Page 51 of Memories with Fire

“No, no, no,”I grumble, my throat thick with sleep, when I feel Luke sliding away from me.

There’s a chuckle as he keeps moving, slipping from the bed, but before he goes any further, he leans over and presses a kiss to the top of my head. “My phone has been going off for the last twenty minutes. I’m coming right back.”

I hear it then. The light buzzing sound jingling against something else. Change, or keys, I’m not sure which. It stops as Luke stands upright, moving towards his jeans, and before he’s there the noise starts all over again. Whoever it is, is persistent as hell.

My stomach clenches with fear, hoping there isn’t some kind of emergency. The thought is enough to rouse me from my sleepy state, and I sit up, pulling the sheet up over my chest as Luke picks up his pants from the floor. My body protests, aching and sore after what I think is probably a couple of hours of not moving while we napped. Both from the accident, and from Luke.

He wiped me right out. Orgasm after orgasm. His mouth. His tongue. His fingers. His cock. It kept getting better the longer we went, the more he learned about my body, and what made me moan and cry his name the loudest.

I’ve never been so thoroughly sated. I’ve never had so many orgasms. It was like he was trying to make up for all the lost years between us, and by the last orgasm he wrung from me, I had to beg him to stop. For one moment, I didn’t think he would, a mischievous glint in his green-blue eyes, but then he conceded, and we curled up in each other’s arms, drifting off.

My body hums with the memories of all the things he did to me, and I wonder, now that we’re both awake, whether he’ll start again.

“It’s Nate,” he says, pulling my attention back to the present moment.

Right. The phone. A possible situation at hand. God, my mind is muddled.

Then the name hits me and I sit up straighter as Luke answers the call. Nate? Why the hell is Nate trying so desperately to get a hold of Luke? Oh god, what if something happened? To him or someone else. Quinn? Liam? Brody?

“Yeah, she’s here,” Luke replies to whatever Nate has said, eyeing me as I swivel around so I’m sitting up on my knees. There’s a pause and he frowns, responding, “Oh. Well, hold on.”

Despite the furrow in my brow, relief washes over me that it doesn’t seem to be bad news regarding someone else. But the fact that Luke is holding the phone out for me isn’t very reassuring either. He must sense my sudden uneasiness, because he offers a tender smile.

Wrapping the sheet tighter around my chest, even though Nate can’t see me and Luke answered in the nude, I take the phone and answer, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Nate’s voice comes from the other end, sounding weary. “Sorry to bother you after everything, but your mom called. More than once.”

A growl filled with rage comes from deep within the pit of my soul. The noise surprises me, and I clamp my mouth shut to keep from uttering a string of expletives at Nate. Fisting the comforter in my hands, I try not to picture it as my mother’s neck.

Fuck her. I can’t even begin to process what she did or how she did it, and I don’t want to. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not ever. Right now, I want nothing to do with her.

When I say nothing else, Nate adds, “She’s called Quinn too. A few times.”

Luke sits on the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand, his fingers running over the back of it as it clutches the bedding. When I let go of the material, I realize that I’m trembling from head to toe, and Luke took note. Must have known I needed his reassuring touch.

My fingers curl around his, my grip on his phone tightening as I take a steadying breath. “Okay. I’ll handle it. I’m sorry she’s being like that.”

“It’s okay. She knew about your car going over the side of the mountain, but can’t get ahold of you. Earlier you said you were going to let her know what happened, so I was worried,” Nate explains, caution in his tone. “Everything okay?”

A wave of nausea hits me, and I close my eyes against it, shaking my head. “It’s complicated. But I’ll deal with her. If she calls again, just block her.”

“Hailey?” Nate sounds surprised.

“It’s fine, Nate. You don’t need to be part of my family drama. I’ll talk to you later, okay? Sorry again.”

I don’t wait for him to respond before I hang up the phone and toss it to the bed, scared that if I hold onto it for one second longer I’ll throw it across the room or crack it in my grip.

“All these years,” I whisper, unsure if it’s to myself or to Luke.“She was the reason.”

Luke moves onto the bed, shuffling on his knees closer to me. He brings both hands to my face, cradling me in warm palms. “Hey, what matters is now.”

Renewed anger seeps into my veins and I jerk my head back, snapping, “Are you not mad? She didn’t do this to just me.”

“Oh, I’m bloody furious with her,” he tells me, his hands having dropped to my shoulders. They run down my arms until he reaches my hands, taking them in his. “But I don’t know that my anger helps you right now. And you, Freckles, are my number one priority.”

Luke brings my hands to his lips, kissing each knuckle, one by one, his eyes holding mine, allowing me to see every emotion in their depths. Pain. Sorrow. Regret. “You always were. It’s why I believed her all those years ago. I thought I was giving you what you wanted.”

If I weren’t so angry with my mother, tears would fill my eyes right now. Of course he gave me what he thought I wanted, or needed, even if it meant his own pain. It was never just a physical thing, even though that’s when he vocalized giving me what I needed, or wanted, the most. But it was always there. In the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, the way he always asked for permission, even if it wasn’t always with spoken words.

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