Every Little Thing

  Her tone unsettled him. He wanted her to forget everything but what it felt like to be together.

  Shucking his trousers down to his hips, Vaughn held her gaze. He held her gaze as he pulled her panties to her knees.

  This was them.

  This is us.

  He didn’t want her to try to escape from that.

  With nothing between them now he pushed inside.

  The velvet heat of her tight grip on his dick made his eyes roll toward the back of his head. He’d forgotten how fucking amazing she felt. “Bailey,” he grunted, thrusting deeper. “God, princess, what you do . . . Fuck!” He grabbed her thigh, pulling it higher, tighter against his hip so he could slide in deeper.

  In answer she wrapped her legs around his waist and he let go to brace his hands by her head.

  Her fingers dug into his ass. “Vaughn,” she breathed. “More.”

  He looked down at her lust-flushed face and felt his lower abdomen tighten with deep pleasure. Wanting her to come before he did, he grew rigid with control, willing his dire need down.

  Holding tight to the reins of his willpower he slowed, no longer fucking her, but making love to her. That tickle of pleasure that crawled up from every corner of his body became like a voracious, mind-shattering desperation, a desperation that he wanted to stop but also wanted to go on forever.

  Bailey’s eyes flared, so bright, so gold, and her hips jerked. “Vaughn!” She undulated into each deep glide of his dick, chasing her orgasm.

  “Take it, princess, take everything.”

  At the first tug of her inner muscles on his dick, Vaughn cried out in gratification. Each hard ripple jerked him toward orgasm.

  A blaze of sensation, of heat, shot through him like a gunshot. He jerked against her as his release roared through him, the blood rushing his ears so hard her gasps of pleasure were muffled.

  As he became fluid, relaxed, the aftermath of hot bliss still hummed in his groin. Vaughn strained to keep himself from collapsing over Bailey.

  She stared up at him.

  And reality slowly began to pierce his sexual haze.

  Vaughn couldn’t read Bailey’s expression.

  Usually he knew exactly what was on her mind. Usually it blazed out of those gorgeous eyes of hers.

  Fuck.

  Sex. They should not have had sex. Not then. He had not meant to do that. Not like that, so hurried, no finesse. He’d fucked her like an overexcited schoolboy, not even getting fully undressed.

  Irritated with himself, he flopped down beside her and listened as they both tried to catch their breaths. He turned his head to crack a joke about it, to ease the sudden tension between them, but Bailey was already on the move.

  Bailey

  Oh, my God.

  I’d done it again.

  I couldn’t believe I’d done it again.

  Fear, anger, pain lanced across my chest, making it hard to breathe, and I knew I had to get out of there as quickly as possible.

  Not looking at Vaughn, I pulled up my panties, ignored the throbbing between my legs, and hopped off the bed. I quickly pushed down my skirt and hurried over to where my shirt lay.

  “What are you doing?” Vaughn asked, concern in his words.

  I ignored the concern. “Getting out of here so I can self-flagellate in private for letting you do this to me again.”

  He sighed and I heard him get out of bed, but I refused to look at him. Looking at him only got me into trouble. My hands trembled as I grabbed up my bra and shrugged on my shirt. Behind me I heard rustling then the sound of his zipper going up. Then suddenly I felt the heat of his presence right next to me, felt the overwhelming focus of his eyes on my downturned face.

  Gently, Vaughn swatted my hands away from my shirt and started to button it for me. My hands fell uselessly to my sides, limp with surprise. “I didn’t bring you up here to do that. That . . . My dick apparently can’t control itself around you.”

  I glowered up at him and the asshole had the audacity to grin at me.

  “Nice,” I snapped.

  “But it wasn’t my dick that led you up here.” Finished buttoning me up, he took my face in his hands and looked at me with such tenderness I felt the war start up again within me. “Bailey.” A look of vulnerability crossed his face; his breathing seemed shallow. “Bailey . . . I’m in love with you.”

  I froze.

  Had I just heard correctly?

  “I’m in love with you.”

  My breath got locked inside of my throat and I struggled to draw in air as I tried to process this revelation.

  “I’ve been in love with you for a long time. I’ve fought it. I’ve hidden it. I’ve tried to cast them aside. But since our night together I haven’t been able to hold my feelings down. And I don’t want to anymore. I’m sorry for saying I didn’t want you when I always have. I need you to know I’m done with that bullshit. I want to be with you. I want to see where this could go.”

  The silence fell thick and fast between us as he stared into my eyes with sincerity and tenderness in his expression.

  It would have been so easy to let this moment with this beautiful man override every moment that had come before it.

  But I couldn’t let it.

  I couldn’t trust it.

  I couldn’t trust him.

  Instead I was suddenly overwhelmed with fear and anger. I took his hands from my face and pushed him gently away.

  “No.”

  The word seemed to wind him. “No?”

  Tears burned my eyes as I backed away from the pain in his. “No. No! You can’t do this to me!”

  “Right now you’re scared, I get that . . .” He tried to reach for me. “But that’s because you care about me, too.”

  I dodged his touch. “I do. I absolutely do. But I don’t trust you, Vaughn.”

  His jaw slackened as though I’d physically gutted him. “You don’t trust me?”

  “No, I don’t.” I shoved my feet into my shoes, glaring at him, and I gathered every memory of his ill treatment of me, his confused, hurtful behavior to me like armor against him. “You tell me you love me, but only a week ago you told me you didn’t want anything to happen between us. Everyone knows you’re a womanizer! So no, I don’t trust you because the truth is I don’t think you can trust yourself . . . You don’t know what you want.”

  Anger tightened his expression. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m feeling. I fucking know what I want. Do you know how hard this was for me? If you walk out on me that’s all about you, not me. I’m not the one running scared now, princess.”

  “I have every right to run scared. You were a confirmed bachelor until two seconds ago! You’re lost, Vaughn, completely lost! And I don’t need another guy like you in my life.”

  I thought of the man, the boy really, who was just like Vaughn. I thought of how easily I’d bought his lies, his apparent sincerity, and I knew I couldn’t trust myself with someone like him again.

  Vaughn needed to know that this moment wasn’t part of the dance we’d been performing around each other for months. This was the end of the dance.

  I stared at him, and suddenly I saw the boy from my past, smiling at me in that boyish way of his that had captured my young heart. “One summer a long time ago, I met a boy.” The words spilled out of my lips before I could stop them. Vaughn seemed to draw closer to hear me, but I was barely cognizant of his movements. I was thrown back into the past.

  “Do you love me, Hartwell?”

  I laughed. “I told you yesterday that I do. Do you need to hear it every day?”

  He stared sadly at me. “Yes. Because up until now no one has ever said it to me before.”

  Tenderness rushed over me. I clasped his face in my hands and whispered, “I love you. I love you so much. And I’ll tell you every da
y from now on. I promise.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Someone just like you,” I whispered to Vaughn. The hurt was an old hurt, a wound that had healed over time, but I still remembered what it had felt like to be so blindsided by someone I’d loved. “He was handsome and charming and rich, and he told me that he wanted me. I thought it was real and I fell in love with him.”

  “What do you mean you’re leaving?” I stared up at him, the flicker of agony beginning to tighten in my chest.

  His expression was embarrassed, annoyed. “This was always just a summer thing.”

  “Not to me! You . . . you told me you loved me.”

  “I thought . . .” He shook his head, exasperated. “I was confused. Caught up in it. But it was a mistake. We were a mistake.”

  That agony was no longer a flicker but a burning, breath-stealing pain. “You’re lying. Why are you saying these things?” I’d brushed impatiently at my tears, desperate to have him hold me and laugh and tell me he was joking.

  But he didn’t laugh. He looked away, seeming anxious to get away from me. “We’re not from the same world, Hartwell. Surely you see that. I’m going back to New York and you don’t fit into my world there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “For God’s sake, you’re a townie,” he snapped. “My family would never approve of you.”

  Rage mingled with my heartbreak as I tried to make sense of the boy who’d spent all summer saying he loved me with this . . . this pompous, arrogant asshole breaking me into pieces. “The same family who has never told you they love you?”

  He had the audacity to wince. “We’re . . . we’re just too young to fall in love. You’re too young.” He tried to reach for me but I stumbled back.

  Sighing, he dropped his hand and walked away.

  Just . . . walked away.

  Like it was that easy.

  I blinked out of the memory, of the one that came after, the one where I sobbed in my dad’s arms until tears of helplessness burned in his own.

  No.

  I would never be that foolish again.

  I pinned Vaughn with my determined gaze. “He said he was confused, that our relationship was a mistake, that I didn’t fit into his world. In other words I wasn’t good enough. Sound familiar?”

  Vaughn blanched, as he clearly remembered the words he’d said to me after our first night together. “Bailey, when I said that before . . . I just said it because I knew it would keep you at a distance. I lied. I could give a shit that you’re not some elite New York princess. In fact the reason I love you is because you’re not like all those other women.”

  “Really?” I was unconvinced. “Then why? Why did you need to keep your distance? Why were you adamant about not being in a relationship with me? And why aren’t you now?”

  “Because I love you!” he yelled, frustration darkening his eyes.

  “You’ve loved me for a long time; you just said it. So you loved me then, but you didn’t want me then.” I wanted answers. I wanted an explanation for his behavior, an explanation that would make sense of everything. “Why now? Why not then?”

  When he had no reply for me, bitterness filled me. He loved me, but I wasn’t worthy of an explanation.

  I was still just like everyone else to him.

  “I’m not that asshole,” he said. “Whoever that guy was who hurt you. But this will be an adjustment for me. I’m not going to lie about that. However, I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and I will sacrifice all the bullshit I thought was important to me, like being a law unto myself, if it means I get to lie next to you every night.”

  His words tried to worm their way inside me.

  I cared about this man, I was more attracted to him than I’d ever been to anyone, and I wanted to believe his beautiful words. But all they were, were beautiful words.

  They weren’t an explanation for why he’d made this so damn hard for us.

  He was hiding something.

  And that scared the crap out of me.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Vaughn stared at me in anguish, and I saw the war going on behind his eyes.

  And then I saw the moment he decided not to trust me.

  A flatness entered his expression and just like that, he closed up on me.

  No.

  No way could I risk myself on him.

  If I fell in love with Vaughn Tremaine, he’d break me in half.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks as I felt renewed disappointment. “You keep hurting me.”

  He had the decency to look guilty. “I don’t mean to.”

  “Then stop,” I pleaded. “Just stop. I need you . . . I need you to stay away from me.”

  Vaughn flinched but after a moment of contemplation he nodded. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”

  If that were true, he’d tell me why up until now he’d pushed me away. “Just words, Vaughn. Those are just words.”

  I turned away, needing to be out of his presence as quickly as possible. I could smell him on my skin, I could still feel him inside of me, and I was desperate to climb into my shower and sob this moment out of me.

  As I stepped out into the hallway, about to close the door behind me, Vaughn called, “Wait!”

  “Vaughn—”

  “No, wait.” He hurried toward me, cutting off my protestations. “There’s something you need to know. It’s about Vanessa.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bailey

  The lesson that I’d hoped to learn from my relationship with Tom, that thing I’d been trying to tell myself since that first night with Vaughn, had penetrated. Finally.

  I believed I deserved to have the kind of passion that I’d found with Vaughn. But I believed I deserved to find it with a man who would trust me enough to let down his guard with me; to really let me get to know the real him.

  One summer when I was nineteen years old I’d fallen in love with the wrong boy and he’d shattered me. However, he’d taught me a lesson I’d never forgotten: to trust actions over words. I’d gotten over that boy, but I’d never gotten over the lesson.

  “I’m sorry.” I sniffled and then blew my nose in one of the tissues Jessica had given me.

  After leaving Vaughn I’d hurried home in tears. But to get to my car I had to pass Antonio’s and Iris was out cleaning the windows. She’d tried to get me to talk to her, but I ran away like the melodramatic teenager I’d currently reverted to. Concerned, Iris had called Dahlia, who’d then called me. I told her not to come over.

  She’d given me that.

  For a while.

  Dahlia, Jess, and Emery appeared early that evening with tissues, cake, and wine. My sister was nowhere in sight.

  We’d had privacy for me to blubber about what had happened with Vaughn. Again.

  Emery’s brows were drawn together in consternation. “So . . . he told you he loved you but you’re not willing to give him a chance?”

  “Exactly.”

  “There has to be more to it than that,” Dahlia mused.

  “Of course there is,” I huffed. “But let’s not forget this is a man who has been hostile to me for years, had sex with me, said it was a mistake and we didn’t ‘fit,’ and then veered between hostile and jealous for weeks—oh, after disappearing entirely—and then manhandled me into a room, jumped me, screwed me, proclaimed he loved me, but refused to tell me why the change of heart.”

  “I would say telling you he loved you was a step in the right direction though,” Jessica said.

  “Only marginally,” I argued. “He won’t tell me why he’s been acting the way he has, or why it was so hard for him to admit he wanted a relationship with me. I mean, he’s acting like loving me is some goddamn big sacrifice—actually used that word—but he won’t even tell me why! How the
hell am I supposed to have a relationship with someone who won’t talk to me?”

  “Bailey, this is you,” Dahlia said. “You stick in there, you fight for the people you care about, you wear them down until you’re their confidante. Why is Vaughn different? Why are you so scared to fight for him? Because we all know you’d wear him down eventually. The man looks at you like you’re his last supper.”

  I stared from one friend to the next, reading the confusion, concern, and curiosity in their eyes. No one but my father and Ivy knew about the boy who broke my heart, not until I’d mentioned it to Vaughn. I’d held the memory close, hating how vulnerable it made me feel, made me seem. But I could never make them understand my fears without sharing that piece of my past.

  “The summer I was nineteen this college guy whose family had spent the summer in Hartwell for years started to notice me. I was hanging out on the beach with Ivy, Iris’s daughter, she was home from UCLA for the summer. And this guy was there with a friend who’d come down from Manhattan. Ivy liked the friend and I liked him. He said it was his last summer in Hartwell because his family was selling their summer home there, so he’d decided to stick around for a while since it would be the last time.

  “He was different from the boys I grew up with. Different from the boys I crushed on, like Cooper and Jack.” I smiled at Jess, having already confessed to her about my schoolgirl crush on her fiancé. “He was handsome but in this perfect Ralph Lauren catalogue kind of way. And he was funny and charming, and he loved to spoil me. He didn’t take life too seriously, and I needed that then. I wanted to be with him and to do that I agreed to keep our relationship a secret. He told me his parents wouldn’t like it if he spent too much time with one girl because they were afraid a girl would distract him from college.

  “He was the first boy I slept with. We spent nights lying under the stars talking about everything. It wasn’t some shallow summer romance,” I tried to explain. “Not to me. He told me about the pressure he felt from his parents, how they never told him that they loved him and only gave praise when he measured up to their expectations. He was lonely. And scared. And I wanted to be the one person in his life that loved him no matter what. So I told him that and he told me that he loved me, too. And the sex was great. It was passionate. It was everything I thought love was supposed to be.”