Things Remembered (Accidentally On Purpose Companion Novel #3) (19 page)

Wordless, I turned around and instantly reached for his neck as I stood on my toes to kiss him. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me thirstily, like he was dying for me to quench his thirst. I know, because that’s how I kissed him, too. Only he could soothe my parched soul.

As I stood in the arms of the only man I ever loved, sharing his oxygen like life support, the gifted butterflies soared.

So did my heart.

Chapter Sixteen

The kids had no idea that Grant and I had gone through a crisis. He told them that I was sick, which wasn’t too far from the truth. They just didn’t know that it was a mental and emotional sickness.

I never thought I’d be happy to see
children
…but I was. It wasn’t just because of the natural high I was on after Grant’s beautiful butterfly surprise; I was genuinely pleased to see them, and maybe a little relieved. I wasn’t all mushy about it, though.

“I made you a get well pwesent,” Nat said, soon after our arrival.

She climbed onto the couch next to me and handed me an envelope decorated with lopsided hearts and crude looking stick figures that rather resembled us holding stick hands.

“What is in here?” I shook it a little. “Did you get me a baby elephant? I’ve always wanted a baby elephant.”

She giggled. “No! A baby elwephant won’t fit in there!”

“A rocket ship?” I sounded hopeful.

“No!” she shrieked, laughing still. “Look inside!”

“Fine.” I released a sigh and slipped my finger under the flap.

A moment later I tipped the envelope and deposited a pile of multi-colored paper clips into my palm. I looked at it blankly for a few seconds until Natalie picked one up. Then I realized all of the paperclips were linked together in a chain. Several little plastic charms that looked suspiciously like pieces from one of her doll sets dangled from it.

It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but I felt myself swallowing and blinking rapidly to keep myself from crying again.

“It’s perfect, Nat,” I cooed when I was able to speak again. I touched one of her two long braids and smiled appreciatively.

I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist. When I looked up, I met Grant’s eyes as he stood in the kitchen talking to Juliette. He raised one eyebrow in question as if to say, “Are you getting sentimental on me, Grayne?”

I shrugged in response as Natalie climbed on my lap. Maybe I was getting a little sentimental, or maybe I was just learning to appreciate the smaller things in life, like an ugly bracelet made by a little girl who had wiggled her way into my heart.

Later that night, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at my reflection and praying for my speeding heart to slow down.

I pulled my fingers through my curls for the hundredth time, and again, examined my body in the white silk chemise I had purchased earlier that afternoon. I had never had a reason to buy lingerie in the past because I didn’t care about pleasing other men. They were all a means to an end for me, but for the first time since before I was…raped…I was interested in mutual pleasure, not just my own.

It wasn’t going to be easy for me to walk out of the bathroom and essentially present myself on a silver platter for Grant. For one, even though we were back together and probably more secure than before, I still felt the remnants of the agony surrounding our breakup. I still felt the ghost of despair I’d felt when I kept taking my heroin tools out to look at them with longing. I still felt a pinch of the pain from when I’d closed the door in Grant’s face. For the most part, I was relieved and happy to be back at the ware-home with Grant and the kids, but I still had to deal with those other, darker emotions.

Like any physical afflictions, those mental and emotional aches don’t stop on command—not even with a dose of medication to ease it. If the pain goes away at all, it’s a gradual retreat.

The biggest reason it was going to be hard to walk into the bedroom was because I hadn’t quite been able to shake the cracked images of being violated. It was something that was always with me, but most days, I was able to function and not think of it. However, after telling Grant about it, it was still fresh in my mind. The last thing I wanted was for our time together to be again tainted by my flashbacks and fears, but I knew I had to try. I
wanted
to try. I wanted
him
.

“Okay, let’s do this,” I whispered to my reflection.

I dashed a little bit of a vanilla scented perfume on my neck and between my boobs. I inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times before opening the door and turning off the bathroom light.

My heart pounded so hard as I stepped into the bedroom that it must have been bruising me from the inside out. Grant was sitting up in bed, shirtless and wearing a pair of lounge pants as he played a game on his phone. I stood motionless as I waited for him to notice me. He glanced up very briefly before his eyes immediately went back to his game. Then his head snapped up as his brain registered what he had seen. He stared at me with his mouth hanging comically open in astonishment.

The chemise wasn’t the sexiest, most revealing thing, but I thought there was eroticism in the simplicity of it. I just hoped that Grant thought so, too.

Once I had his full attention, I walked across the room to his side of the bed.

“Damn,” he whispered as his eyes slowly traveled up and down my body.

“Do you like it?” I asked as I tried not to sound timid. Me and timidity didn’t go together.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and put his hands on my hips. He gazed up at me with lust and love, but there was restraint in those brown eyes, too.

“I love it,” he said and swallowed. “But…what if…”

“What if I freak out like the nut job I am?” I finished for him. I put my hand on his head and lightly moved it over his short dark hair. “It’s very possible that I will freak out again,” I said softly. “But I’ll have to get through it. You will have to bring me back to reality, and you can’t stop.”

He looked alarmed and angry at that. “You want me to continue against your will? Are you damn crazy?”

I smiled a little. “I
am
damn crazy. You already know that, but yes, I want you to continue.”

He stood up and started to push me away as he shook his head. “No. I won’t do that.”

“Grant,” I sighed when he succeeded in pushing me back a couple feet.

“I won’t do that to you!” he snarled at me. “That’s
rape
, Mayson. I won’t be another one of your rapists.”

I flinched at his words, but I didn’t back away.

“I’m not telling you to ignore my pleas. Talk me through it, Grant.” I threw my hands up and let them fall. “It might not even happen. It doesn’t always happen. Something triggered it, and I don’t know what it was.”

“What if I’m the trigger, Mayson?”

“I don’t think that you are.”

He paced the floor agitatedly. “What if talking to you doesn’t help? Then what? We’ll be right back where we were a few days ago. I’m not ready to lose you again for a little bit of physical satisfaction.”

I put my hands on my hips. “First of all, I would hope that it is more than a
little bit
of satisfaction. I’m expecting way more than a little bit, so you better deliver. Secondly, we’ll never be back to where we were a few days ago. The circumstances were different. You didn’t know before, and I... I am beginning to have a better view of myself…at least as far as you’re concerned. Now stop pacing the floor and get over here and make love to me!” I pointed to the floor in front of me. “Now.”

He relaxed a tiny bit as he gave me an equally tiny smile, but he didn’t look prepared to do my bidding. Silence stretched between us for a whole minute or more before he finally moved, but he didn’t come to me, not exactly. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor for another several seconds.

“When I left you thirteen years ago,” he began solemnly, but I held up my hand and shook my head.

“Stop right there,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He looked up at me, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I repeated. “Like ever.”

The expression on his face was so dubious that I cracked a smile.

“You wanted to know,” he said, his voice just as disbelieving as his expression. “I don’t blame you for wanting to know, especially after what happened to you. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t—”

I held up my hand once again to stop him and shook my head once.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. There are a lot of things in the past that do matter, but that’s not one of them. I don’t blame you. I blame myself, I always have, but I needed someone else to direct my anger and hatred at because it was too much for me. But I don’t want to talk about it, Grant. I am ready to move forward.” I took a deep breath. “If you’re able to forgive me for Shari’s death, I can forgive you for leaving, and really, there’s nothing to forgive.”

He stood up so abruptly, I was forced to take a few stumbling steps backward.

“Forgive you for Shari’s death?” he asked, his voice hard and demanding. “What are you talking about?”

I sighed heavily. My night of seduction had gone completely awry. My chemise began to feel like a useless potato sack hanging on my body.

“I introduced Sharice to heroin, Grant. You know that. If I hadn’t—” It was his turn to cut me off.

“If you hadn’t, she probably would have done it anyway. Besides, she had free will, Mayson. She could have said no.”

Anger began to infiltrate me. He was trying to deflect blame from me, and when it came to Shari’s death, that was something I never did. It
was
ultimately my fault and I always owned up to my bad deeds.

“It’s still my fault, Grant.”

He advanced on me, his eyes hot with fury and the muscles in his body taut with savagery. I had some idea of how the criminals must have felt when they saw that big man coming for them with bulging muscles and huge hands balled into fists. I looked up at him with wide eyes.

“I’m not letting you take responsibility for someone else’s actions!” he said ferociously. “Sharice was my
sister
.” He put a hand to his heart. “I will love her and miss her for as long as I live, but you did
not
kill her. She did that on her own. It was
her
actions that put her in a grave decades before her time, not
yours
. No one forced her to put a needle in her arm.”

My anger quickly boiled over. I turned my back on him, and with thunder in my movements, I walked to the armoire in the corner. I threw the doors open so forcefully, that they bounced back and hit me as I grabbed a pair of jeans.

“You ruined everything,” I shouted, tripping as I tried to get into my jeans. “It was so easy. All you had to do was get hard, appreciate how effin’ amazing my body looks in this chemise, take it off me, and ravage me. Four steps, Grant. Four freakin’ steps! Why couldn’t you just appreciate what I was offering, considering how difficult it is for me to offer it?”

I yanked the jeans into place and furiously fumbled with the button. When I felt Grant’s big hand on my arm, I knocked it away and spun around to face him.

“I am to blame for her dying,” I shouted at him, shoving at his hard chest. He didn’t budge, but stood his ground and let me shove at him again. “She was your
sister
! You should have tried to save her first! If you hadn't saved me first, Shari wouldn’t have died. You said you don’t blame me, but how can you not resent me for living when there is nothing left of her but bones?”