Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2) (28 page)

“I promise I’m fine.” It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth. Half-truths are becoming a habit.

“Coming here was a great idea.” The palm of his hand cups my chin. “Fresh air. No commitments.”

He leans down to drop a quick kiss on my lips.

“No worrying that someone will find out we’re together.” He pulls back, cocking one brow. “I don’t have to pretend I’m not crazy about you here, do I?”

Instead of answering, I lift up to kiss him, my hands sneaking inside his leather jacket and under his t-shirt, gliding over the warm muscles of his back. I pursue the kiss, deepening it, making promises with my lips and tongue that my body longs to make good on. He squeezes my butt, brushes his fingertips across my breast, caresses my neck, rediscovering what’s his as I rediscover what’s mine.

The sound of Aunt Ruthie entering from downstairs and closing the door slows our kiss, little by little until we’re just brushing lips and holding on. Rhyson pulls back, sucking in air, bracing his hands on my shoulders and caressing my throat with his thumbs.

“I’m gonna sleep on the couch.” His eyes slip over the simple button down shirt clinging at my breasts and the curve of my hips in my jeans. “It feels like forever since that night in Berlin, and as I’m sure you noticed my dick is quite hard, but yeah. The couch. I may not share Aunt Ruthie’s beliefs, but I don’t want to disrespect them under her roof.”

Just when I think I couldn’t love him anymore, he goes and does or says something to prove I have no idea how much this guy holds my heart.

“Yeah. OK.” I grab his hand and lead him over to the bed where I slept growing up. “Just lie down with me for a little while. Talk to me for a bit while I fall sleep.”

He peers down at me, and I know he’s searching my face for signs of exhaustion. He’ll find them. The lines around my mouth. The smudges under my eyes. The heavy eyelids fatigue keeps dragging downward.

“Please.”

I pull him to the bed with me, squeezing against his broad chest.

“I used to listen to your music in here every night before I’d fall asleep,” I whisper.

“So in a way, I was with you back then.” He smiles against my cheek.

“In a way, yeah.”

“I want to be with you every step of the way.” I can almost hear his hesitation. A pause that says so much before he voices it. “Kai, it doesn’t have to be tonight, but we need to talk about your contract with Malcolm.”

I knew this would come, but was hoping it wouldn’t be day one.

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m with him for two years.”

“But what are the terms?” he presses. “I’d buy your contract out. You know I would. I’ve wanted you on Prodigy for a long time. Malcolm mismanaging you on your first tour, compromising your health—”

“No one knew I was sick, Rhys. I didn’t even know how much.”

“Yeah, but—”

A light rap on the open door stops whatever he would have said. Aunt Ruthie stands at the entrance, her eyes moving between the two of us facing each other on the bed.

“You guys okay in here?” She leans into the doorjamb, one fist on her hip. “Ya hungry?”

Rhyson sits up, looking back and pushing a chunk of hair behind my ear, traces my eyebrows with his thumb.

“I think we’re just tired.” He smiles, some of the irritation from our contract discussion clearing from his face. “Especially this one.”

“Well, get some rest.” Aunt Ruthie turns to go.

“Could I get some sheets and a blanket for the couch?” Rhyson walks over to where Aunt Ruthie stands. Surprise flits across her face before she looks back at me on my bed.

“Sure,” she says. “Oh. Kai, I know you’re just getting back, but Mr. McClausky wanted to cook chicken in the pot for you tomorrow. He’s the only one I told about you coming home.”

“Chicken in the pot?” Rhyson looks between the two of us. “Is this a thing?”

“It’s my favorite thing.” My lips are almost too tired to grin, but I manage. “And, yeah, Aunt Ruthie, I’d love that. You can invite a few other folks you know won’t talk about us being here or make a big fuss. I’d love to see everybody who was here for Christmas dinner.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Aunt Ruthie smacks her hands together, eyes bright despite the lateness of the hour. “I’ll call ‘em all in. They’ll love seeing you. Well, I’m gonna turn in.”

She blows me an air kiss.

“See you in the morning. Sleep as late as you want.”

Aunt Ruthie leaves, and as much as I love Rhyson considering her beliefs, which were once mine, I want him crawling under the covers with me. Not to do anything other than hold me all night, but I can tell it’s important to him that Aunt Ruthie knows he’s behaving. I have no idea why, but I love him for it.

He digs into my suitcase until he finds one of my vintage nightshirts, tossing it to me.

“Put that on and go straight to sleep. Dr. Wells won’t be blaming me for your relapse.”

A wicked, wanton imp possesses me for one last hurrah before I surrender to the sleep dragging at my consciousness. I slip one button and then another loose on my shirt until the lacy edge of my pink bra peeks out.

“Why don’t you come put it on for me?” My raspy, barely-there voice sounds even huskier in the confines of my childhood bedroom.

“I don’t think so.” Rhyson leans out into the hall, looking in the direction Aunt Ruthie went. “There’ll be plenty of time for that when we get back to LA.”

“You’re kidding, right?” My mouth falls open. We haven’t made love in a month and he’s serious. “But we—”

“Kai, I want Aunt Ruthie to like me.” Fatigue and desire darken his eyes to slate.

“She does, Rhys, but I think she knows we sleep together. I was practically living with you a few months ago. I didn’t hide that from her. I didn’t have to.”

“I know. I just . . . Let me do this, okay?”

I never thought I’d be the one pushing for sex. The thought of me pressuring Rhyson to sleep with me makes me smile all the way into my dreams.

THIS COUCH GAVE MY CHIVALRY A
bad back.

I shift a little to avoid the spring poking my lower lumbar, but encounter a warm, curvy lump nestled against my chest. The smell of pears and cinnamon wafts up from the petite person squeezed between my body and the cushions.

“Pep,” I whisper, more to myself than to Kai. This is how every day should start. For her to slip in here with me and endure this lumpy couch when she had a perfectly good bed up the hall tells me she feels the same.

I don’t want to wake her. An investigative look over the top of the couch through the window sheers reveals the sky is still that just-past-dawn palette, faintly splashed with pinks and gold.

I want to keep things above board in Aunt Ruthie’s house, but I have to squeeze Kai a little tighter to my chest. As sprawling and complex as my life can be sometimes, it really all boils down to this. To this girl huddled into me, sharing a blanket in the morning chill. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect her from the likes of Malcolm. To keep her from guys like Dub. Anything to hold her right here this close.

“Guess she couldn’t stay away,” Aunt Ruthie says softly from the hall that leads to the bedrooms. “You two are like magnets.”

Shit.

“Um, well, no. We didn’t . . . I guess she wanted . . . Nothing happened.”

I sound like some pimple-faced teenager from a John Hughes movie. I’m a grown man, and Kai’s my girlfriend. And we sleep together. We fuck
really
hard, and I
really
love it. But under the steady stare of the closest thing Kai has to family, I want to strap a chastity belt on her.

Aunt Ruthie lifts the untamed line of her eyebrows, a small smile denting one cheek.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she says. “I’m getting coffee. Want some? Or are you going back to, uh . . . sleep?”

Kai’s squished on the couch and would probably sleep a lot better and longer with me gone. I slide away, careful not to wake her, pulling the blanket up to her neck and following Aunt Ruthie into the kitchen.

The silence percolates in the dimly lit kitchen right along with the coffee. Aunt Ruthie seems content with it, pulling out eggs, milk, cheese, and bacon, humming a tune I don’t know, probably some church song, but the quiet drives me a little crazy.

“I promise nothing happened,” I blurt. “Last night, I mean. I just woke up and Kai was on the couch, but nothing—”

“Happened. Yes, you mentioned that,” Aunt Ruthie slips in, handing me a mug of coffee. “Why do you care so much if I believe it?”

I clear my throat and sit at the square wooden table taking up a good bit of space in the small kitchen.

“You’re the closest thing Kai has to family.” I shrug, like my next words haven’t knit a nervous ball of yarn in my stomach. “I want you to like me. To approve of me because one day I’ll be asking for your blessing.”

“My
blessing
?” Aunt Ruthie only bothers lifting one brow this time. “What kind of blessing?”

“To marry her.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, that ball starts unwinding because that sounds so right.

“‘Blessing’s’ an interesting word. You don’t strike me as an especially religious or traditional man, Rhyson.” Aunt Ruthie settles into the seat across from me, sheltering the steaming coffee mug between her hands, keeping her voice as low as mine. “Do you even believe in blessings?”

“No, I don’t think I do, but she does.” I take a sip of the coffee before continuing. “I’ve always been honest with Kai that I don’t do religion. I don’t really care about it, but I know it’s important to her.”

“Is it still?” Aunt Ruthie tilts her head, her eyes intent. “I wasn’t sure. We haven’t talked about it in a long time.”

“I think Kai’s figuring things out for herself like most people have to, but her faith is still in her heart.”

“And where’s your faith?”

“If I have any, it’s in her.”

“It’s dangerous to love that way, Rhys.” She shakes her head before taking another sip.

“Why?”

“Because none of us are perfect or live forever. We’re just human beings who make mistakes and die eventually. When you love someone like that, so completely, they can hurt you without even meaning to. Kai’s mama hurt me more than anyone ever has, and all she did was die.”

I absorb those words through my skin, through my bones and to my heart. I get that. Kai and I laughed in Berlin over her being the most powerful person in my universe, but it’s true.

“And as amazing as I think Kai is, she’s not perfect. She’ll mess up. We all do. Love her through her mistakes. That’ll be the true test of it.” She raises her brows over her mug. “Think you can do that?”

“I can do that.” I nod, certainty settling over all my doubts because Kai loved me through my mistakes. I’d do that for her.

“Then you won’t need my blessing.” Aunt Ruthie breathes a short laugh. “And if Kai’s as in love with you as you are with her, she won’t need it either. That girl is as stubborn as they come. In a lot of ways, Kai’s more like her father than her mother.”

Aunt Ruthie tips her head, brows up.

“Not that you could ever tell her that.”

“What was he like? Her dad, I mean?”

Aunt Ruthie’s long sigh makes the air heavy. She sets her coffee mug down, studying the dark liquid before answering.

“He was a good man who made a really bad decision and ruined everything.” Aunt Ruthie runs a hand over her salt and sanded hair. “I can see that in people. How good people do really stupid things. We all do, but what he did, how he left them, was unforgiveable.”

I don’t want to be another man in Kai’s life who hurts her with my bad decisions. Unfortunately, I already have.

“Did she tell you what I did?” I ask tentatively. “Why she left me?”

“No.” Aunt Ruthie grins. “But you’re a man, so I’m sure it was very stupid.”

I can’t help but grin back because in hindsight, getting
Total Package
to pass on Kai
was
very stupid.

“You’re right. I was a Grade A imbecile, but I was only trying to do what’s best for her, to help. She’s not an easy girl to help, ya know?”

“Oh, I’m aware.”

“And I want to protect her, to take care of her without smothering her, but I keep fuck—” My eyes dart to Aunt Ruthie’s waiting expression. “I mean, I keep messing up.”