Back To The Start Box Set: Five Full-Length Novels by Aly Martinez
“And you’ll get it. When she’s ready to give it,” he replied curtly.
If that was not in the next five seconds, I was going to lose my mind. It was fair to assume that things were changing between Rhion and me. And, after that kiss and the promise it held for more, I refused to play the bullshit games anymore.
“Someone needs to start talking,” I demanded, my patience snapping. “If there’s a potential threat out there, this is not the time to keep secrets. I had my girl and my woman under the same roof tonight. I can’t protect anyone if I can’t recognize the target standing directly in front of me.”
“She’s your woman now?” Johnson challenged.
Shit.
I felt Rhion’s head crane back as she peered up at me, awaiting my reply.
She wasn’t my woman. But that didn’t mean the broken memories hadn’t convinced me she should be. And, with her body securely fitted against my side, her lips swollen from our kiss, and the sound of her moans still lingering in my ears, I had every intention of making her mine.
“That is not the part you need to be concerned with,” I grumbled. “You were not here tonight.” I stabbed a thumb at my chest. “I was. It took minutes for Alex to haul his ass down here and take care of something I could have handled in a matter of seconds.” I paused and turned my angry scowl on Rhion. “You and me, Butterfly—we’re gonna be spending more time together. And, if that is going to happen, this is shit I need to know.”
She screwed her eyes shut.
“Stop hiding shit from me.” I gave her hip a firm squeeze. “You’re embarrassed about whatever the fuck happened on Friday night. Fine. I’ll drop it. But I will not stand by being a part of your life all while being the only one in the goddamn dark.”
“You wanna be part of my life?” she whispered, shock almost painfully contorting her face.
I arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, Rhion. And you would know this if we’d actually talked before your mouth ended up on mine.”
She blinked, the pain fading from her face as full-on attitude replaced it. “I believe your mouth ended up on mine this time.”
I shook my head as another PSI deflated my chest. “Right.”
Rolling her eyes, she called out to Johnson, “Are they arresting Margaret?”
“Being a bitch isn’t illegal,” he replied. “But I saw the tape of her weaseling her way in. You want to file a report on that?”
“What tape?” I asked.
Not surprisingly, they both ignored me.
“Do you think she’s really going to see Apollo?” she asked.
“After all the bullshit she’s pulled? No fucking way he’s going to have anything to do with her.”
“That’s probably true,” she muttered. Sucking in a breath, she stepped out of my arms. “Okay. Then my head is good. You can go.”
“Rhion,” he warned.
Thankfully, her ignoring bit wasn’t limited to me. Breezing past him, she pulled the door open, saying, “I’m fine, Aidan.”
Secretly, I fucking hated the way she’d called him by his first name. Not so secretly, I fucking loved that she was asking him to leave.
Johnson whispered something in her ear, and then, with one last scowl in my direction, he left.
I stared at her back as she closed the door behind him, wondering where the magical line that divided her creamy-white skin stopped and the burst of vibrant colors on her arms started. And then wondering how long I’d have to wait to find out.
“Soo…” she drawled, turning toward me. “You…um…wanna sit down?”
“I want answers,” I replied.
She pried her heels off and dropped them to the floor. “And if I don’t want to give them?”
“Then we’re right back where we started: you hanging out on a ledge and me staring up at you, unable to help.”
That was probably more blunt than I’d needed to be. But I was done pretending to be okay with the unknown. If she was in any danger whatsoever, I needed to know. So maybe I could stop it this time before I had to watch her fall. Again.
“Oh God. I’m so—”
“Don’t say sorry. For fuck’s sake, between the two of us, Rhion, don’t you think we’ve done enough apologizing? Can we, for once, just…talk?”
Her tongue snaked out to dampen her lips, and then something miraculous happened. She began talking and her words actually contained information.
“Apollo’s my little brother.”
“We covered that.” I took a step toward her and implored, “Keep going.”
“He scares the absolute shit out of me. When we were growing up, he was terrible to me. My father was hard on him, and Apollo took that out on me. He spent five years in jail for involuntary manslaughter. When he was seventeen, he got drunk one night, took my father’s car, and went on a joyride across town. He hit another car, and the elderly woman died a week later from complications. It was an accident, but he was rich and famous in some ways for being my dad’s son, so the judge decided to make an example out of him. He was in jail when Dad passed away and didn’t get to come to the funeral. I felt horrible for him. Until he lost his mind when the will was read. He told me that I deserved the burns and he’d wished I’d died in the fire.”
“Jesus, Rhion.” I reached for her, but she waved me off.
“So, yeah. It’s been two years. And just the thought of him is enough to send me off the deep end. Tonight, Cruella de Vil showed up and threatened to feed him information about me if I didn’t pay her off. And that’s when you arrived.” She shrugged and tossed me a weak smile. “You know the rest.”
Something was off. The story fit. It made sense. But it felt like a lot of shit had been glossed over. I was missing something. Something she’d no doubt left out on purpose. But what?
“And that’s all of it?” I asked.
“That’s the high points.”
“And if I want the low points?”
She inhaled deeply. “Then you’ll have to wait. Because, today, I spent three incredible hours picking through clothes with an amazing little girl. I got my hair curled and my makeup done, went toe-to-toe with an evil villain, and poured my heart out—in paragraphs—to a man who issued the best kiss of my life.” She smiled tightly. “The low points can wait, Jude.”
As I grinned back at her, I realized they could.
“You can’t blame me for trying.” I sauntered in her direction, retrieving her necklace from my pocket and sliding the diamond off the chain. I placed it in the palm of her hand and tucked the broken links back into my pocket. “You want to hear about my day? I listened to over four hours of Republican speeches today.”
“Is this a competition? Because, if I’m in the running, I’m not sure your story is sad enough to enter.”
“Oh, it’s sad stories now?”
She smiled and nodded.
One of my hands went to the small of her back; the other sifted into the back of her hair. “Okay…I might have an entry. See, four years ago, I fucked up. And, every night, I was forced to watch her die in my nightmares.”
Her face paled as her head snapped back. “Holy shit. You really did have nightmares about me?”
I leaned forward to catch her mouth for an all-too-brief kiss and then continued, “Yes. But I never should have implied meeting you was the nightmare. The fire. Your burns. The nightmares. Those are all on me.”
She shook her head repeatedly as she gasped, “No, they aren’t. They—”
I talked over her. “Shhh… That’s not even the saddest part, Rhion. Last week, something happened. And, now, she smiles at me. And looks at me like I’m the only man she’s ever seen. I tasted her. Touched her. Made her moan my name in a way that carved itself into my subconscious.”
Her hand came up to my bicep.
“And the real kicker is”—I laughed without humor—“I can’t fucking remember what I said to make her give that to me.”
I hated myself when her pale-blue eyes filled with t
And it was that thought that made me drop my forehead to hers and declare, “I want new memories.” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “This is going to require I taste you again.” I kissed her chastely. “And touch you again.” I glided the tips of my fingers up her back, her skin pebbling in my wake. “And make you moan my name in ways I will never forget. You think we could do that?”
She nodded eagerly. “I’d like that.”
“Good answer,” I breathed.
“You’re real,” she breathed before biting her lip, a single tear rolling from her eye.
I smiled and then cleared the tear from her cheek with my thumb, whispering, “I’ve always been real, Butterfly. Even when I didn’t want to be.”
Her breath caught in her throat as she wrenched her eyes shut, a pool of moisture spilling out.
I kissed them away, wishing I could spend the night making sure none of her tears ever saw the light of day.
But, as much as I wanted that taste, that touch, and that moan, I couldn’t have them right then.
“I need to get Val home,” I whispered into the top of her coconut-scented hair.
She faceplanted into my chest and hugged me tight.
Another PSI of pressure disappeared, and I relished the sweet release.
“Tomorrow.” I kissed the top of her hair. “When I text you.” Another kiss. “I want paragraphs.”
She nuzzled my chest. “Okay.”
“She goes home on Tuesday morning. Plan for dinner on Tuesday night.”
“I’ll cook.”
I smiled to myself. “I like compliant Rhion.”
She giggled. “Don’t get used to it.”
Resting my chin on the top of her head, I replied, “I won’t.”
It was the absolute truth, because whether she was compliant Rhion, rambling Rhion, sweet Rhion, angry Rhion, or evasive Rhion, I’d never get used to any of it. Not when she was in my arms. But I was damn sure going to try.
Chapter Eighteen
Rhion
I lived in his nightmares.
He lived in my dreams.
It was a jagged little pill to swallow. But it was hard to focus on the pain as he held me, vowing that he wanted new memories with me.
Not those from the fire.
Or the bits he’d retained from our forgotten night together.
New ones.
And there was nothing I wanted more than memories with Jude.
After he’d left with Val, I spent the rest of the night in my ocean room, listening to the waves crash all around me with a huge smile on my face.
I’d eventually have to tell him everything instead of the CliffsNotes I’d given him about Apollo. But I was in no hurry for that topic of conversation. Not because I didn’t want to tell Jude. Well, not completely. I didn’t actually want to tell anyone. It was the biggest reason I kept my private life private. Johnson was one on the very short list of people who knew the truth. And that was only because he’d had the unfortunate experience of witnessing it all up close and personal.
But, on the other hand, I wanted Jude to know me. The real me. And not the frightened woman who’d spent millions buying an entire floor in a downtown Chicago skyrise in order to stay close to the only man she trusted.
No. That definitely wasn’t who I wanted him to get to know. Though I feared that was who he’d get. And, worse, who I really was.
On Sunday, Jude and I exchanged texts. He’d said that he wanted paragraphs, and boy, did he get it.
After an hour of chatting, I was still going a mile a minute. If I added the word content of all of my messages, I’d probably typed out the equivalent of a dissertation. Jude’s responses weren’t nearly as in depth, but I figured he was busy with Val.
When my phone rang at nine p.m., he was chuckling on the other line. “Jesus, Rhion. How do you still have feeling in your fingers? Can we switch this to the phone?”
I was happy to oblige. Hearing his deep, sexy voice was better than typing any day of the week.
During our conversation, Jude told me all about his life and I listened so intently the world around me disappeared. I learned that Jude had graduated from Ohio State and gone directly into the police academy. He strategically skipped over the part where he’d gotten fired—because of me—and went right to his position in LA, where he’d worked for a security firm. The way Jude talked in paragraphs about his job made it clear he loved it. A lot. And I loved that something positive had come for him after the fire. It gave me hope that maybe I hadn’t ruined his life after all.
I laughed harder than I had in years at his ridiculous stories about his various celebrity clients over the years and then even harder as he recounted the day he’d met Johnson.
But the most important thing I learned during our three-hour-long conversation was that Jude was an amazing man. He told me all about meeting April but falling in love with Val. I thought it was sweet that he paid for her private school tuition every month. Until I found out he had to do it or April wouldn’t let him spend time with Val. Then it was just sad. Without any legal rights, he worried she’d eventually try to take the little girl away from him. I didn’t tell him that Val had expressed those same fears to me. She hated it when Jude and her mom fought for that reason. I felt so bad for them both. Jude loved that little girl, and by all accounts, she loved him too.
After that, Jude and I swapped stories about our families. He told me about his overdramatic but incredibly loving mother and his stoic but also incredibly loving father. It made my chest warm in the strangest way possible. I was happy he’d had that and truthfully, jealous that I never would.
But, when Jude whispered a consoling, “Butterfly,” across the line as I told him about the day my father died, the jealousy evaporated. Right then, I was thankful that his parents had raised such an incredible man.
When he yawned for the tenth time, I let him go. Or, more accurately, I said goodbye, ended the call, and burst into tears. It had been a long time since I’d felt that kind of connection with anyone. The kind that, even over the phone, made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
He was off on Monday so he could spend more time with Val, but our texts and phone calls continued. By the time my eyes closed that night, I feared my smile would never fade. And the idea of that filled me in unimaginable ways.
I had written that man at least twelve different ways over the years, but never once had it come close to the real thing. He was by no means perfect. He was a Raiders fan, preferred domestic beer, and had quite the penchant for telling me how things were going to be. But maybe that was exactly what made him better than my words ever could.
Jude Levitt.
Was.
Real.
I woke up on Tuesday morning to a knock at my door. Nerves rolled in my stomach as I cautiously flipped the security cameras on my TV on and saw Jude standing at my door. I did the best I could to comb my hair down as I struggled to shrug my robe on before rushing to answer it, cursing myself the whole way for not swinging by the bathroom for a once-over with a toothbrush first. However, by the time I got there, he was nowhere to be found. There was only a tiny, black box sitting on my welcome mat. No note. No card. The gift equally as illusive as the man who had delivered it.
But, when I opened it, my heart nearly burst. Tears welled in my eyes as I lifted the repaired platinum chain I wore my mother’s diamond on out of the box.
Up until that moment, there’d been nothing special about that chain. I’d bought it only six months earlier, after I’d broken the last one. That tended to happen a lot when you wore the same necklace twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five.
Truthfully, I’d already restrung the diamond on a spare I’d had waiting in my jewelry box for such an occasion.
But Jude had taken precious minutes out of his limited time with Val in order to get my necklace fixed.
So, with shaking hands and an unrivaled smile, I thre
Needless to say, by the time that night rolled around, my excitement at finally having Jude alone was off the charts. He was out on an assignment that he said could last anywhere between two and twelve hours. And, as the clock hit seven, it appeared it was going to be closer to twelve.
The aroma of my homemade chicken pot pie was barely lingering in the air as I sat on my couch in a pair of skinny jeans and a clingy, cream V-neck T-shirt. I’d tried approximately seventy-five outfits on before deciding to go casual. Though I wasn’t sure it could be considered casual because I was rocking a pair of bordeaux feathered Jimmy Choos.
I wedged beer number two between my thighs and switched the phone to my other ear. “I’m not changing it, Brianna.”
“But what does Maleficent see in him? I don’t even know who the hero is in this book. He’s supposed to be Prince Philip, but you’ve given him this dark need to own her,” she argued.
“Heroes aren’t infallible. It’s the flaws that hold all the beauty. Besides, if Johnson showed up at your door right now, saying he wanted to own you, you’d turn him away?”
“That is not fair. You know Johnson is my weakness.”
“Yeah, well, Maleficent’s weakness is Prince.” I took a sip of my beer.
“And that’s another thing. Every time she calls him Prince, I break out into the chorus of ‘When Doves Cry.’”
I nearly spit lager across the room as I burst into laugher.
She giggled right along with me. “Can we please change his nickname, Rhion?”
I was trying to collect myself when a knock sounded at my door. I snapped my head up and stared at the door as though I had x-ray vision. “Shit. Shit. Shit. I have to go. I think Jude’s here,” I whispered.
“Okay. Call me as soon as you can and let me know how he is in the sack.”
I scowled and whisper-yelled, “I’m not sleeping with him tonight!”
She barked a laugh. “So Jude Levitt shows up at your door right now, saying he wants to sleep with you, and you’d turn him away?”