Relentless Rhythm (Tempest #4) (24 page)

“Yes, Dizzy,” she encouraged in a breathy voice, neck arching as I traced the taut tendon from her neck to her shoulder with my tongue. “Yes. But only tonight.” Her hands were buried deep in my hair, her fingernails scraping deliciously against my scalp. “Just this once. So I can always remember what it feels like to be with someone who I...”

“No.” I froze with both hands on her ribs just beneath the swell of her breasts.

“What’s wrong?” She wriggled in my hands seeming to want to force them higher.

“I thought I wasn’t above having you any way I could get you, April, but I was wrong.” I took her hands and trapped them between our bodies holding her to me while looking into her eyes willing her to listen. Willing her to understand that I needed for her to want me, just me, and not just how I could make her feel. “From the first time that I saw you, I knew you were different. And I don’t want you like this. Fast and forgotten. You’re not like the others. You’re not just a means to an end. You… are… the one I didn’t realize I needed. The new beginning I thought I could never have.”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so selfish.” Long gossamer strands escaped her ponytail and stuck to my stubble like Velcro. Avoiding my eyes, she carefully removed them, tucking the pieces behind her ears and trying to free herself so she could scramble off me, but I grabbed hold of her. I wouldn’t let her go, not just yet. She needed to know all of it to decide. It was time to lay everything out in the open.

“You’ve got so much on you right now. I can’t even imagine how you feel. But you gotta know the love you have with your family is special, how lucky you are to have something like that.”

“I know,” she whispered. “They’re my strength, but why…”

“I only told you part of the truth about my childhood the other day. I didn’t just get knocked around as a kid. There was other stuff that happened. Sexual stuff.” Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I had to continue. Get it all out fast before I lost my nerve. “When my mother couldn’t pay her drug dealers in cash or services they took their payment from me. They wanted my sister, too, but I always made sure she was hidden. I did the sick stuff they wanted thinking that’d be it, but it wasn’t enough. They held me down, and did stuff that no kid should ever have done to them. I’ll never forget. Believe me, I’ve tried.” And tried and tried. Every single time I got the urge to set up a hookup, I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a victim anymore, that I was in control, and that I wasn’t truly and irrevocably messed up. “Lucky CPS finally put us with our uncle. But I’ve never been able to tolerate anyone touching me during sex. It turns my stomach. That’s why I went cold on you in the hallway. Back and shoulders are the worst. Besides the obvious places, because that’s where they put their hands when they pinned me down.”

“No, Dizzy.” Her voice broke. “Oh, no,” she said softer, tears in her eyes glistening beautifully in the moonlight. She was so tenderhearted. So sweet, my hope of salvation.

“I didn’t tell you because I wanted you to feel sorry for me. I certainly didn’t want to burden you with my shit when you’ve already got so much to deal with, but I need you to understand how significant it is that I want to be with you. That I want you to touch me, that I
like
it.”

“Dizzy. Shit.” She reached for me, hands seeming to come at me in slow motion. It meant the freaking world to me that she wanted to touch me after I told her all that horrible crap. She ran her fingers over my face as if I was some kind of special gift.

But her next words brought my hopes to an end.

“I wish I had met you before James. I wish I could be the fresh start that you deserve. I wish thinking happy thoughts made them come true, but they don’t. They just don’t, Dizzy.”

At home on my leather couch, Brutal Strength’s music blasting out of the speakers, I rocked back and forth to the beat, knees to my chin, trying to process it all, to make sense of my suddenly even more complicated life.

Dizzy was at the edge of my every thought and breath. It had been trending that way for quite a while now, but it was so much worse since his declaration at the cove. I could hear his velvety groan in my ears, the voice that beckoned me down the road to ruin.

Remembering made me feel hot even in the chilly room. I remembered his taste, like cinnamon with a sharp edge of danger. I ran my fingers across my lips recalling how his mouth had felt there. The hint of mint in his cologne. His warmth. He’d saturated my senses. Every time I closed my eyes I saw his handsome boyish face and his sexy as sin smile. My attempts at sleep last night had been largely fruitless.

I’d avoided James, crawling into bed next to my brothers on the sleeper sofa after Dizzy dropped me off two blocks from my home at my behest. He’d said little after I turned him down. Though his disappointment was deafening in the silence, ever the gentleman, he circled the block driving past me until he was sure I’d gotten inside the building safely.

But even he couldn’t protect me from the danger within. The trap I’d set for myself. The one I could never escape. The beautiful dream he’d offered was just that. A dream. A frivolous fantasy for a foolish girl.

I stood and yanked the iPod out of the dock, plunging the room back into its oppressive silence. Music couldn’t soothe me today. I couldn’t write either. I’d tried, but the words were trite and tired, and the sentences were all twisted, so I deleted every one of them.

The second visit to the hospital had been harder than the first because now my brothers knew. There’d been no change. All the IV’s had been removed. Now we played a macabre waiting game with no prize at the end.

I sighed. At least James was gone. He’d left first thing this morning.

My cell buzzed on vibrate mode, shimming its way across the surface of the coffee table. I picked it up and turned it over, answering immediately after I saw who it was. “Mel, how’s Seattle? Are you ready for the competition?”

“I think so,” she said, “but things are a bit weird. Sager’s here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s his home town after all.” I could almost picture her shrugging her shoulders while twirling a lock of hair. “How’s your dad doing?”

“The same.”

“I’m sorry, Sweetie. How’s your mom holding up?”

“As well as anyone could, I guess. She wasn’t too happy when I told her about James going out of town. She doesn’t understand the pressure he’s under with his job.”

My mind drifted to the words spoken earlier at the hospital. Words that had stuck with me all day, rolling back and forth through my mind like a puzzle that needed solving.

“I only wish I had one more day with him, when he was whole,” my mom had confided as she’d held George’s hand. “I’d take even one more hour if I knew that’s all I could have. I’d give anything to rewind the clock so I could relive and savor every single moment we did have. So I could hold him again, make him laugh, hear his voice saying my name one last time.”

“April?” Mel called.

“Huh?” I sniffed quietly.

“Are you ok?”

“Sure, yeah. I’m fine.”

A long pause. “Alright if you say so, but you know we’re friends.”

“Yes, the best.”

“Agreed. And you know you can tell me anything, and I won’t judge.” A longer pause with a clicking sound. She was biting her nails. She kept trying to stop, but couldn’t seem to help herself whenever she got really nervous. “Even if you’re having trouble in your marriage. Even if there’s something going on between you and Dizzy.”

Shit. Fucking shit.

I couldn’t tell her about James, and no matter how much she fished, I knew I couldn’t tell her about Dizzy either. “My marriage is what it is, Mel, and since…” I trailed off. I still couldn’t say my baby’s name out loud. “I’ve told you that before. As for Dizzy, well…where did you get a crazy idea like that anyway?”

“I’ve noticed him looking at you…like a lot. And something Sager said made me wonder.”

“Speaking of looking.” I seized on that to redirect her. “What happened between you and Sager last night? What was he so anxious to talk about?”

The longest pause. “There really wasn’t much talking going on. April, I slept with him, and it was amazing.”

Whoa.
“I thought you liked Dizzy, Sweetie?”

“I do, but I wanted to make him jealous. Only Sager…well…”

“Spill it,” I prompted.

A nervous laugh. “Let’s just say that he figured things out, and he let me know that he didn’t like being used.”

“No one does.” I thought about what I’d offered Dizzy last night versus what he was really seeking, guilt pricking my conscience. He’d been right to stop. There was more between us than I’d been willing to admit. There were so many emotions careening around inside my heart where he was concerned. Desire. Longing. Connection. Disappointment. Regret. All tangled together in a confusing knot.

“Hey, I gotta go, April. I need to run through the course before they close it down for the race. But keep me updated about George. You know I can be right back in Vancouver in just a couple of hours. I really wish I hadn’t let you talk me into going ahead with this event.” More clicking.

“No. We discussed it. This is your time to shine. Believe in yourself. Show them what you’ve got…for you, for me, and for George…he would’ve wanted that for you. He always said, ‘faith in yourself is the magic that makes your dreams come true.’”

After I ended the call, everything suddenly seemed to come together in a moment of simple clarity.

I had told Dizzy at the cove that thinking happy thoughts didn’t change reality. And that was true. But my actions
could
change my reality. I could make my own dream come true for the time being, and it would be mine to treasure forever…no matter what happened after that.

“I’m coming,” I shouted as the banging on the door persisted. “Coming, coming, coming,” I muttered under my breath as I carefully set my SG back on its stand.
If only.
For a guy used to plenty of tail that just wasn’t happening, not anytime soon, not for real, anyway. It was just the one hand jive these days. The universe was having a good laugh at the irony because for the first time in ever, my desire was fixed on one woman only, the one woman I couldn’t have.