Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart, #3)(42)

Grief almost cut me in two.

I ached, and I wanted to reach out and turn the pages.

Read everything that was inside.

“Izzy,” he grunted, feeling the fever of my gaze.

I shook the reaction, fought to maintain a semblance of control. Of decency in this moment. “Why don’t you sit on the toilet so I can tend to your wounds.”

A frown pinched his brow, but he nodded, backing away as I stepped toward him. My trembling hands reached out, tentative, hovering, before I wound them around to his back to support him.

His massive arms wrapped around me way up high.

I could feel his heart. The pound, pound, pound.

While mine ached and ached and ached.

He eased to sitting, and his arms that had been around my upper back slid down, hot hands landing on my sides.

Tugging me close, the man searched my face before he leaned in and ran his nose along the exposed flesh above my blouse.

Shivers flashed.

A river of gooseflesh that ate up my body.

“So good, Izzy. You smell so good. Like a field of wild jasmine. Want to lie in it.”

Oh, he needed not to be sayin’ those things to me.

“Don’t, Maxon. You’re drunk,” I begged, trying to quiet him, to stop this from happening, my mind from taking a jaunt into lurid thoughts I set my hands on his shoulders and peeled myself away. I fumbled over to the sink and turned on the faucet so I could warm a washcloth under it, trying to gather myself while I was there.

You can do this.

You can do this.

I edged back over to him, and he lifted his face, those eyes on me.

Energy sizzled in the tiny space.

I swallowed around it and focused on cleaning up his wounds.

Gingerly.

Tenderly.

What he really needed was a shower, but I knew there was no way I could hold him up, and I had an inclination that getting this man naked would be a bad, terrible idea.

So, I just kept rinsing the cloth, ringing it out, going back time and again.

Caring for him, a stupid part of me wishin’ it’d always been my job. That he’d returned it. Been there for us when we needed him most.

A heavy sigh pushed from his mouth, and his head kept sagging forward, the man close to passing out. I was pretty sure that was more from the alcohol than any of the injuries he’d sustained.

Tipping his chin up, I dabbed at the biggest cut over his eye, his striking face right there.

He opened his eyes when I did.

Potent blue gazed up at me. Intense and wild and running to places neither of us could afford for them to go.

“Izzy Baby,” he grated.

I struggled to swallow around the lump.

“You’ve got to stop.” The words shook as fiercely as my hand.

His head rocked to the right side, and his mouth was tweaking up again, arrogance sliding free. “You remember, Little Bird? Bein’ with me?” Big hands gripped me by the thighs. “Sneaking away so we could get lost? How fuckin’ perfect I fit in this body?”

A flashfire of memories sped through my mind. Incinerating everything. All rationale. All logic.

He grunted. “Never have had a woman that felt so good. Nothin’ has ever felt so good as Izzy Lane.”

Redness clawed and streaked, a fire lapping higher.

I struggled to fight them. To extinguish the flames.

“Almost finished,” I grated, words so rough I didn’t even know how I managed to force them out.

“But I wasn’t good to keep you. Wanted to keep you. Fuck . . . Izzy, I wanted to keep you.” His confession was slurred, edged in sorrow, hinting at desperation.

I had to stop this. Stop this before he said things we’d both regret.

We needed to talk.

But not like this.

Not when our defenses were shot and our sanity had fled.

I moved to the cabinet, inhaling cleansing breaths as I rummaged around for a bottle of alcohol. Unscrewing the cap, I covered the opening with a cotton ball and tipped it over, and I tried to prepare myself for when I turned back around.

But he was still there.

Looking at me like he wanted to devour me. Like he wanted to cry.

God, had we gotten ourselves into a mess. And I tried to remember all the hurt inflicted as I swabbed the cotton ball over the gashes on his face. To remember the way it’d felt when he told me he didn’t want me anymore. That picture of him with her engrained in my head as I bandaged the wound.

“Never good enough, Little Bird. Wanted you to fly,” he rumbled, as if he were hearing every single one of those thoughts. But even if he had, that wasn’t reason enough for him to do what he’d done.

He’d broken me.

Shattered me.

Left me weak.

I’d struggled for so long to be strong. To be the kind of mama I wanted for my boys.

He didn’t get to negate that by still claiming that stupid belief that the two of us didn’t belong together because we were from opposite sides of the proverbial tracks.

“Can’t believe we made a baby,” he kept on, though it was choppy, getting caught on barbs of grief.

Could feel them penetrating both of us.

Arrows piercing deep.

“We made a baby,” he whimpered.

Agony blistered from his body, seeping from his skin, and he dropped his face to my stomach. Those hands that had felt seductive shifted in possession, digging in like a plea.