Page 19

AJ

“Shit. You heard that, huh?” I said as I did my best to act like the thoughts creeping into my mind were no big deal.

The last thing I’d thought I’d wanna do after spending a night having damn good sex like that was think of Rosalie Wells, let alone talk about her to the woman in my arms right now. But I knew it would be hard not to after everything Raven and I had already shared today.

She had given me a pretty big glance into her life, and her having questions about my past was natural. But was I ready to reopen memories I’d worked so damn hard to lock up?

Memories of the only woman I’d ever loved. Of leaving her in LA so she could move on with her life and find someone who wouldn’t get her in deadly situations like my life choices had brought her.

The feelings of desperation that I’d had, not knowing if she was all right the night she was taken to the hospital after being jumped in an alleyway by her father’s auto shop as I fought my biggest rival, Jabari, in LA, flooded back to me.

I closed my eyes for a minute, remembering the images and videos on the cell phone that Jabari had tossed me—of her crying in pain and calling my name to come save her.

Remembering how I’d beaten the shit out of the man who had orchestrated it all and tried to make me throw the fight.

The looks on her family’s faces when I showed up to the hospital, only to find out she was in worse shape than I’d thought.

I hated myself for the choice I’d made that night, even if it was the only option I had to take.

“Hey.”

Raven tapped my chest, and I opened my eyes to look at her.

“Her name is Rosalie,” I said finally.

And it all came crashing back.

Her laugh. The way her eyes had lit up when we were going over paint colors for one of my cars.

Watching her, deep in thought, as she drew up designs on her tablet.

How she always trusted me. The feel of her body tucked in next to mine in bed.

The smell of her perfume. The way she always tasted like strawberries from the lip gloss she always wore.

How my heart had felt when she told me she loved me for the first time and when I realized I had fallen in love with her.

“Who is she?” Raven asked.

She was being gentle with her words and her touch. Seeing her being so careful around me reminded me of a similar night with Rosalie. A night where I had started to open up about myself to a woman for the first time in my life. It made it easier to do it this time.

“She was the first woman I ever loved,” I said, the brutal honesty hanging in the air between us.

Raven sat up straighter and turned so she could face me, but her hand never left my body as she listened intently.

“I broke up with her before I came here. She’s moved on.

I’m trying to do the same. But that hasn’t been as easy as I thought,” I said as I reached out and stroked Raven’s cheek.

“Meeting you had been helping with that last part though.” I attempted to give her a cocky smirk, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Her eyes softened, and she placed her hand over mine, her slender fingers rubbing the top of it.

“Is she why you left? Or did you walk away from her because you had to leave for other reasons?”

Fuck, why does she have to ask the exact questions that are hard to answer? Why couldn’t she just let it go after I said I was trying to get over her?

“Both,” I said.

My mind went back to the night Kayden had met up with me. The heaviness of my choice—taking her dad’s offer of money and a one-way flight to leave his daughter—hung on my heart with the force of a brutal punch to the chest.

I could see Raven wasn’t going to let me move on at that, so I kept going.

“I dated her for a while. Long enough for me to bring her to the fights I was in at the time. My opponent in the rematch for the championship liked to play dirty and tried to use her to get me to throw the fight. His buddies recorded what they did to her—beating her and leaving her on the ground next to her car—and mid-match, he showed them to me on his phone. I couldn’t leave the fight because I had more than money on the line, so I called her brother to get to her in my place.

” I paused, feeling my anger increasing.

It’s over with. Jabari isn’t alive to touch her anymore. Her brother said he’d made sure of it.

I took a deep breath, trying to stop the thoughts racing through my mind so I could get on with this conversation.

“She’s fine. She made a full recovery. But I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d only gotten hurt because of me in the first place,” I said, dropping my arm from her body and clenching my fists at my sides.

“If you are the champion of LA’s fight club and she was fine after everything that happened, why come to Tokyo? Seems to me everything worked out in the end?” she asked, pressing for more details.

“Her dad gave me a job opportunity here. I took it. It’s better for her this way,” I said.

“But is it better for you?” Raven asked as she shifted her body to straddle mine again, her hands sliding up my chest until she placed them on my shoulders. “Was coming here what you needed?”

Fuck no, it ain’t.

I’d had to leave my home, my cars, my fights, my money, Pops, and the one person who’d seen me for who I was and not what society decided I should be.

“It is what it is, baby. I’m here now, and this is my life. No sense in focusing on the past. That’s over with,” I said, dropping the hint that I was done with this conversation now.

She chuckled at me.

“What’s so damn funny?” I asked as I glanced back at her.

“I’m surprised. For such a strong, fearless man, you rushed away from your problems instead of facing them head-on,” she said, a smile on her face as she looked down.

“I didn’t run from anything,” I snapped.

She started laughing. Now I was getting pissed off. She had wanted me to be real with her, so I was, and now she’s fucking laughing at me?

“But you did. You ran from your fears,” she said as she pushed her hair over one shoulder and looked back at me.

I said nothing because if I opened my mouth, I was most likely not going to say anything nice.

She sighed, picking up on my irritation.

“I mean to say, you ran from being with the woman you loved because you were afraid of something like that happening again. As someone who is engaged to a man I hate because I want to keep my family safe, I can relate to those feelings. I didn’t mean to laugh at you and for you to misunderstand.

I found irony in something we both share.

Some days, it’s easier to take the road that we think will cause the people we care about less pain than the pain we will put ourselves through,” she said as she reached her hand up and brushed my hair out of my eyes.

“You have a big heart, AJ. And you feel deeply for the people you love. Even if you don’t see that yet, I do.”

I let her words sink in. No one had ever said anything like this to me—no one except Rosalie.

I’d always had people make assumptions about me.

That because of who my mom was, I wouldn’t amount to anything.

That because I lived on the streets, I would become a felon or a gang member.

Because I liked a good fuck, I was going to become a player or a pimp.

Since I was a hothead, I was going to be a fighter.

After everyone kept telling me who I would be, I got tired of trying to prove them wrong. It was just easier to prove them right.

So, I lived my life day by day, doing only things that gave me an adrenaline high, a sexual high, or I literally got high.

Rosalie was the first person who looked beyond the outside and fell in love with who I was on the inside. She was the first person who made me question why I did certain things. And the first person who made me change the way I thought and the way I lived my life.

Because, at the end of the day, she believed in me in ways no one else ever had. And she made me want to be the best man I could be, so I could be good enough for her.

But I knew, even if I worked my ass off, I’d never be good enough for her in the eyes of her family.

Her brother had been a smart-ass to me since the day we’d fucking met.

Her dad had literally paid me off to get away from her, and I was pretty sure, at one point, her mother had wanted to kill me.

So, even if I’d stuck around, if they had made her pick between me or them, that was a fight I didn’t want to know the outcome of.

“Yeah, well, giving a shit about another person has never ended well for me. It didn’t with my ma; it didn’t with the first girl I was into, who just wanted to fuck me and steal my money and weed when I was asleep; and it didn’t with Rosalie.

Hell, giving as much as I am to this situation we’re in will probably fuck me over in the long run too,” I said.

I reached out and grabbed her hair at the back of her neck and tugged her closer to me, our lips centimeters apart.

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you, AJ. If anything, the feelings I’ve started to have for you will hurt me since it won’t be long before I won’t be able to act on them anymore.

If I wasn’t about to seal my fate with Kaito …

if my life were different, I might even say I was falling in love with you,” she whispered as she closed her eyes and kissed me.

Fuck.

Love wasn’t something I was looking for.

It wasn’t something I wanted to give anyone else.

But Raven had leaked into my bloodstream, and I did have some feelings for her.

I wanted to protect her from the creep she was engaged to, to keep her here in my place so she would be safe.

Love might be the wrong word, but I was into this woman.

And while I wouldn’t say anything out loud, I would show her that some small part of me did want her.

Our kiss turned into making out, and then I rolled her onto her back, and we fucked until we exhausted ourselves.

I closed my eyes with her wrapped up in my arms. She wasn’t Rosalie, but maybe she could become someone almost as important to me.

I kissed her forehead one last time before I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up a few hours later to Raven nudging me.

“Hey, Hero, time to wake up. I’ve got to leave, babe.”

Hearing her call me something other than the nickname she had given me drew my attention and made me wake up faster. When I opened my eyes and they adjusted to the low light in the room, my dick began to get hard.

Raven was kneeling next to me, wearing one of my sleeveless hoodies and her panties. It was so big on her that I could see her tits from the gap in the collar next to her neck.

And, damn, was it hot to see her like that.

She caught my stare and followed it, quickly leaning back with a light laugh.

“Sorry, I needed to run to the bathroom and grabbed one of the closest things around. Now that you’re awake, I can turn on the overhead light and find my clothes.

You know, the ones you tossed everywhere last night,” she said with a smirk.

“I remember. They were in the way. You’re lucky I didn’t rip them off you instead,” I said as I got up and began to get dressed.

I watched as she picked up her clothes and changed until she held out my hoodie to me and I tugged it on. It was warm from her body and even smelled a bit like her—flowery but subtle.

Then I waited at the door for her to grab her purse and phone. We walked down together and out to my car.

I walked her over to the passenger side and pressed her back against the car, wrapping my hand around her waist. I bent down and kissed her.

We made out there, our bodies grinding against each other, and I had half a mind to open the car door and bend her over inside to fuck her pussy one more time before we left.

She must have read my mind because she pressed her hands against my chest, and I broke the kiss with a groan.

“We can’t go any further. I need to get going before people wonder where I am. Besides, you might have all the stamina in the world, but I need more of a break than a couple of hours to go again after last night,” she said with a mischievous smirk on her face.

I chuckled and let her go, stepping back so she could open the passenger door.

“All right, baby. Let’s get out of here.”

I hopped into the driver’s seat, and we drove off into the city. The weather turned rainy, and the sidewalks were mostly empty. We chatted about small things as she directed me to her destination.

We parked next to a fancy-looking café, and she leaned over the center console and kissed me.

I pulled her into me more, deepening the kiss, my tongue teasing hers as she moaned. I let her go and chuckled.

“See you around, baby,” I said as I watched her lean back to her side.

She glanced at her appearance in the mirror before glancing back at me with a smile.

“I’ll talk to you later, Hero. Thank you. For everything, but especially last night. I know opening up probably isn’t easy for you, but I’m glad we had that moment together.”

And with that, she got out of my car and quickly walked into the café.

Something about the way she had said it made me relax. Maybe opening up to another woman and allowing myself to feel whatever I wanted to with her was exactly what I needed.

I’d text her later and make sure she had gotten home all right. And maybe I’d let her know that we could find a solution to her engagement issue together. Because I didn’t think I wanted to let her go, not when I was beginning to feel something for her.

I smirked to myself as I pulled out onto the road and drove through the rain back toward the warehouse.