Washed Up (Bayside Heroes)

I heave in a shaky breath, whimpering, clutching at his hoodie, but he locks down, completely still.

It’s not a kiss.

He doesn’t press those lips to mine, doesn’t push me down against the shingles and claim me. His lips just hover there, grazing mine, our breaths blending together in the treacherous space between.

“You’re not washed up,” he whispers, and I taste every word, his lips moving against my own — warm and soft and heartbreaking. “And if I never get the chance to show you that, to make you feel it, to prove to you with every touch I’m lucky enough to steal that it’s true… I need you to promise me you’ll believe it for yourself.”

My brows fold together, a tear I didn’t know was even building slipping silently down the side of my face and falling into my lap.

“You, Amanda Young, are smart, and passionate, and brave, and fearless, and kind and caring and giving and so, so fucking beautiful it physically pains me every time I see you.”

I roll my lips together against another threat of emotion, savoring the way his lips feel brushing against mine, the way it feels everywhere he’s touching me.

“You used my maiden name,” I say with a smile — a smile that’s stopping me from crying, if I’m being honest.

“Because I know how much your married one makes you feel trapped,” he says, and in a show of mercy, he lifts his forehead from mine, his lips gone with the movement. He grabs my face in his hands, his eyes searching mine. “That name does not define you, nor does the life you had with him. It’s over. It’s in the past. You are not a victim. You are a survivor.”

And that does it.

I try to fight it, try to bite my lips together and stave it off, but emotion breaks through, and I crumple into a heap in his arms.

Greg holds me, letting me feel it all, letting me process the haunting past, and the torturous present and the terrifying future at once.

I fist my hands in his hoodie, wishing I could lose myself in his words, in his touch, that there wasn’t such a complicated roadblock keeping us apart.

I wish I could know what it feels like to be loved by a man like him.

But I can’t, not without dire consequences that neither of us are prepared to face.

He’d lose his best friend.

I would lose the trust, the respect, and the relationship I have with my one and only son.

With the one person who’s kept me alive and fighting all this time.

That makes me cry harder, and Greg wraps me up even more, quieting me softly with his lips pressed against my hair.

For tonight, just for tonight, I let him hold me.

And I pretend he’s mine.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AMANDA

“You’re joking.”

I sputter the words, dizziness taking over me as I find a bench and wearily sit down. Students whiz past me, back and forth, oblivious to how my life is crashing down right in front of them.

It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving, which has the campus buzzing with students wrapping up their midterms and papers and other assignments due before the holiday.

And amidst the chaos, I’m having a panic attack.

“Please,” I say again. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I know it seems bad,” Myra says. “But we can work with this.”

“Seems bad?” I choke on a laugh. “Myra, he’s trying to control me even after I divorce him.”

“It’s only one stipulation, and it’s an easy one to get around.”

“He said if I ‘seriously date’ anyone who makes more money than he does, he doesn’t have to pay alimony anymore. Nor does he have to keep me on his insurance.”

“Well… maybe you just don’t date for a while. At least, seriously.”

“But what does that even mean? Seriously? And what, I’m supposed to just date broke men, or no one at all?”

My heart seizes in my chest.

I know Josh, and because I know him, I understand exactly why he did this.

He saw me with Greg. He assumed we were together — or at the very least, realized that I wasn’t going to be a lonely, miserable cow for the rest of my life the way he would prefer it.

He saw it. The truth.

That he can’t control me anymore.

And then, he decided to change that, to remind me of the last thing he said to me before I kicked him out of our house.

If he can’t have me, no one else can.

“He and his attorney have outlined the terms,” Myra explains, her voice distant, as if reaching me through a tunnel of traffic. “Things like if you move in with the person, or date longer than three months exclusively, etc.”

I shake my head, sitting back against the bench and pinching the bridge of my nose. “How is this even possible? Can he do this?”