by Megan Hart
It was without a doubt the most arousing thing anyone had ever said to her.
“That sounds vaguely stalkerish.”
“It’s only stalking if you don’t want to be found.”
“Next you’ll tell me you’re calling me from the gas station across the street,” she said, feeling giddy.
“Ah,” Nick replied. “So there’s a gas station across the street.”
“You don’t have to guess,” she told him. “I’ll tell you how to get here. Drive fast.”
“As fast as I can,” Nick said. “I’ll be there in three hours.”
Three hours passed, then six, but even though she waited up all night, even though she cut all her classes the next day, even though she sat by her window, looking at every car that passed, hoping it was his, it never was.
CHAPTER 45
Now
When she pulled into the carport, the thump of music and the rich, smoky scent of the grill greeted her before anything else. She climbed the stairs into chaos. Someone had set up a portable laser show on the coffee table, and it shone its shifting pattern of red circles on the walls and ceiling.
Her living room overflowed with teenagers, most of them with plastic cups in their hands. The music rumbled her guts and hurt her ears. Her kitchen was a disaster, with open boxes of pizza and bowls of chips and pretzels all over the place. Her footsteps crunched. She saw no sign of a keg or suspicious bottles, but that didn’t mean all those cups of soda were virgin.
This had Nick stamped all over it, but it was Connor who appeared from the deck with a broad grin on his face. “Mom!”
“Connor, what the hell’s going on here?”
“Party,” he said unnecessarily with a wave of his hand. “Just some friends. It’s a going away party for me.”
Bess leaned in but though his eyes were suspiciously bright, she couldn’t smell liquor on him. “Where’s your brother?”
“He’s around.” Connor reached past her to snag a can of cola from the ice-filled sink. “Do you want to know where Nick is?”
“I want you to turn down the music before the neighbors call the police,” Bess said, ignoring the last question.
Connor popped the top on the can and drank around a grin so wide she was surprised he didn’t spill all down his front. “He’s out on the deck.”
Bess eyed her oldest son. “Is he?”
Connor swiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “Yeah. He is.”
Suspicious, but not certain of what, Bess pushed through the crowd of lounging, laughing kids and toward the sliding-glass doors. Robbie stopped her halfway there.
“Mom!”
“Nice party,” Bess said, as someone bounded by her, chasing a beach ball. “If anything gets broken, you and Connor are paying for it.”
Robbie grinned sheepishly. “They’re mostly Conn’s friends. But we’re not drinking or anything.”
Bess rolled her eyes. “Do you think I’m stupid, Robbie?”
“No.” He shifted his feet, stepping in front of her when she tried to move past him.
Bess stopped. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” He’d never been the sort of liar his brother was, hadn’t inherited Andy’s effortless guile. He shifted again when she moved.
“Robert Andrew,” Bess said. “Is there a keg on the deck? Do you know how much trouble I can get into if you guys are drinking underage?”
“No, there’s no keg. Some people have been drinking out on the beach, but not up here.”
Maybe she’d been wrong about the guile. Bess recognized his trick. Offer a little bit of truth to distract from the greater dishonesty. “What’s going on, really? Drugs?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Robbie,” Connor said, clapping his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Annalise’s looking for you.”
Bess clearly saw the war on Robbie’s face. The girl he’d been crushing on all summer, or protecting Mom? The battle was fought but briefly, and he headed off into the crowd in the direction Connor pointed.
More kids crowded the deck, some of them sitting on the railings in a way that made her motherly heart quail. She wasn’t quite uncool enough to tell them to get down. Someone stood at her grill, flipping burgers she knew hadn’t come from her freezer. At least Connor or his friends were providing their own food.
It took exactly three heartbeats before she saw him, his mouth open under the onslaught of tongue and lips of some blond girl wearing a skirt so short everyone around her could see all the way to her panties. Nick, legs spread so the girl’s ass dipped between them, had one hand on the back of her neck and the other on her thigh. It was the girl from the beginning of the summer, from the day he’d tried to leave the section of the beach in front of the house and couldn’t.
Bess stood, unmoving. She meant to simply turn around and leave him to it, but he opened his eyes and broke off the kiss to smile at her.
To smile.
Bess turned on her heel and went inside, where she yanked the stereo cord from the wall. “Get out,” she said without having to shout, and there was no doubt everyone in the room heard her. “All of you. Go home.”
There were mutters and looks, but nobody argued.
“You, too,” she said to Connor. “Take your brother.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he asked, querulous.
“I don’t know,” Bess said through gritted teeth, understanding now his humor from before. “Why don’t you get in that pretty car Daddy bought you and find a place to hang out for a few hours. Just…go, Connor.”
He wasn’t laughing now. He looked out to the deck, where the news of the busted party had spread. Connor swallowed hard, his mouth turning down.
“Mom—”
“Go, Connor,” Bess said. “You got what you wanted. Now go.”
He went. Within fifteen minutes the entire house had cleared. Even the blonde had gone, though whether dismissed by Nick or just following the crowd, Bess didn’t know.
She heard the sliding-glass door open and close.
“Not so nice when it’s you, is it?” he asked.
“Is that why you did it? Because you think I’m fucking Eddie?”
“Yes. That’s why I did it.”
She turned to him. “Well, thank you for being honest. I’m not fucking Eddie.”
“But you’d like to.”
“Oh, Nick.” Bess sighed, and covered her eyes with her palm for one minute. “It’s so much more than just that.”
“I know it is,” he said after a minute. She felt his breath on her face and took away her hand. “And that’s really why I did it.”
He kissed her, or she kissed him. It didn’t matter which. They went together into her bedroom, where he hesitated until she took his hands and put them on her body.
His tongue slid along her throat and down to the opened V of her blouse. When he found her nipples, already tight and hard, he moaned against her skin. His hands slid up her skirt and cupped her ass, grinding her against the bulge in his jeans.
His urgency moved her, but Bess put her hand on the back of his head, lightly, until he lifted it. Nick licked his mouth as he looked into her eyes, but he didn’t move away when she cupped his face in her hands and brushed his lips with hers, so softly it was more breath than caress.
“I love you,” she told him. “I think I loved you from the first time I saw you, and I have loved you for twenty years when I didn’t know where you were. I won’t stop loving you, no matter what else happens, Nick.”
He shuddered, but didn’t pull away from her. His eyes closed, though, and his mouth thinned, as though her truth was too painful to hear. Bess stroked her thumbs along his cheekbones, then down to his mouth. She’d already memorized every feature, every curve and line and scar, but she did it again now, slowly with her fingertips, knowing this was the very last time.
When she pulled his shirt off over his head, his skin bumped at once into gooseflesh. She warmed him w
ith her breath. Along his collarbone, down one arm and then the other, across his chest. Down his belly when she got her knees and tugged open the button and zipper. Along his cock when she pulled it free and helped him step out of his jeans.
She took him in her mouth, her hand at the base of his erection. He put his palms on her hair, not pushing or pulling. She sucked him gently, then harder, the way she knew gave him the most pleasure. His voice broke on the single syllable of her name.
Her mouth and hands moved on him until his fingers tightened in her hair and her name became a plea. Then she got off her knees. She took off her clothes while he watched, his eyes gleaming.
When she stood naked in front of him, she said, “What do you see, now?”
His hand passed over the hair lying unbound across her shoulders. She saw him catalog the curve of her hips and belly, the small silver lines that marked her as a mother. The lines at the corners of her eyes had never had a weight before, but under his gaze she felt them now.
“You.”
It was a sweet lie, and one she didn’t contradict.
“I still see you,” Nick said, his voice low.
She held out her arms and he pulled her onto the bed, where they lay facing each other, their legs twined and hands linked. “Tell me what happened.”
“I meant to come to you right away, but I was at the party. I’d been drinking.” His laugh rushed like lace-topped waves around her. “If I hadn’t been, I don’t think I’d have called you.”
She held him closer.
“I wanted to get in the car and drive, just drive. Just get to you. That’s all I could think of, was getting to you. But I knew I had to sober up first. So I went out, to the beach. I thought if I walked awhile that might help. And it was cold, you know? The water was cold. I thought if I splashed some on my face…well, if I took a swim. That would help. I thought I’d only jump in, get wet. I thought it would only take a few minutes and I could be on my way. To you.”
His voice snagged like a burr on silk. Heat leaked from the corners of Bess’s eyes and slipped between her lips. Salt water. Always salt water.
“I was stupid,” Nick whispered.
“You didn’t know,” she whispered back.
“It took my feet out from under me. And all I could think of was how you were waiting, and I was going to fuck it all up again. How I was going to let you down.”
“Shh,” she soothed. “I don’t blame you for any of it.”
They lay in silence for a long time.
“I have to go,” he told her at last.
“I know you do.”
Nick shook his head, his hair moving on the pillow. “I want to go. I’m sorry, Bess. I’m so sorry, but I do.”
Her throat had gone so tight she was certain she wouldn’t be able to answer, but she managed just the same. “I know that, too, Nick. I know.”
Bess had become the ocean, always breaking against the rocks but never staying broken. Her love was the ocean, too, endless and always changing, yet forever the same.
He moved on top of her and inside her, and she held on to him as tightly as she could for as long as she could, but the pleasure wouldn’t be held back no matter how she wished not to feel it. Pleasure was an ocean surrounding and filling her, and they swam in it together without holding anything back.
She wanted to sleep in his arms, but that was a selfish wish and one she put aside.
“It’s time to go, love,” she told him.
“I don’t know how.”
Bess kissed him. “I know how.”
She took him down to the water, which had gone cold in anticipation of the winter. Wavelets frothed around their ankles. She held his hand. She led him a few steps farther, and the cold water splashed to their knees. Her teeth chattered when the waves began to swirl around their thighs, but Bess didn’t turn back. With Nick’s hand in hers, she dived deep into the cold, black water, and she let it take them both away.
CHAPTER 46
Now
Drowning wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. Her mouth didn’t want to open. Her lungs didn’t want to take in water instead of air. Her body fought to live.
Nick’s mouth pressed on hers in a kiss harsher than any he’d ever given her. Her mouth parted, but instead of his tongue’s swipe, air pushed itself down her throat and into her lungs. Her head broke the surface, gasping; her arms and legs beat at the water.
She swam until the waves turned her upside down and she scraped along the bottom with sand in her hair, her eyes, her mouth. She swam until the ocean tossed her up onto the shore, where she lay panting, every muscle aching and her fingers and toes digging into the cold, wet sand, and she wondered if she was alive or dead.
“Mom!” She heard two voices shouting, felt the roughness of more sand kicked across her as her sons both knelt beside her on the beach.
“Mom, are you okay?” Connor shook her, his voice quavering with fear. “Mom, Mom, please be okay.”
He was crying, Bess realized. They both were. Both her sons were crying, and she put aside her own grief and pain to sit up and clutch them both against her, to reassure them she was all right. That she hadn’t gone and left them before they were ready for her to do so.
She put aside her grief and let them help her to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Go on in the house. I’ll be right there.”
They didn’t want to, of course, but she told them to do it, so they did. Bess looked out to the ocean, always breaking and never broken, and she put aside her grief, not for her sons or for herself, but finally, for Nick.
She let him go.
* * *
From the deck, Bess watched the swirling lights of the beach patrol car cast the sand in alternating shades of red and blue. Connor had insisted on calling the police, and Bess hadn’t resisted, though she knew there was no purpose. She’d told them the truth, that she and a man named Nick Hamilton had gone for a swim. The undertow had taken them, but she’d managed to swim to shore.
They’d asked her for more information, which she pretended not to know. If there were further questions, she supposed she’d deal with them later, but for now she sat wrapped in her old, wash-beaten cardigan and watched the officials wander to and fro, and finally, leave the beach marked with the tracks of their cars.
Even a crisis can’t destroy the appetites of teenage boys. When Connor and Robbie had asked her if she wanted to go with them for pizza, Bess said no. She also said no when they asked if she needed anything, including someone to stay with her. They took her at her word, trusting her with the un-shakable certainty that mothers were always right, and they left her alone.
“Bess?”
Eddie’s soft voice turned her head, but Bess didn’t get up from the deck chair. She did, however, move over enough on the double lounger to give him room to sit.
“Robbie called me. Told me what happened.”
Bess tucked her chilly hands into her pockets. Something smooth and rough tickled her palm. Her fingers closed around it.
“They said…you were with Nick.” Eddie’s voice went soft. “That he drowned.”
Bess nodded. She pulled out the shell Nick had given her. It had scraped the base of her thumb, but brought no blood.
She waited for the questions she would be unable to answer, but Eddie didn’t ask. He put his arm around her. He gave her his warmth, and her face found the solace of his shoulder.
She cried for a very long time, but when she was done, Eddie was still there, solid and real against her. He was her friend. More, if she wanted it from him, and though Bess wasn’t sure she was ready for that, she was no longer fighting to make sure she’d never be.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, don’t miss USA TODAY bestselling author Tiffany Reisz’s THE ROSE, available now from MIRA Books.
Keep reading for a sneak peek!
CHAPTER 1
Lady Ophelia Anne Fitzroy Godwick—Lia to her friends—called
the emergency meeting of the Young Ladies’ Gardening & Tennis Club of Wingthorn Hall to order.
“If I could have your attention, please,” Lia said to the three young ladies in her bedroom. “We might have a problem here.”
“No alcohol at this meeting,” Georgy muttered as she scrolled through her phone. “That’s a massive problem.”
“I’m not joking,” Lia said.
She met their eyes, one by one, so they could see she was serious.
Georgy—blonde, buxom and wearing strapless yellow tulle—sat prettily in Lia’s armchair. Rani, brown-skinned, dark-eyed, tall and slender, lay in her red satin best across Lia’s bed. Jane, the bookish brunette with secret talents hidden behind cat-eye glasses, leaned against Lia’s bedpost in off-the-shoulder ivory.
Lia, in a vintage party dress of palest rose pink, stood with her back to the fireplace facing all three of them—a general addressing her troops, a knitting needle in her hand in lieu of a swagger stick.
“What’s the problem, boss?” Rani asked.
“Fourteen,” Lia said. “The three of you and fourteen of them.”
Rani’s eyes widened.
“Fourteen of our clients are coming?” she repeated.
That got the ladies’ attention. For the Young Ladies’ Gardening & Tennis Club of Wingthorn Hall was not a gardening club, and they didn’t play much tennis, either. The YLG&T Club was, in fact, an escort agency.
“Which ones?” Jane asked.
Lia quickly rattled off their names, ranks and identifying proclivities.
Georgy tucked her iPhone into the bodice of her gown, muttering. “If Sir Trevor tries to lick my feet during dinner, I’m not going to be happy.”
“Nobody is licking anybody’s feet at dinner,” Lia said. “Except maybe Gogo.”
Her dog, an enormous gray deerhound who looked perpetually confused, raised his head at the sound of his name.
“Go back to sleep, boy.” Obedient to his mistress, he laid his long face down onto his paws and closed his eyes. “As I was saying, we have clients coming here tonight so we need to be on our best behavior. When you go downstairs, just remember, this is my graduation party, not an orgy. And this is Wingthorn Hall, not a brothel.”
