More Than Want You (More Than Words 1)

I can’t take it. I stomp to the kitchen and swipe all the loose papers there onto the floor. It’s wholly unsatisfying. There’s no crash. No destruction. If I’m coming apart, everything around me should be, too. Goddamn it.

I look for a better target. The coffeemaker stands squarely in my crosshairs. Yeah.

Yanking the cord from the socket, I jerk it from the counter and hurl it against the closet door on the other side of the foyer. It falls to the ground in a twisted heap. The water in the reservoir splats all over the walls and floor. After a belch, the guts hang out. The unit lies there without fight, totally dead.

Unfortunately, I still have a raging ocean of fury flowing inside me. It’s boiling, brewing, bubbling. I look around for my next victim. The microwave looks promising. That son of a bitch has never worked right, and it would be so satisfying to teach it a fucking lesson.

But as I pull the cord free and wrap my arms around it to hoist it up, I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. And I freeze.

Keeley.

I drop the appliance on the counter. If I didn’t want her to see me beat down by my old man, I didn’t want her to see me enraged, either. Shame slithers through me. I close my eyes, wishing the world would swallow me up whole.

“Go away. Let me do this alone. I don’t want to talk about it.”

With a gentle hand, she curls her fingers around my arm. I know I should resist, but how can I refuse something I want so badly? Someone I love so much?

I let her pull me around to face her. I still can’t look at her, but I feel her all around me. Her empathy. Her tenderness. Her adoration.

“Maxon. I’m here.” She pulls my stiff form closer, toward her embrace.

I try not to go. I try not to cry. I try not to be the loser my father accuses me of being. “You should go.”

“I won’t leave you like this.”

“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me. Don’t do it.” I stab the heels of my palms into the sockets of my eyes and retreat from her until my back hits the counter. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

“That’s not what I feel at all. Maxon, look at me. Please.”

I’m huffing. I can’t get myself under control. I can’t find my center. The fury rages with a sadness I can’t get out from under or push away or process out. It’s just sitting in the middle of my chest, suffocating me.

But her voice is pulling me away from the darkness, beckoning me with hope and kindness and promise.

Finally, I open my eyes. Blink. Stare. “Jesus. Oh, sunshine…”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Keeley is naked. Every inch of her skin is pale and glowing and exposed. She’s looking at me with blue eyes full of not pity but concern. A desire to help and comfort. An open kinship that says she understands and she’ll be with me.

My guts knot. My eyes sting. Water. What the hell is she doing to me?

“It’s all right,” she promises in a voice so soft it almost hurts me.

I shake my head, slowly at first, then the motion picks up steam and I think over and over how wrong and terrible tonight’s scene was. “I never wanted you to hear that.”

All of a sudden, she wraps her fingers around my fists and kisses her way up my clenched jaw. I feel her gentle touch clear down to the living, breathing anger inside me.

“I know,” she assures. “And I know everything he said hurts. I’m sorry. Truly. But I understand so much better.”

“What, that I’m fucking broken?” A tear slides down my cheek even as rage keeps my heart pumping in a stomping rhythm. “You knew that. Why the hell is it good that you’ve seen the gory details?”

As I mentally replay every word she overheard, mortification curdles my blood. My father’s beatdown is a brand blackening my soul. He couldn’t have found a more complete way to humiliate me.

“No, he’s broken. You…” I hear a shaking in her voice and risk a glance her way. Tears pour openly from her eyes as she cups my cheek. “You’ve survived. I’m so proud of you.”

At those five words, my knees buckle. I’ve been waiting to hear them from someone my whole life.

I choke back more tears and try to modulate my voice. “He’s left me with a lot of scars.”

“Of course he has,” she says earnestly, right into my eyes with no shame for the emotion she’s spending on me. “But you’re stronger for them. Better. And softer in here.” She places her hand on my chest.

My whole body lurches. I grit my teeth. “I don’t want to be softer!”

“It’s not a bad thing.” Her fingers graze my cheek. “It’s what separates you from him. He will never be capable of caring about the people around him, not even his own children. You’re right that he’ll die alone and unloved. He’s reaping what he’s sown. You have a chance to be different.”

When she reframes the situation like that, I see she’s right. I absolutely can’t rail about the fact that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone, then be afraid to care about people myself.

I take a deep breath, hang my head. I’m still wound up and turned inside out. And I’m doing my best to apply familiar logic to emotion, like if A plus B equals C, then A plus C must equal B. I know that isn’t accurate, but when I fill in the blanks with feelings and opinions, it works. If hurt plus resentment equals egotistical bastard, then hurt plus egotistical bastard must equal resentment. Yeah, that makes total sense.

“You have a chance to purge everything he dumped on you and be whole, Maxon. Let it go and be happy.”

The words come out so softly. Every syllable grips my heart and squeezes. But her meaning kicks me in the teeth. Forget everything the old bastard has ever said or done to me? Carry on as if the demeaning way he’s treated me for thirty-three fucking years doesn’t matter? I can’t bend my brain around how to pretend all that away. How would that make me happy?

I gape at Keeley. A cynical comeback streaks through my head, perches on my tongue.

Then I stop. Think.

What good does it do me to expend so much energy and hate on an asshole I rarely see if I neglect to live?

I’ve come to a fork in the road. I can be a motherfucker, like my old man. It would certainly be easy. I’ve learned from the master, after all.

Or I can be my own man.

I can’t believe how much courage it takes to simply open my eyes and look at Keeley. No way I can hide the tumultuous confusion churning my insides like a blender. For once, I don’t even try. I just lift my head and meet her stare.

She’s blurry because my eyes won’t stop watering. I grind my teeth together. I’m not sure I’ve ever openly cried in my entire adult life. It’s ugly, I’m sure.

It’s also like a runaway train I can’t stop, especially when I see the empathy waiting for me in her blue eyes. It nearly fells me.

I grab her shoulders to hold on. She closes the distance between us and wraps her arms around me. God, how fucking badly I need her touch…though it’s unraveling me even more.

My chest heaves. My breath is a sob. Another tear falls. The part of me that’s resistant to change doesn’t want this, yet I know I need it.

“I’m here,” she vows. “I’ll catch you. Just…fall.”

If anyone else were standing in front of me, I would scoff and insist they fuck off. But I believe Keeley. This woman is everything to me. In this moment, I’m pretty sure that, despite everything, she must love me, too. Why else would she put up with my crying-baby routine? Yeah, compassion and whatever. I have to believe she isn’t comforting random people on the street. The fact that I’m special to her fills me with peace and warmth that smooth over so many of the wounds my father gouged out in his wake. I want more of her comfort. I need more of her caring.

As I seize her in my arms, I crush her against my chest. I feel complete when her heart beats in time with mine. But it also turns me inside out. The shield around my soul is splintering apart with every quiet moment we’re locked together. All I can do is hold on tight an

d let myself feel.

I splay my fingers across her back until there isn’t a single breath between us. I can smell her, feel her, inhale her. I fucking sob into her hair. A part of me is waiting for her to laugh, call me a pussy, and bark at me to man up. But that old tape belongs to my dad. Keeley will never say those things. She simply soothes me with slow strokes of her palms up and down my back, comforts me with kisses up my neck and across my cheek. I feel her tenderness like a blanket wrapping me in safety, care.