78 Peachy love

**Date = 15 July**
***Five days of peace.***
**Place = San Francisco (Inferno penthouse)**
***And we have the whole place to ourselves.***

**POV - Enrique**

***WARNING – sex scene!!!***

It’s late.
The kind of late where the moon’s done with her shift and even the raccoons have called it a night.
I let myself in and find her curled up on the sofa like a sexy little tortilla, fast asleep under a blanket, while some badly dubbed romcom plays in the background. She must’ve passed out halfway through whatever tragic masterpiece it is.
I strip with stealth that would make a cat burglar weep with envy and slide in next to her, naked, because I have my priorities straight. Her warm, silky form fits perfectly into mine, like we were built in a lab for spooning. Her nightie — and I use that term loosely, because it’s basically a see-through red piece of cloth — is doing a damn fine job of waking up every dirty thought I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a lot.
“Sport?” she mumbles sleepily.
Who else? Amazon delivery?
“Hi, Batnip,” I murmur into her hair. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“But you did.” Eyes still closed, she wraps her arms around me and rams all those unfairly soft curves up against my body. She’s playing with fire. Her leg snakes between mine.
“And …” she purrs, “… you’re hard.”
Observant.
“And rapidly getting harder,” I smirk.
She reaches down and gives the boys a fond little tinkle. Great. Now I’m not just hard — I’m doomed. I don’t want a booty call.
Well, I do … I really fucking do, but that’s not why I’m here. I just want to be with her. Sleep next to her. Smell her. That’s the only way for me to get any shuteye these days — spooning her, breathing in her scent.
“We don’t have to …” I begin, already lying to myself. “I just want to sleep next to you. Smell you. Feel you. Real basic emotional-needs stuff. We don’t always have to … we don’t need …”
“Sport?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
And there goes the last sliver of resistance I had. She rocks her hips against me, nipples peeking through the sheer lace like they’re staging a coup. Her body hums against mine, her leg rubbing exactly where it shouldn’t. Then she pulls my hand down, right to where her heat is practically pleading. It pulls a long, sultry hum from her throat.
I’m shutting the fuck up.
My mouth latches onto a nipple, sucking that baby through the flimsy cloth. I move her panties aside and slide a finger into her. She hisses, grabs my erection like she’s about to negotiate with it.
“Mm … I wonder what we can do with this?” she whispers.
And control officially exits the chat. I swear I understand cavemen way better.
I roll over, pin her under me, rip the panties off like they abused my ego, and bury myself deep. Her eyes fly open.
“Let me show you,” I smirk, thrusting slowly. Fuck she feels good.
Her legs lock around me. Bareback. Always. Forever.
We finish fast and hard, like we’re both out to win a race we didn’t know we entered. I swear my soul left my body halfway through and came back in a better mood. My toes curl to the wrong side.
“Fucking Jeremiah,” I groan, pulling out.
I clean up with my shirt like the gentleman I am and toss it to her. Then we settle under the blanket, tangled up in each other, sweat-slick and satisfied.
“Sport?” she breathes against my chest.
“Mmm?”
“If I say I think I love you… will you bail?”
Caught off guard by her question, my body goes into a motionless standstill.
Silence. Big, heavy, dramatic silence. The kind you get right before an opera singer hits a high note or someone dies on Grey’s Anatomy.
Inert for the moment, my voice too seems to be gone. What must I say? What can I say? Not that …
She pulls back a little. “Never mind. I won’t say it. Forget it.” Taking my silence the wrong way.
I can sense her dismay in both her voice and the sudden tension of her body. Fuck. I don’t want to lose her again. I can’t lose her. I need to say SOMETHING.
“I promise I’ll never bail on you again,” I say, voice all gravel and guilt.
Her muscles slacken slightly. It’s a positive indication, I think. However, I feel I need to say more. It’s just not that easy to talk about something that’s been hidden away for years … almost a decade, to be precise.
“And I truly like you.” And then I add, “A lot.” For dramatic effect.
Yeah, no, wrong move. Her body goes rigid as if I called her a good roommate.
“I just can’t say … you know. That.” How to explain my ridiculous situation. It really is utterly stupid … I know. She sits up and waits for me to say something more. But what do I say? I sit up too. She looks at me like I’m a puzzle she just realized has too many missing pieces.
When I don’t speak up, she does.
“Enrique,” she says, calm and direct, like she’s done playing. “I love you. There. I said it. If you don’t feel the same, I need to know now.”
Cue my internal organs imploding. I want to tell her everything, but the words jam in my throat like wet cement.
She stands. Picks up her destroyed underwear like she’s packing up her dignity. That lacy red nightie is not helping my ability to think.
“I can see it on your face. You look like you’re gonna barf.” Yeah, I might throw up, but not for the reason she’s thinking.
“I can’t keep on being with you … ‘cause it hurts each time I have to leave. I wish I could nothing you, or hate you, or not care about you. I need to not think about you. But I don’t know how to do that when I’m around you all the time.” She smiles down at me. A sad smile lazed with terrifying finality. It rips through my heart like a heated razor blade.
She walks. And that walk. It hits me like a fucking hammer. Up to now, I haven’t realized just how far gone I am when it comes to her. Or how lost in her I’ve allowed myself to become. Or maybe I just previously tried to deny it.
But I am. Completely lost in her, and lost without her.
I knew the moment she walked through my door that she was different.
And I’ve fallen, hard.
Love? Most probably — I don’t know what this feeling is. I’ve never felt it before. The only thing I know for sure is that I definitely can’t lose her. Not ever again.
Losing her is way worse than any pain I’ve ever felt before. And I know pain.
But Aria is warmth and sarcasm and fire. She is sacrifice, motherhood, and courage.
And I’m still that angry kid watching the police take his mother’s body away, heart full of regret and silence.
I don’t deserve someone like Aria. I don’t deserve any of this.
But I want to be deserving. I scramble.
First, I swallow, then I take a deep breath. Then I wipe my face.
“It’s not like that.” It comes out more sharply than intended. Frankly, I’m surprised I even managed a sound to escape from my burning throat.
She pauses.
“There was this party!” I say briskly before she changes her mind.
She turns, brows drawn.
“Just bear with me,” I beg. “I think this is going somewhere.” She frowns deeper, as if contemplating what to do. I choke in air and hold.
She sits back down, tucks her legs under her, and looks at me like I’d better deliver. The red lace clings to all the right places. Whether or not they’re sexier than the tiny strand of ginger hair staring at me from underneath the hem is debatable. I nearly forget what I am about to say.
“There was a party,” I say again, mostly to hear the words out loud, to give shape to the chaos in my head. “It was a Hannah Olson party.” The first one we attended.
That night’s been buried for years, an insignificant party I barely remembered … until Darren’s recent confession dug it up and revealed … THAT party was not insignificant after all. It never was. It was a spark landing onto old gunpowder, igniting a catastrophe.
I didn’t start the war. That thing’s been smoldering underground for decades, silent, hibernating, waiting. I just … kicked the sparks into the air.
“And no other party came close to a Hannah Olson party. Everyone who was cool was invited. It was mandatory.”
I’m rambling on about some insignificant shit. But I need her to understand, even just a tiny bit, why I’m so screwed up.
“And that year, we started a short-lived tradition that lasted four years.” And I started events that would have devastating consequences. Events I didn’t even know about until Darren’s admission.
Aria perks up. “Tradition?” Her tone is cautious, but I catch the flicker of intrigue. She’s hooked.
“We have different kinds,” I say, leaning back. “One is … orderly, I guess. Stupid, premeditated dares. Bets. You get a week to complete and photograph it — a running loop from the oldest to the youngest. Totally pointless, meant for amusement.” I smirk, shrugging.
“Right now is Ilkay’s turn.” Even in the Alpine mountains.
“The others …” My voice drops. “The other kind is random. Strikes anytime, anywhere, on anyone. Total chaos. Keeps us sharp. On our toes.” I let that hang, watching her face. The flicker of fascination is there — but so is the weight.
“Like the liquid ass I recently shoved into Jackson’s car vent.”
“Oh,” she says timidly.
“The Hannah Olson ones …” I shrug. “… those were different.”
“Why her?” she asks, and I can hear the faint possessive strain of jealousy suppressed in her voice. It gives me hope.
“Because she was your typical mean girl. But mostly because of Emily.” Tragic story. But not mine to tell.
Aria’s brows jump. “Emily? Axel’s sister? The one he visited when she had a baby?”
“Yeah. She lives in Santa Barbara now, married to a cop … three daughters, thriving. She’s genuinely kind and ridiculously drop-dead gorgeous — basically the antithesis of Hannah.”
“She’s pretty?”
“Had a huge crush on her when I hit puberty,” I say solemnly. Cause it’s true. The first girl who made my heart race. She was everything a horny teen could dream of … pretty, older, and off limits.
Aria lets out a quiet “Hm” — not approval, not interest, just the kind of noise people make when they’d rather not know. Or when they’re jealous.
“So,” she circles back. “The party?”
“Hannah struck again. Called Emily a slut …”
Accused her of stuff. With the principal …
The kind of stuff that should’ve never happened, should have been handled with care, not claws.
But Hannah wasn’t built for care. She wasn’t built for kindness.
Hannah weaponized it. She spun the truth into poison. Everyone laughed. Everyone looked. No one helped. No one could.
The principal was Hannah and Axel’s stepfather. Untouchable.
Their mom — too weak to protect her kids, or she just didn’t care. Their real dad — clueless — away fighting a war.
I don’t know the whole story. Just fragments, ugly enough to stick under my skin forever.
But Jackson … he went feral. And we followed. Ilkay and I.
“Cruel, filthy rumors, dropped loud enough for half the damn school to hear. That was it. It became personal.”
Her jaw drops a little. “That’s why Axel … the knife …”
She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to. I nod.
“Hence the start of the Hannah tradition. Ruining her birthday parties. Small stuff — rats, shampoo sabotage, crapping and peeing on her bed —”
“Oh my god,” she gasps, laughing. “That’s small stuff?” Yeah. We didn’t maim her, did we? Although I think Jackson was close.
“That year it was skunk spray.”
Her face freezes. “Excuse me — skunk spray? Like, real skunk?”
“Amazon’s best 1-oz bottles.” I grin proudly. “The goal was to get it somewhere awful.
“Anywhere smellable would be awful.”
“But some places are worse.”
She groans and laughs at the same time, like she can’t believe she’s even listening to this. “Okay … so what worse place did your aim hit?”
I tilt my head, squint like I’m searching the memory. “Don’t know. Can’t even remember if I actually got to the spraying part.” A crooked grin twists, but it doesn’t hold. My chest feels heavy, like the stink of that night is still lodged in my lungs.
It’s as if after Darren’s confession, my brain blocked out all the useless, unrelated stuff to focus on all the faults I made back then.
The first one being Lucinda … who was called Lucy before. She was the trigger. The spark.
“All I know now is that what was supposed to be a prank, revenge … backfired. Big time.”
Her smile falters, sensing the shift.
“You know about Darren? And Lucinda?” My throat is dry saying their names.
“Yeah,” she says slowly. “Mel told me about them.”
“They were at that party.”
“What?” she gasps, seemingly shocked.
“But we didn’t know. Not until Darren confessed everything to Jackson, while my brother hung upside down from the ceiling.”
“He confessed?” Oh, he shared so many secrets with Jackson while torturing him and Dad.
“Yeah. Apparently, they had a long, hateful history with our family.” One that started very long ago. A historic family feud we never knew about. But carried on, unknowingly.
And that night, the old grudge found new fuel.
“Splendid. But why … eh, what … does this have to do with … us … with love?” she asks, more softly now, her smile fading into something thoughtful.
“I’ll get there, okay,” I nod, jaw tightening. My chest feels tight, but I push the words out. “At that party. With that prank. With me.”
“I lit a fuse … that led to everything. To the reason why I can’t say …” I swallow the huge lump in my throat.
I scrub a hand over my face, half a bitter laugh escaping. “That’s where the story starts. With a party. And me being the idiot who struck the match, lighting a fuse I didn’t even know existed.”
She wriggles into a more comfortable position, looking like a little kid watching their first Disney film. At least she’s still here. And at least she laughed, groaned, gasped — the whole emotional buffet.
Her voice softens, curiosity catching. “Tell me.”
“Like I said … we never knew … but … turns out once that spark burned, it burned fast — and it didn’t stop until it took her life,” I add, voice gravelly, almost bitter.
“Mom died, and it was all my fault,” I push out, the words tasting like iron.
Her eyes sharpen, but she doesn’t interrupt.
I fiddle with my hands, thinking how I could easily run a knife through my palm rather than sit here talking about the damn past. However, I don’t think Aria is ready for that shit yet. Self-harm. Not something you discuss on a sofa just after sex.
Instead, I start to hyperventilate. I sound like a fat puppy on a hot day.
She clasps my hands into hers and holds them still. A wave of calmness overflows my aura and removes the tightness in my chest.
“Something happened at the party,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, even though I feel it crack inside me.
Aria shifts a little, watching me closely now. The laughter’s gone from her face. Her lip’s no longer caught between her teeth. She’s quiet. Waiting.
“Something I forgot,” I say. “Like I’ve forgotten Lucinda.”
I can hear my own pulse louder than her breathing.
“She wasn’t a bet or a prank or anything like that,” I continue. “Just a crazy girl. Bipolar or something. A year older than me. She’d had this massive crush on me for, like, years. Wrote me poems. Drew pictures of my face in her books. Gave me stupid little presents.”
Aria’s eyes narrow immediately. “And you forgot her?”
“Totally,” I deadpan. “I should have remembered.” I really should have.
“Anyway, that night, she finally decided to shoot her shot. Waited until everyone was watching, cornered me, pressed me against the wall, and kissed me.”
“Ah … that’s rather sweet.” Oh, it was not.
I rub the back of my neck, eyes flicking to the ceiling like maybe the story’s written up there.
“It was not elegant.” My jaw tightens, but I keep it wrapped in humor. “I was young, cocky, horny, stupid … and for a second I kissed her back. Right before I pushed her —”
“Hard,” I add. “She fell. On her ass, in front of half the party.”
Her face contorts into a wince. “Nooo.”
“Most awkward boner of my life. So I laughed at her.”
“She got on her knees,” I start, my voice grinding like gravel, “She looked up at me, crying, and said she loved me. Right there. In front of everyone.”
“And I … being the emotionally stunted genius I am, told her to get lost … in front of everyone.” My laugh is hollow.
“Yikes.”
“Yes.”
“Did she scream?”
“A little. She was pissed. Hurt. Stormed off.”
Aria lets out a soft sound — somewhere between a sigh and a wince.
“I didn’t mean to humiliate her. I just … I panicked. I didn’t know what to do with that. Still don’t.”
“Enrique —”
“When she came to the club with Mel as Lucinda … I didn’t even recognize her,” I go on, pushing past her voice before it makes me too soft to finish this. “I mean … she had scarlet-red hair back then … was called Lucy. I didn’t know she was a natural brunette … dyed it red. For me.”
Her breath hitches, but I keep going before the silence swallows me.
“I also didn’t know she came with the rape.” My voice drops, fraying at the edges. “She said it was me.” I cough, clearing my throat.
“Swore it was me. And Darren? He bought it without question. Even when he finally confessed to Jackson, he still believed it.”
“I don’t know if she made it up, or if there’s a whole ugly truth none of us have seen. All I know is I didn’t touch her. But Darren put that cross on my back and never let it go.”
Her hand twitches in mine, but I barrel forward, because if I stop, I’ll choke on it.
I tell her how a furious Darren and his friends attacked Jackson, thinking he was me. How Ilkay and I tried to intervene. It wasn’t pretty. We got slaughtered.
“Ohmigod, they banged you up …” she starts jittery, pressing her free hand on her chest. Mel’s right. This girl does tend to overthink things. I think it’s kinda adorable.
“We got wrecked. Until Jackson picked up a pole from nowhere and smacked one guy unconscious like some medieval avenger. He was bleeding from his ears. Looked real bad.”
“Holy shit,” she whispers, her eyes huge.
“No charges. But we got grounded for life.” And until recently, we didn’t even know how tangled everything was.
One of Darren’s friends was Graham. The other was Romeo. Talk about coincidences.
Aria goes still. She knows that tone now — the shift in me when things stop being funny.
“Darren … he got angry. His sister’s rejection. The alleged rape. His friend’s injuries. Years of pent-up anger. It broke something inside him.”

Aria’s eyebrows shoot up, and she stares at me, lips parted. She’s already guessing where this is going. I can feel her body tense beside mine.
“That night he made a phone call.” My voice breaks. The hate I feel for Darren is still smoldering inside. Long not extinguished.

“To whom?” she whispers.
I stare at the ceiling.
“To my grandfather.”
Silence stretches between us like a noose. Aria is not breathing. She sits frozen like an owl on a clod.
“He told Alexander that our mother was the one who helped Harry escape. Said Jackson was involved, too.” And none of us ever knew. If Darren didn’t fess up, we’d probably still be in the dark. We’d still not know how that fuse, causing a goddamn massacre, ever sparked.
“Wait — was that true?” She seems skeptical. Understandable. The whole story seems a little far-fetched. But it’s all true.
“The part about our mom helping? Yeah.”
Her hand comes up to cover her mouth. Slowly. “So Darren ratted out … what a bastard!”
“Our grandfather was obsessed with loyalty. With control. With obedience. And finding out that his own daughter-in-law undermined him … he lost it.”
I close my eyes. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else now.
“He captured Jackson … tried to get him to spill everything.” I don’t have to say more. She probably can imagine what happened. I feel her fingers in mine, trembling slightly.
“Was he really that bad?” she asks softly.
I don’t know how to describe Alexander. I never had to describe him to anyone.
“He was much worse … a monster.” I can’t think about him now. And I can’t talk about him. Those parts are buried too deep to discuss with her, here, tonight.
Maybe one day.
So I get back to my story.
“But Jackson never talked.”
“Enrique …” Now I’m getting to the hard part. I close my eyes and continue. I have to.
“Still … the next day Mom …” I feel her flinch. “She was … gone. Like she never existed.”
Silence again. Heavy. Suffocating. A tear slides down her cheek, and I watch it fall like it’s happening in slow motion.
“That morning, before the murder … I cracked.” I swallow down some puke. “Maybe everything just boiled over, or I felt sorry for my brother, or I felt helpless, or I got out of bed on the wrong foot. I don’t know why, but at that moment I needed to vent my frustration, and I wrongfully aimed it at my mother.”
“I was young, angry, tall, stupid, and pissed. I yelled at her … blamed her … told her that she was the worst mother ever … that I hated her … that I wished she was dead.” I will never forget the expression on her face … the painful hurt I saw in her eyes. “In my anger, I slammed my bedroom door in her face.”
“She knocked, but I would not open it for her. Then she said those 3 words and left.” I blink a few times, recalling the one little moment in my life that I regretted the most. The husky, tearful tone in her voice. That one memory I’ll never forget for as long as I live.
“Those were the last words she ever said to me.”
She grips my hand tighter.
“We didn’t know for years about the call. Her death haunted all of us. We blamed each other. We blamed ourselves.”
“But the thing is,” I whisper, “— even knowing it was Darren … I still feel like it was me.”
Her head turns sharply. “Still?”
“Yeah, if I hadn’t humiliated Lucinda, none of it would’ve happened. Darren wouldn’t have snapped. He wouldn’t have made that call.”
“He was sick … he would have snapped sooner or later.”
“I kicked the ashes,” I say quietly. “I lit it up. And our mom paid the price.”
She’s crying now, tears slipping silently down her cheeks. I want to kiss them away. I want to crawl inside her chest and hide. But instead, I just whisper, “I’ve never told anyone this before.”
She leans into me, sliding her arm around my waist. I tell her about us slipping out, not answering our mother’s calls, the spaghetti she never got to make. How I feel responsible, guilty. Because I suggested slipping out. I didn’t answer the calls. I wasn’t there to help her.
It comes out easier. As if the wall had shattered, and now the water flows unhindered through the cracks.
“I’m glad you told me,” she murmurs. “And you didn’t light the fuse, Enrique. He did. Your only mistake was being human.” I’ve never talked about that day … not even to my brothers … or the therapists.
“And maybe your actions actually saved your siblings,” she says.
I’d never thought of it that way. Leave it to her to drop wisdom between orgasms. I look down at her, and for a moment, I feel something heavy in my chest crack. Just a little.
Maybe it’s the start of healing. Or maybe it’s just love, trying to claw its way out.
Either way, I squeeze her hand and let her hold me. Because for the first time in years, I think I might actually deserve it.
“I’m honored you told me,” she says. “But I still don’t know what this has to do with us. And our feelings.”
Fair.
I explain that I can’t say the words … those three little one-syllable words. Maybe it’s a curse. Probably guilt. Allergies. That even thinking about it makes me want to throw up.
“So what if we say something else?” she offers, brain ticking.
“Huh?” I don’t understand.
“What do you think of if you think of me?”
“Peaches,” I answer quickly.
She grins. “Then we’ll say peaches.”
“Peaches?”
“Yes, peaches.” She sounds so cheerful all of a sudden. It fills the room. “So we say, I peach you.”
It’s ridiculous. It’s perfect.
“So,” she asks, watching me like a hawk, “do you peach me, Enrique Lucio Blackburn?” She asks wistfully, but I can hear the tension behind those words. This is make or break.
“Definitely.”
She kisses me. I kiss her back. My peaches swell.
“Say it properly.” It’s a loving order.
I get up, dramatic as hell. I am still an actor. “I peach you, Aria Thompson.”
She smirks. “Still not sure I believe you, Sport. Maybe you should show me.”
Oh, baby. I plan to. Every fucking day.