“It’s disgusting.”
Reese flinches, though the words are no surprise. “I love her. I want to make her happy. That’s all.”
“I love your mother, and I want to make her happy, but you don’t see me prancing around in her underwear!”
“Reese?” Corinne is paused in the doorway, looking concerned. “Hey, is everything okay?”
“You ready to go?” Reese stands, leaving the coffee on the table.
Corinne’s look of concern changes to surprise. “Sure. If you want to.”
“Yeah. I’m ready. Let’s go.” Without a look at his father, Reese ushers her out through the family horde, weathering the hugs, kisses, and goodbyes. In the driveway, he holds out his hand for her keys and slides into the driver’s seat, although it is Corinne’s car and she usually drives.
“What happened?” she asks as he steers them down the long, winding country lane toward the main street. “Did you and your dad have a fight?”
“Something like that. Nothing new. It’s fine.” Tight-lipped, Reese switches on the radio so they don’t have to talk.
At home, she tells him to go take a shower. He doesn’t want to. They showered just before leaving for his parents’ house. He’s not dirty. He and Corinne face off in the bedroom; Reese feels alternately hot and cold. Itchy in his skin. He wants to pace.
“I told you to do something,” Corinne says sharply. “But feel free to keep arguing with me, and see what happens.”
He can’t stop himself from arguing. He keeps thinking of his father’s words and the look of disgust and disappointment on his face. “I don’t want to take a fucking shower, Corinne! I just want to go to bed.”
She gives him a cool shrug. “Fine. But you’re not getting into bed with me without taking a shower first. Go sleep on the couch. No. The floor.”
He pauses. She means it, he’s sure of that. She teases him sometimes, sure, but right now there is nothing but calm steadiness in her expression as she stares him down.
He does not have to obey her. He could, in fact, force his way into the bed, and there’d be very little she could do to make him get out of it. They both know, though, that he won’t do that. Breathing hard, angry, his nails biting into his palms, Reese sneers.
“Fine. I’ll take a fucking shower.”
“Go.”
In the bathroom, he strips out of his clothes and throws them defiantly on the floor, then gets under the spray before it’s even hot. Cold water needles him into a gasp. It warms quickly, but even so, that first onslaught is enough to take his breath away and leave stinging patches all over. Minutes in, the steam wreathes him, and in the fog and the heat, Reese lets his forehead fall against his arm as he leans against the shower wall. The water washes away most of his anger, leaving him with a hollow feeling in his stomach.
He dries off and hangs up the towel, then puts all his clothes in the basket. Naked, he goes to the bedroom. Corinne is propped up in bed, reading, and when she sees him she pulls back the covers and pats the bed in invitation.
Wordlessly, Reese slides in beside her. She puts an arm around him, letting him press his face against her breasts. Her hand strokes down his back in patterns of three, then one then three again. She’s soothing him.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I needed the shower.”
“I know, puppy. It’s okay.” She kisses his wet hair and makes a noise, prompting him to move so he can look up at her. She caresses his face. “I’m sorry you and your dad can’t seem to get along.”
He talks to her for a long time about his father.
When he goes quiet, Corinne says, “I think you should go talk to him. Be the first to reach out. Didn’t you tell me that you guys used to go to Triton’s a lot? Invite him to lunch or something.”
Surprised and angry that she’s not taking his side, Reese sits up. “What? Why? He’s not going to listen to anything I have to say. He’s made his judgments, and that’s it as far as he’s concerned. I’m not going back to work on the farm. Is that what you want me to do?”
She hesitates. “It’s a job—”
“No! Shit, Corinne. I hated working on the farm. If you don’t want me to live here anymore, just fucking say so.”
She’ll be pissed off now. She’ll discipline him for the language, the tone, the attitude. She’ll hurt him, maybe, and then maybe she’ll fuck him. Suddenly, Reese wants that more than anything.
“I love having you here. Don’t be rude. And if you don’t want to work on the farm, you don’t have to. But I think you do need to go talk to your dad and try to mend things with him.”
“Are you ordering me to?”
She frowns. “Of course not.”
He quiets and sits with his back to the headboard, their shoulders touching. He doesn’t look at her. The calm he’d gained from the shower is gone; his stomach is tense and tight again. When finally he slides beneath the covers and turns on his side, facing away from her, Corinne says nothing. She turns out the light. She spoons behind him, her hand flat on his naked belly. She kisses him between the shoulder blades.
“I don’t want you to hold onto a grudge that you might regret, that’s all.” Her soft words float through the darkness over him. “I’m looking out for you.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t listen to her, though, and Thanksgiving Day is the last time he speaks to his father until his mother dies of a stroke two months later.
Chapter Nineteen
“He’s trying to get under your skin, that’s all.” Caitlyn had listened to Corinne’s tirade over dinner.
Overcooked pasta and limp salad, Caitlyn’s work, still appreciated even if it hadn’t been top-notch cuisine. The kids had scarfed down everything on their plates and begged to disappear into the TV room to play video games, and although she usually tried to keep Friday night family night to honor the Sabbath, Corinne had allowed it tonight. She’d been too agitated to really eat, though she appreciated baby sister’s attempt at repaying her for the use of the guest room for what was becoming an indeterminate amount of time. Now she pushed her plate away.
“That is not how we work,” Corinne said.
Caitlyn swiped a piece of garlic bread through the sauce and crunched it, talking around the food. “That’s not how you used to work, maybe. It’s obviously how he wants it to work now.”
Corinne had never talked much to her sister about the way things had been. At the time she and Reese were a couple, Caitlyn had been way too young. By the time her younger sister had been old enough for them to share sexy stories, Corinne had been married to Douglas and fully entrenched in the vanilla life of a suburban wife and mother. She’d never spoken much to anyone about her relationship with Reese, actually, too aware of how not…normal…the other mothers in the playgroup would have thought it was to bend your man over and fuck him in the ass.
“Yikes,” Caitlyn said at the look on Corinne’s face. “Don’t freak out!”
“I’m not freaking out, but you don’t really know…I mean…” Corinne shrugged and twirled more pasta onto her plate.
Caitlyn made a face. “I know you think it’s weird.”
“Actually, I never thought it was weird. It was the only time I ever felt like everything made sense.” Corinne cleared her throat, hating the way her voice rasped. “I think it’s rare, though. To find a connection like that…”
“When your kinks align,” Caitlyn said.
Corinne laughed a little self-consciously. “Yeah. That.”
“Hey, we all have them. Some of us have kinkier kinks, that’s all. And don’t you think he feels the same way? He remembers. Why else do you think he’s being such an asshole? I mean, he’s acting in the exact opposite way he did when you were together, right? He’s being all bossy and stuff.”
“He’s beyond bossy,” Corinne said with a scowl.
“Would it bother you so much if it wasn’t him? If some random dude had come in to buy the company and was throwing all this bullshit you
r way?”
Corinne shrugged. “I wouldn’t like it no matter who was doing it.”
“‘Corinne does not take direction well.’” Her sister cackled, pointing a finger. “That was on your report card in the fifth grade, remember?”
“Yes. Yours was ‘Caitlyn has difficulty coloring inside the lines.’”
Both sisters laughed. Corinne finally gave up on eating the soggy pasta. Caitlyn snagged another piece of garlic bread from the basket and used it to point at her sister.
“Point is, we are who we are, and we’ve probably always been that way. So no, you wouldn’t be happy if anyone had come in and started ordering you around, but it’s particularly egregious that it’s Reese.”
“Ooh. Good word.”
Caitlyn fluttered her lashes. “Thank you.”
“He used to be my boy,” Corinne said, suddenly angrier than she’d allowed herself to be. “My fucking boy, Caitlyn. He…he was mine.”
Her voice trailed into sadness.
“Now he’s just fucking with me, and I hate it. Not because he’s trying to prove to me he’s the boss or whatever. But that he would take what we had and try to erase it that way.” Corinne swallowed against the lump in her throat. “I mean, the whole reason we broke up was because he wasn’t able to commit. We’d been together for two years, I was just about to start working for Stein and Sons; everything could’ve been great. But he was dead set on running away from everything. Even me. When I asked him to meet me one last time so we could try to work on it, he never showed up. And he knew the consequences of that, Caitlyn, because I’d warned him if he didn’t show that we were through. That was it, he walked out on me, and he never came back. It was ugly and harsh and horrible, but it was also fifteen years ago. What’s the point of coming back around now to rub my face in how much he is not ever going to bend to me? What’s the fucking point, if it’s not to hurt me?”
“Maybe you should ask him that.”
“Ugh. Gross. That’s almost as bad as asking him why he can’t just love me. I’ll make sure to be drunk with my makeup smeared all over the place too, because that’s classy.” Her phone buzzed from where she’d put it on the counter to charge. When she didn’t get up to answer it, Corinne shrugged at her sister’s look. “What? The kids are with me. You’re here. Who else would be calling me?”
She got up anyway to look at it, her mouth twisting into a sneer when she saw the caller ID. Caitlyn’s brows rose as Corinne put the phone to her ear with a muttered greeting. Then her sister put her hands over her mouth to cover up the laughter.
“Reese,” Corinne said. “What do you want?”
Chapter Twenty
She should not have agreed to this.
The long farm lane of her memory was still there, though it had been paved into a much wider street lined with big houses on small lots. The house at the end was the same though. Two stories, white painted siding, green shingles on the roof and matching shutters. The barn and outbuildings were gone. She parked by the side porch, noticing that it looked a little newer than the rest of the house, as though it had been recently repaired.
She sat in her car longer than she needed to. Fussing with her lipstick and hair. Her clothes, her armor, were more casual than what she’d been wearing to work the past week, but only because showing up at his house late on a Friday night wearing a pencil skirt and kitten heels would’ve been weird. She’d settled for the pair of leggings that made her ass look fantastic, along with a flattering striped top and ballet flats. Now she was second guessing the choices though. She didn’t want to look like this was a…well, a date.
The truth was, Corinne wasn’t sure what, exactly, this was meant to be.
Reese opened the door almost before she’d knocked. “Hi. Come in.”
She waited until he’d moved aside before she entered into the small but cheery kitchen, decorated in colors that had been trendy so long ago they’d gone from outdated to vintage to trendy again. She hung her purse and coat on the back of a kitchen chair without waiting to be asked. Then she turned to face him.
“So,” she said.
“So, I guess we should…do you want something to drink?”
“I have to drive home.” Of course she had to drive home. She wasn’t going to sleep over. Fuck, why had she even said such a thing?
Reese had already been pouring a glass of red, but paused. “You sure?”
“What exactly do you want, Reese?”
He put the glass on the counter. By the look of the bottle, he’d already gone through a couple already. “I think we need to talk.”
Corinne crossed her arms. “About?”
Reese leaned against the counter, one leg crossed at the ankle. He wore a pair of low-hanging jeans and a concert T-shirt from a band she didn’t know. It clung far too tightly to his chest and arms. His feet were bare.
She hated him.
“Look, can we go into the living room? If you won’t have a glass of wine, at least we can sit on the couch. Be more comfortable.”
Eyes narrowed, she nodded and followed him down the short hallway and into the living room. It didn’t look much different from the last time she’d been in it, though at the time she hadn’t been paying much attention to the decor. “Same furniture.”
“Yeah, I never really did anything to it.” Reese drained his glass and set it on the end table as he took a seat. “Sit?”
He’d asked, not commanded, so she did, perched on the edge of the cushions, plenty of space between them. She wished she’d asked for a glass of water, at least. Her throat scratched.
“We didn’t get off on the right foot,” he said.
Both her brows rose. “You think?”
“Look…I just wanted you to know that I really did buy Stein and Sons because I thought I could turn it around. And I intend to do that. I’m good at it. Maybe you find that hard to believe…”
“Why would I find that hard to believe?” she broke in.
Reese fixed her with a look, one she remembered. He’d been drinking long before she got there. For courage? Heat kindled in her belly at the thought.
“I mean to make it a success. And I wanted you to know.”
She stared at him for a long, long moment before the question rose inside her, slipping over her dry tongue. “Why is it so important to you that I know, Reese?”
“I want…” he began and stopped.
His brow furrowed. Hands clenched, he got to his feet and paced in small, tight lines back and forth in front of her. The hems of his jeans whispered along the carpet. At last he stopped, head bowed, fingers still curled into fists at his sides.
“Because I want you to know,” he said. “I just…do.”
She could have stood, then, and left him to suffer whatever damage he’d caused. She should have. The past had happened and could not be lived over; nor could it do anything to change what was happening now. She ought to have walked away from him in that moment and kept moving forward with her life, away from everything they’d been and what they no longer were.
She didn’t.
“Shhh, puppy,” she whispered and opened her arms to him. “Come here.”
He wouldn’t, that’s what she had time to think before Reese pivoted on his heel and came to kneel in front of her. His face pressed into her lap so that her hands found the soft brush of his dark hair. She petted him, both of them silent. He heaved a sigh so heavy that his shoulders lifted and fell, and the heat of his breath caressed her through the thin material of her shirt.
They stayed that way for a while. She didn’t count the minutes, not by the ticking of the clock or the beating of her heart. They could sit like this for an eternity, she thought, and it wouldn’t seem too long.
His fingers slipped beneath her thighs, and he looked up at her with glazed eyes. Parted lips, slick from the swipe of his tongue. Corinne ran her hand over his face, then a thumb over his lower lip. Reese closed his eyes and pressed his mouth against the palm of her
hand.
“I want you to be proud of me,” he whispered so low she almost couldn’t hear him.
The words were a fist, punching her in the gut. “Why?”
“Because everything I’ve ever done,” Reese murmured, words slurring, “has been about forgetting you or impressing you or making you proud. I’ve lived my whole fucking life for you without having you in it.”
“You’re drunk,” Corinne said.
Reese nuzzled into her lap. “Not much.”
She let her fingers tangle in his hair to tug his head up so he had to look her in the face. She whispered his name. He pushed up on his knees, so they were eye to eye.
“We haven’t been together for a long time,” she said.
“Yeah. I know.”
“You could have called me. Written me a letter, even. You could have done anything but ignore me, but that’s what you did. We had that fight, and I never heard from you again,” she said.
Reese flinched, eyes closing for a minute. Shamefaced. “I know. You told me if I didn’t show, that was it. We were over. I was angry.”
“But you never even tried.” When he didn’t answer, she added, “So, why now? All these years later?”
“Because…I could,” he answered simply, like that was supposed to make sense.
It did, somehow. Years had passed in which it might not have mattered if he’d called or written or hell, even friended her on Connex, because even if he’d come to her with an apology or a declaration of undying love, there’d been no room in her life for him. So here they both were, older and in different places in their lives.
“Look at me,” she told him. When he did, she took his face in both her hands to stare into his eyes the way she’d done so many times when they were young and had never thought what they’d had would disappear. “The problem is, Reese, that all those years ago, I fell in love with you. And I’ve never managed to find a way to fall back out.”
He kissed her then. Soft and slow and sweet and somehow yearning, his arms going around her. He tasted like good red wine. He broke the kiss, their foreheads pressed together, but before she could speak he was kissing her again. Harder this time, breathing a small sigh that turned into a moan when she gently sucked his tongue.