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27

Calista

After

I knew what stepping into the water meant.

There had been a question in Fane’s eyes while he watched me take step after step toward the water, the rest of his face lifting out of the clear pool, taking me in hungrily.

Where I knew he hadn’t taken his eyes off me once, I hadn’t been able to keep mine on him.

I suddenly felt so incredibly stupid. I’d just strutted my ass into the water with confidence coming out the wazoo, and now all I really wanted was to turn around and haul ass out of there.

Everything with Fane, like it had been from the moment I saw him standing in Sunshine, was too much and not enough. I wanted to be impossibly closer to him, and I wanted to be so far away that there would never be a chance of crossing paths with him again for the rest of my life.

Both of those options turned my stomach for different reasons.

I’d made it all the way into the water, the water meeting my waist in the center where he stood. I was honest to God, vibrating. Despite the temperature of the water, my teeth started to chatter. I sunk them into my bottom lip, pressing down and trying to keep my eyes on the way my hand was gliding along the surface and not at how I saw ripples coming from behind me.

Not at the body I felt rise from the water, the heat blazing off him that had nothing to do with the natural springs.

“Calista.” I felt his voice everywhere. Just the idea of him made me clench my thighs together.

God, this was fucking ridiculous.

I cleared my throat. “So, there you have it. Waterfall, check!” I made a checkmark in the air, and the second I did it, I wanted to drown myself. “Great, okay. All done.” I don’t even know who I was talking to, but I did know my legs had decided that they would try and save me from myself and march me right out of the water.

I got one step before Fane’s arm wrapped around me and pulled me back to him. I shivered at the press of his chest against my back. At feeling his skin on mine. Every point of contact felt tingly like tiny little chemical reactions were happening, and with every spark, my willpower to walk away from him was dwindling.

My eyes fluttered close when he dragged his nose up the back of my neck.

“This position seems to be a common theme with you,” I gasped.

“Mmm,” he hummed, his smile pressing against the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder. “You did always love this position.”

“Fane, what are…” I grappled to keep hold of my train of thought. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve decided.” He said the words with such finality. All the air escaped my lungs when both his hands gripped my waist and in one, swift motion he turned me to face him.

My mouth opened and closed a few times, desperate to say something along the lines of “ I’m so happy for you, ” or “ It must feel great to have made your first decisions at the age of twenty-eight, ” but any flimsy sarcastic quip died on my tongue when Fane’s hands dragged up my body. They were so broad I could feel the way his fingertips almost touched at my back where he splayed them along my rib cage.

“When I got here and I said I’d go along with everything, I said I wanted something in return. This is what I want.”

“Fane, I—”

“Mercy, Calista,” he murmured, cutting me off. “Just for a while. I…” His eyelids were heavy, the pupils of his eyes so blown out all that was left was a thin ring of purple, with all his attention totally transfixed on my lips. He held me away from him, and I knew the moment I gave him my answer, the space between us would disappear. “Let me touch you. Please .” There was a desperation in his voice that didn’t match up with all the things I had collected about him in the last few weeks.

Didn’t match up with the person he had become in my mind over the last two years.

It reminded me of when he was mine, and I was his.

“Yes.” The word was barely out of my mouth before he kissed me.

He kissed me in the sort of way that broke people down and then built them back up, piece by piece, leaving them forever changed.

One of Fane’s hands moved from my waist and dragged over the top of my breasts before wrapping around my throat, pulling me closer to him until we were crushed together.

“I haven’t been living without you.” He pushed the words into the spot behind my ear before sucking hard. His mouth tracing and teeth nipping and tongue licking his way down my throat.

I was almost completely useless at that moment. My hands gripped his forearms, and I dug my nails in, determined to remind myself that this was real.

That this was Fane.

His other hand crept up from my waist, toying with the string of my bikini top. He pulled back for a moment, enough to ask me if he could with a single look.

I would do literally anything for him right now.

Tugging the tie that was secured around my neck, he watched as the flimsy fabric peeled off me. My chest was heaving, exposing my tits. Heavy and full and aching.

My nipples were hardened peaks, brushing against his chest with every breath I took. I looked down between us, seeing nothing but skin and water, fascinated by the way we looked together. The way I remembered it so vividly and still I couldn’t remember it feeling like this.

I looked down, and that’s when I saw it. The words so clearly tattooed on his chest, right over his heart, that I stopped breathing entirely.

My eyes shot up to meet his. I knew he was seeing so much right then, most of all confusion. So, so much confusion. Panic and uncertainty and more panic.

“Later,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I promise, just let me touch you now.” And then he kissed me again, and it was all over. Whatever fight I had left in me died before it even had the chance to take over.

Being with Fane had always felt so completely intoxicating that it was like it wasn’t me. I wasn’t capable of being able to feel the things he made me feel. Of being touched the way he touched me. I became someone so completely different from who I was that it was like some sort of contact high. I lost myself in him like nothing else I’d ever experienced before him or since.

I felt the way his hands roamed over my body now, how he skimmed the palm of one hand lightly over the sensitive peak of my nipple before massaging me roughly, all while he took the other in between his teeth, biting so hard I cried out. Head tipping back and legs coming up to circle around his hips, I knew I’d been wrong.

I’d never been lost.

It was clear to me now that the only time I truly knew exactly who I was had been in those moments. The only time when I’d had absolute clarity and confidence in answering the questions that had plagued me. Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want?

“ Fane ,” I gasped, my hand sinking into his hair and missing the length it used to be.

“You have the most perfect tits.” He took a nipple into his mouth again before releasing it with a pop, lapping at my chest with his tongue and sending pulse after pulse of pleasure through me until it was becoming unbearable.

I couldn’t help how I started to grind my hips against him. I could feel him. How hard he was, pressed against my stomach.

“Do you remember when you let me fuck them, Cali?” Fane dragged his teeth along my jaw before pulling my head back with the grip he had in my hair. “How you pushed them together for me and let me come all over your pretty little neck?”

I just nodded because fuck yes, I remembered. Who the hell would ever forget something like that?

“Do you remember what you did after that?” Fane captured my mouth in another bruising kiss. No soft or delicate touches, just a buildup of desire that hadn’t been sated and had begun to overflow.

“Y-yes.”

“Tell me.” It was a rough command that made my pussy clench around nothing, and a moan tumbled from my lips.

My back was pressed against something cool, making me arch further into him. Fane just took it as an invitation to drop his mouth back to my tits, soft purple marks blooming all over them now.

“Fane,” I breathed his name. My heart was pounding so fast I was sure he could hear it.

“Tell me, Calista.”

“You…” Another whimper interrupted my words. He hadn’t touched me anywhere else but playing with my nipples, and I was so insanely worked up that I could probably come just like this. “You asked me to sit on…”

“On my what, baby?”

“Your face,” I gasped, just as the back of one finger dragged down the seam of my covered pussy. “What is happening? ”

That was definitely an inside thought.

“What’s happening is that I want you to remember the way you ground that perfect cunt of yours all over my face, and I got to watch you while I had my tongue in your tight, wet—”

“Jesus Christ, Fane.” I finally opened my eyes and found his already on me. Bright and reflecting the water around us. Mesmerizing.

“You were being a little too considerate, trying to hold your weight.” Fane took the lobe of my ear in his mouth while his hands found their way around my waist again. “You said you were worried you’d suffocate me. Do you remember what I said?”

I nodded, and he just tutted. “Don’t take your words from me now, Rose. Not after I’ve waited so long to hear them again. What did I say?”

I was fucking panting. “You said, ‘God, I hope so.’”

“Mmm,” he hummed, dragging his tongue up the side of my throat and leaving a chaste kiss on the corner of my mouth before he hoisted me up and out of the water, setting me on top of the wide, flat rock that he’d backed us up against. I was almost entirely naked with my bikini bottom wedged up so high that there was nothing left to the imagination about the shape of me.

My whole body was aching, my legs twitching to open. My hands itched to reach up and squeeze my own tits, to play with my nipples the way he had, to give myself some relief.

“While we’ll have to do our best to reenact that later, this will do for now.”

With one splayed hand on the center of my chest, he gently pushed me back until I was lying flat on the rock. The cold, the wet, and even the possibility of fucking leeches right now couldn’t have gotten me to move.

“Are you wet for me, Rose?” Fane’s voice was low and gravelly, the words vibrating through me as he left open-mouthed kisses along the insides of my thighs. I couldn’t take my eyes off him now, not as he got closer to where I was fucking desperate for him or when he elicited a surprised yelp from me when he wrapped his arms around my legs and gave me a little tug toward the edge of the rock and sank back down into the water.

“Yes,” I breathed, voice trembling.

“I have thought of you— just like this— every fucking day.” He freed one hand and brought it around to drag down the seam of my folds again, pushing the fabric of my swimsuit into my pussy lips. “The closest to heaven that I have ever been is right between your legs, baby. And I have been a man deprived of all that’s good while I’ve dragged myself back to you.”

Fane’s lips latched onto my clit over the fabric, making me whimper at the relief of the contact, sucking hard before running his nose along the length of me, inhaling deeply. My hands gave up on trying to find something to hold on to around me and settled into his hair. If the grin on his face was anything to go by, I’d say that’s what he was waiting for.

“ Please.”

“I do love it when you beg.” He pulled the fabric of my swim bottoms to the side, exposing me to him completely. “But you don’t need to beg me here, baby. I’ve been dreaming about this meal for years.”

There was no other way to describe what Fane did except with one word. Feast .

I was writhing beneath him. He moved one hand to the flat plane of my stomach, holding me down while his tongue lapped over every inch of me. Delving in with no restraint before he moved his mouth from me too soon. I could feel his grin along the skin of my thighs while he played, leaving nips and bites.

I saw my life flash before my eyes when Fane started to fuck me with two thick fingers. I screamed that time, not used to being so full, and my god, was I full.

His name kept falling off my own tongue; a plea and a curse. His fingers continuing to pump into me. The pace they set was unforgiving and met with the rough way he sucked my clit, my head started to spin.

“You feel perfect. Your tight little cunt is gripping my fingers, baby. I can feel the way you’re clenching. Are you going to come for me?”

Good Lord, this man’s mouth.

If I wasn’t so consumed with what he was doing to my body, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the face. I’d probably still not be able to look him in the face after this.

“Come on my fingers, Calista. I want to taste every last bit of you.” He added a third finger and latched his mouth back to the swollen, sensitive flesh of my clit. It took two more pumps, and I fell apart so thoroughly that my ears started to ring and stars took over my entire vision.

My legs collapsed on either side of me, exposing me even further while he kept moving his fingers in and out of me. When he finally pulled them away, my bleary eyes settled on him, and I watched him lick them clean before dragging his tongue up the length of my slit one final time.

I whimpered at the contact, my hands reaching down to push him away. He caught my wrists and pulled me back into the water, still limp and reeling. Kissing me so thoroughly that I could taste myself on his lips. Long, languid strokes of his tongue until I was grinding myself on him, already wanting more.

He slowed down our pace, leaving me only half coherent before pulling the loose ties of my swimming top back up, covering me and tenderly retying the knot at the back of my neck.

Pressed against him, I could feel every inch—hard and thick and impossibly heavy—and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to taste him too. To feel his hand in my hair while I licked him from base to tip. To run my tongue along the slit of the swollen head of his cock and savor him. To see the look on his face when I made him feel good.

My hand moved instinctively, sliding down the ridges of his stomach, the taut muscles trembling under my fingertips. I pushed at the band of his swim trunks and through the clear water, I watched his cock spring free. The soft gasp he released, filled with relief, sent a shiver straight down my spine. It made me salivate .

I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock, fingers barely touching, and gave him one hard stroke. He was soft and hard and hot in my hand all at once and with lips parted and his eyes closed, he looked perfect.

I wanted… everything . I wanted his hands back on me, his mouth back on me. To be under him, over him, completely and totally at his mercy.

I wanted to watch the way he looked while I felt him sink inside me.

“Cali,” he croaked like he was in actual pain. His hand moved down my arm until it covered mine. I was absorbed by the sight of it. The strain of tendons in his forearm while he grappled with his restraint. The contracting of his stomach muscles when I gave his length another slow and languid pump, enthralled by the small jut his hips made.

What I hadn’t expected was for him to slowly peel my hand off him. The weight of what he’d done grew heavier every passing second while he tucked himself away.

I felt the frown slowly take over my face. My eyes darted from the water to the words on his chest to the look on his face. Jaw set and eyes hard. Determined in his resolve, yet at the same time, he seemed to be tormented by it.

“You…” I shook my head. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

“Believe me when I tell you, I want you to touch me,” his tone was raw. Unflinching.

“I…don’t understand.”

“I want to feel your hands on me,” he whispered. His eyes dropped to my mouth a second before his thumb traced my bottom lip. “Feel your mouth on me. To watch you…” Fane shook his head minutely like he needed to physically remove the image from his mind. “But I can’t. Not like this.”

“Like this?” I hated how vulnerable I sounded. The shock of what was happening was like a power outage on my defenses.

“There are too many walls between us, Cali.”

If I thought he sounded like he was in pain before, it had nothing on the way he sounded now, the way he looked. “We need to talk first. I don’t think it’s smart for us to…” He took a deep, shaking breath.

I pushed at his chest. “Not like this ? What does that mean?”

“It means that there’s too much shit unsaid between us right now. That I need you to hear me out before we can—”

“And you don’t think I have things that I want to say to you?” God, I was so fucking stupid .

“Cali—”

“No. Fuck you, Fane.” I pushed away from him in earnest now, wading through the water to get out. My heart was thrashing, and I felt so incredibly foolish. “News flash, letting you stick your face between my legs doesn’t eradicate anything that’s happened between us. It doesn’t mean that, all of a sudden, the way I feel about you is miraculously different.”

“Cali, that’s not what I fucking meant. If you just wait one—”

“You’re not the only one here who has thought about what they’d say if we ever saw each other again. God, I fucking hate— ”

Fane was right behind me while we moved out of the water. “If you say you hate me one more time, I swear to fuck— ”

“You have no idea what I do or don’t feel. No idea at all. And if you think that by somehow making me vulnerable and giving in, then hold back like some fucking noble jackass is going to make me, what? Soften up and want to hear anything you say more than I did before? Well, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“I wasn’t trying to soften you up .”

I didn’t need to look at him to know he was tugging at his hair. He’d always struggled to find his words, the right words, and yes, there was a part of me that wanted to just fucking stop. To give him the patience and space to figure it out the way I used to. But also, I was well within my right to rip him a whole new asshole.

There was a crack behind us that made me turn around. Fane was there in an instant, an arm circling around my chest protectively, both of us barely breathing while we looked over the forest around us.

I had to double-take the arm slung across me before I realized what he was doing. “Get your hands off me!” I turned around and shoved him again, which did a whole lot of nothing. The man was fucking huge.

“And that”—I point at the words on his chest—“that’s a sick fucking joke, you…you fucking sicko!”

“Stop yelling at me, and listen to me for two seconds .”

“No.” The word came out a deranged laugh and really said it all about my mental state. “I’m leaving, and if you’re not at the truck when I get there, I’m leaving without you.” I pulled my dress over my head and tugged my shoes back on. I knew he would catch up to me in less time than it would take to blink.

“Ask me when I got the tattoo.” His footfalls were steady and sure behind me.

“I don’t care,” I said, tripping for the second time.

“Ask me, Calista.”

“I don’t fucking care , Fane.”

“I got it the day you left.”

“Stop it!”

“The day you left, I took one of the notes you always use to write for me. That you left around the house.”

“ Stop! ” I was all but screaming at him now. Because I could see it, what he was describing. My linked letters on bright pink sticky notes on the fridge, the closet door, the bathroom mirror. Because I hadn’t wanted him to ever forget how much I fucking loved him.

“And I got it tattooed, in your writing, right over my heart. So that I’d never fucking forget that for as long as I live, even if you’re not next to me, it’s beating the same as yours. Because I can’t— ” His voice broke, and he cut himself off.

I didn’t want to listen to his words. They didn’t match up .

“Do you remember writing that for me? What that meant?”

Don’t listen, don’t listen.

“Every fucking day, you wrote them for me. ‘ Forever synced.’ ”

Nothing about him being here, showing up, made anything match up. He was the one who didn’t want me . He said no.

I was so busy going through that moment over and over, and the way his presence now felt like an assault on everything I’d forced myself to believe.

Wiping furiously at the tears still falling, I stormed for the driver’s side, hoping I’d somehow lost him on the way back. Hoping that he would just disappear from my life again.

That , I had learned to live with.

This? Whatever was happening now? I had no idea how to navigate it. How to survive it.

A rough hand wrapped around my arm, and I ignored the way my body sang at the contact. The way my heart tripped over itself. How the warmth of that single touch ignited my very fucking soul.

Instead, I ripped it from his grasp and whirled on it. The words died in my mouth. Shriveled up into nothing at the look on his face.

Defeated.

Like he’d been a man with one last thread of hope, and it had just snapped.

“I’ll drive,” he murmured, not even looking at me. All he did was walk around to the passenger side and open my door.

I was in a daze. He was going from hot to cold, and still, I felt like I knew nothing . That I was missing something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t trust my judgment even if I wanted to, and that just made the tears fall harder.

I was out of the car before it had even stopped in the gravel drive of the cottage, desperate for some distance. To take a breath of air that didn’t smell like him, but I felt him at my back immediately, looming and haunting.

The tension sitting between us like a steel pole, keeping us from coming any closer, but stopping us from moving away as we found ourselves once again in the useless front room of my house.

“Not a single thing I have said to you since I got here has been a lie.” Fane’s voice was both the balm that soothed me and the blade that sliced, and I couldn’t make up my mind which was worse.

“I don’t even know who you are, Fane.” My voice held every ounce of the heaviness that had taken over my body. The weight of the words that I’d thought on, day after day, had become so much a part of me that I’d gotten used to the way they dragged me down.

It was a losing battle for me now. I could feel my knees threatening to buckle.

“Yes, you do.” He took a tiny step toward me before stopping himself. His jaw twitched at the same time his hands clenched at his sides.

He closed his eyes for a breath before speaking again. “You know exactly who I am, and I know you. I know you so thoroughly I don’t think I could even exist and not find my way back to you. Be pulled back to you. Every single thing I’ve done has been for you.”

He paused at the scoff that flew out of my mouth, and all it did was serve to make his eyes darken. His face drew in, and it was like I was actively watching all the light leave his body like he was trying to show me that this was all he had been for the last two years.

His voice was gravelly when he spoke again. “I’ll take everything you can throw at me. I want it. The anger, the pain, the fucking frustration. I will happily take it. I deserve it, I know I do.” His laugh was sad and empty, and so not like the one that left me with nothing but open blue skies. The laughter that sent those heavy, unforgiving clouds so far I couldn’t see them. This one drew them in, called out for them. Wanted to be suffocated by their darkness.

His eyes flicked up to meet mine, hard and unwavering. “Take your pound of flesh, Calista. Cut it from me any which way you like. I won’t fight you. I would rather you fight with me than nothing at all.”

I wanted to scream.

“Whatever you’re doing right now, it’s not going to last.” I was shaking my head vehemently. I could feel myself slipping, nearing that edge I’d fallen over once before with such a solid sense of confidence that I would not meet my end at the bottom. “You’re here because you’re sad. Maybe you’re lonely. Guilty? I don’t know, but there is nothing left here, Fane.” I waved a panicked hand between us. “Don’t you understand that? It’s all fucking broken , and I have cut myself repeatedly trying to clean up the mess that was left behind, and I couldn’t. I…I hate you.” Those last three words had been the same lie I told myself consistently. The blanket that shrouded me, kept me safe and protected.

“I don’t believe you.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true,” I whispered, my voice trembling under the weight of it all. The urge to yell at him was there, but the fight was draining from me, seeping out like a slow bleed. I felt like I was being crushed alive, suffocated by everything I’d been holding in. I needed to cut something loose, to let something go, or I wasn’t sure I’d ever find the strength to stand back up.

“I have two whole fucking years of memories, right here.” He pointed at his temple, taking another step closer to me. “That tells me hate isn’t something that could ever exist between us.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Rose, I need to tell you…just, five minutes. Hear me out for five minutes.”

I shook my head, turning away from him, desperate for space.

“Cali.” He was right behind me, his voice as jagged and broken as mine.

“I do. I hate you,” I sobbed, walking into different rooms of the house just to keep moving, past Jerry, who had never looked so lost in his life.

“ No!” Fane yelled, voice cracking and splintering something inside of me. My anger didn’t leave, but it bent, twisted, reshaped itself into something closer to sorrow. A hollow ache I couldn’t hold back.

The weight of those years without him suddenly felt unbearable. The hold on the words I had wanted to scream at him, and also never wanted him to hear, shattering.

I whirled on him, chest heaving and vision blurred. Swallowing again and again to keep the sobs at bay. To make way for the words that were coming, whether I wanted them to or not.

Finally.

“Do you know what it’s like to try and want somebody, when you’re in love with someone else?”

“Cali—” Fane frowned, shaking his head at the whiplash he was no doubt feeling.

“ No !” I choked, consumed by the dread of reliving that moment. Of feeling like I didn’t just betray him , but I betrayed myself. “You might have been able to turn away from whatever you felt for me. Turn it off and walk away, but I loved you.” My voice broke. “And not in the way you love sunsets, or you love your favorite fucking movie. I. Loved . You. And when I had to deal with that alone? It was like I was drowning. I…”

I took a deep breath, I needed to calm down. When I spoke again, my voice was quiet, and my tears had stopped, and all that was left were those bloody, weeping wounds that had never healed.

“I know that’s not your problem. It’s mine. I’m not trying to say it’s your problem. But you want to know why I hate you so much? That’s why,” I said, rushing back to the living room to grab my bag, dropping a kiss onto Jerry’s nose that he met with a cry of his own.

I needed to get out of this house that was too small for all the things that were just said within its walls. All the confessions it held.

I opened the front door, forcing myself to look back at him where he stood just behind me. “I hate you because you forced me to try to want someone else when all I have ever wanted was you.”

I held his stare, giving him what he wanted—no walls between us.

He looked like all he wanted to do was pull me to him, to wrap me up in him and help me fix everything the way he always had been able to before. I wanted to let him. But more than that, I was desperate for the explanation he had for me—this big, imposing, fucking haunting why that would make it all make sense.

The answer to why we had ended up where we were instead of where we should have been. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.

I’d thought about what it would be since the moment I left. Built it up and broke it down from something small and insignificant to something huge and life-changing, and I didn’t know which would hurt less.

I didn’t slam the door behind me. I just closed it quietly and didn’t look back.

I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. All I knew was that I was desperate for the first time in my life to be nowhere near Darling.

The real fucking kicker? I didn’t hate Fane Mackenzie, and I never have. I never could. As much as I tried, as I desperately wanted to. It would have made everything so much easier, but no. There was no possibility of hate in my heart for him.

It was definitely not safe for me to be driving right now. What I really wanted was to drive to my parents’ place, to run to my dad and feel him wrap me in his arms the way he used to. To hold me close and rock me from side to side. I discarded that thought immediately, knowing it would only make him worry because I couldn’t even tell him the truth. I’d lied to him so completely since I’d arrived back in town, and if I came clean, all he would do is overthink everything I said, everything I did, and blame himself for the decisions that I’d made.

Two years worth of worry would flood him, and I’d never survive it, having to watch his heart break again.

I grabbed my phone and dialed the only other person I could think to go to.

“Cali?” Delilah’s frown was audible and her hesitancy a palpable thing, like she thought this might have been a butt dial.

“I know we haven’t talked properly in a really long time, and I haven’t been a good friend, or even a friend at all, but I really need a drink, and I don’t want to do it alone.”

The last part came out a sob, turning into a cry of relief when she replied.

“I’ll meet you at Mags’s in ten.”