Salvation (Nashville Nights #2)

  SALVATION

  BY

  ROBIN COVINGTON

  Letting Go Never Felt So Good

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

  Copyright © 2015 by Robin Covington d/b/a Burning Up the Sheets, LLC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Burning Up the Sheets, LLC

  23139 Laurel Way

  Hollywood, MD 20636

  Visit my website at www.robincovingtonromance.com.

  Edited by Nicole Bailey at Proof Before You Publish, Inc.

  Cover design by Sweet & Spicy Designs.

  Formatting by Anessa Books

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-9905432-3-7

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9905432-5-1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition May 2015

  SALVATION (Nashville Nights, #2)

  Carlisle Queen & Mateo Butler

  Letting go never felt so good.

  Carlisle Queen is dying and no one knows it.

  Burying the pain of losing her friends and her professional swimming career in a terrorist attack, America’s former sweetheart dulls her pain with drugs, pills and parties. The bomb left her with more than nightmares; shrapnel is lodged in her back and inching closer to her spinal cord. When the doctors tell her paralysis is inevitable, she decides to take her own life rather than face a lifetime in a wheelchair.

  Mateo Butler isn’t anyone’s hero.

  Reeling from the death of his little sister and his own cowardice, he spends his nights partying and his days ignoring the medical school acceptance letters and his parents’ concerned phone calls. Just a couple of months from graduation, he’s facing a future filled with shame and regret. The last thing he needs is to meet the woman who compels him to be a better man.

  Can they save each other?

  When Carlisle and Mateo meet, the chemistry between them is combustible. They play, party and hide their true selves until one night turns their lust into something more… something real. As secrets are revealed and walls collapse, what they were and what they might become doesn’t matter as much as who they are together. When the choice comes down to life or death, can love be their salvation?

  Dedication

  For Nancy Weeks.

  Thank your for your help, your open heart, and your friendship.

  Chapter One

  Carlisle

  I taste blood.

  Smoke and acrid dust swirl around me and I cough and heave and struggle to orient myself. I reach out trying to find him, searching for Aaron. He was just here.

  The blood is warm on my tongue, on my chin and it dribbles out each time I try to scream. I reach out, desperate. The pain in my body like a thousand sharp knives piercing my skin, digging in deeper than I could have thought was possible. I push through it, dragging my body across the paved walkway a few inches until I find him. Aaron.

  I’d know him anywhere. My lover. My best friend. The strength of his body, the long lines of his swimmer’s frame. My fingers touch him, sliding off the wet and warm liquid on his skin. The smoke clears and I scream.

  I wrench up in bed, my throat raw from the screams I know I tried to make in my sleep. My body is covered in sweat, hurting from the pain of muscles tensed in terror and the very real pain I’ve endured for the past eighteen months.

  I would love for this to just be a nightmare. A figment of my overactive imagination, the product of eating too much spicy food or reading Stephen King novels before bed. Something I could change or explain away. That would be fucking sweet.

  I throw off the covers, a shiver jolting through my body when the air-conditioned air hits my damp skin. I know better than to linger in bed when this happens or to let this dream roll around in my head for too long. I make a tentative attempt to stand and the pain shooting through my back and down my right leg reminds me with teeth-gritting clarity that the bombing wasn’t a dream. I have the metallic shards embedded deep in my body to prove it—morbid souvenirs from a time that should have been the best day of my life.

  I lower myself back to the bed, maneuvering through the exercises I learned in physical therapy to combat the morning pain that often followed in the wake of my nightmares. My body would go into full clench in my sleep and I’d stay like that for hours, sometimes waking with a sore jaw from having ground my teeth together for so long.

  Two quick knocks on my door and my roommate sticks her head through the opening. Her long fall of jet-black hair is tied up in a loose ponytail and her porcelain skin makes Olivia Yee look like a Korean doll. She is tiny too, her barely five-feet frame looks Lilliputian when she stands next to my five-feet eight-inch length.

  “Was it a bad one?” Livvy asks in the voice that takes everyone by surprise when they first hear it.

  Truth be told, it was the voice that compelled me to interview her as a potential roommate in the first place. I didn’t need someone to help me pay the rent; my endorsement money and the insurance payout after the bombing in the athlete’s village guaranteed that I never had to work again but I didn’t want to roll around in this place and listen to myself think. Months spent in my private room in a rehab facility had provided enough “me time” to make me sick of the voices in my head.

  With her low, husky voice, I was expecting the real-time version of Jessica Rabbit to show up the day of the interview but I was in for a surprise when a woman strolled in dressed more like Amy on The Big Bang Theory. She informed me of five things within the first five minutes: 1) that she was a lesbian but I wasn’t her type as she “really wasn’t into gingers”; 2) she had a serious girlfriend who lived in New York City; 3) she didn’t really follow sports but the medals were awesome; 4) she was very sorry I had been blown up; and 5) that she was a phone sex operator to make money to pay for school.

  I immediately regretted that she wasn’t into gingers and the fact that I loved the peen because I fell in love with her on the spot.

  “I’m sorry. Did I disturb your time with Ron?” I ask about one of her regulars while slowly easing up into a sitting position. Livvy doesn’t offer to help me, she knows I’ll ask if I need it. I do take the bottle of water she hands to me as she sits down on the bed. “Was I loud?”

  “Nope. Ron finished early and I heard something when I walked by.”

  I glance at the clock. Ten forty-five at night. I’m not going back to sleep anytime soon. I’d been so exhausted earlier that I’d crashed shortly after wolfing down takeout Chinese in front of the TV but now I’m fully awake and will be for hours. Lucky for me, between the city of Nashville and living next to Nashville University, I can always find something to do.

  “You want to go out?” I scoot over to the side of the bed and quickly add when she opens her mouth to make up some reason why she can’t go out, “You have one more final in two days. Go out with me tonight.” I pout. “You’re leaving me soon to get regular booty in NYC. Go out with me now.”

  She shakes her head and raises her arms to the heavens as if asking for help. “Oh, the guilt trip is strong in this one!”

  I ease up onto my feet and test out the level of cooperation my legs will give me tonight.

  “What’s your number tonight?” Livvy asks, watching me closely from her perch on the bed. “You’ve had a pretty good week, yeah?”

  I nod and make my way around the end of my bed, pulling off my t-shirt and shorts as I go. Nudity
doesn’t bother either one of us. I’ve spent too much time in locker rooms with other swimmers to worry about somebody seeing what God gave me and Livvy doesn’t have a modest bone in her body.

  Truth be told, she’s actually the only person besides the various doctors and my mother who has seen me completely naked since the bombing. My lower back is a mess of keloids from the injury and the many surgeries and I don’t like people looking at them. It’s one of the reasons why I stick to fast-hookups with guys and no sleepovers, my body gives away too many secrets. Invites too many unwanted questions.

  “I’m at a six tonight.” Zero is pain-free and I don’t even remember what that feels like anymore. I walk into my bathroom and turn on the shower. “The episodes are increasing in frequency just like the doctor said they would.”

  The times when my mobility is limited is increasing, just as the doctors have all told me. I’ve seen them all, from every hospital in the U.S. and a few overseas and they all sing the final chorus in unison: the shrapnel will eventually cause paraplegia or kill me. They are all very sorry but there’s nothing they can do for me.

  There’s one guy, a Dr. Bertrand from a hospital back east, who might be able to conduct an operation that can remove all the shrapnel from my body. I’d still have increasing mobility issues but the Grim Reaper would have to take a rain check. But the great Dr. B has looked at my records and turned me down for the surgery.

  I step under the spray and Livvy comes in and sits down on the lid of the toilet to talk. We do this all the time and soon we won’t be able to and the melancholy rains over my body with the water.

  “I’m going to miss this when you move to NYC,” I say, loud enough for her to hear me over the spray. “But I know Sarah is excited to finally have you with her.”

  “Two years apart was longer than we thought,” she agrees, her tone chock full of the pain caused by living apart from your love. “I’m glad we made it. It was touch and go there for a while.”

  Sarah had moved to New York for her dream job in TV and Livvy still had two more years of school to finish and a scholarship she couldn’t abandon. It had been tough on them and they’d had one six-week break-up that had been hard to watch.

  “So, you didn’t answer me,” she changes the subject. “Are the episodes worse?”

  I pause, using the shield of the shower curtain to gather my thoughts. I know what she’s asking me and I don’t want to get into it tonight. It will kill my buzz before I even have one. I shut off the shower and pull back the fabric to grab a towel. I don’t look at her.

  “They are more frequent and it takes me longer to recover. The last one impacted my entire right leg and I couldn’t walk for about an hour.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yep,” I agree with her and move over to the mirror and wipe the condensation off with my towel. The face is still the same, the long hair a dark auburn because of the water weighing it down but I’m not the same. It’s the eyes, the eyes give me away every time.

  The medicine cabinet door squeaks a little when I swing it open to survey the contents inside. Deodorant, Neosporin, band aids, a tube of some eye cream I never use, sit alongside the double row of prescription pain killers, anti-inflammatories, and muscle relaxants. I use the toiletry items and shut the door, using the towel to get the excess water out of my hair.

  “So, where do you want to go tonight?” Livvy’s voice is behind me as I walk into my closet to find something to wear.

  It’s balls hot in Tennessee even when the sun goes down so I grab a white cotton sundress and pull it over my head. I wince a little bit at the pain that throbs in my right thigh because of the movement but I shake it off. My tits are small enough that I don’t need a bra and I gave up underwear, unless I’m wearing formalwear or jeans, three years ago. Grabbing a pair of cowboy boots, I head back to the bathroom and find her gone. I swipe on my eyeliner, mascara and lip gloss and it’s as good as it’s gonna get tonight.

  I head down the hall to Livvy’s room and find her pulling up a pair of cutoff jean shorts. She has a t-shirt on that I gave her for Christmas which reads “Screw your ‘lab safety’. I want superpowers”. She’d rather kiss a man than put on makeup, so it looks like we’re ready to go.

  “I don’t want to go to a club. Let’s hit a party,” I say as we both head into the living room of the apartment. We’re three blocks off campus and it’s the weekend between the two finals weeks. There’s no need to go into Nashville proper if we want to party and I know where I want to go. “Let’s go to Mateo and Zane’s house.”

  Livvy stops rummaging through her small bag and looks up at me, the delight and surprise on her face emphasizing her doll-like resemblance.

  “So, you’re finally going to go to one of their parties? They’ve only invited you every time this entire year.”

  “Mateo never invited me, it’s always Zane,” I answer, transferring ID, lip gloss, breath mints, condoms, cash, and keys to my small party purse. I find what I’m really looking for in the side pocket, tucked into a semi-hidden space. I pull out the small manila envelope and peel back the flap, peering inside at the dozen small capsules nestled inside. I shake one out on my palm and pop it in my mouth, using a bottle of water to wash it down.

  “What’d you take?” Livvy asks as she closes up her purse. She doesn’t judge and she never nags but she does insist on knowing what I put in my system since she’s my wingman. She also made me promise not to take anything stronger than smoking a joint without being with her. Since we’re always together, that’s not usually an issue.

  “Molly.” I don’t drink alcohol, a holdover from my competitive training days and it’s a bitch to have a hangover when I’m dealing with my other aches and pains. Harder drugs let me forget the pain for a while and I rarely have too much of an aftereffect.

  She nods, not judging me, and waits while I put the last of my items in my party bag. Livvy doesn’t always approve of how I live my life and she definitely isn’t on board with my future plans but she supports me and stands by to make sure I don’t go too far. I think it was all those years of pushing every limit life threw at me—body, mind, competitors—but I’m wired to take it to the edge every single time. If it scares Livvy, she deserves an Oscar because I’ve never even seen a flicker of alarm in her brown eyes.

  “So, any reason why you’re throwing the ‘boy wonders’ a bone now?”

  I don’t know why she’s playing coy. She knows why I’ve avoided going to Mateo Butler and Zane Wyatt’s house all year. Hell, I’ve known it since the first time Mateo walked into my freshman Spanish class and announced he was the TA. Normally a girl who goes for long, lanky blondes, his six-feet two-inch, two hundred-pound, dark-haired package of lickable man would have knocked me on my ass if I hadn’t already been sitting down. And then he locked his baby blues on mine and gave me his dimpled “I’m-going-to-fuck-you” smile and I knew I had to steer very clear of Mr. Butler.

  T-R-O-U-B-L-E

  From the jump, Mateo and I were the definition of chemistry. We’d circled each other for the entire year, through two semesters of Spanish and study groups. Because he intrigued me more than any other guy, I’d done my recon and watched him in class, around campus, and at the many clubs where Zane performed. At first glance, Mateo only took two things seriously: his beer, and his pussy.

  But I watched him pretty closely and when he thought he wasn’t on stage to perform for anybody, he was intense and pretty serious for a guy who didn’t give a shit. I knew a faker when I saw one, I looked at one in the mirror every day.

  I just shrug and answer, “Mateo Butler is nothing but trouble.”

  “Well, yeah, but that’s usually the first required item on your list to give a guy the time of day.”

  “Oh no,” I shake my head, slipping on my favorite pair of cowboys boots. Worn black leather with red flame accents on them, a gift from Aaron and the evidence of his love of my hair. “Mateo is the worst kind of trouble because under all t
hat partying and screwing around is the worst kind of deception.”

  “I’m dying to hear this,” Livvy says, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in her voice.

  “Underneath all of it…” I pause for emphasis and while I’m camping it up, I couldn’t be more serious, “…he’s really a nice guy.”

  “Mother fucker,” she says, her smile telling me that she gets me completely. “So, what are you going to do with this potential-boyfriend-material in manwhore’s clothing?”

  “I’m going to see if he’s up for a little fun. No strings.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  I grab my purse and pull it across my body as I head to the door. “He’s up for it.”

  Chapter Two

  Mateo

  “She’s here.”

  I look up from my place on the couch in my room where I’m drinking a beer and considering the idea of letting Amy Tyne unzip my pants and blow me like she’s been offering all night. I like Amy well enough and she gives great head even though she could watch the teeth more often, but I’m not into her tonight. We started out two years ago as casual fuck buddies at my fraternity house. If I wasn’t hooking up with someone else and she wasn’t with somebody, we’d meet up and exchange orgasms for an hour or three. She’d come and leave and not call. It was awesome.

  About six months ago we hooked up in an alley outside a downtown club and ever since then she’s been texting, calling, showing up at my house “just to hang out”. Tonight she invited me to a graduation brunch with her family and every single alarm I have went off in my head.

  “Who’s here?” I ask, pushing Amy off my lap and placing my empty beer bottle on my beat up coffee table. I stand, hoping he means who I think he means.

  “Ariel.” Zane waggles his eyebrows and uses the nickname we have for the woman who has been on my radar since she stepped into freshman Spanish. He’s the one who started calling her Ariel and I have to admit the stupid joke makes sense. She has red hair, emerald green eyes and was a world-class swimmer until a bunch of assholes with a bomb decided to blow the athlete’s village to kingdom come. “She’s here with her roommate.”