Bang Bang(9)
Author: Rachel Van Dyken

Smiling she reached for my hand and gripped it tight “You could hear my stomach all the way over there huh?”

“And your heart,” I whispered, knowing she didn’t hear me, not caring even if by some off chance she did. “Why did you put those things under the mattress, Ames?”

I led her out of the apartment and shut the door.

She shivered so I wrapped my arm around her relieved she wasn’t crying anymore or yelling at me for touching her.

“It was the safest place I could think of, to put my most prized possessions. I know it’s probably the first place people look for money but one glance at my apartment and you know I wouldn’t be hiding money if I had any.”

My eyes narrowed. “A picture and a lamb?”

“A picture and a lamb,” she repeated. “The picture of us. You took it on my seventeenth birthday.”

I shook with the need to kiss her, to make the pain go away, maybe even a bit of the guilt. “And the lamb I gave you when you were little?”

She shrugged. “I’m kind of attached to it now.”

“It’s not even recognizable, Ames.”

Grinning, she looked up at me, her big brown eyes doing a ridiculously good impression of Bambi. “It slept with me every night, protected me from monsters, and never complained once.”

“I highly doubt anything stuffed or human would complain if they were sharing your bed.” I arched my eyebrows and unlocked the car, opening her door for her.

“You did.” She tilted her head. “Every night.”

“Exaggeration.”

“Don’t think so.”

I snorted and shut the door then made my way to the driver’s side. Once I started the car I tugged her braid and whispered, “Well, here’s a little secret… sometimes guys mean the opposite of what they say. Spending the night with you was my heaven, and it was also my hell.”

Her cheeks lit up with red. “Your hell?”

“You were underage,” I explained pulling out of the parking lot. “It was my heaven because you were by my side, because I knew you were okay, because even though I knew I couldn’t or shouldn’t kiss you, that didn’t mean I couldn’t hold you, it didn’t mean I couldn’t feel your skin against my fingertips. Yeah, my heaven and hell, but worth the hell to get to heaven.”

Her eyes were wide; she opened her mouth then shut it. After a few minutes of silence she said, “I’m not seventeen anymore.”

“I’m well aware of your age,” I said hoarsely. “Just don’t remind me or I’m going to take advantage of that fact.”

“And if I want you to?”

I groaned aloud. “Don’t say things you don’t mean, an hour ago you were slapping me and yelling in my face.”

“Right.” She licked her lips. “Right, sorry I don’t know why I said that.”

Why the hell did it feel like I just rejected her when all I was doing was protecting her? Damn Campisi. I was not the man for the job. The right man would do his job without wearing his heart on his sleeve; he’d do his duty, report home, and wash his hands of it.

That wasn’t going to happen with me.

She was a part of me again.

And I wasn’t letting her go.

I just needed to give her time to realize I wasn’t abandoning her — and I couldn’t do that by pressuring her before she was ready, even if she thought she was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Amy

TEARS THREATENED — AGAIN. I was so embarrassed that I’d been ready to cry because of what Axton had said.

What was wrong with me?

He’d found me in a strip club — then kissed me, then rejected me all over again, and I was wondering why?

The more I thought about it the more it made sense. Five years is a long time and if there was one thing I knew about his family or the real “family” he was a part of? They were loaded. Like Richie Rich — I own several jets and can rent out Disneyland a million times over and still end world hunger — loaded.

No wonder he didn’t want my money.

I barely had any pride left, but what I did have still demanded that I pay him back for whatever he spent on me.

Lost in thought I didn’t even realize we’d pulled up to the hotel until he turned off the car. “You okay?”

“Great.” I lied. I wasn’t great. I was going back to Chicago, the last place I wanted to be, and my best friend was suddenly alive, which should make me happy but all it did was make me feel so terribly rejected. My heart hurt so bad that it was hard to breathe. He had connections — he could have found me, did he and Sergio even talk?

I had to know.

It was killing me and I had a right to know. Even if I knew the truth already, I had to hear him say it.

“Ax, before we go inside…” I met his gaze even though I wasn’t feeling very brave. He tilted his head to the side, his crystal blue eyes drinking me in, swallowing the darkness. “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive? Why didn’t you… call?”

“Ames.” His face contorted with pain. “Let’s not talk about this now.”

“I need to know.”

“Damn it, Amy.” He jerked the keys from the ignition. “By the time I was out of the hospital, you were gone. Already in foster care. Sergio wouldn’t help me track you down… I finally found you and I couldn’t… I couldn’t just walk up to you and say ‘surprise!’ I freaking helped ruin your life, who does that? Who just ruins someone’s life and then asks for forgiveness? Or expects a damn hug? I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t put you through the pain again. I convinced myself you were fine because I was too afraid to believe otherwise.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?” he roared. “You’re just going to say okay? After I tell you I’m the worst type of human being on the planet?”

I shrugged. “What do you want me to say? That it hurts? Because it does. That it sucks? It really does. That I understand? Well, I don’t, not even a little bit, because if the positions were reversed I’d spend every waking moment tracking you down and when I found you, regardless of what was in the past, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to make it better. That’s love… that’s friendship. What you did was self-serving, and I can’t love that person, the person you are now? I can’t love him — because the Axton I used to know was the most selfless person in existence.”