Present Day
~Peaches~
“I went to prison for a crime you committed,” Eli said, his voice ringing through the Starkwood. “I love you, Gus, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I already gave you five years. This time, you need to clean up your own mess.”
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
For an instant, I thought I’d heard Eli wrong. What he’d just said couldn’t be true. No way. Except Gus had been late to his own birthday party. I’d seen him come through the back door with Pipes, right about the time Eli was getting arrested for murder.
Eli couldn’t have gotten to the house until after the killing, I reminded myself. And the murder had definitely taken place. Somebody had offed the guy. So why hadn’t I suspected Gus before now?
Probably because you didn’t want to.
Eli’s announcement was essentially a live grenade, tossed into the middle of the meeting. Now, everyone was arguing. I couldn’t hear much in the way of details, but at least a few of them sounded pissed because they’d been left out of the loop.
Good to know. Probably meant that the Reapers MC hadn’t been behind this particular shitshow.
I didn’t hear Gus say anything in his defense, and I had no way of seeing his reaction. Couldn’t see much of anything because the only place to hide was behind the long wooden bar itself. If I’d planned to spy on them ahead of time, I might’ve been able to come up with something more comfortable. Maybe built myself the roadhouse equivalent of a duck blind. But it’d never occurred to me to spy on a meeting before.
Ever.
I’d learned from a young age that when the Reapers were talking, it was time to disappear. Let the men do their thing and stay out of the way. That hadn’t been a winning strategy for me.
Hadn’t worked out so great for Eli, either.
If I’d gotten in the way a little more, maybe Eli wouldn’t have gone to prison. I couldn’t blame Gus for all of—
Wait.
Where the fuck did that crazy thought come from?
Of course, it wasn’t my fault. The real villain here was clearly Gus, with a possible assist from the Reapers. My heart hurt to think about it. I wanted to find an excuse for him, but Eli had been sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary.
How could Gus even look him in the eye?
Eli was innocent. I knew that for a fact, and apparently, so had Gus. And, yeah… It was great that the Reapers had hired a fancy lawyer to appeal the conviction, but Gus still owed Eli five years of his life.
Damned right, he should have to clean up his own mess.
At least now I understood why Gus was selling low to Eli. Hell, he should be giving him the Starkwood.
The tone of the meeting had changed from argument to shouting match, but I didn’t care anymore. I’d heard everything I needed to know. Now, it was time to get my ass out of there, before someone noticed me. I didn’t think I needed to be afraid of the Reapers, but I’d never dreamt that Gus would let Eli go to prison for him either.
Mom had been right—Gus wasn’t the man that either of us needed him to be. The thought twisted my heart in terrible ways, but I couldn’t deny the reality.
No. You can’t think about this right now. You need to focus on getting out and getting safe. Figure out your emotions later.
Right. Grief couldn’t hurt me if I refused to feel it.
Thankful for the noise, I slipped out from behind the bar and headed down the hallway, moving quickly. Past the office, past the storage room. Through the back door and out into the parking lot. I made it the whole way in complete silence. Then my car beeped when I unlocked it, shattering the stillness outside.
Stupid noise almost gave me a heart attack. There was usually at least one prospect stationed out front during meetings like this, to keep watch over the motorcycles. I kept expecting him to come running around the building, possibly with guns blazing.
Nobody seemed to notice, though. Lucky for me, in addition to the regular parking lot, Gus had worked some sort of deal with the national forest, and we’d gotten permission to use one of their gravel lots for employee parking.
It made for a long walk in, but tonight, I was thankful for the distance. They’d have to be watching exactly the right spot to see me pulling out. I kept my headlights off until I made it around the big bend in the highway, though. Just in case.
I didn’t plan on driving to Gus’s house.
Okay, so I’d planned to go there originally, but only so I could make him a cash offer. Given what I’d just heard at the bar, that seemed fairly pointless.
Not to mention wrong.
Eli had literally done time for Gus. I’d probably have to shank the old man myself if he backed out. Not that I thought Eli was a great guy or something, but he was better than some. Most, really.
If you love him so much, why don’t you marry him?
Good God. Now my own subconscious was making fun of me. If I had to put up with a voice in my head telling me what to do, at the very least, it should be male, with a sexy Irish accent… Maybe Jonathan Rhys Meyers, although I’d settle for Colin Farrell if I had to.
Thankfully, the gravel country road leading to Gus’s house was right ahead. Less than five minutes later, I’d parked my car and made my way around the back of the old farmhouse, to the kitchen door, finding it open.
This wasn’t a surprise because it’d never been locked the entire time I’d known Gus. Same with the barn, and the shop—something that had come up during Eli’s appeal. Gus had claimed that not only did he leave his place open, but that he didn’t have the keys to lock it even if he wanted to.
Anyone could’ve taken his pickup that night.
That’s what he’d told me, at least. And I’d believed him.
Stepping into the narrow galley kitchen brought back a thousand memories. Me and Mom, baking cookies. Me and Gus, microwaving marshmallow Peeps. There were even memories of Eli and me. Most of them involved chasing each other with knives.
“How the hell did we never get seriously injured?” I said, feeling almost wistful.
This was crazy. As an adult, I could see that my idealized fantasy had never existed. Yet for some reason, I was still sad about losing it.
And I’d lost another huge chunk of it today, in Gus.
Opening the fridge, I found a can of Dr. Pepper, which made me smile. Gus was an idiot who’d cheated on my mom and sent Eli to prison in his place. Yet for some reason, he always had Dr. Pepper waiting in the fridge.
How could he remember to buy me pop, yet conveniently forget all about my mom whenever he’d fucked someone else?
Eli wouldn’t do that. Or would he? No, he wouldn’t. He was better than that.
Taking a large plastic tumbler out of the cupboard, I filled it with ice from the little plastic trays Gus still used because he didn’t trust ice makers. He had one at the bar, of course. Said that’s how he knew they couldn’t be trusted, which had always amused me.
I refilled the ice trays with fresh water, then grabbed my pop and the cup before passing into the dining room. At least, that’s what my mom had always called it. In reality, there was just one big room across the front of the house, divided into two sections—one for eating, one for watching TV. For years, any time I came to visit, Eli would have to sleep out in the “living room.”
Walking over to the sideboard, I opened one of the doors and pulled out a bottle of vodka. I was old enough now that I didn’t have to worry about how full it was. I still enjoyed the occasional drink, but I wasn’t much of a partier anymore.
Not after Eli had gotten arrested.
A part of me had always wondered if he’d refused to let me talk to the cops because I’d been drinking that night. They might not have trusted a drunk girl with club connections.
I’d spent years wondering what if. Whenever I’d asked Eli about it, he’d always changed the subject.
Now, I knew the truth. None of it had anything to do with me.
Popping the tab on the Dr. Pepper, I filled the tumbler about halfway full, then topped it off generously with the vodka. Then I turned to face the room, raising the glass high for a toast.
“To the snakes!”
“What the fuck is it about snakes that turns you on so much?” asked Eli, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. “If it’s a fetish thing, I’d prefer that you keep it out of the bar.”
“Holy shit!” I yelled, so startled that I dropped the cup, sending pop and vodka splashing across the scratched wooden floor.
“Funny how you can carry entire trays of drinks over your head, but that one plastic cup is just too hard for you to handle when you’re here.”
“It’s warped from the dishwasher. Kind of like you,” I snapped, then realized what a rude thing that was to say. Apparently, I’d told myself that he was the enemy for so long that I’d programmed my body to keep up the hate, even when I wasn’t feeling it.
“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s try this again. You said something about this cup, and how hard it is for me to handle. I just realized you’re playing that game with me, aren’t you?”
“What game?” Eli asked, pretending that he didn’t know exactly what I was talking about.
“The one where we trick each other into saying things that can be used against us.”
“Yeah, I think I remember that one,” he said, offering me a lazy smile. “But I’m not playing it tonight. If something sounds bad to you, that’s because you have a dirty mind.”
“So, you’re telling me that you can’t see how me saying I can always handle hard—” I stopped talking, wondering if there was anything in the kitchen suitable to bash in his skull when I swung it around by its handle.
He burst out laughing. I flipped him off, trying not to smile. Or worse, start laughing with him, because…the thought seemed to hang there, right in front of me, waiting for me to own it. I swallowed. This was going to change everything.
Eli isn’t my enemy. Eli is one of my best friends. I’ve always been able to trust him with my secrets, even when keeping them gets him in trouble.
And he’s always been able to trust me.
“Tell me about the night you got arrested,” I said, letting the game go.
He gave me a wary look. “You already know everything you need to know.”
“Bullshit,” I insisted. “Tell me the real story.”
“No,” he said, and his voice softened. “Peaches, it would hurt you, and there’s nothing good that can come from it. It’s time to let it go.”
“Why?” I said, stepping over the river of Dr. Pepper and vodka. “You afraid it’ll be too hard for me to handle? I can’t believe I fell for that. Probably because it doesn’t even sound dirty anymore. I can’t decide if the culture has changed that much, or if we were just exceptionally sheltered children.”
I took another step toward him, and then another, closing the distance.
“You were sheltered,” he said, catching and holding my gaze. “Me, not so much. Gus took me in because my mom was into meth. I don’t remember the worst of it. Your mom always said that was my brain protecting my heart. Because some things shouldn’t be remembered.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching my hand out to him. He took it, his big fingers wrapping around my smaller ones, strong and warm.
Eli snorted, breaking the moment. “You were sorry that you had to share your bedroom.”
“I was five. Every five-year-old on Earth has anger management issues they’re working through. By definition.”
“And have you finally worked through yours?” he asked, the question playful but very real at the same time.
“Not all of them,” I admitted, walking toward the big, comfy couch in the living room. I’d started sleeping down here once they’d taken Eli away. For some reason, stealing his bed hadn’t felt right. “I still need to hear about what happened that night. When you got arrested.”
“Why?” he asked. “Talking about it won’t change anything.”
I let his hand go, settling back into the center of the brown sectional. It didn’t match the rest of the house on about a thousand different levels, but it was comfy, and I loved sleeping on it.
Eli sat next to me, stretching out on the long section that extended into the center of the room. It was more of a bed than a couch.
“One last chance, Eli,” I said. He reached over, catching my hand. Something wild gleamed in his eyes as he tugged me toward him. I started to scoot in his direction when I realized that he was using sex as a diversion.
“No fucking way,” I said, pulling my hand back. I wanted to glare at him, but it took just about everything I had not to crawl into his lap. “I want to hear it from you. All of it.”
His gaze sharpened. “What time did you leave the bar tonight?”
I considered pretending that I didn’t know what he was talking about. That’s what I’d done when I borrowed his car my junior year. He hadn’t fallen for it then. No point in playing games. Not now.
“The last thing I heard was you telling Gus to clean up his own mess.”
Eli leaned back against the cushions, propping up his feet as he studied the ceiling.
“Then you heard the part that matters,” he said. “What else do you want to know?”
“Everything. But I understand that some things aren’t supposed to be talked about. I can respect that.”
He rolled his head to look at me, raising a brow.
“Okay, so I can sort of respect it a little bit…” I amended. “And I know Gus needs to tell the story for himself.”
“Very true,” he said.
“You know, I worshiped him when I was a little girl. I knew he wasn’t my real dad, but it felt like he was. Then you came along, and he didn’t have time for me anymore. Somehow, I convinced myself that there was only room for one child in this house. I had to get rid of you.”
“You may have mentioned that a few times when we were kids,” he pointed out, his voice dry. “I think the most memorable time was that day at the pond. You threw popcorn out into the water and told me that was the only food I was allowed to eat.”
“I was horrible,” I admitted. “I know I was horrible. I shouldn’t have treated you that way, but I was only five.”
“C’mere,” he said and held his hand out to me. I took it, letting him pull me over for real this time. He rolled up on his side, creating enough space for me to lie on my back, bringing us face-to-face.
It felt horribly intimate. I wasn’t just looking at him. I was smelling him and feeling the heat of his body.
My hands lay folded across my stomach. He tangled his fingers with mine, softly rubbing his thumb across the tiny strip of bare skin that’d been exposed when my shirt rode up.
“Better,” he said. “So, let’s get this out of the way. I know you were a kid. I was a kid. Neither of us had any control, and both of us were scared that Gus would love the other one more. The big difference was that you had your mom on your side, no matter what. I didn’t have anyone but Gus. That’s why he chose me, Peaches. And if he hadn’t done that, I’d probably be dead by now.”
“Yeah, I realize that now,” I told him. “But I couldn’t see it back then.”
“In fairness, I couldn’t see it either. I was used to living one meal to the next, hoping we’d land in a safe place for the night.”
I tried to imagine that, but I couldn’t. Mom wasn’t perfect, but she’d always been totally on top of the whole food/shelter/clothing thing.
Even when I started kindergart—
A sudden realization hit me, and I swallowed. Eli had lowered his head, bringing our faces closer.
“Eli, I have another question,” I said slowly. “Why did you get held back in the first grade?”
“Because I’d never been to school before. Didn’t even know the alphabet.”
“Did…?” I paused, licking my lips. That caught his attention, which was probably a good thing given what I needed to ask him. “Did I make fun of you because you couldn’t read?”
He pulled his hand free of mine, then slowly moved it up my center. It came to rest right below my collarbone.
“You made fun of me every single fucking day for two years,” he said, the words slow and even.
If I could’ve rolled into a ball and ceased to exist, that would’ve been the moment.
“I don’t think sorry quite cuts it,” I said after a long pause. “I really was the worst.”
Eli nodded his head, moving just a little bit closer. If I raised my head even an inch, I’d be kissing him.
“How come you don’t hate me?”
“Well, I’m older than you,” he said, sounding way too damn smug. “More mature. I like to think of you as this silly little butterfly that dances all sum—”
I crushed my mouth to his because after what he’d just said about me making fun of him, telling him to shut the fuck up was probably a bad move.
But listening to that butterfly shit wasn’t a real option, either.
Fortunately, Eli didn’t seem overly invested in continuing the conversation. Instead, he shifted his body and slanted his mouth down across mine, taking control.
There was a new power in him, I realized. One that had nothing to do with all that muscle he’d built while he was serving time. This strength was all mental, and I had a feeling it’d grown out of his need to survive.
My higher mind appreciated that and admired him for it. But in my gut, what I noticed first was how much that strength attracted me. I’d spent years thinking about what it might feel like, should I ever find myself under him again. Not that I’d have admitted that to anyone, including myself…but anytime he was in a room, I found myself fighting with him.
Fucked up? Yes.
Especially since memories were fickle creatures. Nobody felt as good as Eli had felt that night we’d almost had sex. My intellect understood this. My subconscious? Not so much. At one point, I’d read a book about retraining the brain, and decided to try writing letters to myself, explaining all the reasons that Fantasy Eli had nothing to do with Reality Eli.
Now, I found myself under him again, with my hands roaming his body as my legs begged to wrap around him. Time to face a hard truth—this was way, way better than I remembered.
The chemistry between us had always crackled. It was there when we kissed, taking charge in the same way it did when we fought. There was no denying it, either. Every time his lips brushed mine, desire scorched through me. Like wildfire.
But power and chemistry weren’t the only things for me to appreciate.
Eli had always been a large guy with a big frame, and he’d had more than enough muscle the night they’d taken him away. Still, he’d gotten bigger while locked up. Not ginormous and bloated.
Just very solid.
It took a special kind of guy to pull off muscles like that without intimidating a girl, I realized. Eli could hold me down and do whatever the hell he wanted with me, but I’d never worried about that with him.
Probably because, deep down inside, I knew he cared about me as a person and not just getting in my pants.
He’d continued the weightlifting once he got back. Though now, he liked to mix his workouts up a bit more, just because he could. So far, he’d gone snowboarding, rafting, hiking… Fucking quite a bit, too. Or so I’d heard. Not that I’d listen to gossip like that deliberately, but sometimes people just said things in public, and it wasn’t like I could turn off my ears.
Eli ended the kiss, pulling away as I gave his lip a lingering suck. Then he caught my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze head-on. His eyes were intense. Almost too intense.
He was hungry, I realized. And not the kind of hungry you could fix with chicken nuggets.
“Five years,” he said, shifting his left leg so that it slid down between mine, spreading my legs wide beneath him. “I sat in that fucking prison cell for five years, and there wasn’t a single day that I didn’t regret leaving you. Not just leaving the party or getting myself wrapped up in something so much bigger than I could possibly understand at that age, but leaving you. I missed the hell out of that mouth of yours.”
“How come you missed me?” I said, the words painful but honest. “I bullied you. Constantly. I couldn’t see it through an adult’s perspective before. Now I can, and I’m not okay with what I did to you.”
Eli pushed his thigh deep between my legs, then started rubbing it back and forth against me. It felt incredible, yet it wasn’t quite enough to be satisfying. Just unspeakably distracting. I squirmed beneath him, searching for a spot with just a bit more friction. Eli let out a low laugh, and I realized this wasn’t just sex for him.
It was a sensual kind of revenge.
He could torture me for hours like this, bringing me closer to the edge or holding me back, depending on his whims. I tried pushing up and into him with my hips. I just needed a little more—
“So, you want to know why I don’t hate you,” Eli said, his voice low and husky. I waited, but he took his time, brushing his lips against my cheek. Fuck. I was supposed to be listening to him and owning everything I’d done wrong.
“Okay,” I said, trying to focus. It wasn’t easy. Every time his thigh drifted over my clit, I sort of lost track of who I was for a moment.
“Hallies Falls is a small town,” he said. He’d started kissing softly along my jawline at the same time, which wasn’t particularly helpful. Although I hadn’t gotten the impression that being helpful was his goal.
“Yeah, I’m fairly sure we all know how small it is,” I said, wondering where he was going with this.
“So, when I got here, everyone knew why Gus had taken me in,” he said, shifting his hand to my breast. His fingers splayed wide and wrapped around it, giving me a gentle squeeze. “The shit my mom got into was all over the news. I was supposed to be a victim, whether I felt like one or not. The kids at school had to pretend we were friends, even when we hated each other. And all the teachers were so busy feeling sorry for me that none of them bothered to teach me. I was young, but I wasn’t stupid. None of them gave a shit about me.”
“Wait,” I said, not wanting to challenge him, but what he said didn’t add up. “You’d already been to first grade when you moved in with Gus. I remember because you were two years older than me, but only one year ahead. They held you back.”
“That didn’t actually happen,” Eli said, pausing to trace my ear lobe with his tongue. “Someone told me to lie about it. Said it would make me fit in better than admitting I’d never been to school. They were wrong.”
He gave my ear a sharp nip with his teeth, and I sighed. Couldn’t quite decide if that counted as pain or pleasure. Maybe something in the middle.
“So, suddenly, I was in this weird little town where I didn’t know anyone. Not even my own uncle. And no matter what I did, everyone treated me like I was weak—”
My snort of laughter cut him off, and he let my boob go long enough to attack my side with a vicious tickle. I screamed, arching under him and begging for mercy. He laughed but let his hand go back to my breast while kissing the side of my neck at the same time. That sent a fresh wave of tingles rushing through me. My hips lifted, my right leg bending and falling to the side.
“So, like I said, they all thought I was some kind of victim, and they treated me that way. Drove me fucking crazy,” Eli murmured. “Because I was strong. I’d kept myself and my mom alive. For years. And then suddenly I was supposed to turn into a kid again. It was bullshit. All of it. But there was one person who saw through it. You. I was your enemy, and you were out to get me because you knew I was dangerous. Not only that, you saw that being younger was an advantage you could use. Anytime you wanted to, you could’ve screamed for help, and we both knew people would’ve taken your word over mine. But you never did.”
“Of course not,” I said, feeling slightly offended. “That was our only rule. Remember?”
Eli lifted his head, studying my face carefully. I had no idea what he was trying to see—maybe some trace of the little girl I’d been?
“That was the rule, all right. And you never broke it. Not once. That’s how I knew I could trust you.”
“You trusted me too much,” I told him. His fingers let my breast go, only to find it again after sliding his hand up and under my shirt. “I still wish I’d broken it, at least that once. I should’ve talked to the cops.”
“You’re really not going to let that go, are you?” he asked, shifting his pelvis so the hard ridge in his jeans could rub back and forth across my hip bone.
“No,” I said, determined. Eli started grinding against me, slowly swiveling his hips. Shit. I couldn’t think when he did that. Simply wasn’t possible. “Let’s compromise. We can talk about it after. I don’t know how long I can take this. At some point, you’re gonna have to fuck me. Sooner rather than later, please.”
“I love it when you’re all horny,” he told me, his voice registering slightly lower than before. At least I wasn’t the only one slowly going crazy. “It used to be that I’d get frustrated when I looked back on those years. I needed to learn how to read, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t have time to be a victim. But now, it’s our games that I think about the most. They were the only part of my life that made sense.”
“Those were fights,” I reminded him gently. His fingers found my nipple, holding it lightly. “I never played with you. You broke my teacup.”
“Peaches, those were definitely games,” he said, and I saw the laughter in his eyes. “My mom and me, we lived on the streets. Sometimes, we’d find an apartment somewhere, but one thing was always the same. There were always predators. Some of them tried to kill us, but a few of them went out of their way to give me the skills I needed to survive in that world. Do you really think that a little girl with a pink foam princess sword could’ve won against me? I fought other kids for food while our moms got high together.”
I shivered, trying to imagine what that might’ve felt like, but I couldn’t. The idea that a child had to fight for food…that was beyond my comprehension. And I’d known he and his mom had been homeless, but that hadn’t really meant anything to me back then. To me, suffering meant sharing my bedroom. He was right, I’d been naïve as hell.
Too naïve to pity him.
I swallowed, wanting to cry or apologize or do something. Anything. Except refusing to pity him was the one thing I’d gotten right as a kid. I’d be damned if I’d go weak and fuck it up now, just because I could finally understand the truth.
“What about Lemur?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Was taking him one of those games, too?”
“No.” Eli grinned, lifting his hips to reposition himself slightly. “That was something else. That was about the fucking snakes you kept putting in my bed.”
I took advantage of his repositioning to slide my hand down between us. Eli was hard as granite, and I felt every inch of his thick, heavy length, despite the fabric separating us.
My fingers tightened around him, and he groaned. Perfect. I wanted to guide the conversation away from the snakes. Talking about them wouldn’t end well, for either of us.
“I’ve never forgotten how much I wanted you that night,” I told him softly. “Or how amazing it felt when you touched me.”
“I’ve never forgotten, either,” Eli replied. “The good news is that tonight, we’re gonna give that another shot. And this time, I don’t give a flying fuck if Gus is literally on fire. I’m not leaving you.”