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Everett
Her question shouldn’t catch me off guard, but it does. In all fairness, I am still buried inside her after some of the most intense sex I’ve ever had, so talking about the day I tore both our hearts out seems like it may ruin the moment, but I’ve avoided it for too long. I should have told her the moment she opened the door the night her parents died, but I’ve put it off time and time again, and it’s time I come clean.
I sigh and gently pull my softening cock from her tight pussy, groaning when I feel my cum leak around me. The primal caveman living within me aches to push my seed back inside her, but it’s not the time to listen to that part of me. I sit up in the bed and pull her up as well until she’s straddling my thighs with no chance to run from me. I don’t think she will, but I’m not willing to chance it.
Wynter’s eyes are wide as she stares at me. The position we’re in gives me a great view of her naked body, but it’s not the time, and for once, my dick understands that.
“When I was in college, I wrote a program that could be used as a weapon. When I built it, I didn’t really think about the potential of it falling into the wrong hands, it was just something to pass the time, and I thought it could be the next big piece of technology for Frost. Your dad had already planned to hire me the moment I was out of college, and I wanted to have something ready to release to hit the ground running.
“When it was finished, it was a fucking masterpiece. It was going to change the way we look at security systems for computers, phones, tablets, you name it.” I sigh. “But then my family got wind of it. I don’t even know how they knew because I hadn’t had anything to do with them since before I turned eighteen, and yet one day Angelo and Paul showed up at my apartment with an ultimatum. Hand over the program, or they were going to take you.”
Wynter gasps, her eyes flashing with fear and understanding, but I can’t stop now, I have to tell her everything before I lose my nerve. Of course, I could leave it at that. There’s no more explanation needed, but there’s more to the story she should know. I never want any secrets between us, not even this.
“I remember them leaving and trying to work out how they even knew how I felt about you, because we were still skirting around our feelings, so how could they know?” I shake my head. “But even then everyone knew how obsessed I was with you, and it put you in danger. At first I thought I could call their bluff, but then notes started to arrive. Threats against you, vivid descriptions of what they would do to you if I didn’t do as they asked. I called a meeting here at the estate with your parents and Storm and Rayne after I got a particularly vulgar note, with photos of you attached. It was time for us to come up with a plan together. But there was no plan. I only had one option, and that was to leave you. We knew that if you knew why I was going that you would try to stop me, and as awful as this sounds, we needed it to be convincing. So when I left and you fell apart, word spread very quickly about how I didn’t give a fuck about you, and that’s what we needed to happen.”
The words leave a sick feeling in their path, saying all of this out loud after so many years feels like reliving my worst nightmare, but I guess it kind of is. The day I skipped town and left Wynter laying in this bed on her own, with no explanation, it was the worst day of my life but it was a necessary evil, one that I had to live with.
“What was the program?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
I suck in a breath. “To put it simply, the program could hack any network in the world in a matter of minutes. The reason I designed it that way was so I could reverse engineer a protection software that not even this program could crack, but it didn’t occur to me at the time just how dangerous being able to hack anything on earth is. Banks, military forces, the CIA at your fingertips in a matter of moments. Looking back at it, I was so stupid, how did it never occur to me? But I was young.” I shrug like that makes any of it okay, like putting the love of my life in danger over and over again could ever be okay.
Wynter closes her eyes but tears still leak through her lashes. Her breath comes in faster as she desperately clings on to control of her emotions, but it’s only a few seconds before a sob cracks through her chest and she buries her head in my bare chest.
“I thought you didn’t love me like I loved you. I thought I was a dumb kid who thought my brothers best friend loved me. I spent the last eight years believing I wasn’t worthy of your love,” she rasps between an onslaught of tears. “I thought I imagined everything between us.”
I grasp her shoulders in my hands and draw her back until we’re staring into each other’s eyes. Her face is stained with tears, but she’s never looked more beautiful than she does right now. “You didn’t imagine anything. I loved you from the moment I met you. I loved you before I understood what love was. I’ve loved you every single moment of every single day since you first walked into my life, and leaving you was the single hardest thing I have ever had to do.”
She squeezes her eyes shut as she chokes on her sobs, years of repressed emotions rising to the surface all at once. I move my hands to her face until her cheeks are cradled in them. “I never want you to doubt my feelings for you, little dove. You are worth everything, worth so much more than I will ever be able to give you, but I will spend every moment of the rest of our lives proving how much you mean to me and trying to make up for all the years we lost because of my stupid mistakes.”
This time when she burrows into my chest I don’t stop her, instead I wrap my arms around her back and pull her as close as I can, trying with all I am to hold her together as she falls apart in my arms.
Wynter sobs into my chest, her tears soaking the bare skin beneath her face, and I hold her through it as she lets go of all the shit I put her through. I hate myself for leaving the way I did, loathe my very fucking existence, but what I did was for her. It was to save her a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst nightmare, because I’ve been a part of that family, I’ve been held against my will when I so desperately wanted to escape, and I would never allow her to go through that hell.
EIGHT YEARS AGO
I stand at her bedroom door for so long I lose track of time, and the longer I stand here, the harder it is to wrap my head around what I’m about to do. I’m leaving in the morning, transferring colleges and moving across the country to get as far away from her as I can, and I hate myself for it because it’s going to hurt her.
Wynter should never feel pain, or sadness, or regret. All I want for her is life, and that’s why I have to go, because the other option is too heinous to even think.
I’ve stood here a hundred times before but I’ve never felt so dejected staring at the white door as I do now. I raise my hand to knock, it’s time and I can’t put it off anymore. Every day I stay here is another day she’s in danger, and I can’t have that.
The door swings open and Wynter’s shining eyes meet mine. Her hair is pulled in a messy knot on the top of her head, and a loose tracksuit hangs from her body shapelessly, but she looks so fucking beautiful it hurts. Wynter is a timeless beauty, it doesn’t matter what she wears or if she has a dab of makeup on her face, she’s the most radiant woman I’ve ever seen.
It’s been hell keeping my hands off her for the last two years. One day she was the best friend I loved without realizing what that meant, and the next she was a woman. The change should have seemed gradual, but to me it was immediate, and I’ve been fighting a losing battle ever since.
“Hey.” Wynter beams at me, pulling her headphones from her ears. “I didn’t know you were coming over tonight.”
I smile, not because there’s anything happy about right now, but because these are the last moments we will ever spend together where she doesn’t hate me. This is the last time she looks at me like I’m everything. Hell, these are the last moments she’ll look at me at all.
“Hey, dove.” The nickname falls from my lips so naturally, just like it has since the first time I said it out loud.
She pushes the door open for me to come in before walking back toward her bed where textbooks are spread out. “Sorry for the mess, I’m just getting ahead in some of my course readings,” she explains.
“You don’t start college for another month.” I chuckle.
Normally when there is a threat within the family, we just put extra security on that person for the foreseeable future and it’s not a problem, but Wynter going out of state for college complicates things, and it means we have no other option than to make it look like I never loved her in the first place.
“I know, but I want to make sure I’m prepared. And I want to be able to go out and party, and have fun, and not have to worry about the three thousand pages of textbook I should be reading.” She shrugs and starts to gather the books up, placing them on her bedside table.
