Invincible (A Kingpin Love Affair Book 3) (8 page)

I closed my eyes allowing the feelings to take me over, hoping the answer I had longed for would soothe my aching heart.

“You, you are my biggest demon! You haunt my thoughts. I never got rid of you. Every memory implanted itself into my brain as if being in my heart wasn’t good enough. Leaving you was the right thing to do, even though it’s been my biggest regret. I couldn’t keep you around, waiting for me to come back from some unknown location. What if I never came back? Huh? What if I died…? I couldn’t break you in that way… People get over heartbreak, but they don’t get over death, Teg.”

No. Don’t go weak, Tegan… Don’t go weak.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. All I had to do was keep telling myself that. His large hands landed on my shoulders gripping my skin. His flesh against my own…

“I know you want to think I did this because I wanted to hurt you… but I didn’t.”

“You did…” I lashed out, opening my eyes with a new fiery rage behind them. “You may have been hurting, you may have been haunted by your own choices, but I…” A sob escaped from deep within my throat. “I had to carry on. I had to learn to deal with my emotions alone. I didn’t even have a reason. One fucking reason, Devon!” I raised my voice, clenching my fist as I pounded softly against the sheet. “I didn’t even get a reason.”

His eyes softened, and his jaw went slack.

“I never meant to hurt you. I never—”

“You never what? Expected me to fall for you? To want you?” The sting his words left on my skin hurt far worse than anything else ever would… He had never meant to hurt me? What a lie.

A hand rubbed down his face, and when he looked back up at me, he looked different. It was as if he understood something.

Taking my hand, he placed it against his heart. I could feel every breath he took, every beat and push of blood.

“You hear that? The beat, the throbbing, the pumping, and pushing of blood? It’s yours, Tegan. Every single fiber of me belongs to you. It always has and always will. I know I hurt you… I know I caused us unneeded grief, but never again do I want to hear that it was because I didn’t love you. We both know that’s a lie.”

There was no joy, happiness, no relief from finding out what I had longed for all these years. There was no feeling to describe what I was feeling.

Instead of saying something, I allowed my hand to slide down his chest, removing the beating and breathing I could feel from my touch. I was pushing him away, disappearing inside of myself. I couldn’t fight this anymore.

“Don’t do it, Tegan,” he said. I could see tears in his eyes. I knew it should’ve touched me, affected me somehow, but it didn’t. I pulled away from him, pushing myself against the headboard of the bed. Silence settled into the room…

“Do you remember when you asked me if we would be together forever?”

The memory resurfaced again…

“Do you think we’ll be together forever?” Tegan asked. Her smile was bright and full of love.

“I don’t know, Teg, but one can only hope,” I whispered placing a feather soft kiss on her forehead.

“I wasn’t lying to you when I said I could only hope. Just because we have been apart these last few years doesn’t mean you haven’t been in my heart and mind. Every thought I ever had drifted back to you…”

You… It was only ever you…

Minutes passed as I refused to answer him. I had nothing to say, nothing to feel. I was a shell of myself… Exposed.

“Try and believe me…”

We’re over…

We really were.

CHAPTER NINE

Devon

 “FUCK!” I BELLOWED out into the midnight air. My heart was aching, my chest was constricting with pain. I could feel her sadness from inside the cabin. The sadness I had caused. I leaned against the cabin wall, unable to hold myself up. I had never felt such misery like this. Nor had I ever felt like someone had ripped a part of my soul out and threw it away.

This is how she felt… Those words rung in my ears like a heavy reminder.

“I’m so sorry, Tegan…” I whispered into the air as I fell to the ground, my knees giving out on me. How all of this had gone to hell in a hand basket, I didn’t know… How had I gotten so far, yet so far behind?

Could I handle losing her again, right when she was within reach? When I could make everything all right?

Wetness seeped from my eyes faster than I could brush the tears away. I hadn’t cried in years, not since my parents. My parents.

Yet another reminder of why I left… Why Tegan was hurting. The mere thought of them brought me back to the present. Yes, I was hurting, and I knew Tegan was too, but deep down in the pits of what had made me the person I was, I knew I did the right thing. Sometimes, doing what you needed to… hurt. Being strong was just a part of the pain.

All I could do was to say I was sorry and to tell her I still loved her. Then hope somehow, somewhere deep inside of her, she still felt the same way.

Settling onto the ground, I leaned my back against the wood of the cabin and stared up at the night sky. My eyes drifted closed taking me back to a time when she was mine… when I didn’t have a care in the world… just her…

“Do you think there are aliens out there?” she had asked, giggling like a child. She always had the strangest questions. The sun had just set and the stars were blanketing the sky above us in an array of sparkling gems.

“What kind of question is that?” I asked. Her hair was sprawled out as we lay on a blanket on the ground. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It didn’t matter that I had been looking at the night sky. In my eyes, she was the most beautiful of all.

She shot me a look that caused me to smile.

“I just sometimes wonder if there are others out there and if they do stuff like we are right now?” I couldn’t contain my laughter. These are the kinds of comments that had drawn me to her. She was the strangest, yet unique and endearing girl I had ever met in my life.

“You think there are aliens out there? Those who stay out past their curfew, staring up at the sky, wondering if there are ‘humans’ out there?”

“Yes, I do!” Her answer was defensive as if she had expected me to ask her that.

“I just wonder if they love, too… If they could love someone like we do? Like, maybe they aren’t all that bad. Maybe they have feelings… Maybe they…” she continued, pausing for a moment. I took that second and held it in my hands.

“Shhh…” I said covering her lips with my own. She was too adorable in that one second to pass up not kissing. Her hands wove around my neck as I cradled her in my arms. I bit her bottom lip, waiting for her to open up more for me just so I could get one last taste…

“Mmm…” She moaned in pleasure. I smirked against her lips, knowing it was my love, my lips, my feelings that made her so inspired with love. With others, she was caring, loving, and that was because she had felt love. She had me…

She had me. I repeated the words back to myself. I could do this. I had dealt with worse things in my life.

I stood, wiping the dirt off my pants. It was time to stop sulking and hating myself. I had a duty to achieve. I needed a plan, and I had to figure out what those men wanted with her. Hell, I needed to find out whatever it was they were doing to this town.

I had to protect Tegan and I would at all costs. At the end of all of this, she was the most precious thing of all. If I couldn’t do this one thing, then there was no point in trying anymore.

Very slowly, I circled around the house making sure no one was outside. If I were going to force myself to not think about her, about us, then I would have to keep busy.

Once I checked the perimeter and made sure everything was okay, I quietly slipped in through the front door. I could hear her sobs as she sniffled and shifted in the bed… My heart broke with every tear that fell onto her cheeks. I had to make this right.

Pulling my t-shirt and pants off, I made a makeshift bed on the couch and lay down. I needed something, anything, to escape the pain. Even if it was a short lived escape.

I’m sorry… I’m so fucking sorry… I said over and over again until eventually, my body fell into a fitful sleep. Sometimes saying sorry wasn’t enough.

* * *

“DEVON.” I COULD hear my name being called, but my body was telling my mind to shut up and go back to sleep.

“DEVON MITCHELL.” The tone held anger, anger I knew. Shit. Opening my eyes, I blinked. What time was it? Why was the sun shining in my eyes? My neck had a kink from hell in it, and it was then I recalled the night before.

“I swear to God, I will pee this fucking bed if you don’t uncuff me…” Before I could compose myself enough not to laugh, a chuckle slipped out.

“Coming, princess…” I groaned, throwing the covers back as I got up from the couch. The stiffness in my back was proof I did not sleep good at all. Yup, couch sleeping sucked.

Pulling on my pants, I climbed up the ladder coming face to face with a very pissed off Teagan.

“I have to pee. I’ve been calling your name for like an hour.” She mocked, her eyes lingering on my chest and down… down… down… I almost blushed. Hot fucking damn. The way she ogled me had my balls burning in need of release. If she didn’t stop looking at me like that… well, let’s just say she would find my cock nine inches deep.

“You want me to uncuff you or do you want to keep staring at me?” I joked, hoping she had gotten some closure from our conversation last night. Though it was unlikely. She had to know she wasn’t the only one hurting, and with her heartache, came my own. The chances of her being over it were slim to zero, but it didn’t hurt to hope.

A flash of anger showed in her eyes as I reached into my pocket retrieving the key that would unlock the cuff holding her to the headboard. If a joke didn’t lighten the mood, I was sure me being here wouldn’t help either.

“Now, when I undo this cuff, you’re not going to run.” I stared down at her, daring her to disobey me. “You’re not going to hit me or lash out at me either. Do you understand?” I continued on. She looked at me as if she didn’t care, nor would she be listening to a fucking word I said, which in turn, only encouraged my cock to grow harder.

“Leave me alone.” She snarled at me causing her nose to scrunch up and wrinkles to form on her face. She was like a small dog—all bark and no bite.

“No can do, sweetheart,” I said unlocking the cuff, releasing her. She scampered across the mattress to the corner as if I were going to hurt her. Was she still afraid of me? Had I not proven myself to her? Or maybe it was something else, something that caused her breath to quicken and her stomach to fill with butterflies.

“Teg, you can go down there and go to the bathroom. I’ll make you some breakfast and then we can talk,” I said calmly my voice growing softer with every word. I wanted nothing more than to show her just how sorry I was, but she was an emotional mess. She needed support, not sex. Words needed to be said between us before I could strip her bare.

“We have nothing to talk about, DEVON! I thought I made that clear last night?” Again, her voice was full of venom. If she were a snake, surely I would be dead by now.

“Your clear and my clear are two very different things. See, when you said you made it clear, you actually made it rather dark. I can’t seem to see your point of view. Therefore,
we will… be… talking.”
I made it clear in my own words that she couldn’t run from this.

She had a deep-rooted fear in her eyes, and I knew some way, somehow, the fear I saw there had nothing to do with me but everything to do with her own insecurities. She was afraid of falling, of being hurt again. Afraid of me.

She didn’t say anything. Her deep sea blue colored eyes were downcast to the floor. The absence of hers on my own was like a punch to the gut as she sat there unable to form a response. Instead of speaking, she slowly got off the bed and stepped slowly past me, shutting me out once again.

Seconds—although it could’ve even been minutes later, I heard the bathroom door close. The click of the door was soft, but in my own mind, it couldn’t have been any louder. It signified the end of the conversation—the end of the closure I so desperately fucking wanted.

No matter how resilient she seemed, I still needed to find a way to break her barriers down. To make her talk to me so we could figure this out together.

Climbing out of the loft, I headed toward the bathroom. If I knew her as well as I once did, I knew she would try something sneaky. Given the situation we were in, it wasn’t a matter of how but more of when. As I grew closer to the door, all I could hear was the water running, and then it dawned on me—she would try to climb out of the bathroom window, if she hadn’t already.

“Fuck…” I muttered under my breath, a hand running through my hair in frustration. This woman was going to be the death of me. A switch in my mind flipped, and all I could feel was the need to stop her. I slipped out the door and around the cabin to the back field where the window was located.

My eyes zeroed in on it. The screen was hanging on by a mere thread and little Miss Tegan was nowhere in sight. My heart started beating out of my chest at the mere thought of those men touching her again, of her lifeless body in my arms again.

Swinging around, my eyes landed on a red mass bobbing through the high weeds in a field off to the right. She was running, holy fuck she was running away from me. After all these years, she was running. My mind was fucking blown.

She wanted to play games? We would play games, but she would be playing them by my fucking rules. A smirk formed on my lips as I took off in a dead run toward her. Didn’t she realize I was in the FBI? That meant, when it came to being stealthy, killing, and getting away with shit, I was King.

“Tegan…” I bellowed out. I watched her head turn in my direction as she came to a slow jog. She knew I would hunt her down and I would capture her like prey, and when I did, she would be mine. Mine. That feeling alone fueled me…