“I don’t get paid enough for this shit. You guys have marital issues, then keep it in your own damn house.”
I shake him a little before letting him go. He hurries away through a door behind him, slamming it closed. I shake my head when I hear the flick of a lock before moving behind the desk.I sit in the chair the guy just jumped up from and awaken the computer from standby mode. It takes me a second to find the information I need. When I do, I get a spare key for Del’s room. In just a few minutes, I’m strolling across the lobby to the rooms, finding it on the ground floor.
I pause outside her door and look around. I don’t see anyone else about as I hold the keycard up to the lock and wait for the light to flash green. I push the door, but it won’t open even though it’s unlocked. I jiggle the handle and try again. She must have wedged something against the door to prevent it from opening. Smart woman. Of course, that only works when you don’t rent a room on the ground fucking floor.
I turn back the way I came, counting the rooms as I pass them. When I make it outside, all I have to do is count the windows. I don’t know whether to be happy or pissed when I find her room with the window ajar. Does this woman have no self-preservation skills?
I slip my hand inside and pull the window open farther. My eyes land on the bed. Delphi is lying in the center, the covers kicked off. Her T-shirt has ridden up around her waist. My eyes land on her ass, covered only by a pair of black bikini briefs. They’re nothing special as far as underwear goes, but they might as well be see-through for how my cock reacts.
As quietly as I can, I climb through the window, but I needn’t have worried. She doesn’t stir. Once inside, I bend down and unlace my boots before toeing them off and slipping my cut from my shoulders. I look around and see the desk chair wedged under the door handle. I drag it back to its rightful place before hanging my cut on the back of it.
I don’t bother stripping out of the rest of my clothes, not trusting myself to keep my body under control if I do. I climb onto the bed beside her and gently maneuver her onto my chest. Only then does everything inside me settle.
When she wakes up, the peace will once more devolve into war because she’s not in the right headspace to understand what this is. How do I convince this woman who thinks the worst of me that I’ve loved her for a whole lot fucking longer than she has hated me? That when I pushed her away, it was more from fear than anger. She thinks I hated her, but I never did. I wanted to. God, did I ever. Life would have been so much easier for both of us that way. I almost convinced myself that she was the villain, made easier by those around me fanning the flames of blame.
Looking at her now, I wonder how I doubted her for a second. It’s hard to get your head around how you could be so damn wrong about someone. I wanted to believe she fooled me, but I was only fooling myself. When I think back to that night, to how we all turned on her, I’m confronted with the fact that we let our anger cloud our judgment and reasoning. It became an enraged entity demanding its pound of flesh, and we fed it with a callousness that shocks me even now.
Maybe if we’d manned up and fixed shit after the dust had settled. And maybe if we’d thought about it with a level head, she’d have come around a little easier. Now we’ll never know. Instead of falling on our swords, we doubled down, never doing anything to bridge the gap and hear her side of the story. We went from victims to bad guys, and I’m not sure anything I say can change that.
With my thoughts a chaotic mess, I’m surprised I drift off to sleep as quickly as I do. I’m grateful for the reprieve when, a few hours later, I’m woken by a squirming woman trying to get away from me.
I tighten my grip as I open my eyes, which lock on Delphi’s shocked ones. “Good morning, beautiful.”
Her mouth drops open in complete shock. Yeah, I’ll admit, I didn’t mean to let the endearment slip, but something changed in the hours that I rode around aimlessly looking for her.I’m done pretending that all I want is friendship or to make amends for the shit we misguidedly put her through. It might be true to an extent, but none of this was ever about fixing what the club broke. It’s about loving this woman when every obstacle was stacked against us. Watching her happy and in love with someone who wasn’t me, knowing she’d never be mine, to having this one shot to change that. I don’t know how it’s possible to lose something that was never mine to begin with, but that’s what happened between us over and over.
Now there’s nothing in our way but our own mountain of baggage. I don’t care if it takes me a millennium to scale it. I won’t give up, no matter how hard this road will be, because I know this is it. If I can’t make her love me more than she hates me, it’s game over. She’ll leave, and I’ll be forced to watch her fall in love with someone else. I can’t fucking do that again. If that means I have to play dirty, so fucking be it.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“You’re here. Where else would I be?”
She splutters, her words coming out in a jumbled mess as she tries to pull away from me once more.
“Let me go, dammit.”
“Not a chance. I’m so fucking tired of letting you go.”
“What the hell are you talking—” I cut her off by yanking her up my body and swallowing her words with my mouth.
I slide my hand into her hair, careful of her injuries, applying just enough pressure to anchor her in place.
She holds herself rock-solid, and I can’t tell if it’s from shock or something else. I let my tongue dance alongside hers, coaxing it to play with mine. She softens toward me and tentatively returns the kiss. My cock, which has been hard since I woke up, throbs with need, but I don’t want to push too hard, too fast. That doesn’t stop my free hand from gliding over the skin of herback before slipping under the waistband of her panties so I can cup her bare ass.
She gasps into my mouth, making me growl and deepen the kiss. It isn’t until she whimpers that I realize the noise isn’t one of arousal, but pain, that I pull back.
“What’s wrong?” I bark, worried I hurt her.
“Headache,” she murmurs, squinting. The doctors mentioned migraines might be a big issue for her, especially since she suffered from them before the head injury.
“Let me get your pain meds and some water. Can you remember when you last took them?”
She shakes her head before groaning from the motion. “Gonna be sick,” she whispers. I detangle myself from her so I can pick her up, but her body refuses to wait. She just manages to roll onto her side before she starts throwing up.
“Shit.” I gently pick her up, carrying her to the bathroom and leaning her over the toilet. But by this point, we’re both covered in puke.
I hold her hair back until she’s done and rummage around until I find a washcloth. I run it under the faucet and clean her face before running a bath. I hurry back into the room, find her painkillers and anti-nausea meds, and bring them in.
“Can you remember when you had these?”
