His hands came back to frame my face and he replied just as quietly through his waning laughter, “Baby, I hauled you into my house last night, kissed you at the door. I made love to you in my bed. I woke up to you. I spent the day with you and my kids. I watched you go down over the pizzookie. You barely got your spoon in there. And, ten minutes ago, I watched you ride my cock hard and make yourself come before you made me do the same. No way, after what they took from us, no way am I gonna let them make me feel that isn’t anything but what it is. Us winning.”
Shit, he was right.
He also wasn’t done.
“Wish I was a better man,” he said quietly. “Dad’d be pissed at me, he knew I was even thinkin’ this but, I get the chance, I’ll spit on your father’s grave, what he did to you, what he did to me. But, if I don’t get that chance,” his hands at my face pressed in and his voice dipped low, the smooth sliding clean out of it, his expression shifting to intense, “I’ll take this. I’ll take this every day and every day I’ll know in the end I beat that bastard. He might not have been alive to see it, but I beat his goddamned, motherfucking ass.”
Seriously, he was hot when he was being all vengeful badass.
Thinking that, it hit me.
I loved the Creed that was and he was still in there, with his kids, with me.
But without what happened to us, this Creed would never have been.
And I loved this Creed in a way that maybe time had dulled the feeling I had before even though it didn’t feel that way. Because I loved the man under me in a way that wasn’t just meant to be. It wasn’t a way we were born to be. It was in a way that
needed
to be.
With sudden clarity it hit me that I was always a bit of this Sylvie. I liked clothes and I gossiped with my girls and I put on makeup, even now. But I was not the daughter my father wanted, who adored ballet and wore ribbons in her hair and didn’t beg him to let me go fishing with him every time he went out with his buddies.
So maybe the Sylvie due to circumstances I became was the Sylvie I was supposed to be.
And Creed had always had badass in him. He was his father’s son. We even talked about him joining the military when we got wherever we were going to go, settled in and he was okay with the possibility of leaving me to go on assignment.
So maybe due to circumstances, he became the Creed he was supposed to be.
And because the universe wasn’t right without us together, we became that way then we came back together.
On this thought, I pressed closer and asked, “Do you think that shit had to happen so I could be who I am with who you came to be?”
Both his hands slid into my hair and fisted gently at the back of it, none of the intensity shifting out of his face when he replied, “Fuck…
no
.
My
Sylvie who had my back and stood by my side as best she could from the age of six to the age of eighteen did not deserve years of torture and living with the knowledge a man is dead at her hand and I didn’t deserve the shit dished out to me either. What I think is, it’s life. Life can be shit. We had our shit. We’ll have more of it, though, God willing, not that fuckin’ bad and we made our way back together because together is the way we’re born to be. But,” his hands in my hair pulled me closer and his voice dipped lower, “you wanna think it was supposed to happen that way. That makes you feel better. Think it. I just don’t agree.”
“The me that I am right now though, Creed, feels like the Sylvie I was meant to be,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, you are,” he agreed. “Comfortable in your skin. Good at what you do. You enjoy it. You like the way you live. I can see that. But you could have become this Sylvie without that shit buried in your soul,” he replied and I tipped my head to the side.
“Would you be down with that?”
He lifted his head an inch from the pillow so our faces were mega close and he whispered, “Then and now, beautiful, I’ll take you any way you come to me.” His hands in my hair shook my head gently. “
Any
way. I love this Sylvie. I loved that Sylvie. I just love
you,
baby.”
And I just loved him.
Any way he came to me.
To share this, I shoved my face in his neck.
Creed got the message and I knew this when his arms circled me and he gave me a mighty squeeze.
He allowed seconds to tick by before he murmured, “Gotta let you go, need to deal with this condom.”
“Right,” I murmured back and shifted off him.
He kissed my shoulder before he exited the bed. I had pulled on my panties and camisole by the time he got back.
Creed turned off the lone light we had on and pulled me into him, tucking me close and I took us full circle.
“I’m glad your kids like me, Creed.”
“What’d I say?” he asked in reply.
I pressed in closer, grinning at his shadowed skin.
Creed’s arms around me tightened then loosened and I relaxed into him.
Finally, I gave it to him.
“Just so you know, you haven’t changed much but I’d take you any way you came to me, too,” I whispered. “I loved you then. I love you now. I just love you, Creed.”
I heard him draw a breath as I felt his chest expand with it.
Then he released it and I felt his lips brush the top of my hair.
“Good to know,” he muttered there.
I smiled at his shadowed skin again before I took a deep breath and, in my man’s arms, after a day of fun and relaxation, a night of good food and then great fucking, I slipped straight into sleep.
* * * * *
Daddy showed him the picture. Me, wearing heels, a dress Creed had never seen, my hair done up in a way I never did it, looking older, like the days he’d spent there were years. I had Dixon’s arm around my waist, my hand lay on his chest and my head was resting on his shoulder.
“I told you,” Daddy whispered, his voice ugly in his glee. “Right from your arms to Jason’s. Right to Jason.”
Creed tried to focus through the hunger, the pain, the discomfort, the smell. He couldn’t see my face. He could barely see my profile.
But he knew I’d never go to Dixon.
Never.
Daddy went on, “He’ll make her happy. I promise you. I promise you, Tucker. He’ll make her happy. I’ll see to it. She’ll be happy in a way you never could make her be.”
Creed closed his eyes.
Daddy lost patience, his fingers shoving in Creed’s hair, yanking his head back and the pain spiked along the slice in his scalp. “
Look at it!
”
He opened his eyes and there I was.
His Sylvie.
Even in another man’s arms, he drank me in.
“That’s where she’s meant to be,” Daddy told him.
Creed knew Daddy was wrong.
That wasn’t where I was meant to be.
Because we were meant to be.
“He’ll make her happy,” Daddy continued. “I promise you that. You promise to vanish from her life, I promise, I
vow
, Sylvie will be happy.”
Creed’s eyes moved from the photo to Daddy and he whispered, his voice hoarse and weak, “He’ll never make her happy.”
Daddy yanked again on his hair, arching his neck pack, more pain, this excruciating, tearing through his entire scalp, down his neck and spine.
But Creed didn’t even groan.
All he said was, “Never.”
* * * * *
I shot up to sitting, the dream still having a hold on me but I didn’t get the chance to dart out of bed and do anything crazy.
This was because Creed had me on my back with him on me, his hands moving soothingly over my skin and his lips whispering, “Just a dream. Just a dream, baby.”
I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight through the shakes that trembled through me.
He rolled us to our sides and silently held me through the shakes, one hand drifting up and down my back, one hand sifting through my hair until the shakes left me.
Only then did he speak.
“This shit has got to stop.”
I tipped my head back and whispered, “I’ll get through it, Creed.”
I saw his darkened chin dip down and he replied, “Yeah. You will. By talkin’ to somebody. I don’t care who it is as long as it’s a professional.”
I felt my body get tight. “I’m not gonna go see somebody.”
“Yeah you are.”
I pulled up so we were face to face. “I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I’ll get through it.”
He disagreed. “Not on your own, you won’t.”
“Creed, it’s just bad dreams.”
“Sylvie, you got the beginnings of PTSD.”
It was then I felt my body go still.
Then I returned firmly, “I do not. It’s not a big deal. It’s just dreams.”
“It’s not just dreams, baby.”
“It is. That shit didn’t happen
to me,
” I reminded him. “It happened
to you.
”
“You’re right. The shit you’re dreamin’ about, it happened to me. What that shit led to, what’s buried and what’s fuckin’ with your head even if it isn’t comin’ out, is what happened to you after that happened to me. You’re dealin’ with a new load of fucked up shit on top of the old load you haven’t sorted through and your head is focusing on what you
didn’t
experience in order to avoid what you
did.
”
Oh God, now he was making sense.
“That’s whacked,” I scoffed to cover the fact he was freaking me out and Creed rolled into me and on me.
“It fuckin’ isn’t,” he growled. “Trust me that shit happened to me so I fuckin’ know. Years after that, Sylvie,
years
, that shit did a number on me. You think I didn’t have nightmares? You think I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat time and time a-fuckin’-gain? You think, to this day, I don’t always carry water with me in my fuckin’ car? I hear the sound of chains, my gut gets tight. To. This.
Day.
You were sold to an animal, an owned human being forced to do what he wanted you to do in ways
no
woman should have to perform and ended up killin’ him with a knife. You don’t do that shit and move to Denver and everything is cool. You process it. If you’re smart, you find the tools to deal with it because it’s always fuckin’ there. You just gotta learn to control it before it controls you.”
I hated that he went through that, all of it but also this new nuance he shared with me.
And I hated it when he made sense.
But I wasn’t ready to give in. “I can’t talk about this now. I need sleep then I need to get back to the hotel.”
“Yeah, you need to do both of those things but you can do them after you agree to see somebody.”
“Creed –”
”Sylvie.”
I fell silent.
He did, too.
We stared at each other in the dark.
God! I wished I was more patient.
“Fine,” I snapped.
I felt his body relax which sucked because I hadn’t noticed how tense he was. His tenseness communicated eloquently that my dreams were bothering him, maybe even more than they bothered me and that didn’t suck. That sucked
huge.
“Good,” he muttered.
Whatever.
“Will you get off me so I can sleep?” I requested.
“Sure,” he agreed, his voice lighter, the smooth back in it. He tipped his head and touched his mouth to mine before he moved off me.
I was tucked close before I made my effort to save face after giving in.
“You know, you’re a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, I know,” he informed me. “My kids tell me that shit all the time, though they use different words. And they say it when I make decisions based on the fact that I love them and I want them to live the best life they can even if that row is hard to hoe. Don’t give a shit when they gripe. Won’t give a shit when you do either.”
Again.
Whatever.
“You can stop talking now,” I invited.
“Wasn’t me who broke the silence by tellin’ you that you’re a pain in my ass.”
I decided to take his anorexically veiled meaning and try silence.
Creed wasn’t done.
“Though, just sayin’, you’re also a pain in my ass.”
“You’re still talking,” I pointed out.
He stopped talking but his body started moving and I knew he was silently chuckling.
A-freaking-gain.
Whatever!
I was too annoyed to notice that even after the dream, Creed had led me so far from its residue, I fell right to sleep.
* * * * *
“Chelle picks them up at three. Come to the house at three thirty so we can head to the airport.”
We were standing at Creed’s front door and he was giving me directions I already had, something I was realizing I’d have to learn to live with because, apparently, badasses were bossy even when they didn’t need to be.
And repetitive.
“Right,” I muttered.
“You get lost, don’t like Cave Creek, call me. You can hit Cooper’stown for lunch then head back out here.”
Creed had given me some ideas of what to check out during my time alone in Phoenix and I’d picked two top contenders. One was Cave Creek, which was a town just out of the city and with its desert location, history and copious bars and restaurants, it sounded like the place for me. The other choice was Alice Cooper’s restaurant, Cooper’stown which was downtown and sounded like it had great food with seriously cool swag.
“I won’t get lost,” I told him but this was a lie. I probably would. I got lost all the time even with sat-nav because I routinely made the decision to distrust sat-nav and went my own way and got lost which was why I got sat-nav to begin with. It didn’t make sense but then again, a lot of things about me didn’t make sense. I’d learned to roll with it.
Creed stared at me a beat then repeated, “Take the one-oh-one to Cave Creek Road, baby. It’s not hard. If you make it hard and get lost, call me.”
I stared at him but I did it with narrowed eyes and repeated, “I won’t get lost.”
“You will.”
“It’s easy to get there, Creed.”
“You forget, I followed your ass, frequently, for a month. My count, while I was followin’ you, you got lost five times. Take the one-oh-one to Cave Creek Road, you get lost, call me. You with me?”
Annoying!
“Just asking, we established your kids like me, will they stop liking me if I wake them up on a Sunday morning by kicking your ass in the dining room?”