Page 13

Erin

Ryan’s words send a chill though me, and goose bumps rise up on my skin despite the heat that’s still radiating off of both of us.

This is what we do, but it never fixes anything, it never gets to the true issue, yet still we fuck like crazy and then attempt to act like our problems don’t exist.

When his lips crashed into mine, I felt everything he carried with him. He kissed me with all his concerns and worries and fears, but also with his anger and frustration. It’s still written all over his face, and right now it seems that neither one of us is willing to admit fault, admit that we’re a fucked up mess.

I pull him closer, my nails running down the length of his back, marking him the way he marked me.

I want to hate him and push him away. I don’t want to make him a part of this, but in all honesty, once he knows the full extent of this shit show, he’ll leave anyway. It’s the way it always goes down.

We’re both quiet for a bit, our labored breathing finally returning to normal, even as the tension still hangs heavy in the air.

Ryan’s the first to speak, his deep voice cutting through the silence like a knife, and his tone is still harsh.

“You going to start talking?”

he questions and I roll my eyes. His approach sucks and I get that he’s angry, but fuck, so am I.

“Get off me, Ryan,”

I demand, my tone equally as harsh as I shove my hands into his chest, but he stays put. His muscled frame looms over me as I struggle to get out from underneath him.

“Seriously, Ryan,”

I nearly shout.

“You can go now. Just leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on!”

Ryan yells back, startling me just a little.

At this point he has now stood up and is pulling on his clothes. I do the same, but even with something as simple as getting dressed you can feel the anger in both of us. Ryan’s jaw is clenched and his lips pursed as I watch him pull a white t-shirt over his head.

“You don’t want to know,”

I finally respond, scrubbing my hands over my face as I stand in front of him in a t-shirt and underwear. I shake my head knowing that the picture he has tells him everything he needs to know.

“Obviously I do or I wouldn’t still be standing here.”

His hands are on his hips, and there’s tightness around his eyes. He’s obviously not leaving.

“You know everything you need to know, Ryan. I told you, he’s my fucking father. What more do you want me to say?”

I throw my hands in the air, and turn away from him. I can feel my heart beating in my chest, slamming against my ribs as it pulses loud in my ears.

I can’t stand being in this bedroom with him any longer. The room feels like it’s closing in on me, like it’s far too small for both of us.

I push my way past Ryan, leaving the room and heading into the kitchen for another beer, but as I open the refrigerator, he’s standing behind me. I feel Ryan’s hand close around my wrist as he practically spins me around to face him.

“Cut the shit, Erin!”

he shouts.

“Tell me what the fuck is going on!”

He’s frustrated with my lack of response, but what he doesn’t understand is that talking about it is going to break me. And right now, for some fucking reason, Ryan wants that.

“I can’t!”

I scream back, pushing up on my toes so my face is inches from his.

“Don’t you get it? I can’t fucking talk about it!”

I can feel the tears well up in my eyes and I swallow hard. I won’t cry in front of him.

I can hear the sound of Ryan breathing, feel his warm breath against my overly heated skin and I want to push him away, yet I also want to wrap my body around him and remember when I felt safe in his arms. I want to forget how we ever got to this point.

I’m a fucking mess.

I take a deep breath and in that moment I can smell him, I can feel the warmth radiating from his body and it’s nearly my undoing.

“Can we stop the hostility?”

I ask, my hands over my face knowing that if I look at him I’ll start to cry.

“I know you’re confused and want answers, but we need to stop yelling at each other. It’s getting us nowhere.”

I’m trying to be rational, but my body is so wound up and all I keep thinking about is that picture and Ryan getting shot and wondering if any of this has anything to do with my father.

Ryan hasn’t spoken to me yet, but I can see just my words have settled him down, even though I have yet to make eye contact with him. He takes a beer from the refrigerator and leans back against the counter.

He looks defeated and exhausted. We both do.

With a beer in my hand, I fall against his body, letting the weight of him catch me as his arm wraps around my waist.

“I’m sorry,”

I murmur, knowing that this whole thing is just as much my fault as it is his. We’ve kept things from each other, and it’s now led to this.

“I am too,”

he answers back, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. It’s a gesture that’s so simple, yet it means so fucking much to me right now.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the shooting,”

he adds pulling me closer to him, his hand gripping my hip tightly.

“It scared the shit out of me to see you with that bandage on your arm, to know that you could’ve been seriously hurt or…”

I trail off not finishing my sentence. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

“Killed,”

Ryan says filling in the word I couldn’t bear to say.

“Imagine what it felt like for me to see you in a picture with William Fitzgerald.”

His words hang in the air as I process them. I know exactly what it felt like. I’m sure it felt eerily similar to the way I felt every time I told someone my last name, told them who my mother was, who my father was, and watched them then slowly disappear from my life.

There’s fear in it. There’s anger and hatred, and then there’s denial. I’ve felt them all, and then I just disappeared like it never even happened.

I want to tell him that I’m sorry for not telling him about my father, but I’m not sorry. I never wanted to involve him in any of this.

“I’m not his daughter anymore,”

I say, hoping he remembers the person I am and not who my father is.

“You’ll always be his daughter, Erin,”

Ryan shoots back and I hear that original harshness in his voice.

I choke back the lump that forms in my throat, knowing what comes next. He’s gone. He doesn’t want to be a part of this fucked up situation.

“But that doesn’t change the way I feel about you,”

he says, softening a little.

“I just wish you wouldn’t have lied to me and let me find out on my own.”

“I didn’t lie, Ryan,”

I add immediately, cutting him off.

“Whatever you want to call it, but it doesn’t matter. You left me in the dark and I was fucking blindsided by you and…”

This time it’s Ryan who doesn’t finish his sentence, and I run through the different number of things he could’ve said.

“I left that life, and to be honest, it never fully occurred to me to tell you. There are times I forget that it even used to be my life. I just want normal. I had normal with you.”

Ryan pulls away from me, and his fingers rest under my chin, tipping my face up to look at him.

“You still have normal with me, Erin,”

he whispers, his lips nearly touching mine.

“I will always be your normal, your constant. I will always be here.”

I want to believe him, and I want to have a life with him that doesn’t revolve around my past, but I can’t help but think it won’t ever happen. I have that fucking subpoena stuffed in my kitchen drawer, beating like th.

“Tell-Tale Heart”

just waiting to ruin my life all over again.

But I also know, if this is going to work, I can’t keep it from Ryan anymore.

I slip out of his arms and grab the envelope from the kitchen drawer, handing it to him without an explanation. I know this envelope is going to bring forth a lot of questions, more than I’m willing to answer, but it’s a risk I need to take to keep Ryan here with me.

I watch his eyes flick from the name on the front to my face and back again and then he slides the single sheet of paper from the envelope.

He quickly glances at it and sharply says.

“You’re not going.”

It’s not a question but more of demand.

“Yes, I am,”

I shoot back.

“I can’t keep running from this, and what the fuck do you think is going to happen if I don’t go?”

I ask, but I can hear the pitch in my voice rise and once again we’re back to where we started.

“You know exactly what’s going to happen, Ryan. You’re a cop for fuck’s sake. I could go to jail. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not, Erin, but I don’t want you involved in any of this. These are terrible people, and I know what they’re capable of.”

“You know what they’re capable of?”

I question back harshly, as I blow out on a long exhale.

“These people are my family. I know exactly what they are capable of and that’s why I’m going. I need this to end.”

“I’m going to take care of this,”

Ryan responds completely ignoring me as he reaches into his pocket for his phone. Like he’s going to make some miraculous phone call and end everything.

“The hell you are!”

I scream, my foot stamping hard on the ground.

“Stay the fuck out of it, Ryan.”

I don’t want him throwing around his police muscle and making things worse. I’m still under the impression that I’ll be able to head to court, do what needs to be done, and disappear back to Rockport like it never even happened. Ryan getting involved will put my name out there, and put a target on him and I both.

Once again ignoring me, he begins to hit the call button on his phone and I all but slap the phone out of his hand. I grab for his wrist and he stops, his face impassive as he looks at me.

“This is why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d go all protective detective and blow the whole thing out of proportion.”

I drop my hand from his wrist and he returns his phone to his pocket, but there’s no way he’s over it that quickly.

“Out of proportion?”

he mocks.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I don’t want you involved in this and I’m going to make sure that happens regardless.”

“No!”

I shout, ready to throw a fit and have it out with him, but I’m silenced once again with Ryan’s mouth crashing into mine. His lips bruising mine with their force as he pushes me against the cabinets.

“Don’t you fucking get it, Red?”

he growls in my ear.

“It’s fucking killing me to know that you won’t let me protect you.”

He sucks hard at my neck making me gasp out loud and I can feel my heart begin to race.

“Ryan,”

I say, but it comes out breathless and needy.

“This isn’t going to fix anything,”

I mutter knowing both of us are beyond the point of distraction.

“Fuck, I know that, Red, but I need to be close to you, I need to be inside you again.”

His legs are spread wide and his hard cock is pressing into my hip when he takes my face in his hands.

“You see what you do to me?”

he demands, thrusting his impressive cock directly against me again.

“My dick is so fucking hard right now that even jerking off won’t do me any good. I. Want. You.”

Each word comes out uneven and hoarse making me ache with need.

“Ryan,”

I moan, knowing that I should be doing the exact opposite. How is it possible that I can go from arguing with him to wanting him to fuck me in a matter of seconds? There’s something wrong with me.

“Erin,”

he barks and it almost makes me smile. As much as I thought I didn’t want this, it’s exactly what I need.

“Take off your clothes and bend over the counter, I wanna see that perfect ass.”

I don’t need to be told a second time. I strip quickly as Ryan pulls out his dick and begins stroking it. His eyes never leave my body as I take him in, his hand moving slowly up and down his long, hard shaft.

As I shimmy out of my underwear, Ryan’s spinning me around and pulling my hips back so I’m bent at the waist.

“This is going to be hard and fast, Red and then we really need to fucking talk,”

he hisses in my ear and then bites down on my shoulder.

“Just fuck me, Ryan,”

I answer back, because right now we both need a distraction from reality.

Ryan’s thick, hard cock nudges at my pussy and he uses his knee to spread my legs wider and that’s when he slams into me. His cock filling me and making me call out his name.

He thrusts in and out of me over and over, unrelenting and rough, but it’s what we both need.

Oh god, Ryan,”

I moan, looking back over my shoulder and he bites down on his lower lip. My pussy clenches around him as I come undone, and his hips speed up their tempo sending Ryan into an orgasm as he unloads himself inside me.

Before either of us can speak, Ryan picks me up and walks us out of the kitchen, down the hall and into the bathroom, where he starts the shower.

“Get in,”

he says gesturing to the shower.

“We’ll talk in here; that way neither one of us can walk away.”

And as ridiculous as it seems, he’s right.