Chapter Sixteen

Skylar pulled up to her house and got out of Ryliee’s car. She couldn’t help it—she looked over to Parker’s place. Even from this distance her heart ached for him.

She’d go over in the morning and face him. Right now, she needed to regroup.

I’m such a fucking wuss.

Locking her friend’s two-tone Nissan 370Z Sport, pearl white with a solid red stripe, she trudged silently up the walk to the house where she’d gotten to start over. Learned to stand on her own feet and find her place in the world once again. Now it was time to find some balls or do it all over.

Ryliee’s words echoed through her mind as she tried to figure out if she had the stones to fight for him. Standing on the threshold, she wavered. Biting her lower lip, she entered and locked the door behind her. This was home to her, and it was going to be hell starting over.

She’d done it before, and she could do it again.

The house sat empty of all her personal items. She’d left the furniture for the staging and would be sleeping on the couch. She opened the sliding glass door and allowed some fresh air to move through the house.

She sat with a heavy groan. The weight of the world was on her shoulders, and her brain wasn’t giving her a moment’s rest. Hadn’t since Ryliee had talked to her about this. Or was that more like, kicked her ass about it?

Toeing off her shoes, she put her feet up on the sofa and reclined, wishing she’d thought to bring a glass and some liquor. Or ice cream. Because it was going to be a long night, even though it was already two in the morning.

A knock came on the door, and she stiffened. The sound reverberated through the house and after swallowing, she shuffled through the dark to pull it open.

“Did you really think coming back in a different car would stop me from knowing you’d returned?”

She gasped and scrambled back as Parker’s voice wove out of the dark, scaring the hell out of her. Lunging back, she tripped over her own legs and tumbled to the floor. Only to be stopped by something hard. And warm.

Even though he was preventing her from landing on her ass, her body reacted to the simple fact that he was touching her.

“How the fuck did you know I was back, and why are you here?”

His warm breath brushed along the side of her neck as he carefully maneuvered them to the sofa and settled her back on it, then clicked on a light.

Her heart ached painfully just from looking at him. His light gray T-shirt allowed her to see those incredible tattoos, while his bottom half had a pair of black warm-up pants with “MARINES” written down one side of his left leg. He was barefoot, his hair in a messy disarray she wanted to push her fingers into as she kissed him.

He was rigid and began pacing back and forth. Everything about him screamed angry, and yet she sensed hesitation.

“You ran.” His accusation snapped across the silence as he stopped abruptly and stared at her. “I called you. Texting. Leaving messages. But nothing. You acted as if I no longer existed to you.” The pain there hurt her to see in this man who’d always been so strong.

“I needed some space.”

His gaze locked on her. “And that means not being able to let me know you are alive? Weren’t hurt? Didn’t need me?”

She flattened her lips before shrugging. “I went to see my friend.”

He shot her a look that not only burned her but also branded her. “And what? He just lent you his car to come back here with?”

“Ry isn’t a he, she’s a she, and yes, she lent me her car, because my truck is overloaded with wood.”

He blinked. “How’s your hand?”

She looked down at the palm that had first inserted him into her life for more than just a passing of an electrical appliance for a party. The scar remained, but she’d removed the bandage.

“Healing. How are you, and how’s Cullen?”

“Missing the fuck out of you.”

His outburst touched her in ways she wasn’t ready to admit to him. “I see.”

Christ, she felt like a stranger to him in her own home. A home they’d shared together and had acted like a real fucking couple in. An engaged couple.

“Why?” His question was ragged, as if the devil had reached down his throat and yanked up the inquiry, not caring of the damage he did in his wake.

“I can’t compete with the mother of your child, Parker, and it’s not fair for me to have to.”

“I didn’t want you to compete with her. Fuck, Skylar. You were my fiancée.”

“That was fake,” she yelled, furious tears burning her eyes only to leak over their containment. “The only reason you put that out there was to keep her off her game and not be in the same house with her. Not because you suddenly fell in love with me, so let’s not pretend it was anything more than that. Then when your parents showed up and fucking bought a house here, it had to continue because you didn’t have the stones to tell them.”

He pushed his fingers through his hair. “You’re wrong. Because it wasn’t fake.” Parker shook his head. “Not to me.”

It was difficult to breathe. Those words gave her dying hope much-needed oxygen to flare back into existence.

He flexed his hands and stared at her. “I talked to Mrs. O’Neary. She told me about your husband and son.”

The room rushed around her like she was in a vacuum with no way out. Her heartbeat reverberated in her ears, and bile pestered her tongue. Tears filled her eyes, and if she had been able to force her legs to move, she would have run right out to the car and driven away as if Cerberus himself were after her. “I see.”

“Even now, you can’t discuss this with me.”

“No point,” she ground out. “She told you.”

“That’s not the issue here. You should have told me,” he growled.

“Why?”

“Because we were a couple.” He shook his head. “Are. And we’re friends. We shared so much, but you never shared that with me. I asked you so many times about your past because I wanted to know everything about you, Skylar. You wouldn’t answer and stupid-ass that I was, I stopped pressing, because I was selfish and didn’t want to ruin the night we were having. But I’m not letting it go now. Why?”

“My past is my past. And we were a fake couple.”

His jaw clenched and his nose flared, but he stayed back from her. She could see him forcing himself to remain calm. “All those talks we had about Reggie and him teaching you your craft, but you never told me he was your husband or the father of your son? You kept that from me.”

There was pain in his words. Tears dangled from her lashes before sliding down her cheeks.

“Why are you doing this to me?” She shook, and her chin wobbled.

Parker dropped to his knees in front of her and gripped her head in his hands.

“Skylar, talk to me. Let me in. Please.” His calloused thumb pads wiped the escaping tears from her skin. “Baby, I’m not fucking willing to let you go.” He pulled her closer until they were forehead to forehead. “I love you. I want you in my life. I want you to be the woman who lights up our son’s life, who will teach him how to work with wood like his mama. I want to trip over Alpin’s toys, and I’ve been praying the last night we were together I got you pregnant, because if that’s the only way I can tie you to me, I’m fucking willing to take it. I will work every goddamn day to earn your trust and love back.”

Dammit, she wanted that, too.

He brushed his lips over her head as he pulled back enough to look her in the eyes.

“I was an asshole, and I get that. I said shitty things to you, and I wish I could go back and not behave like a teenage boy who’d been hurt and wanted you to feel that same pain, but I can’t. All I can do is promise to try to do better. To be the man you would be proud to have as your husband. If it means giving up the Corps and moving somewhere else, fine. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you in my life.”

This was it. Her moment. Either she took it or accepted she had to move on without this most perfect man in her life.

No, Parker Jax was far from a perfect man, but he was perfect for her. He got her. Understood her. Loved her. She could see that now. All the missed calls, missed texts—it had been hell ignoring him, and she didn’t want to do that anymore.

“I was going to come over and talk to you in the morning. I was scared to do so right now because if she answered the door, I would have punched her.”

“You can always come over tomorrow morning and we can talk again. My house is your house. I’ll put money on you any day of the week, baby. She’s not there. I kicked her out, and we’re going to court. I’m petitioning for full custody of Cullen.”

Her breath hitched and he shook his head, sorrow filling his expression.

“Fuck! I wish I could pretend I didn’t deserve that look of suspicion, but I do deserve it and more. This isn’t why I’m on my knees for you.”

“So if I told you to leave, you would?”

He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Of course.” Parker slid his fingers along a section of her hair. “But I’d be back the next day. And the next. Every fucking day, until you let me in and allow me to plead my case. Day in and day out.”

He loosened his hold on her, and she couldn’t pull away, needing his touch.

“Reggie,” she said not much louder than a whisper. “He’d been my one since before I graduated from high school. We married before I finished college, because I was pregnant with Brennen. I was at my friend’s, celebrating the birth of their baby. Reggie was”—she gulped—“out with our son and on the way home from where he’d been. There was an accident.”

He slid both her hands into one of his and used his right to cup the nape of her neck, bringing her closer to him. She widened her legs, allowing him to fit between them. His heat surrounded her, reminding her she wasn’t alone. That he would protect her with his last breath.

“That wasn’t your fault, baby. Please tell me you know this.” His fingers caressed her skin.

She sniffed. “If I hadn’t been gone, he wouldn’t have been out there.”

“A man is going to cheat if he’s going to cheat. Whether you were there or not wouldn’t stop that. I can’t tell you how sorry I am you lost your son, but I can’t imagine he’d want you to feel like any of this was your fault.”

“He would have been with me.”

“Do you blame your friend who invited you to the party?”

“Of course not,” she blurted out. “That’s not her fault.”

“And neither is it yours. You didn’t have any control over him leaving the house or the vehicle that struck them.”

“You don’t understand.”

He closed his eyes before locking onto her once again. “I know I don’t, but I want to. Help me understand what you’re going through, so I can be there for you.”

She couldn’t find the words and felt like a heel because she’d just accused this man of not understanding.

“There were good times, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not him, Skylar. I swear to you I will never cheat on you. I haven’t wanted another woman since the day I laid eyes on you. That won’t ever change.”

“What about when you’re deployed?”

He scoffed and gave a little smile. “What about it? I jacked off plenty to thoughts and mental images of you. It worked then, and it’ll work again. Especially if…when I have you to come home to. Please let me have you to come home to, Skylar.”

She gave in to the urge to touch his hair, brushing some of it back from his face, exposing herself to that laser-sharp green-blue gaze of his that had snared her from the jump. “I don’t get you, Parker Jax.”

“I’m not that complicated a guy to figure out, baby.”

“After everything, why would you be willing to do”—she waved a hand around—“any of this again?”

“You don’t have any idea what I see when I look at you, do you?”

She shrugged, not really sure the best way to answer that.

“I have my work cut out for me, then.” He canted his head to the side. “What would you have said to me tomorrow?”

She mulled over her response. “I would have apologized for my behavior, told you that I’m scared. Beyond mild panic. More like I’m in full-blown-panic-attack kind of scared.”

His eyes continually roved over her, like he needed to memorize her.

“You were”—she cleared her throat—“are the first man since Reggie who means a damn thing to me. When I lost him and Brennen, it took me a long time to pull myself up out of the deep hole I was in.”

His touch was infinitely gentle as he brushed more curls back from her face to settle behind her ear.

“You, Parker Jax, are a lot of man. Powerful personality, hot as everything, and completely put me off my rails.” He grinned, and Skylar felt an answering tug in her gut. “You know I’d been thinking about you for the longest time. Hell, it never failed when you rolled up on that bike of yours, you caught me staring out the window.” She shook her head. “But it wasn’t just you, there was Cullen.”

She fiddled with the cuff on his T-shirt before she managed to find her words. “From the very first time he looked at me, that unruly mop of chocolate-brown hair and those killer blue eyes, I was a goner. I was pissed you acted as if he were an inconvenience to you and your current way of living. The marines, the parties, all of it. I believed having someone like me pose as your fiancée was part of the plan, and you could soon be back to those ways. Here you had the perfect little boy who just wanted to love you and to be loved in return, but you saw a hassle. No more late nights partying and even later afternoons rolling out of bed and working on your motorcycle. He needed you to step up to the plate and be a dad. His dad. He was your son. I’d had mine torn from me, and all I longed to do was punch you in the throat and hug him, protect him, love him. But it wasn’t my place to do that and anytime I tried to broach that with you, it ended up in a fight between the two of us.”

…

The raw emotion raking across Parker as Skylar answered what he’d asked was more than he’d expected.

She continued, “It ripped my heart out when I’d climb in my truck and see Cullen’s car seat back there, where my son’s used to be. See the toys and Cheerios on the floor. All of it.”

Her body shook, and he just realized the depths of the emotional toll this entire thing had been on her. Lord help him, he wanted to kiss her, offer his strength to her the only way he knew.

“Then came the baby momma drama.” A heartless bark of laughter. “All the things she’d do. Trying to make me look like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And it worked. Even your mom sided with her.”

Yes, he could feel lower than a piece of dog shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

“I had to go. I just couldn’t anymore. I realized I deserved more than to be the one you came to for sex and when shit fell through with baby momma. I’d fallen too hard for the both of you, and it was killing me, slowly. So I ran. I hid, removing myself from everything, and decided that once again, what I needed was a new, fresh start. Away from you and Cullen, because it would have torn me apart to watch you across the fence as the failed fiancée. The woman he used to call ‘Mama.’ To see a new woman there, beside you, with him. It was best I leave.”

He slid his hand around to her back, pressing her closer to him, pleased when she came willingly. Tears pricked his eyes as she snuggled her head beneath his chin, her hand still tangling his hair in her strong yet feminine fingers.

“I crashed with my friend Ryliee. The one whose car I’m driving. She yelled, smacked me down for my excuses, and then asked me one very important question.”

“And that was?”

“She asked me if it was only sex or if you were worth facing my demons and fighting for.”

He broke the lingering silence when he couldn’t take it any longer. “And?”

“That’s what I would have told you tomorrow morning. That I love you and you’re worth fighting for. You and Cullen, regardless of anything. I don’t want to sit back—I won’t do it—and let that bitch get her claws into you or our son.”

Parker gripped her face and kissed her, poured everything into it he wished he could verbalize. His love, his pride, his hope, his everything.

“I love you, Skylar Radford. So fucking much. So motherfucking much. You are my always and forever.”

The warm splash of her tears hit his hands, but he didn’t move to brush them away. She, in turn, slipped her hands along his jaw until her thumbs skimmed the underside of his earlobes.

Time passed as he sat there, breathing her breath, slowing his world to accept it was the two of them. Now and forever. Him and her.

Breaking the kiss, he tipped his head down. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Let’s go for a drive.”

“You do know it’s the ass crack of dawn?”

“I know, but I want to share something with you.”

“And this ride, is it on your motorcycle? Your SUV?”

“Hell no, we’re taking your friend’s car and going to break all kinds of speed limit laws.”

Her faint laugh was music to his ears. “I suppose you’re going to expect to drive? Even though it’s not your car.”

“You know I’ll always keep you safe, baby. Always.”

“I know. I think I knew that even before you yelled at me across the yard when I first cut my hand. That’s why I didn’t argue when you made me slide over.”

It was his turn to laugh. “Bullshit. You were just woozy over your blood loss. You’d have given me an earful otherwise.”

That was probably true.

Taking her hand, he swiped the house keys on the way out, then escorted her to the car. He held the door for her and got behind the wheel.

Parker caressed the black-and-red shifter. “She’s got good taste.” He turned to Skylar, captured her chin in his hand, pressed his lips to hers until she sighed, and nipped her lower lip. “You fucking taste amazing.”

As soon as they hit the interstate, he opened up the engine until they raced down the road.

It took them about forty-five minutes to reach his destination. He pulled off the road onto the scenic overlook and stopped the engine. He went to her side and held the door, then tucked her close to him as he moved to the barrier.

“Not planning on tossing me over and keeping the car, are you?”

“Not today,” he whispered, nibbling on her ear. “But that is one sweet ride, so the potential is there.”

She laughed. “Why are we here, Parker? It’s nighttime.” She yawned and settled against him.

“Just wait.” He wrapped his arms around her, ensuring she wouldn’t be chilled.

Silence owned the earth until the first golden stream of light peeked over the horizon and the ocean. Slowly, as if time had been cut in half just for them, the sun pushed up over the water, setting it aglow with gold and diamond dust.

The spectacular hues were like watercolors, blending into each other and changing, but never losing the magnificent imagery. Parker kept his lips pressed to the top of her head the entire time.

“This,” he whispered as life went back to normal speed. “This is what you being in my life is like for me. You are the light in my world, and I don’t want to go back to living in the darkness. I love you. Will you marry me?”

She tensed, but didn’t look away from the stunning display before them. “Are you sure that’s what you want to know?” Closing her eyes when it got too bright, she allowed the warmth to hit her.

“Without a doubt, baby. You’re my other half, and I’ll keep asking if you say no.”

“So you’re proposing to me by standing behind me and no ring?”

He kissed her neck. “Open your eyes and look down.”

Her gasp rocked him as she saw the ring he held in his fingers before her.

“This is the one… From the shop.”

“Will you wear my ring, Skylar? Will you promise to be my lodestar? My rock? My wife?”

His breath slowed as he waited. This was hard enough—he didn’t know how guys did it staring up at the woman who had the potential to rip out their hearts.

She extended her left hand, widening her fingers. He took that as a sign and slid the ring on her finger.

“Perfect.” He kissed her hand before angling his head to plant one on her lips. He couldn’t possibly love this woman any more, could he?

Skylar pulled from him and turned until she looked up at him. Then she jumped at him, winding her arms around his neck, feet dangling. Parker gripped her, making sure she couldn’t fall.

“I love you, Parker Jax.” She kissed him again, and he groaned as her tongue danced with his.

“Are you up for one more thing?” His cock was hard, but he wasn’t thinking about sex right this second. Well, he was, but he wasn’t going to act on that here.

“What is that?”

Her eyes had that hazy, desire-filled look about them. He loved that he was the one who put that there. And would be the only one to do so for the rest of their lives.

“We’re going to tell my parents and Cullen that we’re really getting married, then the two of us are taking the weekend away from every-fucking-body, because I’m not sharing you.”

“Okay.” Her tone was a bit worried, and he swore no one was going to hurt her again.

After arriving at his parents’ home, he parked the car and unlocked the door. Together they walked up the walk to the front door. It flew open before they got there and Cullen ran out, full bore, in nothing more than a cowboy hat, tool belt, and jeans.

“Mama!” he screamed, arms reaching for the sky. And her.

She dropped and held out her arms. Cullen jumped the last distance and she caught him, wrapping him tight and dragging him flush to her. His son’s hands wound into her hair, his face pressed against her neck. Skylar’s tears glistened on her lashes.

He understood now the depth of her love for his son, how Cullen had been instrumental in her healing.

“Son?”

Parker glanced up and said to his father, “I figured it was time to come let the three of you know Skylar and I are getting married. For real this time.”

His mother stood beside his dad. After relaxing her flattened lips, she nodded. “I’m happy for you, Parker. Cullen? Perhaps you’d like to come in and finish breakfast.”

“No,” he hollered, voice muffled. “Stay with Mama.”

“Leave them be. I have something else to say to the two of you.”

They waited.

“This woman lost her son when he was killed. I will no longer stand for you treating her like she’s the hired help. I never should have allowed it. This is the woman I want to marry, the woman I will marry. I love her, and I am not letting anything come between us again. You either support this, or you step aside and watch your grandson and any future grandbabies grow up through nothing more than photographs.”

Mom nodded and stepped back. “I’ll go put on some coffee.” She walked off.

“Give her time, son. She’s bound to come around. How can she not? It’s obvious how much that little man loves her. A lot like his father does, I reckon.”

Dad slung an arm around him. For a few moments they stood together watching Cullen hold Skylar, who held him just as tight.

His father had already walked back in the house when she looked him square in the eyes.

I love you, Parker Jax.

She might have mouthed it, but he could read it plain as day, like she’d spoken with her voice.

He kissed the tips of two fingers and touched his heart, then held out his hand when she stood.

She was his one, and he would move mountains for her. The person who completed him.

If giving up the single life meant changing it for this, he was willing to accept it as his ultimate sacrifice.