AN: This chapter has smut. Being forwarded is being forearmed. If you're going to bitch and moan don't bother. Not interested, don't care. You might as well hit back now and save your time typing out any kind of complaint, rant, flame, whatever because you'll be ignored, and even better, if you're anon, you'll be deleted. If you're too young to get it or too prudish not to get your panties in a twist over it, don't read it. Consider that my first and only statement on the issue. Capiche? On another note, if the story continues to get 300+ hits a chapter and one review from my husband I'mma stop posting it. I'm at work most of my life, if I want to tell my husband a story, I don't need to waste my time typing it up and posting it on the internet. Rather than saying nothing, say it sucked if you know why you think it did, say hello, say it's ok, say whatever, but indifference means no more wasting my time. That's the last time I'll say it and as melodramatic as it'll get because I'm serious this time. Ciao.

Lose The Road

By – TempestRaces

Chapter 16 – Here I go Again

"Still remember how you make me weak. How I fought to find the words to speak.

I just can't escape the memories. I tried but I just can't break free.

Thought I closed the door on what we had. But these feelings just keep coming back.

Didn't think that you could make me lose control like that."

When he woke up she was gone, but he wasn't surprised. When she depended on him for anything she got embarrassed about it, and uncomfortable. So because she'd chosen to share her breakdown with him, and then let him comfort her all night, she'd managed to sneak off before they might possibly have to talk about it in the cold light of sober day. Why she figured he'd want to talk about her feelings or his for that matter, he didn't know. Surely she should know better by now. Know he'd be just as willing to pretend it hadn't even happened as she was.

He did want to get up, move around, find something more productive to do than lying flat on his back, but his options were limited in that regard. He found himself hoping she came back, or at least Bryce took it in his head to visit again, anything to break the monotony. But he wouldn't ask either of them to, because that would be like admitting his weakness to them that he needed company in the first place. He sighed. The sooner this limbo was over the better. Being on the run or being in jail would surely be better than this solitary confinement.

When Tempest woke up she slipped out from under Vince's limp arm and quietly left the room, feeling like a thief in the night. She felt guilty for being willing to accept his company and comfort in the dark and then stealing off before he could wake up, and she might have to face some of the feelings she was warring with if he wanted to talk about how she could be so cold to him in one moment and be crawling into his bed the next. And she couldn't talk about it with him yet. Wasn't ready to talk about how much she hated herself for the very real desire to forget what he'd done, and how hurt he was, and just jump him in his hospital bed. How part of her hostility toward him was caused by the fact she had an almost overwhelming need to crush her lips to his every second of every minute she was looking at him. And the fact he didn't seem to feel the same. Didn't seem half so affected by her as she did by him.

She pushed into Jesse's room with a sigh. She felt like she lived in the hospital. All she did was migrate from one room to the other. Vince's because she didn't yet know how to breathe without him and Jesse's because he was still Vince and thus still drove her so angry she wanted to choke the life out of him every second time he opened his mouth and she had to escape before she killed him for the sin of breathing, or blinking, or letting his fingernails grow.

"Aren't those the clothes you had on yesterday?" Jesse asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, guess they are," she answered before sitting on the edge of his bed and helping herself to a piece of toast off his breakfast tray. "How do these people manage to fuck up toast?" She scowled. Hospital food was gross.

"You're in a perpetual bad mood lately. What's wrong now? And why are you still in yesterday's clothes?"

"I'm in a perpetual bad mood lately because you're hurt and I'm hung over."

"Bullshit. Don't bother telling me anything if you're going to tell me lies." Jesse could only blame how frustrating it was to be stuck in a bed that wasn't his with nothing to do and no one to talk to when she was wasn't with him for how he talked to her. But he couldn't take her coddling him, placating him, protecting him from the truth anymore.

"I'm in a perpetual bad mood because," she paused, blew some hair off her forehead while she gathered her thoughts. "Because I'm still in love with him, and I don't like being the stupid one so I'm perpetually angry with myself and it comes off like perpetually angry with the world. I'm still in yesterday's clothes because I got piss loaded out with Harry last night, couldn't drive home, and chose instead to have a drunken break down in front of Vince, and then spend the night in his hospital bed with him, before creeping out just now before he could wake up and want to talk about, well, anything. Because I can't face anything between us yet. So I ran. And here I am." She shrugged.

Jesse sighed forcefully. The fact she felt she had to face Vince at all was all his fault. He'd pushed her into seeing Vince again, and into feeling like she had no choice but spend the foreseeable future living with him too. "I know I made you feel like you didn't have a choice, but really, if you can't live with him again T, I'll understand if you back out of this. It's crazy, and if that's how you really feel about him, how you gonna live with him day in day out for years?"

Tempest sighed, before leaning in and kissing Jesse on the cheek to thank him for his understanding. "I need to have time to learn to like him again Jesse. I need to learn to breathe again, and if he goes to jail and I never see him again, I'm never going to learn to breathe again. If I didn't actually want to do it, I would have shot you down in the first place. Not let it go so far. Not let V get his hopes up. Not got Bryce involved. Harry had some good ideas for me." She shook her head, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling in a move Jesse recognized as one she did when she was fighting to keep her composure. "It was just that Harry helping me plan this thing made me realize that Harry was helping me plan to never see him again and it got to me. I really like Harry."

"Why do you really like Harry? I mean, I know he's your friend, but how'd you get to know him that well anyway?"

Tempest looked at Jesse and she didn't know what to say. She couldn't fill him in without telling him about Harry's offer. And he'd already proven once today he didn't want to be lied to or patronized. But it was going to be hard for him to swallow. "Hard truth?"

"Please."

"He offered me a really peachy job when I visited. When Vince happened. I was thinking about taking it. Trying to decide if I had the courage, had the balls to move to L.A. without an offer or request from him to come make a go of it. Just be around and normal and hang with you and just be there. I'd decided I did. I was going to do it. But before I could tell any of you, least of all you or V, he did what he did and then I just couldn't J. I never told you because you would have been crushed and pissed at me and Vince. At first I was still thinking about if I could do it, give up my life to come be here hoping on him and face the fact that he might never come around. But when he did what he did it was like he threw all my plans and dreams into the dirt and ground them into it with his heel while he laughed. I couldn't do it then, not even for you, so I never told you. But Harry's kept in touch, trying to talk me around. But I couldn't be in the same state as Vince without committing murder, never got over what he did enough, so he was still talking and I was still digging my heels in."

Jesse nodded like he understood. "I don't know what to say to you right now."

"How so?" A frown wrinkled her brow. How had she been unclear?

"I just feel like that means I wasn't worth enough to you for you to get over some two week relationship that never went anywhere."

"Jess, it wasn't like that!"

"I know, but it feels like it to me right now. Can you go away and leave me alone for a while? I need time to think on my own." Jesse watched as she got up and rushed the door, but not fast enough for him to miss the tear on her cheek. "T, come back I didn't mean it!" he called after her, but she still pushed the door open and ran through it, not letting on she'd heard him. "Fuck!" he roared.

He'd asked her to stop protecting him, treating him like a boy not a man, and then rather than act like a man, he'd acted like that spoiled child and driven her off. He knew that she didn't let people in often, but that she'd let Vince in and that his violation of that trust had crushed her. Crushed her ability to trust people, and then he'd tossed that in her face like it should have been nothing she just let go to give him what he wanted. He'd shown no regard for what she'd wanted back then. What she could have had. What they all could have had. She wasn't the villain, she'd done nothing wrong. She'd been a 19 year old kid ready to give up her family and friends over something she thought she had. She hadn't been the wrong one, Vince had, so where he got off blaming poor T he didn't know. But he cursed the fates for having him bed bound and unable to go plant the fist in Vince's face he should have put there two years ago. He picked up his phone and rang the number she'd given him for her while she wasn't, but she didn't answer.

Tempest stopped running a few paces down the hall and stood with her hands clenched into fists at her sides with tears streaming down her cheeks. She was crushed by Jesse banishing her from his room, not even trying to understand where she was coming from. She wanted to run to Vince, wanted him to want to comfort her because he was the one she'd picked to be strong for her when she couldn't be. But she hated herself for that feeling as well, because she wasn't sure she should stop hating him long enough for him to manage. Then she started thinking about how she was only in the position of admitting to Jesse she'd turned down a job in L.A. because Vince had ruined it all for her. And she was so angry at herself for still loving him and so angry at him that he didn't love her back, that she stormed into his room full of rage.

She pushed the door open violently and strode in.

"T, what's wrong?" he questioned, as agitated by her tears now as he was the night previous, but hoping for something so easily put aside as it was last evening. But her anger didn't jibe.

"You ruin everything!" she yelled in his face.

"Generally yeah, I'd have to give you that one. But since I been laid up in here for the last week or so, how'd I manage to ruin anything lately?"

"Because of you I couldn't come move here. And I just had to admit to Jesse that I had the chance and had to turn it down over you and now he's mad at me for picking being angry at you over him! And if you hadn't been such a fucking idiot who decided I wasn't woman enough to make up my own mind what I wanted in the first place I would have done it, taken Harry's job, and at least in this shit storm one thing that wouldn't be going wrong wouldn't be that Jesse is angry at me!" She got in his face with her rant, practically roaring in his face, hers screwed up in absolute rage.

"I told you I shoulda called. Why are you still so fucking angry at me?" Vince roared back. What more did she want?

"Because what kind of admission is 'I shoulda called' after what you did? And because of this!" She roared back, still right up in his face, before taking hold of his hair with two fists and crushing her mouth to his.

He couldn't think fast enough to kiss her back, the shock of what she'd done rendering him frozen in time. He'd figured she didn't want anything to do with him along those lines anymore.

"Because I still want that as much as I ever did, despite everything, and clearly you don't!"

Before she could move away, or even think about what came next, he tangled his one good hand into the hair on the back of her head and pulled her back down the few inches needed to allow him to crush their lips back together. He noted that she had the same moment of brain freeze he had, where she just let him, staring him in the eyes with shocked surprise, but he didn't let her move away and a second later he was glad he hadn't when she finally gave in and kissed him back, her eyes sliding closed as her fists again tightened in his hair. How could she think he didn't still want her with something that burned every second of every day? After the way he'd kissed her that first night? After he'd admitted he'd been in love with her.

He tugged on her scalp with his fist in her hair, never letting her move away from him, but encouraging her to straddle his hips down low enough that she would be sat where he wanted her and low enough she wouldn't be on top of his wound. She climbed up, eyes closed, hands in his hair and once she was settled, he used the grip in her hair to tip her head to the side and bit her on the neck hard enough he was sure it was going to mark her skin. She only whimpered breathlessly and he licked back up her neck to her earlobe which he nibbled on before sucking it into his mouth, feeling himself growing hard where he was pressed between her spread thighs. A fact she clearly hadn't missed as she sat down harder, gyrating her hips gently and allowing him to drag her mouth back to his with a throaty moan.

Her hands left the hold in his hair, moving down to unsnap the snaps holding his gown up on the shoulders, pushing it down around his waist without ever opening her eyes, her hands tripping over his chest, reacquainting themselves with his skin. He cursed his lack of a second hand, the other one still swathed in gauze bandages and loaded with IV lines. He wanted one to hold her down tighter against his hips and one to slide up her shirt. He decided compromise was in order and left her to make up her own mind how hard she wanted to grind on him while he slid his good hand up her shirt and pulled her bra cup down enough to cup her breast with his palm.

She released his mouth and arched her back into his touch, her head thrown back with a moan. He grabbed the hem of her tank, starting to pull it up her torso, glad when she pulled it off when he'd pulled it as close to off of her as he could with one arm. He splayed his palm on her back between her shoulder blades, pulled her chest toward his mouth, wrapped his tongue around her nipple and sucked hard. She whimpered again, the circular motion of her hips grinding on him increased in tempo. He tangled his hand in her hair again, bringing her mouth back to his so he could hungrily mesh is tongue with hers.

He wanted her out of her jeans. He wanted to be inside her. Now. Before there were stains on his hospital gown he didn't want to be explaining to nurse Martha. He was contemplating if he could get the button at the waist of her jeans undone one handed when a throat was cleared at the door.

"Guess this is a bad time?" Bryce asked on a chuckle. About time they stopped dancing around what was obvious.

"You think?" Vince growled back.

"Well, yeah, but I don't know what you thought you were gonna do in a hospital room with no lock on the door in the middle of the morning anyway."

"I don't either," Vince answered, obviously still irate. His inability to finish what he'd helped to start went far beyond that, but that didn't bare thinking about. "But whatever it was, it didn't involve you watching to get your jollies." Vince knew this was an argument he was going to be having with his brother on his own, because Tempest had already buried her no doubt bright red face into the crook of his neck where it was also pointed away from Bryce in her embarrassment.

"I just go here. And besides that, what if I'd been that cop that's hanging around? I thought the only one who was supposed to know all about you two was the nurse who figured it out on her own?"

Vince sighed. Bryce was right. Didn't mean he had to like it. Didn't Bryce know how long it'd been since he'd been with any woman? Let alone the right one. "Yeah, but couldn't you have just backed out and let us have another 10 minutes?"

"You're optimistic today. You think you could have used a whole further 10 minutes?"

"Very funny. You want to give poor T a few minutes of privacy to get over the weirdness of you seeing her with no shirt on here?"

"I suppose. I'll be in the hall. Find a way to send the all clear when you've sorted yourselves out and I don't have to be further traumatized by either of you without your clothes on." Bryce backed out and let the door shut behind him.

"I guess this is going to be another one of those moments you find it too awkward to deal with, huh?" Vince asked with a chuckle.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tempest asked snottily, choosing to ignore his correctness, proven by the fact she'd yet to unbury her face from his neck.

"When recalling one of the best afternoons I ever spent in my car, an afternoon with some parallels to this morning actually, one of the things I clearly remember is how long it took me to convince you to get over being embarrassed enough to put your clothes back on."

"Yeah, well, at least you finished what you started back then."

"Baby, give me a few weeks to be out of this bed and not flat on my back and I'll have no problem finishing what I just started with you. Over and over again."

"Yeah well after everything, this was a moment of insanity on my part so don't count on it."

"We'll see."