Battered Hearts 3: Crossing the line (44 page)

“Wy Wy.” A frown marred Jules’s forehead when she turned to him. Her blue eyes were darker than they usually were, her pupils wide and dilated from whatever drugs they were giving her, but still she saw what Romeo didn’t and asked, “What happened to you?”

“Well.” Wyatt grabbed the chair Romeo had obviously been sitting it and pulled it closer to Jules’s bed. “Let’s see. My sister made me an uncle this morning. That happened. Wanna see some pictures of my nephews?”

Jules made a move to sit up a little.

“Honey, you can’t move too much yet.”

“I got her,” Wyatt said as he took his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t move round too much.”

That seemed to appease the nurse, who walked out of the room as Wyatt searched for the pictures he took of Jules’s sons. He held up his phone to his sister, showing her the first one.

“Oh.” Jules took the phone from him, staring at the screen with a look of motherly adoration. Tears filled her eyes as she whispered, “I wanna hold him so badly. Which one is he?”

Wyatt looked at the screen, trying to see what bed he was lying in. “That’s Freddy.”

“Sweet like Daddy.” Jules let out a little giggle. “He looks like a Fred, dontcha think?”

Actually, he didn’t look anything like a Fred. He looked more like a Nova or a Tino, with his olive coloring and dark hair, but Wyatt didn’t argue. If they’d had a daughter, they would have named her after Romeo’s mother, but they didn’t.

Romeo didn’t seem to mind letting Jules honor her family instead, and Wyatt knew it meant the world to Jules. So they’d be Italians with two of the biggest redneck names on earth. One day they might complain about it, and Jules could send them to talk to their Uncle Wyatt, who most certainly won the prize in that category.

He hoped they did better with their legacy than Wyatt had done with his.

“He sure does.” He took his phone back and swiped his finger across the screen, looking for another clear picture. “I think Dad would be mighty proud ’bout right now. Grandpa too. You know he’d be strutting round this hospital telling everyone Charlie was named after him.”

Jules nodded, tears filling her eyes once more. “He would.”

“Charlie.” Wyatt showed her a picture of her son screaming his head off. “Screeching like his mama.”

“Hush.” Jules took the phone again. “He’s beautiful. They’re both beautiful, aren’t they?”

“They are,” Wyatt agreed softly. “You did good. I’m proud of you.”

“I wish it didn’t happen like this.” Jules’s bottom lip jutted out as she took over swiping through picture after picture Wyatt had taken. “I hate seeing ’em alone like that.”

“Sweetheart,” Wyatt started as he pulled his phone back and found a picture of Tino posing in front of the glass, a wide smile on his handsome face with his nephews being held up on either side of him by the nurses in the NICU. “They aren’t alone.”

He handed the phone back to her.

Jules laughed hard enough that she winced in pain as she stared at the picture of her brother-in-law hamming it up for the camera. “I may never get to hold those boys with Tino in the house. He’s so excited.”

Wyatt decided not to tell her how out of his mind Tino had been a few hours earlier. That picture had been the first smile Wyatt saw from him. Seeing the babies healthy and strong had lightened the mood for all of them, especially knowing Jules was going to be okay.

Jules was obviously tired, but she lay there for a long time looking through the pictures Wyatt had taken. He’d taken a lot. When she did drop her arm, her eyes closed and Wyatt thought she had fallen asleep. Instead she turned her head on her pillow and studied him. She left the phone on her chest and reached out, touching the crease between Wyatt’s eyes thoughtfully.

“What happened?” she asked as if the first conversation had never happened and they were looping back to where they started. “Did she leave?”

Wyatt shook his head. “No.”

“Is she going to?”

“Probably.” His voice cracked on the word, and he turned away, fighting the surge of loss that hit him square in the chest hard enough to steal his breath. “Love was kinder to you, Ju Ju.”

“No, it wasn’t,” she argued as she reached up and touched the crease between his eyes once more. “I just fought harder.”

Wyatt could always count on Jules to state the obvious, and he winced at the bitter truth of it.

Jules eyes closed. Her arm dropped. The beeping on the heart monitor told Wyatt she was closer to sleep than wakefulness, but still she whispered, “Daddy made you strong too.”

“Did he?” Wyatt asked, because he wasn’t so sure.

“Yes.” Jules didn’t seem to doubt it. “If you got something to fight for, you fight, Wy Wy. Promise.”

Wyatt leaned down and kissed Jules’s forehead instead.

She fell asleep before he had to promise.

* * * *

The sun was high in the sky by the time they got home.

Tabitha was exhausted. Wyatt even more so. If it was just the physical strain, they might have been able to ride into the sunset on the adrenaline, but as it was, they pulled off their clothes and fell into bed in their underwear.

Tabitha did managed to tug off her bra and toss it over the bed, which wasn’t like her, but she was too broken to bother picking up any of the clothes now littered over the bedroom.

Wyatt rolled up next to her, and she curled into him, with her head resting on his arm and his heavy body draped over hers. She closed her eyes, savoring his scent. The feel of his warm skin. The rhythm of his breathing. The strong energy that still vibrated off him, even at the very moment when it should have dimmed under the weight of injustice resting on his broad shoulders. She just let it all wrap around her and lull her into a false sense of security.

They didn’t say anything to each other.

They just let sleep claim them instead.

Tabitha’s nightmares were different. In them, Vaughn had a gun pointed at Wyatt, his finger on the trigger, and Tabitha screamed, desperate to warn him. To do something to help him. She would have jumped in front of him and taken the bullet instead, but she was rooted to the spot, forced to watch helplessly when Vaughn fired.

She screamed when she saw it tear into Wyatt’s chest. The rest of him was strong. His heart was vulnerable.

“
Wyatt! No
!” she shouted, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t go to him. He was dying alone. “Please! No!”

“Tabby, you’re dreaming, darlin’.”

Tabitha jerked at the low rumble of Wyatt’s voice against her ear. His arms had tightened around her, and it helped to wake her up more fully. She was covered in a cold sweat, and she turned in his arms to look into his eyes that were wide and bright in the darkness.

She reached up and touched his chest, feeling for herself that his heart was still beating. Wyatt stroked her sweaty hair away from her temples as she took a quivering breath and whispered, “This is worse. It’s so much worse.” The thump against her open palm told her Wyatt was still healthy, but it still felt like Vaughn had raped her soul rather than just her body as she fought her way back from the nightmare. “He’s taken everything this time.”

“Not everything.” Wyatt kissed her, soft and chaste, and then breathed against her lips, “We have now.”

Vaughn could take everything else. He nearly had, but right now she was in Wyatt’s arms, and Vaughn couldn’t have that. The love was untouchable. It always had been, and she gave in to it as she reached up and threaded her fingers into Wyatt’s hair. She returned the kiss, parting her lips in an invitation Wyatt took. His tongue slipped into her mouth as he rolled her over, his body heavy over hers as if he suddenly didn’t have the strength to hold himself up, but it was okay. Tabitha held him as she let him take out all the heartache in a crushing, feral kiss that stole her breath far more effectively than his hard chest pressing her to the bed.

She used her hold on his hair to tilt his head and returned the kiss with the same desperate hunger for something to remember. The passion flared easily, making every brush of his skin against hers a dance of ecstasy. When he slipped a hand between their straining bodies, pushing it beneath her panties, he found her already wet and needy for him.

He groaned into her mouth and then pulled away to press his lips against the soft spot behind her ear. “Lemme hear you.”

She gasped, arching her hips into his hand in surrender, and whispered, “Okay.”

Tabitha could feel Wyatt watching her as he touched her, rubbing his fingers against her clit in a way that left her sweaty and moaning from the quick build of need. She didn’t even try to fight it. She just clutched at his large biceps and rode out the storm until the end crashed over her in a wild rush of bliss.

The electric surge of her climax left her pussy aching for more and her fingers tingling from the bone-melting rush of it. She was still shaking with it when she blinked up at Wyatt. His chest was heaving as he studied her face and then tilted his head to eye her body beneath his.

His fingers were still on her, and rather than slip them out from beneath her underwear, he pushed one into her and then a second, stroking her and making her head jerk back against the pillow. She knew he was intent on bringing her to a second orgasm while he watched, but she needed to be with him.

She tugged at the elastic to his boxer briefs, forcing them past his muscular ass until he was finally forced to help get rid of them. While he kicked them off, Tabitha fought to get herself naked too.

Their underwear ended up on the floor with the rest of their clothes, but she didn’t care. She just wrapped her legs around Wyatt and clutched at his shoulders when he shifted over her. Then his cock was stretching her, slow and steady, bringing them closer and closer until they were inseparable and untouchable for that one perfect moment.

Tabitha swallowed his moan when he kissed her again. He thrust the rest of the way in, claiming what had always been his. It wasn’t sweet. It was hard, strong, powerful, and it was perfect just how it was. She had always loved every side of Wyatt, the dark as well as the light, because Tabitha understood it was an all-or-nothing deal. The meek lived their lives devoid of these turbulent emotions that created rocky peaks and valleys. They carved out an amazing man, because Wyatt had never been meek. He was so much bigger than that, and Tabitha wouldn’t change him.

Even if it would’ve made things so much easier.

She just savored the climb to the top and tried to forget about the plunge to the bottom waiting on the other side. Now was theirs, and she wasn’t going to ruin it by thinking about tomorrow.

He broke the kiss to bury his face in her neck and started fucking her as if he needed to extinguish the flame of passion between them that never flickered, no matter how tumultuous the storm. It had always been a warm, steady glow in the night that beckoned them toward home. Like their love, it was a something that never died, but it wasn’t the first losing battle Wyatt fought.

He tried to take the last of the passion.

He failed.

He only fueled the fire.

Tabitha stiffened under him at the first surge of ecstasy, digging her nails into his shoulders as she surrendered to their destiny instead of fight it. She reveled in the sea of desire rather than try to drain it. She just wanted to enjoy it for as long as she could.

She pulled Wyatt down with her, and he grunted against her ear when he lost the war. She was so wrapped up in him, she could feel the ripple of bliss in the muscles of his back when they tensed under her fingers as he moved in her to the pulse of his release.

They were both breathing heavy and sweaty once it was over. Individually shattered, but still together. For now it was okay to lie there and just accept the loss.

Tomorrow was a new story.

Tabitha knew from hard-won experience the hardest part wasn’t enduring the storm, or accepting the end. It was finding a way to put the broken pieces together in the aftermath.

Part Nine

The Aftermath

In boxing you can create a strategy to beat
each new opponent; it’s just like chess.

—Lennox Lewis

Chapter Thirty-Four

Wyatt looked at the DOJ card in his hand.

He tapped it against the aged wood, trying to get up the nerve to make a call he didn’t want to make. He tried to think rationally and consider his options, but none of them were great. He could step down as sheriff to save himself from the embarrassment of being fired.

But damn, he liked being sheriff.

Even on bad days, he liked it.

Willingly letting it go was going to be the second-hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Losing Tabitha would always be the most difficult. He’d already done it once. He knew how fucking heart-wrenching it was. He breathed for her, but he thrived because of his job. Now he had to do both at the same time. What the hell would he have left to keep taking blood pressure medication for? He might as well just toss the bottle in the trash now and let the stress of a criminal trial kill him.

Jules had Romeo now. She had Nova and Tino too, and like Wyatt had observed at the hospital yesterday—his father had raised his sister strong.

Clay had Melody, and Wyatt knew the two of them would flourish easily without him.

There really was nothing left.

“For you.”

Wyatt looked down at the plate Tabitha put in front of him and grimaced. “What the hell is it?”

“It’s a broccoli-and-spinach egg-white omelet.” Tabitha sat down across him with another plate with the same beige-and-green creation. “At least try it.”

Wyatt picked up the orange Tabitha had garnished the dish with and put it in his mouth, giving her an orange-rind grin.

She giggled as she looked at him. “You’re silly.”

He snorted and took it out of his mouth. “Sometimes.”

Wyatt went ahead and picked up the fork on the plate and tried a bite. He raised his eyebrows after a moment and said, “It ain’t half-bad.”

“Ain’t half-bad at all,” Tabitha agreed as she took a bite too.