Dannika Dark - Six Months

He gripped my jaw and forced my mouth open. The next thing I knew, Trevor shoved his finger down my throat and forced me to gag.

“Stop it!” My words were garbled.

But his hand wrapped around the back of my neck and he pushed his finger in deeper. I bit his knuckle and shook my head until he let go.

“April, how many ? How long ago?”

“You’re crowding my space,” I argued.

“Get out,” a man’s voice commanded.

“What is this, a party?” I ran my fingers through Trevor’s perfect hair.

A few pills scattered across the floor and when I glanced up, Reno filled the doorway.

“Why is he here? He’s not really here, is he?”

Trevor grabbed my wrist and shouted, “How many did you take?”

Then he was gone.

Reno had yanked him back and had taken his place. His hands cupped my cheeks and he examined my eyes. Then he felt my pulse. Reno held up a few pills and studied them. “Did you swallow any of these, April? Answer my question or I’m going to force you to throw up and take you to the ER where they’re going to pump some vile shit into your stomach.”

“I’m…”

He glanced in the toilet and then looked at Trevor over his shoulder. “Leave us alone and shut the door.”

“Are you crazy? Call an ambulance!”

“She didn’t take these,” Reno said decidedly, brown eyes still on mine. “Did you?”

I shook my head. He knew me too well. As drunk as I was, I didn’t have it in me to cross that line.

“Two minutes,” Trevor growled.

The door closed and Reno took a seat in front of me, moving the bottle aside and taking handfuls of the pills and tossing them in the toilet, which was already full of them.

“My mother’s dead,” I said in a broken voice. No more tears were left to spill, but my heart burned with raw anguish. I’d never felt so gutted—so lost.

Reno leaned in and kissed me softly on the cheek. God, I’d missed him more than I thought. He smelled so good—like pine trees—and I wanted to rewind and do it all over. I’d ruined what we had and there was no erasing my past. I hated hindsight—I wished I could back a truck over it.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed against my skin. “But what is this about? Where’s the girl who has it all together? Where did she go?”

My head rolled to the side and I looked away. “I turned my mother into an addict because I was a stupid kid. I should have been a better daughter.”

He brushed my hair away from my face and leaned in so close that my leg had somehow wrapped around his waist.

“You told me when your mother started doing heavy drugs. Juvie. But did she drink before then?”

I didn’t answer and he gripped my shoulders.

“Dammit, April. Let me in .”

“Yes. She’d hit the bottle now and again but was never a user. Maybe some weed—I don’t remember.”

“You don’t get it. She was already an addict. She just traded out the booze for something stronger. It wasn’t you that drove her to fuck up her life the way she did. She couldn’t cope with her problems and tried to dull them away. Maybe she had a messed-up childhood or something dark you never knew about her. Don’t blame yourself for what that woman did to you. You’re entitled to a night of hitting the bottle after all that you’ve been through, and I’m cool with that. I’ll sit here and have a drink with you. I’ve been through some rough shit in my life and hit some pretty low points; those who have been there know what it’s about. Those who haven’t, judge. I’m not here to judge you, April. You’ve got some personal demons you need to battle and I want you to win. Do what you need to do in order to deal with this and get past it. But don’t shut me out.”

“I wish I hadn’t screwed things up with us.”

“Yeah, well. People fuck up. Doesn’t mean you go through life punishing yourself for it,” he said in bristly words, brushing the last few pills away from me. “I’m not perfect by a mile. I got a toolbox full of issues and I’m not a big talker, so that shit mostly stays locked up.”

I lifted my eyes. “You’re not a big talker? Everything you say to me changes my life in ways that you don’t even realize. You fix me with your kindness.”

His eyes melted and he held my left hand, brushing his thumb over the top knuckles. I studied his features and admired the man before me. His eyes were coffee brown and not wide, but narrow and kind. And his masculine nose and jaw didn’t seem to stand out as much as those carved lines in his cheeks or the tiny scar on his lip that used to be mine. He had recently shaved and I touched his smooth chin, pinching the tip and feeling a pang of guilt that made me let go.

“Don’t,” he said, capturing my wrist and bringing it back up to his face. “Keep doing that.”

I outlined his thin mouth and scratched my fingers along his short sideburns, noticing how attractive his widow’s peak looked on him. When I pinched his earlobe, he smiled, deepening those lines in his face. What a handsome man Reno was when he smiled.

“I have a confession,” he said, and I got the feeling by the way he was averting his eyes that it wasn’t something he wanted to admit.

“You regret having slept with a human?”

Reno reluctantly reached in his pocket and opened his fingers. I glanced down at his hand and saw a familiar red item settling in the crease of his palm.

“My cherry earring,” I said, nonplussed. I lost it months ago and they were my favorite pair that I wore to work. “How—”

“Six months ago, you drove by the house with Lexi and I was outside playing horseshoes. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you step out of the car. Damn, I couldn’t even speak when you looked at me with those hazel eyes. You were like an angel fleeing from a devil when you ran to your car and sped off. I found this on the driveway and…”

“What?”

He tucked it back in his pocket and lowered his eyes. “I’ve carried it with me ever since. A good luck charm I never leave home without. Ever. Austin caught me off guard once with an emergency and halfway down the road, I turned back around to get it.”

Holy smokes. “Some luck,” I muttered.

“Yeah,” he said with a dazed smile, gently cupping my face with his warm hands and centering his eyes on mine. “Brought you back to me, and I’d say that’s pretty damn lucky. I don’t think you’re aware of one important detail, and I’m going to clear the air so there’s no confusion. You’re my girl and I’m putting my claim on you. Maybe I still need to earn it, and that’s fine, but you’re not walking out of this room without knowing what you mean to me. You’ve got my heart. You’ve got my loyalty. You’ve got everything a man can give a woman, including my love. Yeah, that’s right, princess. Love. The first time I saw your eyes, my chest squeezed so damn tight I couldn’t breathe. But what sealed the deal was the first night we slept together. And I don’t mean the sex, but lying next to you in bed and talking. The same feeling I get when I’m on my bike and thundering ninety on an open stretch of road, I get when I’m with you. I feel alive when you’re in my arms, and that’s a helluva thing for a man like me to admit. Trevor was wrong when he called you submissive, and he knows it. When life keeps kicking a man down and he gets right back up, that’s strength. You’re just finding your way in this world and keeping your chin high, and that’s what attracts me. You’re a proud woman and I love you because you ain’t perfect. I’ve never felt like this, and I’m not about to screw it up by letting you go.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Please God, let him mean that! my inner voice screamed with giddy excitement. I didn’t want to imagine that he was just messing with my head. It would kill me, because I still had strong feelings for him I couldn’t erase. Reno was a man I wanted to know everything about, who not only made me feel safe, but happy. Nothing I told him about my past shocked him, and it made me want to open up to someone for the first time. Even Trevor didn’t know all the details of the baggage I carried around.