And shit, I hate earthquakes.
“Becks …” My voice trails off, and I’m not sure what to say because he’s right. There is most definitely something here between us. Something that I don’t want but can’t seem to stop thinking about. Maybe we should just hook up one more time, flush this need from my system once and for all.
I start to think it’s a brilliant idea. I’m already mentally undressing him when his name is called out over the hum of the market’s activity. “Becks?”
And I’m instantly bristling at the accented voice calling to him. He stares at me a moment longer, his tongue darting out to wet his bottom lip while his eyes dare me to question him. “One second,” he calls out to Ms. Exotic, holding a finger up to her before turning his attention back to me, challenge back in his gaze. It’s almost as if he’s taunting me, wanting me to ask him to stay, to explain who or what she is to him.
As desperately as I want to know, I settle for smiling subtly and shaking my head in response. When I shift my gaze, I meet Ms. Exotic’s eyes, and she smiles genuinely at me, making me hate her on the spot. Can’t she be some superficial catty bitch so that I have reason not to like her? And I hate that I hate her for it, but she has no clue who I am. Or how expertly Becks has handled my body.
And now holds my emotions.
Maybe it’s her presence that has me immediately wanting Becks all that much more. Makes me wish that easy smile he’s giving her was directed at me instead of the one that always seems to taunt me. The one that says you know you want this—want more of whatever this is—so why are you fighting it?
“Haddie?” His voice fortifies my obstinacy, but the gentle probing in it tugs on my resolve.
I glance over to Maddie for a split second before looking back to him. “Yeah?”
“You know I’m here if you need me, right?”
I roll my shoulders, not needing my scattered emotions to find a home here right now. I don’t need this man I have somehow let in to start offering me more than I can readily accept. Something beyond friendship.
“Thanks,” I say, hating that my voice sounds unconfident and needy. I try to find my dignity, try to find my trademark wit. “No strings, right?” My laugh sounds weak; my thoughts are inconsistent.
He steps in closer, reaching out to run a hand up and down my arm. I know the gesture is one of comfort, but my senses go haywire from his touch. “Run all you want, Haddie,” he murmurs, his deep cadence a strong sound against the white noise around us, “but you’re going to find yourself all tangled up in those dangling ends you refuse to tie to something. … Who’s going to rescue you then?”
His words scar my psyche, telling me truths I don’t want to know but already believe to be true. Want to be true. Because if I’m all tied up in my own web of protection, then when the inevitable happens, I can’t hurt anyone else.
“I don’t need to be rescued, Becks.”
He steps back and shakes his head, sorrow in his eyes as he searches mine, trying to see past the impenetrable guard I’ve put in place. “That’s where you’re wrong, City. Everyone deserves to be rescued at some point.”
He holds my gaze for a moment longer before nodding his head at me, ruffling Maddie’s hair, making her giggle, and walking away. I watch his strong shoulders and broad back until the crowd around us swallows him up. I don’t let myself wonder if she kisses his cheek when he reaches her, if he laces his fingers with hers, or if she puts her arm around him.
I don’t.
Because he’s a forever.
And I can only focus on todays.
Chapter 11
Exhausted, I top off my glass of wine, walk out into the backyard, and sit down on the chaise longue. I sink into the warm summer air, face up to the fading sun, and close my eyes. Then I let the emotions that have been warring inside me during the past week wash over me. I keep my eyes closed but lift my wine to my lips and drink the tart liquid as the tears well behind my lids.
I think of my sweet Maddie girl and how she cried and clung onto my neck earlier when I dropped her off at home. I think of the what-ifs and never-gonna-bes for her, and I’m filled with such melancholy that it’s easier to just sit here in the warm summer night with the light dwindling and the sound of kids playing beyond the fence than to go inside and face the silence.
Because in the silence, doubts creep in, memories come, and need swelters.
So instead, I sit and enjoy the sounds of life around me beyond my fenced in backyard and think what a metaphorically sad description that is of me and my heart. The wine goes down too easy, and with the comfortable warmth sliding over my skin, I slowly drift off, succumbing to the grueling aspects of my week.
I jolt awake when my wineglass is taken from my hand. I’m immediately startled, but when I snap my groggy eyes open, Dante is sitting on the side of my chair and has placed my empty glass on the table beside me. His gray eyes hold mine, and he appears both concerned and amused at my midevening nap in the backyard.
“Hey,” he says softly, his hand moving to the side of my face. My body freezes at the graze of his callused fingertips against the line of my jaw, but my heart races. I tell myself that my pulse is pounding because of being startled awake, but the simmer in my lower belly puts my cards on the table.
I rub my lips together, stalling for time to figure out what I’m thinking, what to say, but just end up staring at Dante, trying to get a read on the look in his eyes. “Hey, you okay?” I finally manage to ask.
I watch the muscle in his jaw tic and feel the tensing of his fingers, and then just as soon as I see something flicker in his eyes, it’s gone. “Yeah, I’m just not used to seeing you so sad.” He angles his head to the side for a moment. “You’re not my firecracker that I’m used to.”
I take in his hair curling over the collar of his T-shirt, and the goatee on his handsome face. When he rubs his thumb absently over my bottom lip, I sit up immediately, despite his hand still resting on the crook of my neck. The air between us shifts suddenly, and I need to put this back into comfortable territory for me.
“I watched Lex die. That kind of changes you, you know?” And I know he knows, know that he held his grandfather’s hand as he passed on from cancer too, but that was over fifteen years ago. My sister’s death feels like it happened yesterday.
He nods his head in understanding as his free hand moves from the cushion to the bare skin of my thigh, his eyes never leaving mine. Warning bells go off in my head, but I can’t figure out what is louder: the alarm or the desire. I work to swallow as his thumb rubs concentric circles up my inner thigh to the hem of my shorts.
“What are you doing, Dante?” My voice is barely audible, my warning lost in the exhale of breath that comes with it. I know I told him no sex, to not even go there … but at the same time, I’m so needy right now, so desperate to forget again.
The problem is, this time it’s not Lex I’m trying to forget.
It’s Becks.
And the flickering thoughts of forevers and tomorrows that I most definitely don’t want. Will not allow myself to have.
“You know Lexi wouldn’t want you to stop living. She’d hate that you have.” He begins to lean in, and I feel my eyes narrowing and my breath hitching as he gets closer.
“Dante …”
I know I should stop him, know I should push him away, but the minute his lips touch mine and his taste hits my tongue, I feel alive again. And I push all of the objections from my head—the ones that scream a warning about the devastation I know he can have on my heart once he gets ahold of it—and let myself fall under his spell. I want to lose myself, and the headiness I feel from his touch, his body, and his dominance doesn’t allow me to think.