Wide Open

  I knew Maya hadn't 'stalked' me all over town. I believed her when she said she happened to see my Jeep when she drove by, but Joey had always been that way. She didn't give people many chances, she didn't waste her time on guys who didn't call her after a date. She was respectful of her parents, but pretty much did whatever she wanted to. She was a definitional free spirit, and I had always wondered why, since all of those things made up Joey, she had given me chance after chance, helping me come back to the land of the living.

  That girl was a conundrum.

  I pulled into the preacher's driveway and accepted all their hugs and answered their questions on how I was doing as I made my way inside. Joey's mom cooked a meatloaf dinner, enough to feed the whole town. After it was over, Joey and a couple of her friends wanted to go out her last night in town before she went back to Texas and begged me to tag along.

  I caved and followed them out to a bonfire some people were throwing at the lake. We roasted marshmallows, or burned them really, and then they started dancing to some Taylor Swift CD. I was done at that point, happy to retreat and listen to some of the guys tell their high school football stories and about how college sucked, nothing like everyone made it out to be.

  Since I might attend college next year, somehow, I asked some questions of my own. When the beer was brought out, I told Joey I was gone. She was a little miffed at them, saying she didn't know that they'd be drinking or she wouldn't have invited me. I told her it was all right, though her not knowing a bunch of college kids at a lake party would be getting drunk was a little naïve of her.

  She pulled me aside and asked how I was doing. Were the "meeting thingies" still working out for me? As much as I loved her and owed her a huge debt of gratitude,

  she was pretty clueless sometimes.

  I assured her they were and that I was fine. It didn't take much convincing and she was bouncing off again to enjoy her farewell party. I rolled my eyes at her and laughed when my phone dinged as soon as I walked into my apartment.

  I pulled it out, expecting it to be her asking for a ride or something, but it was that same unknown number as before.

  Your nephew is due in a few days.

  I took a deep breath as I plopped down on the couch, my elbows on my knees. If I expected Maya to face her past, then I had to stop running from mine.

  So I heard. What you naming him?

  The response was slow. I knew he hadn't expected me to answer.

  Jackson

  Emma doing OK?

  She's great. Hasn't been too rough on her. I think she kinda likes it.

  She looked really great. Mamma did too.

  You can come back anytime.

  I left it with that.

  I spent the next hour running around the neighborhood and doing weights. Running at night or early in the morning was my favorite time. It wasn't hot and there was hardly anyone around. I could listen to my music and not worry about traffic, go shirtless and not feel weird.

  I was just getting back when I saw a dark-haired beauty on my stairs, headed back down toward the lot. "Hey!"

  She turned, looking relieved. I picked up the pace and rushed over to her, running a backward circle around her, grinning. "Well, what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  "I'm glad you're home," she said and smiled, but it wasn't the happy, giddy smile I had been hoping for.

  "Yeah. Joey and her friends dragged me out for a while, but I was done pretty quick. I came home early. You all right?"

  She moved to hug me, but I stopped her. "Don't. I'm disgusting. You'll get—"

  She pushed my hands out of the way and pressed herself to my chest, her arms gripping around my neck. I sighed into her hair and clamped onto her hips.

  "Thank you," she murmured into my neck and reached onto her tiptoes to kiss the skin there. My hands tightened on her hips. "You have to be the sweetest man I've ever met. Did you buy every cookie Mrs. Ming had?"

  I leaned back a little and lifted her chin. I brushed my thumb over her skin there a couple of times and I'd be lying if the shiver that went through her didn't thrill me to my core. "I wanted you to be thinking about me."

  "I'm always thinking about you," she said, almost distractedly, almost as if she didn't even have to of about the answer.

  "I know how much you love those cookies," I said, completely off my game. She wasn't being the cute, giddy girl I had expected. I didn't know what was going on, really, but something had happened. Something had clicked.

  In the streetlights, I saw her barely shudder, I saw her eyes barely sheen over. I took her face in my hands. "Sweetheart, what's going on?"

  Her hands pulled me down while she lifted up to kiss me. Once, twice, again, she kept coming back for more. I couldn't have stopped the moan that bellowed from me when her hands coasted from my shoulders all the way down to my behind. But she didn't stop there. She stuck her freezing hands inside the back of my sweatpants.

  I reached back and took her hands gently away, replacing them to my neck. I was in sweatpants, it wasn't leaving much to the imagination, and she was making it infinitely worse. She sighed into my mouth, thinking I was fighting her and pulling back. I wasn't. If anything, I was about to make things so much worse for myself. "Hold on to me, Maya."

  With my hands behind her thighs, I lifted her petite frame as if she weighed nothing at all. She didn't wrap her legs around my waist but instead clamped her knees as I turned and sprinted up my stairs with her. She gasped with shock that I could do that and hung on tighter. When I opened the door, I knew she'd been inside. There was a box of cookies with a note on the counter that said in big letters: YOU GET ME LIKE NO ONE ELSE.

  I set her on the countertop, but before I could say anything, she was back to making me forget my name, let alone what the hell a cookie was.

  It was strange in the weirdest, best way.

  It was slow and unhurried. She wasn't pulling and grabbing at me in passion; she was smoothing and coaxing me in reverent fervor. It was so totally contradictory that my head spun as she leaned back and tugged me to bend on my arms on either side of her. Her mouth said thank you and never spoke a word. Her tongue licked at my own as her fingers seemed to count my ribs deliciously.

  She smelled amazing. I had no idea what it was, but something good and sweet. Her lips were sweet, too. Cookies, I realized. Her jeans were tight. I let all my weight bear down on one arm so I could push one of my palms down her thigh. Gah, I totally got why Mason was into legs now. The right set of twigs could make you absolutely insane.

  I stuck my hands inside her tiny little jacket to grip her sides. She pulled back a smidge. "I can't believe you went running with no shirt. It's freezing out there."

  "It's not freezing when you're running." I covered her mouth again so she'd stop talking about it.

  She pulled back and put her hand on my chest, her fingers caressing and begging me to make all that pain in her eyes go away. "You'll get sick," she whispered. She stared at my chest, her eyes suddenly vacant, like she wasn't there. "You'll get sick and you'll leave me, too."

  That sounded like something that Will had said. I waited, my breaths panting in the space between us. I stayed right there, silent, ready, strong as I could, knowing this was it. What Will had said would happen was happening. My girl was about to break wide open, and I had to be there to make sure she didn't fall apart, even if this was the first small step.

  After a long time, I bent as I lifted her chin with my finger. "Maya, I'm not going anywhere." Her lip quivered, something I was beginning to recognize as her last defense of keeping herself together. "I've done so many bad things. I was…not a good guy. I don't deserve you, but there's nothing you can tell me that will make me leave. I am so stuck on you."

  "Sometimes things happen," she whispered, tortured.

  I covered her lips with my thumb. "I'd fight hell to come back if that's what it took."

  One tear made the long journey from the corner of her eye to her jaw. I leane
d in and kissed it away, not knowing what else to do. I had to find a way to make her see that she could trust me.

  "That night," she began, and I knew this was it. She looked at my eyes and begged me not to disappoint her, begged me to forgive her for things I hadn't even heard yet. I gazed back, letting everything show on my face, and pulled the stool over, turning it around to sit on it backward. "That night in my kitchen when I told you I wasn't a virgin." I nodded. "I used to do things…sex…for drugs."

  I nodded again. I wasn't going to confirm my own past. This was her time. She waited, looking more shocked by the second. Her mouth fell open finally and she shook her head. "Why aren't you disgusted? I am!" she shrieked.

  I wrapped my arms around her middle, keeping her from escaping, and whispered into the skin under her ear. "Because the girl you're telling me about was a different girl than the one sitting here now. The one who's sitting here now is strong and courageous and knows she's an addict; she deals with it. The one you're talking about was having a hard time dealing with things, she let the drugs carry her away for a while, and got so desperate that she'd do anything to get them before she got help."

  Her chest began to quake softly. "Why?"

  "Why what, sweetheart?" I said gently.

  "Why do you want me?"

  I didn't even have to think. "Because anyone who's been through what you have and can still come out in one piece on the other side is a beautiful creature that I want to know."

  "I'm not in one piece," she argued.

  "Oh, yes, you are, Maya. It's hard. It's always going to be hard to some degree, but you're here, you're not giving in. You're taking care of Will, whatever he has wrong with him, taking care of others, always helping and giving them your time, and you don't give up." She couldn't hold the sob in any longer, but I kept going. "Why wouldn't I want you?"

  Her eyes were as wide as half dollars. She swallowed and smoothed her hair, looking around the room. No… I thought I had her this time. I thought she had finally opened up to me. I thought she was finally going to let me in.

  "Milo?" she asked and took the box of cookies in her hands.

  "Yeah," I said, defeated.

  "Put on a shirt, all right? And will you grab a blanket? There's somewhere I want to show you."

  My heart hurt it leapt so hard. I grinned without saying a word and ran to do what she asked as she took the box of cookies from the counter and cradled it to her chest. I drove her truck, a little smile on my lips as she told me where to go and sat smashed up against my side. She had me pull into a little gas station that was open twenty-four hours. We went inside and got hot chocolate and then I followed her, bemused, as she led the way out to a row of big satellite dishes that lined a hill behind a fence.

  "They don't use these anymore," she explained and looked at me a little sheepish. "I used to come here a lot. I stopped when I got messed up. It was like I didn't want to…taint this place. I found it with Will. In his rebellious days, he used to try to find all sorts of odd jobs so he didn't have to get an actual after-school job. The store owner told him if Will cleaned up all the trash from around the store, he'd pay him a hundred bucks. Will used to have to drag me everywhere with him. When I started driving, I came back here. I…love it here."

  She looked up at the sky. It was clear. I hoisted her up and she took the blanket from me before I climbed up myself. We laid there under the covers for a long time in the pitch black of the night before she spoke. Again, I just waited, knowing she would start when she was ready. She lay on my arm as a pillow, and my other arm was draped over her hip.

  When she spoke, she dug her nails into my arm without realizing it, but it was okay. If that's what she needed to do, then I would take any pain to help her through it.

  With her butt nestled to my front, she told me about all the "awful" things she had done for drugs, how she wound up having to get her GED because she got kicked out of school, not for her grades—she paid for test answers and cheated on homework—but because of her behavior and missed days. Her dad was always rescuing her from parties and strangers' houses. All of it sounded eerily familiar. She told me she couldn't even remember how many guys it had been, their names, where, when, how, what drugs she had done.

  Then she told me about how her dad saved her, how she hated him so much for embarrassing her like that, how she was ungrateful, and it took a long time for her to see what he had actually done for her—it wasn't about interrupting a party, it was so much more than that. Then she told me how he died.

  And she bawled.

  I held her so tightly, so afraid that she was going to fly apart as she sobbed and told me that as soon as she felt like she might be okay, as soon as she felt like she might survive the fact that her dad was dead, she found out her brother was dying, too.

  She told me everything. All the things she had been too scared to put words to. She said giving them words gave them life and made it too real. It wasn't that she didn't trust me; she didn't want them to be any more real than they were already.

  I turned her toward me and kissed her face all over, her eyes softly. I knew it would be bad, but how did people survive things like that? This tiny girl with such a big heart and spirit with a little spark that was dim, but still there inside her? Will was right. She wasn't going to survive if anything else happened.

  She was strong, but there's only so much a person can take until they break, until that person's spirit is chased down the rabbit hole, too scared to come out for fear of being smashed. I held her to me tight and silently promised her and myself that I was never going to let go. No matter what I had to do, I was going to keep that promise.

  Maya

  I woke with his warm chest on my cheek. It was still partially dark outside, but right then I couldn't find it in me to care.

  At some point last night, Milo had carried me back to the truck and we had snuggled up in the seat. Last night we had laid in the dish for hours. I couldn't believe it was all out in the open. It didn't seem real.

  And he was still here.

  Obviously, he could he faking. He could be acting as if it didn't bother him when in fact it did—

  I felt warm fingers smooth the lines between my brows. "Hey," he scolded, his voice roughly sexy from sleep. "No regrets."

  "I don't have regrets," I challenged and lifted my chin a little on his chest. "Do you?"

  He lifted my chin farther, kissing my closed lips, but still kissing me. Morning breath forgotten, he still wanted to kiss me even though I was clearly a rotten apple? He pulled back and licked his lip. "I'm going to keep on kissing you until you stop making that self-deprecating face."

  "There's no such thing."

  He leaned in and pulled my torso up this time for a full body experience of licks and bites and nibbles. I gasped when he let me go. "Are you finished?" he asked. "I can go all day."

  I smiled, couldn't help it. "Is that supposed to deter me or…"

  "Oooooh," he mocked with a grin and settled in closer. "She shoots, she scores."

  I giggled. "You're pretty cute."

  He looked at me funny and then grimaced. "Oh, my… No."

  "What?"

  "You're a morning person." He wrinkled his nose. "Look at you. All smiley and sassy at whatever the hell time it is before the sun comes up."

  I giggled and then covered it. "Um…sorry?"

  "Good night, I need coffee." He pulled me into his lap before scooting under me and sliding over in the driver's seat. He gripped my thigh and tugged me closer. "Let's go get breakfast."

  "My favorite meal of the day," I gushed happily and slipped my arm through his.

  He chuckled and rubbed my leg during the short drive. In no time at all, I was scarfing bacon and eggs. He watched as he ate his own, his eyes lit with fascination.

  "What?" I laughed, mumbling around my eggs.

  "I've never seen a girl eat like that."

  I glared and cocked my head. "Like what exactly?"

  His
lips twitched as he pushed his plate aside and leaned across the table. "I am going to sound like a total chick right now, but God, I just…God, I am so glad I met you." I bit into my smiling lip. "A girl who's beautiful, humble, eats real food, has completely real boobs." My brows rose. "I assume," he recanted and grinned devilishly. "Is short, but still manages to have legs for days, wickedly smart, genuine, loving, and knows what's important." He shook his head.

  I laid my fork down gently and pushed my plate over near his. "Is that really how you see me?"

  "Yes. I think your boobs are totally real." I chuckled under my breath, but my eyes never left his. His never left mine. He reached over the short Formica table and cupped my cheek. "Yes. That's you, sweetheart."

  My breath eased out slowly. "I really love it when you call me 'sweetheart', Milo."

  "I love it when you call me 'Milo', sweetheart."

  I was absolutely falling for him. There was no turning back now. But could something I wanted so much last? Could something that seemed so easy really be that easy?

  He paid the check, and I didn't protest. I could tell he was the type that was raised to pay, and that fighting about it was futile. Besides, it was nice. I hadn't had anyone take care of me before. It felt odd to let someone look after me for once.

  "Hey now," he scolded like he'd done this morning, rubbing between my brows. "Don't do that. No waiting for the worst to happen."

  I smiled as best I could. "It's hard for me to accept it when good things come my way. And before you make some smart remark, yes, I'm talking about you."

  He smiled, but didn't crack any jokes. He leaned in, taking me in his arms and pressing his lips to my ear. "Fall, sweetheart. I'll catch you."

  Milo

  The next four weeks were amazing ones.