Page 88 of Perfect Order
I absorb her gasp as I go on. “You’re everything I always dreamed a woman could be—strong, stubborn, loyal, and so fucking smart it makes my head spin trying to keep up. I don’t know what the hell you could possibly see in a guy like me, but as long as you do, I’m here. Just know that…”
I have to pause because her fingers come up and lay across my lips. “Hush.” Her lashes are spiky with wetness as she stares up at me. “Now, it’s your turn to listen.”
I don’t protest when she rolls me to my back and straddles me. “This, you, me, it’s once in a lifetime for me, Kane. I’ve lived so long in the shadows, I felt like I was destined to be there. Yet, you understand. You don’t try to make me step away. You bring the light to me. And all you have to do is simply be there. No one’s ever just been there. Someone I can trust beyond trust. It’s everything I’ve been looking for and…”
“And what?” I squeeze my arms.
“I found it in you.”
“Not Kylie?” I probe, not because I’m doubting her words but because I want her to let go of some of her grief.
Her head shakes just before she lies down on top of me. “No. She’s a part of me, Kane. There’s no real way to explain this. I’m always going to feel like I’ve lost a part of myself because she’s gone.”
I rub my hand up and down her back. “You don’t have to.”
“I do for me.” With that, I quiet and let her explain herself. She pours out her story from the beginning, concluding it with the order to subdue her grief. The emotions she lets out tumble clean through her in a way she hasn’t had a chance to let go of. My chest is damp with her tears by the time she’s finished. In the end, I’m inclined to find Leanne’s handler and kick his ass, but she hasn’t given me his name. “God knows what I’d do if I had it,” I mutter.
“Hmm?” Her breath flutters across my neck, causing a chill to race through me.
“Nothing.” I run my hand through her hair, lifting it from her neck. “Now what?”
“Now, I finish what I started. Then…” Her shoulders move up and down. “I guess it’s back to life. I don’t know.”
“What about your parents?”
Her laugh is full of bitterness. “What more would you like to know about them? Name? Address? The fact that since Lee died they can’t bear the sight of me? My mother blames me for my sister dying because I should have ‘done something,’ though what more I have no idea.”
It doesn’t take a genius to identify the underlying devastation her parents’ actions have caused. “You love them.” I pull back so I can judge her true feelings.
“Yes. I love them the way I love Kylie, the way I love you. Always. Forever. But it hurts because with them I know I’ll never have those emotions returned again.” Her chin wobbles briefly before she firms it up.
I groan before I push her onto her back. I cover her body with mine, kissing her lips, which are so soft from the tears she’s shed. I have to have her again, touch her, brand her to me. To show her how much I love her.
How I always will.
So I set about reminding her there’s more to life than the shadows of despair we’ve both been living in. There’s the light that spins from two people loving each other.
MARCH
Kane
Is rock god Beckett Miller carrying indie goddess Erzulie away from the scene of the crime so his newest lover won’t know? Shh, we won’t tell. #tryst #lifewithbeckett #grammys #tsk #wewouldtoo
— @LFrederickShadowOfficial
All hell is breaking loose. And to keep myself from taking it out on people who don’t deserve it, I’m running on the treadmill. Hard.
We’ve been back from the Grammys for half a minute and a shitstorm has evolved, and I’m caught right in the eye of it with my lover on one side and a man I respect on the other. And because I’m sworn not to reveal who Leanne is since that’s tantamount to revealing a national security secret, Beckett can’t fix his love life. So the rest of us are paying for it. It took weeks to pry out of him what happened, but when I pieced the dates together, an overwhelming guilt crashed over me.
His relationship is on the rocks because I distracted Leanne.
One afternoon when I had a break and was over at her place engaging in some midday shower sex, a post with a picture of Beckett carrying Leanne the night she was drugged from Snowy-T’s party emerged, only it insinuated it was from the Grammys. The problem is that not only has he tried to deny it, no one can find any semblance of the photo because—I amp the speed just a little more—Leanne has a miracle script that scrubs photos of her sister from the web. It’s like she’s some sort of benevolent demigod who decided what information the public could absorb to formulate an opinion about her sister. In my less infuriated moments, I must admit it’s fucking brilliant. Just not right now.
“What the hell. Just put it back,” I shout.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, Kane. It’s not that fucking simple,” she yells back.
I remind her of our earlier conversation. “I thought you didn’t deal with photos.”
