Always (Cape Hill Book 3) Read online

  © 2019 C.L. Matthews

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written expressed permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Opulent Designs

  Cover Photographer: Lindee Robinson

  Cover Models: Fatima and Brian

  Editor: Nicole Zoltack

  Format: Inkstain Design Studio

  The use of actors, artists, movies, TV shows, and song titles/lyrics throughout this book are done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and please purchase your own copy.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior express, written consent of the author

  Somos para siempre.

  Juntos somos una locura.

  One’s my salvation, the other the captor of my heart.

  Love shouldn’t come in threes, so why is this happening to me?

  They say love is spilled from the veins and onto the skin of lovers.

  Bleed, bleed, bleed until they set you free.

  My blood will shed until one wins.

  They’re destined to destroy one another, and I’m caught in the middle.

  Will there be anyone left?

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  COVETED Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgements

  “I forgive you.” It’s the first words Brax mutters to me before pulling me in for a hug. His lips envelope mine like they’ve been gone for too long. They have been, even if it went unnoticed by me.

  But his lips aren’t welcome like before. They are foreign. Distant. Vacant. Unwanted.

  These lips aren’t the same, strong ones that spent the last three days cherishing mine, the same ones that took mine like they were weathering out a storm, like they were fighting a never-ending battle, and I was that battle to win. Brax’s mouth isn’t the one that took care with every caress or gave love with every press and consumed me with every breath in between.

  These are too soft, too uncontrolled, too unsure, too not mine.

  Too Braxton Kol and not enough Silas Esparza.

  That’s not true though. Sy has never been mine to begin with. It had been a fool’s errand, thinking I could convince him to pick me, to even attempt and ruin my mother’s marriage. It had been childish to believe he’d love someone like me.

  Too young. Too naïve. Too much his stepdaughter.

  I’m just not into this moment, and I momentarily forget I’m supposed to kiss back. After forcing my mind to Brax and away from the man who snatched my heart in Puerto Rico and left it, we fall together. I give him what I’ve held back for so long, and he gives me another chance. This is what Sy wanted, for me to fall in love and move on with my life. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll forget the man who set my soul on fire, forget the way his body awakened mine, and let go of everything he changed in my life.

  Brax’s vibrating mhmm has me smiling up at him. The familiarity of him, my best friend, brings peace. He’s the eye of the storm. Brax will be easy to love, to give into.

  My best friend. My Brax. My future.

  “I missed you,” I whisper against his lips.

  And I did, albeit not in the way he wants or needs, but in the way where I can tell him everything. The way I can confide in him like I’ve never been able to with anyone else. The way that I can find comfort in him every possible way. With everything experienced together, it’s easy to seek him out and for us to be inseparable.

  Not even six months ago, I would have confided in him what happened during these past three days since he left. I could vent to him, express my regrets, and explain that my heart is raw as if a meat cleaver was taken to it over and over and over again. He would hug me and listen. He would hold me and tell me even if it was a mistake, he’d always be here for me.

  Not anymore.

  Now, we’re in a different place. Our first touch changed everything between us. It brought a line, or rather a crack, in our friendship, slicing down until it reached the roots and separated those too. Regardless of what we face now, we’re going to work through it. I’ll be the best friend who loves him in whichever way he needs. Even if it’s just friendship.

  I can learn to love him, if that’s what he wants.

  Because I do, even if my love for Sy consumes me in an entirely different way. There’s still this love that Brax kindled in the shower. The passion, even for only a moment, lived and thrived in me. And I’ll get it back, allowing it to devour me again.

  “I missed you, too.” He pulls me in the tightest embrace, holding me like I’ll run away.

  But I’d never run from him. We’ve been through so much of life together. We’ve experienced so much, even if a lot of it hurt.

  We’re best friends.

  We’ll always be best friends.

  He showed up as I left the hanger, heading to the shuttle area, standing there. Not with a sign but with his hands in his pockets, all unsure and adorable. His head hung down, his dark blond-brown hair disheveled like he ran his fingers through it with stress over and over again.

  The way he angled himself made his mop head appear like a bad hair day commercial. I smiled. It reminded me of all the times I’d lecture him on using a brush. As if he knew my thoughts, he peered up at me, his eyes swimming with emotions, ones that he never held back.

  He wears them on his sleeves, like it’s his armor, his honesty.

  I smile now, and when he sees, the corner of his own lips tilt up, giving me that boyish smirk that brings a happiness to hug my heart.

  He’s my salve.

  He’s always been able to heal my heart, and though it’s shitty of me, I’ll use his comfort to heal me once again, just like after my birthday, when Sy touched me for the first time. Brax soothed me as I cried for days. He’s always protecting me, loving me, giving me life.

  Brax is always here, and for once, I’m choosing him.

  Even if it only feels like he’s a consolation prize rather than the love of my life.

  She looks at me with those lost, allotrope, crystalized blue eyes, and I melt right there. In her eyes, I witness her pain. There’s so much turmoil and regret there, and I hope it’s for how we left thi
ngs. In those same blue orbs, I see how much she missed me, and how much she loves me. Even if not the way I want… yet.

  I need to love her, to forgive her, to hug her, and to have her help me forget.

  We can regret our actions, even if we don’t share them.

  I’ll never share them.

  She won’t know I kissed him. That I dreamed about him. How this new desire for two different men has invaded my senses.

  I’ve never been into guys. As much as the signs scream at me, I’m not gay. I’ll get lost in her… my best friend.

  When we kiss, it feels like coming home. She doesn’t kiss back at first, and I’m not sure if it’s from fear, her not feeling the same, or surprise, but I wait until she does.

  As soon as her lips move with mine, it’s like that missing piece I had is being filled once more. She’s curing that broken part of me that sought love elsewhere.

  She’s it for me.

  I’ve believed it since we were kids. It’s not changing over the best kiss of my life.

  Best kiss of my life?

  I want to shake my head. I want to retch that thought and those words from my brain, but it’s out there.

  Brady gave me the best kiss.

  No.

  I mentally chastise myself to be in the moment with Leia, to be absorbed with her, to be sucked in the same way as before, instead of thinking of Brady.

  His hands. His lips. His moans.

  I’ll keep kissing her until it’s the best kiss of my life, until the memory of his lips are erased and eradicated with the taste of hers.

  Soft. Loving. Meaningful.

  After I hear several claps, I pull her mouth from mine. People surround us with looks of amusement, adoration, and even annoyance. When I stare back at Leia’s lips, they’re swollen, and her eyes are wide. It only takes a second for her coquettish smile to come. She blushes, the red tingeing her brown cheeks with the faintest blush.

  “I missed you,” she says, pulling me into a hug

  “I missed you, too.” I had to get it out, just in case she caught too big of a pause. I did miss her, but if she never left, I wouldn’t be questioning my sexuality.

  I’m not questioning. I’m straight. I’m sure of it.

  My stomach drops. My heart flinches like I personally offended it.

  It’s true. It has to be.

  “Let’s go home?” she asks timidly, her face faltering a bit at the word home.

  I haven’t told her that I attacked Darryl, that I haven’t been home since, and that I’ve been staying with Aster.

  “Yours or mine?” I question instead, closing my eyes, hoping she doesn’t say mine.

  “Mine, for now, at least. Then yours? I don’t want to be there ever again, Brax.”

  What the hell went down when I left her behind? Suspicion coils its way through me, making my hand drop from her side.

  “Did something happen?” I accuse, my voice harsh.

  Again, I flinch, knowing it’s my inane jealousy sparking bright at the fact that she always picks him. No matter what, it’s always him. If she would have picked me, I wouldn’t have kissed Brady. I wouldn’t have cheated. I wouldn’t want to do things with the same sex.

  I wouldn’t need fixing.

  “Nothing important,” she says, brushing it off. “Got in a huge fight with Mamá and Sy. I’m moving out as soon as I get a job.”

  It’s as if she’s explaining this to herself, rather than in response to me and my own personal turmoil.

  “Then, let’s figure shit out, babe.”

  She peers at me with the word, a small ghost of a smile on her face. “I’d like that.”

  Just like that, we head to her house and start planning for the future because it seems we’ve both decided to pick each other even if only for the time being.

  Even if it’s really only an escape.

  It’s like this every night.

  There’s a twist of a knob, a grumble, some shuffling, and the loud sounds of boots stomping on the carpet like heavy rocks falling down the mountainside. If not for the creaky boards beneath the floor, no one would hear.

  No one would know.

  Please go away.

  His thick and angry voice hollows me through even as it’s bereft as a whisper. It burrows inside my chest, warning me of what will happen next.

  We all know what happens next.

  “C’mere, boy,” his drunken tenor bites sharply, yet it’s somehow still a whisper.

  The tears come automatically. It’s useless to fight them. I’m a teenager now, but the helplessness I feel is the same as when I was a six-year-old boy, as when he first used that knob for more than just to tell me to wash up and come eat.

  “I said come here, boy,” he growls, his speech angrier, frigid, demonic. It’s louder, and that’s even more unnerving, knowing both my mom and Leia could wake up from the alcohol-incited baritone of his voice.

  “C-Coming,” I mutter, not knowing if he could hear my soft tone. My stomach recoils from how small I sound, how childlike, how weak.

  I should be stronger. I should know better. I should fight.

  I’m feet away, the ground beneath my toes squish through each tiny fiber of the carpet, grounding me to this room—my own personal dungeon. The floorboard beneath the plush material squeaks, and Darryl clamps onto my arm like a shark does a seal in the ocean. And then, I know. I know tonight isn’t a good one. None are, but this will be gruesome. I can feel it. Whenever his impatience draws me near like this, I’m in for a long night when he hurts me over and over until there’s nothing left but my soft inhale, exhale, and the slow pitter patter of my deflated heart.

  Darryl pulls harder, forcing my back to rest against his front while he grinds the lower half of himself behind me. Stop! I wish I could scream it. I wish I could hurt him. I wish I’d never known what a man felt like against my skin.

  My heart hammers, my face vibrating with the intensity. Breathe. I need to breathe. That’s where the pounding is coming from. He groans next to my ear, the sound demoralizing me, slithering up my body, sickening me with every breath.

  “P-please, D-Darryl,” I plead, frozen stiff.

  Albeit warm to the touch, I’m unable to move any part of my body. It already knows. It’s already preparing for what he’s bound to do, what he has always done. It’s adapted to late nights. It’s adapted to turning emotions off. It’s detached itself from my mind.

  It has saved me.

  “What’s that, fagboy? You gon’ get hard for your stepdaddy?”

  His aroused and putrid bourbon breath infiltrates me. If you’d ask me what other liquor smells like, I couldn’t tell you, but I know the burn of bourbon, the stench that wafts when it’s consumed by a man who could literally bleed it if you’d only cut him open. It takes every ounce of strength to not shake from the familiar scent, to not allow him even that much more power.

  The names he calls me, the things he does, the way my body reacts… I can’t control it.

  It’s disgusting.

  Abhorrent.

  Wrong.

  Depleting.

  Right as he’s attempting to cup my privates, the knob on the door twists on this night once more. As soon as it does, Darryl jumps like a burglar caught in the night. He kind of is, taking what isn’t his to take, stealing the soul of a child, scavenging what’s left night after night. As he moves away, he glares, making sure I’m aware to keep my mouth shut.

  The door opens, and in comes Leia, my best friend.

  My throat clogs at the implications, making it hard to swallow, let alone breathe. Despite the fear racing through me, my first instinct is to protect her from the monster nearest me. She doesn’t see him. She doesn’t know what he does in the shadows of night. She. Doesn’t. Know. And how can I tell her? How do I explain that the man who’s raising me also likes to touch me in places no parent should? Or how he forces me to do things to him that I can never reiterate? Things that will never leave me? Things that
have damaged me far more than my own father could?

  I can’t.

  I sure as hell can’t risk her being hurt too.

  “Brax,” she whispers, not realizing I’m only feet away. It’s pitch black, and the dark room hides the predator wreaking havoc behind closed doors.

  “I’m here,” I barely muster, my voice shaky and fearful and even smaller than when Darryl walked in. Will he punish her? Is she not safe too?

  “I-I can’t sleep. Can we talk?” she asks, nibbling on her lip.

  My entire body shivers. Whether it’s from her lip bite, Darryl hiding next to me, or the absolute terror I feel for this outcome is uncertain.

  When Darryl steps toward her, my heart gallops like fifty stallion horses on a track.

  He doesn’t say a word, just brushes past her and doesn’t look back. The thundering in my head, the sweat gathering in my palms, and the breath lodged deep within me all feel like too much, and how she doesn’t utter a word makes it worse.

  She reaches for both of my hands, and I place them in hers. Her dainty fingers rub soothing circles into the juncture between my thumbs and pointer fingers, and my breathing calms. Not even a minute later, she repeats my worst fear out loud.

  “He comes to your room, too?”

  And with those six small worlds, it feels as if my life stops right there, suspending in the moment she shares the darkest part of her soul with me.

  “He comes to your room, too?”

  “He comes to your room, too?”

  “He comes to your room, too?”

  Too? Too? My mind unravels while it replays her question. It scours for a response. It claws for an answer, for a reason, for something other than the blanketed darkness. Instead of giving her a lame excuse—perhaps even a lie—I nod shakily, not knowing if she can even see the motion, not knowing if she’s hurting as much as me, not understanding her six words.

  Because he can’t hurt her too. He can’t. He can’t. He fucking can’t.

  “Don’t be scared, Brax. That means we can heal each other.”

  She grabs me tighter, like this hug is our thread, our strand to sew the nightmares into a safe spot until those tight-knitted lengths of fiber, so carefully crafted, rip the seams and flood through. They’re a band-aid for now until a tear comes. It’s inevitable. It’ll come, and we’ll be shredded filaments, unable to repair and reconstruct.