“Perfect,” he murmured, taking my earlobe between his lips and sucking, his tongue stroking.
I was grateful my hands were braced on the table because my knees buckled.
His hands fell to my waist and unfastened my shorts. In two seconds, his fingers slid into me. “Goddamn. So wet.” His words were hoarse, bringing me to the brink.
I pressed my bottom against his hard, denim-swathed length in combination of mute plea and invitation—I wanted him inside me. Just like this, right now.
He pushed my shorts and underwear lower bit by bit, squeezing and worshipping the flesh I’d never celebrated as I did in that moment. “So fucking beautiful. I want to take my time loving you, but—”
My shorts fell to my ankles, panties trailing after, tickling my calves.
“Jesus, Pearl.”
I almost cheered when I heard his zipper lower, felt his skin against my hip.
And then, “Shit—I have to get—”
“I renewed my prescription,” I said. “You can—you don’t have to—” Gah. Why was it so awkward to just say, “I’m on birth control! Carry on!”
But I’d forgotten—this was Boyce. He didn’t need a roadmap.
He raised me to my toes, pressed my elbows to the table with one arm angled across my chest to keep me just above the flat surface, and guided himself into me. His growl of satisfaction, the way he held me and filled me and the fact that he was leaning me over a kitchen table all joined forces to pitch me over the edge. I was convulsing around him by the second thrust.
“That’s my girl,” he rasped, following me.
After that moment, we were like a couple of unsupervised sixteen-year-olds who had just discovered sex. We rushed through dates to give ourselves more time at his place after. No surface was off-limits, no position too contorted to try, even if we ended up laughing like idiots and abandoned two or three attempts as failed experiments, happily finishing in more familiar positions.
Last night, we hadn’t actually made it into the trailer first. We pulled onto the gravel driveway and were kissing before our seat belts were off.
Boyce’s eyes burned when I slid onto the center console and then backward into the back seat. He crawled over after me and with some maneuvering we ended with me astride his lap, my flouncy skirt barely covering my thighs, shirt unbuttoned, front-closure bra open, his hands beneath the skirt, opening his fly and guiding my hips, his mouth alternately kissing and sucking until I came so hard my toes numbed.
As he caught his breath, head resting back against the seat top, he chuckled. “What in the world made you do that? And for the record that is not a complaint.”
I cuddled against his chest. “I’ve never done it in a car before,” I admitted.
He tipped my face up, caressing my cheek. “Well, sweetheart, you just earned the award for best backseat fuck I’ve ever had.” He kissed me. “I can’t clearly remember having done it before, in fact.”
“Good,” I said, my tone prim, as if I’d harrumphed the word.
He laughed and I scowled.
“Let’s go inside and I’ll make up for being a tactless jackass. I’m making you dessert tonight.” He fastened my bra, buttoned my shirt, mostly, and stuffed my underwear into his front pocket. “I bought ice cream. And chocolate syrup. And whipped cream. And cherries. Wait till you see what I got planned for those cherries.”
I blinked, my brain filling in the blanks.
He grinned, fingers stroking up and down my thighs on either side of his. “Um-hmm—that’s right. When I said I’m making you dessert? I meant I’m making you into dessert. And I’m going to enjoy devouring every fucking delicious bit of you.”
I got home late and studied into the wee hours of the night, not caring one whit that I was missing sleep for every extra minute I spent with him. Retraining myself to concentrate in class was difficult but doable. Wiping the smile off my face when I thought about him was impossible. In days, I would be moving away for nine months. I had time enough then to learn to endure long weeks without him.
• • • • • • • • • •
Thursday afternoon the doorbell rang. I was expecting a box of textbooks I’d ordered for fall, and our mail carrier always came in the afternoon, so I didn’t check before opening the door—an action I instantly regretted.
“Mitchell? What are you doing here?”
“I texted you and you didn’t answer. I called you and didn’t get your voice mail. Which means you blocked me. You blocked me.”
I’d seen Mitchell angry, but there was more to this than anger. His eyes were bloodshot, and bulging like overinflated balloons. He filled the doorway, hands braced on the frame.
Mitchell was usually put-together—laundry-pressed shirts, hair styled. But his blue button-down had a visible stain on the pocket and was beyond rumpled—so creased it looked as if he’d slept in it. His hair was lank, hanging over his forehead.
He should have been immersed in medical school coursework and studying and team-building—not driving fifteen hours, one way, to confront an ex-girlfriend who’d broken up with him seven months ago. There was no reason—no reason—for him to be here. A spear of dread cut through me, and despite the heat, I battled the urge to wrap my arms around my chest. I tried not to cower visibly.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.” I swallowed and took a deep breath, striving for calm. “I asked you not to contact me again. If you’d complied with that request, you wouldn’t have known you were blocked.”
“What if I needed you? What if I had an emergency and I needed you?”
I shook my head. “You don’t need me,” I said, attempting to soothe his agitation. “You have your family. You have friends—”
“I don’t have anything thanks to you.”
“What—what does that even mean? We broke up. I said I wished you well and I meant that, but I don’t owe you my time, I don’t owe you my emotional support, and I don’t owe you any further explanations.” Annoyance doused my desire to pacify his baseless fury. “It’s over. Please leave.”
I moved to shut the door and he blocked it with a shoulder and shoved it open. It bounced into the wall from the impact, and I flinched and stepped back. Tux shot up the staircase behind me and I found myself wishing he knew how to dial 911. No one else was home.
I backed across the foyer, judging my options. I had three. My first instinct was to try to get around him, make it out the wide-open front door and scream for neighbors instead of retreating deeper into the house, but I’d have to practically go through him. He wasn’t big, but he was a man. Nope.
I could run through the kitchen and mudroom and into the garage, but I’d have to hit the button to raise the garage door. Mitchell was a runner. If he was right behind me—and he would be—he could easily reverse the door and I’d be trapped.
Option three: get to the keypad in the kitchen and press the panic button, which would call the security company.
Without another thought, I took off for the kitchen. I swatted a barstool over and heard him trip over it, cursing, as I jammed the panic button. He caught up and grabbed at my arm when the phone rang seconds later—probably the security company calling to ask the nature of the emergency or the code in case someone had pushed the button accidentally.
I only managed to knock the handset off its base before Mitchell threw both arms around me, imprisoning my arms at my sides. The phone skittered across the counter, still ringing. If no one answered, they were supposed to send the sheriff, the volunteer fire department, and probably an ambulance. I stomped Mitchell’s instep, and he grunted and loosened his grip enough for me to elbow him in the gut. I lunged out of his grasp, turning to run for the front door.
That was when we heard the rack of a shotgun and Mama’s voice at the door to the mudroom. “Get back, pendejo.” She leveled the barrel directly at his chest.
I reversed course and ran to stand behind her. Mitchell glared, hands half-mast, but didn’t move.
r />
I was eight or nine when Mama bought the Remington 870. We were making dinner one night when we heard a knock at the front door. She looked out the window, didn’t recognize the guy selling candy door-to-door, and called, “No thank you.” Furious that she wouldn’t open the door, he banged his fist against it for five minutes, shouting racial slurs. We’d both started at the slightest noise for weeks after, and I’d taken to sleeping in her bed, too scared to be in my room alone.
So she did something she’d sworn to never do—she bought a gun and we both took lessons. It hadn’t been used for anything but target practice since.
“Get out of my house,” Mama said, nothing in her voice negating her willingness to unload a round of buckshot in his direction.
Mitchell’s face held a tempest, barely contained. He backed out of the kitchen, but he sneered his last words as though my mother wasn’t shepherding him out the door with the barrel of a shotgun aimed at his chest. “I thought you gave up Vanderbilt and threw me away because you wanted to do marine biology. Not because you wanted to fuck that trailer trash.”
A siren sounded in the distance as he bolted out the door. We heard his car squealing out of the cul-de-sac as Mama locked the front door and I ran to the window. He was gone. It’s a good thing I wasn’t holding that shotgun, I thought. I’d have shot him.
chapter
Twenty-eight
Boyce
When I collected overdue weed payments for Rick Thompson in high school, I got downright gifted at judging who was going to be a problem and who would cave after one look at my size or Maxfield’s merciless expression. When Pearl’s ex showed up at the garage, I didn’t waste time deliberating over likely whys and wherefores. Mitchell Upstone was going to be a problem. That was plain.
Sam and I were in the middle of her first supervised solo engine replacement—something she’d been looking forward to all summer. I prayed to God she didn’t set off on a rant at the sudden change in plans.
“Samantha, there’s really nothing more for you to do today. Call your daddy and go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“What?” she said, her bristly blond head whipping up, a squall brewing in her gray eyes. She must’ve learned to read me in the past few weeks, though, because she tugged her phone from the pocket of her overalls and dialed, sneaking a surly glimpse at our unwelcome visitor.
When Sam’s dad pulled up, Upstone quit pretending to examine my tools and read my certificates and gave me his full attention. The look he gave me was cold-blooded—no expression to speak of. No scowl, no narrowing of his eyes. His eyes looked dead, matter-of-fact, and that was a cause for concern, because his true interest didn’t lie with me and we both knew it.
I waved a hand to Mr. Adams and Sam as they drove away. Wiping engine grease from my fingers, I got straight to the point, my tone all false calm. “We got business, motherfucker?”
He angled his head. “You remember who I am?”
“Yeah, I remember who you are. You’re Pearl’s ex. So I’m wondering what the fuck you’re doing here.” Here in our town and here at my place of business.
“I came to see Pearl, of course. I hadn’t realized until I got here that I’ve been an idiot, not realizing you and Pearl were fucking around all this time. I get it now. I get it, and I’m here to… encourage you to cease and desist.”
I’d advanced one step of the fifteen feet or so between us before he reached into the back of his waistband and whipped out a pistol he’d hidden under his slept-in shirt. He held it low, but it was aimed at my chest, and he’d removed the safety and cocked it without looking at it, which meant he knew what he was doing. Fuck.
“What’s the weapon for, Upstone?” My hands balled into fists at my sides.
He flinched at my use of his name. “It’s just here to inspire you to listen instead of react in what I imagine is your customary Neanderthal manner. I’d like us to have a chat about Pearl. What is and isn’t acceptable going forward.”
I hated her name in his mouth. “And you’ve run this by her?”
He chuckled, and I wanted to bash his face in. “She’s mulling it over at the moment.”
Everything stilled. “So you’ve seen her today.”
“Saw her today, saw her leaving here last night… After the two of you fucked each other for two hours in that shitty trailer you call home—I assume. Highly unlikely you were having a philosophical discussion.”
I calculated the last time I’d heard from her—a couple of hours ago when she was leaving class. She was due at work in three hours.
“Where is she now?”
His slow smile made the monster inside me bend the bars on the cage I’d put him in. “Oh, I imagine she’s still at home.”
“You need to understand something, Upstone. You hurt Pearl, I’ll kill you.”
He chuckled as if I was too simple to understand what was going down. “I love her. I wouldn’t hurt her. Oh—did she tell you otherwise?” He laughed again. “She likes to be the center of attention, that girl.”
Right.
A car drove by, and his stance faltered slightly. “Let’s go inside the trailer, Wynn. You can give me a tour of your extensive property.”
“Let’s not. Whatever we have to discuss, we can discuss here.” I’d never wanted to wipe a grin off anyone’s face so badly.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Inside, now, or I’ll have to revert to my secondary plan, and I’d really rather not do that. And in case you’re wondering? I’m an excellent shot.”
“Planning on shooting me, then?”
His jaw flexed. He was getting more riled with me by the second. “The firearm is just here to level the playing field between us—self-defense, you understand. That said, only a pussy-assed moron carries a gun he has no intention of firing to a conversation with a belligerent redneck.” He gestured toward the trailer with the barrel. “But let’s talk. Maybe we can reach an agreement that will work for all of us.”
That lying sack of shit didn’t intend to reach anything but my elimination, but there’d be no happily ever after with Pearl if he was wanted for murder. As batshit as he was, he knew that much. She was in danger of this sociopath’s delusions, and I was the only thing standing between the two of them.
I walked to the trailer and he followed a few feet behind. Even so, I could feel the barrel of that gun like it was jammed right into the middle of my back.
Pearl
Sheriff Walker wasn’t all that impressed with the fact that my ex had shown up and shouldered his way into the house, tried to keep me from calling 911, and had to be persuaded to leave at gunpoint. He was equally unimpressed that we hadn’t gotten a license plate number or the make and model of his car. Mama saw a blue sedan in the driveway when she pulled in, so I knew he wasn’t driving the white Corolla he’d had while we were undergrads.
Walker heaved an overworked, underpaid sigh. “Look. These sorta squabbles happen all the time with young folks—boys with too much testosterone and pretty girls who like to be the focus of a little drama—until it gets out of hand.”
I clenched my fists in my lap. “We broke up months ago, and I do not welcome drama.”
He raised his unkempt brows and quirked his mouth knowingly as if to say, Sure you don’t—and yet here we are.
“Idiota,” Mama mumbled, her posture mirroring mine.
My phone alert sounded—a text from Sam. I typed in my lock code three times before I got it right; my fingers felt like prosthetics.
Sam: Some weird guy showed up at Wynn’s and Boyce made me leave early. He called me Samantha and he never calls me that. They didn’t seem friendly and I didn’t recognize the guy. He looked like he needed a shower BAD. I couldn’t get a pic of him without being really obvious. I took this pic of his car and plates though.
My hands shook. “I have the car and plates. It’s from Tennessee—maybe a rental. He’s at my boyfriend’s business.”
Sheriff Walker rolled his eyes.
“All right then, lemme have it.” He scribbled down the information and called it in, and I texted my thanks to Sam and then texted Boyce: You okay?
Sam answered me: No problem.
Boyce didn’t.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Sheriff Walker shot out of the velvet-upholstered parlor chair, his phone still pressed to his ear, and Mama and I stood with him. “Call Bobby over at San Patricio—we may need backup. I’ll meet you at Wynn’s.” His mouth twisted in contrition, he turned back to us. “Well young lady, your ex is wanted in Nashville—assault and battery at the least, possibly attempted murder. He’s armed and dangerous. Sounds like you were lucky today.”
I didn’t believe in luck, but in that moment, I wished I did. Mama crossed herself—which I’d never seen her do outside of church—and sat back down.
“Excuse me, I need a drink of water,” I said. I walked to the kitchen, picked up my keys, passed through the mudroom and into the garage. The garage door was still up and the sheriff’s car was parked in the drive behind Mama’s car, not mine.
No one ran outside when I backed down the drive and turned onto the road. Sorry, Mama, I thought, switching the stereo off so I could consider my course of action. If anyone could talk Mitchell down, it was me. If I had to lie and say I would take him back or go with him, I would.
My phone rang— Mama. I turned the sound off, but it continued to light up impotently during the last mile. I parked on the street outside Boyce’s place, behind the blue sedan with Tennessee plates. The doors to the garage were up and a car, hood raised, sat in one of the bays. I took a deep breath and listened for any sounds coming from inside the trailer—shouting, shots.
Nothing.
I was halfway across the yard when the front door of the small wood-framed house next door flew open. “Don’t go in there, young lady!” the old lady called, huddled in her doorway. Mrs. Echols, Boyce’s crabby neighbor. “C’mere now!” She waved a thin arm commandingly.
I wavered and she renewed her appeal, her arm circling like a windmill on speed. Her next words froze me in place.