Sarah Mine (8 page)

“Liar.”

I lay down beside her. “No way,” I said, kissing her shoulder. “I like knowing that even now you’re getting all tingly and wet for me.” Her snort made me smile. “Five bucks says you are.” My hand glided over her ass and she shifted her leg to give me access. Her eyes closed as her mouth parted on a sigh when I found that she was wet for me. “Tingly, Sarah?”

She nodded.

“Roll over.” I leaned down, kissing her when she was right side up. Our tongues muffled her moans as she shifted, hips rolling in time to my caresses. There was something a little addicting in how she responded to me. Even that first night when she had been tipsy on her first beer and nervous about what was going on, she was right there with me. When I eased a finger into her, she cried out, arching up as she covered my hand with hers. Fuck, that was hot.

I knew exactly when she found what she was looking for because her slick walls squeezed on my fingers as she came with another cry. “So sexy,” I said as I kissed down her arched neck, her fingers bumping mine. She reached up with her other hand and grabbed onto the pillow, as if that was the only thing holding her to the ground. With ease, she took a second finger, riding me as I found her swollen nipple waiting for me.

I throbbed to be back inside that oh-so-greedy, oh-so-generous body. Abandoning her breast, I ran my cheek down her stomach, feeling the muscles tightening and pulling with each needy roll of her hips. “Move it,” I said, brushing her fingers. I smiled when she screamed, my tongue sliding over her. One more lick had her arching hard, squeezing my fingers and spilling over me.

“Oh so sexy,” I said, sliding my fingers free.

Get inside her now.

It was my only thought as I brought her to orgasm again. “Hill.” A hand pressed on my shoulder. Down? Up? I had a feeling she had no idea. Grinning, I looked up at her. And lost my breath. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes closed though her lashes were fluttering. I grabbed her hand and slid it back where it had been. Rolling away from her, I grabbed my camera, then zoomed in on her face.

I waited, watching her through the viewfinder, her soft cries sliding over my skin like a touch. Not yet. Not yet. “Sarah.”

“Don’t you dare,” she moaned.

Grinning, I shifted the shot and took it of her fingers. They flexed as her back bowed. Returning to her face, I caught the sensual image of her orgasm. I slid over her, unable to resist her anymore. As if I ever had.

“I hate you,” she whispered as she lifted her head to kiss me. Slick fingers found me and I groaned as she stroked. “I hate you so much.”

“No, you don’t,” I murmured as I let her guide me in. “Oh, no you don’t.”

“No,” she moaned, her legs wrapping around my hips and she met my thrusts. “I really don’t. Come inside me, Hill.”

“Look at me when I do.”

Her eyes opened and I stared into them as I did exactly as the lady requested. It was the least I could do.

Sarah

“Can I show you something?” I didn’t look up from my sketchpad. What was I doing? There had always been fences with Hill. Places neither of us dared to go. I half expected to wake up and find him gone again. But he was still there, sprawled on my couch as he read a book, his jeans open at the waist.

Sexy man.

“Now?”

Frowning, I contemplated the question. If not now then it would be never. Nodding, I finally met his gaze. “Now.” With a loud exhale, I set down my pad and pen, then stood up. The rubbing of his jeans over the couch cushions seemed loud to me as I walked down the hall, Hill following. “You showed me yours,” I said as I gripped the doorknob. “This is mine.”

Pushing the door open to the studio was one of the hardest things I had ever done. Because this was it. Jax was right. I needed to tell Hill what had happened because someone would tell him. The hell if I wanted Brandi to tell him out of spite.

It wasn’t the fanciest studio, but then I wasn’t the fanciest girl. Closing the door, I leaned against it as Hill gave the room a thorough look over.

Then he began to walk around. There were a few projects on the go because a few people I had met in rehab and I were putting together a show. Alistair Holt, who had once been pretty big in the Canadian art scene with his photography, had decided that it was time to return to what he saw as his slippery slope downward and had contacted me and the others about doing a show in Vancouver, centered around our addictions.

It was an opportunity of a lifetime and it terrified me. I was a bartender in a town of seven hundred people. No one knew. Not even Jax. “Don’t look at that one yet!” I held out my hand, stopping him when he approached a long ream of paper on the floor. He had been quiet since he had walked in. “I need to…” I rubbed a hand over my heart, my stomach churning with fear and nerves.

He ignored me and crouched down, studying the drawing. He would know the table. It had been the coffee table in my old, shitty apartment. The paper was as long as the table had been. I knew what he would see. Inked renditions of empty pill containers, a tipped over vodka bottle with a little liquid still in the bottom. And an alternating pattern on the table. Pill, shot glass, pill, shot glass. There was a half empty wine glass and a baby’s soother on the table. Two shot glasses were empty, two pills were gone.

He walked his fingers over the combination I had taken that night. His finger stopped over the empty spot. Slowly, he tapped it, then looked at me over his shoulder.

“Three years, one month, and three weeks ago,” I said softly, “I took a lethal combination of vodka and ecstasy that sent me into a coma. By the time the air ambulance arrived, I had gone into cardiac arrest.”

Hill shifted his finger and tapped the soother. He said nothing, just looked at me. Nodding, I gazed up at the ceiling. The white ceiling was easier to talk to than those grey eyes. “He’s three. Lives with his dad. I’m pretty sure Donovan hasn’t told him that when he was five weeks old, his mother sat on the floor of her crappy apartment while a cheap ass band played below and she overdosed right in front of him.” Tears fell down my cheeks as I stared at the popcorn pattern on the ceiling. “Because who wants to know that, right? Who wants to know that their mother is so broken and dead on the inside that she’d rather die when she’s supposed to love him and look after him? So I gave him to the one person who did love him and would look after him. Someone not fucked in the head, someone not broken, someone not afraid to live for him.”

Hill stood up and stared at me. I wished he’d say something. Anything. “I hated that they brought me back. Hated them all. I hated Donovan sitting beside my bed,” my jaw began to hurt as I looked back at the ceiling. “I hated Billy, that’s his name, for crying so loud that someone heard him down in the bar so they came investigating and found me. I hated the doctors. I hated them all because I just wanted it to stop, so I was planning what I’d do next when Jax appeared.

“He didn’t leave when I told him to. He didn’t leave when I screamed at him. He sat in that goddamn chair, his stupid pen always scratching over paper. “Sarah mine,” he said, “it’s been a shitty haul for you but suck it up, darlin’. This pity party has gone on long enough. You
will
get clean and sober. It
will
suck. But by God you will not let them win this way.” Then he slapped a piece of paper in front of me that said he would pay for my rehab and give me a down payment on a house so I was not in that apartment. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe because my own family never came to see me. I don’t know. It was hell. It took a long time to stop hating everyone because I was alive. Then I stopped hating everyone. I began to draw again. I hadn’t for years. One day I had a visitor at rehab and it was Jax. Told me he found what I needed and showed me pictures of my house….my home. That’s what he called it. Sarah’s home. I couldn’t go back to that apartment, Hill. I couldn’t go back,” I whispered as I finally looked at him. He was staring at the floor, at the drawing.

“I saw you four years ago.”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Five weeks old you said?”

I nodded and he nodded too.

“Hey, Hill,” he said without looking up from my sketch, “I’m pregnant.” Finally he looked at me. “That would’ve been nice to know, Sarah. That would’ve been really fucking nice to know. But this…Jax. Jax knew.”

Shit. I nodded again as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“My Jax?” He didn’t see me nod. A bitter laugh escaped and made my stomach hurt. “That asshole. Asking me if I knew why you got clean, acting surprised when I said you were sober. That asshole knew. All along. Why am I just finding out now, Sarah?”

“I–”

“As opposed to three years, one month, and three weeks ago!” He yelled it out as he faced me. “What the fuck, Sarah?”

I swallowed and fought the urge to go to him. “Would you have come?”

“Fuck. You.”

“Would you have come, William? Would you?” I was shouting too, fear that telling him was a bad idea. “Be honest. Right now. Right here. In my room full of truths, would you have come if someone had said I had overdosed? Because between the bouts of all our fucking, there wasn’t a lot of wondering about me. Even when you were here it was fuck Sarah, pretend she doesn’t exist. Fuck Sarah, walk away. Fuck Sarah, walk away. No thoughts of me, no concerns. Just got an itch, let’s see Sarah. Would you have come, William?”

“Yes,” he shouted. “I always do. You will not lay all our shit on my door, Sarah. Because I’m pretty sure you were in that bed with me. I would have come and that’s why you had Jax keep it a secret. You
died!
Sarah, you fucking died! Had someone called me to tell me you were in pretty bad shape, I’d have hauled my ass out of that jungle to get here.”

My shoulders sagged as I looked at him. “No, Hill. You wouldn’t have. I have to go to work.” Not that I wanted to work. I just wanted to escape.

“No. This is not done. You are not running away. You must think I’m total shit to think that. Yeah, I’m selfish and was shitty to you, but give me some fucking credit, Sarah. You know me. Good, bad, and the asshole, you know me.” He stalked across the room and lowered his face to mine. The storms were alive in his eyes: anger, fear, hurt. All because of me. “You know I would have come back for you. You think about that as you’re pouring alcohol for that fucker who slapped you around. Because I
always
come back for you. Though at this moment I’m kind of asking myself why. Had you died would Jax call me? Or would I have found out knocking on your door a few nights ago? But I guess we’ll never know. Fuck you for that, Sarah. Fuck you right back.”

When my front door slammed behind him, I wondered if I’d ever see him again. As I walked over to the picture, I stared down at it. Jax’s words that I’d underestimated Hill rippled around in my head, chased by the look in his eyes. I had hurt him. Badly.

Just once it would be nice to not fuck up my life. Once.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hill

Overdose.

Lethal combination.

Cardiac arrest.

The words banged around in my head and made my chest tighten. I stopped in the middle of her lawn, hands braced on my knees to catch my breath. I felt all wobbly from Sarah’s words. I had seen her. I had been with her months before her OD. I should’ve seen something in her. Right?

“Breathe.”

I shook my head as Jax appeared beside me, the hand on my neck was more welcome then I’d admit. I was mad at hell at him for keeping this from me, but so thankful I wasn’t alone.

“She overdosed, Jacky.”

“Yes, she did. Breathe, Billy. Breathe.”

I sank down to my knees, gravity winning. “Was it bad? Tell me.”

“They lost her twice. Ten years of hard abuse had taken its toll on Sarah mine’s heart and body.”

Twice? Fuck. I lowered my head, bracing my forearms on her lawn. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“She didn’t want me to.”

“You should’ve called me anyway.” I’d have sauntered up to her door and found out from some stranger, or worse her damn sister, that she was dead. Nausea churned in my stomach. “You should’ve told me.”

“I promised her. She was at the end of her rope, Hill. She had nothing left inside her. What do you think it would’ve done to her if I went against my word?”

“I had just seen her. She was… Tell me about the guy.”

A sharp bark came from Jax. “You just learned she died and you want to know about the guy?”

I nodded. I wanted to know about the guy. Was he just another asshole who had used her and left? Like the asshole hyperventilating on her lawn?

“Not from around here. Prince George I think. Had a band. Shitty music. Decided they were going to tour the island, live like rock stars. From what I know, it was a short hook up. A couple of nights. He played at Brandi’s. Helluva shock to both of them when he knocked her up.”

I sat up, breathing a little easier now that I wasn’t imagining her dead on the floor of that shitty apartment. That drawing though…too real. Too real.

“He got points for not vanishing, but it’s not like he was here all the time. He came over for the birth, visited more but I think it was too late.”

My brother knew an awful lot about what had gone down. I could just imagine the mess Sarah’s head had been when she learned she was pregnant. It was easy to bring up the Sarah I had once known. All skin and bones, big brown eyes that were so sad, lost and needy, spirit broken down from every damn person she came into contact with.

“She didn’t tell me. Why didn’t she tell me any of it? The baby. The OD. Fuck, Jax.”

“Take a walk with me. I want to show you something. And I need you to muffle the ego. Would you have come, Hill?”

“Well, fuck you too.” I was damn tired of being the asshole who would’ve left my…what? Would’ve left Sarah in the hospital.

“Not you now. You four years ago.”

“Asshole.” I jammed my hands in my pockets, walking beside Jax.

The me four years ago hadn’t even noticed she was pregnant. I had watched her slide further and further down the rabbit hole with the booze and drugs and I had turned a blind eye, the thought pattern of ‘not my problem’ had grabbed me by the balls early on when the alcohol had gotten pretty noticeable. Even when I had left, I had seen her life snowballing out of control. Hadn’t stopped me from fucking her. Would I, who had ignored every damn warning sign pointing at her head, have come back after turning a blind eye to everything leading up to her OD? I kicked a rock and nodded. “I’d have come back, Jackson,” I said softly. For Sarah, I’d come back.