Tasting, Finding, Keeping: The Story of Never (39 page)

“Shut up and fuck me,” I whisper with his lower lip tucked between my teeth, lip ring clinking against the enamel. “Now.”

Ty rips off my shirt like an animal in heat, puts his hand on my chest and pushes me back into the wet grass that is quickly becoming mud as the downpour intensifies and sticks our hair to our foreheads and slicks Ty's jeans against his ass.

“I think we need to practice foreplay,” he whispers, droplets of moisture clinging to his body, hugging him tight and slipping down his skin. “I don't want you going behind my back and telling all your fucking sisters that I am a
wham, bam, thank you, ma'am
sort of a guy. Beth already looks at me funny.”

“She looks at you funny because you curse like a sailor and try to sneak smokes in the downstairs bathroom.”

“There's that, too,” Ty says as he retrieves a cigarette from his back pocket along with a lighter. He wiggles the objects at me with a grin. “Going to give you a vicarious postcoital smoke.”

“Postcoital?” I ask him, trying to use my elbows to prop up, so I can raise an eyebrow and give him my signature bitch look. I'm starting to get mad horny, and I'm going to blame him for making me pregnant. “You haven't even fucked me yet.” Ty ignores me, manages somehow to light up in the pouring fucking rain because he's just so friggin' amazing at everything, and then pushes me back into the grass.

“Oh, I'll get there, baby, but it's a process.” I try to remind myself that his mother died today, and he needs to be in control of something, so hell, it might as well be me right now. I relax my muscles, and then gasp as Ty slides two fingers in me, just like that. He pushes aside my underwear and makes himself at home, slipping all the way into his knuckles and hitting my pulsing flesh with his hand as he moves in and out. He starts off wicked fast and then slows, hooking his fingers, so that he's teasing the muscles that clench and squeeze just for him, tightening and releasing, begging him to release whatever it is that he might have inside of me. With his other hand, Ty smokes. He fucking smokes and teases me in more ways than one. Even through the wall of water that cascades from the sky and cuts the clouds up into shards, I can smell tobacco and bad boys, pasts that burn like lava, and the scent of my own desire.

I let him bring me to the edge of my sanity, to the spot where I once thought I would jump from, crash to the rocky floor of my own mind and let myself die there. This time, when my feet slip and my body becomes weightless, I soar.

“The only reason that you're not dead is because of that kiss,” I tell Ty as he rolls off of me and collapses into the mound of white pillows at our backs. I turn towards him, drawing my knees up towards my chest and sliding my hands under my head. I am just this side of sore down there, gently bruised by Ty's thrusts, the pressure of his hips, the strength of his love for me. Each time I adjust myself I get a reminder that he was inside of me and have to smile. “The one that you gave me after you put my shirt back on. I think you actually said
mwah.
I didn't know anybody actually made sound effects for their own kisses.”

“See,” Ty says, chest rising and falling as he tries to recover from the vigorous exercise that he's just undergone. “Disney fucking prince. I told you I was lame.” I reach over and poke at his lip ring, but I do it with affection. After all, Ty just taught me a new position, one that he swears comes from the Kama Sutra, but that I think he really just made up. He smiles, like he senses my thoughts, and turns over, a cigarette magically appearing in his hands. Pretty impressive, considering the fact that he's naked. “Thank your boyfriend for this hotel,” Ty says as he puts the cig in his mouth and kisses me with it dangling from his lips. He's teasing me on purpose, the ass. “This shit is posh.” I don't look around the room to confirm his statement. Despite the fact that we were shirtless and rearing to go when we stumbled in, we both still managed to get quite the shock when we saw the room. Posh was right. Noah had spared no expense.

“Fuck you,” I say softly, but he knows I don't mean it. “Your thick skull just isn't used to down pillows. It's making you testy.”

“Riiight,” Ty says, snapping his teeth together and rolling over to dig through his discarded jeans in search of a lighter. When he returns, the glow of the cigarette illuminates his face in the darkness. He takes a breath, like he's about to say something and then just stops. Silence descends. I fill it first because I know that now is the time to get some of the serious crap out and on the table. We won't be able to do it all at once; Ty and I are not built like that. It will have to come in stages, like Ty's past. Yet another thing we need to discuss.

“I'm sorry that I lied to you,” I tell him and tears come, hot and fresh. I'm glad he can't see them in the dim light. Today is not about me. This is about Ty, and I've already taken up too much of the spotlight. His mother died yesterday and left him with an inheritance of guilt and pain and a hoarded house that used to belong to his beloved grandmother. He has a right to be feeling it, yet now, he's acting like it's no big deal. Do I think he's hiding some of his emotions? Hell yes. Is he ready to go off the deep end? Maybe not. Ty is stronger than me. Where it took me weeks to recover, I can only guess that he will be okay in a few days.

“It was an omission of truth,” he says, trying to make me feel better. “And besides, I was the fuckwad that stopped you in your moment of courage.” He pauses. “And I'm sorry, too.” Ty turns over and finally sees the tears on my face. With a deep, throaty chuckle he reaches out and brushes his fingertips along my wet cheeks. “Are you okay, baby?” he asks me, voice too soft to be real. It's at odds with his dark hair and eyes, his tattoos, his piercings. He should be thanking me and getting up, grabbing his clothes and leaving. That's what they've always done to me. Men. But not Ty. Somehow, in that bar way back when, I found one of a handful of real people, the ones from legend who care about others and put their needs before their own. How lucky am I?

I decide to tell Ty the truth, even if it hurts him because I cannot lie again. Or omit the truth. Whatever.

“I don't want to be pregnant,” I say and my stomach flip-flops as if in protest. “I'm afraid. I don't know how to be a mom, Ty. You don't know how to be a dad. We have no money. We – ” Ty shushes me with a kiss, putting his hands on either side of my face. Cigarette ash hits the perfect pillows beneath us.

“Never, being a mom means putting someone else's needs before your own. You can do that, I know you can. You've done it for me.” Already, I'm shaking my head.

“When?” I ask as I delve into the depths of Ty's dark eyes and look for truth in his statement. I feel like I've been a selfish bitch from day one.

“By coming here with me for one,” Ty tells me. “For leaving your sisters and coming halfway across the country to a big, steaming pile of shit.”

“But … ” I try to say something, but I'm not sure what words need to cross my lips. I had to be here with Ty. I just had to. There was no real debate, no animosity, just this simple need to stand by his side. Is that what it's like to be a mother? Is it much the same as being a sister? Love is love, after all. The results of it may have different manifestations and different outcomes, but isn't it all the same?

“To be a good parent,” Ty says, and I wonder where he's getting this from because he seems pretty damn sure of himself. “You have to believe in your kids. You have to trust them and they have to trust you, and the rest of the world be damned, you have to stand up for them no matter. If they fuck up, you have to hold their hand and show them that it's okay, show them how to do it right. And the last bit, the most important one is real easy. Nev, when I said you had the greatest capacity to love of any human being I have ever met, I meant that shit. You and your sisters are a sight for sore friggin' eyes, a dot of color in a world of black and gray. You already have the perfect ingredients inside of you to be a good mother. I see it in your face when you hold Darla, when you laugh with Jade, when you kiss me. You have to fucking love them, Nev. That's all there really is to it.”

Ty rolls back over and flicks his cigarette onto the nightstand. There are no ashtrays in a room as fine as this.

“How do you know?” I ask him because what he says sounds easy and yet, my mother couldn't do it. His mother couldn't do it. There has to be something else, something that makes it hard. Besides, how can Ty possibly know? How, how, how?

“Because when you've been with someone as selfish and ignorant as my mother, it's easy to find her complete opposite in a crowd.” My own words flash through my mind, a silent reminder of one of the simple truths I've always known.
If you live your whole life in the darkness, then you don't have any trouble recognizing the light.
I scoot forward a bit, so that I can lay my head on Ty's chest and revel in the idea that I have the other half of my soul lying right next to me, telling me that things are going to be okay, loving me back with every fiber of his being. “What else?” he asks, and his muscles contract as he leans over the bed and gets another cigarette. My mouth waters, but I'm craving the secondhand smoke, so I let him have it. “I can feel your stress,” he tells me. “Let it all out.”

“This is about you,” I say, determined to get him to talk about his feelings. He's having them, even if he won't admit it.

“Fuck that,” Ty says as his bracelets clink and he blows out a puff of smoke that hangs in the stagnant air like a cloud. “I'm your right hand right now, your support beam. Nev, you have my baby on board.” Ty turns on his side again, dislodging my head but putting his nose so close to mine that I can't complain because I can see his face clear as day, and he looks pretty happy about what he's just said. Proud maybe, too.

“Think you're some kind of stud or something?” I ask and forget all about practical shit until I really just want to flick him in the balls and see how high pitched he can scream. Ty raises both eyebrows at me and props his head up on a hand. His look is all male arrogance and sex – half sexy and half annoying as fuck.

“You said you fucked more than forty guys?”

“Don't want to talk about this right now.”

“And didn't use protection, right?”

“I was on the pill.”

“And on our what, our second fuck, you got pregnant?”

“You're an ass.” Ty laughs and the sound is joyous enough that I have to fight back a smile.

“I got you pregnant,” he says, like he just can't say it enough.

“Stop.”

“I marked you. You're mine. I like that. I like knowing that my baby is growing inside of you, that a piece of me will always be tied with a piece of you.”

“If that's true then you owe me,” I say getting brief but terrifying glimpses of me, legs spread, on a table surrounded by doctors with a freaking
person
screaming from between my thighs. I feel sick. “God,” I groan as I push away from Ty and stumble to the bathroom. As usual, he's right behind me, right there by my side, strong and immovable, a force to be fucking reckoned with.

“I agree,” he says as he brushes hair from my forehead. “And I concede. Whatever it is that you want, I'll give it to you.”

“I want you,” I gasp, sucking in mouthful after mouthful of breath as I fight back nausea. I have the weirdest urge, bent over that toilet like an invalid. Either I just have odd taste buds or the cravings have already started. “To get me a fucking strawberry shake.”

The next morning when I wake up, I am no longer sweetly sore but painfully sore, and I have to slap Ty hard on the arm to feel better about it. At least, to his credit, the man has breakfast waiting for me on the table that overlooks the city, perched high on a balcony I would never venture onto if it weren't for Ty. That's not to say that I'm afraid of heights but rather that before all of this happened, all of this stuff with Tyson McCabe, I craved them. I had always wanted to see what it would feel like to throw myself off, to be weightless for just a single moment in time. That's not to say that I was suicidal – or maybe I was and just didn't know it – but really, I wanted to see what it would be like to take the weight off my shoulders for awhile. With Ty here, I feel like he's sharing the burden with me and that, while the load of life's problems and insecurities will never be fully lifted, now it's not such a big deal because he's standing beside me.

“Thanks for the shake,” I say, grabbing my second dose of strawberry. The first I didn't even get to finish because Ty shoved me up against a wall, pressed my cheek to the gold and brown wallpaper and fucked the shit out of me. It was the second best fuck of my life, topped only by the first time we made love. I don't think that one will ever lose it's number one spot, though I sure would like to see Ty try.

“Thanks for the bake,” he says and when I stare at him with a raised eyebrow, he rushes to explain. “You know, shake and bake?” I keep staring. “Okay, not fucking funny,” he says as he blows air out from between his teeth. He's dressed to kill today, so it really doesn't matter how lame his jokes are. He's got on this long sleeved shirt which shouldn't be sexy because it covers the muscles in his arms but somehow is anyway because he wears bracelets over the top of it, and the butterflies peek out at me from the end of the sleeve, tantalizingly reclusive. Besides, the fabric is tight and clings to him, outlining his pecs and his belly muscles. He's paired it with baggy jeans that are holier-than-thou, tucked into his big, black combat boots.

I sit in his lap because frankly, there is nowhere else I'd rather be, and lean my head against his. He doesn't know it, but last night, I heard him get up and stand on this balcony. He didn't cry, but he mourned. I could feel his melancholy energy like a storm, so I cried for him. Maybe I'm just hormonal, but to me, it seemed as if his pain was my pain. My poor Ty.

I sip the shake and notice that there's a map on the table, marked up with red lines and little dots.

“S'that?” I mumble around my red straw. Ty cringes which is weird enough and stuffs a miniature muffin into his mouth. Continental breakfast anyone? They have the weirdest shit.

“It's our tour for the day,” Ty tells me and his voice is falsely cheerful like he wants to be happy but can't. I wonder what happened between now and last night.

“Tour?”

“The time line of my past,” he says and then pauses. “Or part of it anyway. There's some baggage back in California, but I figure if we start with this then you'll know and then I can just forget it all and move on.”

“I don't understand.”

“Never, I was a whore. A fucking whore. A prostitute. I fucked people for money. I did it because I didn't know what else to do. I let weakness and pain overwhelm me. I need you to see where I'm from.”

“Just tell me about it,” I say. I don't want to visit the places that Ty frequented, run into people he might have slept with. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. Or maybe that's just Ty or Never Junior down there. “I don't want to see.”

“Maybe not,” he tells me. “But I need you to.” I try to change the subject.

“What about your mother's house?” I ask. Ty pretty much flat-out said we could live there, go to school, raise our kid. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, the place is a festering shit hole of crap. Worse than the actual garbage are the memories that Ty is going to have dredged up by the whole process. What if we find things in there? Things that he doesn't want to see? That he isn't ready to see?

“We'll clean it out, together,” he tells me, voice strong and confident, like he's made up his mind and there is no going back. It's a false sense of security that could crumble at any moment. I need to be the mortar that holds it all together. “And if it's liveable,” he says and then chokes on the word. That house has a lot of bad memories in it. I wonder if that's such a wise idea. “We move in. If not, we sell the property as is, retreat back to Cali and make a go of it.”

“Can you live there?” I ask him. “Can you honestly tell me that the ghosts of your past won't haunt you?”

“They might,” he says, but I can tell he's already thought about it. “But I'm willing to bet my sanity on the fact that you and me, we could handle it. It's a
house,
Never. If my mom hasn't fully fucked it, then it's a historical freaking landmark, an heirloom that my grandmother left us, so that we'd have a fighting chance in this world. It'll be ours, just ours, free and fucking clear. We can go to school and raise our kid without having rent as a fucking overhead.” He pauses here for dramatic effect. “And I can even buy you
Baby Einstein
episodes or some shit.” I laugh, but he isn't done. Ty stands up, taking me with him and leans me up against the railing, not on it per se because I can feel that he isn't willing to risk me thirty stories up. He lets me feel the wind in my hair and his warm breath on my neck. “Or maybe some sexy lingerie to wear when you're big and pregnant?” I slap him lightly. “No? How about some classical music to make sure the brat's smart?”

“Ty,” I say, but I laugh because I can't help it. Ty makes me want to laugh. “You're an asshole,” I tell him and he nods like this is common knowledge.

“That's true,” he says. “But I'm an asshole that's engaged to you, bound and determined to stick by your side forever. You are pretty much stuck with me whether you like it or not, babe.”

“I like it,” I reassure him.

“Then come with me and let me show you my dark side.”

“I've already seen it,” I whisper, my voice suddenly hoarse.

“No,” he tells me. “You haven't. And I need you to.” Here he pauses and plays his sympathy card. I pretend that it's the only one he's got, but in reality, he has as many as he needs. “Please, Nev. I can't confront my mom, and I sure as fuck can't confront that douche bag of a husband she dragged out of the gutter, not until I get to hell anyway, but I can confront the streets and the life that nearly killed me. Tell me you'll come with. If you don't, I'm afraid I'll get stuck again.” Even though Ty's already got my heartstrings wrapped around his fingers, he tugs on them with his eyes, giving me this look that is so fucking puppy dogs and kitty cats sappy that I have no choice but to relent.

“Okay,” I say. “But in exchange, I want a tattoo.”

“No.” Ty says that single word with such force that we both cringe. And then I get pissy because I'm not going to play pregnant bitch to his masculine stud.

“You gonna stop me?” I ask as I push away from him and drop to the cement floor beneath our feet. Ty looks at me defiantly.

“Remember how I said I wasn't into tying chicks up?”

“You're a weirdo,” I begin, but he isn't done.

“I am now. If you try to get a tat, I will tie you up and pleasure you fiercely for days. Tattoos are bad news for babies, Nev. How about after it's born? I'll save some fuck money for you.” I don't tell Ty that his threat is actually kind of tempting. Instead, I cross my arms defiantly and glare. After all, I am Never Ross and that's what I do. I am an ornery bitch with a dirty past and a whole shit ton of rage just waiting to break loose.

“Not good enough,” I say as I cross my arms over my chest and hear the distinct ringing of my phone from inside the hotel room. “A piercing?” Ty shakes his head.

“Even worse.”

“What then?” I ask him and he grins.

“Remember what you said about marking me … ?”