by Ginger Scott
“You know I saw her in Vegas, bro,” Sean says, drawing loud groans as Sienna and I fall back into our seats. I twist my head to make eye contact with my girlfriend, and we both jerk in a disgusted laugh.
“Becky know that?” Reed says over his shoulder.
“Not like that, dude. I mean I ran into her. I was there for business, and she was on the strip heading somewhere. She looked good.” Nobody speaks after Sean gives us that update. I think maybe we’re all glad she’s all right, even though she put us through hell when we were young—me more than most.
Tatum always wanted to perform, and I had heard during college that she spent some time in New York and L.A. trying to get gigs in theater or commercial work. She was on a soup ad for a while. It even aired during the NFL playoffs. Reed never brought it up, but I know he noticed. It was a year he was watching them next to me on the couch. My mom’s the one who told me she eventually started working in Vegas. She ran into Tatum’s parents just before they moved to some retirement place in Florida. They said she was starring in a show, but my mom had this feeling they were leaving out a few details. It only took her ten minutes surfing online to find out that show was topless.
“She always had great boobs.” Sienna’s quip is utterly sincere, and it breaks the thick silence as we all burst into uncontrollable laughter.
The dim lights start to reflect the dust behind the thick brush, and pretty soon Sarah’s car comes into view, her trunk already popped open with way too much alcohol dumped in the back for seven adults, two of whom won’t be drinking.
“I couldn’t decide what to get,” she says, already starting in with excuses as she cracks open a can of the cheapest beer in Coolidge for me. I wasn’t planning on drinking, but I take it in my hand knowing if I hold onto it over the next hour, she won’t harass me.
Reed reaches in and kills the lights on his Jeep, crawling up on his hood and stretching out a hand for me to join him.
“So much for date night, huh?” I tilt my head as guilt shrinks his smile a little. “It’s okay,” I shake my head, feeling bad.
I take his palm and plant my foot on the tire, letting him lift me. A little bit of my beer spills on my arm, so Reed takes it in his hands and sucks it off.
“I still can’t let you waste it,” he teases.
My back rests on his chest as he draws his knees up on either side of me and I hook one arm under his thigh. I take a sip of my beer, which is bitter and possibly stale if not a little warm, but I hope it helps me relax. He leaves in hours, and I want to soak up this last moment.
For the next hour, we all take turns warning Sarah that it’s a bad idea to cross the gulch where the actual teenagers are, but it doesn’t stop her from trying with every new song that blasts from someone’s stereo.
“Has she always been this crazy?” Reed speaks into my ear, his lips stopping at the edge of my skin long enough to dust a kiss. It still sends shivers down my neck, and I tilt my head inviting him to do it again.
“She’s actually tamer than she used to be. I’m just shocked she’s never been arrested,” I say, swallowing hard when his nose draws a line from my collar bone up to the space behind my ear.
He nuzzles me there for a few seconds, his breath hot and his chin scratchy, reminding me he’s a man now and that this is not twenty years ago. This is now. I lean into him more, feeling the heat of his chest against my back, the rise and fall of his wanting breaths. I can’t remember the last time we’ve been together—really together.
“I miss you,” he finally says, his hands running along my arms as he folds them over my chest, his thumbs dragging in secret across my breasts. I draw a sharp breath as he pauses with his knuckles over my now hardened nipples that have turned to pebbles from his touch and the cold air.
“I miss you so much,” I breathe out, my head falling back into his chest and turning enough to find his mouth waiting hungrily for mine. He kisses me with our kiss, taking my top lip in and sucking slowly until I feel the rough edges of his teeth grab hold of my skin. My lip slips out with a slight pant and Reed pulls me against his body more, this time so I can feel what this is doing to him.
“We should go for a walk,” I whisper. He nods, his rough cheek rubbing against my soft one, and we slip away just as our friends are all shouting over one another about who can handle more shots.
I start to giggle as we break into a run, and Reed holds his finger over his wide smile as he turns to take my hand and jog backward.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this. We’re almost forty, and we have to sneak out in the desert to have sex,” I laugh out.
Reed’s laugh shifts into a growl as he reaches for my other hand and draws me closer to him, urging me up a few steps to a large boulder embedded on the opposite side of a wash that’s been dry for months. My back against the rock, Reed cages me between his arms and leans to the side to test how hidden we are.
“They’re drunk as fuck,” he says, his eyes glimmering with the moonlight. I don’t bother to look. I’m too mesmerized by the movement of his Adam’s apple, and every dip it makes with his laugh. It stalls when his gaze shifts to me, his lips closing with the heavy swallow of his growing desire.
“Reed,” my lips quiver out his name and my eyes work to seduce him more, sweeping closed at his chest and opening wide on his.
His gaze circles my face, painting me with the adoration that’s never left, but has only been buried by life—by all of this shit that the game brought with it. The game isn’t with us right now; it’s only me and him. I shift my body up enough so my eyes are square with his, and I wrap my fingers behind his head, threading through his thick hair. It’s courser than I remember. These months apart have aged it, but it still submits to me, softening to silk in my hand as he takes his time closing the distance between our lips.
His eyes flit from mine to my mouth, licking as he parts his just before falling into me with a possessive kiss that forces my chin up as his hand comes to the side of my neck. I whimper as his fingers follow the curve of my jaw, neck and arms then grip at my sweater, gathering it in his fists from the bottom until his palms are cupping my breasts.
If the ground were softer, we maybe wouldn’t have noticed the crunch of gravel and brittle snaps of brush under someone’s approaching feet. Reed’s eyes widen and he presses two fingers to my mouth, holding my nervous laugh inside, but barely. I can feel his body shake with his silent laugh as his head falls to rest against mine, and after a mood-killing round of hearing two teens trying to sneak off into the darkness to do the exact same thing we’re doing, we make our escape and slowly walk back to our friends.
“You all went to make out, didn’t you?” Sarah is slurring her words and stumbling toward us. My friend is a sloppy drunk, and it’s late and the early morning will be here way too soon.
“You caught us,” I smile at her as I shoot a glance to Reed over my shoulder. I slide my arm under her to hold her weight and hold out my open palm, our universal sign for her to give me her keys.
“I’ll see you at home,” Reed says, and as everyone else loads up in the Jeep, Becky, Sarah, and I climb into Sarah’s car. Together we all make our way out of the dry river bottom to the main road.
My stomach sinks the moment I catch up to the Jeep, now parked near our house in our driveway, the lights beaming high on the front door that Reed is ripping through as I shift Sarah’s car into park.
“Who’s here?” Becky’s question is so sweet and innocent. It’s exactly how she always was in high school. Peyton, however, is more like me. And that extra vehicle parked in our driveway belongs to a certain high school quarterback that should not be at our house while we aren’t home.
I sit back and grip the wheel, debating whether I should join Reed or wait this one out and let him handle the shit-fest that comes with parenting a teenager.
“That’s the boy,” I say in a flat tone.
Becky’s chuckle starts to boil into hard laughter.
&
nbsp; “I know, I know. This so serves us right,” I say, grabbing the keys and my phone and moving my attention to the backseat where Sarah is now completely knocked out.
“Should we just leave her here?” Becky sits on her knees in the passenger seat and stares over the seatback at our friend. I do the same and shrug. It isn’t hot out, and all of the extra beds are taken.
“Yeah, why not. She’ll just let herself in like she always does if she wakes up anyhow,” I say.
Becky pulls off the flannel shirt she was wearing over her T-shirt and drapes it over our friend like a blanket. We both exit the car and push the doors closed as quietly as we can. I’m shocked when I don’t hear yelling or see an embarrassed boy rushing from our house while Reed’s ears smoke from the sides. I catch up to the rest of our friends and stop in my tracks when I see Buck sitting on the sofa next to Bryce watching old film of Reed on the TV.
Peyton catches my gaze and leaves her perch on the sofa arm to come talk to me.
“I asked Grandpa if he could come in. He was up. I promise,” Peyton explains away the situation quickly. I nod, not really caring if it’s plausible or not. I’m too invested in everything I’m seeing.
Reed is standing a few feet behind them and off to the side, his thumbs hooked in his pockets and his eyes hypnotized by the boy making miracles happen on the screen. Buck gives play-by-play for every single movement of the ball, knowing every game by heart. It’s been years since we’ve watched Reed’s scouting video. I put it on a disc a few years ago, and the only person who has ever gotten it out is Buck.
“He sure was something, huh?” Sean’s arm brushes against mine as he moves into the space next to me.
“He still is,” I say, admitting to myself that I’m talking about both the man and the player.
Chapter Twelve
Reed
I’ll crack the border into Oklahoma just as the sun is setting if I can get on the road in the next half hour. It’s feeling impossible to leave this bed, though.
Curled up in my arms, Nolan hasn’t even stirred once over the last two hours. Maybe she sleeps silently like this when I’m gone, but right now, I’m taking complete credit. I reach to my right to tap my phone screen awake so I can turn off the alarm before it sounds, but my movement makes Nolan wake up. Her arms stretch out, one to the empty side of the bed and the other across my chest, which she then places a flat palm against to help her lift her head.
“Good morning,” she says, eyes all sleepy and smile crooked. I run my thumb over her eyebrows, which always somehow get a little bent overnight. She looks up at them while I do.
“Brows go rogue again?”
I breathe out a soft laugh in response.
“Just a little,” I say.
Her eyes settle on mine again, so I live here for several long seconds. Once I leave the warmth of our bed, everything will go back to how it was—I’ll be a thousand miles away, and she’ll be here, and Trig will be dead, and we won’t be talking like we should.
I don’t want that. I don’t want any of it, but there’s really only one piece of it I can control.
“Noles, I’m so sorry.” I let my eyes fall into hers as they start to form tears in the corners.
She sucks in her top lip, and I run my thumb under her eyes this time, sweeping the moisture away. She gives me a small nod before finally speaking.
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever survived,” she says, and though we’ve had this talk before, it’s never been quite like this. My insides crack, like poorly plastered walls in an earthquake.
“I know it was,” I whisper, drawing her head close enough to my mouth that I can press my lips into her hair. I inhale her scent, remnants of the desert and the fire pits still smoldering in the strands.
“I shouldn’t have sent that email,” she says, and I let my eyes blink closed. My pulse speeds up just a little from the pain.
“It’s okay,” I whisper into her, my own body quivering with emotion. I blink away tears, and I’m ashamed because they’re a mix of fear and anger still. Not completely, but those feelings still poison me.
“I love you,” I breathe out instead. She whimpers—those easy words have become too hard to say. We need to speak them more. She needs to hear them…now.
“Always have. From the very first moment. And through everything…this…now. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she cuts in. I needed to hear those words as well. I swallow hard, consuming them.
Nolan adjusts her hold on me, sliding her arms around my body and shifting her weight until she’s lying completely on top of me. Her eyes sweep closed and her lips close softly on my chin, her tongue peeking out just enough to taste my salty skin. She moves up me in fractions of inches until her kiss finds lips, and my hands tangle in her chocolate-colored hair.
“Mmmm,” she hums, the sound coming out with a cry of pleasure when her hips roll against me. My hands slide down her back and find her ass, feeling her perfect contours and gripping hard enough to pull her center over my aching cock.
She braces her weight with her hands in the center of my chest and moves her knees up until she’s straddling me. My head falls back as her hips grind and her body squirms for relief. I glance up in time to see her grab the opposite sides of the bottom of one of my old college T-shirts as she drags it up her naked body and tosses it to the floor.
“Jesus Christ, woman. Your body is the same garden of the gods it’s always been,” I say, leaning up enough to take a soft bite of one hard nipple.
She whimpers when I do, and my cock flexes beneath her, forcing my hands to rock her hips up and down. Eventually she takes over the movement for me and I let my hands paint every inch of her skin with feather-light touches at first until I pull hard on each nipple and send her body cascading down on top of me.
“Please, Reed. Now.” She moans at my ear, and I obey, sliding my boxers down just enough to feel her bare skin against me. I reach between us and tug the cotton strip of her panties, now wet with her own needs and wants, to the side, giving my cock enough room to push deep inside her.
“Ah,” she cries, and the sound of her pleasure sends a rush from my spine into my shaft as I push up and into her again.
Pushing herself up to sit, she begins to move up and down, meeting me with each forceful lift of my hips. Her eyes drift into bliss, but they remain focused on mine. I don’t want to look away, but I’m so drawn to the art of her—the way her breasts quake with our crashes, the muscles in her arms as they work against me, the curve of her hips and thighs. I’m a fool for not thinking any of this is enough, that I need more to prove who and what I am.
Nolan brings the knuckles of her right hand to her mouth and bites down on them as her eyes flutter closed and her cheeks blossom with a pink flush. Heavy breaths turn into panting and we both move slower and slower until eventually she’s collapsed in my arms, our bodies damp with our actions and our hearts craving more.
We lie together in total quiet until the tension of all the words we aren’t saying starts to make it hard to breathe. I reach again for my phone, knowing more time has passed than I planned. It was worth it.
“I have to go.”
It hurts to say out loud. Nolan doesn’t move from the spot where her body is practically glued to me, our legs intertwined, hair splayed on my skin, fingers spread covering as much space on my chest as possible. It’s seven in the morning. The team is going to want me to fly. I’ll be late.
It won’t matter anyhow.
“I thought you were dead.” She says it so matter of fact, as if it’s in the middle of a conversation we’ve been having. Maybe it is; we just haven’t been having that conversation out loud.
I swallow hard, trying to be quiet about it but the movement is jarring and it causes her to curl her fingers on my chest. They form a fist. I cup it in one of my hands, covering it completely.
“You were miles away from me, and all I could do for so long was hold my phone in my han
d,” she says, her head shifting against my shoulder as she looks down at where our hands are linked. I let go of her palm and she opens, flexing, before closing it again.
“I stared at it…for hours. I don’t know what Peyton did on that stage, I don’t know how I told her the news, and I can’t remember how I got from that building to the airport. I can’t remember a single word your brother said to me that day, Reed, but I remember how desperate I was and how my heart stabbed with searing pain and hope and despair every time he called.”
She moves to sit up and I join her, turning to face her as she puts a little distance between us so she can look me in the eyes. The ghosts hiding behind hers are frighteningly real. She’s like a crystal ball right now of what could have been, and I know it’s the reason she sent that email. I know it’s the reason we aren’t where we should be.
“I started making plans, and I was terrified Reed, because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I could function. I could pay bills…file documents…plan a funeral. I could talk to the press and do stories about how horrible it was to be me—for Peyton and me to be us. I knew how to do all of that, and yeah…my mind went through it all. I made a list. I made lists of lists. I sat on an airport floor lying to your daughter that things were going to be fine, that this was something routine. But not once in any of those lists did I write down how I was going to be able to live…without…you.”
She shudders and loses her breath, tears forming quickly at the corners of her eyes. It guts me, and I reach for her, but she pulls away, standing up and waving with her hand.
“No, I’m fine. We’re…we’re fine. I think we’re fine, but…” She pulls the sheet around her body and turns and paces before steadying her nervous feet and looking up at me again. I stand on the opposite side of the bed, nearing an hour late for the road, willing to make it hours more.
