by Zoey Parker
“Too many.” Emma laughed.
“You know you sound like a textbook half the time?”
“I was a lonely kid. Books and animals, that’s what kept me going.” Emma smirked.
“When are you gonna get the money from your dad’s stuff?”
“Lawyers are still processing stuff, but it’ll clear up before I go back to school.”
“More textbooks.” Hannah butted her shoulder against Emma’s and the two women shared a companionable laugh.
Emma couldn’t say anything to that because the owner of the Cadillac came waltzing up in her four-inch heels and a brand new hairdo.
“Hi, Samantha!” Emma smiled, doing her best to make it look sincere. “How are you today?”
Samantha ran a hand through her perfect hair. It fell into place in just the right way. “Fine.”
Emma and Hannah exchanged a look. Hannah gave a tiny shake of her head. “Hey, Samantha, listen, Hannah and I were—”
“Is my car ready?” Samantha interrupted.
“I…” Emma glanced out the door. “I don’t know, I’ll have to—”
“Never mind, I’ll just go ask myself.”
Samantha waltzed through the door before Emma could say anything else. Emma watched through the blinds as half the guys in the auto shop stopped working so they could watch those long, long legs saunter through their work zone.
“You need to cut her.”
“Violence is a terrible way to get a point across.”
“You heard me, that girl needs to get cut down a few inches. Look at her, waltzing in here like she owns the place and everything in it. Perfect little princess.”
Samantha paused in front of her Cadillac, fixing a big bright smile on her sculpted face. Emma couldn’t hear what she said but it had Kellan glancing up and smiling.
“See that?” Hannah said.
“Yeah,” Emma said softly, “I see.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing,” Emma admitted. “And there is nothing to do. I know, I know. I should walk in there and claim my territory or whatever it was you said, and maybe you are right. But, Han, that’s not me. I didn’t want to play those kinds of games when I was in school, and I am certainly not going to play them now. If Kellan wants her, he’s going to have her.”
The sound that Hannah made was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “That’s a piss-poor way of backing out.”
“I’m not backing out. I don’t want to fight for something that isn’t even really mine in the first place.”
Emma watched the perfect woman wrap an arm around Kellan’s shoulders. For a moment, just a moment, she thought she saw him pull away. Her heart gave a leap. Then he settled back against her and her exultation sank down to her knees.
# # #
“Hey, you okay?” Kellan asked that night over dinner.
In the end, Emma had decided not to bring up going out with the group. She hadn’t wanted to be around people anymore. Instead, she and Kellan had picked up pizza on the way home as Emma no longer felt hungry. She stared down at her single slice of olive and sausage and felt no inclination to take more than a bite.
“You been pretty quiet.”
“Yeah,” she lied. “I’m fine.”
He glanced down at her untouched food and then back at her. “All right. I guess Rocco is going to eat well tonight.”
The dog, hearing his name, wandered over and plopped a hopeful butt down on the linoleum. The sound of his tail sweeping back and forth in gluttonous anticipation was audible. Emma tore off a piece of crust and tossed it to the mutt. She knew it wasn’t the best practice to feed a dog from your own plate, but she couldn’t help herself. At least the dog got to be happy.
“Saturday is Phantom’s birthday. We were thinking of doing a party.”
“How old is Phantom?” she asked. She didn’t much want to say yes or no; neither option held any appeal. Then again, Phantom had rescued her from a potential kidnapping, so she certainly didn’t want to snub him.
“Nineteen, he’ll be twenty.”
She shook her head. How young was too young to break the law? She glanced over at Kellan, who had been involved with her father’s “work” for years and decided not to ask. “Where did you guys find him?”
“We didn’t,” Kellan said. He took a healthy bite of his own slice and chased it with the neck portion of his beer. “He found us. See, a few years ago your dad got pissed. He thought someone was stealing food from the shop. Nothing big or anything just packages of chips, a couple of sodas, you know, stuff like that.”
She tore another piece of her crust off and handed it to a waiting Rocco. “It was Phantom?”
“Yup. Your dad got so mad that he put one of those secret camera things in. We all went out of our minds when we saw this scrawny little kid sneaking in through a window. He moved like some kind of acrobat. It was nuts. He snuck in, grabbed some food and left. He left nothing behind, not even a dirty footprint.”
“Was he homeless?”
“Turns out he was. Some runaway foster kid. I don’t know. Vinny took a liking to him, brought him home and washed him up. The kid almost never talks.”
She remembered the single sentence she had heard he had helped rescue her. “I noticed something of the sort. I guess Phantom isn’t his name.”
“No, I think it’s Taylor or Travis or something that sounds like it belongs to a cowboy.”
“Phantom suits him better.”
“It’s all he answers to now. Vinny gave him the name.”
She nodded and picked up her slice of pizza. She gave it a little nibble. “I remember Vinny from when I was younger. He’s a good guy.”
Kellan nodded. “He is. Loyal, too. It was him who dragged your dad to the doctor when he realized something was wrong.” He finished his slice of pizza and reached for a second. “How about we go sit in front to the television and watch a movie. That’ll get your mind off of whatever this is.” He motioned to her barely touched food.
They did. It was easy, so easy, to just curl up with him and disappear into a movie. At some point she did eat, and later she found herself curled into his arm. She could almost forget this wasn’t real, that it was all temporary.
“I think I’m going to go to bed.” Emma shoved herself off the couch as the credits rolled.
A hand, tattooed and callused, wrapped around her wrist. “Emma, you don’t have to talk with me. I mean, I am not going to beat it out of you or anything like that, but if something is wrong—”
“Are you sleeping with Samantha?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. They were stupid, and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to stop them from happening.
“What?” He dropped her wrist.
She shook her head and held up her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, forget I said anything. I don’t even know where it came from. I don’t think I’m feeling very good tonight.”
He stood up. “I’m pretty sure I’ve made what’s between Samantha and me pretty clear. I’ve told you I’m not sleeping with her, and even if you and I weren’t doing whatever it is we are doing, I still wouldn’t be sleeping with her.”
“What are we doing, Kellan?” she asked. “I mean, honestly, what is this? I don’t…I don’t think it’s normal.”
He took a step towards her, and even Emma could see he was barely holding onto himself. “What isn’t normal about it?”
“I want you to touch me. I want to touch you.”
“Seems pretty normal where I’m standing.”
She shook her head once, hard enough to make her head spin. “The hell it is. I’ve touched guys. I’ve had them touch me. From time to time it’s been all right, but this….this isn’t that. I wake up and the first thing I look for is you. I kiss you and it’s like I’m breathing for the first time. And when you are inside of me, I feel alive. It’s just…it’s just ridiculous.”
He grabbed her and pulled her to him.
She was buried against his chest, surrounded by the scent of him. She let herself sink against it.
“I don’t know what to do.”
He put a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face. His kiss was like butterfly wings on her lips. His tongue brushed along her lower lip, caressing ever so lightly, an invitation to be let in. She welcomed it.
Her arms slithered around his neck as her toes lifted her up. It took only the press of his body against hers to have her blood humming inside of her skin.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered.
He swept her up and, rather than taking the left and going into her room, he went right and took her into his.
# # #
She looked like a goddess who had gotten lost on the way to somewhere important and landed in his bed. All that golden hair haloed out on the dark blue of his pillow. Blankets were bunched up around her as her bare feet kicked them out of her way.
“Touch me, Kellan,” she begged, opening her arms to him.
He was going to, by God, he was going to touch her everywhere she’d let him. Her jeans were better than all the expensive panties that high price stores could toss at him as he popped the button and slid the zipper down.
She was wearing simple white cotton today, and it drove him crazy. He’d seen all kinds of women in all kinds of frippery, but nothing made him go quite so wild as Emma the Brain in white cotton panties.
Emma was right, he realized, this was ridiculous. It was insane. The scent of her as he slid the fabric down her thighs drove him wild. He didn’t know if he wanted to possess her or roll over and let her possess him; the truth was probably somewhere in the middle.
It was easier to get her shirt off. She’d taken her bra off at some point, he didn’t know when, but his eyes fell on the softness of her breasts and he knew he was done for.
She fell back against the mattress and spread her arms out like she’d make a snow angel out of his sheets. Her long legs were stretched out, showing off the curves she got from walking the dog every damned time he barked. They were good curves. He bent and laid a kiss in the inside of her knee, tasting her skin there. “You’ve got great legs for a nerdy chick.”
She rolled her eyes and poked his shoulder with her big toe. “How do you think nerdy chicks are supposed to look?”
He ran his tongue along the inside of her thigh and felt the skin twitch. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I know they ought to taste like you.”
He let himself get lost in the feel of her against his lips. The creamy satin of her thighs, the softness of her belly. He took his time when he got to the full underside of one breast, and again when he took the rough peak of her nipple between his lips.
She made the most delicious sounds. He never had to wonder if she was enjoying herself. It was all breathy moans and hungry sighs. Every time he laid his hands on her she rose to greet them. He’d never had a woman respond to him so willingly.
When he slid into her, he knew he was done for.
When she had fallen asleep, curled into a protective ball around a happy dog, Kellan decided he had to do something.
“Yeah, no, I’ll be there in a minute.” He ended the phone call.
“Who was that?”
“Samantha,” he lied.
“Oh, you are going to meet her?” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. He had fully intended for her to be angry. He had grown used to the way she could snap at people. The wildfire of her. Instead, her voice sounded soft, almost broken.
“Yeah, I mean, you are done with me, right?”
“What?”
He shrugged into his leather vest; it felt heavier today than it should. “I mean, you said it was just about relaxing. You seem pretty relaxed to me.”
“Are you kidding?” she demanded. “I mean, yeah, I said that—”
“And you say what you mean, right? That’s what you told me. You don’t play those kinds of games. You were pretty sure about it.”
“That’s so not fair. We’ve been…I thought—”
“You thought what?” He kept his voice low and even. He could see every word hurt her, slapped at her. Something inside him broke to do it. “You thought it was special? That you were special? Emma, I am not going to lie. You are hot, and you were a sweet little honey pot, but it wasn’t anything more than that.”
“Liar!” She flicked the stove top off, leaving the eggs sizzling in a cooling pan. “You are a liar. I am not stupid. I know it wasn’t…that what happened was…different.”
He laughed, and even to his earls it was cruel. “Different? Please. I mean, you were sweet, but you were a little…I dunno…naïve.”
“Naïve?” she demanded. “What? This wasn’t just one night, Kellan. This was weeks. This was something else. I don’t know what you are doing here. I don’t know if you are so damn scared of being in a relationship that you are pulling away. You are, aren’t you? You are being deliberately cruel.”
“Am I smart enough for that?”
“Yes,” she snapped back, pushing past him and into the room beyond. She hadn’t spent much time in it since their first night together. God, he’d been living with her, really living with her. “You are great with handling people, and you are trying to handle me. Right here and right now.”
“Where are you going?”
“What do you care?” she demanded. “If you are going to Samantha, it is actually over, isn’t it? It shouldn’t matter where I am going. I mean, you don’t care, right?”
“I am supposed to protect you.”
“Then why are you hurting me?” She opened one of her drawers and deposited the contents in a bag. It wasn’t her typically neat and orderly packing. “Why are you doing this?”
Her shoulders were shaking. He wanted to go to her and that made him angry. She needed to understand that this wasn’t serious, this was temporary. Emma deserved better.
“I told you what this was, from day one I told you. It’s not my fault you got caught up.”
“I didn’t just get caught up, Kellan. I love you.”
“What?”
She whirled on him. Her eyes were like glass. “You heard me, damn you. I love you. I don’t know when it started or how it started or even why but I love you. I love how you lead people, how you keep them all at arm’s length, but you are there if you need them. I love that you took care of my dad. I love that you named your ugly dog Rocco. I love so many things about you and you are an idiot, a goddamned idiot if you pretend otherwise.”
He couldn’t say anything, so he didn’t. His throat was tight, and his skin felt too hot. It itched like the lie was infecting him. He clamped his fists and waited for the feeling to pass. She continued to glare at him, this small woman filled with so much passion. She was an intoxication.
“I’m going to go to Samantha’s. I’m going to fuck her. If you wanna keep saying you love me after that, I’m not the idiot.”
He turned on her and left. The last thing he heard was a desperate sob, but it didn’t drown out the sound of his own heart breaking.
Chapter 12
“He said what?” Hannah pushed another glass of wine into Emma’s hands. It was a dark liquid, smelling vaguely like apples, or spice, or something vaguely sinful. Emma took a long sip of it, letting the flavor linger on her tongue. The taste of the wine matched Hannah’s living room. The space was all decorated with rich dark woods and elegant prints of artwork. It seemed to match her friend, and not.
“Before or after he said he was going to sleep with Samantha?” Emma curled on the lush sofa. A comfortable pillow was snuggled up against her back. A soft throw blanket was curled over her legs. Everything around her was comfortable. Everything inside felt broken.
A soft clink of Hannah’s wedding ring tapping glass drew Emma’s attention to her own blank finger. She sighed softy. Maybe it had all been some stupid fantasy, a dream she was never meant to realize.
“Oh, honey.” Hannah reached across the space between them w
ith her ringless hand and clutched Emma’s. “That sucks.” Hannah’s hair was coiled around sponge curlers. The wet locks smelled of some sort of chemical, the kind a woman used when she wanted to give her locks an extra bit of oompf. It wasn’t a bad smell, but it was strong.
“Were you getting ready to go somewhere?” Emma asked. She took another long sip of wine.
“Rudy and I were going to try to do date night.”
Emma suddenly felt guilty. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Hannah. I’ll leave you be. I shouldn’t have come over I just—”
