Still the One

  “What is it with you and all the talking?” She yawned. “You must’ve dated some real high estrogen levels.” She shook her head. “No, we don’t have to talk about it. I’m not big on the talking.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, you’re more the screaming sort.”

  “Hey! I most definitely didn’t scream.”

  “Close enough,” he said.

  She smacked him and he laughed. “I wonder if anyone’s in the rooms on either side of us.”

  “I was not that loud.” She paused and slid him a look. “And at least I wasn’t needy.”

  “Needy?”

  “‘Come here. Wrap your legs around me. Kiss me. Open your eyes. Do this. Do that,’” she said in a low voice, clearly imitating him. “Needy and bossy.”

  He grinned. “Admit it. You like it when I’m bossy.”

  “Hmm. Maybe just a little bit.” Her eyes had been drifting shut but they flared open again. “And if you tell anyone that, I’ll … something,” she vowed. “I don’t know what yet but it’ll hurt, I can guarantee that.”

  He laughed. “Who am I going to tell, your brother? He’d kill me dead and then bring me back to life just to kill me again.”

  “No,” she said. “I’d make sure he knew I instigated and jumped your bones.”

  “You’d protect me, huh?”

  “Well, it seems only fair,” she said, snuggling into him. “Since I pretty much did jump your bones.”

  He shook his head. “We jumped together.” He ran a finger along her jaw. “And while we’re on this topic, I don’t want you trying to protect me, ever. I’m not ashamed or sorry about what happened here.”

  “I’m not, either. And I can protect myself as well.” She turned her head and caught his finger in her teeth, making him laugh.

  “So …” she said. “We’re back to what happens in Boise stays in Boise.”

  “Maybe we should define exactly what it is that happened in Boise.”

  “Wild monkey sex?”

  “I do like the sound of that,” he said. “And my reputation could probably use the boost.”

  She grinned and then yawned again, and he flipped off the light and hauled her into him. He kissed her once, softly, ordered himself to not go for more, and then he flipped her so that she faced away from him, her back to his chest. Spooning her, he entwined his fingers with hers at her chest. “Okay?”

  She nodded and yawned some more, relaxing into him. He could feel every single inch of her sweet, curvy body, and because that was going to have a quick effect on him, he did his best to keep his hips back.

  But she foiled him by snuggling in with a quick little butt wriggle that just about slayed him. Even more so when she wrapped her free hand around his arm, holding him to her.

  Intimate comfort.

  He just wasn’t sure who was comforting who. “I’m sorry about the dreams,” he said quietly.

  “I just feel so stupid that after all this time I still get them.”

  “I get them sometimes, too. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all have things that haunt us.”

  “What haunts you, AJ?”

  When something happened to someone he loved … “Things out of my control,” he said. “Like my mom and her RA. Kayla and her accident.” He cut himself off before saying, You.

  “You do like your control,” she said mildly. “And micromanaging.”

  “I don’t micromanage,” he said, and she laughed.

  He stared at her.

  “Oh,” she said, appearing to bite back her amusement with great effort. “You’re serious.”

  “I don’t micromanage,” he said, as though saying it out loud again would make it true. “Not all the time.”

  She looked as if maybe she was trying to not laugh again. “Okay,” she said agreeably. “But you totally do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve got a lot to take care of. Problem is that you can do all the right things but bad things might still happen.”

  No shit.

  “That night of my accident, I wasn’t being reckless or crazy. The storm came up quick and the car in front of me got all squirrely and I had to swerve to avoid hitting it. Then my car got away from me. That’s what I dream about. Being stuck in my car. The flames—” She shuddered. “It’s always the same as what really happened except I don’t get out. And I can feel myself suffocating, running out of air …”

  “I never heard about the other car,” he said.

  She shrugged. “It vanished into the night. I’m sure they had no idea I crashed, it was so dark.”

  He loved that she didn’t whine about how the accident wasn’t her fault. And he knew if she had been in the wrong, she would have taken responsibility for her actions. She owned up to her own mistakes, her own behavior. He loved that about Darcy. Then there was the way she’d told him about her nightmares to make him feel better. It touched him, deeply.

  He might have told her so but he was having a flashback of her mangled car after her wreck, and then Darcy in the hospital, in so much pain. He’d spent months and months helping her out with that, until the pain had mostly retreated and she’d looked at him with temper instead.

  Infinitely better.

  “I’ll never forget the sight of your wreck,” he said. “We went out there the next day, Wyatt and I.”

  She turned her head and sought out his gaze. “You did?”

  His arms tightened and he buried his face in the back of her neck and wild hair, unwilling to let her see his expression of remembered horror. “We saw the scrap of metal, all that was left of your car, and I couldn’t believe you’d survived.” He shook his head. “It was a miracle.”

  “I know,” she whispered, and slid out of the bed, heading in the dark to the mini fridge. “When I dream, it’s the regrets that get me more than anything else,” she said, pulling out two bottles of water.

  He rose and accepted the bottle she held out to him. “What is it you regret?” he asked.

  “Wasting so much time and energy being mad at my parents and how we were raised,” she said. She hopped up onto the low-lying dresser next to the fridge and drank deeply. “The truth is, I always had a roof over my head and food and clothing, more than plenty of people.”

  AJ leaned a hip against the dresser and wished there was more light so he could better see her face. “It’s okay to be mad at them.”

  “I’m the one who got into trouble in the first place,” she said. “And when they sent me away, I’d get into even more. My own doing, all of it. It was only when they refused to help me when I needed it, or even to call Wyatt and Zoe to do so instead, that it got pretty rough, but at least I’m here to tell the tale, right? And at least I learned to fend for myself.”

  “It’s okay to be mad at them,” he repeated, hating them all over again. “What happened at school?”

  She shrugged. “The usual. I screwed up. Though the time I landed in Switzerland’s equivalent of juvie for stealing some girl’s wallet, that I didn’t do.” Her laugh was short and she took another long drink of water. “I’d never steal from someone, but hey, who was going to believe me if my own parents didn’t.”

  “They let you stay in jail?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah.” She shuddered and hugged her water bottle to her chest. “And trust me—every single story you’ve ever heard about evil headmistresses and their enjoyment of torturing the bad girls? All true.”

  “How long?” he asked, trying not to let his anger for her show.

  She slanted him a quick glance, so clearly he hadn’t been all that successful at hiding it. “Three months,” she said.

  Jesus. “They hurt you?”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said, clearly regretting her decision to tell him the story that he knew for damn sure neither Wyatt nor Zoe knew.

  God, she’d been so alone. No wonder she’d grown up and gone on to wander the world for a living. It was all she knew. “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was,” he sai
d. “It shouldn’t have happened. You were innocent.”

  “Maybe that time, but there were plenty of other things I got away with, so it all equaled itself out.”

  He didn’t believe that. And he didn’t know how to get rid of the temper now pulsing through him. He wanted to go back and vindicate the girl she’d once been, and he felt helpless that he couldn’t. She amazed him, she really did. All she’d been through and yet she showed no visible weaknesses. She was good at making people believe she was okay. Real good.

  Too good.

  She’d been taught the hard way not to depend on those around her, not to trust love, and worse, to be ashamed of any need for it. “I’d really like to strangle your mom and dad,” he said as mildly as he could.

  “Lots of people suck at being parents,” she said. “And the bottom line is I made it out alive in spite of myself.”

  “Hell yeah, you did,” he said. “And you’ve chosen to really live, too, not just survive.”

  Maybe it was the dark and the forced intimacy. Maybe he’d finally gotten inside the real Darcy, but she kept talking. He hung on every word.

  “I have a lot I want to do,” she said. “I want to start a website where people in need of emotional support dogs can register, and I’ll do my best to get them what they need. I want to work with trainers and breeders willing to donate dogs, or maybe I can get grants like you’re doing to fund PT for those in need. I don’t want someone to lose out on getting a dog just because there’s no money for it. Or for a service dog to have to go to a shelter because his job no longer works out.”

  His chest constricted. He knew damn well she saw herself as a throwaway, just like one of those dogs. “I want to help you with that.”

  “No.” She softened her voice. “You’ve helped me so much already, AJ. More than I even knew. I can do this.”

  He understood that. He’d always felt he needed to prove himself, too. To his father. To the military. The big difference was he’d always had someone at his back.

  His grandparents. Friends. And even his dad, as hard on AJ as he’d been.

  Darcy had Wyatt and Zoe, but she didn’t often let even them in.

  But she’d let AJ, at least tonight.

  Still, he had no grand illusions. Sex did not equal a relationship, not when it came to Darcy. But it was a start.

  To remind her, he took the now empty bottle from her and set it aside, along with his, and then he took something else. Her mouth. He needed this, needed her, and he liked to think she needed him just as much, at least in the moment. When his tongue stroked hers she moaned, a deliciously helpless sound as she clutched at him.

  He stepped between her legs, happy to note that the height of the dresser was perfect. He nudged the hem of her T-shirt northward.

  “Again?” she murmured.

  “Always. Lift up, Darcy.”

  She did and he swept the shirt over her head. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned in until her lips barely touched his. “What’s gotten into you tonight?”

  “Actually,” he said, “the question is, what’s going to get into you?” He slid his hand between her thighs, causing her to dig her fingers into his biceps.

  “Wait,” she gasped.

  Damn. He took his mouth and hands off her body, waiting to see if there was a stop to go with that wait. If there was, he’d take it like a man and not cry.

  Probably.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Her hand made its way down the front of his sweats and got a handful of him. “I just think we should take this to the bed.”

  “Now who’s bossy?” Scooping her up, he turned and tossed her to the bed. “What else have you got?”

  She came up on her elbows and smiled a badass smile. “Strip.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Really?” she asked. “You’d do whatever I said?”

  “In this bed,” he clarified with a laugh.

  “I can work with that,” she said.

  Darcy woke with a start at the sound of the low groan of pain.

  Not hers.

  Disoriented in the dark hotel room, she sat up, whipping around when the sound came again from the body thrashing in the bed next to her.

  “AJ?” Leaning over him, she set a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

  Before she could blink he’d moved and was on her, pressing his hard body flat to hers, pinning her to the mattress. Using a knee he forced her legs apart as he jerked her hands up over her head, holding her utterly immobile.

  Neither of them moved.

  Not that she could …

  The only sound in the room was AJ’s labored breathing, like he’d just run a marathon.

  A nightmare, she thought, her heart squeezing with empathy as he lifted his head. She could feel the weight of his stare in the early dawn’s light, could hear his breathing still sowing in and out of his lungs. His body felt like a furnace, heat blasting from it. “AJ,” she said softly, wanting to ground him. “It’s just me.”

  He jerked back from her and came up on his knees.

  Freed, she leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. As it illuminated the room she caught the image of him kneeling there in absolutely nothing but his glory, his ripped body damp with sweat as his chest heaved.

  “You okay?” she asked quietly.

  Instead of answering, he shoved off the bed and strode into the bathroom.

  And hit the lock.

  “Right,” she said shakily, not enjoying being on the other side of the closed door. “You’re fine.”

  The shower came on. He stayed in there for thirty long minutes, which she knew because she watched the clock tick the minutes over.

  When AJ finally turned off the water, she cut the light, knowing from experience that having a witness to your nightmare sucked.

  The last time she’d had one hadn’t been all that long ago, and she’d woken up screaming like a banshee, drenched in sweat, cowering in her bed like she was still trapped in her burning car. She hadn’t been able to stop screaming until Zoe had crawled onto the bed with her, gathered her close, and held on tight, stroking her hair for an hour before she’d been able to relax.

  But AJ lived alone. Who gathered him into their arms and held on tight until the memories faded?

  The bathroom door opened, and for a brief moment he was outlined in bold relief from the bathroom light behind him.

  Until he clicked it off.

  She strained to listen for him but he could be silent as a cat when he wanted to be. “AJ?” she whispered.

  He didn’t answer but she could hear him now, clothing rustling. He was dressing to leave.

  She got that. Her first instinct was always to run like hell, too, because that’s what she did when she got scared.

  And she was scared.

  To the bone. She was scared because she was feeling things, big things, deep things, and she’d never been good at any of them. What they’d shared this weekend went beyond her scope of experience and she had no idea how to handle it all.

  Yeah, she’d most definitely be running if it hadn’t been for one fact—he needed her.

  She’d never been needed before. “AJ?”

  Instead of answering, he headed for the door.

  Yep. He was leaving.

  “It’s nearly dawn,” he said. “You’ll be fine now. We can leave whenever you want.”