Page 28 of Never To Suffer (The Hollywoodland #4)

SOME NIGHTS

FUN.

The sun shines on my face, warm and inviting.

I’m coming back from checking out the last venue on our list, and I’m already planning the table layout in my head because this is the place.

I’ve found the venue where we’re getting married.

Tomorrow, we’re going cake tasting, which Steve hasn’t shut up about since he proposed.

I’m going to make him taste every fucking flavor they have until he’s sick of cake.

There’s a flash. My bike drags sideways across the pavement, taking me with it.

Metal screaming as it bends and twists to the breaking point.

The world goes from sky to blacktop and back again.

Searing pain starts in my arm and moves to my legs.

Everything goes black. Someone screams; something burns.

Opening my eyes, heat slices through my body and everything tastes like copper.

I’m not alone. Glass crunches somewhere near my head. Why won’t they stop screaming?

“Skylar? Baby, wake up. It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

I struggle to cling to the painful memories as Dani tries to wake me, but I’m losing them. I always lose them.

I don’t remember Steve proposing to me, or anything else that happened in the eight months before I woke up in the hospital with pins in my arm and a tube down my throat.

The doctors said my memories could come back.

Spoiler alert, they didn’t. Since it also meant I didn’t remember how they found me, some people called it a blessing in disguise.

Except I dream about it. I wake up with those last thoughts in my mind, with my heart racing and sweat soaking the sheets.

Sometimes I cry, begging some non-existent sky dick to give me back what I lost. Sometimes I sit there for hours, staring at my hand and tracing the lines of the scars because I can’t remember what I’ve lost.

Surviving has proven worse than remembering the pain of the collision, because even though I lost time and the use of my arm, I still remember the way I lost Steve and the pain I caused him, no matter how hard I tried.

I watched the video our friend Jamie shot of Steve proposing to me over and over.

I watched it day after fucking day. I listened to stories of my life like a bystander, not an active participant.

I hung pictures of us everywhere, so I had to see them no matter where I looked.

I touched the clothes we were going to wear, visited the venue we’d picked, and struggled through months of therapy—physical and mental.

No matter what, I couldn’t outrun the emptiness and rage.

Love and tears of joy on the screen made the hole inside me bigger, deeper, until it became impossible to fill, no matter how hard Steve tried.

He understood.

I caused his heart to break, and he never blamed me.

He accepted the pain and all of my rage.

He did nothing wrong—at least not that I could remember—but he took the brunt of the fallout.

I gave up on myself, on us, and on him, and he accepted that fate.

I couldn’t find what we’d had together no matter how hard I tried, and he’s the one who told me we couldn’t force it or fake what wasn’t there.

That’s the pain I wake up to and the reason I self-medicated for so long. Today, though, I remembered something new. Someone new.

“Hey, come back to me.” Her voice brings me back slowly as she wraps around me, cradling me like an infant. “Can you do that? Can you focus on me? On my voice.”

It’s the voice that’s pulled me out of the unending nightmare before, but this time, I’m not in a hospital. This time, it’s not a recording. She’s real.

“Dani?” I reach out and touch her face, letting my fingers trace the edges of smudged eyeliner and feeling the corner of my mouth tick up. It’s as unfamiliar as my memories, but much more welcome.

“I forgot how bad your nightmares get, Skylar. What happened?”

I bury my face in my hands, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and the thoughts from my mind. I can’t burden her with this now, not after all these years. “I drank too much. Sorry I scared you, Beetle.”

“Is this really how you want to start off?” I lift my head and stare up at her, and as stern as she’s trying to act, the smeared makeup forces a laugh out of me.

So, I sit up and cup her angelic face in my hideous hands to drink in more of her soul.

She melts to my touch, and I slide between her legs, burying my head in the crook of her shoulder as I rock back and forth.

I move faster when she begs me to, harder when she screams a name I never knew could sound so angelic.

My name. We ascend together, a chorus of my beastly grunts and her ethereal moans reaching its crescendo before gradually returning the world.

Two people, wrapped in hotel sheets the staff should burn after we leave.

After I clean us both up, tossing the towel onto the floor of the bathroom, I grab my cigarettes and head for the balcony. Before I can step outside, she’s wrapping a towel around my waist while I pull her in for another kiss. And another. Until we fall together into a chair.

“Hold on,” she giggles. “Wait, I gotta ask you something stupid.”

“Okay, ask.”

“Uhm, when did you get the, uhh, you know.” She shifts and moves the towel away, staring at my cock. “Those.”

“I was born with—” She smacks my arm, and I pull her back to me, deep laughter coming out of me.

Gods, it feels good. “The first piercing was, I dunno, about a month after I left. Once that healed, I got the other bar done. The ladder I did right before I went into rehab. The three times I hit my lowest lows, and I wasn’t sure I could still feel anything anymore.

I needed to prove to myself I could feel more than numb; like I needed the pain to remind me I was alive. ”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.”

“You’re fine. They were cathartic in ways, like that high you get from a new tattoo.

” She picks up my hand, tracing my death's head moth again as she listens. “They say the ladder works for self-pleasure, and the cross gives more gratification to your partners. I liked the sound of that, and the sounds you make when I’m inside you.”

She kisses me, and I lift her off my lap and step out the door so I don’t stink the room up.

I like how it smells right now, the sweetness of her perfume mixing with the musky smell of sweat and sex.

I don’t notice she’s staring at me because I’m lost in the landscape of puddled gravel lots and soggy trees.

Not that I see them. I’m too busy remembering how everything felt last night and pushing the painful nightmare away.

I want to feel like I did earlier, like a new person, re-birthed into this world to experience life and all its pain and bliss again.

She steps in front of me and undoes my towel, and it pools at our feet. “They are correct. Whoever they are.”

“Glad you like them.” She’s not touching me, only studying, and that’s getting me hard again. Stepping forward, her body presses against mine as her fingers trace around the metal pieces.

“We should get dressed and go get breakfast soon.” She mumbles the words against my chest as I light up and suck in that first kick of nicotine.

My knees buckle every time her fingertips dance along the head of my cock, exploring the piercings.

“We can go back to the diner and make sure your motorcycle hasn’t run off with some hot mustang or something. ”

“Or we can slip Connor a twenty and have him bring something back for you so we don’t have to leave the room.”

“Skylar, I was serious earlier.”

“About what?”

“Us. About starting out this way.” She steps back to stare up at me. She’s not especially short, but most of the world seems short when you’re 6’6”. I brush her face with my knuckles and do my best to smile, the nightmare still too fresh even after our release.

“Skylar, you said you wanted to be with me, and I want to be with you too. I want this to have a chance, and it’s going to be rough for a while getting used to it, getting used to each other like this. But if you’re going to start off by keeping secrets, we should stop this before it gets started?”

I close my eyes and drop my head. “You’re right.”

“So, what did you see? You can be super vague if you’re uncomfortable, but it’s me.”

I take another drag and watch out over the trees again. “I have nightmares about the accident. I don’t remember much when I wake up, although today I held onto a little. Being with you might bring some of that back.”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. I keep putting my stupid foot in my mouth and I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”

“No! No, it’s okay.” I take her face again, thumb brushing over her lips. I can’t get enough of her. “I can handle it. Especially when you’re here, my fallen angel in your black wings.”

“Are you making fun of my makeup? Because I’d like to remind you that was all your fault. I said I needed to get ready for bed and you said, and I will quote you here, ‘I’ve waited long enough to be inside you, I won’t wait any longer.’ So yeah, your fault.”

“I wasn’t making fun of anything. I kind of dig the look, honestly. It’s dirty and raw. You should keep it like this for breakfast so I can sneak off to the bathroom with you and have a little snack before pancakes.”

“You officially have a higher sex drive than Xander. Insane.”

“Did you call him?” I rumble into her ear.

“Is that a problem? Because you knew going into this, he was?—”