Please, God, no, I pray. I didn’t smell alcohol on Jayson’s breath, but the fact that he was at a bar…
“Was he drinking?”
“No.”
The profound relief I feel is immense. “Did you punch him?” I ask, not thinking that he did but needing to know how bad things got.
“Marcus.”
Jesus.With a weary sigh, I tip my head and gaze up at the midnight sky, the three stars that make up the Summer Triangle directly overhead.
“Did Jayson fight back?”
Even though Marcus was completely in the wrong, I would hunt Jayson down if he laid a hand on my son.
“No. Marcus is fine. Upset, but fine. Hannah is with him.”
“She’s a good woman. Sweet girl, but tough when she needs to be.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Fallon replies softly.
Glancing back up to the heavens, I find Cassiopeia and trace a line from its middle star to the handle of the Little Dipper, then continue across to the Big Dipper. What new stories are being written in the stars tonight?
“Jayson said something as he was leaving.”
One dark-blond eyebrow hikes up, the only indication of interest breaking through the stony, blank expression Fallon has been wearing. He’s a master of masking his emotions, but I see through his disguise of apathy.
“What did he say?” he finally asks.
I look at him then,reallylook at him. Fallon is the epitome of devastating beauty. The devil with the face of an angel. A man who loves with his whole heart but won’t blink twice as he cuts yours out.
Jayson was my moonlight; Ryder was my starshine. But Fallon’s darkness calls to me, its pull a force I can never escape. The scars he carries are the same as mine. We’re both broken. Damaged. Survivors. Two souls who were destined to collide, the threads of our lives tangled in intricate knots, tying us together for eternity.
“That I shouldn’t trust you.”
A crack in his armor appears. “You shouldn’t.”
“Well, tough shit,” I reply, my backbone rigid and my resolve made of steel, “because I will always trust you, even when you lie to me.”
Lies are different from secrets kept for good intentions or manipulations from people who mean well. I’d rather you flat-out lie to my face than try to subversively control my life andtake away my choices because you presume to know what’s best for me. Been there, done that—numerous times. Never again.
And maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s reckless, but if trust is a choice, I will choose him. Every time.
“Are you coming in?” I ask.
Fallon brushes the flyaway strands of my hair back from my face. The blue of his eyes shifts to a deeper color as he leans in, and my heartbeat slams against its cage of bones. “It’s late.”
I step into his body, the heat radiating off him warming my skin. “So?”
He cocks his head. “So…I can leave if you’re tired and want to go to bed.”
“I’m not tired.” Far from it. I brush my nose up the masculine column of his neck and place a tender kiss behind his ear. “And what I want is standing right in front of me.”
Fallon’s eyes widen—with surprise, with desire—but it’s the roaring heat swirling behind the blue that sets my body on fire.
“Kitten, we don’t have to—” he begins, but I shut him up by pressing my lips to his mouth, giving him the invitation to take more.
His hands take my hips, and he hauls me to him. A small moan escapes when I feel him already hard for me, how badly he wants me but holds himself back.
