Love, Me: A Pleasant Valley Novel Read online

  “I don’t want any of that, Vaughn. I just don’t want you to give up on me.”

  He drops our hands and stands up then walks to the window. “Ya know what my biggest fault is?”

  None. He’s perfect. “No.”

  “I’m too loyal. Way too fucking loyal. My mother picked my stepfather over me my entire life. Since before I could even remember, she let her disgust of my presence be known. And ya know what the fucked-up thing is?” The continuation of his thoughts tells me he doesn’t really want an answer. He seems like he’s realizing these things as he speaks them. “I’m still so starved for her attention that I continue to allow her to destroy me; she’s the reason I’m such a closed-off prick. And because I went through so much shit with her, because it’s all I fucking know, I have always rejected anyone else who could be in a position to do any more fucking damage to my already fucked-up existence.”

  I can’t bear to hear the agony in his voice, so I get up and wrap my arms around him from behind. “You’re not fucked up, Vaughn. You’re such a good man, and I’m an idiot for holding onto the past when all I want for the future is right in front of me. I’m trying to let go of a delusion I’ve been clinging to, and you’re trying to move on from your past as well. You made me realize that all I was holding onto was a freaking fantasy I had built up in my mind. I already forget what it feels like to be sad because you make me happier than I’ve ever been.”

  He turns in my arms and lifts me up. I give a little squeal and grab his shoulders as I wrap my legs around his waist. His determined strides bring us to his bedroom, and my heart rate accelerates. Finally. He lays me down and without releasing me, kisses me. I keep my limbs where they are, only squeezing tighter. I’ve wanted this and needed to do this with him for way too damn long.

  He pulls back from me, and I whimper at the loss of him. His forehead rests against mine, and he struggles to get out what he’s trying to say but finally gets it out. “Anywhere else, baby. He’s allowed anywhere else but not in this bed. Not when I have my hands on you and my mouth on you. Not when I’m trying to show you how I really feel because words will never adequately describe what you mean to me.”

  I press my lips together, and a single tear rolls out of my eye and onto his pillow. He wipes it away with his thumb, and I turn my head to kiss his hand. My agreement with what he just said is wordless, but he must understand because his lips ghost over mine before he begins working his way down my body. His mouth feels magical, and I’m somehow taken away to a place where I have no worries, I have no past creeping up on me, and no resentment for what I’ve lost. Right now, it’s just him and me.

  His hands slide up my belly underneath my shirt, and when his thumb rubs my nipple, it shoots straight to my core. He slides the material all the way up and over my head then tosses it on the floor. The wide expanse of his hands covers my entire belly when he slides his hands down, stopping to trace parts of my tattoo. “Your skin is so soft,” he whispers right before his mouth descends to the valley between my breasts.

  The sparks igniting with every touch from him begin to burn brighter, and I press myself up against him to get more.

  “Patience, darlin’.”

  “I really don’t have any.”

  “You’ll learn.” He sucks on a nipple through my cream lace bra, and I arch even higher. Fuck this waiting stuff. I reach behind me to take my bra completely off, and before I even realize what happened, I’m flipped over to my stomach, and he’s blanketing me. His left arm slides down mine, and he locks our fingers together. “Not today, Rayne. I’ve been dreaming about this for months.”

  “Let’s just do it real fast to get out all the pent-up frustration, and then we can do it slow next time.” I sound like a whore, but when he presses his hard length against my lower back, I know he’s just as desperate as I am. “Please, Vaughn. I just want you inside me.”

  He sits up and takes his shirt off then moves down my body, taking my pants with him. He kisses my calves on the way up. And then his tongue glides with him until he’s at the very back of my thigh. He nips at my cheeks then grips my hips to pull me higher. I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting in anticipation for him, and when his wet, hot tongue slides inside me, I scream.

  “Holy shit.”

  He works me between my legs, sucking and nipping. Licking and kissing me until I can’t even see straight. Magical powers, I’m convinced.

  “You ready to come, baby?”

  “Ohmygodyes.”

  He slides his thumb into me from behind and rubs his fingers against my clit in firm, confident circles. I fall onto my head and barely have enough strength to hold myself up anymore as I clench and shake, letting the feelings just take over.

  “Do I need a condom?”

  “No, just you,” I murmur as the crest begins to fade away.

  I lose the skilled hand that brought me the best damn orgasm of my life and whine from feeling empty without him. But in one stroke, he bottoms out inside me, and his balls slap against my already pulsating clit, prolonging the sensations.

  “You feel so good.” The words spin in my head, but I say them out loud, too.

  “Who feels so good?”

  I look over my shoulder so he can see me when I say it. “You do.”

  “Tell me you know who’s fucking you, Rayne. Who’s making you feel good? Say my name.”

  “You, Vaughn. Only you.”

  His lips part and he grunts and wraps his hands around my hips. “That’s right, only me. So damn tight, Rayne. Absolutely perfect.”

  He pulls out and slides back in. “Fuck.” He does it again and again, each time a little harder and a little faster, causing my head to fall forward again. “You ready for me to take out my pent-up frustration?”

  “Yes,” I pant before he even moves. Just the dirty words that come out of his mouth turn me on more than I ever have been. I feel like since he’s touched me, I’ve just been having one big ass, ongoing orgasm. “I need to come again.”

  “Wait for me.” He grabs the back of my neck and just as his fingers tighten, he fucks me like we both need. He drives into me with a beautifully brutal force, each slap of his skin against mine an echo of the pounding of my heart.

  “I can’t wait anymore.” I feel the peak about to hit, and as much as I try, I can’t hold it off. “Oh, my God,” I shout against the pillow.

  “Goddamn,” he growls. “I can feel how fucking wet you just got. Shit, baby.” He pumps into me four times in rapid succession before he stills and collapses on top of me.

  Chapter 14

  Vaughn

  I walk Rayne to her car and lean in to give her a kiss before she drives away. I’d be lying to myself if I said this woman hasn’t already changed me more than I ever thought I would or could change. When I get back to my apartment, I head straight to my room to put on clean clothes. The rumpled sheets make my cock twitch when I think about her hands clutching the material.

  When she called me, I didn’t know what to expect when she arrived; I had no clue what she wanted to say. I didn’t have any expectations at all, actually. The battle of allowing a woman into my life who’s still hung up on another man weighs heavy. Last night, as I couldn’t sleep, I thought about how things would have been different if my mother had given a shit, even a little bit. I don’t know who my dad is, and I never met him. For all I know, he could be dead. He is to me, anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

  Part of the reason I always tried to seek my mom’s attention was because I watched her give it all to someone else. Listened to her blame me for any and everything. If she had tossed me a goddamned sliver of a bone, things would have been different.

  I’ve realized we’re not so different, Rayne and me. The past still hangs onto us, making it hard to move sometimes because it’s so crippling. But in the bad, there’s good. There has to be good at the end of it all. And she’s my good.

  She’s everything I want, and now that I have her, nothing and nobody will ta
ke her away from me. I’m willing to accept the tragedies of her past, and I know she’s willing to accept me for who I am now. The real question is will I ever decide to tell her who I truly was back then. And when she finds out, will she still want to be with a man responsible for his stepfather’s death?

  * * *

  Since I was running late because of a certain brunette, when I arrive at my shop, my client is waiting outside the front door. “Sorry.” I apologize as I unlock the door and shut the alarm off. “Have a seat. I’ll be ready for you in about five minutes.”

  “No problem, man.”

  I rush to the back, get everything set up, and then head back up to grab him. After he fills out the paperwork, I prep his arm and begin work on the tribal design he picked out. I’m finished in almost two hours, and then my next client comes in, and I knock out the butterfly she wants on her lower back.

  My day passes by in a blur, and I only realize how late it is when Rayne texts me.

  Rayne: I know you said you’re busy today, so I didn’t want to bother you. I’m leaving now to run errands . . . Do you want to come over for dinner?

  Me: Ur never a bother. That sounds good. 7?

  Rayne: Perfect. <3

  Because I don’t have a vagina, I leave out an emoji when I reply.

  Me: Cool. C-ya later

  I’ve just finished the outline of a portrait on the chest of a guy who lost his father recently. Whenever I do a portrait, it always hits me in the gut, because I don’t have anybody in my life whose face I’d want on my skin. Not until Rayne, that is.

  The alarm beeps, and I look up into the monitor to see Rayne’s dad. “Shit,” I say under my breath. “Hey, man. You okay to take a break for a minute?”

  “Yeah, I’ll just go burn one real fast.”

  “Cool.” I point at the door outside my room. “That takes you to the back. I’ll unlock it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks, I’ll meet you back here.”

  On the way to the front of my shop, I flick the deadbolt so my client can go in the alley.

  “Ron.” I greet Rayne’s father. He stands from the chair and hesitates before holding his hand out for me to take.

  After we shake hands, I lean on the counter and cross my arms, waiting for him to say whatever he came to say.

  “Let me first apologize for what I said the other day. I don’t know you, and it wasn’t fair of me to project my hostility toward you.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  He nods and looks around. “Nice place.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Rayne is my only daughter.” His mouth turns down, and he redirects his attention to me. “When she was with Bryan, she was a happy girl. He disappeared, and I questioned if she was even going to survive without him.”

  Not really liking hearing how happy my girl was with another guy, I grunt but wait for him to continue. Never having been one to go home and meet Daddy, I assume this is like a rite of passage. He continues his lecture, and I continue to pretend to give a shit.

  “Her hope that maybe he was coming home one day was the only time she’d smile. She was depressed and barely even functioned. Then one day, I made an off-handed comment out of frustration about how excited I was for the day he would come back so I could have my daughter back.” He drops his head and shuffles his feet before looking at me again. “That was the first time I saw the light come back to her eyes. From that point on, I did what I thought was the right thing. I said shit just to see that light continue to brighten. I kept the façade going that he was maybe still alive. I kept the hope going because it was the only thing I could do to make her halfway . . . normal again.”

  For the first time in my life, I’m watching a grown man’s eyes fill with tears. It’s surreal. This is what love looks like. What it is to feel compassion for your child. Hmm.

  “If I’m being honest, when Margaret and I came back from the cruise, I could tell something had changed with Rayne. She was . . . different. The sadness that always floated around her was gone, but in its place was frustration. The two are very different things, and when she gets frustrated, well, let’s just say she’s a spitfire.”

  I laugh at that, being on the receiving end myself. “Yeah, can’t argue with you there.”

  “It was good to see again. But then she didn’t show up for work. I thought she was just sick, so when we went to her apartment and found you two, I reacted on pure instinct. And when she was sitting with you on the couch, and I saw my little girl truly happy, I mean really fucking happy, for the first time in two years, and I wasn’t the one to do that . . . I said some mean things. It’s a shitty excuse, but I wasn’t prepared, and I acted poorly.”

  “I’m back, Vaughn,” my client says, and I turn around to acknowledge him. “Be there in a minute.”

  “Look”—I give Ron my attention again—“I appreciate you coming here, and I get it. I’m sorry if it took you off guard, but that’s as much of an apology as you’re gonna get from me because what’s going on between Rayne and me is our business.”

  “Fair enough.” He begins to back away. “But Vaughn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It doesn’t matter that she’s already been shattered; she can still break.”

  “Your daughter hasn’t been shattered, sir. She wasn’t waiting for him to come back; she was waiting for me show up. And now that I’m here, no way in hell am I going to allow anything bad to get close enough to even breathe the same air as her.”

  With those parting words, I head back without a second glance and finish my tattoo. My schedule goes as planned for the rest of the day, and before I go to her place, I stop by the grocery store to grab some flowers. I have no clue where else to go for flowers. I only know every time I come here, I walk past them. There are so many I don’t know which ones to choose. Am I supposed to get one color or is a bunch of different colors better? The same flower or a variety?

  “Fuck it.” I’ve really gotta stop talking to myself out loud. I grab four different packages of flowers and head to the checkout.

  I’m not one to get nervous, but as I’m walking to her door, my palms are sweaty. I balance the bundles of flowers in one hand and knock with the other. A second later, I hear multiple voices and a man I’ve never seen before opens the door.

  “Hi, you must be Vaughn.”

  “Who are you?” Fuck pleasantries.

  “Come in, and I’ll explain.”

  I look past him, and when I get inside, I drop the flowers on her kitchen table. “Rayne.” I say her name when I see her on the couch sitting next to a woman who I’ve also never seen before.

  She looks up, and before she even says anything, I figure out who these people are. I just don’t know why they’re here. There are some possibilities brewing, but I really fucking hope I’m wrong. I stop at the end of the couch and squat down in front of her. “You okay?”

  Her eyes tell a story her mouth won’t say, and as much as I don’t want to, I know I have to let her know I’m here, no matter what. I know this is what she needs. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

  “They found him,” she cries. Her shoulders shake, and tears flow out of her eyes like an overflowing river. The woman who I’m assuming is Bryan’s mother pulls Rayne into her arms.

  My gut sinks, and I find it hard to stand but somehow gather up the strength to do just that. I can’t very well walk out of here with my head held high if I’m crawling. She doesn’t even notice me leave, and Bryan’s dad claps me on the shoulder as I reach the door.

  I shrug it off. “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry, son. I do—”

  “I’m not your fucking son.”

  I slam the door behind me and almost trip over my own feet reaching my vehicle. I don’t want to go home. That’s where I’ll see the sheets I left crumpled on the bed from her being on them today. Where I’ll still smell her sweet scent. Fuck!

  Before I realize where I’m going, I end up do
wn in the valley in front of my childhood home again. This time, the blinds are still open, and a man walks by. My mom is right behind him, and just before they go out of view, he turns and kisses her. Figures. She replaced my stepdad but can’t even speak to her own son.

  I don’t know why the fuck I came down here. I told myself she was dead to me. But this solidifies it. She has her life, shitty as it may be, and I need to move on with mine. Just like I thought I was already doing.

  If I wasn’t so pissed off right now, I’d laugh at the irony. But nothing’s funny about this. Nothing’s funny about any of this.

  Chapter 15

  Rayne

  “So it’s finally over then, isn’t it?” I ask Kristen.

  “Yeah, sweetie, it is.”

  As I let the words sink in, I begin to regain some clarity. I pull back from her, wipe my eyes, and look over to where Vaughn just was. “Where did he go?”

  “He left,” Aaron answers my question.

  My brain works at getting caught up with reality. “Shit. I need to go talk to him.”

  I start to get up, but Kristen grabs my arm. “Why don’t you calm down for a few minutes before you think about leaving? You’re upset, and I don’t want you driving like this.”

  Aaron hands me a new box of Kleenex. “She’s right.”

  “I know.” I take the tissue from the box and ball it in my hand. “Can you write down your plans for the memorial service? I know you told me, but I forgot already.”

  “Of course,” Kristen answers.

  “I’ll do it.” Aaron walks to the kitchen and shuffles through my junk drawer.

  Feeling like I need to offer to help, I tell Kristen, “Let me know if you need anything from me. Pictures, help setting up, or whatever.”

  “You know I will. I would really like it if you could maybe find some photos. And maybe make a platter of food for afterward.”