Mer rolls her eyes and zips her coat up over the low-cut, long-sleeved shirt she’s wearing. Her braids, she flips over her shoulder. “Dios mio, wait here.”
She releases me and my back finds the wall a short ways down the hall. Standing in front of Sara’s neighbor’s door, the scent of weed thickening my already cloudy thoughts, I’ll be out of sight, which I’m grateful for, but I won’t be able to see her either. I lick my lips and watch in horror as Mer’s knuckles crack against the cream-colored door. It swings open almost immediately.
“Oh.” I hear her voice, tinted by surprise and my heart races faster. “Hello.”
“Hi,” Mer says, sounding more human than I’ve ever heard her. “My name is Mer. I date Knox, one of Dixon and Charlie’s brothers.” She holds out her hand.
Sara’s porcelain palm stretches out to meet it tentatively, still cautious. Good girl. “Hi. Sorry, I’m just…is there something wrong. Is he hurt?”
He. The word rings repetitively, filling up all the silence surrounding her voice. Which one of us is she thinking of, is she concerned about?
Mer laughs and shows Sara her palms. “They’re both fine. Well, one is more fine than the other.”
“What happened?”
“Well, one of them happened to ask out a girl the other one is in love with so that one went on a bender then attacked the other one when he tried to leave the house. They’re both fine though, physically at least.”
I could kill Mer. Kill her and kiss her in the same second for having the balls to say what I couldn’t. Sh… What the hell is Sara going to say? What is she going to do? My fists are shoved into my pockets and I clutch hard at the material as if it’ll keep me from falling over. I’m swaying, even though my back is flat against the wall, spine stiff, shoulders knotted. She still hasn’t said anything, and my whole world is crumbling to the ground. Rejection has never come easily to me and this is the first time I’ve been rejected by something I want.
“He told you that?” That’s what she says. I expect something more, but why I do, I don’t know. Her skepticism is the least that I deserve.
Mer shrugs both shoulders to her ears. “Why don’t you ask him? He’s right here.”
A pause. Then, “Here?” Her voice catches, and the word comes out butchered. I’ve never heard her anything less than eloquent.
“Yeah I mean, right here.” Mer jerks her elbow towards me and glances vaguely in my direction, as if there were somewhere else she’d rather be. I can tell however, that she’s loving this. I would too if I were her.
A pale hand stretches forward into the light. That hand is all I can see of her. “You mean, he’s in this hallway?”
“Yes.”
“Like right here? He can hear everything we’re saying?”
“Yep.”
Her face peeks around the doorframe and her expression is one of shock as she takes me in. “Sh…” She jerks back up to standing and disappears from sight.
Mer laughs. “So I’ll wait at the end of the hall, maybe give you two a few minutes to chat. But essentially, I’m here because we didn’t want to ruin your night. You asked for a night out and that is exactly what we plan to provide. We just weren’t quite sure if you would feel comfortable going out with just Dixon alone in his current uhh…state.”
Sara drops her pitch, but not low enough because I can still hear it. “How bad is it?”
“Fine,” I blurt out, voice raw from all of the liquor. I stand up and away from the wall and Mer lurches towards me when I try to take a step. This is embarrassing, because I want to shove her off, but have to use her as a crutch instead.
“I’m fine,” I repeat, blinking quickly. Everything is blurred – except for her. Sara, I can see in total clarity.
She’s standing just inside her apartment, arms crossed tight over her chest and the outfit she’s wearing makes my mouth water. She’s got on skin tight jeans and a royal blue shirt cut low enough I can see the swell of her cleavage. Her blonde hair falls around her shoulders in loose waves and the makeup she wears makes her look like she belongs in front of a camera, not staring at me with concern – or is it fear? revulsion? – in the middle of this dimly lit hall.
“You don’t have to come,” I say. “I just know that you got a sitter for Brant and you don’t get many nights off…wanted you to have a good time.” At least this was what Mer and my brothers said earlier.
The real reason I’m standing here is because I’m too weak to resist her. Never more so than now. She looks perfect enough I want to reprimand her for not wearing a trash bag out with my brother. She put herself together like this for him.
Her blue eyes beam up at me and she shifts a couple inches closer. Glancing at Mer, she says, “I’ll come out with you guys, but may I talk to Dixon for a second? If he’s okay to stand, I mean…”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, but neither woman is listening to me.
Mer edges me back until I’m against the wall. My head swims rapidly for a moment when I try to break free of her grip and stand on my own, unsupported. The effort is futile and when the world finally settles around me, I’m leaning where Mer put me. Sara is standing just out of reach and Mer is at the end of the hall, waiting and watching like a good babysitter. My core is fire and though I know Sara just agreed to come out with us and I should be happy about it, I’m still embarrassed to hell.
I expect her to lay into me, tell me off and reassure me that her feelings towards me could never be anything other than hostile, but when her lips part the guarded expression she wears falls. She reaches towards me and I’m stunned by the pressure of her hands on my face, my forehead, running underneath my collar to feel my chest.
“Sh…” she breathes, never finishing the word and I smile because of it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Your skin is fire, your pulse is fast and your eyes are bloodshot. How much did you drink?” I shake my head and her eyes narrow. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I drank as much as I could to forget you were going on a date with my brother.”
The words don’t seem to faze her. She repeats, “How many?”
“Two.”
“Two what?” Color rushes to her cheeks and I want to move closer to her, but know that wouldn’t be welcome right now.
“Two bottles.”
Her dark eyelashes arch up to her forehead. “Oh boy.” She exhales heavily. “That explains it then. Whiskey?”
“How’d you know?”
“Everyone knows you’re a whiskey man.” She pulls her arms back and crosses them, hands balled into tight little fists. The gesture only succeeds in pulling her tits closer together. I focus on her face with renewed intensity and she sucks in a breath. “You told them you loved me?”
I shake my head. Can’t meet her gaze. “Didn’t say anything. They just knew.” I clear my throat. “I spend every day I can with you and am pissed off all the days that I don’t.”
She swallows and I see all of her limbs reposition themselves very subtly. “You seem pissed when you do.”
“I’m an asshole.”
She laughs. “Yeah, you are.”
“But you’re still here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I lick my lips and though it takes all of my concentration, I manage to bring life into my back muscles and stand up on my own. “You could tell me to leave anytime, close and lock your door.”
She glances back, and edges in that direction. I’ve done something to anger her again. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this response. “How could I do that to the man who’s given me so much?”
“Is that the only reason?” Because I pay for the privilege. Just like all the other scum.
She nods. I grit my teeth, collapse back against the wall, and call for Mer. As she looks up and starts towards us, Sara grabs my arm.
“No, wait!” Mer stops in her tracks. Sara turns to m
e. “Wait. I didn’t mean that. I mean…I don’t know what I mean. You’ve just been so hot and cold to me that up until Mer knocked on my door, I thought you were trying to dick me around.”
“I never meant that.” I rub my face hard as the alcohol wages war with my rationality. “I just…never been in love before. It hurts here…” I touch the center of my chest.
I’ve never been good with emotions, and have never had to articulate them. Marguerite used to try to coerce the thoughts out of me, and while she never succeeded, I’m standing in front of a woman who’s never even asked trying to force her to understand my perspective.
“When you’re not around it hurts here.” I take her hand and force it to my chest, under my jacket, and I lock it there beneath my palm.
Sara looks directly down and shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything and it worries me because she’s the type of woman who always speaks her mind. I say her name and she punches me in the shoulder with her other hand.
“You are such an asshole,” she says and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her curse but I’m not given time to dwell on it when she lifts up onto her toes and presses her mouth to my lips.
She kisses me hard and my whole body reacts. I hold her there against me – my hands on her hand and around the broad of her back – and I commit the sensation of her body’s curves against mine to memory, just as I have our every encounter leading up to this. Her lips are fire and so deliciously soft. I’m not used to kissing women like this – as if to stop kissing them would be to die. I want more than her mouth though. I want her to want me back.
I wrench away from her, holding her shoulder at arm’s length – her arms, not mine. “Do you…” Do you have feelings for me? Tell me now, otherwise to keep kissing you will be to break me entirely. “Do you want to come out with me?”
Sara inhales deeply and smiles. “Yes. I’d like that.”
Nodding, I release her arms and as she separates us by another step, I whisper, “I won’t let you down again. Ever.”
There’s that blush again, swirling across her chest in shades of carmine. “Says the man who’s so drunk on my doorstep he can hardly stand or speak.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, smiling for the first time this evening. For what feels like forever. “This is…not how I wanted this to go.”
She smirks and the atmosphere between us is lifted, made lighter by something that I don’t understand but that I want to know intimately. “How did you want it to go?”
“Any other way.”
She laughs quietly and shakes her head. “Alright, well why don’t we get on with it then and see where the night takes us? After all, I’m training to be a medical doctor. What kind of doctor would I make if I let you go out into the world like this and fend for yourself?”
I let her slide up against me and pull my arm over her shoulder. She walks me to Mer who then takes most of my weight and helps me out to the car.
Mer sits on Knox’s lap and we drive like this to Mercury – a bar we like two towns over, one we don’t own so we don’t feel any responsibility for the clientele. Knox and Mer head to the dance floor immediately and Clifton cozies up to a blonde at the bar. At a table, just the two of us, Sara sips on a gin and tonic. She’s got the straw trapped between her teeth and she’s laughing at something a couple on the dance floor is doing. The smile on my face makes my cheeks hurt because they’ve never been in this position for so long.
I drink water. Tons of it. Because I refuse to still be hammered when it’s time to take her home. I wait for that time. Wait for it on the edge of my seat. I want to play the gentleman. I want to give her my elbow if she stumbles, give her my jacket when she’s cold. I want to open the door for her and kiss her on the cheek and promise her that I’ll be over to make it up to her tomorrow. To her and Brant.
But she doesn’t ask to leave and pretty soon it’s nearing two am.
Her eyebrows lift and she suddenly balks. “Oh my gosh, is that Clifton with a prostitute?” That drags me out of the spell I’d been under. She’s a vision in blue.
Reluctantly I turn my head, following the line of her finger until I see a tall, modern day Viking trailing a pro with short, auburn hair. “Woah,” she says, and I see why a second later. At the bar, a second man who looks daringly close to the first tries to catch the Viking’s attention, without success.
“Clifton’s twin brother, Aiden,” I say. “Hard to tell them apart from here, but when you get close enough, you’ll see the difference.”
“What is it?”
How do I put gently that one’s a loveable teddy bear and the other, a sociopath with a penchant for killing? “Aiden’s not like his brother. Don’t make the assumption that he is. Ever.”
“Why didn’t he come here with us?” Sara asks, looking puzzled.
I grimace. “Not much for socializing.”
“Sure seems like he’s socializing now.” We watch them disappear through the door to the bathrooms. He won’t fuck her in there though, but rather take her to the alley. Even in winter, outside in filth is the only place he fucks women. The man hates himself as much as he hates everything else around him.
“It was Aiden and not Clifton who interrupted us the first time we met. I don’t want you around him alone.”
I look back at Sara and though her lips twist down at the corners, for once she doesn’t protest. “Okay.”
“Hey, lady and gent…well, lady.” Clifton chuckles as he approaches. “Let’s say we continue this party at ours? I think Knox and Mer need to get out of range of pubic eyes.”
Feeling more sober now I open my mouth to tell him that Sara probably wants to go home, but it’s Sara who speaks. “That sounds like fun,” she says with a shrug, pulling her purse off of the bench seat beside her and over her shoulder.
I fidget with my jacket uncomfortably. “Are you sure?”
Her cheeks are flushed, eyes glossy, but she seems coherent and clear. “Sorry. I don’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding,” I say before she’s finished and she smiles at me broadly.
She shrugs and takes a sip of her drink, sucking in dredges of melted ice cubes and air. “Okay then. It’s a plan.”
She takes my hand when it’s offered and I lead her back to the car. The five of us who’d gone out together pull into the driveway and it’s strange watching her pass across the threshold – a barrier I’ve denied so many others. Not just women, but everyone. That’s all I ever wanted was to keep people out. And now I want to share everything with her.
Clifton pours drinks and Mer and Knox don’t last long. Watching their inability to keep their hands off one another makes me roll out my neck, wring my hands, cross and uncross my legs. Makes it difficult to remember to be a gentleman when I glance at Sara seated next to me on the couch. After a while, Clifton leaves and it’s just us and the throbbing in my body grows more intense. I lower the volume of the music playing.
“Do you want me to take you home?” I say, throat dry. Scorched. I drank too much, stared too hard, acted too out of character. I don’t know who I am anymore because ordinarily, denying a woman would be easy. Denying a woman I wanted because I didn’t feel good enough, on the other hand…well, I’d never been in this position before.
She blinks up at me, runs her hand back through her silky hair. The way she’s seated, twisted towards me on the couch causes the cleavage I’d been trying to ignore all night to rise higher on each inhale. “Do you want to take me home?”
Sh… I clear my throat. “I know what I want to say, but what I want to do is something else entirely.”
“Well why don’t I make it easy for you?” She sets her glass down on the edge of the table and slides her hand across the couch towards me. I watch it hungrily.
“How will you manage that?”
“I might start by asking you to show me your room.”
The heat in my chest swims down to the rod
hanging between my legs. Leading the way there, I feel like I’m in high school again. Sober now, I can’t fully recall the moments that led to this. What state of utopia did I have to be in to secure her tacit endorsement, even enough to hold my hand, which she is.
“This is it.” I turn the key in the lock and open the door to my most sacred space – a space I was denied as a boy: my own. It’s entirely different than the rest of the house, and not just because it’s four times bigger than any other room. It has its own living room, couch, TV and fireplace while the bed sits against the opposite wall against a half-partition. It’s bigger than her entire apartment and the blush on her face looks to me like one of embarrassment. My gut softens, and grows cold.
“You don’t like it,” I say, knowing that’s not the reason she takes a tour of the space. She keeps her hands to herself, as if she’s not worthy to touch any of my things. It makes me want to shatter them.
“No, I just…you have so much. I probably wouldn’t have let you into my apartment if I’d known you live like this.”
“I’m glad you didn’t then.” I inhale and breach the distance between us by half, but I won’t go farther. Can’t. Not when I’m this in love with her. Another step forward and I’ll need to keep her forever. “It’s just stuff. What you have in your house is more meaningful.”
“You mean Brant?”
“Yes. He’s part of it.”
She glances down. “I didn’t think you liked kids.”
“I like your kid.”
As she exhales, she shivers from head to toe. “Oh lord.”
“What’s wrong?”
She bites her lips between her teeth and the red in her cheeks holds. Sanding between the couch and the bed she looks so small against such ubiquitous and superfluous luxury. It’s meaningless without her.
“Sara, what is it?”
Her gaze hits mine and is enough to knock me backwards. I imagine myself falling, like a set of dominoes though I haven’t moved. “Shit,” she says.
The Hunting Town (Brothers Book 1) Page 26
