Beyond Now: The Hutton Family Book 3

by Brooks, Abby

  He studied me for a long moment and I felt like he could see right through me. Like he could tell I was avoiding the scary stuff and hiding behind sex. Like he was going to call me on it and things were going to get very real, very fast. Expectation rose inside me. The conversation wouldn’t be easy, but it was necessary. And maybe, just maybe, we could figure out a way to keep what we were building.

  But then he pressed his hips into my hand, smiling down at me. “Oh, I’ll give you a reason to be scared all right,” he said before scooping me up, throwing me over his shoulder, and carrying me back to his bedroom.

  There was an insistence to our movements that night, a desperation that hadn’t been there before. A frantic need that drove us forward, denying our awareness of the rest of the world. I dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his thick length in my hand, swirling my tongue around his tip. His hips pressed forward and I opened my mouth for him, moaning as he quivered in pleasure I was giving him. His hands fisted in my hair, holding me in place, his crown pressing against the back of my throat. I swallowed and the sound he made sent molten desire through my body.

  To know I could make him feel that way, down on my knees and vulnerable to him, had me feeling powerful. I drew my tongue along the underbelly of his shaft, running my fingernails up his legs. He made another sound that had me throbbing with need, then helped me to my feet and out of my clothes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That felt amazing, but I want all of you.”

  When he plunged into me, I dropped my head back onto the pillow and closed my eyes, but Caleb slid a hand around the nape of my neck and lifted my gaze to his. “Stay with me,” he said. “Don’t look away.”

  I met his gaze as his hips rolled into mine again and again. We finished together, our bodies unlocking as one and I fell asleep tucked into his arms, warm and content and safe next to him.

  Twenty-One

  Maisie

  The next day, Caleb had to work, so I went back to my room at The Hut. After all, the family had gone to the trouble of getting the place ready for me, the least I could do was spend a little time there. After a long soak in the tub of awesomeness, I curled up in a chair on the private patio and turned on my phone, bracing myself for the barrage of incoming missed calls and emails.

  Whatever I expected, reality was worse. I flipped through the list without really reading them as anxiety flooded my system. How could one redheaded rock star cause so much chaos because I managed to get him a part in a movie? In what universe was this a bad thing? There were people with hungry bellies, children living in warzones, families struggling to survive on the very same planet where Collin West was pissed off because he didn’t have enough time onscreen.

  It all seemed so inconsequential. So utterly ridiculous. But, by ignoring it all in favor of spending time with Caleb, I was putting my job at risk. And if I lost my job, I would lose everything.

  I thumbed through the messages from Brighton, looking for anything that might resemble a message from a friend, but all I found were questions about work. There wasn’t one single email, text, or call waiting for me on that phone that had anything to do with me as a person.

  Maisie Brown wasn’t a human being. She was a commodity.

  I opened Facebook and scrolled through the list of waiting friend requests, all from faces I didn’t recognize. My feed was filled with people who probably didn’t even know my name and the same thing was waiting for me over on Instagram. I didn’t even bother opening the app before I locked my phone and put it down.

  Those messages could wait. Whatever was happening in Los Angeles wasn’t life-threatening. They could go another day or two before I hopped back into solving other people’s first world problems.

  I was meeting Caleb back at his house that evening, so I spent the day shaving my legs, walking on the beach, and lounging in the sun. Cat—the hotel’s masseuse—had a cancellation and offered me the time slot, which I happily took and sighed as her deft hands worked at untangling the knots of stress I carried in my shoulders.

  “You seem so happy,” she said. “I’m actually surprised to find you’re hiding enough anxiety to do this.” She pressed on a particularly painful spot on my back, then slowly started working out the knot.

  “I’m just as surprised as you are, honestly,” I replied, moaning a little as she kneaded the troublesome muscle. “I am happy.”

  Cat focused her attention on my back and I urged myself to relax under her skilled fingers. When she started speaking again, I almost missed it, her voice was so quiet. “Sometimes we’re so busy trying to create a wonderful life, we don’t realize how much of it is smoke and mirrors, lies we tell ourselves to get through the day without crying. At least that’s what happened to me, before I met Lucas.”

  I let those words roll around in my head for a bit, trying to untangle how much of it applied to my life. Before I came to the Keys, I would have sworn I was happy. That I had it all. That my life was perfect in its fairytale-style, living-the-dream completeness. And now, in the span of just a few days, it felt like I’d been lying to myself the whole time. That the life I built was teetering on a weak foundation and that I was the same lost little girl I thought I had outgrown, the only difference was that now I wore designer shoes.

  “Sheesh,” Cat said as she worked into my back. “Just when I thought I was making progress, you go and get all tense again.”

  I did my best to relax. To focus on my breathing. To imagine all the good that I had. My mind went immediately to Caleb. Not my fancy office or my well-decorated apartment. Not to the connections I had cultivated with influential people in the business, but to the charming man with his old-fashioned phone and low-tech website. To Matthew McConaughey’s love child with his ridiculous fake accent and cool-as-a-cucumber approach to life. I found myself smiling and Cat let out a sigh of relief.

  “There we go,” she said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Just keep breathing and doing what you’re doing. Whatever it is, you’re on the right track.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, I pulled up in front of Caleb’s house and found him waiting for me on the steps. He stood as I killed the engine and climbed out of the car.

  “There’s the face I’ve been waiting all day to see,” he said, opening his arms as I closed the distance between us. “How was your day?”

  “Confusing,” I said, before I could talk myself out of being honest.

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that.” Caleb pressed a kiss into my forehead and then tilted my chin up to meet his gaze. “I made you something.”

  “Made me something?”

  A hint of embarrassment crossed his face as he smiled. “Yeah. Maybe it’s silly. But it seemed…right.” With that strange statement, Caleb took me by the hand and led me into his house.

  There, taking up most of the living room, was a blanket fort. A giant, ridiculous, wonderful blanket fort with pillows spread out inside, a bottle of wine, and a picnic basket open and revealing dinner.

  “You didn’t…” I said, turning to him with a wide grin.

  “Oh, I definitely did.” He made a broad gesture with his arm. “Welcome to Fort Casie the Second.”

  “You know what? I’m so tickled that you went to all this trouble, that I’m not even going to fight you on the name.” I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled inside, my purse slipping off my shoulder and dragging on the floor as I surveyed the space. “You thought of everything, didn’t you?”

  Caleb joined me, his large body brushing the blankets and sending a shudder of protest through the fort. “Mostly, I just thought of you.”

  “You are so amazing. Do you know that?” I leaned over to kiss him, breathing him in, desperate to have as much of him as I could before…before…

  Caleb kissed me back with an urgency that matched mine, drawing me close and holding me tight, as if he never intended to let me go. “There’s so much to talk about,” he said when he finally released
me. “And we’ve both been dancing around the hard topics. I thought this would make it easier to stop avoiding what we should have said days ago.”

  “God, you’re perfect. It’s no wonder I love you.” The words slipped out so easily, so naturally, I barely had time to think about what I was saying.

  He smiled sadly, questions dancing in his eyes. “That’s the second time you said that, you know. That you love me.”

  “Yeah?” I drew my eyebrows together and tilted my head.

  “Do you?” Caleb shifted, adjusting his long legs. “Do you love me?”

  “Caleb…I’ve always loved you. How can you even ask me that?”

  “Because the way a person loves their childhood friend is different than the way a man loves a woman.”

  “You’re not wasting any time getting to those hard questions.”

  “We’ve already wasted enough time, don’t you think?” Caleb reached for the bottle of wine and poured us each a glass. “Let’s move on to an easier question, then,” he said as he handed one to me. “Are you happy?”

  I took a long drink as his first question bounced around in my brain. Did I love him? My heart answered the question without difficulty, the same way I had answered every question that came to Caleb.

  Yes.

  But was that residual love from when we were kids? Because of how he treated me? How he taught me to treat others? Or did I genuinely love him? The way a woman loves a man?

  He was right, it was best to move on to easier questions. I gestured around Fort Casie the Second. “I’m a grown woman, sitting in a blanket fort with my best friend. How can I not be happy?”

  “Take another drink, Masie.”

  I gave him a questioning look but Caleb refused to say anything more, simply gesturing at the full glass in my hand, so I did as he requested.

  “Let’s try this again without any of the bullshit. Are you happy? Not just right now. But last year. Tomorrow. In this great and glorious life you have built, are you happy?”

  This was getting serious. Quickly. I took yet another massive gulp of wine and let out a long sigh as I held out my glass for a refill. “I thought I was. I thought I had everything—the great mysteries of life and personal satisfaction—I thought I had it all figured out.”

  And just like that, the floodgates opened. I told him about Collin West and his ridiculous temper tantrum. I told him about my friendship with Brighton, how she knew Caleb was a childhood friend, but never even bothered to question how we came to end up as adults in the same bar. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” I said with a smirk. “I’m afraid that sums up my relationship with Brighton. I’m starting to think the only reason she’s nice to me at all is because I’m her fiercest competition at Shift.”

  I told him about endless hours of work that I thought meant I was winning at life, and then I told him about lists and lists of so-called friends on my social media accounts. “I’m surrounded by people and feel completely and utterly alone. And within days of reuniting with you, it feels like everything I have is worth less, because you…you are worth so much more. You’ve made my life so full in such a short time, and it’s made me realize how empty I really am.” I finished that diatribe with another swig of wine.

  Caleb echoed the motion, throwing back the drink like a shot, then refilling his glass.

  “What about you?” I asked, desperate for a chance to breathe. “Are you happy?”

  “I was perfectly content in my simple life. But now that I know what it’s like to have you with me, I’m not sure how things will be when you leave. You’re…” He shrugged. “It’s always been you, Maisie. From the first time we met to the last time I saw you and all the years separating then from now, every woman has been held up to your standard and every woman has been found lacking. Why do you think I stay away from short-term? Because I’m looking for the meaning I had when you were in my life.”

  I shook my head, the rational side of me outright rejecting the thought that he could have spent his whole life loving me. We were just kids! How could I have had such a lasting impact on him?

  And yet I’d spent my entire life loving him. He was my inspiration every time life got hard and I didn’t know which way to go. His picture was the only personal item in my office. In fact, when you included the décor in my apartment, his picture was the only personal item in my life.

  Caleb continued. “I didn’t know I was doing it at the time, obviously. Holding every woman I encountered up to your standard. It’s only now, that you’re here, that it’s all made sense.”

  “So what happens when I leave?” My eyes met his and found all the fear and uncertainty I was feeling mirrored back at me.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” he asked with a weak smile.

  I took another drink, eyeing the dinner sitting untouched in the picnic basket. “You asked me if I love you. The answer is the same one I’ve been giving you since I’ve been here. You asked me to stay and I said yes. You asked me to dinner and I said yes. You asked me to come home with you and I said yes.”

  “And now I’m asking if you love me.”

  “And I’m saying yes.” There hadn’t been enough time to fall in love, and yet, we’d had our entire childhood. Adult Caleb fell so easily into his old place in my heart. He was still everything I needed. The ways he had grown and matured had done so hand in hand with the ways I had grown and matured and somehow, inexplicably, he was still my person. The one human being in existence to see all of me, to understand me, and to love me anyway.

  Or at least I hoped he loved me anyway. It sounded like he loved me, but this wasn’t a good time to make an assumption.

  “Caleb…?”

  “Yes, Maisie.” He took my hand in his, already answering the question I hadn’t yet asked. “Yes, I love you.”

  A trembling breath shuddered past my lips. The only way our love could work is by one of us giving up our life to move across the country for the other. After years of hard work, I had the financial security I prayed for—literally, every night—when I was a little girl. I no longer had to suffer through wanting something I needed. If something caught my eye, I bought it.

  And yet…

  I needed Caleb. And no amount of money could bring him into my life without tearing one of us out by the roots. If I chose to keep the life I had built with Shift, I would lose Caleb.

  Everything I ever wanted at odds with everything I ever needed.

  Fortune reversing over and over again.

  A coin flipping through the air, our fate, our love caught in the balance.

  “So, now what?” I asked.

  “I guess it’s time for the most important question of all.” Hope tugged at the corners of his mouth, crinkling in the corners of his eyes. “How long are you staying, Maisie? How long do I have you?”

  The question lingered between us. I was supposed to leave days ago. We were already living on borrowed time. The answer was both soon and forever, both words caught in my throat because neither one made any sense.

  My phone buzzed. “Shit,” I said, reaching into my purse for the thing. “I forgot to set it on silent.” Lombardi’s name flashed across the screen, but I dismissed the call and silenced the phone. Before I had time to get my thoughts back in order, the screen lit up with another call, which I declined again.

  Caleb gave me a sad smile. “Things are getting pretty bad for you, aren’t they? Because I’m being so greedy.”

  A text came in. “I’m the one who took vacation time out of the blue. This isn’t your fault.” Another text. And another. I pressed a finger to the power button, eager to turn the stupid thing off though I knew that if Lombardi was calling, things were bad and ignoring him would only make things worse.

  “Don’t turn it off.” Caleb shook his head. “I’ll still be here when you’re done solving whatever problem is on the other end of that line.”

  And so, when the phone lit up with one more call, I took a deep b
reath and answered.

  Twenty-Two

  Caleb

  I poured a glass of wine while Maisie got an earful from her boss. I drank said glass of wine, my eyes locked on hers, as I tried to ignore the stream of curse words that asshole flung her way. Maisie sat beside me in the blanket fort, shell-shocked, until finally she mouthed an apology, then turned her attention to the other man.

  Her life was falling to pieces…all because I couldn’t let her go. How selfish would I have to be, to expect her to keep ignoring her job, just because we happened to cross paths at a bar one night while she was on vacation? I hadn’t canceled a single tour while Maisie was here, while she had been turning off her phone every time we got together. That wasn’t balanced. Nor was it fair.

  The problem was, and this was a big one…I couldn’t help but be selfish. I wanted more of her. All of her. From the moment I built the blanket fort, my plan had been to ask her to stay. It was wrong to expect her to choose between her future and her past, but this was my last chance to keep her from walking out of my life forever. Again. I expected her to say no. What did she have here, other than me? I would respect that answer, because at my core, I understood, but I couldn’t stop hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would say yes.

  “Mr. Lombardi. You have no right to talk to me like that.” Maisie opened her mouth to continue speaking and was interrupted by another stream of angry conversation.

  “I had every right to take the time off. Everyone at Shift accrues personal days at the same rate, then wears that number like a badge of honor. I have ninety-six. Ninety-six personal days! Respectfully, I ask you to do the math on that. It’s been a while since I’ve taken any time for myself.” Maisie frowned, then climbed out of the fort, pinching the phone between her ear and her shoulder and putting her ass in my face on the way. Under any other circumstance, it would have been adorable. But under these particular circumstances, not so much.