Page 43 of From West, With Regret (NYC Billionaires #2)

TWENTY-SEVEN

LONDON

I used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what it would feel like to regain my memories.

I always imagined it clearly, everything slipping into its rightful place.

Each memory compartmentalized into neat, tiny boxes.

All of them are connected yet still organized, as if I’d been spending my life blindly searching for the light switch to the room that is my life, and once I found it, the room would light up and I’d feel right at home again.

I imagined living a happy life—one where I had two loving parents who only gave me up for reasons out of their control. I imagined a life of sunshine and rainbows. Other than the blip of me ending up in a foster home, my life was perfect.

Oh, how I wish that were true.

“Are you okay, Dimples?” West asks me for the millionth time.

“Yes.” I sigh, giving him the same exact answer. I try to give him a small smile of reassurance. He accepts it with a twitch of his mouth before focusing back on the gate that leads into the parking garage below his apartment building.

I don’t tell him to stop asking me, though. I get it. He’s worried about me. We’re both wandering through uncharted territory, and I know the dam breaking on my memories isn’t as perfect as I’d always imagined it to be.

Over the past few months, West and I have lived a separate life from our pasts. Now our pasts have collided with our present, the future is more uncertain than ever.

We haven’t spoken much since we left our old foster home behind.

I know he’s giving me space, and I need it.

I constantly twist my fingers in my lap, trying to focus on the good memories.

The ones with West. But then the flash of the star-speckled sky comes to mind, and I feel his hand over my mouth, starving me of oxygen.

I go from warm and happy, to cold and terrified. Calm and still, to frozen, shaking with fear.

West parks his car in his designated spot and flips off the engine. Without a word, he steps out of the car, and within three seconds, he’s opening my door and scooping me up into his arms.

I can’t stop my teeth from chattering or the chill that’s embedded itself in my bones.

My whole body hurts. I don’t know why when I haven’t physically exerted myself other than sprinting down the road and into the woods in high heels, but all the energy has been sucked out of me.

Physically, my mind is all over the place.

I drape my arms around his neck and rest my head on his sturdy chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. He rests the side of his face against the top of my head, and I can hear every word he’s saying without him ever speaking.

He holds me tightly. His large hands mold to my body and I’m aware of every touch point, like connecting stars to a constellation. He carries me all the way to the elevator and up to his floor. When he steps over the threshold, he loosens his grip and lowers me.

We’re home.

My feet have barely touched the floor when I fall against him, collapsing in his arms.

Sobbing uncontrollably, I clutch onto his shoulders. He’s no longer wearing his suit jacket. The soft fabric of his button-down shirt slips across my skin. I hang my head low, unable to lift it long enough to look into his eyes.

Then I fall to the floor. My knees slam against the hardwood before I catch myself from face planting the mahogany. Tears slip from my tired eyes, splashing to the carpet/tiling beneath me.

“London.” The broken tone in West’s voice causes another wrack of sobs to escape my fractured ribcage. “I don’t know what to do, baby. Tell me what you need.”

I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. Why does my past have to be so ugly? Why are the horrifying memories tearing apart the new, good ones?

When I think about it, I’m not only crying over the memory of my attack. I’m crying over all my memories of West. Every single one beautiful in its own way only to be left stranded and abandoned for fifteen years.

It’s all too much, and guiltily, for a moment, I wish I hadn’t regained my memories. I wish this sense of dread and emptiness would go away.

Clawing at the floor, I want to scream, but nothing comes out. Only silence. I open my mouth wide and force air in, focusing on my lungs, picturing them expanding, filling with life.

“What do you need?” he asks again, running his hand over my back. “Baby, please, tell me.”

I sniff as tears stream to the floor, then I close my eyes and breathe in the memory of West kissing my cheek before the last time I’d seen him. Standing in the doorway to his bedroom of the foster home.

I strain my neck to lift my head, meeting West’s gaze. He’s crying again the way he was out in the woods with me earlier.

“I… I don’t know.”

He lifts his free hand and massages the back of his neck. He’s drowning, and so am I.

I find his kind blue eyes, clinging to them like a life raft bobbing aimlessly in the middle of an open ocean.

“Just love me,” I whisper. “I just need you to love me.”

And he does.

Slowly, he reaches out, slipping my coat over my shoulders.

He’s gentle and precise, never once taking his eyes off mine as he scoots closer to me, running his hands down the length of my arms as the coat falls to the floor.

My shoulders are exposed, but I don’t shiver.

His touch warms me from the outside in. He’s reaching deep in my bones and into my soul, breaking the cold festering inside.

Then his hands meet my jaw. Then my nose. My cheekbone, just below my eye. He’s studying me. Admiring me.

“I love you,” he says, softly, as gentle as an afternoon breeze. He kisses my forehead.

I reach up and loosen his tie. It unravels beneath my dirt-laced fingernails. I shove the memory of what happened in the woods aside and focus on West. His touch and his voice. I wrap myself up in the only comfort I’ve ever truly known: him.

“I love you,” he says, tugging on the ends of the bows of my dress straps; two thin pieces of fabric tied together on my shoulders. They fall when they come undone, and his hands graze over my collarbones before he slips the top of my dress down, revealing my bare chest.

“I love you,” I say, my voice hoarse. I’m no longer sobbing, but my tears are still fresh, welling in my eyes. I can’t stop crying. It’s an overwhelming mix of emotions. Ones I haven’t yet taken control of.

I unbutton his shirt, then slip it down his arms. I press my hand to his hardened muscle, just over his heart, and look in his eyes. “I love you,” I repeat, this time a little stronger than the last.

Shifting to our knees, we kneel in front of each other.

I run my hands over West’s face. My fingers trace his eyes, then the stubble lining his jaw.

My chest sparks, recognizing the curve of that jaw.

It’s more prominent than it was at fifteen, the last time I’d seen him.

I’ve looked at it many times over the past few months, but I’m seeing it differently now.

“Our past is ugly.” I tremble, admiring his face. My nail grates against his stubble, then I flick my gaze to his. “But looking at you now, with my memories of you then and what we had…” I swallow. “It’s something I didn’t have before, and it’s beautiful.”

A tear slips from his eye, and he inhales a sharp breath before claiming my mouth with his.

He slips the rest of my dress over my hips.

We both move to a stand, still locked in a kiss, and I kick off my heels.

I’m standing in front of him in nothing but my thong.

He’s already working to remove it when I start unbuckling his belt.

When we’re both free of our remaining clothes, he wraps his hands around the back of my thighs and lifts me.

I curl my arms and legs around him. I think he’s going to carry us to the bathroom, but he surprises me when he walks over to the plush, leather chair set in the middle of his living room. I fall against it, with my back against one arm, my legs over the other.

The chair smells exactly like West, and I’m overcome with love for him.

The apartment is dark. Apparently, it’s still nighttime. The room is covered in shadows, and when West looks down at me, all I see is the hint of light in his blue eyes.

Wrapping both hands around my ankles, he pulls me until my ass lifts onto the arm. The warm air of his place breezes across my nipples. I hold my breath.

West is healing me, doing exactly as I asked him to.

He’s loving me.

Holding onto the back of my knee, he drives himself inside me. I tilt my head back, overwhelmed with the feeling of being wrapped around him.

When he pulls back, I look up at the ceiling.

“Look at me, Dimples.”

He wraps a hand around my face, pulling my gaze to his beautiful face above me.

A tear streams from the corner of my eye, and my chest expands before it finally explodes with love for West and all he’s given me. I think about the years he spent searching for me, and the two times when he did, I’d treated him like a stranger. Like a ghost.

Clasping my legs around West tighter, I hold him against me as he drives himself in deeper. We move in sync effortlessly. His hand falls to my hip, and as I stare into his eyes, I come undone, gasping for air. Then he’s bending, stealing my mouth, breathing air back into me.

He’s bringing me back to life one breath at a time, and when he stills, with his cum spilling into me, he falls forward and rests his head on my chest.

He lifts his shaky hand and traces an invisible heart over the swell of my breast, complete with a large ‘W’. “I’ve always been in here, Dimples. I’ve always been yours.”

I hold me knees close to my chest, staring at the opaque water in West’s bathtub.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” West says, running his fingers through my hair. He’s rinsing the rest of the shampoo out, taking his time, and I let him. I think at this point, we’re both caught in a daze.

I lift my hands out of the water and turn them over. The dirt that accumulated under them has dissolved, so I dip them back under.

“A lot of things.” I frown, biting the inside of my cheek to keep me from falling apart again. I don’t want to cry anymore. I’m so tired of crying.

West smirks behind me in the reflection of the floor-length mirror in front of the tub. “I figured.”

“For years, I thought if I was able to put all the puzzle pieces together, I’d get a good idea of the entire picture of my life, but it’s massive and messy. Somehow, the puzzle is even more confusing now that it’s pieced together.”

“It’ll take time, Dimples.”

I sniff and nod before looking down at the water again. I run my hands over my knees. “I only want to ask you this one time, and once I have my answer, I never want to talk about it again.”

West shifts behind me, straightening his back against the tub. I lift my eyes and find his in the mirror.

“What happened to him?” I whisper. “After I left…”

Pressing his lips together, he averts his gaze to the side, then he’s back to me. “You remember what we said that night, when he was still lying there?”

I sift through the memories that have come back to me of that night.

West had told me I was safe, then when he made sure, he slowly walked over to Ryan, the older foster kid who’d bullied me for three years since the day I moved in.

West lightly kicked his shoulder. Ryan moaned but wouldn’t wake.

He was still alive, and I couldn’t look at him for long or else I was certain I was going to vomit.

I covered my exposed chest with my arms, and West walked back over to me, kneeling in front of me.

He asked me what I wanted to do, and I felt like my world was crashing down around me.

I was attacked on my last day there. Nearly raped.

But West saved me, and then I was losing him, too.

My eyes fell to West’s hands covered in blood.

I told him I didn’t want him to jeopardize his chances of being adopted, because there was a possibility West could be charged with assault.

Knowing Ryan, he would twist the story to turn himself into the victim.

He’d claim West attacked him. Then I told him not to tell anyone about what Ryan tried to do to me.

I knew I needed to leave the past behind me the second the Walkers signed on the dotted line that I was theirs.

I needed to live my new, beautiful life, trusting West would follow through on his promise to find me.

I made West not only promise to find me, but that he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened that night.

“I remember,” I tell West as I spin around and slip both of my legs on either side of him.

He pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me.

I press my hands to his bare chest, then remove his necklace from around my neck, returning it to its rightful home. “We promised to never speak of it again.”

“I did as you asked,” he chokes out. “But only until after you left.”

“What?” I ask, looking up from the Big Ben charm below his neck.

“I waited until I was certain you were far away from the foster home when I made the anonymous call to the police. I couldn’t let him get away with it, London.

I just couldn’t. They showed up the next day, arrested Ryan on all sorts of charges, including drug possession.

They never investigated your attempted rape because I never gave them your name, only that I’d witnessed him attacking someone in the home.

Apparently, there were a whole litany of charges that were more solid than my anonymous tip, but after Ryan was arrested, the foster home lost their credibility and reputation.

All the children still there were either placed into another foster home, an orphanage, or adopted out. ”

“What happened to you?”

West’s neck bobs as he looks down, his gaze heavy, and I run my hand along his sharp jaw, forcing him to look up at me again.

“Glenna Hall showed up and saved me.”

I press my fingers to the side of West’s face, pulling him in for a kiss. We stay like that wrapped up in each other until the night sky starts to lighten.

Closing my eyes, I remember the day of the accident before it happened.

I pedaled down the street as fast as my legs could take me, soaking up the warm autumn air. Leaves were falling all around me, and I’d spread my arms wide. I felt like I was flying. Then I smiled, finally feeling free for the first time.

I’m filled with immense sadness for that hopeful fourteen-year-old girl I left behind.

I crack my eyes open, looking at the man I love. I study his face, taking note of every lash and every imperfection. His blue eyes brighten, like the sun glistening off the ocean.

“So, what do we do now?” I ask him, holding back my tears.

He pulls me closer, feathering his mouth over mine. “We breathe, Dimples,” he whispers. “We breathe, and we start living.”