Adam, Enough Said (This Can't be Happening) (30 page)

"Baby,
what's goin' on in that head of yours? What's wrong?" Adam asked roughly, and I closed my eyes, refusing to bring up the past, even though I wanted to do just that. I wanted to scream at him for ruining me. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs until I lost my voice. I wanted to slap him for stealing away my confidence, and for every ounce of self-doubt I harbored. I hated myself for feeling so weak around him.

What am I even doing here? In this house? I shouldn't be here.

I opened my eyes and Adam's expression was the epitome of worry and fear combined. I had to admit it felt good to believe he actually cared, but I knew I was only another body to him; one that he probably cared about only slightly more than the others because it held a lot of old memories for him.

I could feel Adam’s eyes on me and k
new that he was watching me closely, but my mind wouldn't stop working. Honestly, I was sick of myself. I made these decisions so I had to live with them, but I didn’t want to.

I fel
t dirty and confused.

I'd had sex with Adam
, twice, knowing I had a boyfriend. The fact that I didn’t have a boyfriend the day after I’d had sex with Adam didn’t count because said
ex-
boyfriend didn’t know it yet.

E
ven though Max had gotten in trouble and we were over now, I still cared about him and was even a little worried about him. Would I never see or talk to him again? Was he on the run or had he been hurt or killed? And why did I care?

The problem was,
I knew he was a good guy that made a bad decision, but that didn’t stop me from caring.

"Mia
?" Adam said my name like a question, and I quickly gave him a smile that I'm sure didn't reach my eyes. I wanted him away from me before I broke down.

“
Sorry, nothing's wrong. I'll just take a quick shower and be right down."

"Baby, tell me what
you’re thinking in that head of yours so I can fix it," he rumbled deeply.

I shook my head.
"It's nothing you will ever be able to fix, Adam. Please stop trying."

He
exhaled loudly and rubbed a hand over his head and down his face in clear frustration. "I've made so many damn mistakes with you, Mia, but I can easily see that the biggest one I made was staying away from you for so long."

"
But that's what I wanted...what I want," I corrected and I watched in fascination as his body grew taller and his shoulders grew broader.

"
Mia, stop lying to yourself; it's really starting to piss me off," he snapped and I stiffened at the abrupt changed in tone. He reached for the linen closet door. It opened, closed, and then he came out with a towel, which he handed to me right away.

“Cover yourself and go to the bed.
I’m gonna talk, you’re gonna listen and then you can take a shower.”

I narrowed my eyes on his face, but
I still wrapped the towel around myself because I was naked and uncomfortable - not because he ordered me to - and then I watched in longing as he turned off the shower.

When he turned, I still hadn’t moved from my place
and his eyes met mine.

“Can we do this later?” I asked
, hopeful.

“Move, Mia,” he ordered
.

I sighed and did what he
’d said, but only because I wanted to get this over with.

He started as soon as I sat on the edge of the bed
and looked up.

"
I'm gonna say this, and I'm only sayin' it once so listen close and let it sink in: What you wanted was for me to come crawling back to you on my hands and fuckin' knees, begging for forgiveness, but I didn't do that like I should have because I was fucked in the head thinking I killed my baby, and lost you because of it.”

I closed my eyes, hating his words.

“I drank myself into oblivion until I couldn't remember the day before. I didn’t eat for days, and sometimes, I didn’t even wake up to go to work. I was fucked up, Mia. In the beginning, I was giving you time, but during that time, I was only digging myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of. I couldn't even fix myself, so how the fuck was I supposed to fix us?”

“
Then, you didn't show up to mom's funeral and, honestly, yeah, I was pretty fuckin' pissed at you. More than pissed, but I had no idea you actually came, which is
your
fault…” he pointed in my face, “…for not confronting me then and there. So, I let more time go by, still drinking, still thinking I killed my baby and ran you off... and then I get a call from you a year and a half later wanting to meet, and picture this, I'm still half drunk when I get the call, but I’m out of my mind ecstatic thinking I'm getting my world back, my heart back, and then I see you, and all you do is tell me you've met someone else and that you want a motherfuckin'
divorce
," he spat the word.

“Adam--”
I tried.

"
No. I guess in the long run, I needed that wake-up call because I cleaned my ass up and, in doing so, I was able to see how much I needed you back, but seeing as how you’d already moved on, I knew it was too late. So I was even more pissed at you. I even hated you a little, but you still
belonged
to me and there was no
fuckin
' way I was letting you go. So, I ran that little piece-of-shit Cole off. He had a record, anyway, so it wasn’t hard."

He paus
ed and I held my breath. My heart was beating uncontrollably and my stomach was knotted so tight it hurt. Adam took a step, closed the distance between us, framed my face with his hands and tilted my head up further. I exhaled hard. This was too much to take in, but somehow I needed to hear this. I needed to hear that he’d been hurting just as much as I had.

"
Freckles, here it is, for the last time, I didn't cheat on you. The stripper was a case I was working, because my Lieutenant at the time made it sound like it would fast track my career. I had my dad's money that I didn't want to touch, but then I had you, pregnant with my baby and I wanted to give you the world, but I couldn't afford to. I realized too late that all you wanted was me."

His eyes were so beautiful, I thought
, before my vision began to blur and tears threatened to spill.

His voice softened. "
The night I was given the case, I will never forget coming home to find you asleep and your pillow wet from crying...tears that I knew I'd caused for being such an idiot, and I knew...
knew
that I’d made a mistake by taking that case. I swear to God, Mia, Breena’s touch made me cringe; I hated it, and that kiss you saw probably saved my life."

I jerked my face out of his hold.
"What?" I asked in an angry breath.

"I'd been to the strip club
three times, but the first two were just to talk. Breena was a stripper, but she was also an informant who refused to talk to anyone else but me. She was only nineteen, had one look at me and decided I looked like the only person she could trust. By the third night, she knew her boss suspected I was a cop. When you saw her kissing me, she was trying to save me. She warned me before doing it. She whispered in my ear and I had to let her kiss me because all I could think about was not getting myself shot, so I could come home to you."

"Oh
my God!" I whispered as a tremble wracked my body.

I felt queasy.

"I never touched her, Mia. Think about that. I know what you saw, but think back real hard. I never fuckin' touched her and nothing...I mean
nothing
else would have happened. I was done, I knew at that moment, that was it, I was gonna quit if they wouldn't have let me off that case."

His thumbs caressed the app
le of my cheeks as his eyes gazed into mine.

Tears
spilled over my lashes as I took it all in, but some things still didn’t make sense and I needed answers.

"
Why was she at your mom's funeral? Why do you still remember her name?"

Adam’s fingers stopped moving on my face and I took that as a really bad sign.

“Tell me,” I ordered through the tightness in my throat.

He sighed.

“It’s a really long story, Mia. Basically, I ran into her outside of court about a month after you left. She felt responsible for messing up my life. And, because I ran after you the night of the case, I fucked up her life. Again, it’s a long story, and I’ll tell you everything another time, but I sort of felt responsible for her after what happened. I knew she was out of a job since the club had been shut down, and…I don’t know…I also felt I owed her for helping me, so I helped her get a job. A waitressing job. That was it. She showed up at the funeral to be nice, and maybe a little out of misguided feelings for me, but you missed the part where I made her leave.”

By the guilty look on his face, I knew he wasn’t telling me everything.

“Did you have sex with her after me?” I asked and his blink was slow and lasted long. My blood ran cold.

“No, I
never fucked her, Mia. But I won’t lie to you; I’m still friends with her.”

“Oh
my God,” I breathed as I shook my head to make it all go away.

“Friends, Mia. Not best friends, not friends with benefits
. We don’t talk on the phone unless she calls and needs help, which is almost never. I’ve changed a tire for her once when she had a flat. I’ve helped find someone to fix the water heater in her apartment, and various other things men do, but it’s rare. She knows I don’t feel anything for her. I visit her at the diner a couple times a month to check on her, because she’s a good person, has a shit life and very few friends. You’re gonna like her and she’s gonna love you.”

There was no fucking way
, I thought as I shook my head. I couldn’t even look at him.

His hands dove into my hair. “Now is not the right time to tell you her story, but it was bad,
Baby. Not moving from foster home to foster home bad.” I froze. “Bad as in forced into prostitution by her own father bad.”

My stomach roiled. “You can’t be serious.”

“Sold into a sex ring, Mia. That was part of the case I’d been working back then. And think about this, Baby, Breena’s twenty-six, the same age you are now, so figure she was the same age you were when you left me.”

I
winced. I’d only been nineteen.

“She’s a good person. You’ll like her. She’s so sweet, it’s hard not to. You might never be friends with her…though I think you will
be because you’re an even better person than I am, but when you meet her, you’ll understand why I couldn’t just pretend she never existed.”

“This is too much right now,” I admitted softly
and to my surprise, Adam nodded.

"
I know, but you needed to know it all so you can stop thinking about the past and start thinking about how we’re going to move forward with our future. I think we both made huge mistakes, me more so than you, but both of us nonetheless. I should have come for you, and you should have trusted me enough to come back, but we're together now. You're with me and you're fuckin' staying."

I didn't know what to say. So when h
e asked, "Freckles, you with me?" all I could do was blink.

"Okay, I see understanding is sti
ll sinking in, so I'll add this: I will never touch another woman, and I will
never
make another fuckin' mistake so stupid. I won’t risk losing you again. I will screw up and say the wrong things, because that's me and I won't change, but you'll know I won't mean the bad shit I say because you're the only one who knows the real me.

“And t
his thing with Max, it pisses me off, and I know you're confused about it, he was there one minute and now he's not. I know you feel guilty that you haven't had a chance to tell him about me, even though he nearly got you killed because of the bullshit he's involved in, but that's just you. You wouldn't have gotten into a relationship with him if you didn't at least care about him. So, I hope to God, for your sake, that he's caught soon. If I find out he involves you deeper in his mess, I will find him, and I will kill him."

Oh
my God!

"Adam --
," I whispered.

“No, Mia, I will not let his shit touch you, so don’t even
try to down play how serious it is,” he ordered, his tone unwavering.

I frowned,
suddenly feeling uncomfortable having this conversation in my current attire - a towel. “Adam, I’m nearly naked.”

“
Yeah, Baby, I know. Just how I like you.”

“
You’re too much,” I whispered. “Couldn’t you have waited to lay all this out until after I took a shower and was dressed?”

“N
ope. You were thinkin’ bad shit, so I needed to address it all now. And clothes aren’t body armor. They won’t protect you from me.”

“But you don’t live in my head,
” I snapped. “You have no idea what I was thinking.”