Lucky Charmed

by Sharla Lovelace

  What did I just do?

  “Are you okay?” Lanie whispered, nudging my knee with hers.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back.

  She took one of my hands. “That was really good, what you said.”

  My eyes closed. “I don’t even know what I said. It’s like a blur of noise in my head, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t get that I’m a grown-up now thing across.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know that that was the message,” she said.

  “I remember a lot of f-bombs.”

  “There were one or two,” she said. “But you probably saved me from killing Katrina, so there’s that.”

  “True.” I leaned forward, my face in my hands. “Jesus. My mother.”

  “I blame her,” Lanie said. “She started it.”

  “I need to move to Wyoming,” I mumbled into my hands. “Raise goats and make buttermilk.”

  “You won’t touch honey, but you’ll make sour milk?”

  “Wyoming,” I said. “Bigger picture.”

  She nudged me again. “You don’t need Wyoming. You just need all the stupid people to go away. What’s wrong with these morons?”

  I nudged her back. My best friend, ready to go to the mat for me. Once upon a time, I’d been so envious of her life. Of course, I’d also thought she was married and successful in California, not single and living paycheck to paycheck in Louisiana. And now she was back, all that behind her, and there I was sort of envious again. Not because she was jet-setting or living an adventurous life, but because she was happy. She was loved.

  “You need to get home to your hottie hubby,” I said. “You don’t want to be late for your date.”

  “I don’t want to leave you like this,” she said. “Come with me.”

  I shook my head. “Go on,” I said, looking at Sully’s form in the near darkness as he bid goodbye to some stragglers. “I have some unfinished business to deal with.”

  Lanie paused. “Are you sure?”

  I blew out a slow breath, watching his movements. “No. But I need to do it anyway.”

  She left.

  A few minutes later, it was down to me and Sully. He stood in the doorway watching the rain fall, his right arm propped on the door jamb. He was beautiful.

  And dangerous.

  He turned my direction and slowly walked toward me, climbing up the two rows and sitting down next to me.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Probably not my shiniest moment.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought it was pretty good.”

  “You don’t have to live here,” I said, before thinking. “I mean, yeah, I guess you do now. But I have to live and work with these people, and I’ve fought the gossip my whole life. I don’t know if I made it better with that speech.”

  Sully looked around the gym, careful to avoid my eyes.

  “So this is what high school was like,” he said. “Pep rallies and shit.”

  “Yep. Can’t you just feel the school spirit?”

  “I can smell the sweaty feet,” he said, making me chuckle. “Or maybe that’s just the wet doormats.”

  “So you never went to public school at all?” I asked.

  I already knew some of it, but I’d babble about anything to give me more time.

  “My mom made me go through the fourth grade,” he said. “Then when she left and Camilla came in with Aidan, my dad hired tutors to home-school us the carnie way. On the road.”

  What kind of mother left her kid? Especially to a carnival life. As much as my gypsy spirit coveted that back then, I was the first to say it wasn’t for children.

  “She couldn’t handle the life,” Sully said, as though reading my thoughts. “It’s not for everyone.”

  It was the time to ask the question. Now. While we were both facing the empty gym and not looking at each other.

  “It wasn’t for you,” he said softly.

  My head whipped like it was on a remote. “What?”

  “That’s why.”

  I stared at his profile. He hadn’t even let me ask the question. He stole my question, and gave me the—hell no, that wasn’t it. It was him deciding what was good for me without giving me that choice.

  My blood ran hot, flushing my skin so fast I felt like I matched my sweater. My lip started to quiver, but not from tears, and when the heat from my gaze made him turn my way, I barely felt the kick to my heart.

  “Carmen,” he began.

  “How dare you,” I said.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Damn right, I don’t,” I breathed, getting up and stepping down to the floor. I needed stability under my feet. “You decided that for me? That I was so weak and unprepared for the perils of life on the road, you’d be better off ditching me—”

  “I didn’t ditch you.”

  “—without a word and moving on so you wouldn’t have to think of me again? So you and Kia could fuck every night?” Angry tears burned my eyes as the jealousy bug reared up. Wow. I never planned on playing the Kia card, but evidently it was there. She was all over him in the years I went to the carnival with Dean, draping over him like a blanket, and now—I flexed my fingers and walked away a few feet. Damn it, I was acting like a spurned teenager.

  Like the person he left. We never got to have this conversation then.

  I whirled around as he stepped down to the floor, looking just as angry as I felt.

  “Kia?” he spat, coming so close we could have bumped chests. “Have you lost your damn mind?”

  “Didn’t ditch me?” I responded in the same tone, head tilted. Letting the heat from my anger hold me up there in his face. “Did you think I was in your trunk?”

  Anger flashed in his eyes, and he slowly breathed out, probably to keep from throttling me. That was okay, because for once, being near him wasn’t sending me into a wanton frenzy. All I felt was fifteen levels of pissed off.

  I shook my head as I glared up at him. To hell with needing answers. I didn’t have time for these games or this drama.

  “Screw this,” I said under my breath.

  “Fine.”

  I walked around him, straight out the door, straight through the rain to my car. I couldn’t feel the rain on my skin, and it didn’t matter. I drove home as steadily and carefully as I could with rain streaming across my windshield and tears streaming down my face.

  It wasn’t for you.

  What a self-righteous, pompous son of a bitch. How had I missed that side of him? How had I ever fallen for him? Why did he have to come back here and torture me?

  Between the trek to my car and then to my front door, I looked like I’d jumped in the pond with all my clothes on. I stripped off my clothes as I walked to my bedroom, making a nice soggy trail that I couldn’t care less about. All I wanted to do was climb into my bed naked and be angry. Think about all the hateful words people had said out there, all the things that just would not die, and dwell on the ones that made my blood boil. This town was toxic, and getting out of it sounded better by the second.

  I’d just made it under my covers, wet hair and all, when my doorbell rang.

  “Oh for the love of God,” I groaned.

  I pulled the comforter over my head, hoping whomever it was would go away.

  The doorbell rang again.

  What if it were my elderly neighbor Mr. Harlan, who frequently locked himself out of the house? I couldn’t leave him outside in the rain.

  It rang again.

  Damn it.

  I had to put on clothes.

  Grunting out of bed, I pulled on my go-to cut-off sweatpants shorts and a Billy Joel tank top that probably showed a little too much with no bra, but Mr. Harlan was almost legally blind. Hence, my need to crawl out of bed in the middle of my misery to save him.

  “Hang on, Mr. Harlan,” I called out as another loud clap of thunder shook the house. I padded across my living room to grab his extra key out of a mosaic bowl. “I’ve got your�
�”

  The face looking back at me when I opened the door wasn’t sweet little wrinkled Mr. Harlan. It was a hot, wet, and fuming Sully.

  Chapter Seven

  Sully.

  Fuck balls.

  Sully stood in the doorway, anger radiating off him. Holding my wallet, with words stalled on his lips as his gaze fell to my chest.

  I sucked in a breath and found my tongue again. “What are you—”

  “You left your wallet on the bleachers,” he said. His eyes lifted slowly to meet mine. They were angry. Well, good for him. So was I. “And we have things to discuss.”

  “We have nothing to discuss,” I said, crossing my arms and wishing I’d gone for a different shirt. Like a giant sweatshirt that covered me head-to-toe. “You said enough.”

  “I wasn’t done.” He walked past me, forcing me to step aside.

  I scoffed. The fucking nerve!

  “Well, come on in,” I said, making a sweeping motion behind him and shutting the door.

  He tossed my wallet on a table and turned to face me. In my house. Sully was in my house. Just maybe five feet away. Maybe ten, but it didn’t matter because he was in my house. Standing by the couch where I watched TV and read books and did all the normal things that people do when their old first loves aren’t standing in their living rooms taking away the normal.

  I was far too undressed for this, but there was no way I could walk into my bedroom with him there. I would have a stroke just thinking of the possibilities.

  “Okay, you have the floor,” I said. “Say what you came to say.”

  He slicked back his wet hair, and my toes curled. God, I hated my body’s reaction to him. He was an ass. He had no right to make a speech in my living room, and yet there he was. I had to keep my arms crossed so my nipples wouldn’t get hard.

  “That life isn’t—”

  “—for me,” I finished. “Really? You’re leading with that again?”

  “It’s not a dig, Carmen,” he said. “That’s not an insult. It’s hard. It’s miserable.” He took a step closer. “It shouldn’t be for anyone.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Sully,” I said. “I’m not that naïve girl anymore. The one you left in a parking lot.” He closed his eyes as if he were seeing that. Good. He should. “I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need this drama back in my life. I thought I wanted to know why, but if that’s all you’ve got, then I’m good.”

  “You think I didn’t want you. That I wanted Kia?” he said incredulously.

  Ugh, why did I say that? Jealousy was the worst defense ever.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “But for starters, she’s here with you.”

  “For starters, Kia is like a sister to me,” he countered. “So no. Never have and never will. She’s my family. She just wants off the road too, so she came with me to help.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “She was all over you. Every year, I saw the two of you.”

  “Because you were all over your husband,” he snarled. “In front of me. She’s my friend. She knew what that did to me.”

  What that did to him? What the hell?

  “Why would you care?” I said with a bitter laugh. “You left me, Sully.” I pointed. “You.”

  “You think you weren’t with me?” he said, stepping closer again. Close enough to touch. Too close. And yet my feet couldn’t move.

  “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t,” I said, hating the shake that my voice held.

  “You’re wrong,” he said through his teeth. His expression looked raw as his eyes drifted downward. I knew what he was looking at, and it wasn’t just my too-exposed boobs. It was what was inked inside one of them. I needed to inhale and couldn’t. He lifted his shirt sleeve. “Every day.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I whispered. “More words from—”

  “Every… single… day,” he repeated, not blinking, holding my stare. “I woke up and did what I had to do, in fuck knows what crappy town, with wheels under my feet and fast food in my belly, rarely seeing green grass because most places we set up are nothing but gravel and mud. That’s the life I was given, Carmen, and that’s okay. I lived it.” His breathing was ragged as he leaned into me. “But I thanked God you weren’t there to have to.”

  I sucked in a breath and mentally fought back the burn that was imminent. I’d cry when he left. Don’t you dare cry.

  “You had everything in front of you, baby,” he continued. “I couldn’t take that away and put you in another trailer. And I had too much to do before I could offer you anything else.”

  My world spun. No. He couldn’t come here fifteen years later and do this. Not now. I backed up a step.

  “You don’t get to call me baby,” I said, turning for the door. “That was another time, with two different—”

  “I loved you.”

  They slammed into me like dynamite. Those words. Those… those fucking unfair words.

  By the time I turned back around, my eyes were on fire and my legs were shaking so badly I didn’t know how they held me up.

  “You don’t get to say that to me either,” I said, my voice tremulous and irritatingly whispery. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to throw something at his beautiful head, but damn it I didn’t want to cry.

  “Carmen.”

  “No!” I yelled, my voice cracking. “You didn’t just leave, you deserted me. You left me in this hell hole to rot and didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye! That’s not love.”

  “Yes, it was love,” he yelled back. “I grew up with nothing, do you hear me? Not a damn thing. No bike, very few toys; there was no room. We didn’t have Christmas; we’re in Branson for Christmas every year. My dad gave us a new jacket every year and some money to go hang out in town. Merry fucking Christmas. Do you think I wanted to bring you into that? Raise kids to live like I did? Hell no.”

  “So why play me?” I said. “Why tell me you wanted me with you? Why tell me anything?”

  “Because when I looked at you, I did,” he said.

  “No,” I repeated, spinning around blindly toward the door, my hand finding the knob through a haze of hot tears. “You need to go. Just le—”

  His body was against my back instantly, holding us against the door as his face pressed into my hair. His right hand went around my waist as the left held my head against his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said above my ear. “I am so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t,” I whispered, shutting my eyes tightly against his words, against the way he felt against me, trying not to melt back into him. Trying not to be eighteen again. Trying to keep my damn dignity.

  “I might not have done it right, but I loved you,” he said, his voice breaking, crushing my heart for a second time. “Maybe it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but—”

  “It was,” I cried, spinning around, pushing him back. Tears poured from my eyes, and I’d never been a pretty crier. Dignity had left the building. “It was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. You had me, you idiot. I would have woken up with you anywhere.” I shoved at him again as my sobs made the words catch. “You had me!”

  His scent filled my nose as he pulled me to him, and I found myself crushed into his chest, his arms holding me like I might disappear. I gasped and knew there were important, smarter thoughts fighting to be heard. Thoughts that said to back away—far, far away—and not to melt into the all-consuming sensations of his hands going into my hair or travelling my back. I cried into him, unable to stop. Anger at him, at myself, at every memory that had stayed with me all these years. At my infuriating reaction to him. My hands moved up his sides all on their own, grabbing his shirt in my fist. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care that he was soaking wet. I wasn’t aware of anything except the feel, the smell, the need, the screaming voice in my head telling me no, and the direction my face was headed in spite of it.

  There were no more words. There was just the sound of my crying, our erratic breathing, and the gentle scrape of his sc
ruff against my hair, my forehead, my cheeks, as he dragged his lips in slow kisses along my face. Until almost… almost… and then his mouth. It was on mine as his hands came up to hold my head. His lips searched against mine, kissing my top lip as I kissed his bottom one. We switched. We tasted. My fingers found the bottom of his shirt and skimmed underneath to the skin above his jeans, making him hiss in a breath as his mouth covered mine hungrily. There was a groan and a clenching of fingers and pulling in tighter and then our eyes opened and—oh my God, what was I doing?

  My whole body tingled like I’d been lightly electrocuted, and I was kissing Sully Hart like a woman starved.

  “No,” I whispered against his lips.

  I slid my hands back around, and moved up his chest, pushing him back gently. Putting some space between us as my eyes fell from the haunted look in his eyes to his mouth. My lips missed him instantly.

  “I can’t,” I said, my voice sounding odd and scratchy. I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I can’t do this again.”

  “Why?” he said, his voice gravelly. “I’m not going anywhere this time.” His brows came together as something else crossed his face. Something I instinctively knew I didn’t want him to ask. “Or is that the problem?”

  My heart physically hurt as I pulled out of his grip, like it was telling me it couldn’t do that, either. It couldn’t detach from him again. I pressed a hand to my mouth before the pain could manifest itself as more tears. I’d done that enough. He’d seen enough of that from me. And the look on his face was—sweet Jesus. I needed out of this town.

  Sully rubbed at his eyes with a finger and thumb as if trying to clear the fog, and raked his fingers through his damp hair. “I—” he began, just as his phone rang from his pocket.

  I took the opportunity to walk away and breathe as he answered, flexing my fingers to rid myself of the shakes. The what-the-fuck-did-we-just-do shakes.

  “What?” Sully said into the phone, the alarm in his voice making me turn back around and give him a questioning look. Not that he saw it, because he was kind-of-sort-of avoiding looking at me, too. He blew out a breath and paced a few steps. “Yeah, let me know what you hear, and I’ll keep a lookout too.”