Saving Lawson (Loving Lawson Book 2) (8 page)

              Her wet warmth was addictive. My cock tasted her pussy like it was made for it. I couldn’t get enough of it. This would never get old, and that’s how I knew something this good was made to last. Every time I took her it felt as exciting and personal as the first.

              “Heath, oh, my God,” she moaned my name over and over again. “Heath… Heath…”

              It was the sweetest sound. I felt the pleasure course through me as I fucked her fast and hard, hitting her special spot every time. I’d make her sore. I’d make her remember come tomorrow I’d been buried deep inside her. She’d know who she belonged to. It was me.

              She was mine.

              My fingers dug into her flesh as I growled out my own moans. I felt my spine tingling and a deep pressure building. My hold tightened, and I was sure she was going to bruise, but she didn’t care. No, she screamed out my name, pushing her ass into me. She took me in so deep, and she never relented. She took the harsh thrusts, and she loved the pain mingled with the pleasure. Her whole body began to tense, and I knew she was close. I brought my hand around to her clit and massaged it as I continued slamming into her. She let out a cry followed by a soft moan and fell apart beneath me, quivering as her pussy clenched my dick and forced me to my own pleasure. I came hard inside her and the pleasure made every inch of my body flushed from its intensity.

             
Fuckin’ hell.

              Panting, I gathered her in my arms and collapsed to the ground, resting my back against the wall with her in my lap. The back of her head relaxed between my shoulder and neck. She turned her face to me and laid a kiss on my throat. It was always these tiny acts of affection that broke down my walls.

              Love. It consumed me. It made me scared of how far I’d go to give the ones I loved a good life. But Allie… god, she was the one that opened that part of me. She was my endgame. I wanted everything with her. I held her tighter to me, afraid to let her go. I panicked at the thought of going a day without her being mine, and it was that thought alone that prompted me to say, “Marry me.”

              In my hold, her entire body froze. Moments passed, but the two hopeful words still clung to us. I waited for her response, and it was fucking me up that she still hadn’t said a word.

              “Allie,” I pressed, suddenly wondering what was wrong.

              “I… I can’t.” I barely heard her say.

              I tried not to feel like my heart had been bulldozed. The bitter taste of rejection was hard to swallow.

“Why?” I wondered aloud. “I’ll never hurt you. Don’t you know that?”

              “It’s nothing to do with you. It’s…”

              I waited for her to continue. With bated breath, I hoped for a good excuse. However, all I could think about was Ryker standing in our way and my paranoia feasted on my fears.

              “Is it
Ryker
?” I bit out angrier than I’d intended. “You don’t want me because of
him
. Do you… do you still love him, Allie?”

              “No,” she answered quickly, shaking her head against me. “No, Heath. It has
nothing
to do with Ryker. I’m so tired of you thinking I’m in love with him.”

              “How does someone fall out of love with somebody, Allie?” I was surprised by my plea. I genuinely needed to know the answer. “I don’t get it. Because… the way I feel for you, how in love I am with you, it’ll be a cold day in hell before these feelings lessen.”

              She exhaled and buried her face in her hands. “I was never in love with Ryker. He… He was my best friend. I’ve told you this a lot of times already. You’re choosing not to believe it, and I’m asking you to stop.”

              “Then tell me why you can’t commit. Are you uncertain of me? Do you think you’ll walk away one day or –”

              “No, Heath, it’s nothing like that.”

              “Then what is it? I can’t know unless you tell me.”

              I tried to turn her face to me, but she refused, not meeting my eye. “I’d like to get my school done first. I just think marriage should come at a time when you’re in a stable situation. Right now, I don’t have a job and I’m far from stable.”

              I waited for more –
I knew there was more
– but she stopped there, and I felt foolish for opening my mouth in the first place. Fucked up I must have been to think she’d blindly want it like me. To think she’d jump in today if the opportunity presented itself. Something was holding her back, and I had a feeling whatever it was didn’t relate to her education or her “stability”.

              “Don’t make this change things,” she then added cautiously. “Please, Heath.”

              I shook my head slightly. “It won’t,” I muttered, but I wasn’t sure if I believed in my own words. One second everything was absolute, and then the next it was a fucking unpredictable road again. I knew deep inside I just wanted to give her my name, and by then everyone would know who she belonged to. It was sick feeling this possessive, but I wasn’t going to sugar coat how I felt about it.

              Caveman thinking or not, she belonged with me.

              I locked my jaw and didn’t bother pressing her for answers. She wouldn’t give me them anyway. Once my arms loosened around her, she moved away and started putting her pants back on. I watched her closely. Allie barely had a poker face. She laid it all out there, and right now she was doing her best to appear normal, but her hesitation showed everywhere: in her trembling fingers and inability to look me in the eye.

              “I’ve got another fight tonight,” I then said in an effort to bring back some normalcy. Truth was, I felt like a fucking idiot.

              “I know,” she replied quietly. “You told me already.”

              I stood up and did up my jeans. “Just reminding you, babe.”

              As if something had suddenly occurred to her, she turned and faced me. “Did you see Matt around at your last fight?”

              Confused by her random question, I shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I go in and fight and then get the fuck out. I’m too busy racing home to be with you than to stop and chat with the boys. Why?”

              “He told me today he didn’t see you fighting last week, and I found that odd because he’s always at the fights.”

              Shit. “Why were you talking to Matt? You phone him up or something?”

              She frowned at my tone, but I wasn’t happy she was talking to player Matt at all. “No, he crashed his car and has been taking the bus. His Uncle lives around the corner from Mom’s house, so he was on the same ride as me. He seemed a little down, and I think he has some issues with his Uncle or something, but the guy seemed nice enough when I walked by. I guess it’s the same thing with what’s going on with Mom and me, right?”

              I didn’t fucking care about his problems with his Uncle, I wanted to say.

              I was a little rattled, but I hid my emotions. I never stopped to think he might be the one to fuck this up before I was ready to bring it to Allie.

              “Lately Matt’s been heavily into drugs and alcohol,” I replied, crossing my arms as I leaned back against the counter. “I wouldn’t listen to what he does or doesn’t remember.”

              Allie stared at me oddly then, and I saw the note of suspicion there in her eyes. What the hell did I say to get that look?

              “Why don’t you talk to him?” she then asked curiously. “He’s been meaning to catch up with you, and I haven’t heard you talking about him for a while now.”

              “He’s not that good of a friend of mine. He was Ryker’s buddy first.”

              “But he’s a good guy, Heath. Better than…” Her words trailed off and her face darkened.

Fuckin’ here we go again. The Marko hate train. I was growing tired of her loathing him. She didn’t know him at all, and for someone that didn’t appreciate being judged, she did an awful lot of fucking judging when it came to him.

“You have to stop this obsession with hating Marko,” I told her. “You’ve got him all wrong.”

“Did you hear the rumours about him?”

“Which ones?”

“Which ones?” she repeated incredulously. “Like the ones about him and what he did to his sister.
Those
ones.”

My chest tightened. I shut my eyes and shook my head, more to myself than her. “Allie,” I started, trying to reign in my temper. “Babe, people don’t know what they’re talking about. Marko never raped his sister –”

“Apparently he’s in love with her and he even put a boyfriend of hers in the hospital. Broke his legs or some shit.”

I groaned and shook my head yet again. “No, Allie. People paint the stories in black and white. It’s easy to fuck up someone’s reputation when they twist the truth around. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Like with you, that’s not an excuse to
hate
someone based on bullshit.”

I could tell by the look in her eyes, she didn’t agree. “I understand what you’re saying. But he showed up out of nowhere, Heath, and he beats you at a fight that you
had
to win. And what did that result in? You had to scrape for more money and then you had to kill a guy because you didn’t have enough.”

She stopped abruptly when she saw what her words were doing to me. I was tense, nostrils flared, completely enraged she was bringing this up. She was well aware how sensitive the topic was to me. It wasn’t something we talked about ever.

“So,” I harshly said, “your excuse for hating the guy is because he was new to town around the time I had to get the money? If that’s the case, your list of people to hate must be pretty long.”

“I just want to know where he came from. That’s all. After what happened, we can’t just let anyone into our lives.”

“He came from here, Allie! From Hedley! He’d been gone for a while, and then he came back –”

“But
why
did he come back?!”

I’d had enough nonsense. She was paranoid. Absolutely paranoid to suggest Marko had bad intentions. To say that he had been instrumental to my loss. I called bullshit.

“There’s nothing wrong with Marko,” I told her sternly on my way out of the kitchen. “What’s wrong is your disinterest in getting to know someone close to me.”

“He’s not right,” she shot back with conviction. “I just know it.”

I glanced over my shoulder at her and said with finality, “You know wrong.”

Allie

I was fuming that night.

              You know wrong, he’d said.

              That was bullshit. Whatever bromance was going on between Heath and Marko was getting ridiculous now and I was reaching the end of my rope. As if to throw it in my face, Marko showed up at the apartment while Heath was preparing for the fight.

When I opened the door, he practically pushed me aside to let himself in. All the while he was smirking wickedly at me, like he knew he could get away with this behaviour and there was nothing I could do about it. I stared daggers at him, feeling that usual off vibe coming out of him. He unsettled me, and I couldn’t understand why the girls went crazy for him. Surely they heard the rumours too.

“How’s it going, Allie?” he asked me in his low voice.

“It’s going,” I replied coldly, crossing my arms.

We waited a few minutes for Heath to get out of the bathroom, and we spent every second of it staring at each other. He kept his smirk alive while I glowered.
Did you rape your sister?
I wanted to ask
. Did you hurt her boyfriend because you’re a jealous, crazy man?

“Saw your new place,” he then said, disrupting my thoughts.

Of course he’s seen it.
Knowing Heath, he’d probably dragged Marko to it and asked for his opinion. I didn’t like that he was already involved. If he knew where we lived, he’d be knocking that door down too and shoving his way inside.

“It’s pretty great,” he added.

              “It is,” I agreed passively.

              “Said it was close to your school too.”

              I nodded once.

              He took the hint of my disinterest and didn’t press for more conversation, but he continued looking at me. The humour was still there; he knew I didn’t like him, yet he stuck around with so much ease, like it was completely trivial to him.

              Heath interrupted our staring contest, stopping at the threshold of the kitchen to glance wearily at the two of us.

              “All set?” Marko asked him, looking about Heath like he was inspecting him for something.

              Heath nodded carefully, holding tight the duffel bag strap. “Yeah, man.”

              “Got everything?”

              I raised a brow, wondering what the hell was up with the weird look Heath shot Marko in return. “Yeah,” he answered tightly. “Got… everything.”

              Marko shrugged innocently and turned to the front door. I stared hard at Heath, trying to figure out why he was suddenly acting… peculiar. He caught my look and moved to me. Ever since this afternoon’s random proposal – and rejection – he’d been completely flat.

              He kissed me quickly and muttered, “I’ll see you later. I might be a little late tonight. The guys wanted to have a quick catch up after the fight, so…”

              “That’s fine.”

              “Okay. Love you, Allie.”

              “Love you too.”

              They got out of there, not a word exchanged from either of them. When they left, I sank against the counter and stared at the door for minutes on end. There was a strange feeling in my chest, like something wasn’t right.

              With a slow pace and an oddly heavy heart, I cleaned up the apartment and tended to Kayden when he woke up for a feed. I tried to shake my unease away, thinking that what happened this afternoon was the cause for it. Heath had been off because he felt rejected and hurt. I hated causing him pain, but there was no way in hell I was going to jump into marriage, even if Heath was the only person I could ever see myself with.

He saw right through my excuse, although it was partially true. Truth was, I didn’t want to dive into marriage because of Kayden. He would grow and come to learn just who his real father was. I was petrified of what he might think of me when he realized I had torn apart two brothers.

It was never my intention. It was never something I aspired to do, because who the hell wakes up one morning thinking, “Yeah, two hot brothers – time to break ‘em up!” Yeah, no. That was not at all up there on my list of priorities. I was being judged for it every single day I stepped out of the apartment and passed people who knew us, or knew
of
us. Why would anyone want to put themselves in this kind of position?

I wanted to protect Kayden from the same judgment. This meant at the moment, I needed to keep things as uncomplicated as possible. Just until I figured this shit out, anyway. I had so many questions I needed to ask Ryker. I felt like I couldn’t live my life being a hundred percent content with everything if I didn’t clear up the past.

You need to tell Heath the rest of your reason
, I thought. I decided when he returned I’d smooth it out and explain my hesitation. That way he wouldn’t think I was rejecting
him
. Hell, maybe he’d make me see it in a different light and it would stop bothering me altogether.

Maybe he could even change my opinion of Marko. He clearly knew a lot about him, and he hadn’t been surprised at all when I brought up the rumours. I could see how unfair I was judging him, but he still made me uneasy.

              I spent the next couple hours studying, and when I checked the time, I figured Heath would have finished his fight and was probably hanging out with the guys now. Deciding to call him, I grabbed my phone and dialled his number. I hoped he was in a better mood. I didn’t want us feeling distant even for a minute.

              I didn’t get an answer and decided to wait a half hour before trying again. When it rang out the second time, I frowned. Had his phone died? Or maybe he left it.

              I got up and checked the clothes he’d been wearing. The pockets of his jeans were empty, but something hard was in his hoodie pocket. This must have been it. I dug my hand in there and pulled out something…

              Something that wasn’t a phone.

              Confused, I stared down at a pocket sized notebook that looked like it’d seen better days. I’d never seen this before. Was it from work? I opened it and flipped through the pages, and what I saw further perplexed me.

              It was gibberish. Sentences that were filled with random letters that made no sense, but I was even further disturbed by the line that went through some of them. Like… like it was a list and things were being crossed off of it.

              What the fuck? Was this… encoded?

              I spent minutes on end, flipping through every single page, trying to read something that made sense. He needed to explain this because it wasn’t giving me any answers.

Pulling out my phone again, I scrolled through my contact list and tried to reach Matt instead. Surely if he was hanging with the guys, Matt was most likely there, or would at least confirm this.

              “Allie?” he answered in surprise.

              “Hey, Matt, how’s it going?” I returned, anxiously chewing the corner of my thumb.

              “Good, hon. And you?”

              “Yeah, good. Look, I can’t get a hold of Heath. He said he was fighting tonight and then hanging with the guys, so I’m wondering if you’ve seen him. I know you hang out with them too sometimes, so thought I’d try reaching him through you.”

              “Um,” he hummed for a moment, and I could hear loud chatter behind him slowly fade away as he moved into a more secluded spot. “There
was
a fight tonight, but Heath wasn’t in it.”

              My heart rate picked up. “What?”

              “And Heath’s not here with the guys either.”

              I nearly grinded my thumb to smithereens. “What about Marko? Is he kicking around there?”

              “Nope. No Marko in sight either.”

              My eyes widened in shock. “Are you fucking with me, Matt?”

              “No, Allie, I’m being a hundred percent serious.” His voice took on a gentler tone. “You okay?”

              No, I was most definitely not okay. Heath had lied to me. Fucking
lied
to me! Why? Where was he really? What was he up to?

              “How many times has Heath fought in the last couple months?” I demanded shakily.

              “Not a lot of times. I mean, you asked me today about the one he had last week and I asked around but everyone’s absolutely certain he didn’t fight.”

              This wasn’t making any sense. I got off the couch and began pacing the room. My whole body coursed with sudden adrenaline as all kinds of horrible scenarios played out in my head. What the hell was he doing?

Was he… Was he with a girl?

              No! No, a guy that looked at me with such warmth and love could not be capable of that kind of dishonesty, right?

              The tiny voice in my head whispered,
Ryker was.

              “Allie,” Matt said, “are you okay? What’s going on? Has he been lying to you?”

              “I just… I don’t get it because he’s been telling me he’s been fighting and he’s been coming home with the money in his hands! I don’t… I don’t understand!”

              Matt went quiet on the other end too before he solemnly asked, “How much money is he bringing home?”

              “The usual you get from winning a fight.”

              “Every time?”

              “Yes.”

              “What the fuck?”

              “Exactly!”

              “Alright, alright, look, maybe there’s an explanation. Maybe he’s been fighting somewhere else, out of town or something...” He knew that was bullshit as he was telling me. There wasn’t anywhere outside of town you could fight.

              “No,” I disagreed. “That’s not possible. He’s been getting money from somewhere else. I just can’t think of what it could be. In the rumours you heard about Marko, did he ever do anything illegal, like sell drugs?”

              “No, Allie, nothing like that.” Matt was deep in thought too. “It was just shit about his sister and him. No crime involved.”

              I sighed in defeat. “Okay, well, I’m going to try calling him again. Thanks for everything, Matt.”

              “Let me know how it goes. I’ll call up some people and see if he’s hanging around anywhere else.”

              “Okay, and thanks.”

              I got off the phone and tried Heath once more. I got nothing again and this time I ended up throwing the phone on the couch as hard as I could. What in the hell was happening?!

Tears threatened to spill as the twisted feeling of pain gutted me from within. I hunched over, clenching my stomach with my arm, and breathed hard through my mouth.

              I was having a full blown anxiety attack.

              My entire body shook hard, tremors so violent I couldn’t shake them off no matter how many times I paced the place. He lied.

He fucking
lied
to me!

              For the first time since being with Heath, I felt helpless.