I’d passed out once during a rare visitation with my father and he’d been on a tear, ranting about how Mom had filed some papers which might mean he’d have his paycheck garnished and he’d not be able to pay his mortgage.
If memory served, at the time, he owned a thirty-five-hundred-square-foot house in Littleton that had a pool table, a Jacuzzi, a wet bar, and in the garage were a pimped-out Ford Bronco and a Corvette Stingray. So even then, when I was fourteen and listening to his horseshit, I knew he wasn’t hurting.
But my mother was.
Brian was.
And I was.
Financially.
And otherwise.
“Right, Mom,” I muttered, staring at my electric toothbrush, wondering if I could get toothpaste on it while on the phone with my mother, preferring to think about that, and not the other things filling my short and already not-so-great day.
“I’m going to find a time that’s somewhat calm and go and talk to your brother,” Mom decreed.
Fabulous.
“Mom—” I started to tell her I wasn’t certain that was such a hot idea.
“Not with you, Kathryn. He’s shifted accountability for what’s become of his life to you. It’s not right. It’s not fair. And it hurts me to say it, but because of that, I think you’d be a hindrance if you were there.”
And again…
The need to cry.
I didn’t pull in breath through my nose because fortunately, Boone showed at the door.
He leaned a bare shoulder against the jamb and studied me with gentle eyes.
He hadn’t put on his jeans, which meant a lot of him was in view.
And all of it was spectacular.
But such was my morning, even that didn’t help.
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said to my mother, but my gaze was on Boone’s face.
“We need to think strategically from here on,” Mom told me. “So I’ll let you know when it’s happening, what I intend to say, and I’d like you to be available at that time so when it’s done, I can go to you and fill you in.”
And be there for you because it’s going to go direct to shit and you’re going to need to lay that on somebody.
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
“I’m not going to drag my feet, honey.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“All right,” she said. “Now get some sleep. I know you danced last night. I worry about you getting enough sleep.”
No way I was going to get back to sleep after all of this.
“Will do. Love you, Mom.”
“And I love you. It’s going to be okay, Kathryn.” She said that last bit really quick, like she was trying to convince me she wasn’t lying, or maybe convince herself. When she carried on, though, she wasn’t lying. “One way or another.”
We said our good-byes, I put my phone on the edge of the pedestal sink and gave my full attention to Boone.
I then called it down.
“She got a call. She’s not going either. She says we’re a united front. And she’s going to try to find a good time, soon, to sit down and chat with Brian.”
“I feel this is the worst possible time, and the best possible time seeing as your day is crap and it can’t get much worse, to share something with you that is likely to piss you off royally,” he announced.
Uh-oh.
I decided not to say anything.
He didn’t move from his casual-but-not-casual lounge against the door frame when he noted, “You know I looked into you.”
“Yeah,” I said that one word slowly, drawing it out.
“Well, when I do that kind of thing, I’m pretty thorough.”
I pressed my lips together.
This was invasive and we were going to have to have a chat about it.
It couldn’t be denied that his actions brought to light something that I needed to know, even if it was now a mess, though that was not his fault.
But even though I had nothing to hide, and even if we’d been together, Boone looking into me would be very much not okay.
However, now was not the time to discuss that.
“Cottoned on quick, the drain on you was your family, so that was my focus,” he continued.
I remained silent.
“So that line took me right to your dad.”
Shit.
“Boone.”
That was all I said, because depending on what he found out, that was all that could be said.
“It’s no different, girls and guys,” Boone said. “You either hope to God you grow up to be just like your mother, like you, or you hope you’re nothing like her. Lucky for me, I’m like you. I had a dad to look up to, I did, and I still do. Your brother didn’t.”
“I hear you.”
“I don’t know where that takes a guy, seein’ as I don’t have that. I just know there’s a good chance it doesn’t take him to a good place. Like, fuckin’ up his life, his family, like his father did, something somewhere along the way he probably vowed to himself he’d never do, and on some level knowing he was following in his dad’s footsteps, and drowning that shit in the bottom of a bottle because he can’t deal with that mammoth of a fuckup.”
“I think alcoholism is an illness that needs to be treated, Boone.”
“I agree. But there’s a catalyst that triggers the need not to think or feel and the addictive behavior carries on from that, Ryn. And you can’t treat something when you don’t know its cause.”
He was undoubtedly right.
“How much do you know about Dad?” I asked.
“I know you don’t call him or see him, your brother doesn’t call him or see him, and he’s not on Angelica’s phone tree for when she needs a new outfit.”
Hmm.
Boone kept going.
“I know he had judgments against him for not paying child support. I know he counter-sued, alleging your mother was withholding you and your brother for visitation. And I know both you and Brian testified in front of a judge that those times you were supposedly withheld from him, he just didn’t show up.”
Well, court documents were public records.
So yeah, it was awesome to know (not) that somewhere out there the crap of my family life was available for anyone to read.
And one of the people who read it was Boone.
“And I know,” Boone continued, “you’ve owned that house you want to flip for nearly a year and it hasn’t even been fully demoed. If my dad was here, he had a daughter, that was something she wanted to do, and life got in the way, he’d be there every weekend, pulling out carpet drenched in cat piss and cutting stone to fit French doors.”
I had a great mom. I should be down with that. A lot of people didn’t have either parent give a shit about them.
But the way Boone described his dad made me long for a great dad.
“So, the baggage I carry not weighing you down yet?” I asked miserably.
“My best friend from the military got out around the time I did, came home to his wife and eight-month-old baby, struggled silently for six months without saying dick to anyone, then blew his brains out in his truck in their garage.”
My entire body swayed back in shock and pain at his words.
“Baby,” I whispered.
“Whitney, his wife, found him.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
I couldn’t imagine.
I didn’t want to imagine.
I didn’t even want to know this, but more, know Boone was living with this.
“Her first call was to me. I got there before the cops did.”
He’d seen his friend like that.
Oh God.
“Boone.”
“I’d hold a woman down in ways she liked when I fucked her. And I never could really get off in bed unless I was in control. But that shit went overdrive, and stayed overdrive, after I did what I did, saw what I saw, and lost what I lost in the service, Kathryn. Sometimes, it’s gonna be natur
al, a need to connect with you and dominate when we do. And sometimes it’s gonna be therapeutic, a need to control and release.”
No threat of me passing out now.
I was getting a lot of oxygen due to me breathing heavily at all he was laying on me.
“So how do you feel about that baggage?” he asked.
“I think our morning has been way too heavy to face any longer without coffee,” I answered.
“That isn’t what I’m looking for, honey,” he replied softly.
I knew it wasn’t.
Shit!
Where did I go with this?
I started with, “Okay, with all that’s happening, I’m sure you haven’t missed I’m a pretty strong person, Boone.”
“Your shit plus my shit equals a fuck ton of shit.”
With what he’d just given me, I was seeing he was not wrong about that.
“If you promise not to break, I won’t either,” I told him.
“I can’t promise not to break.”
Oh boy.
I took a moment to process that as I took him in.
Boone, all that tall, muscled commando goodness, warning me he could break?
I had entirely no clue how to deal with that and my next words shared I didn’t.
“Boone, baby,” I whispered.
“It’s getting real and it’s doing it fast with us, Kathryn. You’ve got your shit. I’ve got mine. But yours is external. Mine is internal. It’s also external with buds who are dealing with the same load as me, and after losing Jeb the way we did, I’ve made a promise to be there for them, same as they have for me. And I’m dedicated to that. You and me made this decision to give us a shot, and so you don’t bear the burden of thinking your baggage is going to point me to the door, you need to go in with your eyes open because it might be you who needs to walk away.”
“You liked my outfit yesterday,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” I confirmed.
“And you told me,” I went on.
“Baby, I give good boyfriend and I know you’re gonna like what I do to you in bed. But compliments on how you dress are not gonna light the dark times.”
“How dark does it get?” I asked hesitantly.
“I know guys who have it worse, and for the most part, I feel I got a lock on it or an outlet to let it go if that lock feels like it’s slipping. But if it gets loose, it’s not a trip through the light fantastic.”
Lamely, I flipped out a hand. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t either. I just know you need to know what you’re headed into so if this doesn’t work out between us, I didn’t fuck it up from the start by keeping that from you.”
“Okay, well, we have that. I’m out there with my crap, you’re out there with yours. That might not be a meet-cute start that leads to us ice skating together and sitting close in a park staring into each other’s eyes, holding cones while ice cream melts down our hands and heartwarming trips to the pound where you get me a puppy we both know we’re going to raise together all in a montage with ‘You’ve Got the Love’ playing over it. But it’s what we’ve got. And outside my mom, no one has ever even offered to stand between me and the shit of life, and you did that not half an hour ago. You did it without hesitation just offering to answer the phone for me. So I guess the only thing I’ve got to say right now is, I’ll take it.”
Boone just stood there, deceptively casually, leaning against the jamb.
But his eyes were hot on me.
“Oh, and you have an insanely gorgeous body. So seriously, there’s a lot a girl will put up with just as long as you grace her doorway in nothing but your skivvies.” I ended that with a shrug.
I then cried out in surprise when he came at me, and at first, I had no clue how to respond.
Retreat was out, seeing as, in that little bathroom, there was nowhere to go.
I would find I didn’t want to go anywhere.
He caught my head in his hands and his mouth came down on mine hard.
He kissed me harder.
He did this pushing me against the sink so it dug into my back.
I did not care.
Not even a little.
I cared less when my panties were drifting down my legs, because he’d pushed them down.
Nope.
I didn’t care.
Because with that, I knew where this was going.
I also wanted to go there.
Nope again.
I couldn’t wait to get there.
And I hoped to God we got there fast.
Which meant I rejoiced when he lifted me by my ass and put me on the edge of the sink.
I knew better than to pull his cock out as a demand for him to give me what right then I needed really, really badly. And I knew this, what with how he was, and how I was.
So I communicated that by digging my nails in his ass.
He lifted his head, caught my eyes, his were glinting, near-black with dilatation and turned on, my womb contracted at the sight, and he grunted, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I breathed in answer.
“Baby,” he growled.
I got that too.
It was a question.
One I answered swiftly.
“I’m on the pill. Clean. You?”
“Yeah.”
His hand was between us only a second before I felt him searching with the head of his cock.
He caught and then he grabbed my wrists, lifted my arms, transferred them into one of his hands, leaned into me and pressed them against the mirror behind me.
He did this as he slid inside.
Oh…
Yeah.
I closed my eyes and my head fell back, hitting glass.
God, he felt good. Perfect fit. That body so close. So warm. His smell. His hold on me.
His free arm came around me and it was then I realized he wasn’t moving.
I opened my eyes and righted my head.
“Boone…”
I trailed off because of the look on his face.
Suffice it to say, I’d never forget the look on his unbelievably beautiful face.
It told me, moments earlier, I’d said the right thing.
The way right thing.
And it meant a lot to him.
A whole lot.
At the same time, where he was now, connected to me, meant the same.
“Fucked up, not puttin’ in the work to win you,” he said. “Fucked up again, seein’ another woman when I should have been with you. Fucked up with this, because I didn’t want our first time to be on a bathroom sink. But bottom line, all that, and you like you look right now, like you feel right now, what you just said to me, I’ll take it too.”
I arched my back to press my front into his chest.
He dipped his head and kissed me.
It might have begun fast, but he then straight-up made love to me.
On my bathroom sink.
Slow, sweet, lots of kissing, lots of eye contact, lots of him touching me and doing it flat-out reverently.
Faster, deeper, but sweeter, and more kissing, eye contact, and now gripping (him, doing this to my ass with one hand as well as his fingers of the other around my wrists).
And then I knew where he was at by the look in his eyes even before his hand moved from my behind and went between us.
With a thumb to my clit, he wanted me to get there.
So I gave over to him and he took me there.
Oh yeah.
I went there with a gasp and a full-on shiver, and once I got to the place he took me, I never wanted to leave.
He watched my orgasm.
Then he took himself there.
I watched his.
Wow.
I’d always thought he was beautiful.
But that?
That was beautiful.
I’d had my fair share of experience with sex, but I could not say I’d ever done it on a bathroom sink.
And
I would never in a million years suspect that doing it there would be the most profound and intimate experience I’d ever had in my life in a way this moment very likely could be just that for the rest of it.
But that was what happened for Boone and me.
He was kissing me gently and gliding in and out before he slid in, ended the kissing and caught my slowly opening eyes.
I liked all this.
Including the fact he held me where I was, didn’t release my wrists, even when we got to the gentle after parts.
“Choice taste in music, sweetheart,” he murmured.
“Wh-what?” I forced out.
“‘You’ve Got the Love.’ Never gave any time to considering what song would cover my ice-cream-cones-in-the-park montage. But that one’s spot on.”
Was he still inside me after our first time and…
Teasing me?
“Do you ice skate?” I asked.
“Pennsylvania is no Minnesota, but we were no slouches in the hockey stakes.”
“Hockey?”
“Got my ass kicked a lot when I was a scrawny fucker. So when I filled out and got back on the ice, felt damn good knocking those guys on their asses.”
I smiled up at him.
He smiled back.
Then I noted, “I think we did great with this going-slow thing. What is it? We waited a whole day and a half before going at it? We rock.”
He chuckled at that, it was ridiculously awesome to see it at the same time feel it, but it faded, and he let my wrists go so he could catch my face in both his hands.
“Don’t let me fuck this up,” he whispered, for some reason, his eyes directed to my mouth.
“Don’t let me fuck it up,” I whispered back.
His gaze rose to mine.
“Deal.”
Chapter Ten
Threat Neutralized
Ryn
I woke with a jerk, my breath catching.
I was on my back, on my couch, my laptop on my stomach.
I’d fallen asleep while researching alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder and the best tile grouting strategies.
Earlier, Boone had had to go to work.
But he didn’t go before we’d made plans.
Lots of plans.
These included the fact that Boone and I had things set for that day, ending with him spending the night at my place.
Where I hoped we had more sex.
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