32. Hailey

THIRTY-TWO

I peeked at my phone for what had to have been the fifteenth time since Cody had said he'd be back by nine.

This was exactly what I got, wasn't it? Giving in the way I had?

A needy obsession that left me antsy and in a toil of nerves. Wondering where he was. If he was okay. If I'd been a fool and believed something in him that I shouldn't have when there'd been so much proof that he wasn't the type of guy who was going to stick around.

I deserved it, didn't I? Deserved it for casting the type of betrayal I had last night. The same as I'd done last Saturday when I'd begged him to touch me. The one thing I'd sworn I'd never do.

But it felt like he would.

Stick.

Become a piece of the molding.

A brick that perfectly fit even when I wasn't supposed to allow him to.

I tried to act as if I wasn't a deranged mess where I lounged on the couch watching an old episode of The Voice with Lolly.

She had her own unhealthy obsession with Blake Shelton.

"Look at that man." She tsked like it was a shame. "If I were only forty years younger…I looked just as good as that Gwen back in the day. And I sure can sing, too."

I held back a chuckle. "I'm sure you would have gotten on that stage and completely stolen the show."

I took another furtive peek at my phone, frowning when the last text I'd sent him remained unread.

Me

You okay?

"Don't pretend like I don't know you keep looking at that thing on your lap or that I don't feel that you're tied up in stitches."

My head jerked upright to find Lolly peering at me from her side of the couch, her expression knowing.

I blew out a sigh. "He just…said he'd be back by nine. That was almost half an hour ago."

Okay, fifteen minutes.

He wasn't even that late, and I was already spinning circles.

"I'm sure he knows how to take care of himself."

I flinched. Is that what I was worried about? That he was taking care of himself?

"There you go, twisting yourself up even farther. You don't watch out, you're going to wind yourself so tight you're going to squeeze the life out of the roots that have just sprung." She said it like she'd known exactly what I'd been thinking.

I rubbed my finger at the corner of my eye to try to ease some of the tension. "I know. It's stupid. I either need to trust him or not, but this whole thing is brand new, and that's what we need to be about—building trust between each other—and he's already taking a chink out of mine."

Guilt flailed in my conscience. The hypocrisy of what I was keeping from him. But it was too soon. Too early. Too dangerous. If he knew, it would shackle him. Make him an accomplice of what I was hiding. I couldn't do that. Not when I still hadn't figured out how I was going to handle this.

"You should probably give a person the benefit of the doubt before you go jumping to conclusions and thinking the worst of them."

That would be all fine and dandy if people didn't typically default to the worst.

Maybe Pruitt had ruined me in some way, made me cynical and suspicious, because I sure as hell hated what I was stewing in right then.

This unease that grew and toiled in the pit of my stomach with each second that passed. A sense that left me off-kilter.

Worried and dripping with dread.

I guessed I'd rather think something bad of him rather than think that something bad might have happened to him. Because there was a speck of alarm that stewed in the periphery. A warning that flared.

I nearly bolted off the couch when headlights finally cut through the night and lit up behind the front windows.

Relief heaved from my lungs, and Lolly chuckled a low sound as she pushed from the couch. She turned and set her hand on my cheek.

Her gaze went soft and sincere. "Demand respect from him, Hailey, always, but keep your heart open. I know that jerk did a number on you, and I don't want you missing out on something great because you're scared of a repeat."

"I think I'm scared of everything right now, Lolly."

Her thumb traced over the apple of my cheek.

Warmth spread with the same love and care she'd covered me with over the years.

The way she'd always been there for me. Taking care of me like a mother, filling the spaces that could have remained hollow and turned bitter, but instead, she'd turned them into beautiful memories.

"You're fighting, though, and that's the one thing that matters," she said. "Fight against the chains. Fight against what's cruel and wrong. Just don't fight against the things that might bring you joy."

Setting my hand over hers, I leaned into her touch. "Thank you. For everything. I don't know where I'd be right now without you."

Her grayed eyes swam. "You'd be just fine, that's where, but I sure am glad I get to be here to experience all of this with you."

The lights cut out from the front, and she sent me a slow grin. "I think that's my cue. I'll be in my room if you need me, though that man seems to have things handled."

I shook my head behind her as she shuffled for the hall, my heart aching and full, and I whispered, "Goodnight, Lolly. I love you."

"I love you more, sweet child."

Once she disappeared into her room, I stood from the couch, far too eager to see the man who'd only been gone for a couple hours.

I slowly edged to the front door when it seemed to be taking him far more time to come inside than it should have.

Tendrils of that worry spread, vines that slithered across the floor to wrap around my ankles and curl up my legs.

I hesitated for a few seconds before I gathered my courage and told myself to suck it up because I was being ridiculous.

Unlocking the door, I slowly opened it.

The lamp that hung on the wall sent a yellowed glow over the porch, and I frowned when I found Cody sitting on the white wicker loveseat that sat against the exterior wall on the right.

He was leaned far forward with his head drooped between his shoulders.

"Cody?" I whispered it.

Anxiety bottled my senses.

Something sticky that slicked over my skin in a flash of awareness.

Something wasn't right.

I could feel it.

Taste it.

He lifted his head.

A gasp ripped up my throat.

Blood was smeared across his face, streaked where it looked like he'd used his shirt to try to wipe the evidence away. No chance of that since it was dried and caked and matted in his hair.

Golden eyes burned in the night, so wide, filled with rage and hate.

"Oh my God." The shock finally wore off enough that I jumped into action. I rushed across the porch and dropped to my knees in front of him. "Who did this?"

Frantic, I searched for injuries, eyes racing, my heart manic because I already knew.

I already knew who'd done this.

I'd dragged him into it.

Brought danger to his feet.

"Cody," I whimpered.

Agony whipped through my spirit and cast me into a sea of torment.

"It looks worse than it is, darlin'. I just didn't want to go storming in the house looking like death if Lolly and Maddie were still awake."

He had a gaping cut on his right upper cheek and that side was beginning to swell. But it looked like most of the blood had come from a wound at the side of his head where it still trickled from his hairline.

"I'm so sorry." I croaked it. "I'm so sorry."

"Shh…" Cody reached out and took me by the jaw. Softly. Tenderly. Though I could feel the aggression that ticked through his muscles. "It's okay. It's not your fault."

"You know that it is. Pruitt…" I choked over the vileness of his name.

Cody let his hand drift down to the side of my neck. He held me there. His eyes flaming and alive.

"Pruitt is a gutless fuckin' coward. Sneaking up on me from behind and catching me unaware. But you can be sure that's not going to happen again."

"Because you're going to stay away from me." The ball of razors in my throat was so big it was a wonder I could even speak. The pain in my heart too great.

I'd known better, hadn't I?

The risk I was running?

He cracked a grin. So sweet where the rest of his face was covered in blood. With the evidence of my foolishness. Misery squeezed my chest.

"The one thing you can count on, Hailey? It's that I'm not going anywhere."

"Cody, I can't let you?—"

He cut me off with a kiss. A hard press of his closed lips.

I could taste the copper tinge of his blood, and I inhaled it, inhaled him.

He held me that way for the longest time before he finally edged back, his thumbs back to brushing comfort along both sides of my jaw. "Whatever you're trying to keep me out of, there's no use in it, because I'm already there."

"Cody." My voice was a breath.

Affection and fear.

Devotion deepened his expression, the masculine lines of his face as inflexible as stone.

"I'm not going anywhere, and I promise you that I'm not going to let that asshole get to you. I wasn't sure what we were dealing with before, but now I know."

He didn't though.

He didn't know the despicable depths.

On shaky knees, I pushed to standing and stretched out my hand. "Come inside. We need to get you cleaned up."

Cody didn't argue.

He stood.

Towering.

Menacing.

Protecting.

I could feel the haven of it as he loomed over me, and I turned and began to lead him inside. He followed behind, his boots thudding on the wooden porch, the race of his heart bashing against my spirit.

I slipped through the door, and he clicked it shut behind us, his action pointed as he turned the locks. Then we quietly moved through the house and into the bathroom within my bedroom.

"Sit." I angled him for the toilet.

He somehow managed a smirk. "Bossy."

Exasperated, I rolled my eyes, every molecule in my body haggard with the knowledge of what had happened. "You seem set on taking care of me. I think it's only fair if I take care of you."

"This isn't a tit-for-tat thing, Hailey. You don't owe me anything."

I reached into the long cupboard beside the sink, pulled out a washcloth, and ran it under hot water. Then I edged back in his direction, the air heavy with implication. With this connection that crackled.

Both soothing and inciting.

My lungs filled with it, almost to the point of pain, like I might burst apart looking at him where he'd been battered because of me.

I gently reached out and pressed the cloth to the wound at the side of his head.

"Isn't it, though?" My words were so quiet they barely broke above the hum that wisped through the small room. "Isn't that what this is, Cody? Giving and taking? Receiving and sharing?"

A big hand clamped down on my hip, and he tipped his marred face up to mine.

I wanted to weep.

Wanted to hold the power to wipe it all away.

"You don't get it, Hailey. Getting to be in your space is enough reward for me. Getting to stand for you is a prize. A fucking honor."

Hesitating, his gaze dropped away for a beat, his expression filled with an old, old grief when he looked back at me.

"I haven't always been the best man, Hailey. I've made bigger mistakes than you could know. I've always known I didn't deserve happiness. Not the true kind, at least. But I'd had this sense coming for a long, long time that maybe…maybe I was meant for something different. For something more. And now I know I was meant for this."

My brow furrowed. "We aren't a moral obligation."

"No, you're not, Hailey." He gathered up my free hand and splayed my palm over where the tattoo was seated in the middle of his chest. "I think you're my heart's obligation."

I blinked, trying to process through what he was saying.

Part of me wanted to dive into the safety of it. Get lost in this incredibly kind man who seemed ready to surrender it all.

The other part urged me to run.

Terrified that falling into it would only be asking for more trouble.

Everything at risk. On the line.

It was so much and so soon, and I knew he wanted to be there for us, but I didn't think he had the first clue of what that really was going to mean.

Hell, neither did I. There was no certainty of what we'd be facing.

I'd been hoping that Pruitt was here to play the victim. Going to my father and acting the good guy when he was nothing but a villain.

Deranged.

Drunk on power and money.

But I couldn't rest in the hope of that any longer.

And I didn't know how to fix it. Where to go from here. I'd been set on facing this head-on, but I wasn't sure if I was strong enough.

Brave enough.

I wanted to be.

I wanted to stand like Cody and claim the one thing that my heart was aching for.

Because I did feel it. I'd felt the power that had pulled between us since the first time I'd turned to find him standing in the moving truck. Had felt it all those years ago, even though I'd buried it in a grave of sorrow and shame and remorse.

I pulled my hand away from where he had it pinned to the raging at his chest, and I started dabbing at the wounds on his face again, gently cleaning the blood away, my heart cracking further when I forced myself to whisper, "I'm wondering if maybe I should take Maddie away from here. Someplace where Pruitt is not."

I might as well have been dragging a dull blade across my flesh as I said it.

Tormented at the thought of walking away from here.

Walking away from him.

Cody had me pinned against the wall so fast I didn't even realize what had happened.

A raging fortress that towered over me.

Eclipsing reason and sight.

Big hands gripped me by both sides of the face, and he leaned down, his voice near to a growl. "You want to run, Hailey? Then I'll run with you. You want to fight? Then I'll fight for you. But what I'm not willing to do is let you go. Not when you're doing it out of fear."

"I've been afraid for years, Cody. For years. And now?—"

"And now you have me."

He swooped down and captured my mouth, stealing the terror from my lungs. Swallowing it as he kissed me deeper, those hands on my face holding me firm and sure.

His tongue stroked over mine.

A demand.

An oath.

Lightheadedness swept through my head, and my knees went weak.

I was overwhelmed.

Taken.

Destitute.

Found.

"You're hurt," I warned between the necessity of his kiss.

"Don't care," he muttered as he gripped me by the back of the neck to control the angle.

There was nothing I could do. No way to resist. No way to stop this.

I dropped the washcloth to the floor and held onto his wrists, silently begging him to hold me up.

Which was such bullshit when he was the one who'd suffered because of me.

He'd taken the brunt.

And here he was, this man who I'd once thought so selfish who was pouring every ounce of who he was into me.

Beauty and light and belief.

Offering it.

Giving it.

Energy lashed, and that connection pulsed and pulled, seeking a way out from the fractured places inside me.

Ribbons that weaved through the cracks and wound within.

Filling the cavities and depressions with a paradigm unlike any I'd ever known.

"Fuck, Hailey. I think I forget how to breathe without you," he rumbled between the frenzy.

His lips passion.

His touch devotion.

His tongue greed.

I was so close to falling over the edge. So close to this heart sitting fully in the palms of his massive hands.

Hands that slipped down my back until he was taking me by the backside and dragging me against the solid planes of his body.

Flames erupted at the contact, and I gasped.

Cody only kissed me deeper.

Harder.

Possessive in his consuming.

He pulled me from the wall and walked me backward out of the bathroom. He peeled my shirt over my head as we went, and I did the same, my fingers racing up his abdomen, his chest, careful as I worked the ruined fabric over his head.

He didn't wince, he only groaned as he urged me farther into my room.

He jerked at the buttons of my jeans, then he was shoving them down. I was quick to work the rest of the way out of them, kicking them off my ankles as I tugged at his fly.

He stepped away long enough to wind out of them, then he was pushing me back onto the bed, gone for the flash of a second as he grabbed a condom from the drawer before a second later he was climbing over me.

Cody Cooper was normally the brightest light. Warmth. The sun.

Tonight, he was a storm.

Shadows and desperation.

A frenzy as he wound himself between my thighs.

No hesitation before he drove into me.

Shock ripped from me on a needy moan, and my back arched from the bed as my nails sank into his shoulders.

A fevered grunt rolled up his thick throat as he seated himself deep.

The man so big my nails raked across his flesh as I struggled to adjust to him all over again.

In an instant, he began to work me.

There was no playfulness to it the way there'd been last night.

This was dire.

This was need.

This was a confession.

One arm fully curled around me to hold me against him as he pumped and stroked and fucked. The other hand was pressed to the mattress to hold us up.

He rocked in frantic thrusts.

Intense and extreme.

I lifted my hips to meet him, thrust after brutal thrust.

Bursts of pleasure sparked in my body and projected from my mouth.

He swallowed them with impassioned kisses.

With his need that I could feel swill around us. Rising from the depths of an unfathomable sea. Sinking down from the darkest heavens.

All around.

Everywhere.

No walls.

No boundaries.

I clawed at his back while he took me as if I were his to take.

Forever.

Branded.

Our spirits melded and our hearts thrashed and the energy that had bound us from the beginning wrapped us in steel threads.

Those shocks of pleasure grew and built, spreading out to leach into every surface of who I was.

Cody angled just right, and his mouth went to my ear, his words gruff and low. "You're mine, Hailey Wagner."

I came apart at the command because that's exactly what it felt like.

A command.

A claim.

A reckoning.

Cody buried a roar in my neck, his body pulsing and vibrating as he came.

Our orgasms rushed through us.

Liquid flames.

An inferno where we were trapped.

A flashfire where we were both consumed.

Burned beyond recognition.

Incinerated.

Ash.

We floated there, in the rubble of who we once had been, in the darkness as we clung to each other.

I didn't know how much time had passed, but Cody had me fully wrapped in his arms, breathing me in, our hearts thundering against the other.

Finally, he pulled away so he could look down at me, and I stared up through the dimness at his marred, beautiful face.

He ran the pad of his thumb along the edge of my cheek. "I mean it, Hailey. I'm here, standing for you. No matter what, I won't walk away."

Reaching out a trembling hand, I scratched my fingers through his beard and whispered, "I trust you."