Brand Me (Imagine Ink Book 2) Read online

  Beating on the door with little urgency now, Michael leaned against the cold surface and pleaded with his unseen love to forgive him. He knew she was there, he’d watched her head lamp weave and bob back and forth around the lake before returning here, sensing it was her long before he saw her final destination. They were the only two souls out here. Besides, who else would be crazy enough to run a freaking marathon in the dead of winter, in the dark, around a frozen lake on a Tennessee mountain.

  Michael had reconciled his feelings and reaction, for the most part, the moment he stepped onto the porch. It wasn’t thoughts of Wendy that kept him out there, it was the words that came out of his mouth and the damage they wrought that held him outside in the cold instead of offering comfort and apologies to Tori.

  It was true, when she was riding him and her orgasm was pulling him with her, the moment in the hotel room came flooding back—the helplessness, the out of control feeling, everything. But the minute he said no and removed Tori from his body, who in the heat of the moment represented Wendy, everything started to change.

  That one act was slightly redeeming in some twisted, fucked up way. It was like a second chance to say no, do what he hadn’t done that night. After that, clarity started creeping in as he paced the porch. A strength had come to him, a strength that was taken from him that night, but it came with a hefty price tag. It killed a piece of his soul that Tori had to pay that price for his strength.

  Knowing everything would be all right with time and help was all well and good, but hurting her would never be worth it for anything. After Tori left and he finally came inside, he sat down and wrote out a detailed account of what happened that night. Reading over it, he knew it would never see a second in court. That wasn’t going to stop him from trying to file charges and talking to John’s sister, though. He had to stand up. For his own piece of mind, he had to. Justice for him would be in telling the story and hopefully making it okay for other men to tell theirs. If just one person didn’t end up like Troy, then his pain and suffering would be a fair price. Tori’s however, wasn’t.

  The things he was saying to her were true, one hundred percent. He knew he needed help and he would get it, but he didn’t see her as his attacker, he didn’t blame her, and she wasn’t his blood feather, at least not in the way he had used it to get her to leave. It was his shame, not his anger that hurt her.

  He slid down the door and continued his pleading. “Tori, please. I know I hurt you and said awful things, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m asking for it anyway because I’m a selfish bastard when it comes to you. I want you in my life. Forever. By my side through all the bullshit the world throws at us. I want to be there when you cut the ribbon on your store and I want you to be there when I go to the police and admit what happened.”

  Michael heard footsteps approaching the door and hope soared. “Please come back to the cabin, don’t go to the airport. Please don’t leave me…leave us.” At that, the footsteps pounded up the stairs and away, taking hope with them. The rest of what he said was said without an audience and he knew he was talking to himself, but it didn’t stop him. It needed to be said and maybe, just maybe, she was somewhere listening.

  “I’m sorry I made you come back to this place. It was cruel of me, I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself last night. I’m not a mean person by nature and I would never hurt you. Not again, anyway. I know I have some shit to deal with, and I will, but of all the things I need to see me through it, you’re at the top of the list.”

  He was so adrift in his own thoughts, he didn’t even bother to project his voice anymore; he was sure she was already lost to him. “I didn’t lie about everything though, I do love you. More than I ever thought possible.” Michael rose to his feet and leaned his forehead against the dark maple door and spread his hand out flat against it, like he could touch her through the wood.

  “And you are a blood feather, just not broken or damaged. But in the sense that when I plucked you out and cast you away, hurt you, I mutilated myself. Without you, I will continue to bleed and bleed. You’re in my blood, Tori, pumping through my heart with every contraction.” His flattened hand balled into a fist and slammed against the door.

  He backed off and shouted, “I’m leaving, Tori, but I love you and I’m begging you not to give up on us. I won’t, not ever. I’m going to show you the man I truly am, the man I can be, the man you need. A man you can love.” Walking away, he cast his eyes back to the top floor where he suspected she was and shouted, again, “I LOVE YOU, TORIONNA KRYSTLE-CARRINGTON REID AND I ALWAYS WILL.”

  Michael felt to do more than he had already would just push her away rather than bring her closer. Knowing she needed space and time to deal didn’t make it easier. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, make love to her, prove to her she was nothing like he accused her of being, nothing like Richard accused.

  That was the real kick in the pants; he had inadvertently poked at the scars Richard had given her, and after he’d made her trust he was nothing like his not-brother. Tori was the absolute best thing to ever happen to him, hands down, and he stomped on what they had and scraped it off his shoe like discarded gum.

  As much as he wanted to blame everything on the shit that had happened to him, he couldn’t. He would not be one of those people who went through life doing whatever the Hell they wanted, treating people anyway that suited them, then play the victim card. Oops, sorry, but I can’t help myself, I suffered through shit. Nope, he would not be like that, besides, he couldn’t if he tried.

  Michael was loath to admit it, but there was a part of him last night that recognized it was Tori and not Wendy, a very small and mute part, but still it counted. It was like his mind needed to handle it in the way it did so he could move on. Sadly, it kind of worked. He had exorcised a demon and reconciled the fact that just because he could have physically stopped Wendy, mentally, he couldn’t have, and in his book, that was still an assault.

  He had repeatedly said no, and even if in the eyes of the law it was not, it was to him and he would deal accordingly. And if she was pregnant and it was his child, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. If the law couldn’t punish her, the chance of him getting full custody wasn’t very good without a way to prove her unfit. Another thing to reconcile, seeing his attacker every other week as they traded their kid back and forth like goods.

  When he got back to his cabin, he started making himself something to eat. He didn’t have much of an appetite, but he had to fuel his body. However, without Tori, nothing in life had flavor, not even food. She was his spice, his hot sauce, and without her, it was bland city.

  Stirring the small steaming pot, he let his mind wander back to children. First, to the one’s he saw Tori corralling by the beach in his dreams, then to the one he might share with a woman he couldn’t stand the sight of. Once again, his mind went to how he could love a child from her, then he heard Tori’s voice saying, “…don’t pay interest in worry by borrowing trouble,” when she was recounting her e-mail. She was right, or more accurately, her mother was right. He decided to heed the elder Ms. Reid’s advice and not borrow trouble; so instead, he returned his attention to the stove.

  Then, he heard the snowmobile. He moved to the door and flung it open so he could watch her approach, to see his future coming back to him, his home, but he was devastated to see her turn and head down the trail toward town and away from him.

  He closed the door and stared at the food he couldn’t eat; he couldn’t stomach a single bite. The best thing in his life just rode away and all he had was some clothing that still had her scent clinging to them, some vivid memories of what was and what could have been, and two words on a piece of paper.

  I Care.

  Michael curled up with her champagne camisole and the precious piece of paper and cried. Tears for so many things, tears a long time coming, but noticeably, none of the tears were for himself this time. They were for everyone else, but mostly, they were for h
er—the woman he never thought he needed, never knew he wanted yet meant everything to him in such a short period of time.

  After a while, he remembered his personal Wi-Fi. Why did I not think of it before? He could have given her peace of mind ages ago by giving her a connection to her family and info on Walker and Erika…if the damn thing worked out here, anyway.

  God, I’m such an idiot. Just add that to the growing list of ways he’d failed her. At the rate he was going, he would need to start volumes to record all his dick moves. After wiping his eyes on her cami and pausing to inhale the sweet vanilla mint smell of her skin, he grabbed his laptop and set it on the table. He dug through his bags to locate the dongle, which took twenty fucking minutes.

  He plugged it in and waited until a thrill ran through him when a single crappy bar of Internet service appeared. Immediately locating the yellow pages for Walton County, he found the number he was looking for. Using an Internet call service, he prayed the connection held out long enough. He took a deep breath, and waited for an answer.

  “Imagine Ink, you got Big Dax here, tell me where you want it.”

  Taken aback by the gruff voice and the strange hello, it took Michael a minute to collect himself.

  “I’m looking for Walker Reid?”

  “Business or personal?”

  “Um, personal, is he available?”

  “He’s a little tied up at the moment, maybe you can give me the highlights and we can take it from there? Deal? So, how do you know my man, Walker?”

  Um, okay, curiouser and curiouser. Did he just take a trip down the rabbit hole or was he getting pulled into tattoo parlor therapy? Does everyone my woman knows try to fix people?

  “Okay, my name is Michael Brande and I’m…a friend of Tori’s. I was hoping to catch up with her brother before she got home. If he’s too busy right now, can you find out a good time to call him back? I really need to talk to him and I’m not in a cell area right now, so I don’t have the option of getting a call back.”

  “Well, Michael Brande, friend of Tori’s, Walker isn’t here right now, he just brought his wife and baby home from the hospital, but I wouldn’t expect you to know that since Tori is out in the middle of nowhere right now and if you’re out of cell range, I’m suspecting you are too, am I right?”

  What the fuck? As weird as it was, or maybe Michael just needed a sympathetic ear, he wanted to talk to Big Dax. In their conversations about back home and family and friends, Tori had painted Big Dax as some sort of larger-than-life lumberjack Viking-looking dude, with a keen sense of people and a heart as big as Texas.

  “Um, yeah. I’m in the middle of nowhere, but Tori left earlier, she’s flying back late tonight. She just got a partial e-mail from her brother, but it was actually from January. She knows there was some sort of accident and that Walker and Erika are together and have a baby girl, but that’s the extent of it. That’s all the communication she’s had from home.”

  A low whistle preceded Dax’s next chilling statement. “She doesn’t know the half of it. Melanie and Erika were in one Hell of a wreck. By the time Walker found them over at a hospital in Holmes country, Erika was in bad shape and Melanie was already gone. Luckily, Erika’s on the mend, and little Willow is just too adorable for words. Now Walker has his girls home, finally.”

  Michael’s chest constricted at what Tori would come home to. “Melanie’s dead?” he breathed.

  “Yeah, the good news is it was instantaneous, she didn’t suffer. Had you ever met Melanie?” Michael suspected that Dax already knew the answer, it was obvious in his voice. He seemed to know a lot—a very wise-sounding man, one of those people who could see things that others overlooked, or in this case, hear things. It seems Tori was correct when she claimed Big Dax was very attuned to people on an unseen level.

  “No, I only just met Tori here in Tennessee, well not exactly, I met her on the flight out here and we happened to be staying at the same place.”

  When he paused to take a breath, Dax jumped in to fill the silence. “Same place, huh, so tell me, what has you urgently reaching out to her brother. Don’t tell me you aren’t desperate, because I can hear it. So, spill, I’m a decent listener without a client in the chair right now. Lay it on me.”

  “Well, I guess the cliff notes are she was dating my married brother, who as it turns out, isn’t my brother at all, which was news to me. Also, he is very much married, which was news to her. He tried to kill her and destroy me, so we commiserated together for weeks while snowed-in. Until I turned into an even bigger ass than him and hurt her feelings pretty bad. I just wanted to make sure someone she cares about, who cares about her, is there to meet her when she arrives. She’s going to need a shoulder to cry on. She’s been through a whole Hell of a lot these past few months, and now it seems like she has a lot more waiting for her. I knew Walker probably wouldn’t be able to be there with what happened and all, but I was hoping he could get Melanie to do it. Now, well, now that’s not a possibility, I don’t know who to call. Poor Tori, after everything she’s already been through, that I put her through, she won’t even have her friend to lean on.”

  Michael knew his voice was on the rise, but he was losing his shit. Big Dax kept quiet and just let him work through it.

  “Could you do it? I know she adores you. Or, could you call her parents, her mom, that’s who she needs, her mom. If you give me her number, I’ll make the call if my connection holds out.” Michael could barely keep up with the words and thoughts rapid-firing from his mouth, so he didn’t expect Dax to be able to, but he obviously did.

  “So, tell me, Michael Brande, friend of Tori, do you love her? I take that back, that’s not a real question, the real question is what are you willing to do to prove it?”

  That’s twice now someone has asked him that. Too stunned to answer, Michael just made a series of incoherent sputters.

  “Don’t worry, Michael, I will see to it her mother and myself are at the airport waiting for her. Don’t worry about what is going on with the Reid clan, we’ll take care of Tori and ease her through this. We’ll even shelter her from Richard and everything else that we can while she heals, but we can’t keep her isolated from everything, you dig?”

  If Michael wasn’t mistaken, there was censure and warning in the other man’s voice. “We can’t protect her from things outside our little circle. So, when she picks up the papers, and she will, we can’t armor her from the pain and hurt that will bring her. We won’t even be able to pick up her pieces and put ‘em back together, only you can do that if you’re willing to.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Sea oats and waves.” Dax was kind of talking to himself about something, and then turned his conversation back to Michael. “Did you know that sea oats prevent erosion? Those tiny wispy stalks are pretty freaking amazing. Alone, they can’t really do anything spectacular other than shake and bend in the harsh sea air, but together, two becomes many. And in bunches, they can literally hold back the destruction of an ocean. How awesome is that? I think you need a new table.”

  “What?” Michael was so fucking confused, this man was talking in tongues or something.

  “Never mind, you’ll understand soon enough, or maybe you won’t. Anyhow, time for talking to me is over, it’s time for action. Either you bring your ass back to Florida and you grovel at Torionna’s feet, beg her forgiveness, and become the glue she needs to hold her pieces together, or you, Michael Illanipi Brande, go ahead and marry your fiancée Tonya Beverly Richmond in a lavish country club ceremony this spring and never darken Tori’s doorstep ever again.”

  The call abruptly ended and Michael just sat there staring at the computer, digesting the strangest conversation he’d had in pretty much forever. It finally hit him…that bitch. Tonya had really done it; she printed their announcement in the papers—papers Tori would read, and he wouldn’t be there to explain or comfort. Shit, he was causing her pain, even from a distance.

  He threw the laptop
against the wall and it smashed into the stone face of the fireplace. That was his only connection to the outside world. To Tori. Fuck. There wasn’t another living soul up here at this time of year; he’d already checked, twice. No other cabin had a functioning vehicle other than a boat, which couldn’t do shit for him but take him around a slushy lake.

  Since Tori took the snowmobile, and John wasn’t due for a month, Michael was stuck—stuck in this Hell knowing Tori would be facing major heartache, some because of him, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to explain or ease the sting.

  Once again, he’d let her down. It seemed to be his milieu lately. He didn’t even have to lift a finger to do so. Apparently, it fucking came naturally. Michael vowed he’d find a way to make it up to her. He didn’t have a clue how to make that happen, but he would die trying. Because he realized, life without her meant nothing; Hell, it wouldn’t even be living.

  He would get healthy, he’d make it up to her, and he’d break this fucking cycle he created. That was a fucking promise.

  After some raging, and running, and thinking, and more anger, Michael finally made it to the bathhouse sometime well after dark. The dilemma of how to get out of this place was the one thing he didn’t have an answer to. Well, not the one thing, but no solutions at all came to mind. It was too far to hike down the mountain in this weather; he had the same chance of twisting an ankle and freezing to death as he did making it to town.

  He could have called someone if he hadn’t destroyed his only possible means of communication. Fuck, why am I such a moron?

  At least Tori wouldn’t be alone when she arrived home, he’d seen to that. He enjoyed a small degree of comfort from knowing that. She would’ve landed hours ago, he thought, as the hot water beat down upon his achy body. Tori was with family and friends; he trusted Big Dax at his word. Tori had spoken a bit about Big Dax, and all the people back home, so he had no reason to believe he’d flake on her. She would know about Melanie by now and would be bawling her eyes out, probably thinking of punishing herself by giving up on her and Melanie’s dream.