I’d made a sloppy, wet mess of her pussy with my mouth.The sounds and the obscene sight of my fingers slipping and gliding in and out of her forced blood to pulse through my cock again, and thank fuck, because I had plans to make messes out of her all night long.
Looking up, I begged her one more time.“I fucking need you.”
She gasped, and her hazel eyes flashed a kaleidoscope of color before I descended again, attacking her pussy one more time with my tongue.I sucked her clit so hard that it rubbed the roof of my mouth, and she dug her heels into my back when she came, whispering my name to the night.
ChapterThirty-Two
Avery Jane
In my bathtubunder the spray of the shower, I washed Dixon, attending to the ridge and rise of every muscle with soapy hands and caressing fingers.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, rubbing a bar of soap over his stomach, “for trusting me.”
“I do trust you, AJ.It’s me I don’t trust.”
“Why?”
“You have to ask?”
“Yeah, I mean, I know why you would say that, but you’ve been sober a long time.Don’t you know yourself well enough now to trust that you won’t relapse?”
“People can go years without a drink or a hit, and then somethin’ shitty happens or they have a bad day, and it starts all over again.The fear will last the rest of my life.And it’s not just drugs I’m afraid of.It’s the anger.It’s always there.”
“Anger at your father?”
“Yeah.Both of ’em.”
“Both?”
“Noah Lee ain’t my dad.Not biologically.I think I’ve known it my whole life.”
He’d hinted at it more than once, but this was the first he’d said it out loud.“Your mama told you this?”
“No,” he said, “she’s skirted it since the day I was born.I’ve suspected it for a long time, but when I came home a few weeks ago, that first time I saw Merv and gave her the orange flowers, it was in her eyes.It’s time for me to come right out and ask her to tell me who I belong to.WhereI belong.”
I was quiet as I contemplated what he’d said, but I kept washing.His fantastical story about the magic man flitted through my mind, but finally, I turned him and rubbed the bar of soap over his back and hips.I knew he’d tell me more when he was ready.
“What are these tattoos?”I asked, chasing the dark lines inked between his shoulder blades with a fingertip.“What do they mean?When did you get them?”
He pushed into my touch as I traced the image of a broken human heart on his back, the arteries left frayed and bleeding.“The one you’re touchin’ is pretty self-explanatory.It’s a broken heart.”
“I can see that.”I swatted his ass playfully.“But who’s it for?Kel?”
“Naw.Don’t get me wrong.I loved Kel.She gave me Stu, and she was a friend to me when no one else in the world was, but we didn’t love each other.Not like that.We were just two people—two friends—caught up in somethin’ they didn’t know how to get out of.
“No,” he said, “the heart’s for Stu.After I left him with Bax, I wandered a while but eventually headed up to Alaska, and I got a job on a halibut boat.I saved most of what I made to give to Bax for Stu, but with my first paycheck, I paid for the tattoo.
“I put it on my back, ’cause at the time, I thought I could move on from the pain of leavin’ Stu behind.I wanted the evidence that I loved him to be part of me forever, but I knew if I had to look at it every day, it would be a temptation.To use again or to come home when I wasn’t ready.I wasn’t sure which, but I knew both would hurt.
“But I was dead wrong.
“I thought about that kid every day.I went to bed every night with a sour stomach ’cause I couldn’t forget him.”Dixon went quiet for a minute.I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was seeing in his head, but finally, he said, “I thought about you too.”
“You thought aboutme?”
“Yeah.You’re gonna laugh, but I couldn’t remember your name.I tried and tried, but it was like my brain wanted to protect you from me.It got so bad, the need to remember you, that I almost called my sister after years of unreturned messages.I probably should have.
“I remembered your laugh, though, and your hair.And your eyes.Your eyes have been hauntin’ me for a long time.”
