by Jenna Mills
“At least you’ve been listening.”
“I have.”
“Good girl,” he said. “Now tell me—what else haven’t you told me?”
“Nothing,” I said, sliding the hair from my face. “I met a guy. I like him—why?”
Silence. He just kept looking at me, studying me…studying me really, really strangely.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, fighting a bad, bad feeling. “What do you mean I might not be ready? For what?”
The house was huge.
I sat in my car long after I arrived, comparing the address from the text with the one on the amazing north Boulder mansion just beyond my window. His parents’ house, he’d explained...
I had no idea why I’d changed my mind about going to see him. I thought about driving away. It was the safest—
Not safest, I told myself. Lamest. Cowardliest.
I said I was tired of running, but that’s what driving away would be. Running. Running from something because it scared me. From someone. Because he scared me.
Because he didn’t.
It didn’t make any sense: Austin scared me, because he didn’t scare me.
It’s a good thing I hadn’t come up with that brilliant observation in front of Dr. Rivers. That was the kind of messed up comment that he could spend days dissecting.
But I wasn’t sure I had too many days left, not in Boulder. By next week, I could be in San Francisco…
Dr. Rivers had a friend who was a photographer. They’d talked. The friend wanted to meet me, to talk about an internship. It was the chance of a lifetime, or at least, of my lifetime, so far.
In San Francisco.
That’s what Dr. Rivers wasn’t sure I was ready for.
The thought, the possibility, was like staring at a physics equation you’d studied for, studied endlessly. That should have been easy, a no-brainer. But suddenly nothing made sense, and you realized maybe you weren’t so ready, after all.
I made myself turn off the car. I made myself step into the early evening breeze and walk toward the ridiculously-gorgeous, two-story European-looking home, with its perfectly manicured lawn and winding walkway, toward the massive front door, that looked more like it belonged on some Spanish fortress than a simple home in the suburbs—
The thought made me grin. There was nothing simple about Mapleton Hill, with its wide tree-lined streets and multi-million dollar houses.
With my portfolio tucked under my arm, I stepped up to the wide porch with its lush hanging baskets, crossed to the welcome mat of wrought iron, lifted my hand and took a deep breath.
“Omigosh, they’re so cute.”
Kneeling in the spacious mudroom at the back of the house—a room bigger than most kitchens I’d seen—I watched an army of kittens wrestle over possession of a fuzzy toy mouse. “How old are they?”
“Five and six weeks,” Austin said as a calico fluff ball scaled the back of his t-shirt. With only a slight wince, he reached back to scratch her little face as she settled on his shoulder. “Giselle’s been here the longest. I think she’s closer to ten weeks.”
I watched them, his mother’s fosters, the four orange tabbies and three seal point Siamese, a slinky one of all black, and the scrawny little calico. “I could stay here all night,” I said, laughing. “My grandpa had two big Russian blues, but my mom’s allergic, so we never had any of our own.”
Austin leaned back against the wall, his outstretched legs becoming a new object of fascination for the kittens. He looked so relaxed here, completely at home—which he was, I reminded himself. Austin lived here…or at least he had until the year before, when he graduated and moved into his own apartment at the university.
It was a lot to reconcile.
With Lexi, she never missed an opportunity to let you know she came from privilege, from the car she drove (a BMW convertible) to the purse she carried (usually Kate Spade), the jeans she wore, even the way she carried herself, with an air of superiority that screamed how much better she (thought she) was than everyone else.
With Austin, it was the opposite, as if he went out of his way to be just like everyone else.
Except when he smiled, like he was doing as he rolled a Siamese over onto its back and rubbed a fat little belly. Then it was like no one else even existed.
“I thought you might want to take pictures of them,” he said, glancing up. “For the rescue website.”
He knew. He knew exactly what to say, exactly what to do. There was only one problem. “I didn’t bring my camera.” Only my portfolio, such that it was.
He gestured behind me, toward the quartz countertop along a row of tall, darkly-stained cabinets. “I’ve got one.”
I should have known. “Then I’d love to,” I said, twisting around to take the high-end SLR into my hands. And for the next hour, it was as simple as that, Austin positioning the babies on the climbing post or on the fuzzy white kitty bed, while I quietly snapped. Blue eyes, green eyes, yellow eyes, pink noses, long twitching whiskers, ears perked, fat little tummies, fluffy tails and…
Him. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t resist the image of his hands, strong but gentle, his fingers long, his touch like magic to the fuzzy little babies. All he had to do was reach for them, and their little motors turned on.
“Lie down,” I instructed.
He glanced over, a sweep of dark blond hair cutting along his cheekbone. “Me?”
“You,” I said. Him. “On your back.”
And he did. I could tell that he was curious, but he did as I instructed, lying down on the cool travertine floor, hands behind his head, long, blue jean clad legs bent at the knees.
And the kittens came running. All of them, scrambling from all directions to crawl on top of him—just like I’d hoped.
Smiling, I stretched out on my stomach and went to work, capturing the babies as they crawled all over him, the Siamese climbing over his legs and the little black one slinking across his tummy, the curious calico inspecting his face, her long white whiskers tickling his mouth…
“What about you?”
The question was so quiet that the slightest sound would have drowned it out. But there was no other sound, no music or television from another part of the house, no sound of his parents or younger brothers talking, not even the wind rustling the trees beyond the window. Just us. And the kittens.
On the floor.
“What about me?” I asked over the thrum of my heart.
His eyes, heavier lidded than usual, met mine. “You look a little lonely over there.”
Four feet separated us. Four feet of stone floor, a pile of suddenly sleepy kittens, worlds as different as dark from light—and an internship waiting in San Francisco.
It would have been easy to stay where I was. That’s what I should have done, what I’d been doing my whole life, staying where I was, never venturing forward, too scared to find I might not belong…
But I was tired of being afraid.
Of staying where I was.
Of denying what I wanted.
Of caution.
“I am,” I stunned myself by saying, but the words, the truth, the chains that had bound me, didn’t hurt or shame like I’d always thought they would. They disintegrated in the light of his eyes, and then I was pushing up from my stomach to my knees, and shifting forward, toward him…
Kittens scrambled as he reached for me, his hands finding first my face, his touch soft, gentle against the side of my cheek.
“I can change that,” he muttered, and then he was drawing me closer, and I was going, going with him, to him, until I was the one on top of him, my body sprawled over him as he urged my face closer, closer, until there was nothing left between us, no space and no kittens, no dividers and no chains, just us, our mouths and our bodies coming together.
The kiss started out slow, soft, a door once again opening, inviting me in, the warmth drifting toward me—but this time I didn’t pull back. Pull away. I didn�
�t want to. I went where he invited, opening to him as fully as he opened to me, our mouths slanting eagerly, hungrily as our bodies twined together.
And then there were more doors opening, doors I’d never been aware of, doors inside of me, eager doors—desperate doors, and all I could think was I didn’t want to let go, didn’t want him to let go, didn’t want the moment to let go. That I just wanted this, the feel of his arms around me and his hands in my hair, the hard heat of his body beneath me…him—
He pulled back without warning, ripping himself from me with a violence that stripped the breath from my lungs—
I jerked back and looked at him, looked at him sprawled beneath me, the dark light in his eyes and his mouth slightly open, his lower lip wet and swollen. And I didn’t understand…
“A few more seconds of that,” he said with a slow, boyish grin, “and we’re going to have a real problem.”
I realized it then, realized all I’d been too lost to realize a few moments before, the thick ridge pressed up against my abdomen and the way I’d settled between his legs, the bright light overhead—the hard cold floor beneath us. “Oh.”
His chest rose and fell as if he’d been running, running fast and hard with no end in sight. “There’s no lock on this door,” he said, and all those places inside of me clenched.
“No,” I whispered as one of the little Siamese ventured back over, scrambling up to settle in the curve of his neck.
“But there are other rooms,” he said quietly—but I didn’t need voice, didn’t need words, not with the way he was looking at me. His eyes were on mine, touching—holding. “Upstairs.”
I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. “Okay,” I heard myself say—or maybe I felt. I wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure of anything except the slow burn moving through me, begging.
And then he was on his feet, standing and reaching a hand toward me, and I was giving him mine and letting him pull me up, pull me closer, until we stood thigh to thigh, heartbeat to heartbeat.
In some barely functioning corner of my mind I was aware of him lifting an arm, his hand tangling in my hair. “You’re sure?”
Dreamlike, I went up on my toes, and brushed a kiss to his lips. “Yes.”
Chapter 8
“These are really great.”
Kneeling on one of the tall, thickly cushioned bar stools, I watched Austin’s mom scroll through the pictures I’d taken of her kittens, and tried not to squirm. There were well over a hundred images…but not all of them were mom material.
“Thanks,” I said, sliding Austin a quick frantic look.
He wasn’t paying attention. He stood beside me, my portfolio spread on the marble-topped island in front of him.
We’d been halfway upstairs when his mother had breezed in from the cabana beyond a wall of windows, and asked to have a look. Austin had tried to put her off, but Kimberly Sumnter was, apparently, not a woman to be put off. Smiling, she promised to only steal a few minutes and whisked us into the kitchen. I’d tried not to gawk or stare, but the brightly lit room, with its espresso cabinetry and white quartz countertops, the elaborate stone backsplashes and gleaming stainless steel appliances, looked like something ripped from an elegant ladies magazine.
“This one’s really fantastic,” she cooed, tilting the camera to show me a close-up on one of the little Siamese’s face. “Those eyes…she looks like she’s contemplating the fate of the world.”
I smiled, subtly shifting my leg to nudge against Austin.
He glanced over, and something inside of me kicked. His eyes. Only minutes before they’d glittered like green diamonds. Now they were…distant.
It was like a quick shot of cold straight to my soul.
“Austin was right,” his mom said, but this time I didn’t glance at her, couldn’t, couldn’t stop looking at her son. Something had changed…
“…you are extremely talented.”
I could hear her, hear the words, but her voice sounded muted, far-away, as if she was one place and I was somewhere altogether different, removed.
Nothing prepared me for Austin’s quick smile, or for the moment to change from one breath to another, like a channel changing and Austin returning, the Austin from before.
“Told ya,” he said, and then he was reaching for the camera and taking it from his mom’s hands, taking it before she reached the last pictures I’d taken, the pictures of him, of his hands and his face, the close-up of his mouth.
“Look at these,” he said, sliding my portfolio toward her.
But I couldn’t stop watching him, trying to understand what I’d just seen—felt. And then his eyes met mine, and the imaginary band around my chest pulled tighter, because, for a frozen second, he looked…sad.
“Stunning,” his mother said.
I looked away, looked away because I had to, to the image of the cascading waterfall and turquoise water. “Hanging Lake,” I said. “Up by Glenwood Springs. It’s crazy beautiful.”
“It is,” Austin’s mom said, looking up. She was a beautiful woman, with dark glossy hair in a shoulder length bob and smooth creamy skin, a wide smile and eyes…exactly like Austin’s. Looking at her, it was hard to believe she was old enough to have a son in college. She looked like she could have graduated herself only a few years before.
“But I can guarantee if you took me there, I could take pictures all day long and they wouldn’t look like this.”
Despite the sudden tension, her words made me smile. “Thank you,” I said, and meant. “It’s what I love to do.”
“Then you need to keep doing it,” she said. “Share your gift.”
My smile froze. It’s what I’d always wanted, to pursue photography and see where it could take me.
San Francisco…
All smiles, Austin’s mom slid the pictures back toward me. “I’ve taken enough of your evening,” she announced. “I should let you two get on with whatever it was you were about to do.”
And then she was gone, breezing from the room and leaving me and Austin alone in the brightly-lit kitchen—and a sudden vacuum of silence.
Back to whatever it was we were about to do.
I stared into the oval mirror, trying to recognize the girl I saw staring back at me. The pale blond hair hanging loosely against my shoulders and slanted, light blue eyes were the same, the fair complexion, the freckles across my nose, the shimmery dragonfly at the base of my neck…it was all the same.
But the girl I’d always been didn’t hang out in million dollar mansions with guys who had the whole world at their fingertips. And she didn’t receive random offers to fly off to San Francisco to chase her dreams.
Maybe that was why I’d been texting with Emily for the past five minutes.
But I couldn’t stay in the small, magazine-worthy bathroom forever. After running my hands under cold water one last time, I dried them with the monogrammed linen towel, then slipped back into the Old Hollywood themed media room—
Framed by heavy red velvet curtains, a car chase blasted from the enormous projection screen, but Austin no longer sprawled in the cushy leather recliner where I’d left him. Instead he stood with his back to me at the art deco bar against the far side of the room, the one that looked like it belonged in a Hollywood lounge, as if waiting for a server to take his drink order.
But there was no one else there.
Exactly like before, in the mudroom with the kittens. Only us. But something was off. Something was wrong. From the moment he’d put the movie on, it had been like he didn’t even know I was there—if it was possible for someone to be a million miles away, he was two million.
Then I noticed the phone in his hands, his thumbs flying along the screen.
And something inside of me snapped.
“I’m going to head out,” I said, veering for the amazing curved sofa where I’d tossed my bag among a pile of fringed pillows.
He jerked, twisting toward me with the strangest look on his face, almost…stricken. “Zoe�
��I didn’t hear you come back.”
I could’ve left, I realized. I could’ve walked out the door and he wouldn’t have realized it. “Thanks for showing me the kittens—”
“Don’t go.”
Two words, that’s all they were. But they stopped me cold. Or maybe it was something else, the naked, unguarded way he was looking at me, something invisible reaching out and grabbing me.
Or maybe…it was something…inside of me.
Something…that didn’t really want…to go.
Something that desperately wanted to stay.
“What happened back there?” I asked without stopping to consider all the reasons I should have ignored the craziness inside of me and left well enough alone—and all the possible answers he could give.
The beautiful bar stood between us, all polished, gleaming wood and no more than five feet in width, but in that moment, it seemed more like a bottomless ravine. “What do you mean?”
“In the kitchen? With your mom? Something changed. It’s like you…went away.” Somewhere far, where I couldn’t follow.
Where he didn’t want me to.
“I didn’t go away.”
“Then what happened?”
His eyes darkened. “You.”
There was a ceiling fan in the room. It was twirling lazily. The air was cool. I knew all that. But for a frozen heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. “Me?”
A long moment passed. I didn’t think he was going to answer. He glanced down at his phone, the lines of his face hard as he turned it over and pressed it down against the bar.
“You happened.” His voice was quiet now, thicker than before, but strained. Uncertain. “And you weren’t supposed to.”
The movie still blasted. I was sure that it did. No one had moved to turn it off. But I couldn’t hear anything else, couldn’t see anything else, only him.
Woodenly I took a step back. I wasn’t sure why.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, his voice still so, so quiet. “But there you were, in the park. And now here you are, in my house. And sometimes I just look at you,” he said, and I could feel him, feel him right there beside me, even though he was still on the other side of the bar, “and I get all twisted up inside, because…you’re everything.”
