Page 59 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

I squeeze my thighs around his waist and fist his hair too.

“No, I’m not Jupiter. Don’t call me that.

You called me by my name that night too, at the club and I hated it.

I’m your Little Strawberry and I’m not letting you destroy something you’ve worked so hard to build.

You’re leaving tomorrow. You’re going to have the best season of your life.

I’m not going to let anything stand in the way of that.

Not even you. I’m not letting your asshole father take more from you than he already has, okay? He won’t win. He?—”

His fist tightens in my hair as he speaks. “I didn’t sleep.”

“What?”

“The night he left us,” he says. I’ve had my eyes closed so far, but at his words, they snap open and the night comes back into view as he continues, “Mom told us he’d left after we got back from school.

She was devastated. Could barely hold herself up.

Callie was just born; she was crying, wailing.

Stellan took her. Conrad sent Mom upstairs.

I got started on dinner. In all that confusion, we lost track of Ledger.

Apparently, he’d run away to the playground and Con had to drag him back home.

It was a mess. All of us were a mess. But somehow, we all went to sleep.

I couldn’t though. I couldn’t sleep. I had this…

” His chest shudders again, his breath hitches.

“This rage inside of me. I wanted to… I wanted to hunt him down, and then beat the shit out of him. I wanted to…” Another shudder and a hitch.

“So I stayed up all night and I played soccer. I practiced my free kicks. And I practiced and I practiced until I twisted my ankle.”

I gasp and try to break out of his hold.

But he keeps me where I am, wrapped around him in the world’s tightest hug. And I realize maybe he needs it. He needs my arms, my soft body, my hard hug to be able to do this. Make his confession. So I keep holding him.

“Until I buried that rage deep within me. Because I couldn’t bring my rage into it.

I couldn’t bring my anger when we were all so fucking angry.

When Ledger was throwing tantrums. When Conrad was trying to control everything.

When Stellan was being his aloof self. When there was a baby in the house that needed changing and feeding.

So I bandaged my ankle, iced it, elevated it, fucking did everything I could and kept playing every night until my anger passed.

“And then, I kept doing it. I kept burying things, do you understand? Because there was no space for any more dysfunction in my family. Any more rage or anger issues or grief. My mother died of cancer. She was wasting away up in that bedroom that smelled like death and Clorox, that no one could go into. Our family was breaking apart. All my siblings were grieving before she left this earth. So I went for a run. I’d run every single night.

I’d run circles around this town until my urge to scream, to break something, to fucking break everything would pass, and… ”

Another shudder but it doesn’t stop with that, no.

He keeps shuddering now. His chest keeps shaking with choppy breaths and his arms are vibrating.

It’s like there’s a dam inside of him. A big, thick, strong wall, a fortress that’s been holding everything, all these things, all these hidden secrets, and now that dam is breaking.

The wall is cracking. There are deep fissures running through all his defenses and he’s coming apart.

This is what it is, isn’t it.

He’s coming apart at the seams and it feels like my arms, my body are the only thing holding him together as he keeps going, “But I don’t…

I d-don’t fucking know…how to… H-how to let this go.

I don’t f-fucking know how to…” His teeth chatter with his next word.

“D-distract myself. I can’t… I need to… I have to fucking k-kill him for?—”

“Kiss me,” I whisper, cutting him off and making him go still.

Which sounds so ridiculous when I say it like that. How can my mere whisper still the tsunami within him? How can I calm his rage down with a simple command, a request? I don’t even know what it is. All I know is that this is the only way.

The only way to distract him.

I’m supposed to be his distraction, aren’t I?

I’m supposed to soothe him, help him move on, help him focus away from the pain.

So this is it. And I was going to tell him that anyway, wasn’t I?

I was going to tell him I was his before we got interrupted.

So this is it. I’m his. I’ll find a way not to screw this up.

I’ll find a way to keep Snow and her— my —new family away from this.

I’ll find a way to keep the world, the stupid fucking media away from this as well.

Because it has nothing to do with them. It has nothing to do with anyone but him.

For him I’ll keep a hundred secrets and die under the burden of them.

Because he deserves that. He deserves someone who loves him like that.

The Wrecking Thorn. My toxic asshole stepbrother .

Who’s so easy to love. Who’s so easy to get lost in, so easy to get ruined for.

How can I not when every inch of his soul, every muscle of his heart is made of love?

He is made of love. Love and loyalty and sacrifice for his family.

He’s been sacrificing himself, his emotions, his feelings.

He’s been denying them, burying them like dead bodies.

He’s been shrinking himself, so his family has the space to grow.

To flourish. While he’s withering away without them.

That’s his truth.

I wanted to see his truth, didn’t I? I wanted to see inside of him, and while I’ve gotten glimpses in the past, I never got the full picture, the full depths of him. This is it.

I go to move away from him and thankfully, he lets me.

What I see on his face makes me flinch though.

All the lines, the angles standing in stark relief.

The hollows of his cheeks are deeper, the peaks higher.

His eyes are harsh but somehow still lost. Full of fire that will burn down the world, but somehow still bruised themselves.

He looks vulnerable.

Naked and exposed. Like bare heart and stripped nerve endings. And God, I love him. I love him so fucking much that I’m dying with it. That I’m a wreck for his love. I’m a wreck for him.

Framing his face, I whisper, “Kiss me.”

His nostrils flare, his chest convulsing again. Not that it stopped, but still. This one is bigger, this tremor, as he whispers back, “Kiss you.”

“Yes.”

When all he does is stare at me, I dig my thumb into his cheeks and say, “Before those guys interrupted us, that’s what I was coming to tell you.

I was coming to tell you that I don’t care.

I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about lying or secrets or a fresh start.

I don’t care about anything. I don’t know why I ever did.

Because none of that matters. Nothing matters but you.

I can’t stay away from you. It’s too painful.

I can’t watch you be in pain. Alone, angry, standing away from everyone.

Away from your twin brother.” He stiffens but I keep going, “I know you miss him. I know . But you can’t be around him.

I know that too. Which is why he never shows up at the house.

So yeah, I don’t care. And I don’t even care”—I press my forehead against his—“if it was all a game to you that night. If all you felt was your need for revenge, while I loved every single thing you did to me. All I want you is to come home. Come to me. Kiss me.”

“You loved it,” he says, his voice low.

“What?”

His chest moves again, but this time it’s more from a large breath than from the tremors of his emotions.

And then he widens his stance and flexes his grip, his arm around my waist and his fist in my hair.

It’s as if that breath was him coming back to life, him building up his defenses and shutting everything and everyone out.

It’s okay though. It’s fine. He can’t hide himself from me anymore.

I’ve seen him, all of him, so I won’t let him.

But that’s for later. For now, I’m going to fucking be his, even if it kills me.

He pulls my head back and rasps, his eyes all dark and dangerous now, “You loved it. What I did to you.” I nod without shame, without any reservations. “All those things, mean and degrading. Things meant to wreck you to pieces.”

I lick my lips, and he pulls at my hair harder. “I felt like… I felt like I wasn’t really mine in that moment. I felt like I was yours. My body, my heart, my soul. My will. And it felt like you’d keep them safe. All my organs, all the pieces that make me. You’ll keep the fabric of my soul safe.”

By the time I finish, his jaw is pulsing. There’s a flash in his eyes, bright and full of unknown things. Things that should give me pause, should make me shiver. They do make me shiver, but they don’t make me want to pause. They make me want to jump headlong into the unknown.

“You shouldn’t have told me that,” he says, his fingers flexing.

My heart pounds. “Why n-not?”

He licks his lips and says gruffly, “Because I’m hungry.”

“What?”

“And I wanna eat.” My thighs flex at his low, intense tone.

“I wanna eat and eat and fucking eat everything you gave me. That night.” My eyes go wide and my mouth parts, but he keeps going, “It means that I wanna eat your tears. I wanna eat your whimpers. I wanna eat the way you light up for me when I call you my whore, the way you moan when I squeeze your throat a little too tight. I wanna eat your shame and your lust, your desire for me, your desperation. It means, baby, that I wanna eat you . Because I might have wanted it to just be about revenge, I might have wanted it to just be about hurting you the way you hurt me, but it wasn’t.

The moment I walked in the door and saw you across the room, everything became about you. ”

I blink. “Me?”

“Yeah,” he rumbles. “So I want you to know I won’t turn you away.

I won’t tell you this is a bad fucking idea.

Because if given the chance, I’ll eat you up.

I’ll eat all of you until there’s nothing left.

Until you’re lying on the ground, your heart bleeding out and dying.

Until every part of you is ruined and wrecked.

Do you understand? So don’t ask me to kiss you if you aren’t ready for that. ”

I stare at him for a few moments, noticing every line of his face, committing it to memory, the way he looks right now, on the edge, at the tipping point, before inching closer. Closer and closer until our lips are grazing against each other and I whisper, “I’ve been ready for years.”

And then, closing my eyes, I put my mouth on him and jump to my death.