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“Tomorrow at noon. If you’re not there, if you don’t bring Max—” I turned and faced him one last time. “I’ll slit your girl’s throat. No hesitation. If I can’t have my daughter, I won’t let you have yours. I don’t give a shit what happens to me after that.”
I waited until I was in the car and Bear was driving out of the parking lot to exhale.
“How did it go?” Bear asked.
I sighed.
“That bad?”
“It went about as good as it could have gone. It’s what I did that I’m sighing about.”
“What exactly is it that you did in there?”
“I just traded, Doe.”
“For what?” he shouted.
“Who,” I corrected.
“Okay, for who?”
“Max. I just traded Doe for Max.”
“Oh. My. Fuck.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” I said, running my hand over my head. “If I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever sold my soul, I’m positive I have now.”
Chapter Thirty
King
I was in bed with Doe. It was almost midnight, and I was already counting down the hours to noon. Noon was when I would see Max for the first time since I held her in my arms the night I let my mom burn in the fire.
Noon was also the last time I would ever see my girl.
Doe was going to become the person she was supposed to be, the person she was born as, Ramie Price. She probably wouldn’t bother glancing back at me in the rearview mirror after realizing the life of luxury she was heading back to. I was never good enough for her to begin with, and this was going to be both the most selfish and selfless thing I’d ever done when it came to her.
I was giving her back.
I was getting my daughter back.
I’d never been so miserable, and excited at the same time. A few months ago, I didn’t think that if I got Max back I would be doing it all alone. I thought at least I’d have Preppy. Then, I thought Doe would be in the picture.
Now, it was down to just me.
I lifted my leg over hers. I couldn’t get close enough. I’d convinced her to let go of the person she was to be with me, but unlike Preppy, her past life had risen from the grave and had been haunting me since I hit the search button.
I was tossing her back like a fish that wasn’t worth keeping.
But she WAS worth keeping.
She was worth fucking everything.
Everything I couldn’t give her.
There was no doubt in my mind if something like soulmates did exist that Doe was mine. The problem was that Ramie wasn’t. Ramie had a boyfriend. Ramie had money. Ramie had a future that didn’t include a felon with tattoos and a penchant for violence. Ramie wasn’t going to have to put herself in danger, risk getting shot, or ever have to worry that either one of us was going to get hurt or end up dead.
I wanted more for her. I wanted to break her heart and mine and get it over with so we could both heal.
Her with her family.
Me with mine.
I turned her onto her back and rolled on top of her. Spreading her legs, I lowered myself until I could taste her sweetness one last time. I slowly lapped at her folds as she woke with a moan on her tongue. Water welled up in my eyes. I’d licked her into her first orgasm by the time the first tear fell. I was glad her eyes were closed when I entered her and began thrusting fiercely into not just the greatest pussy I’ve ever had, and the greatest girl I’d ever known, but the greatest love I knew I’d ever have.
The only love.
If things were different, I’d put a ring on her finger. A baby in her belly. We’d have Max. We’d have Preppy. We’d be the family I always wanted but never knew could exist.
Because it didn’t exist.
Preppy was fucking dead, and my girl was about to return to the life of privilege she was born into.
I told her I loved her with each thrust of my hips. I told her I was sorry. I told her that I wanted her to stay forever. I told her I wished she would have my child. I told her everything with sex that I dared not speak out loud. I told her that if things were different that we would be together forever.
Forever.
I’d never spoken the word in my life, but looking down at Doe, still half-asleep as I brought her to the brink of another orgasm, I saw what forever would look like.
And it was fucking beautiful.
A wayward tear dripped from my chin. I reached out and caught it in the palm of my hand before it had a chance to wake Doe from the state of sleepy ecstasy she was currently in.
Before she could find out how I really felt.
Before she was gone.
Forever.
The next morning, for the first time in my life, I made love to a woman. I didn’t fuck. I didn’t have sex.
I kissed her the entire time. I held her as close as two people could be. I told her she was beautiful. That I loved everything about her.
I waited until she was in the throws of her orgasm to whisper, “I love you.” I don’t know if she heard me, but I was saying it more for me than for her.
I needed to say those words while I still had the chance.
I think a part of me loved Doe from the first moment my eyes landed on hers. Haunted, beautiful, scared. I wanted her, body and soul.
I would only have her for a few more hours, and I was going to spend every second of that time, inside my girl.
While she still was my girl.
* * *
Doe
Every time I woke during the night, King was touching me. It was like no matter how close we were, it wasn’t close enough.
I dreamt that he told me he loved me. Once before, after finishing my tattoo, he’d told me to shut up and let me love you. But what I heard in my dream was the real deal.
There was something wrong. I felt it in my bones. I’d asked him what was bothering him, but he brushed me off and just kept making love to me.
For hours.
Maybe, he was lost in thoughts of Preppy, and just needed me to be there for him.
So, I was.
Out time together that morning was so unlike anything I’d experienced with him before.
I told him over again that I was okay after Isaac forced himself on me. It was a moment in life, a horrible one. But I know I’d be okay. As long as I had King, I would be okay.
It would all be okay.
I was helplessly, passionately, in love with the complicated man who touched me like I was a thin square of glass, and he was afraid I was going to shatter.
He whispered to me how gorgeous I was as he dragged his cock against my clit. He pulled out of me and rubbed against my sensitive bundle of nerves when he thrust back in.
I was alive with sensation, and full of questions.
He whispered how much he loved being inside me. How much he wished he wasn’t so much of an asshole. How I deserved the world. How he wasn’t good enough for me.
And then it hit me like a fucking freight train with no brakes, and my heart seized inside my chest.
King was saying goodbye.
* * *
The sun was already high in the sky by the time I woke up and got dressed. At any second, I expected King to burst through the door and tell me he wanted me gone. It was a horrible thing to be waiting for. I was going to pack, but there was nothing there that was truly ever mine.
I threw on some clothes and headed outside to find King. Rather than waiting around with my neck stretched out on the block, I went in search of the executioner. I found him outside, rocking in the swing I’d recently convinced him was the only thing missing from the porch.
“What’s going on?” I asked him. “Something’s wrong. Tell me.” He buried his face in his hands.
“Everything, baby. Everything is wrong,” King said, looking up over the porch railing.
I walked over to him and he ran his hands up and down my arms. I sat on his lap and draped my arms around his neck. He burrowed his nose into my chest.
“Tell me. Please,” I begged. “I can help.”
“You can’t. Nobody can.”
“You’re scaring me. You need to tell me what’s wrong.”
“My fucking heart is broken,” he said, raising his raspy voice.
“Why? Who broke it?” I asked.
“You did,” he said, looking up at me with tears in his eyes.
I was taken aback. What did I do to break it? Did I even have that kind of power over him?
The sound of an approaching car turned both of our heads to the driveway. A black town car with dark tinted windows pulled up in front of the house.
“Will you remember something for me?” King asked, snapping my head back around from the car to him.
“Anything,” I answered. And it was true. I would do anything for him.
“Remember that I love you,” he whispered.
He had said it. I didn’t just imagine it.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked, finding it odd that King wasn’t even acknowledging the approaching vehicle.
I wanted him to love me, especially because I’d known I’d been in love with him for so long, but the way he said it, and what had transpired that morning told me there was a lot more to what was going on.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on!” I leapt from his lap.
“Baby,” he said, reaching for me.
“No! Don’t baby me! Tell me what the fuck is going on!”
