“You’re kidding, right?” Sadie saw Ford trying to fit this in with other puzzle pieces and having trouble.
“Nope, that’s the for-real deal,” Willy said. “Paper with a solemn oath on it. I got it somewhere. Never know what might be valuable one day.”
“Why would James do that?” Ford asked.
“There are rumors that you’re very well, you know”—Willy paused—“endowed. Maybe he was jealous.”
Kansas came over and wrapped her arms around Willy’s neck as he said that. She planted an enormous lipstick mark on his cheek, gave them both a mischievous look, and said, “I knew you two were talking dirty.”
Sadie felt a sharp prickle of impatience course through Ford at the interruption. “Jealousy wasn’t really James’s style,” he said.
“Could be he still felt guilty about that day on the ice,” Willy offered. “Trying to protect you.”
Sadie’s ears perked up.
“The day with the beer can?” Kansas asked, smiling. To Ford she said, “Willy told me all about it.”
Sadie’s breath caught in her throat, and she thought about the shack on the lake, the pile of beer cans. The voice telling James to stay away. Normally that would have triggered a river of images in Ford’s mind, but now there was nothing.
Willy nodded. “I still tear up laughing when I think about the hand with the glove coming out of the ice—”
“And Linc screaming like a little girl,” Kansas said. “That’s the part I can’t believe.”
Sadie thought, Not nothing. Whiteness again. Still, placid. Boundless. Endless.
Inescapable. Sadie felt Ford’s heart rate tick up. His breathing grew shallow, panicked, and his thoughts got choppy, There’s no way out, I’m trapped, hel—
A bright strobe flashed in his mind, and the memory vanished.
Ford said, “What did he have to feel guilty about? I was the one who messed up.”
Willy gave him a perplexed look. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Ask him why not, Sadie urged. Ask him to tell you what he remembers. Better yet, you tell the story. Everyone tell it. With lots of details. She felt like she had the first day of Syncopy, when she’d been desperate for them to say Ford’s name.
As if the bright light were an eraser, Ford’s mind bounced back to the moment just before Willy mentioned the cabin. He said, “There aren’t really rumors about me being well endowed.”
Also like that first day, Sadie wanted to strangle someone.
Fingernails teased the back of Ford’s neck, giving Sadie goose bumps, and a familiar voice at his ear said warmly, “I’m afraid there are.”
Ford turned and looked at Cali. Sadie was hit with a wave of desire, followed almost immediately by anger, settling into a wary mix of the two. “Hey,” he said.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Cali told him, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
That tipped the scale slightly toward anger. “That’s me. Predictable,” he said sarcastically. “Stuck in the past. Not moving forward.”
“Maybe,” Cali said, her hand coming to rest on his chest. “Maybe that makes you reliable.”
Sadie couldn’t tell if it was Cali’s words or his reactions that were confusing him, but his mind felt like it was being sloshed around.
Cali was wearing a new perfume, which he registered negatively as cheap daisies, but she was also wearing a skimpy bikini top, which he registered positively as small.
“You look good,” he said, wondering when Willy and Kansas had disappeared.
About a minute ago, Sadie told him. Between “hey” and when you got lost looking at her boobs.
“You too,” Cali said. She touched a finger to the stubble on his cheek. “I leave you for a few days and you grow a beard?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to shave? Intriguing,” she said.
Sadie heard Ford think She’s jealous and felt his moderate surge of pleasure. Of which, since she was supposed to be objective, she could neither approve nor think was immature. “How’s it going?” Ford asked Cali.
She let her finger rest in the indentation at the base of his neck. “It’s only been a week since we’ve talked.”
Given the way Ford’s pulse picked up and his body tightened, Sadie thought there should be rules about how close people could stand a week after a breakup. Finger-on-the-collarbone seemed a bit too close. “Feels longer,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Her gaze moved from her finger, up over his chin to his lips, and then met his eyes.
Sadie heard a clarinet give an experimental blast. Ford’s eyes held hard to Cali’s. “What’s going on here?” he asked, taking the words right out of Sadie’s mouth.
Cali exhaled deeply, and Sadie saw her chest rise and fall in Ford’s peripheral vision. “We’ve spent every Fourth of July together since we were sixteen,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right to stop now.” She took a step forward so her thigh was between his. “Does it?”
Ford’s body thrummed like a taut vessel, sending reverberations through Sadie. “When you say ‘spend Fourth of July together,’ you mean—”
“I want you.” Cali pressed her cleavage against his chest. “No strings.”
Ford’s mind was spinning and his throat felt tight. “No strings,” he repeated hoarsely.
I know the no-strings thing sounds good, Sadie told him, but statistically it’s very hard to put into practice. People who get back together with their exes in less than a year generally find themselves in the same—
“None.” Cali ran her fingers down his arms, setting off a jingle of bells. “Just two people looking for…” Her voice trailed off.
Trouble, Sadie finished for her. Heartache. Arguing.
Ford still hadn’t touched her, hadn’t grabbed her, pulled her in to him, the way Sadie knew his mind was begging him to. The restraint seemed to be twisting the sinews tighter, eking out a slightly higher note from the saxophone, a more discordant shimmer from the drums.
His mouth came within a hairbreadth of hers, but still he didn’t touch her. “Looking for what?”
Sadie felt the heat of Cali’s body, the warmth of her breath on his cheek. “Kiss me,” Cali begged. “Please.”
I know that seems tempting, Sadie acknowledged objectively, but the best thing for you to do right now would be to just turn and walk—
He bent and brushed his lips gently against her, and a steaming wave of passion tore through Sadie, knocking her backward.
CHAPTER 23
Where should we go?” Ford breathed. His voice was raspy, the tension in his muscles heightening every sensation, like notes played on a tightly strung guitar. “I’m sure there are rooms—”
“Let’s get away from here.” Cali’s eyes were wild, daring. Sadie wondered what it would be like to let someone see you that way and not care, not worry about getting it wrong. To feel—so much. So free. “What about that special place you were going to take me?”
“Really?” Ford asked, and his happiness at the prospect made Sadie ache for him. He was so hungry for validation, for someone to pay attention.
She felt a sharp pinch of envy. Cali doesn’t deserve to go there. Not her, not the first time. Take me. I love the tree house. I love—
“I—it would be great to take you there,” Ford said, gazing at Cali with heat and longing.
Sadie wished she could look away.
Ford drove Cali’s car the half mile to the tree house. Tension sizzled between them as they left the bustle of the blocks around the baths and turned onto the quiet street. He made her wait while he went ahead to open the place up and get it ready. Working quickly he lit three tall tapers inside, and five hanging lanterns he’d arranged in the branches of the tree.