The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Read online

“Did he have a name?”

  “No, Trey. We didn’t name him.”

  “Oh,” I said, and that’s when my chest felt like a dark black pit. He was nameless. That was worse than death. I grabbed hard on my dad’s arm, desperate for him to understand. “We need to name him, Dad. He needs a name. He has to have a name.”

  “Okay,” my dad said, holding his hands out wide, a helpless gesture. “What should we name him?”

  “Can we name him Jake?”

  “Sure,” he said in an empty voice. “We can do that. We can name him Jake.”

  Then my father broke down and cried on Madison Avenue, falling to his knees on the sidewalk and clutching me, like I was the anchor.

  “You miss Jake, don’t you?” I asked.

  He nodded against my chest.

  My parents tried again, and my mom made it further, but at her seventh-month appointment, the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. She went to the hospital that day to deliver the baby, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick brought me over in the evening so I could meet my second brother. I held him, the baby boy named Drew who was wrapped in a standard hospital baby blanket, with fingers the size of matches bent into miniature little fists and a heart that no longer beat.

  The next day, Mrs. Fitzpatrick came by the apartment with flowers and sympathy, and a year later with wallpaper samples and paint chips, since my mom was pregnant once more. I was fifteen then, and this was their last shot. My mom was optimistic, bright, cheery. Third time’s a charm, she said, as Mrs. Fitzpatrick helped her pick out colors for the baby’s room.

  When Will was born—alive, red, screaming at the top of his lungs—everyone erupted into cheers. But soon after, he was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect and given only a few days to live.

  The doctors told my mom, “At least we know now why you keep losing the babies.”

  As if that gave her solace.

  We brought Will home to give him “comfort care.” We were hidden away in the apartment on some sort of death watch. The clock was ticking, and we were simply unwinding the minutes until he died.

  I was the one holding him.

  I didn’t let go for the longest time.

  Then my mom cleaned out the baby’s room, threw away the crib, ripped off the teddy bear border from the wall, and turned it into a cold, sleek modern office with two desks, where my parents buried themselves in medical journals each night.

  The expansion plans had failed, and so it was time to move on.

  Dust off your hands. Don’t look back. Don’t even breathe a word.

  I planted the trees myself. In Abingdon Square Park alone late one night, the moon and the city my only company. The only one who wanted to remember.

  And if they were going to numb themselves, I figured I could too. When I turned sixteen, I started visiting Mrs. Fitzpatrick, ostensibly for her home-baked cookies and for her keen interest in talking about feelings and all the things my parents would never discuss. Like that card from my teacher with the saying about the stars in the sky. She looked at it with me. She talked about it with me. She said she believed too. Then we stopped talking about feelings, because I was done with them. I wanted to feel other things. I wanted to feel her. I wanted to numb myself in pleasure, in women, in sex. I wanted nothing but euphoria, but never-fucking-ending ecstasy. I wanted the opposite to take the pain away. Yeah, she started me on the path that led to my addiction, but she taught me everything I knew and sent me off on the merry path of curves, and breasts, and sixty ways to make a woman scream your name at the top of her lungs. I worked my way through the building, the beauties and the cougars, and they made me feel all the highs that only losing yourself in sex could ever bring.

  Harley’s cheeks are stained with tears. Her lower lip is quivering. She’s swiping at her cheeks, trying to wipe the evidence of her sadness away. But it’s futile.

  She blinks several times, swallows, and says in a broken, choppy voice, “I am so sorry.”

  But her words don’t stick. They bounce off me like I’m made of rubber. It’s not her though. It’s me. To tell that story, I had to disengage. Disconnect. That’s the only way I could get it out without choking on a river of tears. I barely feel rooted to the steps right now. It’s as if my vision went blurry and I’m seeing fuzzy silver streaks before my eyes. I’m a ghost, floating above us, watching this scene transpire from another plane of reality, one where I can’t be hurt.

  She brings her hand to her chest, and her shoulders are shaking. The tears fall like a rainstorm now, unleashed, and it’s so strange to watch someone else’s reaction. I’ve been living my own reaction for years, inside of me and locked up in my head, and now this story that’s only been told in hieroglyphics on my body is someone else’s to own, to process, to feel. It’s as if I’ve given her a piece of my heart and said, There, do with it what you will. I’m frozen in time, waiting to see if she’ll kick my heart away.

  “I can’t believe you kept all that inside, Trey,” she says in between sobs. “I can’t believe that’s your history, and your family, and you never said a word.”

  I shrug. Or the me I’m watching shrugs. He’s not sure what happens next. “I got used to not talking about it. It’s like this black hole in my life.”

  She grasps my hand and slides her fingers through mine. “You. Are. Brave.”

  I scoff, then sneer for good measure. “How does that make me brave?”

  She grips harder. “You are brave to tell me. You are brave to let me in. You are brave and crazy, and you are stupid to think you can handle all that yourself,” she says, laying a gentle hand on my rough stubbled jaw.

  “So I’m stupid. Like that’s news.”

  “You are stupid brave. And stupid courageous. And stupid amazing. And I won’t let you go through any more of this alone,” she says fiercely, eyes blazing with an intensity I’ve never seen before. She grabs the neck of my shirt and pulls hard on it, tugging me closer. “I’m sorry about your brothers. I’m sorry your parents never talked about it. And I’m sorry you had to carry all that by yourself. But I want to know whatever you want to tell me, Trey. I want you to show me all your tattoos and tell me what they mean. I want to see the trees you planted for them,” she says, and she twists harder on my shirt. “I want you to know they’re not ever going to be forgotten because I will remember them with you.”

  In an instant, I’m back on earth. I’m no longer floating above us. I’m here, next to her, and my chest is cracked open. I’ve given her my bleeding, beating heart, and she’s holding it in her hands, and she’s not crushing it, she’s not destroying it. She’s doing the opposite. She’s getting me. And she’s burrowing her way so far under my skin, into my head, and around my heart that I am dangerously close to joining her in the tears department. I’m still a guy—I don’t know that I can go there in front of her.

  But I don’t have to, because I’m going someplace else, it turns out. She ropes her arms around my neck, and I bury my face in her hair, and I don’t ever want to let go of her. She clings to me, bringing me closer, like she doesn’t ever want to let go either. And I don’t know how we’re here, how we’re back on a stoop in New York—we always seem to wind up on a stoop in New York, but more than that, we always seem to wind up in each other’s arms. We are magnets, and I can’t resist the pull.

  There is no distance between us, and I don’t want any more distance. I want closeness, I want connection, I want it with her. Then she loosens her grip. Not by much, but enough to bring her sweet lips to my ear. She grazes me with a whisper, her voice soft. “I want you to take off your shirt, and I want you to tell me everything. I want to see your new ink. I want to understand you.”

  I am an electrical line, buzzing. “Do you want to come to my place?”

  “Yes.”

  10

  Trey

  The subway takes too long. But if I were in a cab with her, I’d probably jump her, and whatever is going to happen between us tonight needs to happen behind close
d doors. I want to be alone with her. I want to have her to myself. I don’t want anyone around, anyone to walk in, anyone to find us. I want to hole up with her and kiss her and touch her all night long until morning comes and our lips are red and raw and we still can’t get enough of each other.

  But the practical matter of transportation downtown comes first.

  “I have big news,” she tells me as the train rattles underground.

  “Yeah?”

  I trace the vein on her forearm, from the heel of her hand to her elbow. Goosebumps rise on her skin, and she shivers. I will never grow tired of the way she responds to me.

  “You make it hard to focus,” she chides. “And I want to tell you something. I finished. I’m done with Miranda!”

  “Whoa, are you serious?”

  She nods several times. “One hundred percent. Sent it off tonight.”

  “That’s amazing. I’m seriously proud of you. Which I know sounds like a weird thing to say, but I am.”

  She pats her back, pretending to look over her shoulder to see what’s there. “See that? Oh wait. You can’t. Because the monkey’s off my back.”

  “Good riddance, monkey.”

  There are other chains that bind her though. My chest constricts as I ask the next question. “But what about Cam? Did you tell him you’re done? Are you done?” I ask, hoping, praying, needing her no more than air right now.

  She lowers her eyes. “I haven’t told him, but I will now.”

  She takes her phone from her pocket and taps open a new message. I look away as a thick plume of jealousy snakes through me. I don’t want to know what she’s saying to him. I have to trust that it’s exactly what needs to be said.

  She stuffs it back into her pocket. “Done. I’m free of these burdens. I want to start over. Start my new life from this day forward. Start everything like it’s the first time.”

  “So, this is it? No more Miranda, no more Cam, you’re done with the past?”

  She nods.

  “I don’t want you with him, Harley. He’s no good for you, and you don’t need that anymore. Okay?”

  “I know. I know,” she says, and she seems resolute.

  “Promise me you’re done? Promise me he’s the past?”

  “I promise. I just told him I won’t do the job he asked me to do—some stupid dinner event. I said it’s over.”

  I shake my head in disgust. I hate every single guy who’s hired her. I hate every dude everywhere who’s hired a girl. Because I’d be willing to bet most of those girls didn’t really want to be hired. Fine, Harley made her own choices, but she also didn’t. Her mom boxed her into a corner, gave her no choice, no options. So Harley did what I did. She tunneled her way out through sex.

  “Good. Because I don’t want you with anyone else,” I tell her as the train winds around a curve, and I’m struck with how easy that was to say. I used to think speaking honestly was impossible, but now I’m two-for-two tonight.

  “But what about rules? And trying to stay away? And being in recovery and all?”

  “Fuck the rules,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “I want to be with you.”

  “I want to be with you so badly it’s killing me,” she says in a breathy, desperate voice that makes me want to stop time and never forget this moment. Because this is perfect. Us. Here. Now. On the graffiti-filled subway, chugging into my stop, after I’ve told her the ugly truth of me, and she wants everything I’ve ever wanted too. Each other.

  “I’m dying, Harley,” I say, bending my head to her neck. “I’m dying without you. I need you. I want you. I want to teleport to my apartment right now because I can’t stand being on this train a second longer. I want to touch you all over. I want to be with you.”

  “I want that too, but we can’t go all the way. We can’t have sex. I’m just not ready.”

  “We can do whatever you want. I have waited six months for you. I can wait longer if I have to. I can wait as long as you need. If all you want to do is kiss, I will happily spend the night doing that. Hell, if you want to play bridge, we can do that too. Even though I have no clue how that game works.”

  “I bet you know how to play strip poker though,” she teases.

  “That I do.”

  “Or just strip.”

  When the train stops, we practically leap out of the car and bolt up the steps. After several blocks of near race-walking, we make it inside my building and up two flights of stairs. I unlock the door to my tiny studio, open it, and before the door closes, my hands are on her face.

  “Kiss me,” I tell her. “Kiss me, Harley. And don’t stop.”

  “Never,” she says, and then her mouth is on mine. She kisses me hard and ruthlessly, attacking my mouth, sucking on my tongue, nibbling and then biting my lips, and it’s like she’s devouring me and I want it. I desperately want her to feast on me, to leave bite marks all over my neck, to pin me down if she wants to. I don’t care, I just want her. She wriggles that sexy, beautiful, insane body of hers against mine, her breasts smashed against my chest, her hips jammed into me, and her lips insisting on exploring every inch of mine.

  This girl can take me, have me, tie me up, blindfold me if she wants, even though that’s honestly not my thing. But how I feel for her threatens to overpower everything else. This is a sweet unraveling, as she obliterates my hold on the world, on time, on space, on anything but the ferocity of her kiss.

  Then, in an instant, she breaks the kiss. She’s panting, and her brown eyes are wild, so wild, and her lips are parted and bruised already.

  “Hi,” she says, breathing out hard.

  “Hi.”

  “Are you going to show me your tattoos now?”

  “Um, yeah,” I say, managing a few syllables, though I doubt I’ve recovered the power of speech, considering how she kissed me raw and senseless. I am standing here stupid with lust, hard as a rock, and unable to form coherent thoughts.

  Fortunately, I don’t have to.

  She takes my hand and guides me over to my futon a few feet away. My apartment is crazy small, like most in New York, but it’s mine, and it’s stuffed with my notebooks and drawings and paperbacks and music. I start my playlist and turn Arcade Fire on low.

  “Best. Band. Ever,” she says as we fall down onto the futon that doubles as a bed.

  “No. Questions. Asked,” I say with a smile, repeating the words we both said the night we met. I curve a hand around her neck. Bring my mouth to her ear. Hear her sigh. I whisper, “You said that the first time I saw you at my shop.”

  “I know.”

  “And we talked about everything that night. We talked about the beach and how much you want to go there again, and how you felt when you were there as a kid visiting your grandparents. And we talked about the music we love, and what we wanted out of life. And now here we are again.”

  “Full circle or something like that,” she says with a smirk. “If I were a poet, I’d make that sound all artful. But I’m just a wannabe. And now I want your shirt off.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She’s up on her knees now, grabbing the hem. I raise my arms over my head, and she tugs off my shirt. There’s no striptease, no slow, lingering removal of clothes. It is frenzied and necessary. She closes her eyes briefly, then opens them and inhales sharply. Seconds later, her hands are on my chest, her palms spread wide on my pecs, and I don’t ever want her to stop touching me.

  She moves her index finger to my throat, then trails it down my chest softly, painting a line, drawing on me. I feel like I’m being marked by her, like she’s claiming my body. Down my ribs, along my side, across my waist.

  I hitch in a breath as she touches my abs, her fingers turning me ragged with want.

  I’m fighting every instinct to yank her down on top of me, rip off all her clothes, then flip her over, spread her legs, and thrust into her. To look into her eyes as I enter her for the first time. I won’t do that, though, until she’s ready. And I won’t do anything toni
ght, either, until she explores me like she wants. Her hands leave my chest and reach for my arms, her fingertips traveling from my shoulders down to my wrists, every second of contact winding me higher. I swear I’ll have to grip the edge of the futon soon to stay still.

  She stops at my wrists, then bends her head, and her lips are on my skin, mapping an agonizingly slow trail of kisses up my arm until she reaches my right shoulder with the trio of sunbursts.

  “What are these for?”

  “Life,” I tell her. Her hair is draped over my arm in silky, soft sheets as she layers quiet kisses on my ink. First, one sun. “Energy. Heat. Strength,” I add.

  “To remind you to be strong?”

  “Yeah,” I say with a forced laugh. “Didn’t work.”

  She looks up, her eyes fierce again. Powerful. Passionate. “You are strong, Trey. You are so strong. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

  Her belief in me is the strangest thing I’ve ever known. I’ve felt lust, I’ve felt rage, I’ve felt pain. I’ve felt sadness. I’ve felt power. But this—faith in myself from another person. It’s foreign, and it’s heady, and it’s addictive in its own way.

  She returns to my arm, kissing the second sun.

  “And I know this may seem obvious, but the sun means a lot of things to different cultures. Some believe it has the power to heal,” I tell her.

  “And you wished the sun could have healed the hearts of your brothers?”

  “Yeah,” I say, nodding, choking back the emotions that threaten to overtake me again. “But it’s also a symbol of light. And light in hard times. So I kinda wanted the sun to represent that. That the sun would shine through the past and the darkness and the death. That the day would start over, and maybe…” I say, then trail off, because this is too much, too much closeness, too much admission.

  The shadows from the moonlight stream in through the window, playing across her beautiful face as she leans down to kiss the third sun.

  “It’s okay, Trey. I believe that too. That maybe we can all start over. That’s what you were going to say, right?”