Never is a Promise(37)

He gripped my hips, using them as leverage as he pressed himself deeper inside me, as if he couldn’t get enough of me. The feeling was mutual; at least for the time being. I spread my legs and accepted as much of him as I could take. Every muscle in my body melted, heeding to the intensity of his raw power.

We’d come a long ways from sneaking off at night and screwing like rabbits in the back of his truck. The soft mattress beneath my hips was a welcome change.

He gripped the back of my neck before gathering my hair into a ponytail in his wide hand and lifting my mouth to his once more. My core throbbed and tingled before tightening around his shaft, and his breathing intensified. A wave of pure intensity washed over me, and my thighs widened to accept his final thrusts before we both collapsed into a melded, sticky mess.

He peeled himself off me and climbed to the spot beside me on the bed, tugging a pillow under his neck as he stared at me. Blush rose in my cheeks. Intimacy had a tendency to make me feel painfully vulnerable, and Beau had crushed that barricade with the verve of a man who’d stop at nothing to take back what was rightfully his.

And I was his.

I could choose to fight it, or I could choose to find a way to live peacefully beside it, hoping someday it might fade into the background enough for me to move on.

He’d owned me all those years whether I chose to accept it or not. I’d given myself to him since the day I fell in love with him, though at the time I never knew it’d be the kind of love that would take a lifetime to get over.

He kissed me again, and I didn’t have a chance. My corded steel resolve, my diamond-hard determination, all of it was blown to bits the second we collided.

Beau tugged on a blanket, covering our bodies as the sweat of our skin turned into a cool fog around us. Climbing into his embrace, I found a soft spot on his shoulder and buried my face.

Once upon a time, before I knew any better, Beau Mason was my favorite feeling in the whole world. It took giving myself to him in order for me to discover he still was.

I felt his eyes on me as I listened to the steady drum of his heart beating in his chest, and I thought about that girl who had the good fortune of falling in love with the most popular boy in school and the bad fortune of losing him at the worst possible time.

My heart ached for her and everything she had to go through without him by her side. That poor, young woman who’d grown up to become so strong and resilient she forgot how to feel.

It felt good to finally feel something again even if it was equal parts confusing and wonderful all at the same time.





10 years ago



I stepped down from the tour bus, my boots kicking up a small cloud of dust as I stretched my arms behind my head. Ten long hours on the road was all it took to get me from my last tour stop to my hometown.

Somewhere along the line,everything had changed.

In the six months leading up to that point, I’d turned twenty-one, churned out one platinum album and three platinum singles, toured in thirty-two cities across the country, and drunkenly slept my way into the hearts of more nameless, faceless girls than I could remember.

“You’re young and dumb,” my tour manager, Mickey, said as he hoisted my arm over his shoulder and hoisted me into the tour bus the night of my twenty-first birthday. “It’s better that you get it all out of your system now. You’ve got the rest of your life to make up for being a giant asshole.”

Somewhere along the line I’d lost myself, and somewhere along the line I’d lost the only thing that ever meant anything to me.

My Dakota.

“Hey, Beau.” My older sister, Calista, stood resting against her vintage Jeep Wagoneer. Her face pinched as she scrutinized me the way she tended to scrutinize everyone, but that’s what older sisters were for. Had Ivy been the one to pick me up, she’d have come running, jumping, and squealing into my arms. I loved them both the same.

“Calista,” I said, squinting into the sun. I opened the luggage compartment on the bus and pulled out some bags. I was only in town for a few days, but my daddy said mama was worrying a hole into the floorboards at home and it was time for me to check in and assure her I was still alive and well. “Where’s Ivy?”

“Probably at softball camp with Addison,” Calista said as we loaded up and drove off. The mere mention of Addison reminded me of Dakota, not that I needed the reminder. She lived in my thoughts, safely tucked away there, where I couldn’t harm her or hurt her. My jaw wriggled back and forth as I thought about Dakota and what she’d think if she saw me then. “She’ll be home for supper.”

“Is she bringing Addison?” I asked, shielding my curiosity about Dakota with an innocent, unsuspecting question.