He’s a white boy in a polo shirt. ’Sup is he’s a poser.
I don’t respond.
“Is Sarah upstairs?” He scratches his neck.
“She’s busy.” Apparently, I just spew shit sometimes.
“With what?”
Not with me, that’s for sure. Though I could certainly keep her busy and—god damn, Pixie in her towel!
I sigh. “What do you want, Ackwood?”
He narrows his eyes. “Are you two… like… together?”
And now my head is swimming with all the possibilities of “together,” and most of them—hell, all of them—involve no clothes and tangled body parts.
“Why?”
He shrugs, all confident and douchey. “You seem pretty possessive of her; that’s all.”
“Whatever, man,” I say and move past him.
Pixie’s not mine. I don’t care.
I’m not sure where Daren goes after that because I force myself not to turn around. But damn if I don’t want to track him down and put a leash on him.
“Morning.” Ellen smiles at me from behind the front desk.
Haley’s nowhere to be found, so I assume she’s late.
“Morning. I called the alarm company this morning. Here’s the estimate,” I say, handing her a price sheet. “They can come out as early as next week to do the install. You just need to call them back to set up a time.”
“Perfect.” She smiles. “Your To Do list is on my desk. You’re awesome, Levi.”
I purse my lips and nod before heading to her office. I’m not awesome. I’m a loser who calls Pixie names.
But for some reason, Ellen doesn’t hate me.
When my parents split, I didn’t take their separation well. I knew they blamed me for Charity’s death. Hell, I blamed me. But after they left town, things just went even more downhill.
I no longer cared about my grades or school in general. Football wasn’t a problem for me because I got to step onto the field and do my job—and do it well—and step off the field without incident. It was the only thing I didn’t hate about my existence.
But at one of our last games of the season this past winter, I absently looked up in the stands for Pixie and Charity, temporarily forgetting how drastically different my life had become. I searched the stands for my personal cheerleading section, and when reality hit and I realized that I would never see Charity—or Pixie—cheering me on ever again, I just choked.
I couldn’t play. I didn’t want to play.
Not then. Not ever.
I was failing my classes. I was failing as quarterback. I was spiraling down a winding staircase of guilt and grief. And then I got the academic probation notice from Dean Maxwell.
Needless to say, I had no desire to try at anything in life, let alone my studies, so I lost my football scholarship and, therefore, lost my room in the dorms. The day I packed up my things and drove away from ASU in my truck, I was a homeless college dropout without a job or a future.
I was halfway to Copper Springs when I realized I didn’t have a home to go back to. Why I didn’t call one of my buddies to see if I could crash at his place, I’m not sure. Shame maybe? I probably didn’t want to explain how my parents bailed on me because, you know, I killed my sister.
When the Willow Inn showed up on the side of the road, I impulsively decided to stay there for the night and formulate a plan for my future in the morning.
Ellen was at the front desk when I walked inside. I forgot that Pixie’s aunt owned the inn. She knew who I was and she knew I’d almost killed her niece, so she was surely going to kick me out.
“Hey, Levi,” she said pleasantly as she looked at my duffle bag. “Need a room?”
I stared at her warily and nodded.
She smiled and started typing stuff into the computer before grabbing a key.
“How many nights?” She made it sound like I was just an average guest, but I knew twenty-year-old unemployed football players weren’t her typical guests.
“Uh, just one,” I said.
She glanced up, looked at my bag again, and said, “We’re having a two-for-one special right now. Buy one night, get the second free. Want to stay two nights?”
“Uh, sure.” I shifted uncomfortably.
“Follow me.” She led me up to a room, left me in peace, and I dropped on the comfy bed, trying to figure out what the hell my next step was going to be.
The next afternoon, Ellen knocked on my door. “You used to work in construction, right?”
“Yeah.” It had been one of the many summer jobs I’d taken to save up for my truck.
She sighed dramatically. “You don’t by any chance think you could help me fix the downstairs banister, do you?”
I paused, because I didn’t know shit about fixing banisters.
“I’ll give you another night for free for your trouble?” she offered.
“Uh… I don’t really know much about stair rails—”
“Oh, you can do it.” She waved a hand. “You’re smart and strong. I have total confidence in you.”
“I guess I could try—”
“Perfect.”
And that was the beginning.
Ellen kept finding things for me to fix around the inn and kept offering me another free night’s stay for my work. Three weeks went by before I realized I’d been roped into a job that came with room and board.
I tried to bail, but the woman was convincing and, by that point, I was actually starting to like fixing things around the old place. It made me feel… well… not useless.
So we made it official, and I moved into the old wing of the inn, where I had several bedrooms and a single bathroom all to myself.
Until Pixie.
Everything was fine until Pixie.
27
Pixie
I smell Levi before I see him, and this is why I have no business sharing a bathroom with the guy. If just the smell of him can drive me crazy, I certainly should not be anywhere near him when there’s hot water and soap involved.
“The sink’s broken?” he says.
I keep my back to him as I stir potato soup on the stove and point to the sink.
Things between us have been civil lately. Fake as hell, but civil. We haven’t argued in several days, but we’re not getting along either.
I’m not really over the erotic calf caressing Levi gave me last week, or the fact that it hurts him to be around me, but you know what? Screw him.
He’s not the only person who lost Charity. I lost her too, and then some.
I lost the only real family I’d ever known and the house I considered my safe haven. I lost my childhood friend and the keeper of the “best” part of our “best friends” heart-shaped necklace. The only thing I had left after the wreckage cleared was Levi.
And then I lost him too.
He promptly headed back to his life at college and left me behind in a town where nothing held any more significance for me and no one understood my pain.
Levi left me, and he didn’t look back.
Sharp bitterness heats low in my stomach as I think back to the many days and nights after the accident where I was too hollow to cry, and the only thing that kept me from tearing my hair out was the hope that Levi would come back home so I wouldn’t feel so lost, so alone anymore.
But he didn’t.
And then, when I was healthy enough to be discharged from the hospital so I could start my first semester at ASU two weeks late, I thought for sure Levi would hunt me down and at least say hello. Maybe give me one of his awkward boy hugs and just let me be silent against his chest for a moment. Like maybe if we embraced and pressed our broken hearts together, for a moment—just a moment—things might somehow be better.
But he didn’t.
The one and only time I ever saw him on campus was from across the library. I was seated in the back behind four textbooks when I saw him walk in through the squeaky double doors. He didn’t see me as he headed for the r
eference section, but just the sight of him, the visual confirmation that he was alive and breathing and twenty yards away from me, made my broken heart leap.
I immediately stood from my table with every intention of following after him and… and… and what, exactly? What was I going to say to Levi, who so clearly had nothing to say to me?
Where have you been?
Why did you leave me?
I’m sorry?
Why did you leave me?
Please forgive me?
WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?
I had nothing to say to him then, and I have nothing to say to him now, which doesn’t seem to bother him one bit.
So yeah. Screw him.
My heart dips. I look at the soup.
Levi works for a few minutes, and the only sounds in the kitchen are the bubbling soup and the occasional clang-clang of his tools.
I shuffle about, finding mindless tasks to fill my hands. I’m stacking rolls and rearranging napkins and scrubbing the counter. Mindless.
I hear him growl in frustration and look over at his body, laid out on the kitchen floor, his head and shoulders tucked under the sink as he twists and turns things with his hands.
He’s got one leg stretched out along the tile and the other bent at the knee, and the blue T-shirt he has on has ridden up his stomach a little, so there’s this bronze patch of tight skin showing just above the waistline of his jeans.
I need a break.
Twitching my lips, I gingerly step over his lean, frustrating body with one quiet Converse sneaker and head to the dining room.
“Hey, Sarah.”
Oh God. Daren.
He stops unloading a crate of club soda behind the bar and leans over the counter on his elbows. “Have you decided to go yet?”
“Go where?” I watch Angelo move Daren off the bar, then wipe the whole counter down with a white bar towel.
“To the Fourth of July Bash,” Daren says.
“Oh yeah. That,” I say, as Mable comes in and sets a lavender-and-sunflower centerpiece on each table. It shouldn’t work, lavender and sunflowers together, but somehow it does. “Uh, no.”
He wrinkles his forehead. “No you haven’t decided yet, or no you’re not going?”
“I’m not going.”
“What? Come on,” he says. “Bring a friend. It’ll be fun. You’ll feel normal.”
The idea of “normal” does something to me, and I hesitate, buying time as I watch Mable straighten a fork on table six before going to the kitchen.
“Please?” Daren implores me with those puppy eyes of his again.
God, he’s such a whiny baby.
I sigh. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Awesome.” He smiles.
“But not with you.”
His smiles drops. “Less awesome.”
I shrug. “I’ll bring a friend, and maybe we’ll see you there. Maybe.”
He smiles again. “I’ll take it.” He tilts his head. “So does this mean I’m forgiven?”
I lift my brows. “For kissing me without permission?”
“WHAT?” Angelo stops wiping down the bar and snaps murderous eyes to Daren. “You kissed Sarah without asking?”
Oh crap.
Daren looks like he might wet himself. “Uh, yeah. But I, uh, didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine, Angelo.” I give him a small smile. “It wasn’t a big deal. It was just a misunderstanding. We’re cool. I’m cool.” Angelo doesn’t look like he believes me. “Really,” I add. “I’m fine. I promise. And Daren already apologized, so see? Everything’s fine.”
Daren shrinks back as Angelo leans in to him and says, “I better not hear about you kissing any more ladies without permission. Ever. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“ ’Cause if I do, make no mistake. I will twist your head off, slowly, and shove it so far up your ass it comes out your throat; you hear me?”
Daren swallows. “Loud and clear.”
“Good.” Then Angelo goes back to wiping down the bar like he didn’t just threaten Daren’s life.
Biting back a smile, I turn and head for the kitchen.
I love this place.
28
Levi
I’m staring at the piping above me, almost finished with the sink, when I hear Ellen enter the kitchen.
“There you are,” she says to my legs. “The install guys just left, so it looks like our new fire alarms are up and running. But I’m going to schedule a drill tomorrow, just to make sure everything works properly. I’ll let the rest of the staff know, but I’ll need you to monitor the control box. Got it?”
“Fire drill. Got it.”
“Thanks, Levi.”
I hear her leave. As I finish tightening the last bolt, something thwacks my leg. Looking out from under the sink, I see Mable standing above me with a less-than-happy expression.
I sit up. “Did you just smack me with a spatula?”
“Yes. And I will do it again if I have to.” She’s dead serious.
I furrow my brow. “Is this about the whore thing? I know I was mean—”
She smacks me again.
“Jesus, Mable!”
“That boy was in the dining room talking to Pixie again,” she says.
I blink. “Who, Daren?” It’s all I can do not to say “douche bag.”
“Yes, Daren. And I don’t like him.” She puts a hand on her hip.
I exhale. “Get in line.”
She stares down at me expectantly.
I stare up at her, dumbfounded.
“Well?” she says. “Are you going to go get Pixie or what?”
“Why?” I stand up, immediately on alert with all these visions of Daren hurting Pixie and how I’m going to kill him when I find him. “Is Pixie in trouble?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what the—ow! Mable, quit hitting me.”
She points the spatula at me. “You are that girl’s whole life, Levi.” Her soft wrinkles bore into me. “Don’t you dare let her get distracted by some guy who doesn’t know how to love her.”
And whoa.
When did we start talking about love?
I narrow my eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She tosses the spatula into the sink I just fixed and makes her way to the exit. “You know exactly what it means.”
29
Pixie
I woke up this morning determined to be pleasant, but the moment I saw Levi enter the bathroom, my emotional barometer cracked. And suddenly I wanted to fight. Badly. I wanted to kick and scream and yell and get all kinds of angry.
Because he was right.
Fighting doesn’t hurt.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” I wave my finger in the air as I barge into the small bathroom with him, setting my stuff on the counter and staking my claim to the shower. “My ass is taking a shower first.”
He looks at said ass, then shakes his head. “Your ass is leaving.”
He moves to pick me up and I skirt past his hands and duck under his arm, climbing into the dry shower with my clothes on.
“You want to get wet, Pixie?” He’s got his wicked smile on, and I hate that I like it. “Because I can help you with that.”
Of course my dirty head is going all sorts of naughty places with his words, and I fail to see his hand reach into the shower.
“What I want is a hot shower.”
He turns on the water and the spray begins to douse the tank top and gym shorts I have on. I purse my lips as he grins at my slowly soaking pajamas. “Wet enough for you yet?”
Our eyes meet and the air around us begins to sizzle.
Because now we’re both thinking about a whole different kind of wet, and the heat filling the small bathroom isn’t coming from the steamy water running down my body.
I refuse to break our gaze, so I wait him out. His eyes flicker briefly, like maybe he’s scared or nervous, but then they wander to my chest.
The
wet tank top is hardly working as any kind of cover, so the exact shape and size and tightness of my nipples is very, very apparent.
I let him look. If he wants to be an ass, he can be an ass.
He lifts his gaze to mine, but then his cocky-as-sin expression falters for a moment. Like he forgot this was me, Pixie Marshall, standing pretty much naked before him. And the realization does something deep to his eyes and funny things to my stomach.
I suddenly want to cover my face.
Not my boobs.
Not my white shorts that easily show off how I’m not wearing panties.
I want to cover my face.
Because what he sees reminds of him of everything he can’t erase.
He stares into my eyes, and now I’m trapped in a deep blue sea of rage and regret and hurt and loss. And I don’t want to be there. I want to be anywhere else. Because the deep blue sea is filled with a million things I can’t bring myself to admit.
It hurts to think about his pain. It hurts to look at it. And it sure as hell hurts to swim in it.
But here I am. Swimming in Levi’s deep blue broken sea, and I’m drowning right alongside him, just as hopeless and helpless as he is. Two castaways in an ocean of pain, and we’re not even clinging to each other for dear life. We’re just watching each other drift to the ocean floor, where silence and blackness might swallow us whole and take away the sorrow.
For long seconds we stand there, staring at each other as water beats down on me. And then his eyes fall to my mouth.
Oh crap.
My eyes fall to his mouth as well, and the atmosphere ignites. Now we’re in this steamy, tense standoff—half in, half out of the shower—heads tilted toward each other and eyes locked on mouths. And I know I’ve already surrendered.
I know I’m mad at him, hurt by him, but when it comes down to it, I trust Levi with everything I am.
And he has me.
He has me when I’m seven years old and scared of monsters. He has me when I’m brokenhearted in the eighth grade because Tommy Marchim won’t take me to the Valentine’s dance. And he has me when I’m nineteen and in the shower with my pajamas on, searching his eyes for my hero.
He has me.
He’s always had me.
And I’ve never wanted to be had by anyone else.