Trust Me (Rough Love #3) (23 page)

For years and years, I’d known it would end this way.

Still, I said, “I can’t believe he’s dead,” like an idiot. It was more that I couldn’t believe he was
under that dirt
, buried in some box. He was dead, and he wasn’t coming back, and that was why I finally started bawling, because there was
I guess this is the end of us
and then there was fucking death.

Price came to stand beside me, a pillar to steady me as I wept. “You must be happy,” I said bitterly between sobs. “Your rival is gone.”

“Why does it matter?”

He didn’t say it in a mean way, the way I’d sounded. He said it like he was stating a fact. Yes, why did it matter? Price was out of my life the same way Simon was out of my life, with one big difference. Price wasn’t dead, buried under six feet of dirt in a quiet New Jersey cemetery. The idea of Price and death made me clutch at him like he needed saving, like the earth might open up and take him too.

He brushed away my tears as I clung to his elbows, like I had any power to rescue either one of us.

“Just tell me you understand that this isn’t your fault,” he said gruffly, as more tears replaced the ones he wiped away. “That’s the reason I was so stubborn about all this. About his funeral. I should have let you go to the damn thing, but I…” He made a vicious face, staring down at the flowers, all colors, all kinds. “I was right about not letting you help Simon, because he was beyond saving. He would have turned you inside out again, and he’d already hurt you enough. But I was wrong about the funeral. After all those years, everything you suffered, you earned the right to say goodbye.”

“It’s a little late to realize that now.”

“I know. When it comes to you, I always figure things out too late.”

“What does that mean?”

He shook his head, wisely refusing to talk about us. It was too dangerous at the moment, with him apologizing and me in tears. We looked down at the grave instead, and I realized I really had nothing left to say to Simon Baldwin or the dirt that covered him. I’d said goodbye years ago, whether Price believed me or not. As for my guilt in the saga of Simon’s terrible choices, I’d have to find a way to let that go.

I turned back toward the car, drawing our visit to a close.
Goodbye, Simon. Goodbye, Chere’s fucked-up past life.
It was time to move on.

Price opened the door and I slid across the seat, mopping at my eyes. They stung from crying, and I had a headache. I used to deal with pain and discomfort all the time at Price’s hands. I loved that kind of pain, but the pain I brought on myself was unbearable.

He climbed in beside me and shut the door. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to get something to eat?” He studied me in consternation. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”

“I’m fine,” I said too quickly. I wasn’t fine at all. I was lying to him again. Dishonesty. Jealousy. Lack of trust. Those were the things that had doomed our relationship from the start.

“No,” I said instead. “I’m not okay. I haven’t been eating, or sleeping. I’m barely surviving without you. Even now…” I couldn’t admit all the specifics. I couldn’t say how magnificent he seemed to me with his stern, tightly controlled emotions, or how drawn I felt to the pain he held inside. “Even now, I still have feelings for you.”

“Then why are you at the Gramercy?” A glimmer of raw vulnerability flashed in his eyes. “Why aren’t you with me?”

“Because you’re an asshole. Because you wouldn’t let me safeword out of your cage.”

“I wouldn’t let you out because you wouldn’t listen to me. You wouldn’t trust me. You’ve never trusted me.”

“You’ve never proven yourself worthy of my trust!”

My voice sounded loud in the sedan. The driver remained stone-faced, pretending not to hear our tortured conversation. I wished I didn’t have to hear it. My emotional nerve endings felt scraped raw.

“Chere,” he said, reaching to stroke my face. Damn, I was crying again. My eyes were killing me. He was killing me.

“Don’t,” I said, pushing his hand away. “Just don’t.”

“Everything I’ve done to you, all the wrong, bad things…” he murmured sorrowfully. “It was all because I love you. I told you, I don’t know how to love the right way.”

“Then I guess there’s no hope for us.” My voice sounded bitchy, but my soul was bleeding. “I can’t survive like this. My heart can’t take this anymore.”

“Mine can’t either. Something has to change.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes with those words between us.
Something has to change.
But what could we change? He couldn’t turn sweet and genteel. I needed his rough edges, and he wouldn’t be able to pull off the genteel thing anyway. I wanted him to be who he was, and I wanted to be who I was, a surrendered submissive who still needed to fight every now and then.

Were we impossible? Were we hopeless?

“I miss you so much,” I said. “But I don’t know how to live with you.”

“I don’t know how to live with you, either. I don’t know how to find that line between having you and letting you go. Not letting you go from my life, but letting you go enough to let you live your life.” He rubbed his eyes and growled in frustration. “I’m too afraid of losing you. I’ve been looking… Fuck. I’ve been looking so long for love, for acceptance. My parents were absent, my nannies hated me because I was a shit. My grandmother…she died when I was young. The women I dated loved my money, my body, but none of them loved me. None of them accepted me. Only you. And I feel like if I don’t…” His hands clenched in his lap. “I worry if I don’t hold you tightly enough…”

I stared at his whitening knuckles, searching the spaces between his words to find some way to fix us.

“You don’t have to lock me away to make me love you,” I said. “Don’t you understand that? I loved you before. Your passion, your poetry, all of it changed me. God, I’ve loved you for so long.”

“You loved me until I put you in my dungeon.”

I placed a hand over his. “Even then, I loved you. You were the one who fell apart. You were the one who wouldn’t trust me, who came up with all these controlling rules that were more about suspicion and jealousy than keeping me safe.”

He made another frustrated sound. “I thought you liked control and rules.”

“I do. I love them, but I wish they came from a place of love rather than fear.” I studied his profile, his strong, thoughtful brow. “You’re right,” I said softly. “Something has to change. But it’s not you, or me. It’s this constant fear we live with, this fear that our relationship’s going to end.”

“But we did end,” he said. “Many times.”

“Because we’re fuck ups. Because we’re afraid of everything that might go wrong.”

He gave me a sideways look. “I hate being afraid.”

“I hate it too. It’s exhausting. We need to fucking change.”

The car stopped at a light. People bustled through the crosswalk, lugging Saturday shopping bags and shouldering for space. The city was busy, always busy, but inside the car, time seemed suspended. Change was scary, but living without one another was so much scarier. I prayed he was brave enough to change for me, to at least try. I was brave enough. The fighter inside me was stirring to life.

“Can you change?” I prompted. “Can you let the fears go? I know I’ll have to do it, too. But I will, for you.”

He didn’t answer. He stared instead at my hand over his.
Take my hand. Hold my hand. Please, try, for us.

He stirred suddenly, like he was coming out of a trance, then looked at me with his brows drawn together. “For a couple months now, I’ve been designing this bridge. It’s not like anything I’ve done before. It’s simple and spare, because of you. Because you showed me that that could be beautiful.” His eyes burned me with their intensity. “I didn’t think there’d be a way to do it, but I figured it out and showed it to everyone. No one liked it at first, but I kept trying to make them see. I kept trying. I made it work.”

I swallowed past the emotion in my throat. “And did they see?”

“Yes. I told you, there’s always a way.”

I held up a finger. “No,
I
told you there was always a way. Remember? I put that sign in my window.”

“I remember,” he said.

“Because you were fucking up again.”

“I’m pretty sure you were fucking up too.”

He finally laced his fingers through mine, and brought my hand to his lips. They felt warm and firm. How many times had I kissed those lips?

“I know we can work,” he said. “There’s always a way. There has to be a way for us, because it’s important. I’ll change the way I act, to make things better. I’ll adjust.”

His words unsettled me. I knew we needed to work together to fix things, but I didn’t want the essence of Price to go away. I needed his commanding personality, his dominance and requirements. “I don’t want you to change too much,” I said. “I still want you to be you.”

“I’ll still be me, but you need to tell me what
you
need. You’re part of this too.”

“You know what I need. You’ve always known.”

“Jesus,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to communicate with a submissive.”

“But you
know
,” I argued. “You know the good parts of our relationship, and the parts that didn’t work. I want the things that were good. The passion. The sex and drama. The dungeon, and the kisses afterward in your arms. The poetry.”

“The poetry.” He made an impatient gesture. “It’s not enough, for all you do for me.”

“You’re enough for me, just as you are. Well, slightly changed. Minus the fears and jealousy.”

He shook his head and gave a rough laugh. “I can’t believe I’m enough for you.”

“Believe it.”

“My poems don’t even rhyme.”

“Poems don’t have to rhyme to be beautiful.”

Look at what you do for me
, I thought.
You’re so beautiful.

He let out a slow breath. “You know, I only ever wrote poems for you. You’re the only one.”

“I know.”

He was so fucked up, this freakishly handsome, lonely, neglected, rich boy who’d never known love. All his grand bridges and skyscrapers weren’t enough to make him feel worthy of one ghetto-bred ex-hooker.

“I love your poems,” I said, “but I don’t want the taunt of you anymore. The mystery. The distance. I want
you
, Price. Let me in. I’ll be your slave forever, but I need you to be with me too. Do you know what I mean?” I let go of his hand and spread my fingers against his chest. “Be with me. Give me your heart, all of it, without fear and suspicion. I won’t hurt you. I won’t leave you.” I grabbed his face and made him look at me. “I love you.”

He gazed into my eyes and put his hands over mine. “You left me,” he said.

“You left me too, damn it. But we’re going to change. We’re not going to leave each other anymore. We’re going to find a fucking way.”

He stared at me as he squeezed my fingers. “Does that mean you’re coming back to me?”

That was the big question, but it was hardly a question. I was almost sitting in his lap. “Do you want me back?” I asked. “You told me to get out of your fucking life.”

“I was a little upset when I said that. If I ever say that again, just ignore me because I don’t mean it. You belong with me.” He let go of my hands to grab my neck. “Come back to me, starshine. When you’re ready, I want you to come back. We’ll fix everything. We’ll make everything better.”

He put his thumb against my pulse, and I felt it in the beat of my heart.

Beautiful

T
here were tons
of people in the Gramercy Park lobby when Chere and I returned, and more people in the elevator. I wanted all of them gone. Coming back to this hotel—to
that
room—was difficult enough for me. I’d made so many mistakes. But white tulips were a symbol of forgiveness and new beginnings, and Chere was letting me come upstairs.

I stared at her stubborn little chin in the elevator, and her lovely, elegant neck, so perfect to choke or caress. I loved her. I needed her, and she’d agreed to give our relationship another chance. Something had to change, and it would. I’d figure out what I needed to do to make her happy, and come as close as I could to that.
Poems don’t have to rhyme to be beautiful
, she’d said. And love didn’t have to be perfect.

You just had to find a way to make it work.

I followed her down the hall to the room. I wasn’t sure what she wanted. I wasn’t sure if she was ready to come home yet, or if she wanted to talk some more, or if she wanted to fuck. I felt stripped naked from our conversation in the car, and now I was terrified of doing something wrong and causing her to lose hope in us after all.

When she stopped outside the door, I stopped too, and waited. We were like two teenagers after a first date, unsure whether it was okay to kiss. “I haven’t kissed you yet,” I said. “I want to kiss you.”

“You can do that. But first we should go inside.”

She flipped her key over in her palm, then slid it into the door. The lock clicked and she went in, but I stayed where I was. “If you let me in…”

“I know.”

“I’ll do terrible things to you. Rough, uncontrolled things.”

“That’s kind of what I was hoping.”

She stood back and let me through the door, and shut it behind us. We were alone together for the first time in over a week, and I wanted everything, every violent and carnal thing.

No. Wait.
I forced myself to be still. I didn’t want to take her in a frenzy, so it was over before we realized what was happening. I wanted this reunion to be slow and deliberate, so it would last. I wanted to remember everything, and also rediscover everything. My fingers trembled at the waist of her skirt. I wondered if she had panties on, or if she was still following my rules. I jammed my hand down beneath the material and discovered warm, bare skin.

Good girl
, I thought, but the word that came out of my mouth was “Mine.”

“Yes,” she whispered, leaning into me. “I’ve been yours for years now.”

I slipped my hands under her sweater and traced over her ribs and spine. I flicked open her bra, and then I pulled everything off because I needed her naked. So much for going slow. I tugged down her skirt and she kicked it off, along with her shoes. I looked at her for a second, and then I was on her, biting, devouring, kissing every beautiful curve. She pulled at my coat and sweater, and I yanked them off so we could be skin to skin.