Rebound: Passion Book 2(12)

I sat on one of the benches on the boardwalk with her seated safely on my lap. My head was already coming up with its own conclusions but I wanted her to tell me that I was wrong, that what I was thinking was foolishness. She didn’t answer me and I squeezed her gently to get her attention. I wasn’t playing, if she didn’t tell me what I wanted to know I would go straight to her father and ask. With my mind made up about us I truly believe I now have every right, whether she accepts it or not. She was here, that had to mean something. Obviously that’s what Carrie had been up to last night, but she had to know I would be here and she wasn’t wearing that fucking suit for Joshua or Andrew, she better fucking not have been.

She turned her face into my neck and breathed in deep. Her body was still tense but at least she wasn’t fighting to get away. “I can’t talk about it Matt, I just can’t, not yet please. And I’d appreciate it if you waited for me to tell you myself. I don’t want my dad to worry.” Her voice had gone soft and pleading.

I took a deep breath and prayed for patience. I can’t force her if the shit was going to make her this ill but soon, one way or another I was going to have my answers.

“I’ll give you some time to get comfortable with me, that means we’ll be spending a lot more time together from now on. By then maybe you’ll feel safe enough to tell me. But tell me this one thing and I’ll leave it alone for now. Did someone hurt you?” I gritted my teeth as I awaited her answer, please tell me no. It felt like forever before she finally answered me.

“Not in the way you mean no, but…” her body shook hard enough to rattle her teeth and my gut tightened. “It’s okay, leave it for now.” I soothed her, running my hand over her hair and shushing her. “Look at me.” I turned her face myself and looked down at her, studying her.





Last night in the moonlight I hadn’t noticed the specks of light in her eyes, or the different shades of grey, from slate to almost silver. “You’re fucking gorgeous Kadyn damn.” I hadn’t meant to say that dammit. She was falling apart in my arms and I was fighting my body’s reaction. I hadn’t lost my hard all throughout this whole ordeal. I don’t know what that says about me, or more to the point the hold she had on me.

“Matt, I’m not who you think I am, I have…there are some things about me that you may not like.” She hid her face once more and I let her. What did she mean by that cryptic remark, and did it even matter?

“Are you a criminal or something, are you running from the law?” Funny, I could care less if the other one got the needle but her I was willing to hide if it came to that. I am truly and totally fucked.

“No of course not but…let me just think about it first okay, I have to decide if this is something that I want, you’re moving so fast…”

“Don’t worry about that it’s a Steele thing, as to you needing time to think I already told you when it comes to us your time has run out. You’ve found your future and I’ve found mine. Just a few short hours ago I wasn’t sure, I too had questions. But I do know you’re the last thing I see before I close my eyes at night and the first thing I see each morning when I awake. I don’t see that changing anytime soon if ever so that’s pretty much a done deal. But I’ll give you time to tell me whatever it is that’s bothering you. So take the time you need, not too much though. Somehow I don’t think I’ll have too much patience where you’re concerned, not with something like this, something that obviously caused you great pain.”

“You feel that?” I pressed her ass down on my hardness that still had yet to go down, it seemed nothing would make the shit go away short of getting inside her. The truth is, nothing had ever kept me this excited for this long except maybe tinkering with my cars. That’s another sign that I’d been about to make the biggest mistake of my life with the other one. She never had me tied up in knots the way Kadyn did; never made me feel like I was losing my damn mind.

Huh, thinking of her didn’t bring with it that feeling of lost. I didn’t feel that ripping hopelessness that had been tearing at my gut for so long and I had no doubt it was thanks to the girl in my arms. Whatever her problem was we’d deal with it so I could get on with the business of claiming her. I hope I have the patience to wait for her to come around on her own and not go home and fire up Josh’s comp and find shit out for myself. Shit, dad had said be a Steele, I guess we were all about to see just how much of one I was because this shit was wild. No wonder Joshua had lost his damn mind.





Chapter 12




We walked back down the beach to the blankets and sat watching while the others frolicked in the water. I kept her hand in mine more so because I couldn’t bear to release it just yet than because she still needed my support. She seemed to be relaxing a little bit more, though I could still sense some tension in her. “Whatever it is, whatever secrets you’re keeping Kadyn won’t change the outcome of us. I don’t know how I know that I just do. I too have some things in my past that aren’t pretty; I’m only now learning to let them go. Our past cannot control us unless we let it.”

“But Matthew we don’t even know each other, who’s to say that you will want to deal with my baggage? How can you know unless you’ve heard what it is? This all seems too crazy for me. You have to understand before I came here, I’d made up my mind that I wouldn’t have that sort of life that it just isn’t in the works for me. I’d made peace with it, I can’t go through another heartbreak…”

“Somebody broke your heart? Who?” I didn’t like the sounds of that, that maybe she’d once been in love so deeply that she had given up on life when that love failed. And that’s just fucked Matt, you were in a relationship too remember? Somehow that didn’t placate me one bit and I found myself biting back the anger.

“No it’s nothing like that; you promised to give me time remember?” I ran my finger down her cheek as she held her face up to me. Why was it I wonder that at this moment I felt none of the angst and uncertainty that had plagued me for so long now? Why did sitting here with her like this suddenly feel so right? This growing up shit was a pain in the ass, what I had before felt like child’s play compared to what I felt now. Did all men fall this hard this fast? Was it even natural, or was it a Steele trait? Josh had been the first person I’d seen react in this way, at the time I’d thought he’d lost his shit but this…this was beyond me.

“As time goes on you’ll learn that I’m not the most patient man in the world Kadyn. I agreed to give you time yes, but if I don’t get some answers soon enough I might take matters into my own hands. You’ll have to be prepared to deal with that. There’s a lot we need to learn about each other, I understand and respect that. But make no mistake about it whatever this is going to be it’s not going to be like anything you’ve known. I will tell you this much, I thought I was in love once, thought I’d found the person I was destined to spend my life with. Yes I can see what you’re thinking. I’m so young to be thinking of forever, but that’s just the way I’m wired. Things didn’t turn out quite like I’d expected and I’ve learned to live with that failure. But in all the time I thought I was in love, she never plagued me the way you do. I never lost any sleep over her, not for the right reasons anyway. So when you start questioning what I say to you about us remember that. I know my mind if nothing else, and I know that what I feel for you if it’s not love, it’s well on its way to something spectacular.”

I think I struck her dumb with my little speech but that’s okay. I was fine just sitting there under the shade of the umbrella with her little hand held tightly in mine. Every once in a while I took a sneak peek at her beautiful face as she kept her face in profile. I knew she was as aware of me as I she because with each look her cheek would redden and her fingers would tremble slightly.





“Tell me Kadyn, what are your plans for school?” There was no sense in pretending that this thing was going to end in any other way but one. If this was true then I would have to make certain arrangements. I felt a burst of what I was beginning to think of as ‘the Josh syndrome’. I’d watched my brother damn near lose his mind over a woman not too long ago. And though it had been fun to watch from the sidelines it never once entered my mind that that could one day be me.

I wasn’t given to the same volatile temperament as my brother after all. Though I’d been seen as the brawn and he the brain I tended to think things through whereas Josh was more a man of action. Sitting here like this with her, with so many unanswered questions between us still I found myself thinking ahead. Was this what it felt like to be in love? Was this need that came out of nowhere part of the descent into madness?

How can I want in so short a time to own and possess her? How can I know with such certainty that there was no way in hell I was going off to college and leaving her here? She hadn’t answered my question and I squeezed her fingers to get her attention. “Well?” I turned to face her drawing her gaze to mine with my stare.