“No,” he ground out as he pulled her back against him. “No more running away. We’re supposed to be together.”
“I don’t love you” Letty spit the words in his face as he swung her around. “I’ve only ever loved…”
His hand over her mouth stopped her from finishing the sentence. “Don’t say his name.”
The arm Henry was no longer holding on to swung up before Letty even realized she was moving. As her hand connected with his cheek, the sound lashed out around them. Letty yanked her other arm free and rushed towards the door.
She pulled the door open and ran out into the sunshine. His voice called her name behind her, but she kept running until she reached her car and threw herself in. She really needed to call Sonia. She owed that girl a big, fat apology.
Chapter 7
“I need you to say it one more time,” Sonia’s voice sounded a little tinny as it came over the phone line.
“You were right,” Letty sighed. She wasn’t saying this again. “I was wrong. And I’m so sorry for not listening to you.”
“Ok. I hear you. And I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Sonia. I’m fine. I… I feel lost. How could I have been wrong about Henry for so long? All the signs were there, and I was too stupid to catch them.”
“No. You aren’t stupid. You didn’t see it because you didn’t want to. I know you were hurt by what Henry said Landon did. But I think you were also scared shitless and searching for a reason to push him away. Henry gave you a reason. Then, you had to find your way past all of the things you knew Henry was doing to justify how you treated Landon.”
“Yeah. Probably. But it doesn’t actually make me feel any better. Today, I realized I’m an idiot, one of my closet friends is an asshole, and my actual best friend is a gloating bitch.”
“Babe. You have always known I’m a bitch. The gloating is a surprise because you’ve never given me anything to gloat about. Ask Katie. She’ll tell you all about it.”
Letty chuckled. “Thanks for not being mad at me for not listening.”
“Okay. Enough. I was right. You were stupid. Can we please move on now?”
“Happily. I just wish I could talk to Landon. I don’t know if there is enough groveling or apologizing to get him to forgive me for this.”
“He’ll call. And if he doesn’t, there are ways to find him. I’m pretty sure this exact situation is why social media was invented.” Sonia paused. “Seriously, are you all right? You’ve had a rough weekend. Do you want me to come over?”
“No thanks. I have extensive plans to put on my jammies, curl up on the couch with a bag of popcorn, and watch movies with lots of explosions. And you’ll just get mad that I’m wallowing.” Letty stood up as her doorbell rang. “Seriously, I’m fine. Give me tonight. You didn’t need to come over.”
“Babe, it’s not me. Probably Patty stopping by to check on you.”
Letty smiled. “Probably. She can’t help herself. If she brings popcorn, she can stay.”
“How come she gets to stay?”
“Because she’ll let me wallow,” Letty said as she opened the door. The smile slid off her face as she registered the person standing in her doorway. “Sonia, I gotta go.”
“Letty?”
“I’m fine. Really. But I gotta go. I’ll call you later. Promise.” And she hung up the phone.
Chapter 8
She drank him in as he stood in in her doorway. His jeans hung low on his hips, and a blue shirt hinted at the muscles underneath without showing them off.
“Hey.”
Letty stepped back out of the way, so he could walk into her apartment. She calmly watched him walk by her and shut the door. She rested her head on the door for a moment before turning around to catch him watching her.
“I’m sorry to show up at your doorstep like this.”
“How did you find me?” she asked. “Why did you find me?”
“Sonia gave me your number, but when I went to call you, it was gone.” He smiled down at her as he stepped into her personal space. “I don’t know what happened, but I also saw Sonia’s name in my contacts. I called her, and she told me her suspicions. Then, she gave me your address like it was a gift. She may have threatened me a little bit too.”
“It was Henry,” she blurted out.
“What was Henry?” he asked patiently as he reached out to touch her arm.
“The whole thing. It was Henry all along. He lied to me.”
“Scarlet. That’s what Sonia suspected. And I don’t care.” He pulled her a little closer to him. “I don’t care what Henry did or said before. I only care about you and us.”
“But I do, and I’m so sorry. I believed him.”
He reached up to flip the hair off of her shoulder. “I know you are. And I know now, you were scared and searching for a reason to push me away.”
“Sonia said the same thing.”
Landon smiled and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “And you are so stubborn it took you ten years to finally hear her?”
“No. It took running into you again.” She reached up and tentatively touched his cheek with her fingertips. “I’ve missed you so much.”
She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him. His scent washed over her, and she closed her eyes. She snuggled into him as he rested his chin on the top of her head.
“I’ve missed you too, Starshine.”
She breathed him in and remembered all of the years he spent as her best friend, the lazy Saturdays and late nights studying for tests. All the little ways they took care of each other as they grew up.
But they both grew up more in the ten years they had spent apart. Her experiences and relationships in the last decade shaped her into a different person than she had been the last time they were together. If the broadness of the chest she leaned against was any indication, he had too.
“Stop it,” he murmured into her hair.
“Stop what?”
“Stop over thinking this. I can feel your brain churning away through my shirt. Yes. We’re both older, and we aren’t the same people we were. But I know you. Even though you hair is a little lighter than it used to be and you’re a lot more reserved now, I still know you. And I am still in love with you. Please don’t push me away again.”
She pulled back enough to stare up at him.
“You still love me?”
“I never stopped loving you. Every relationship I’ve had in the past ten years was screwed from the beginning because I always compared them to you. And not a single one of those women came even close to being you.”
“How many relationships?”
He sighed and smiled down at her. “Too many to remember and not enough to forget you.”
She went up on her tip toes and brushed her lips against his. “I still love you too,” she murmured against his lips.
He took her invitation and deepened the kiss as his arms wrapped more tightly around her. As he lifted her up, she swung her legs up to wrap them around his torso and continued to kiss him. One hand snaked down her back to palm her ass as he started to walk backwards.
He came to an abrupt stop and almost fell backwards onto the couch. He sat down hard, and she bounced off of his knee and onto the floor. She glanced up at him and started laughing.
He watched her with a smile on his face as she rolled sideways and kept laughing. “Smooth move,” she chortled up at him. “Is this how you got all of those ladies?”
He reached down and scooped her off of the floor. She placed her forehead against his and breathed him in. “Second door on the left. I don’t want you to get lost this time.”
Landon laughed as he walked toward her bedroom with her in his arms. “I wasn’t lost. I was over eager.”
“And you’re not this time?”
“Over eager? No. I’m excited and nervous.”
“Nervous? Why nervous?”
“Because I want this to be perfect
. And it’s a lot of pressure to put on any moment.”
As he laid her down on the bed, she reached up and brushed her knuckles across his lips. “It will be perfect. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. It just took me a while to realize.”
He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head in a single motion. She gaped up at him as she drank in the sight of his perfect, golden skin stretched over the most delicious body ever imagined. The shirt hinted at what lay underneath it, but it hadn’t come close to telling the whole story. He clearly possessed an extra ab most people didn’t know existed.
“Are you done objectifying me?” he asked with a smirk on his face.
“Nope. Not even close. When did you get all of this?” she waved her hand toward him. “Don’t you have a day job?”
“If you’ll stay with me, I’ll promise to completely let myself go. I’ll get as fat as you want me to be.” He put his knee on the bed and crawled over her body.
The witty retort was all ready to go, but she swallowed it as his lips descended on hers again. Her body caught on fire at their single point of contact and spread outward. She moaned as it washed over her breasts, and her nipples hardened.
He grabbed the opportunity she gave him and slipped his tongue past her opened lips. The bliss of his invasion zinged along her spine even as the rest of her body ached for more. All of her lady bits started to remember their one night together. She missed being completely consumed by him.
Her hands wandered down his back to pull him tighter to her. She sighed as more of his weight settled on her and pushed her into the mattress, with the added bonus of his rock-hard cock pushing against her pussy. Even through all the layers of fabric, the heat radiated off of him.
She reached between their bodies and undid his pants. Then, she slid her hand inside until she could wrap her fingers around him. She used the silken bead already formed at the top to smooth her hand down his velvet encased length.
He groaned as he thrust into her fist, and she echoed the sound as his head rubbed against her, pressing the layers between them against her swollen clit. She arched up into him to try and get more contact, but his hand moved to her hip to hold her still. She squirmed under his grip even as her hand continued to stroke him from balls to tip.
“You need to stop, or this isn’t going to last very long,” Landon murmured into her ear.
“You don’t like it?”
“I love it. Which is why I need you to stop. Ten years is a long time to wait for your hands on me again. But when I cum, I want to be buried inside your pussy. Preferably after making you scream my name a few times.”
Landon’s words spread through her like an inferno. Her hand tightened around him as she struggled to get closer to him with all of her clothes still on.
“Sweetheart. Please. Stop.”
“I can’t. I want you.”
Landon pulled away from her long enough to grasp the bottom of her shirt and rip it over her head. As she slid back on to the mattress, he grabbed both of her hands in one of his larger ones and pulled them over her head. His knee pushed between her legs as his body settled back over her.
The smoothness of his move made her wonder how many other women he had practiced on before her.
“If you can think this loudly, then I’m not doing this right.” His lips graced over the lobe of her ear as his hand traced down the column of her neck. He shifted down her body as his lips followed his hand down across her collarbone. He licked and nipped his way across her skin as the fire moved across her abdomen.
His fingers flicked across one nipple as his lips lightly brushed across the other one. He pulled it into his mouth and sucked before letting go and switching to the other side. She groaned as he nipped at her flesh, and his free hand continued traveling down her stomach.
Her muscles contracted as his hand lightly traced below her belly button. His fingers dipped underneath the elastic waistband of her pajama bottoms and stroked the sensitive skin there. He moved a little lower and slid a single finger in between her folds.
She groaned as his finger found her clit and started to stroke her. She tugged against his hand, desperate to touch him back. He tightened his grip on her hands as he took her nipple back into his mouth and pressed a little harder on her clit.
As the fire built up in her core, she shifted underneath him. The combination of him holding her down and working her over was almost too much. She tried to twist away from him as he pushed two fingers inside of her, and the pleasure ramped up. He sucked her nipple deeper into his mouth. Her body froze underneath him a split second before the fire zoomed out from her core, and she came around his hand.
He let her hands go as her body relaxed back into the mattress. He slowly stood up and pulled her pants off of her body. She cracked one eye open in time to watch him unsnap his jeans. She sat up and knocked his hands out of the way, so she could unzip him and push his pants down his legs. Her hands were trailing back up his legs when he shifted in front of her and pushed her back on the bed.
He put both hands on her hips as his body settled in between her legs, and the head of his cock brushed against her pussy. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and tried to pull him closer.
“Please. I need you inside of me. Now,” she whispered against his neck.
He growled and took her in one, hard thrust. Then, he pulled almost all the way back out of her and thrust deep inside of her again. They settled into a steady rhythm as she moved her hips up to meet him. He pressed his forehead against hers and stared at her as his thick cock continued to drive into her.
She was so young and innocent the first time they did this. The slide of him was better than she remembered. Naively, she assumed she would eventually find someone or something as miraculous as what she and Landon had. But she was older and a lot more experienced now, and they were still magic.
She lifted her face for a kiss as he continued to pound into her body. His hand gently touching her face was a perfect counterpoint to the ecstasy of having him inside of her, and she flew over the edge again as the fire raging inside of her exploded behind her eyelids. As her orgasm rocked through her, he stilled above her, then groaned out her name as he spilled himself into her.
“I love you, Starshine.” he murmured against her lips as her body slowly started to relax back into the mattress again.
“I love you too, Midnight.”
Epilogue
“Where do you want me to put this box?” Landon asked her as he picked his way across their new kitchen.
“It clearly says office on it. So probably in the office,” she quipped as she dried another dish and reached up to place it on the shelf.
She jumped as he swatted her on the ass as he walked by her. How did he even have a hand free? He held a heavy box in one arm. Stupid man and his stupid, delicious muscles.
She smiled to herself as she continued to put the dishes away. The last six months since their chance meeting at the bar was fantastic. She was making a name for herself as a graphic artist around town and really loved her work. Though, she was pretty sure her friends were sending new clients her way, but her work and growing reputation closed the deal with each of them. When she brought it up at last week’s breakfast, they promptly changed the subject. Not suspicious at all.
Landon came back into the kitchen, and Letty ignored him as he putzed around behind her. The biggest part of why things were so wonderful in the last few months was currently messing around with something behind her. She never understood how much she missed him until he was back. And he was back.
They fell so easily back into the friendship, one could assume nothing changed. Except for the sex. The bind-blowing, earth-shattering sex they continued to have was a constant reminder they weren’t simply friends anymore.
This little house they bought together was another reminder of how things changed. Their nightly walk through the adorable neighborhood near his apartment landed them in front of a realtor puttin
g the For Sale sign up in the yard. They stopped her and chatted about the house for a few minutes before she invited them in to poke around. They put an offer in that night, and six weeks later, she stood in their new kitchen, putting away dishes. The whole thing had been perfect and more than a little surreal.
“Starshine, where does this box go?” Landon asked from behind her.
She sighed and turned around to find him on one knee holding up a small velvet box. Dropping the towel, she gripped the counter behind her. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Landon scooted closer to her and pulled one of her hands off of the counter. “Scarlet, you are my best friend and the only person I want to do this whole life thing with. I want to be with you.” He paused, and she continued to stare at him blankly.
“I promise I will never leave you again. I love you to the stars.”
Nothing.
“You can objectify me as much as you want.”
Still nothing.
“Starshine, please say something.”
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t actually asked me anything yet.”
He laughed as he stood up and pulled her into his arms. “Scarlet Anne O’Hare. Will you marry me?”
“Huh. If I marry you, I can finally change my stupid last name.”
“True. That’s why you should say yes.”
She smiled up at him. “Midnight, I’m saying yes because I love you and want to be with you. The new last name is a nice bonus.”
He kissed her hard on the mouth. “I love you too.”
About the Author
C.A. Higgins started writing as a way to get the characters in her head to stop yelling at her. She's inspired by friends that lose track of their undergarments, loves long walks on the beach and the smell of Pine Sol. She lives with her husband and two sons in a place that's too damn cold for her warmth loving soul.
Love Lost in Time Page 4
