PLAY WITH FIRE

CHAPTER 32

TW: MENTION OF S/A

HOLDEN KINCAIDE

PRESENT TIME

Scarlett's presence stopped the nightmares. Her warm touch. Her lotus perfume. Her citrus shampoo and conditioner and the lingering scent of strawberries on her delicate sun kissed skin. Her soft lips and the slight rise and fall of her chest as she slept soundlessly, tangled with my limbs, in my bedsheets. 

Scarlett stopped the nightmares, replacing them with uninterrupted sleep. 

Even though I never dreamt, I didn't feel like I was missing out. I wasn't missing out on dreams containing Scarlett, because I had the real thing in my arms. Whatever dream Scarlett and Holden did, real Scarlett and Holden could do it. 

Maybe not everything. We couldn't step onto a magic carpet and have it fly us around the world, but I sure as hell would be questioning my sanity if they were the types of dreams I had. Fucking Disney Fairy tales. 

I've spent my whole life with this empty hole in my chest, a hole that no matter how hard I tried to fill it, never filled. I tried to fill it with previously unpursued hobbies, like guitar, or art, but they never did the job. Nothing did the job until her. 

I had felt that hole repair itself the first time she looked at me. Those gorgeous chocolate brown eyes that tore away at my internal walls with every glance. Those gorgeous pink lips that thinned ever so slightly when the largest smile blessed the face of the beholder, constructing a structure around the hole in my chest before it was rebuilt. 

Whilst I thought Scarlett had been the one to fill that hole, which she was, it wasn't over something she did, but rather the way she made me feel. The love I had for Scarlett Valentine made my chest and heart look so whole, and so full, you'd never question if there were a hole there to begin with. 

"What's going on in that big head of yours?" Scarlett's voice broke me out of said big head, a smile on her face as she rested her chin in her hand, her eye meeting mine across the long desk. I'd told Scarlett before we'd come back in to work that she'd have to stay seated on the other side of the desk, as far away from me as possible. 

She'd questioned me with a frown on her face, her creased eyebrows showing she'd taken what I'd said negatively and slightly to heart. 

'You'll distract me' I'd told her earlier, even from across the table she was distracting me. The way her bare shoulder and collarbones were exposed when she pushed her hair behind her ear and over her shoulders. The way her chest rose and fell with each breath. The way she made tiny, almost silent pants of annoyance that turned me the fuck on. 

Scarlett was a distraction. One I didn't want to indulge in. One I couldn't help but do exactly that. 

My greatest downfall, My last salvation. 

"Nothing" Everything. 

"Liar" Scarlett mumbled, eyeing me with suspicion, her eyes failing to hide her amusement. I cocked my head to the side, watching intensely as she consumed herself in work, or rather tried to. 

"What did you just call me?" I asked, Scarlett's bottom lip disappearing between her teeth as she looked up at me innocently. Scarlett's throat bobbing as she swallowed sent a shiver down my spine and I cursed myself as I felt myself begin to harden under her gaze. 

At work? Not the best time. 

"Do you need hearing aids to match those glasses, grandpa?" Scarlett questioned, nodding her head in my direction as she sat forward in her seat, a teasing smile adorning her beautiful face. "I called you a liar."