He’d called me by my name. Again. Then the rest of his statement registered. “You can’t be there…”
I was still talking when he walked away, disappearing down the hall that led to the restroom. My brain struggled to catch up, was still struggling when he reappeared, carrying a broom and dustpan. Feeling stiff and useless, I slid from the stool and moved closer, as if I could help.
“Stay back,” he said, his tone clipped.
I twisted my engagement ring around and around. “You know, if there’s a job or something that you’ve got going on that weekend, I’m sure your employer would understand you needing the time off for your brother...”
He shot up to his feet and strode over to me, grabbing my arms. His hands gripped me tightly, although there was no cruelty to his touch. His eyes raked over my face as though memorizing every feature.
“You’re not hearing me,” he said roughly. “I can’t be there for the wedding, Tennessee.”
My heart clenched at the nickname.
His expression so full of pain that I could hardly look at him, and yet I couldn’t look away either.
“I can’t watch you marry my brother. Not in October. Not next week. Not next year and not in the next hundred years.”
Frozen, I stood there as he reached up. His hand cupped my cheek and when he slid his thumb over my lower lip, I trembled.
“I want…” he murmured. “More than anything else, I want for you to be happy. If I had to choose between my next breath and your happiness, then I’d take my last breath satisfied, all because I knew you were going to have the things you wanted in life. The writing career you wanted, a big house, some place where you can see green…you like the city, Tennessee, but your heart isn’t here. I’d die easy if I knew you had the things you wanted in life.”
It was like he’d somehow managed to reach inside me and wrap his hand around my heart, squeezing it. I couldn’t breathe and tears blurred my vision.
“Flynn?”
He pushed his hand into my hair and I shivered.
“One last time.” The rough, silken whisper made no sense.
But then his mouth was on mine and I groaned. He did too, sliding his tongue into my mouth. As he deepened the kiss, I found myself clinging to him and the only thing that kept me upright was the fact that he had curled one arm around my waist and the solid strength of him was there, steadying me.
This kiss was nothing like any I’d ever experienced. It was everything I’d ever hoped a kiss could be.
And it was a goodbye.
When he started to pull away, I clutched him tighter, my teeth nipping at his bottom lip. He tried to pull away again and I wrapped my arms around his neck, desperate to keep him there. I couldn’t let this go. I couldn’t explain it, but deep inside I knew a simple, hard truth. One that I’d tried to deny, but couldn’t anymore.
He’d talked about my happiness.
The best chance I had of it was standing right in front of me.
This time, I let him end the kiss, but I didn’t let him go. Instead, I caught his hand and guided it to my breast. His breath came out of him in a rush, eyes blazing with a desperation to match my own.
Then he caught my hand and, in a rush, he twisted off my ring and hurled it to the far corner of the room.
“Not when my hands are on you.”
Chapter 23
The darkness of the hallway wrapped around us.
I’d never been back here before, but I didn’t care where he was taking me. Only the man in my arms mattered.
The studio had a private area in the back and I knew Flynn and I had half-stumbled, half-groped our way down here, pausing every few feet for him to push me back up against the wall and kiss his way down my neck, then back up to my mouth, all the while his fingers were busy underneath my skirt. My panties had met their end somewhere behind us.
He’d made me come twice already, but every time I’d reached for him, thoughts of reciprocation on my mind, he’d gripped my hands and tugged me further down the hall.
“In a bed,” he mumbled against my mouth. “In my bed.”
I liked the sound of that. Flynn’s bed…
It never occurred to me to think about the fact that his bed should have been at his apartment, but then again, with one hand between my thighs, talented fingers stroking my clitoris, I wasn’t exactly thinking very clearly.
When my knees started to give out during my third climax, he half-tossed me over his shoulder and we’d stumbled into a darkened room.
I caught sight of the bed and a big window, shaded by drapes. I didn’t notice anything else though, because Flynn was coming down over me, one knee on either side of my hips as he reached for the long series of buttons that ran up the front of my shirt.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said against my mouth. “I dream about you, having you with me. I feel your skin against mine. I smell the scent of you…”
Every word made me burn hotter. Every rasp of his calloused hands down my arms, my sides, my hips, my thighs, had me shivering and arching closer until I had my legs wrapped around his hips, grinding against him and hating the material that still separated us.
Neither one of us seemed willing to let the other go and he fumbled my skirt up over my hips while I worked and pulled at his belt, the button on his khakis. He untangled my legs from his hips and levered up on to his knees, staring down at me in a way no man had ever looked at me before. Breathless, I sat up and slowly tugged on the zipper of his trousers, his cock heavy and full under my fingers, pulsing with a rhythm that seemed to echo inside me. When my fingers wrapped around him, he swore softly, his eyes never leaving mine.
We removed nothing else. He drove inside me with one deep thrust and I caught my breath, arching up to take him while something inside me sighed out in completion. It felt like the missing pieces of me had finally been put back. I was slick and wet, gripping him tight as my body molded itself around him.
Our hands reached out, sought…connected. His fingers threaded between mine, fitting together perfectly, just like the rest of us.
Then he started to move.
I rose to meet him and shuddered. The sensations inside me weren’t like before. They weren’t lust. They weren’t even just desire. What I was feeling was like the kiss. This was everything and the feel of his stroking deeper, harder, driving me closer and closer to another orgasm was almost too much. Everything was too much and I could feel myself wanting to pull back, needing to pull back because if I didn’t, I was going to explode.
Flynn rolled onto his back and took me with him. He caught my hips and stared up at me with hungry eyes. “Tennessee...”
His whisper rolled through me, warming things I hadn’t realized had been cold, places I hadn’t known existed. Places that only he could speak to.
His hands sought out my breasts and I stopped bracing my weight on his chest long enough to reach up and fumble my buttons loose so I could feel his skin on mine. The memory of his hands, slathered in red pain, covering my breasts flashed through my mine, and heat washed through me, but not embarrassment or regret. Need.
It was raw and powerful and real, so real, it left me shaking.
“I need you.”
The words came out from him in a heartbreaking confession and I felt my own response echo inside of me. But before I could voice it, he arched and groaned, driving up inside me, the head of his cock passing over that spot deep inside and I cried up, rocking and twisting, the friction rubbing exactly where I needed it.
“Flynn!”
As I came, he twisted our position again, putting me flat on my back, staring up at him. Even as my body shook and convulsed around him, he drove into me, quick and hard, stealing away my scream with a deep bruising kiss. He swelled impossibly, and then I felt him come and it was my turn to swallow his cries.
He slumped down on me and I was left devastated by the force of what had just happened between us. By what I now knew.
He clutch
ed me tight against him, pressing his face against my neck, and although I could barely force air in and out of my lungs, I clung to him just as tight, held him inside me.
The knowledge burned inside me, something I should have figured out long before now.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I buried my face against his heaving chest and tried to pretend I hadn’t just figured things out. If I’d thought I’d been a mess before, I knew I was really in trouble now.
He rolled off me and I felt the sudden pang of loss. Once again, I wasn’t whole. That piece of me was missing and now I knew what it was.
“We…” He paused and sucked in a deep breath, blew it out. He did it again and then managed to speak, “Tennessee, I need to tell you something.”
Ice flooded my veins and I tensed, stomach twisting. I should have known better, and it was my own fault this time. Forcing a smile, I sat up. “If you’re going to point me in the direction of the shower, I remember where it is.”
I’d be mature about this, no matter how badly I was hurting. I’d gone into this with my eyes open. I wouldn’t blame him.
Flynn sat up with me and before I could climb out of bed, he pulled me back onto his lap. I was too surprised to resist, but not nearly as surprised by what came next. He pushed my hair back from my face and then leaned down, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m in love with you, Tennessee.”
Chapter 24
“Don’t.” My voice shook as I fought to get free of him. He let me go and I half-fell in my haste. Stumbling away, I smoothed my skirt down in an attempt to regain my composure. “Don’t. You don’t get to do that.”
I shook my head, fighting tears. I’d been ready for things to end the same way they had before, with him treating me the same way he treated all of his conquests. The way he’d treated me before. Like I didn’t matter once he’d gotten off. I hadn’t been prepared for a new lie.
He was already out of the bed, zipping up his pants and looking ridiculously beautiful.
“I don’t get to do what? What, fall in love with you?” Flynn shrugged. His tone was casual. “I’m sorry, Tennessee. Nobody gave me the rule book. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I suck at following rules.”
“Stop it!” I glared at him. “Don’t be...” I made a noise of pure frustration.
“Don’t be what?” he asked. His eyes narrowed.
“Don’t talk to me like...” Like I matter to you. I couldn’t say that though. “Don’t stand there and look at me like you meant that.”
“I did. I do.” The dim light shadowed his face and he moved around me. I flinched a moment later as light came in in a harsh glare, all but blinding me. He continued before I could say anything else. “I think I started to fall for you the day you flipped me off.” He laughed. “It only got worse after that. Every time I saw you and couldn’t have...but it wasn’t until you were in the wreck that I really knew I was in trouble.”
I heard his sigh as I wrapped my arms around my middle and started to rock. I didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to dare to think about what it might mean.
“That’s why…” His words trailed off.
I told myself I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t not know. “What?” I demanded, shaking inside.
“That’s why I’m leaving.”
I darted a look at him from the corner of my eye, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at something on the far wall. “I can’t stay here day after day and see what I can’t have. It’s driving me crazy, Tennessee. It’s making me hate myself, hate my brother…”
I felt his eyes on me now and I forced myself to look up, meet his gaze. He was staring at me intently.
“It’s making me hate you because you chose him. Hate you both even though I know he’s the better guy. So I gotta get out of here.”
Stunned, I turned to say…something.
I didn’t know what and I forgot to care too when I found myself struggling to stay on my feet as I saw what he’d been looking at.
Me.
The far wall was dominated by a floor to ceiling mural of the picture he’d done months ago. The first ones he’d ever taken of me. The ones that had haunted me from the moment I’d walked out the door.
I’d never seen them and now I couldn’t look away at the one in front of me. My back was arched, my face challenging. Red paint dripped down my breasts. Red paint in the shape of Flynn’s hands. The look in my eyes was both playful and fierce and I was smiling in a way I’d never seen.
I barely even recognized myself.
Shaken, I turned to look at Flynn.
But he was already gone.
Slowly, I moved across the floor, still staring at the larger than life image of myself.
The woman up there looked bold and fearless. She looked like she’d conquer life and if she couldn’t, then she’d go down fighting. She looked like a woman who’d chase her dreams to the end of the earth.
She looked like the woman I’d forgotten I was.
You’re one of the strongest people I know.
My throat closed up and I turned away, staring out the door. I waited for all of three seconds before I went after him.
I found him in the main part of the studio, but he wasn’t doing anything. He was just standing in front of the window, arms crossed over his chest, staring outside.
“The…” I stopped and swallowed. “The mural…”
“Don’t worry. Nobody’s seen it but me. I’ll take it down when I leave.” His voice was flat, emotionless. There was nothing left of what I’d heard before. “I was never going to show the pictures to Edward,” he added after a moment. “Those are mine. Just mine.” He slid his gaze back to me and it was hard. “You’re wasting your time if you ask me to destroy them.”
I didn’t know what to say, not to this version of Flynn.
“You should go,” he said. “I’ll call you up a car.”
“No need.” My voice was tight. “Paul’s here.”
“Of course.” He nodded.
I didn’t understand what was happening, what had happened. For a moment, I’d thought I’d seen him, the real him. And then I’d seen me, the real me, and it had seemed so natural that the two had happened together. Like we brought out something in each other that no one else did.
But now it was gone and I didn’t know what to say to him.
I was lost again, and before that realization could drive me to tears, I grabbed my purse and hurried towards the door. “Good luck in California,” I mumbled as I went.
“Thanks. Be happy with Edward.”
His words brought me to a standstill. “I can’t,” I said. My voice was low, but sure.
Flynn said nothing for the longest time. “Can’t what?”
My hands shook as I spun around, everything I’d been feeling exploding inside me.
“I can’t be happy with him! He doesn’t love me.” I put my hand on my chest and felt my heart racing against my palm. “He doesn’t love me, Flynn. Edward loves the idea of me, but of a me who’ll stay home where she’s safe. A me who lets your mother treat her like shit just to keep the peace. A woman who sucks everything in when she’s upset and just smiles. I don’t know who she is, but that woman isn’t me and I can’t be happy with him because he doesn’t love me.”
Flynn’s eyes were burning and dark when I stopped to suck in a breath. Stopped to consider what I was going to say next. “And…”
“And what?” he rasped, taking a step toward me.
I forced myself to meet his eyes. “And I don’t love him. Not the way I should. Not the way I need to if...”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “Tennessee?”
This time, we both moved. I didn’t know who reached for the other first. I didn’t know who kissed the other first. I just knew that being in his arms again, holding him, hugging him, loving him—that was right.
He pressed me up against the wall, his mouth moving along my collarbone, down my torso between my breasts, fingers flicking a
t buttons and tugging clothing out of the way, baring skin for his mouth and hands. With lips and teeth and tongue, he worshipped my body. When he pushed my skirt up around my waist, baring me to his hungry eyes, I shivered. A moan escaped my lips as he kissed just above my pussy.
I shifted my stance, needing him to have better access, needing him to touch me. The insole of my foot came down on something hard and I gasped.
It was the ring, the stone on it jabbing into my instep. Flynn’s eyes immediately dropped to see what was wrong and as soon as we saw it, we both froze. I was suddenly very aware of how exposed I was. I pushed down my skirt as Flynn stood. My fingers shook as I buttoned up my shirt.
“I…”
Flynn’s gaze came to mine, searching. Reaching down, I picked up the ring.
“I need to talk to him before we…do this,” I said quietly.
Flynn’s lashes swept down to shield his eyes and he looked away. His voice was guarded. “Exactly what are we doing here, Gabriella?”
My heart clenched a little at how distant he sounded at the use of my name. Biting my lip, I struggled to find the words. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how I felt, not anymore. I knew it beyond the shadow of a doubt. But I was scared. Terrified, actually. Terrified that once I said it, I couldn’t take it back and then he would know.
And he could hurt me.
You’re one of the strongest people I know…
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t strong, not really, but I’d learned early on that if I wanted something, I had to reach for it, fight for it. I’d lost that somewhere along the way. Lost the will to put what I wanted above my fear.
Not anymore.
Honesty was the best place to start. “I don’t know what we’re doing here, Flynn. I don’t know what’s happening or where this is going to go. But I do know that I feel more alive, more like me when I’m with you. Even when you piss me off, I feel alive.”
He’d turned back to me as soon as I started to talk, but a careful distance remained between us and I didn’t like it. Inching a little closer, I held up the ring Edward had given me, studying it like I’d never seen it before. “This felt like a promise when he first gave it to me, but it’s not. It’s an obligation. I’m expected to be the proper wife and act a certain way, be a certain way. Be a certain somebody for him. I don’t even feel like me half the time. But when I’m with you…”