Reckless (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 1) (13 page)

DG beamed. “She seems like a great kid.”

“The best.”

If only he could be a better dad to her. He’d started to repeat the mistakes his father had made with him and his brothers. But he wasn’t interested in dwelling on his faults right now.

Right now all he wanted was to make DG feel as good as she’d made him feel. Then make her feel that good again. And again.

Derek’s whole face softened when he talked about his daughter. His love for her was as obvious as his guilt. He’d mentioned Haley had forgiven him, but he clearly hadn’t forgiven himself. DG didn’t understand how that worked, how someone could continue to wallow in guilt even after they’d been forgiven. A person would have to hate himself more than he loved the person he’d wronged.

She cupped his cheek. “You’re still upset with yourself, aren’t you?”

He kissed her palm then shook his head slowly. “Honestly, the only thing I’m feeling right now is lucky to be with you. Lie back, sweetheart. I’m going to give you a good memory to take with you when you have to leave this morning.”

The thought of leaving him hit her hard in the chest. She didn’t know if her heart could take another long separation
from her dream guy. Their eyes locked, and she saw the words had the same effect on him. His mouth set in a grim line.

“What’s happening to us?” she asked.

He rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “I don’t know. But I’m done wasting time. Aren’t you?”

She nodded solemnly and arched her back to let him un
hook her bra. As she sank back into the pillows, he stroked his hands over her shoulders and down her arms, drawing the straps down and sending warm tingles racing over her skin. The moment he’d freed her breasts, his hands covered them, caressing and weighing them. His face was reverent, his gaze dark with determination.

He lowered his mouth to hers. When their lips touched, she moaned, wanting more than the sweet, slow kiss. He paid her reverence. She burned to be debauched.

“Please,” she begged, lost to the need to be filled, heart, body and soul, by Derek.

“
Shhh. Let me.”

He stroked his hands all over her, up and down her torso, over her hips, around to her back, languid strokes from her shoulder blades to her buttocks. He followed his touch with kisses until every inch of her knew what it meant to be worshipped.

If she’d had her way, she would have missed this. Properly schooled, she lay back and let her tough construction worker have his tender way with her.

The only sounds were the scrape of his callused hands over her skin, the rasp of clothing as he divested her of each piece one at a time, her gasps, and his occasional hum of approval
as he pleasured her with everything at his disposal.

At last, he settled between her legs, sent her a naughty grin and
lowered his face to her most intimate place, where he proceeded to make her forget everything but delicious ecstasy. Even after an earth-shattering release, her serious, angry man persisted in his efforts to please her. He coaxed her higher and higher and anchored her to the bed with his strong hands as she came crashing down once more into purest bliss.

He sat up between her legs, smug as the cat
who knocked over the milk jug. She was so relaxed, she couldn’t move a muscle, didn’t want to move a muscle. She just lay there, sprawled and naked and utterly transfixed while he dragged his t-shirt over his head.

She greedily devoured the sight of his tan skin, stretched over hard working muscle. His jeans were already open from earlier, and
the V of his zipper perfectly framed the evidence that he’d fully enjoyed what they’d just shared. But the best sight of all was the look in his eyes, heavy with desire for her and tender with something she dared to hope might be love.

Her movements clumsy, she helped him peel his jeans down his hips as he covered her body
with his. She kneaded his firm glutes and skimmed her fingers up and down the warm skin of his back. She wanted to worship him as he’d worshipped her, but the intensity in his eyes spoke volumes.
I will have you now,
that look said.
Right now.

No argument from her.

His mouth found hers and their tongues joined. With one hand, he guided himself to her center and pushed inside, stretching her with unapologetic intent, making them one. The amazing fullness felt so secure she wondered if the fog would lose its purchase on her. They froze like that and looked into each other’s eyes.

Derek exhaled a rough curse.

Thank God he’d turned the bedside lamp on earlier. She would remember the look on his face for the rest of her life…or death. Solemn passion bled from his every pore. Love shone in his brown eyes. Parting from him at dawn would break her.

“You feel so good,” he said. Then he
made love to her.

Her heart soared as she locked her arms around him, her fingers clinging to his back. He held on just as tightly. All her dread of the fog and fear of being dead vanished, leaving only rightness.

Pleasure zoomed up on her more quickly than she would have liked. Her body was a parched desert and Derek’s loving brought floodwaters rushing up from below to quench and nourish. She wanted it to go on forever, but the drenching fulfillment wouldn’t be denied.

He knew. “Come on, sweetheart,” he
murmured over her ear. “Let’s go there together.”

His words brought her
home. She cried out in mixed pleasure and determination not to let the fog steal her away again. A moment later, Derek followed, his arms tightening around her until she couldn’t conceive of ever being alone again.

After several beautiful, quiet seconds, he whispered her name and brushed kisses over her face. Moisture on her cheeks told her she was weeping.

“Don’t cry, baby girl,” he said. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“Don’t let go,” she said. “When dawn comes, don’t let go. I won’t leave you again.”

“I won’t let go, sweetheart. I’m never letting go again.”

As he smoothed her tears away with his thumbs, she noticed the gray circles under his eyes.
Her own problems vanished in the face of his exhaustion. “You need to sleep.”

“No. I won’t lose any time with you.”

“You can’t keep this up.”

He exhaled, clearly knowing he’d reached his limit.

She wiggled out from under him and clicked off the light. He didn’t protest as she guided him to lie down, and stretched alongside him. Darkness and Derek’s scent surrounded her, along with his strong arms.

“You’re right,” he said. “I need sleep, but I won’t let go. I promise.” Keeping one arm around her, he set his alarm for a few minutes before five AM. “I hate this.” He settled beside her, tucking her against him like a treasure. “We never have enough time.”

“Whatever we have, it’ll have to be enough,” she said, her fingers stroking his forearm.

“It’ll never be enough,” he murmured, already half asleep.

The sound of his steady breathing created a soothing rhythm. Peaceful. But she would never be completely at peace until she knew the coming dawn wouldn’t rip her away from the one place she longed to be.

* * * *

Derek buried his nose in the cool silk of DG’s hair. Her melon scent curled around him
and conspired with his sated body to drag him into oblivion. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with his woman, wanted to make love to her again. Once was not enough. A thousand times wouldn’t be enough.

But she was right. He couldn’t keep this up. He needed some serious shut-eye, even if the thought of going to sleep filled him with dread.

“Every time I close my eyes, I have bad dreams,” he said, fighting the inevitable.

“I’ll watch over you.” Her voice was a soothing balm.

He knew she would wake him from the nightmares when he had them again, but that wasn’t the issue. The first nightmare, the one where he relived the accident from last Friday, always caused a dark feeling he had trouble naming in the pit of his stomach. And the other one, the one where he worked in vain to save the older man, that one left him feeling so damn empty he could hardly breathe. DG would wake him, but not before the nightmares did their worst. He didn’t think his psyche could take any more, and he knew his body needed hours of uninterrupted sleep.

The dreams were breaking him. And poor DG was his on
ly salvation. He hated being a burden to her. He should be her rock, not the other way around.

Sleep crept up on him even though he resisted. He felt himself falling into that place where a person could never be sure what was real or imagined.

Blackness gave way to a floating, twisted knot of living, pulsing matter. He recoiled from it, disgusted, even as his mind gave it a name. Guilt. The thing in the pit of his stomach he had yet to fully acknowledge.

“It was me.” He didn’t know if he’d said it out loud or just in the dream. “I caused the accident.”

The knot pulsed with approval. It swelled before him, but he also felt a sickening pressure in his gut, like the knot existed within him and this glimpse was just a projection. Its sides ballooned until he thought it would rupture and flood his system with poison. The thought made him sick, but he knew it had to happen. Like puking: once it was over, he’d feel better.

Then he could forget about the accident and the guilt.

The memory of yanking the wheel of his truck to cut off the little Honda assaulted him.

The knot had grown painfully large, pushing at the walls of his stomach.

“I was an asshole. I hurt somebody.”

“It’s okay,” DG said, stroking his hair. She probably thought he was dreaming again.

Maybe he was.

“No. It’s not. I did
bad. I really hurt somebody.” Sickening, pulsing pain radiated to his limbs from that frigging knot.

“Then you need to make it right.”

Horror crashed over him as her words penetrated. He startled awake. A layer of sweat had chilled his skin. The full weight of what he had done on Friday sank in. Shame made his face flame and seared the knot into a lump of hard coal that would sit heavy in his gut forever.

So much for getting it to rupture and disappear.
That would have been too easy. He didn’t deserve easy. He deserved to suffer.

“Derek?” DG smoothed away the sweat on his brow. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head. He wouldn’t be okay until he made it right, like DG said, and maybe not even then. He turned to her and stared at her figure in the dark, terrified by what he knew he had to do.

“Derek.” Her voice turned urgent. She cried out in pa
in. She coughed as if she were choking.

He turned on the light to find her clutching at her throat. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she coughed. “My head hurts. I can’t breathe.”

He reached for her, but his hands didn’t connect with her shoulders. He blinked hard to clear his vision, because what he saw couldn’t possibly be. She was transparent.

“DG! Baby, what’s happening?”

She tried to speak, but could only cough. Her face turned red. Her eyes flew wide. Terror pulled her face taut. She reached for him with one hand while her other scratched pink furrows into her throat.

“DG!” He grabbed for her, but his hands came up empty.

She faded into mist. Her coughing drifted into nothingness. Faintly, he heard her choke out, “I’m not ready to go.”

Then there was nothing left of her.

He clawed at the covers, searching in vain for his dream girl. He launched out of bed, his hands swiping at the air.
“DG! Where are you? Come back. Come back!”

Only silence answered him.

He wheeled around to stare at the bed while his pulse pounded in his ears. She didn’t reappear. The clock read 11:47.

His knees hit the floor. DG was gone.

She’d woken him from his nightmares with more than just pleasure. She’d told him she loved him. He hadn’t gotten the chance to tell her he felt the same way about her.

A woman’s voice faded in and out with the throbbing pain crushing DG’s entire head. “Camilla? Cami? Oh, honey, come back to me, please.” The voice was familiar, and too loud.

The light pushing at her closed eyelids was too sharp.

A whimper climbed her throat and got stuck. She choked. Her body convulsed as she fought for air.

“Yes, hello?
Hello? Cami’s waking up. She’s waking up! She’s in pain. Please hurry!”

She recognized the voice she’d heard in the fog when she’d been trying to get back to Derek.

“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Arlington.” Another voice, staticky and small.

“Oh,
Cami sweetheart, hang on,” the first voice said.
Cami
meant nothing to her, but
sweetheart
did. She was Derek’s sweetheart. His DG. The pain could not rip her in two as long as she had an identity.

Hands on her shoulders tried to restrain her, but they were tentative and therefore didn’t belong to Derek. She fought them.

Noise bombarded her in a rush of urgent voices and the rattle of wheels over tile. More hands restrained her, not tentatively.

She fought those as well, still choking, dying.

Someone pried one of her eyes open and blinded her with needles of light. An authoritative female voice said, “Stop fighting the tube, Cami. You need it to help you breathe.

You’ve been in an accident. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

She squeezed the cool hand gripping hers, not sure why she obeyed. These people…they were killing her. Where was Derek? She tried to ask and only choked more.

“
Cami, I need you to calm down.” The no-nonsense voice sounded clear and close to her ear. “You’re in the hospital. You’re hurt very badly. You need to calm down so you don’t hurt yourself worse.”

The words
hospital
and
hurt
registered. She forced herself to relax in stages. Air filled her lungs.

Is Derek coming?
She wanted to ask, but the air-giving tube prevented it.

He’d said he wouldn’t let go, but he must have, becau
se she’d been ripped away from him again, just not by the fog this time.

Agony at the forced separation burned her from the inside out. She scrunched up her face with the empty ache, only to have pain scour her cheeks and forehead, her left eye and ear, her scalp.

“You have to relax, Cami. Please try to remain calm.” Someone Velcro’d a blood pressure cuff around her arm. Other hands were on her, too, and other people spoke nearby, but she focused on the calm voice. “Your face is bruised, and you have some stitches. I need you to try to keep still. You won’t be able to talk, but we’ll bring you a pad and a pencil so you can communicate. I’ll answer all your questions, but first I’m going to examine you. Can you open your eye on your own?”

Eye?
Not eyes? That didn’t sound good. She tried to breathe through the impossible sense of loss, and focused on opening her “eye.” The right one opened a crack. She slammed it shut again as angry sparks of light stabbed through to her brain.

“Good,
Cami. That’s really good. You other eye is swollen. You won’t be able to open it just yet. You were in a car accident. We’re taking care of you here at Mercy Med. I’m Dr. Grant. Squeeze my hand if you understand.”

She obeyed the voice, because it brooked no argument.

“The pain should be better now. I’ve increased your morphine drip. Squeeze my hand if your pain is tolerable. Let go of my hand if your pain is bad.”

She squeezed, grateful the pain was fading.

The next hour was both grounding and terrifying. She’d been in a coma for four days, they told her. She’d had part of her skull removed to allow for swelling. Her name was Cami.

Once she started remembering, she couldn’t stop. She saw that white tailgate again, too close. Way too close. She heard the groan of buckling metal, the crash of breaking glass. She relived the surge of terror until her skin flashed with cold sweats.

It had happened again. She’d had another accident.

As the last nurse left her room, she tried to sit up, an important question doing battle with her blasted breathing tube.

“Don’t try to talk, sweetie,” the auburn-haired woman she began to remember as her mother said. “Easy, easy does it.”

She made frantic hand motions, wanting the promised pad and pen.

Her mother fished in her purse and finally put a pen in her hand. She smoothed an old receipt out on the bed.

Cami
wrote on it,
Was anyone else hurt?

Her mother shook her head, her lips quirking despite sad eyes that remembered a time when smiles had been impossible. “Just like you, sweetheart,
always thinking of others. Two other cars were involved, but other than some mild whiplash, everyone else is okay.” Her voice faltered at the end. A tear slid down her cheek, and she discretely blotted it with a tissue from her purse.

Her chest relaxed a fraction to know no one had died, even as her heart ached with eight-year-old guilt. She’d been driving then, too. It had been raining, and her father had been in the passenger seat. They were coming home from a daddy-daughter date.
Pizza and a movie. His last words to her had been, “Don’t rush it, sweetheart. Merge when you’re ready.” She hadn’t listened, had rolled her eyes at his overreacting hand clenched on the armrest. She’d been impatient. She’d been eighteen and invincible.

Focused on the car she’d be slipping
in behind, she’d clipped the bumper of the car in her blind spot. The wheel jerked in her hands, and she’d overcompensated by yanking it in the other direction. They’d spun out of control. Her world had changed. She was not invincible. Neither was her father.

She closed her eyes against the fresh wave of remorse. When s
he opened them, she picked up the pen again and wrote,

I’m a menace. I’m never driving again.

Not even for Helping Hand. As soon as she got off the breathing tube, she’d call Ellen and quit. She’d find a volunteer position that didn’t require her to drive, like she should have a long time ago.

“
Shhh, sweetheart,” her mother said, holding her hand and stroking her arm. “The accident wasn’t your fault. Witnesses said a white truck cut you off. The police are looking for the person responsible. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t cry. It wasn’t your fault.” She heard the
this
time
, even though her mother never would have said it.

It was a lie anyway. Yes, she’d been cut off
—how anyone could be so callous or at the very least oblivious on the road was beyond her—but it had ultimately been her foot that slammed on the brakes too hard. It had been her hands on the wheel, panicking, yanking her car into the fast lane, into the path of speeding cars that hadn’t had enough time to avoid colliding with her.

She never should have gotten on the freeway.

She’d messed up. Again. But at least the damage seemed limited mostly to herself. Last time, she’d destroyed her entire family.

Her mother clasped her hands around one of
Cami’s. Her mouth pursed in a grief-tinged smile. Her auburn eyebrows pinched in concern, not accusation, never accusation. Yet Cami couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. Hadn’t been able to since the other accident.

Intellectually, she knew forgiveness was possible. She urged the kids she counseled to forgive all the time. It was a staple in the counselor’s handbook. And yet, deep down in her heart, where who she was always seemed to trump what she knew, she didn’t understand how her mother could still love her, how she could have truly forgiven her for causing the accident that had killed her father. In that secret, private place, she suspected her mother’s love was merely a facade. She worried that like her brother, her mother had never really forgiven her.

She wiggled her hand out of her mother’s grasp, the contact suddenly unbearable. Why couldn’t Derek be here to hold her hand, instead? With Derek, she hadn’t obsessed about the past. There hadn’t been any past to obsess about. Even if there had been, he would have kept her preoccupied enough it wouldn’t have been a wall between them like this awkwardness between her and her mother.

Under her pain, her face heated with the memory of ma
king love with Derek what felt like mere moments ago. Their handful of nights together rushed through her consciousness with fierce longing. Her heart contracted with horrible understanding.

He wasn’t real.

She’d been here in the hospital, unconscious and hooked up to tubes and wires the last four days. Derek had been no more than a random creation of her concussed neurons, a desperate reaching of her subconscious for acceptance and love as a reaction to her massive insecurities.

But oh, how her heart wanted him to be real!

Regret clogged her chest until she was sure she would have died from lack of air if not for the breathing tube.

“Sweetheart?” her mother said. “Are you okay?”

She wanted to tell her mother never to call her that again. That’s what Derek had called her. She’d been his sweetheart, his dream girl. But she had no strength to protest the endearment.

She was too busy trying to survive the ache of her broken heart.

* * * *

Derek shuffled to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He normally didn’t have any
until he got to the job site, but he wouldn’t be going to work today. He might not be going to work for a while. Deadlines or no deadlines, Jibb’s Construction would just have to make do without him. He had something he needed to do.

After DG had disappeared, he’d realized what had happened. Denying his part in the accident on Friday had done a number on his conscience. Nightmares had led to sleep deprivation, sleep deprivation had led to hallucinations, and before he knew it, his strained mind had made up a sexy-as-hell comfort for himself whose unwavering compassion had led him to the only conclusion that would make it all stop. He had to turn himself in.

Once he’d accepted that and the fact DG didn’t exist, he’d slept like a baby for six blessed hours before his alarm had gone off in time for him to call in sick and snooze for another two. With some solid sleep under his belt, he felt better than he had in days, except for the heavy pain in his chest from the loss of his dream girl.

She had
felt
real. He wanted her to be real, wanted to have her in his bed every night, wake up beside her every morning. He wanted her as a girlfriend. Could imagine her as even more. And he’d made every last nuance up, from her short, polish-free fingernails to her gorgeous breasts to the perfect blend of sexiness and innocence. She’d been perfect because he’d made her up to be exactly what he wanted.

What an idiot he’d been to believe it all. His subconscious had done a number on him.

He’d gone loony-toons for days on end and thanked his lucky stars he’d come to his senses before anyone found out about it.

Now he needed to own up to being an asshole on the road and take his lumps.
Even if it meant a suspended license. Fines. Gulp, jail time. Double gulp, humiliation as he faced Deidre and saw the inevitable judgment in her eyes. Shit. Would she try to keep Haley away from him?

He couldn’t allow that. He’d accept the consequences of his temper, but he’d be damned if he’d let those consequences affect Haley any more than they had to. She enjoyed their weekends together as much as he did, and it would feel like a punishment to her if Deidre tried to keep them apart.

After showering, he poured his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table with the phone book. The blue pages were no help whatsoever in a search for the non-emergency police number.

Why did the cops have to have so many phone numbers? Which one should he call? There was no entry for
Turning yourself in? Call 555-FUKT.

He tossed the useless book on the counter and grabbed his keys and Thermos before he changed his mind. He might as well do this in person. It might be his last chance to drive for a while.

Forty-five minutes later—yeah, they made him
wait
to turn himself in—he shook hands with Lieutenant Christy, a tall, hard-eyed man with gray hair buzzed so close his tan scalp showed through.

“What brings you in, today, Mr. Summers?” Lt. Christy
asked as he showed Derek into his office, a claustrophobic eight-by-eight cube of plaster, industrial-grade blue carpet, and reinforced glass that looked out at the reception area. Christy’s desk was neat, but his walls were overrun with layer upon layer of tacked up pictures, flyers, and clippings. All that paper smothered the corkboards like multicolored kudzu.

Derek took the offered chair, sucked a deep breath, and fessed up.

Christy listened as he described how he’d cut off the Honda, and mentioned the other two cars he’d seen get involved in the accident. His embarrassment at his behavior grew with every word. It was one thing to act the way he had Friday without an audience, quite another to tell a cop about it. He’d called the driver of that Honda some nasty names, but the real jerk looked back at him from the mirror every morning. In all his self-righteous glory, he’d proclaimed himself judge, jury, and executioner of the highway. A little patience, and he could have eased up on the gas just a hair while a less confident driver took a little longer to change lanes than he thought reasonable. Would that have killed him? No. But acting impatiently might have caused irreparable harm.