Slow Burn

  We sit there a while longer before gathering our stuff. We walk toward the parking lot and decide to stroll through the farmers’ market on the way to the car. Of course, Maddie’s eyes stop on every booth, and we pause numerous times to ooh and ahh at the random items on display.

  We are busy discussing why she doesn’t need the huge bag of kettle corn she’s eyeing since she still has smudges of chocolate ice cream on her face from her snack moments before when I freeze at the sound of the slow, familiar cadence behind me. I know it can’t possibly be him, but it’s not like I can resist looking because before my brain even tells my mind to stay focused forward, I’m already turning my head.

  At the same moment that my eyes lock on the owner of the voice, his eyes find mine. And all of my resolve, every damn bogus, bullshit lie I’ve told myself about not wanting more with Beckett comes tumbling down around me when our eyes meet.

  I feel that instantaneous spark—that firing of desire in my core—when a slow, lopsided smirk spreads on his lips. My vanity has me immediately cringing at my cutoff denim shorts and oversized shirt hanging off of my shoulder. My hair piled high on top of my head in a messily fashionable ponytail compensates for my complete lack of makeup.

  Or so I tell myself.

  We hold each other’s gaze for a moment, while we both try to figure out what the other’s eyes are saying. And then my chance to infer any meaning there is knocked clear to the wayside when I notice an arm looped through Becks’s. I follow the arm up to take in the woman at his side. She says something to him, and he looks at me a moment longer before turning to see what she’s pointing to.

  I can’t tear my eyes away from them. I don’t want to acknowledge the pang of jealousy that starts gnawing through me at the sight of him with another woman. And not just any woman, but a woman who’s the complete opposite of me. Dark and exotic compared to my blond hair and dime-a-dozen cow brown eyes.

  Maddie tugs on my hand and breaks my trance. And as I’m pulled back to the here and now, as I blindly buy the popcorn for her because my mind is so rattled by seeing Becks with someone else, I find myself dismayed by the fact that for the first time ever, I feel completely insecure.

  What the hell is he doing to me?

  I silently chastise myself, tell myself to pull on my big-girl thong and own it like a stripper does her pole, but I think I’m a little stunned at the realization that my ever-confident self has pulled a disappearing act. And even now I’m at a loss because I suddenly notice that the guy who handed me the kettle corn is staring at me like I’ve lost it until I realize I’ve paid and am blocking the next customer in line.

  Fuck.

  I let Maddie lead as she pulls my hand while I attempt to come to grips with this foreign feeling of inadequacy inside me. I laugh. Mad thinks I’m laughing at her excitement over the popcorn, but in all honesty, I’m dumbfounded that of all men to make me feel this way, it’s Becks.

  Wanting more of him is most definitely a possibility … but it’s the what comes after that’s not in the cards for me.

  And while I sit at a picnic table shoveling popcorn in my mouth without thinking, it hits me. This is how he must have felt when he called the house and Dante answered his phone. No wonder he was a prick to me.

  But Dante is no one, and she … she obviously is someone to him.

  It’s not like I care or anything.

  Before I can finish lying to myself, I look up from the bag of popcorn, and he’s right in front of me. Or rather his abdomen is, and that in itself causes my breath to hitch as I recall the feel of my fingers over the defined muscles beneath his T-shirt. I have to angle my head up to meet his shadowed eyes under the brim of his baseball cap.

  “Dante.”

  The name falls out before I can even process my thoughts properly and get a handle on what I’m about to say. And of course I really mean that I understand why Becks was angry at me—I want to explain Dante’s presence properly—but my brain is scrambled with whatever jacked-up hold he seems to have on my coherency.

  Becks’s brow furrows immediately in response, and before he can voice the question I can see on his tongue, Maddie makes her presence known.

  “What do you call a bad popcorn joke?” her high-pitched voice asks to my right.

  His eyes narrow at me momentarily before darting over to Maddie. To the little girl I should be answering, but my eyes are fixated on Becks’s face and the range of expressions that are playing over his features: confusion, interest, amusement. His smile spreads wide and genuine on his face as he steps toward her and lowers himself onto his haunches so that he’s about eye level.

  “Hm,” he says, and then purses his lips in thought. “I think I have an answer but I’m not supposed to talk to strangers … so I’m sorry but you’re a stranger.” He just keeps his eyes focused on her as she erupts into a fit of deep giggles from her belly.

  She angles her head and rolls her eyes at him, the laughter still bubbling up as she forgets all about the popcorn and falls under Becks’s charm. “I’m Maddie,” she says.

  “Ah … you wouldn’t be half of that fabulous duo Haddie Maddie would you?” he asks, and my heart immediately swells, watching him engage with her—and at the knowledge that he remembers who she is from overhearing my past conversations with Rylee, knows how much she means to me. And then of course, I don’t want my heart to swell because how can it swell if I don’t like him in that way? Maddie’s giggle pulls me from my overanalysis, which seems to be the norm as of late around him.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Oh, well, in that case, I do know you,” he says, holding his hand out to her. “I’m Becks. Your aunt Haddie’s friend.”

  Friend. Hm. I mull the word over in my mind, wanting to like the sound of it but at the same time wanting to reject it immediately. Lover of hot monkey sex with strings tying me to the headboard sounds so much better.

  Maddie’s voice pulls me back again as she shakes his hand. “So, what’s the answer?”

  “What do you call a bad popcorn joke?” Becks repeats as he stands up and grabs a handful of popcorn from our bag on the table in front of him. “I’d call it corny.” He chuckles as Maddie’s jaw falls open momentarily in shock that he guessed the answer correctly. Then she grins ear to ear.

  Question answered, Becks turns his body toward mine, and I find myself standing without thinking, like he has some kind of magnetic pull on me I can’t resist. He angles his head to the side and just stares at me for a moment. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I say, my body thrumming instantly from his attention. Nipples tight, pulse racing, body flushed.

  “Dante?” he asks, and I immediately cringe that he remembered my greeting to him. “Am I missing something here?”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Yeah. I just wanted to explain who answered your phone the other day. Dante is—”

  “Not my business.” His matter-of-fact tone stops me momentarily, but I want him to know the truth.

  “He’s someone from my past. He needed a place to stay,” I tell him, but he just quirks his eyebrows at me. I glance over to see Maddie watching our exchange with amused curiosity, popcorn in hand for the show.

  “You can say ex, Had. No strings, remember?”

  I swear to God if I never hear that term again, I’ll be a happy woman. He taunts me with it every chance he gets, a verbal assault on my conscience. A way to let me know that … what? If I wanted strings, then maybe he might too? I mean that’s just not plausible.

  “Becks, it’s important for you to know that I didn’t hop from being with you to being with someone else. Nothing is going on between Dante and me.”

  “Just like nothing is going on between you and me, right?” he asks, suggestion in his tone and the question hanging in the sexually charged air between us. I avert my eyes as I sigh, my gaze dragging down his T-shirt and board shorts to flip-flops as I try to find my footing in this world, which is continually tilting beneath me.

 
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.

  Make me numb, Dante.

  Right now, I just want to be taken. Transported away from my thoughts and my questions and my insecurities. And I try to lose myself in the physicality of it all to convince myself that I want this—to be pushed to the brink so hard and fast so that I can for
get everything I don’t want and remind myself that this is enough for me. Will be enough for me. That this is the way I choose to live my life.

  Sex with someone who wants nothing more. Someone who will be out of my life just as quickly as he came into it.

  That’s safe. That’s what I can accept.

  “No, no, no!” I stop Dante by pressing my hands against his very firm and tempting chest, forcing him back so that his lips tear from mine. I can’t do it. Can’t lose myself in Dante when Becks is the one I really want.

  Dante stares at me, jaw clenched in frustration, eyes telling me he wants me. “Yes, you do,” he murmurs. “I can help you forget, Haddie. Make you feel alive.”

  My body and heart have two different mind-sets, but I keep him at arm’s length as I try to calm myself down. He angles his head, his eyes holding mine until they glance down to where his fingers begin to untie the laced ribbon crisscrossing the cleavage portion of my shirt.

  … but you’re going to find yourself all tangled up in those dangling ends you refuse to tie …

  Becks’s words hit my ears again. Pull me back from the brink of making a huge mistake. Make me think of him when all I was trying to do was use Dante to forget about him.

  “No!” I tell him with more determination.

  Dante leans forward against my palms, his fingers untying one more lace. “C’mon, babe, you want me as much as I want you.”

  I keep my hands up in defense as my heart and head win over the control of my body. I give one final shove against him and turn so that my legs fall over the opposite side of the lounger from where he is sitting, his hands still on my body. I shrug out of his touch and shove myself up out of the chair and start walking toward the house.

  “Such a fucking tease.”