I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2)(107)

“Stop,” I murmur. “I can’t concentrate when you do that.”

Chase chuckles, smug that he has this effect on me. He’s exceptionally cocky in this state, I note. I push his hand away. But my effort is half-hearted at best.

I know this is where I should be firm, resolute. Chase has tripped and fallen tonight, and I should refuse his advances. Wait until morning. But I’ve fallen too, just in a different way. So what does it matter? Both of us are messed up, in our own ways. Maybe that’s why my body responds so strongly, urging me to encourage, not discourage. So I quit resisting. But when we reach Cold Springs Lane, Chase sits back of his own accord. He closes his eyes.

I turn into the driveway and cut the ignition. “I screwed up tonight,” Chase says as he scrubs his hand down his gorgeous, but tortured face.

“Why?” I whisper. “Why didn’t you just come home after you found out Will wasn’t coming?”

He glances over at me and shakes his head. “I don’t know, baby. I don’t have a good reason. I felt overwhelmed, I guess.”

I start to think he’s not going to elaborate, but then he sighs and says, “I disappointed Will again. He still wanted to fly out to visit, but he wanted to bring his girl. I said no and he flipped. He said I’m like our mother. He said I may as well still be in prison.”

“Oh, Chase.” I place my hand on his forearm.

Chase pulls at his hair as he rakes his fingers through the strands. “I just keep letting that kid down, Kay. I didn’t tell you my mom told me Will used the money I gave him to buy weed. He lied to me. You were right to be worried.”

I squeeze his forearm and his muscles flex of their own accord beneath my hold. “I’m sorry, Chase.”

“It doesn’t matter. When I left the airport I wanted to forget, forget everything. I wanted to feel numb, like I used to in the past. I felt lost, I guess. It was stupid, I know, but I couldn’t stop. I drove to Kyle’s.”

“What happened there?” I whisper.

Chase admits he drank…a lot, hard liquor, vodka. Then, he tells me he got high. He smoked with Kyle and his friends. Not too much, but still. My once-addicted boy did something he hasn’t done in years—and that in and of itself is significant. With Chase’s history I know what potentially comes next—more drugs, harder drugs—coke, pills, God knows what…

With this in mind, I ask, “Was that it? Did you do anything else?”

“No, but…” Chase presses his lips together and looks over at me. “I almost… Uh, Kyle chopped up some lines and…and I was going to. Fuck, Kay.”

My boy turns away and I lean as far as over the console as I can and wrap my arms around him. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “You didn’t do it, though, right?”

“I almost did, baby. I was so f*cking close, rolled bill in hand, bent over that shit.”

I freeze. I remain perfectly still with my arms around my guy. How did he stop? I wonder.

“And then I thought about you, sweet girl,” Chase whispers, as if he’s answering my thoughts.

He relaxes into me. “I walked out, left Kyle in the bathroom with the coke he’d just cut up. He had said when we first went in that I’d like it…and I was sure I would. I wanted it in my body, that’s for sure. I was ready to feel like I used to, wasted, uncaring. I can’t lie to you about that, sweet, sweet girl.”

I rub the back of his neck, play with his hair. “It’s okay, Chase. You didn’t do it, you stopped.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to do it. I wanted to shut everything out, get lost. But then I realized I care too much. I care about Will, I care about my life. I don’t want to f*ck it up again.”

Chase straightens and I lean back some, so that we’re sitting and facing each other in the darkened car. “But mostly it was you who stopped me, Kay,” Chase continues. “You give me strength, even when we’re not together. You save me…you’ll always save me, baby girl. Just knowing you love me like you do.”

His gaze holds mine, and I can’t help it, I have to touch him. Leaning forward, I cover his face in kisses. I kiss him and lick him, sloppy and wet, and he loves it. The skin under my lips tastes so good, so right…so Chase. My boy groans under my assault, and then he pushes me back into the driver’s seat, coming right along with me, hands roaming my body, lips covering my neck, the whole way. “I need you, baby,” he groans into my ear. “Let’s go inside.”

I need him just as much right now, though I don’t tell him why. I’ll wait until he’s sober and not high to share with him the events of my own tumultuous night. Not to mention, I am sick to death of talking…and thinking. I long for an escape as well.

We end up in my apartment, since it’s the closest to where I’ve parked. Clothes are discarded hastily, a hodgepodge of fabrics left trailing from the living room to the bedroom. By the time we tumble together onto the bed, we are both naked, bare, in body and soul.

I’ve never experienced Chase f*cked up like this, and it’s definitely different. He’s more aggressive than usual, which is saying a lot. He’s rough and crude, with his mouth and his hands. But I like it, it makes me wet, it makes me want him in this coarse way. “I don’t want it easy,” I tell him.