurts hearing my name coming from her lips as a rejection.
She looks up slowly, deliberately. “Do you think I’m a bitch?”
I’m about to ask why just before that display she laid out over my bed slaps me.
“No,” I say it sharp, clear, no room for disputing it. “Not when I saw it, not now.”
She sits up, swallowing down her apprehension. “Then tell me everything.”
A growl works its way up my throat because we can’t seem to escape this Jackie- shaped labyrinth. “Not tonight.”
She bolts up and sprints halfway across the sand before I catch up with her, knocking us both to the ground. My hands circle her wrists, handcuffing her to me—afraid that if I don’t, this will be the last time we touch.
“Let go!” she shrills in my face.
“I want to talk about us!” I shout back. The house just above flicks its lights on and off.
The ocean roars to life before exploding its fury over the shore as the whitewash inches near our bodies.
Macy jumps to her feet, and I rise up with her.
“I don’t even know who you are!” The cords in her neck distend as she rages into me. The wind blows back her hair like flames.
“You know me.” I shake my head as if denying it. “You know me better than anyone on this planet.” My voice breaks. “I want you back. I want everything we had back.” A horrible knot twists in my throat, painfully cramping, but I push through it. “I’ve never felt more sure of anything—of anyone in my entire life, Macy. You make me a better person.”
“You stole from my family! You’re a criminal!” Her eyes bulge with rage. “And perhaps a murderer! I’m not sure what I’ve improved.” She wriggles out of my grasp and begins stalking down the beach, stumbling and staggering. I could taste the liquor on her when we kissed.
“Macy, wait!” I catch up and grasp onto her fingers once again. A hot pain shoots through my chest, dissecting me from the inside out as the past comes boiling up my throat. “I didn’t kill her.” My voice softens. “And I don’t want Jackie’s beautiful, short life to be something I shout into the wind.” My panting grows uncontrollable as I pull Macy in close. I fall to my knees, and Macy follows. She lands on my lap as I run my fingers through her hair, twisted into cords by the wind. “I love you, Sin.” I pump the words into her ear. “When I was younger, there was one other person I thought I loved—I did. Her name was Jacqueline.” A line of pain bites across my stomach as that name passes from my lips. I haven’t spoken it in so long, a dull ache
churns in me as if time had turned back, and it was that ill-fated night. “Shit,” I sigh as I take that knife to my mouth once again. “Jackie.” I hold Macy tight, trying not to lose it.
Macy twists until her face is inches below mine. “I’m sorry it hurts so bad.” Her lips quiver, and water fountains from the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was hopped up on anger, resentment. It was petty jealousy. I saw how much she meant to you, and I couldn’t let it go.” She hiccups, wiping down her face with the back of her wrist. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to somehow know this girl you loved. Find out how she killed you on the inside from loving anyone else.”
“Not true. Everything I feel for you is real. I just needed the right person to come along. I needed you.” I press a kiss over her lips and let it linger. When we part, I see her eyes still opened, still filled with tears, and it breaks me. “Jack—” I swallow down the surge of emotions. “Jackie is a girl I met in boarding school. We were fast friends at a young age. I had some buddies, but for the most part, it was Jackie and I. Her father lived in Spain. Her mother remarried and lived in New York. She really didn’t have anyone. About fifteen, we started messing around.” That lump swells the size of Manhattan, and I take a moment to breathe. “We thought we were in love. We wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. At seventeen, we applied to the same colleges—we both got into NYU. She doesn’t know that. I chose another school.”
Macy gives a frightened nod. “She was gone?”
“She was gone.” Here it comes—words and sentences that I’ve avoided, never spoken out loud except once to my father. That year, I learned the hard way that when you want something wiped clean you need to start with the truth. My father’s team could work around it, fill in the jagged edges until it all smoothed out. And that’s exactly what I’m doing with Macy, without the filler, just raw, unfiltered truth pouring from me, acrid and biting, painful to digest.
“Macy. I didn’t kill her.” I pull her up and press my lips together. “It was spring break.”
“It’s at Julie Atwater’s house.” Jackie’s eyes narrowed in on me accusingly. I thought it was cute, harmless.
“We went to a party.”
“I fucking told you. I’ve never seen that girl in my life.” My voice pitched like a pussy’s. I didn’t want to lose Jackie over some stoned girl who stepped up and smacked me with her lips. “I pushed her off.”
Jackie staggered toward me, her nostrils flaring as if my words could never be enough. “There are always going to be girls who need to be pushed off with you!”
“I don’t see anyone else!” I shot back. “I just see you!”
“We got in a fight over stupid shit.” I squeeze my eyes shut and see the white-hot anger spewing from Jackie as I denied the rumors.
Her hand came up and slapped me; that painful sting still fresh against my skin.
I’ve felt it so many nights, thanked God for it, because it was all I had left of her.
“There was a group of girls lobbying hard for our breakup—one girl in particular, Hillary Sanders. She wanted me and didn’t care how she got me. She started rumors that I was getting it on with half the student body. All of Hillary’s friends happily got the rumor mill in motion. It was working. Those vicious lies were chipping away at Jackie.”
“Tiffany Oberman said she gave you a blowjob.” She started to spin, insane from the idea.
“Tiffany is a fucking liar.” I pulled her in. “I swear to you. You’re enough. You and I can make it through this—just three more months and we’re out of here, far away from Hillary and the mall rats she’s sicced on us.”
Jackie softened in my arms, her red hair tangling just below my lips. She looked up, shivering with a nod.
“You believe me?”
“Yes.” Her lips quivered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me lately. It’s like someone has set my brain on fire. I’m just not myself. I cry all the time. I’m paranoid as shit. And you”—her hands clutched to my face—“I can’t do this without you.” She brought her hot, swollen lips to mine. “I love you so much it hurts, Lincoln. I couldn’t share you if I wanted to. You will always be mine.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist. “And you belong to me.” I gave one of my widespread smiles that she claimed slayed her.
“Yeah?” She tugged me in closer by the shirt. “You think you own me, but I own you.”
“Jackie”—I mumbled into her hair, my hard-on growing for her—“the things you do to me.”
“Let’s get out of here. I want to go to the beach, find a spot, and make it our own.”
“We made up and left the party.”
“I’ll drive. You’re tanked.” She fished in my jeans for the keys and came up triumphant.
“You don’t have a license, and I’ve had less than a beer. I’m fine.” It was three beers, but I still thought I could outdrive Jackie sober on the open road.
“Oh, come on—just this once. You’re worse than my dad.”
Jackie’s father had forbidden her to drive. He wanted her to live out the rest of her days in Manhattan under the supervision of her mother where she wouldn’t have to lift a finger, let along touch her foot to a pedal.
I shook my head, taking back the keys.
“Let’s go to my room. Then neither of us has to drive.” That was what I wanted, but more than that I wanted what made Jackie happy. In a few short weeks, I was going to propose and wipe out any lingering doubts of my love for her.
Macy pulls back. “Then what happened?”
“Jackie insisted on driving us to the beach. There was a place off Venice we used to curl up on a blanket.” I rake my fingers through my hair, grooving my nails into my scalp to refocus the pain. “She hit a telephone pole. It was a blind corner. She was laughing at something I said. She was going too fast. It was stupid of me to let her drive.”
“How is any of that your fault?”
“She was banged up pretty bad, but still conscious. I had no idea to what degree she was really hurt. I moved her to the passenger’s side, and when the cops arrived, I told them I was the one behind the wheel. They ran my blood alcohol, and it came back a hair above the limit. Jackie didn’t make it to the hospital. It was hell on earth. The rest turned into a legal nightmare for my father. My sisters don’t really know the details. They did know that Jackie and I were serious, but the rest of it—I wasn’t ready to talk about.” I plant a kiss over her head. “Until now.” Something releases in my chest. A knot untangles after twelve long years, and I take my first cleansing breath in over a decade. “There’s one more thing.” Here it is, the lead weight that’s pressed against my heart all these years. “Her father had an autopsy done. Nothing too invasive, just proving the point she wasn’t drinking. That settled it in their minds that Jackie was a good girl who just so happened to get involved with the wrong crowd—me.” Macy increases her grip over my waist. “My father paid the coroner to do an intensive autopsy on her in the event she had a seizure—something—anything that would back up my story and get me off without shoveling me out of a shithole. Turns out, Jackie was healthy. He didn’t find what he was looking for. But we did learn she was four months pregnant. She didn’t know it. Her periods never came when they were supposed to.”
“Oh, Lincoln.” Macy wets my shirt with tears, and, for the first time since that horrible spring, hot tracks sail down my cheeks. Macy and I rock in each other’s arms with my quiet tears pouring out over her shoulder. I rein it in, pull it together enough to set my face to the wind and feel the sting.
“I would have wanted her to keep it. We were going to be together anyway. I wouldn’t harm a hair on our unborn child’s head.”
“You lost them both.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “Oh, God.” Her hand covers her mouth like she might be sick. “I’m so sorry about what I did. If I had known…”
“Don’t apologize. In hindsight, I was an ass. I could have done things
much better. Macy, that day you walked into my office, I had already surrendered to you. Not because I’ve got some fetish for redheads.” I give her sides a weak pinch because I know where she was going next. “But because you were the exact amount of sweet, spicy, and beautiful I was looking for. And once I got to know you, I was all yours—gone. I wanted to tell you everything, and a part of me couldn’t do it. Each time I opened my mouth to say something about Jackie, I couldn’t contain the emotions. It still hurts like hell.”
“You can always talk to me about Jackie—about the baby. I will never judge you. And I will never make you insane again. I’m here for you—day or night. It’s important for you to get it all out. Talk about what happened, the feelings you had, everything.” Her hand sweeps across my cheek, pulling me in. “I just want to be the person you lean on when you need it most.”
“Thank you,” I whisper into her lips. “You’re everything to me, Macy. I can’t lose you. I can’t let you go.” I bounce her on my lap. “Move into the beach house with me.”
“Beach house?” A playful smile comes to her lips as she bites down over it. “I’ll have to see it before I commit.”
I help Macy to her feet and scoop her up, taking long strides down the beach with this beautiful woman tucked safely in my arms.
“All right, Sin. But once you’re in my bed, I may never let you leave.”
“Who said anything about me in your bed?”
“I’m not above begging.”
I race her the rest of the way, the muscles in my legs on fire, but nothing compared to the way my body aches to be inside her. I take her on a brief tour of the house, landing her in the master bedroom overlooking the Pacific with the windows wide open, the way I left them to gulp down the fresh night air.
I lay her on the mattress, and she gives a solid groan while making snow angels over the covers.
“Wow, this is the best seat in the house.”