Lost Perfect Kiss: A Crown Creek Novel Read online

When the prescription came home with me I was too out of it to flush them. I’d had ample time to flush them in the weeks since, but something had stopped me.

  I must have known I’d need something to help with this. Driving Everly away was a different kind of pain.

  Numb, I moved to twist open the bottle. The grooves slid into place, the child-lock came loose. The cap was untwisted, ready to fall off into my other hand.

  I froze in place. My heart stalled in my chest. I was so close to popping the pill, but...

  I didn’t take the cap off.

  Slowly I exhaled. I ducked away from my reflection in the mirror, feeling like it was watching me, disappointed. Pleading. Reminding me of all those nights in rehab where I’d felt the same compulsion. The devil on my shoulder whispering encouraging words about risking it all. He’d never gone away. I’d been drowning out his voice with thoughts of Everly.

  “Fuck,” I whispered again. I’d been right. I didn’t need her help. I needed...

  Her.

  Her hard-won smiles, her sass, her determination. I needed her physical presence in the room with me, her body’s nearness to mine. I needed her, and I’d driven her away. Lost in my frustration at my weakness, I’d driven away the very person I needed to make me strong again.

  With calm resolve, I re-latched the bottlecap and set it deliberately back into the cabinet. I shut the door on the pills.

  It was only then that I realized my entire body was shaking. In fear. And in anticipation of the beautiful hit, that wonderful bliss.

  “Fucking weak,” I snarled in the back of my throat. Enraged, I slammed my fist into the wall, but the sting in my knuckles didn’t make me feel any stronger. “I hate this shit,” I muttered. All of this shit. The pain, the weakness, the helplessness. The Gabe I was before, the old me, he took these giant risks every goddamn day, put his body and his self on the line just to feel something. And here I was hiding in the bathroom after sending away the only thing that had made me feel in months. Fuck, I’d found her again, after months of wondering, and I was gonna push her away because I felt sorry for myself?

  Fuck you, the old, risk-taker Gabe said to this new, wimpy Gabe. Fucking call her and tell her you’re sorry.

  I nodded and cleared my throat. “Fuck.” I repeated it one more time because it felt necessary, but my throat was tight and dry and I couldn’t get a full breath. Don’t pussy out now, the part of me that still had pride insisted. If you’re not gonna call her then fucking text her, you weak piece of shit.

  I nodded and hopped back to my bedroom, then grabbed my phone from its place at my bedside table. Quickly, before the weakness could take hold again, I flicked to her contact and started typing.

  Me: Are you up?

  Lame. But it was a start.

  I waited, glancing down out of my window. Her house was nestled down there by the raging creek, dark and shut up for the night. I hoped she was too pissed at me to go right to sleep.

  She was.

  Everly: Do you need something?

  Cold. Professional. I deserved that.

  Me: Yeah. I need to tell you that I’m sorry.

  I waited, but she didn’t reply. I glanced down at her house again. The light was still on, so I took a deep breath.

  Me: I do need you. I need you around. You make everything better.

  Me: And I’m sorry I haven’t said that until now.

  Me: Fuck, I mean I just found you.

  Me: I might be an idiot, but I’m not going to let you go again.

  Me: I promise.

  The light went off. With my heart in my throat, I watched my screen, but there was no sign of a reply. With a heavy heart, I set my phone back down on the nightstand.

  Where it glowed with a new text alert.

  Everly: Open your door. I forgot my key.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Everly

  He threw open the door with such violence that it hit the wall next to it. I winced, but he didn’t seem to care as he stared at me. “You came over?”

  “I hate texting,” I declared.

  A wash of relief flooded his face and before I could say another word he had the door open and me in his arms. “I fucked up,” he murmured, leaning down to cup my face in his hand, pressing tender kisses to my eyebrow, my lips, my jaw. “I’m really fucking sorry.”

  I sighed against his shoulder, bracing myself so he could set his crutch aside and put his arm around me.

  We stood still like that for one heartbeat, ten heartbeats. As I relaxed into the sound of his breathing, a silvery light appeared at his feet. “Gabe?” I breathed, standing up and stepping back. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Your feet! They’re glowing!”

  He looked down in shock and then started laughing. “Babe,” he said, reaching out and gently cupping my chin. “It’s the moon.”

  He tilted my face towards the window in the door. There, hanging in the sky, was a huge, fat full moon peeking in between the racing clouds. “Oh my god,” I giggled. “It’s been raining for so long I forgot what the moon looked like.” I buried my face in my hands.

  Chuckling, he reached out and gently tugged my hands away from my face. “Come with me,” he murmured. “I have something I want to tell you, but my parents’ bedroom is down here and...”

  “You want to sneak me into your bedroom while your parents are asleep?” I teased.

  He shook his head ruefully. “I never got a chance to do that.” Then he brightened as a mischievous smile spread across his face. “So yeah. I totally want to sneak a pretty girl into my bedroom for the first time tonight.”

  As I followed him, grinning about the scandal of it all, I wanted to keep my heart light. After all, he’d apologized in the best way possible, and my training had prepared me for how much people in pain could lash out. I was grateful for that lesson.

  But my training also meant that I knew exactly how much he struggled with putting weight on his ankles. Instead of making a clinical observation, I pressed my hand to my heart in sympathy. What I saw as I watched him hobble up the stairs hurt my heart. His limp was so pronounced on his left side. When he reached the top there was no mistaking the grunt of pain as he had to pivot to reach his door.

  “Gabe,” I said. “You need to listen to me.”

  “No, I have to tell you this. Let me go first,” he said as he pushed the door open.

  I stepped in, pressed it closed behind me, and shook my head. “No,” I said firmly. “You need to hear this.”

  He let out an explosive sigh, then gestured for me to continue.

  “Sit,” I begged. “Please.” I shook my head. “As a nurse, I want you to heal. But as a person who—” I trailed off. What kind of person was I about to confess to being? A person who cared for him way too much? “I can’t stand to see you struggling like this when there are ways you can help yourself.”

  Gabe stared at me for a long moment. When he inclined his head in a soft nod, I wondered what he had decided to tell me. My heart started racing out of some perverse defense mechanism. Even though I wanted nothing more than to stay here with him, the way he was looking at me had me ready to flee.

  Finally he exhaled and patted the bed next to him. “Right,” he said. “And this was what I was going to tell you, too.” He glanced at me. I hadn’t moved from the spot. “Please come sit by me, Everly. Standing up like that? You have to know it looks like you’re showing off right now.”

  In spite of myself, I started laughing. When I went to him, it was with the sun shining inside of me. “What were you going to tell me?” I asked as I settled in next to him.

  His thigh was pressed alongside mine. He didn’t look up at me when I sat down, but he did reach over and grab my hand. He lifted my fingers, playing with each one in turn before twining them with his. “Everly, I can’t take those painkillers. I can’t.”

  I snatched my hand away. “Yes you can!” I bleated, frustration making me raise my voice. �
��You’re only refusing to out of some kind of—”

  “I can’t!” he said in a low, forceful tone that stopped me mid-sentence. I stared at him and when he finally raised his eyes to mine, I felt like he’d caught me in a tractor beam. Pulling me in to him. “Everly, I’ve been sober two years, one month, and fourteen days.”

  “Sober,” I echoed, not quite comprehending. Was he a drunk? Is that what he—

  “Pills,” he said, answering the question I hadn’t dared ask. “Anything I could get my hands on, but opioids mostly. Codeine, morphine, Vicodin.” He glanced away and seemed to force himself to look at me again. Shame was written in the drawn lines on his face and my chest felt too tight to catch a full breath. I reached out and snatched up his other hand, pressing it to my lips as he said, “Our manager gave me the first one, and after that, any time I needed something to take the edge off, he was right there with another little white pill for me. I mean, even if I didn’t think I was on edge, he was still pushing.” He growled in the back of his throat and tried to snatch his hand away in frustration, but I held on to him tightly and refused to let him pull away. He looked down at our still-joined hands as if in surprise and looked up at me with a challenge in his eyes. “I tell people it was my manager who got me hooked, but no one seems to want to believe me. They tell me to take personal responsibility and I fucking have, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  A little alarm bell went off in my head, but I knew now was not the time to challenge him about that idea. Not while he was baring his soul to me. “Wow,” I said.

  He looked at me.

  “You’re pretty strong, you know that?”

  He made a snorting sound and gestured to his legs.

  I nudged him. “No, not like that. I mean... here.”

  Without thinking I pressed my hand to his heart. He closed his hand over it. I could feel the strong, steady thump thump under my fingers and there was an answering throb in my own body. My breath caught for a moment as I looked up at him again. “You’ve been suffering this whole time and you never told me why?”

  “I haven’t been suffering,” he said in a voice so low I had to lean in to hear it. “Not when I’m with you.”

  As he said that, I felt his heart speed up under my hand and my breath quickened at his reaction. Tracing my fingers up, I instinctually started to feel for the pulse at his throat.

  He caught my hands, one and then the other. “Come here,” he whispered, lightly tugging.

  “Are you sure? I might... I’m gonna hurt you.”

  “Not as much as it hurts me to have you so far away. Come here, baby. Let me hold you, please.”

  It was the please that propelled me forward until I was straddling his lap, facing him. I was careful not to press down with my full weight, but he grinned at my attempts to hold myself in the air and with a firm tug he yanked me flush against him. “Gabe!” I gasped, half thrilled and half worried. “Be careful!”

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised, then he reached up and threaded his fingers into my hair, pulling me down into a kiss that made my brain melt. “I’ll be so careful,” he murmured against my mouth, but it was just sounds now, the shape of his words deepening the kiss as I sighed into him, the light in my chest blazing as bright as the sun at noon.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gabe

  Her body against mine was strong and taut. Her mouth was hot and desperate. There were so many layers to this girl, but they were all hidden away under that shell of hers. She was always hanging back and waiting for someone else to make the first move. She was too wary to cut loose, to take a risk.

  Who better to help her get over that than me?

  And what better way than this? “I’ll be so careful,” I was saying, but it was far from a promise I could keep. Not with her straddling me like this. Not with my hands in her hair and my face in her breasts, kissing until I felt her nipples tighten into beads under my lips. “Don’t hold yourself like that, Everly,” I told her. “I’ve got you.”

  “I—” she started to say, then hissed through her teeth as I slid my hands back around her waist to pull her down into my lap. I knew she was feeling how much I wanted her right here, right now, but that tension was still singing through her body. “Your parents,” she whispered.

  I nibbled my way from the top of one rounded breast up to her neck. “Who cares?”

  “Gabe, I—oh...” she moaned as I brushed my lips against her ear.

  A shiver tore through her body and she arched closer to me. I grinned against her neck. “Oh, you like that, huh? What else do you like, baby? Tell me quick so I have time to do them all to you before I wear you out.”

  “Do that,” she urged. Her eyes were half closed in pleasure as she pointed to her ear again. “Kiss me there again?”

  The hesitation in her voice almost broke my heart. I wondered if this girl had ever been allowed to ask for what she wanted. What she needed.

  I had a lot of work to do to show her it was okay to demand what she wanted, and I planned on enjoying every minute of it. “Right here?” I questioned, curling my tongue along her earlobe. Another delicious shudder tore through her body and it was all I could do not to groan in response. “Or do you like it better when I do this?” I nibbled along the shell of her ear before biting down.

  “Unh!” Her stifled scream was music to my ears.

  “You like it when I bite,” I groaned in approval. “Jesus, why are you so fucking perfect?” I peppered her skin from the place under her ear right down to the pulse at her throat with little biting kisses and every time my teeth found her skin she pressed against me, swaying in this sexy little rocking rhythm that drove all of the blood in my body straight down to my cock. “Let’s see if these beauties are as sensitive as your sweet little ear,” I urged, coaxing her out of the flannel and oversized T-shirt she must have changed into at home.

  With a glazed look in her eyes, she shrugged out of her flannel, then seemed to snap back into focus when I tugged at her shirt. “I’ve got it,” she said.

  “It’s okay to accept help, you know,” I couldn’t help pointing out.

  She stuck out her tongue at me as she lifted her shirt. I let out an appreciative hiss when I caught sight of her for the first time. She was braless under her shirt and her breasts were small and perfectly shaped, with high, proud nipples that already stood at attention as if in invitation. I glanced up at her face and caught the wary look she was giving me. “You have the prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.”

  Her face flushed and she gave me a smile that squeezed my heart. “They’re small,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  I gently tugged her hand away. “They’re perfect and I really want to tell them how perfect they are.”

  She giggled. “You want to talk to my breasts?”

  “I feel like they’re suffering from unwarranted low self-esteem. Hey,” I whispered, leaning forward and pressing my lips to her skin as I spoke. “You listen to me now. Don’t ever let anyone make you think you’re not fucking spectacular.” When she laughed again, more freely this time, I kissed first one, then the other, and gave in to the need to cup them in my hands. “Dear God, I can’t believe you’ve been hiding these from me all this time.”

  “Scrubs aren’t very flattering,” she sighed before squeaking as I gently took one of those pretty, pearly nipples into my mouth.

  It was bliss to feel that sensitive skin tighten under my lips, but when I bit down gently and made my girl gasp in pleasure, I felt higher than any pill had ever taken me before. I bit down harder, testing how much she could take and was surprised but not really surprised that Everly wanted to skirt that edge of pain. She wanted more sensation. She wanted the feelings to shut out the noise in her head.

  Just like I did.

  That revelation drove all thoughts of being careful away. With a growl, I sank my teeth into the soft skin that surrounded her nipple, biting a savage ring into one breast before moving to the
other. Everly moaned and squirmed in my lap, grinding her hips against me. It was far sexier than any lapdance I’d ever had, and what made it even better was that it was my name she moaned as she writhed.

  Needing more, I tugged at her waistband. “Let me have all of you,” I demanded, almost begging. “Stand up, baby, and let me see your pussy.”

  She was beyond blushing at the rough word. She hopped off my lap with an eagerness that made my cock throb painfully. When she yanked her yoga pants down past her hips, she revealed she was bare under there as well. “Naughty girl.”

  “I thought I was going to bed.”

  “You are. With me.”

  “Then I guess I’m dressed appropriately after all,” she said, her lips twisting into a grin as she stepped out of her pants.

  “Shit,” I hissed. She gave me that same wary look as she watched me take her all in. I knew enough to add, “I bet you taste as good as you look.”

  She rocked a little on her heels, and her toes may have curled a little. “I have no idea.”

  “I’ll let you know,” I told her, reaching out and taking her hand. “I’m going to kiss your pretty pussy for a little while now. Is that okay with you?”

  “Uh.”

  “No one’s ever kissed you down there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you a virgin?”

  “No,” she said, her voice half frustration, half regret. “But the guy... it was just one time... and he was in a hurry… he didn’t...”

  I pressed my lips together and pushed down the urge to deck the knucklehead who didn’t take his time with this girl. “I’m glad,” I said. “Because I planned on being the standard by which you measured all guys.” I grinned. “It’s a good thing I have nobody you could compare me to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s unfair to the other guy,” I boasted as I tugged her to me. “Now, baby, I want to taste you in the worst possible way, but I need you to do something to help me.”

  “Of course.”