I put my head in my hands and try to breathe. It's been a long two months. Every day I've thought about Roberta Carrell, the way the blade struck her chest, the color of her blood against her gray T-shirt. I see Audra's gun firing at the side of Lloyd's head, his brains splattering Robbie as she collapsed with a look of surprise on her beautiful features. And at night, sometimes I wake up sweating with the sound of Audra's laughter echoing around my nightmares.
“I paid your mortgage, your car payment, utility bills. I cleaned out your fridge and mowed your fucking lawn, so … you owe me dinner or something,” Audra says as she turns down our street and my heart starts to beat fiercely in my chest. The engagement ring was in my possession when I was arrested, so I clutch it tight inside my pocket now, wondering what, if anything, I'm going to do with it. “Are you listening?”
“Maybe,” I whisper, but all I can do is stare out the windshield and focus on taking oxygen into my lungs. Lloyd is dead. My career as a master of the taboo is essentially over, at least for now. I don't know if I'll be able to carry on my business with a parole officer breathing down my neck. But … I feel okay with that. My demons have been quiet, as if they're waiting. I still have a choice to make, but if Robbie isn't around to help me make it, what will I do? Will there be any other option than to simply wake them up and continue where I left off?
“And you promised if I kept your roses alive while you were gone, you'd give me the numbers of all your clients. It's at least worth a try to see if they'll hire me. I'm not that into girls, but I'd make it work.” Audra grins and elbows me, but I don't smirk or snarl or even look at her. I'm too focused on my house, once my sanctuary away from the world, now …
My gaze immediately snaps to Robbie's house.
It gets harder to breathe.
“Lucas, it'll be okay. It's going to be okay.”
But Audra can't possibly know that. Besides, a woman that dark doesn't really understand. Hell, maybe none of us really ever do. Happiness is so fleeting. You have it one minute, and it's gone the next.
As we pull into the driveway, I feel my muscles tighten and my hands begin to shake. Robbie. I can't do this without Robbie.
Fortunately I don't have to.
She's sitting on the steps of my porch, newly released from the hospital, with a smile on her pretty face. While I was incarcerated, Robbie finished up her last few weeks of high school. She's officially an adult, thrust into the real world to learn to fend for herself. But that doesn't matter because … if she'll have me, I choose her. This path. It's the much harder choice of the two, but I owe it to myself, to Aliyah, to Roberta Carrell, to try.
Audra drops me off, plants a kiss on my cheek that sears, but fails to bring my demons screaming to the surface.
“If you ever change your mind, let me know.” I smile at her offer and climb from the car, pausing on the driveway while Audra pulls away and disappears down the street to her yellow house.
Neither Robbie nor I move.
“It's been awhile,” she says, attempting to be nonchalant, but her voice is thick with unshed tears.
“Just awhile,” I repeat, my voice calm, as if I'm still Lucas Carter and not Luke. I study Robbie's dark brown hair, cut short during her hospital stay. She wrote me letters but never included a picture. From what I recall of her words, handwritten in ink on scented stationary, she wanted me to see for myself. We didn't exchange phone calls, and I never wrote back. This is the first Robbie has heard from me since the day Lloyd kidnapped her.
Robbie looks away, and I see a small tear drip down her cheek. It smears her eyeliner and mascara as it trails down to her pale pink lips, softly parted and waiting between a sigh and a breath for me to say something else. My gaze travels over Robbie's red cotton dress with the cap sleeves and the sweetheart neckline. The lacy skirt leaves tantalizing hints of her peach ripe skin showing and hardens my dick in an instant.
Well, now, who I am fooling? Emotionally, I might be linking myself closer to Luke, learning from his mistakes and his hopes and his dreams, but sexually, I'm still Lucas Carter. And I revel in the fucking taboo.
“I missed you,” I tell Robbie, drawing her bright blue eyes back to mine. When she stands up on her shiny black heels, she stumbles a little and I move to catch her, striding across the driveway like I can't wait a single second longer. And maybe I can't? Maybe I shouldn't have to?
I wrap an arm around Robbie's waist and pull her close, sliding her body up against mine, chest to chest, as she balances on the step and looks me in the face.
“Why didn't you write back to me?” she asks, her voice joyful but unsure.
“I wanted to be certain,” I admit, my gaze dipping to the gentle sweep of her clavicle bone. I want to kiss it, and fuck her, and show her all the nasty tricks in my massive tome of sexual techniques, but I just stand there instead and pull my eyes up to hers. “And I wanted you to be certain. These things, relationships, and love, they're not ever easy. They're hard. And they suck.” I hiss the word out and take a deep breath, lifting my chin and finding myself terribly glad that I had Audra take my suit to be tailored while I was incarcerated. “I won't ever be a fairytale prince, and times will be hard on occasion. I might die. You might die. The world could end.”