Overwhelmed by You Read online

I snorted and started to turn away when he yanked my arm and pulled me back around. I put my hands out to stop from banging into his chest, but as soon as my palms felt the muscles beneath his shirt, a liquid heat hit me between my thighs.

  “I’ve never been the same.”

  My breath hitched. “What?”

  “After we were together. Something changed in me and I’m not going back. I like the change. And I miss the woman who gave it to me. I’m not talking just about the sex, Kat. It was before that.”

  God, why the hell did he have to go and say shit like that? I was good. I could handle him pushing and me pushing back, but this … it was unsettling, and I didn’t do well with unsettling.

  “I want us back. And I’ll take you any way I can have you. Even if it’s just friends, Kat. I’ll take it—for now of course. But the constant anger and pain we’re causing one another is destroying our beginning, and our beginning was something fuckin’ special.”

  It was. Ream and I supported one another when Logan and Emily were down in Mexico. We became friends, and now that was wrecked too.

  “What happened with Lana?” I blurted out. It may have been eight months ago, but him bringing Lana to my coming home party still hurt. “Did you fuck her?”

  “Shit.” He ran his hand back and forth over his head like he always did when he was agitated. “I thought you knew. Matt didn’t tell you?”

  I placed my hands on my hips and raised my brows, waiting for him to explain something that was no doubt still inexcusable.

  “I picked her up at Avalanche that night. She started talking and…”

  God, I so didn’t want to hear this, yet I had been the one stupid enough to ask.

  “I told her about you and…”

  Unfrigginbelievable.

  “Jesus, Kat, I was drinking, had a few too many, and Lana—”

  “Offered to suck your dick?”

  His eyes narrowed and body stiffened. “You need to drop the fuckin’ attitude. I never touched her and I sure as hell would never let her mouth near my dick.”

  “You know I can’t figure it out. You’re here trying to get me to listen to you after you did something so incredibly insensitive as bringing some chick to my homecoming. On the day I get back from the hospital after being shot.” I pushed on his chest and tried to get him to back away but failed. “No, forget it, I don’t care what excuse you come up with. Slime is slime, and it doesn’t change its consistency.”

  Ream grabbed my wrists and locked them in place, so the palms of my hands were flat against his chest. “I hadn’t planned on coming that night. I didn’t want you to see how wrecked I’d been. Kat, you nearly died. Fuck. Fuck.” His grip tightened and I winced. He noticed and loosened a fraction. “I was drunk and Lana offered to drive me. And you know why she did? Because she wanted to fuck your brother. I thought he would’ve told you.”

  “My brother doesn’t tell me who he fucks, Ream.”

  He sighed. “This has to stop, Kat. The fighting.”

  “Fine. We’ll ignore one another.” And yet I knew that was impossible. I couldn’t ignore him even when he wasn’t in the same country. I was constantly bombarded with thoughts of him at the farm with me, of us making meals together, painting, when he wiped the grease off my neck with the tip of his finger after fixing the tractor. How he made certain he was the one getting the door when a delivery arrived. A rule he’d insisted on. He said it was important the delivery men knew a guy was living here. I remembered the first time I heard him chuckle. He’d walked in on me attempting to put a curtain rod up by myself and instead ended up on my ass with the white sheer material overtop of me.

  I felt Ream’s hand cup my chin and I met his brooding eyes. “That won’t ever happen, Kat. And you need to get that, so I’m going to tell you something. Something no one knows, not even Crisis. I wanted to tell you that night at the bar, but that shit you pulled with the guy …” I bit the corner of my lip. He saw it and I immediately let it go. “I swear if Matt hadn’t called security and got me out of there …” What? Shit, Matt would seriously have a hate on for him. “I’d have killed the guy.” He took a deep breath as if trying to ease the anger over the memory. “What I feel isn’t normal, Kat. It’s fucked up because I’m fucked up. I certainly don’t deserve you. But I’ve tried to forget you, and it’s not happening. So we will do this another way. You need to hear why I’m like I am and why I left like I did.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that because secrets were almost always bad. Mine were.

  “What I’m telling you … goes nowhere. Understand?”

  I nodded. Not sure why, maybe because I hadn’t been the same either and I was searching for something to grab hold of. Was a truce possible for us?

  “I had a sister.”

  Oh God. He said had. I could feel his heart racing beneath my palms and the tension in his hands.

  “My twin. We were complete opposites physically, and yet we were one and the same. She’d often finish my sentences and knew how I felt without me saying a word. She was my angel, the light to my darkness. We balanced one another out.”

  He grunted then abruptly let me go and turned slamming his fist into the wooden barn door. I waited, not knowing what to say, if anything.

  “She was only sixteen when she died.” His ragged whisper was that of a broken, torn man fighting to keep control. He leaned his forehead against the barn, his arms outstretched, palms flat on the rough surface looking like a crucifix.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “It was my fault. It was my job to protect her and I didn’t.”

  He was silent for a while, and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to say something. I realized that no matter what had gone down between us, he deserved to be listened to.

  He stayed quiet. Unmoving.

  “Ream.” I moved toward him until I could feel the heat of his back seeping into my chest. Then I lay my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Ream.”

  His shoulders sagged. “I was in and out of the hospital constantly with her. Never knowing if she was coming out alive. It was the drugs that finally did her in.” Shit. That was why he freaked when he’d seen mine. Was it why he’d left the hospital when I’d been shot? “I lost the only person I ever cared about. Until the band.”

  I closed my eyes as the wave of his words hit me. I knew the band was important to him. He took it really seriously and I was guessing that whatever happened in his childhood with his sister, the band had helped get him through that.

  “I should’ve seen what was happening to her and stopped it. I could’ve found a way.” When he turned back around, I was taken aback by the clear liquid pooling in his eyes. Ream’s agony was written all over his features, the lines across his forehead, lowered brows and lips tight. He dragged a finger down his inner right arm over his tats then looked directly at me.

  I avoided facing shit like this. But this … this was something I needed to talk to him about because it’s what brought us to where we were now. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Jesus, Kat. I saw the needle and it was my sister all over again. I freaked out.” He sighed and ran his hand back and forth over his head. “You told me and … all I could think about was you dying like she did, trips to the hospital. I couldn’t go through caring about someone only to lose them again. But, Kat, I freaked, got my head together, and I came to the bar to talk to you, to see if we could—”

  “Could what? Work it out? You just said you couldn’t go through it again.” That morning I’d lost more than just Ream. I’d lost a part of me. He took what I feared the most and shoved it back in my face with his reaction. I hid it from everyone to protect me from his exact reaction. I felt dirty and worthless. He’d destroyed that and I’d been struggling to get it back ever since. I think I wouldn’t have cared so much if we hadn’t developed that friendship between us first. He ruined everything. I didn’t have it in me to have him do it to me again no matter what his past ha
d thrown at him.

  His voice hardened. “Fuck, I don’t have the answers, but I came to find you because I cared and I wanted to explain. We were friends, Kat.”

  “Yeah, we were. But friends don’t run out on one another when they don’t like hearing something.”

  His jaw tightened. “You were fucking another guy two days after we were together,” he shouted.

  “Not technically.” It was meant to be sassy and flippant. It wasn’t.

  “Fuck, how could you do that?”

  Because I’d been hurt and angry and needed my dignity back. I wanted to feel powerful and in control after Ream had stripped it away.

  “It doesn’t matter now.” He sighed, lowering his head and shaking it back and forth. “You know, she was always laughing and bright. She trusted everyone. Once she was …” He stopped abruptly. “She got hooked on the drugs, and I couldn’t get her back.”

  I asked the only thing I could, “What was her name?”

  “Haven.”

  His half-broken words put a dent in the shield I had around me because I knew about devastation, about loss, the emptiness. The waking up every day and feeling like you’re missing pieces of yourself. A twin … I couldn’t fathom the connection they must have had and what it would mean to lose.

  “What about your parents?”

  I saw the moment the coldness guarding what he hid from everyone descended over him. It was like a dam had been opened then suddenly slammed shut with a loud bang.

  He pursed his lips together in a tight line. “Don’t know who my father is and my mother is dead to me.”

  “Ream …” I couldn’t help myself as I felt the anguish mixed with anger pour through him. My fingertips brushed against the bare skin of his arm and I wanted to hold him, but I couldn’t. I had to keep him at a distance. “I’m sorry about Haven.”

  “Me too.” He looped his arm around my neck and dragged me into him. I was completely caught off guard by his sudden gentle display of affection and found myself snuggled up against his chest. He kissed the top of my head and then softly stroked my hair. The tips of his fingers touched my bare skin at the back of my neck, and I sucked in air from the intimacy of it.

  “Baby.” His voice was a low whisper, caressing my insides like a feather. “I fucked up. With my sister … with you. I’m all screwed up inside.” I went to draw back so I could look up at him, but his arms tightened around me and he refused to let me go. “Not done yet.” I sighed then rested my cheek against his chest and listened to his heart thump and his long drawn in breaths. “I can’t take back the things I said to you over the last few years. Fuck. I was so angry at you for hooking up with that guy. Then the flirting shit with Crisis. Hearing you talk about fucking other guys like you did it all the time. And shit maybe you do, I don’t know.” His hand stroked my back. “What I do know is that you’re all I’ve thought about.” He tightened his hold. “I’m not letting you go, I can’t do it anymore.”

  This time I used my palms against his abdomen and pushed. He loosened his hold, but just enough so I could meet his eyes. “Ream, it won’t work. It’s too late.”

  His eyes flashed with something that I didn’t recognize. “This wasn’t a discussion.”

  Whoa. What? “Ream—”

  His head tilted then lowered, and I gasped just before his lips took mine. It was hard and unrelenting, and a tidal wave of desire shot through me. Tingling peppered across my skin and when his hand curled into my hair and yanked my head back, I sucked in air, taking his into my lungs.

  When he pulled back, I knew my lips were swollen and red from his grueling kiss.

  “Tell me you can walk away from that.”

  “I did before and I will again.” Shit, I had to tell him about Lance.

  Ream took both my hands in his. “No.”

  I huffed. “You can’t force this, Ream.”

  His brows raised and the corners of his lips curved upwards. It was rare Ream ever smiled and I was a little uneasy as to what he was thinking. “Oh, baby, I won’t need force.” He kissed my forehead. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

  “How long what lasts?” My voice raised an octave as I watched his eyes flicker with amusement.

  “It will be entertaining.” He grinned and my pulse rate tripled at the rare sight.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What will be?”

  “You denying us.”

  “Ream. There is no us. And I’m seeing—”

  He cut me off. “Babe, there’s been an us since the moment I saw you from the stage and wanted to fuck you. You need us being friends first? I can do that. But I’m making you mine again.”

  My voice rose. “Yours? Are you insane? You can’t just make someone yours. Jesus, Ream, what the hell has gotten into you?”

  “You.”

  “What?” Shit, was my voice cracking? It never cracked, but my heart pounded so hard and my insides were freaking out and in a war of melting mush and red-hot poker fury. I’d preferred it when he was shooting insults at me and losing his cool. This … this threw me off balance and he damn well knew it.

  “You’re in me and that isn’t leaving. I’ve fought it long enough, and I’m not doing it anymore. I told you something I’ve never told anyone, but you needed to hear it to understand why I freaked when I did. Now, there is nothing stopping us.” Any mild amusement left his expression as he continued, “I fucked up. I won’t do it again. You need help … I’ll be there for you. I won’t run, Kat.”

  I stared up at him and even though every single blood vessel pumped “yes, yes, yes,” I couldn’t. He may have explained the freaking out over the needle, but it didn’t make me trust him. I tried to live my life without stress, and Ream meant high-velocity tension.

  “And what happens when I get rushed to the hospital like your sister had been, Ream? Are you going to freak again?”

  “It won’t happen.” He ran his finger across my still pulsating lips.

  I shoved his hand aside. “No, it won’t. Because I’m seeing someone else.”

  He froze and it was such a scary look on his face that I nearly ran. I could feel the pulsating rage pumping through him. His jaw clenched and the lines between his brows were deep and scary. “Get rid of him.”

  “Are you freakin’ insane?” Yeah, he was. I knew that already. We fought like we both were insane. “Seriously. You’ve been gone for eight months. Now I’ve met someone nice who treats me well. I’m not dumping him, and you have no right to tell me to do that.”

  Suddenly, everything changed in him like a switch was flicked, and he grinned. “We’ll see.”

  Before I could find some sort of intellectual reply, he turned and walked back to the house.

  Fuck.

  ***

  Her gentle voice whispered to me, “Are we staying here, Ream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he’ll feed us?”

  I closed my eyes remembering the scraps we ate. Like a dog, I’d scrounge through bins to try and find us something to fill our stomachs. Mom never cared. All she cared about were the drugs.

  “Yeah, Angel. I think so.”

  “You won’t leave me.”

  “No. I’ll never leave you.”

  I’d do whatever it took to protect her.

  Hank was in the barn when I finally went inside after managing to tear my gaze away from Ream striding back to the house. He looked up, a flake of hay in his hand. He’d heard. It was written all over his face with his accentuated wrinkles pulled down on his forehead and his subtle hazel eyes filled with concern. Hank had come with the purchase of the farm and was a godsend. He cared for the horses with a gentle touch and soft words, exactly what the abused horses needed. He tossed the flake into Gym’s stall then came and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. Hank rarely said much, but that one gesture was all he needed to convey his support.

  We took Clifford out and treated the deep lacerations around his fetlocks. He’d been l
eft hobbled in a barren field starving for months. The big Appaloosa was a character, constantly undoing gate latches and escaping any place you put him. No doubt that was why the previous owner decided to hobble him instead of simply making a latch he couldn’t open.

  Clifford was the sweetest horse we’d ever had on the farm, and I’d decided the moment he arrived, starved and bleeding, that he was mine. He was one of the few that endured his ordeal without a broken spirit. He remained good-natured and trusting without a mean bone in his massive body. He had come with the name Axe, but I immediately changed it to Clifford because he had red spots and acted like a big loveable dog.

  After Clifford we treated Gym, the Shetland pony that foundered and had severe thrush in the frogs of his feet from standing in a wet, unsanitary stall. I then spent some time quietly talking to the thoroughbred, Ice, offering him carrots, but the horse was so skittish he stood and trembled in the back corner of the stall. Hank came up beside me and I sighed, tossing the carrots into his feed bin.

  “Emily will help him,” Hank said.

  I nodded. The media called Emily “a horse whisperer.” Although she didn’t really like putting a title on it. “I’ll do night check after dinner.”

  “Sure thing, doll.”

  By the time I got back to the house, Ream’s words were back spinning in my head. The feel of his lips on mine, the cocky grin, and twinkling eyes … that was exactly what I didn’t want to see. Damn it, Ream. It was far easier resisting him when he was being a complete butthole.

  “There you are. We ordered Chinese.” Emily stood beside Logan at the kitchen counter. They were unpacking dishes from a brown paper bag. “Oww,” Emily hissed as her fingers touched the bottom of one of the containers.

  Logan quickly took it from her scowling. “Mouse, let me do it.” He examined her finger before slipping it inside his mouth. When he withdrew it, he kissed the tip. “You good?”

  She nodded and I noticed the flush to her cheeks.

  “Damn, Logan. I haven’t had any in a while. You mind keeping it to the bedroom.” I’d need a few new toys living with these two. Logan’s mouth twitched and Emily smiled. He was still a scary hot-ass, but Emily didn’t see it. At least not anymore. She did for a while when he came back for her. It was that look in her eyes, a mixture of need and fear all whipped into one.