The Careless Boyfriend

by Erika Kelly

  “That was hilarious.” She straightened, looking at Gray to explain. “We—”

  “—wanted to see how far apart we could get and still hear each other.” Robert deliberately cut Gray out of the conversation. “But I took it too far and started climbing down the cliff. Shit, do you still have that scar?”

  “Of course.”

  Robert reached across the table to cradle her hand, turning it over, and running a finger along the fleshy part of her palm. “I told you not to follow me down there.”

  “Where did you think I should go?” She pulled her hand back. “I was completely alone in the woods, it was getting dark, and there were creepy sounds out there.” She pointed a finger at Robert. “And you weren’t using the walkie talkie anymore, because you wanted to go home in time for—”

  “The Sopranos.”

  Knox shook her head. “Nope. The Amazing Race. You wanted to enter with Gray.” She nudged him with an elbow. “Do you remember how obsessed he was? He was so worried they’d end the show before you guys were old enough to be on it.”

  “You’re right,” Robert said. “You’re totally right. It was The Amazing Race. In fact, that’s why I tried to climb down that cliff.”

  “You were in training.”

  “Exactly. But then you came after me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jesus.” When he opened them, he clasped his hands behind his head. “I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest.”

  “What happened?” Gray asked.

  “You don’t know?” Robert asked, at the same time Knox said, “I found him. He was making his way down the side of the mountain…more like skidding down. He kept landing on his butt, and I called out to him to wait for me, but he couldn’t—”

  “Dude, gravity had me fuckin’ careening down that mountain. But I turned around and saw you jump. You jumped off the ledge, and I thought you were good, you landed, but then you lost your footing. Slammed onto a boulder and sliced your hand open. Jesus. I felt so bad.”

  “Yeah, but you took really good care of me,” Knox said. “You gave me a piggyback ride to your house. Cleaned my wound. Gave me the last Klondike bar.”

  A phone chimed. Knox reached into her tote bag and pulled it out, reading the screen. “It’s Delilah. She wants me to come to the kitchen and say hi. I’ll be right back.” She got up and took off, both of them watching until she disappeared behind the double doors.

  When she was out of sight, Gray turned to his friend. “Come on, man. Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?” Robert reached for his water and took a long, slow drink. He set the glass down, pulled the napkin out from under the silverware, and dabbed his mouth.

  He was not going to play games. Not where Knox was concerned. “I thought you were all about your career.”

  “I am.”

  “Then, why play games with me?”

  “Oh. Is that we’re calling it? Because I call it catching up with my ex-girlfriend.”

  “I get what you lost, and it sucks. But it’s been seven years. You made your choices. Don’t try to mess up what Knox and I have.”

  All civility left, as Robert planted his feet on the floor and lunged forward so fast water sloshed out of glasses. “And you don’t think it’s fucked up to hook up with my ex? What about the bro code? You wouldn’t go after one of your brother’s exes.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t go after any woman who’d been with any of my friends or brothers.” He paused to make his point very, very clear. “Except for Knox. And I think you know that.”

  “Oh, I knew.” Robert’s smile turned hard and mean. “Everyone knew. You had it bad for my girl.”

  A flood of heat washed up his neck, burning the back of his neck, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “You had everything a guy could ever want,” Robert said. “Brothers, a dad, money…and everything you touched turned to gold. You had everything…except the one thing you wanted most.” He leaned in so close, Gray could see the birthmark on the edge of Robert’s jaw. “My girlfriend.”

  And that was it. Gray’d had enough. “My dad treated you like his own. You were part of my family until you stole from him. You had money, and you had skills. If you hadn’t chosen drugs over boarding, you could’ve competed with us. You made your choices. And, yes, I wanted her, but I never touched her, never made a move. I respected your relationship even through all the years you treated her like shit.”

  “Right, Saint Gray. Perfect fucking Gray Bowie. You want to lay it all out on the table, then let’s do it.” He stabbed a finger at Gray. “You don’t bail on friends when they need you most.”

  So, he’d lied about being cool with everything. No surprise there. “I didn’t bail on you. I tried everything I could to help you, to get you clean. You didn’t want it, and when I finally figured that out, I backed away. I wasn’t going down with you.”

  “You stayed for Knox. You wanted to be her hero…it’s the only reason you stuck around as long as you did. Don’t pretend it was anything other than that.”

  “Are you fucking serious? You know how hard I tried. You want to blame me, but you’re the one who ended the friendship. You ended it when you chose drugs over me. When you chose to get high over hanging out with me. Every time you asked me to bail you out of trouble? That was using me. It sure as hell wasn’t friendship. Stealing my dad’s watch, showing up wasted to a competition? Friends don’t do that. But you’re right about one thing. Nothing—nothing—made me sicker than watching you hurt her. That was the deal-breaker for me. How many times did you let her down? Break her heart? I couldn’t stand it.”

  “And yet she still chose me. Must’ve sucked, huh? Mr. Perfect couldn’t get the girl.”

  He’d never seen this side of affable, charming Robert, and suddenly the picture came into focus. “Jesus, did you ever love her? Or has it always been competition with me?”

  “Everything okay here?” Knox sat down, looking between them.

  “Just clearing the air,” Robert said.

  She gazed up at Gray with concern. “You okay?” She stroked his thigh.

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.” She drew in a breath. “Guys, whatever issues you have to work through, I’m going to ask that we deal with it after fashion week, okay? Please? Can we do that?”

  “Of course.” But Gray wasn’t sure they could.

  Because he’d never been less sure of Robert’s motives.

  Knox patted her face dry, then pulled the elastic out of her hair. “Gray?”

  “Yeah?”

  Leaning back, she looked through the doorway into her bedroom and found him facing the window, stark naked, stretching the resistance band. Holy mother of God. Feet braced, he stood there with one arm stretched all the way out and the other bent at the elbow and crossing his chest, making his biceps bulge. The muscles of his back flexed, his broad shoulders tapering to a trim waist and rock-hard bubble ass.

  That ass started moving, bunching and releasing like some Magic Mike dancer. When she glanced up, she caught his big grin in the window’s reflection. “Perv.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “You’re the one thinking sketchy thoughts about my ass.”

  “It’s really nice.” She made a circling motion with her finger. “Why don’t you face me when we’re having a conversation?”

  “It’s just safer for me this way.”

  “Safer?”

  “Yeah. Once I show you the frontal view, you’ll leap across the bed like a mountain lion.”

  “If you’re talking about your wiener…I don’t know, Gray. At this point, it’s just kind of…same old same old, you know?”

  “You sure about that?” He turned around to reveal a hard-on like a steel bar.

  “Oh, my God, Gray. Is that from staring at your own reflection?” She balled up her hand towel and tossed it at him. Of course, he snatched it out of the air. “If you’re about done with your Mr. Universe poses, do you think we c
an go to bed now?”

  “That depends. You going to keep me up all night with your insatiable needs?”

  Pretending to give it some thought, she let her gaze wander from those strong shoulders to the sculpted pecs, down his ripped torso, to his thick, long erection. “Yes.”

  He got back to stretching. “Then I’ve got to stay in shape.”

  “You’re very disciplined.” She flicked off the light and sashayed toward him. “I admire that.” When she reached him, she set her hands lightly on his chest. He dropped the resistance band and reached for her, but she shook her head. “Don’t let me interrupt your routine.”

  She skimmed those powerful shoulders, the skin smooth and hot, and down his thickly muscled arms, her palms registering every curve and bulge. Up on her toes, she leaned into his neck and breathed him in. “You smell as good as you look.” Reaching around, she stroked his back, the muscles flexing under her touch. When she got to his ass, she squeezed hard.

  He grunted. “You’ve got about ten seconds before I toss you on the bed.”

  “Hold your horses.” With her hands full of his ass, she kissed the hollow at the base of his neck, then wandered to one nipple, which she licked and sucked before trailing wet kisses across to the other one.

  His hand came to the back of her hand, and she shook him off. “Dammit, Knox.”

  “It’s not every day a woman gets the run of a body like this.”

  He cupped her cheeks, tilted her face. “I’m not a body. I’m Gray.”

  Clarity hit her like an alarm jarring her out of a deep sleep. She didn’t know why it had taken her so long to get it. He’d grown up feeling invisible in his family, but then she’d gone and done the same thing when all she did was talk about Robert.

  She brought her hands around to his chest, sweeping up and around his neck. “You should know that it’s not the hard body that turns me on—lots of men are fit. It’s not your handsome face, your medals and trophies, and it’s certainly not your money. It’s the man who takes responsibility for the actions of his friend, when she drives a Jeep through someone’s living room.”

  “It was your living room.”

  “You would’ve gone above and beyond no matter whose career Amelia had wiped out. I see you, Gray, and I feel so damn lucky to be with you. Every minute of every day, you’re on my mind, and you can bet your very hard ass that the immediate thought that follows is how grateful I am that you chose me.” She dropped to her knees, and the vulnerability in his eyes only made her want him more.

  Grasping his erection with both hands, one on top of the other, she stroked him in twisting pulls. She took pity on his strained expression by licking the head with the flat of her tongue.

  His fingers dug into her hair, barely touching her scalp, but poised to grip her if she dared pull off. It made her smile. Until she sucked him deep into her mouth, one hand tugging on him, the other clutching his ass to keep him right where she needed him.

  His hips flexed, and he started pumping. She watched his chest rise and fall, his eyelids lower. Loved the way his hands clamped down on the sides of her head, the tremble in his thighs, and the groans deep in his throat.

  “Fuck, Knox. Fuck.”

  He was moving too fast for her to flick her tongue, so she used suction instead. He had that just-showered scent of soap and man, and his fingers digging into her hair, the rough punch of his hips, made her drenched with desire.

  “I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come so fucking hard.” His fingers shifted to the back of her head, holding her in place, while he released in short, hard thrusts.

  She sucked and licked, drawing out his climax, and she was rewarded with animalistic sounds and the twisting of his hips.

  He let out a harsh exhalation, before letting her go and sliding out of her mouth. “Jesus. You’re going to kill me.” He fell back onto the bed.

  “It’s a good way to go, though, right?” She got in beside him.

  “The best.”

  “Come on. Get under the covers.”

  “I can’t feel my toes.”

  In the cover of dark, she eased off the bed and lowered to a crouch. His legs hung off the mattress, elevating his feet. She gathered a lock of hair and brushed the strands over his bare soles.

  He jerked. “Okay, okay.”

  “You said you were numb. Just making sure you’re all right.”

  She loved the rumble of his sleepy laughter. He reached for her and hauled her onto the bed. They both got under the covers, and his big arm wrapped around her, enfolding her in his heat and strength.

  It didn’t take long for his breathing to even out, and his muscles to slacken.

  But she was wired and knew she wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon. Gently, she lifted his arm from her waist.

  “Hey.” He sounded adorably sleepy. “Where you going?”

  “Go to sleep. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  His head popped off the pillow, and he squinted at her. “What’s wrong?”

  It would have been so easy to say, Nothing, but she didn’t want that kind of relationship with him. “I’m scared.”

  “You think Robert’s going to screw us over?”

  “You know, you always think it’s Robert who’s got the power to hurt me the most, but you’re wrong.”

  “Wrong?” He sat up, shoving the hair off his face. His powerful body belied his confused, boyish expression. “What’re you talking about?”

  As a kid, she’d gotten the concept of love all wrong. What she had with Robert was loyalty, obligation, guilt. Because he was her boyfriend, she’d forced the jumble of powerful emotions to fit in a box labeled love.

  But with Gray, she had respect, awe, gratitude, affection…it was love. Pure and simple. How did she know? Because losing Robert had made her feel guilty. Losing Gray had ruined her. “It’s you.”

  “Me?”

  “You think I left town because prom night was my wake-up call, but it had nothing to do with Robert crashing into a plate glass window. There was absolutely nothing new about that.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was you leaving me. You were the one constant in my life. The one person who seemed to like me unconditionally. No matter how hard people tried to humiliate me, no matter how many times I lost my shit over where Robert was or what he was doing, how hard I took it when I got a rejection letter from Parson’s, you were always there. You were the only barrier between me and loneliness. Until you weren’t. Until I was so twisted that you couldn’t stand me one more second.”

  “That’s not why I left.”

  “Yes, it was, and you don’t have to lie about it. You didn’t leave because you were in love with your best friend’s girlfriend. You’d put up with that for years. You left because I disgusted you. And that was the coldest, harshest wake-up call I could have gotten.” She got out of bed, too upset to lay beside him. Because in a week, he’d leave for New Zealand, while she took off for New York.

  And she was terrified to lose him all over again.

  “It gutted me,” she continued. “I didn’t think I’d ever recover. I felt shame and…horror. I couldn’t even live in my own skin. My mom was working on the ranch, so she wasn’t around, Robert was in rehab, and you were gone, so all I had was myself, and I thought if I didn’t change my life I would die. So, I left. Packed my suitcase, got on a bus, and moved to New York, where I could grow a new skin.”

  “You got it wrong.” He shifted to the edge of the mattress, elbows on his knees, gazing up at her with an earnest expression. “I was disgusted with me. All those years I saw myself as the outsider looking in. But that night, I realized that I was as caught up in my relationship with you as you were with Robert, and I needed to cut myself off. I needed a clean break. When you wouldn’t come with me, I got that you’d never be mine, and so I left.” He stood up. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I honestly thought you wouldn’t even notice, that you’d be so invested in Robert’s rehab and in keeping him
clean, that you wouldn’t even notice I was missing.” He stroked the hair off her face.

  “Robert was my job,” she said. “He was responsibility, and that was fueled by the terrible guilt that if I took my eyes off him, he might die, and I couldn’t live with that. You, you were my happy place. You made me laugh and listened to my dreams and fears. You were everything good. And when you left me, my world went dark. I have never been so scared in my life. Not as a teenager alone in New York City or a young woman in Paris for her first job, not when Luc stole my sketchbook, and not when Amelia drove into my living room. The worst day of my life was when I understood you were gone for good. And I’ll be honest with you. Deep down, I’m not sure I believe you’re going to stay this time.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Knox stood in the parking lot, leaves skittering across the asphalt in a crisp autumn breeze, and watched the truck spew exhaust as it turned onto the highway. Every time she blinked, she saw the profusion of tulle, organza, and lace imprinted on her eyelids.

  Her dresses were headed to New York.

  I’m doing this.

  It’s happening.

  She was so giddy with excitement she wanted to scream.

  The wrong arms came around her from behind and lifted her off the ground. “It’s done, baby. We’re on our way to Bridal Fashion Week.” Robert set her down and opened his arms, but when she didn’t step into them, he faltered.

  “You have to cut it out. We’re not together. I’m with Gray, and you can’t call me ‘baby’ or touch me like that.”

  “Pretty sure he can handle a hug between old friends, but whatever. You can be excited from over there.” He grinned broadly. “And I’ll do it right here. Because, honey, it is on.”

  “I can’t believe it.” She pressed her hands together. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. It’s real. We did this. We made it happen.”

  “No, you did. I’d put it in my rearview mirror.” He’d gotten fifteen models, really good stylists and make-up artists, and even some of the best influencers. In the space of a few weeks, he’d pulled it all together.