Bad Boys After Dark

by Melissa Foster

  “Baby,” he whispered against her lips. “Your kisses destroy me. I never really enjoyed kissing until you, and with you, I never want to stop. When we first got together you said you didn’t want to rush our kisses, and that was so different from anything I’d ever known. You opened my eyes to how incredible kissing can be.”

  “Sex without kissing is just sex, and I didn’t want that with you. I wanted to feel closer to you, even if only for one night, and to me, kissing is the most intimate thing you can do. It lets me feel everything you feel. A good kiss feels nice. But when we kiss, I feel it all over my body, like it, and part of you, becomes part of me.”

  “Baby—” His voice got choked by emotions. “I’ve never felt closer to anyone in my life. Your kisses are unforgettable. They’re there even when we’re apart.”

  “Forever kisses,” she said softly.

  “What, babe?”

  “That’s what our kisses are. They stay with us forever. Forever kisses.”

  “That’s exactly what they feel like.” He had the urge to make their forever kisses more permanent, to memorialize this moment, the time she’d given him with her family and friends, so they’d never forget it. “I wish I had a pocketknife. I’d carve our initials in that tree. That’s a small-town thing to do, right?”

  “It is, and it’s a family thing to do, too. But we’re already on here.” She took his hand and led him around the tree, pointing to an area that had been stripped of bark, where two hearts with initials were carved. One of the hearts had DR + AR carved inside it, and the other had SR + FK.

  “My parents call this the Tree of Forever Kisses. Nana and Poppi have one in their yard, too. When I have kids, I hope to do the same thing. Lindsay doesn’t ever want to get married, so her initials aren’t on here, which makes me sad. But maybe one day she’ll change her mind.”

  She pointed to the first heart. “This is my parents’ heart.” She pointed to the heart with her initials in it. “And this is mine. I carved it into the tree in middle school. Sophie Roberts and FK Forever Kisses. That’s you.”

  He laughed and kissed her again. “That’s any man, baby. I need a knife to fix that up.”

  “It’s not any man. You’re wrong. Only one man can be my forever-kiss guy. My father is my mother’s, and my grandfather is my grandmother’s. My uncles are my aunts’ forever kisses. It’s how things work.”

  She was so sweet, but she wasn’t naive, and he felt compelled to ask a difficult question. The question that made him think about his own parents and the relationship he’d seen between them before Lorelei died. “What about marriages that don’t last? Those people who think they’ve found their soul mate, but their relationships fall apart? Are they out of luck?”

  Her brows knitted, and she sank down to the grass. He sat beside her as she said, “Not out of luck, no. Relationships can go wrong for so many reasons. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how strong your love is. The things that tear the relationship apart are too hurtful or too big to see your way around. But that doesn’t change the love that was there. Lots of marriages fall apart because of outside influences. The husband or wife gets off on the wrong path, or they grow apart, or they’re tempted by someone else.”

  “That’s messed up,” he said too sharply. “Think about it, Soph. Temptation? Cheaters need to grow up. If a man or a woman commits to marriage, temptation shouldn’t mean shit. And growing apart? Yeah, I can buy that to a point, but if your partner is doing new things, get off your ass and do them with her. I think those are poor excuses people use when they’ve grown bored with their partner or to give validity to their insecurities when they need an ego stroke and reach outside their marriage.”

  “So, what do you think is an acceptable reason for divorce?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m sure there are some. If you find out your spouse isn’t the person they led you to believe they were. Why do you think I’ve never committed to a relationship before this? Committing to anything means something to me. Marriage isn’t supposed to be disposable. The last thing I want to do is let down a person I care about.” The topic made him think of his parents, which caused him to be edgy. He pushed to his feet and paced.

  “But your parents are divorced.”

  “And? Do you think I agreed with that? They lost their daughter. A child they created together, a child they loved and raised for eight years.” His voice escalated. “How does tearing the family apart help?” He paced beside the tree, trying to get a grip on his mounting anger. “How can you turn your back on your other children? Or holler at your grieving wife until she’s ready to lose her mind?”

  Sophie went to him, but he stormed away, splaying his hands like a warning. “You should give me some space to get this out of my system.”

  “Brett, why are you so upset? I’m sorry I hit a nerve, but is it because you lost Lorelei? Or because your parents divorced?”

  He looked up at the sky, trying to calm the rage eating away at him. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “It’s both, and it lives right there beneath the surface. You didn’t need to hear all that. I’m sorry.”

  She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Sophie, please give me a minute.” He tried to step back, but she held on tighter.

  “Talk to me,” she said softly.

  He ground his teeth together, upset with himself for burdening her. “You don’t need to hear any of this ugliness.”

  She leaned back enough to gaze into his eyes. “No, Brett. You don’t need to hold it in. You committed to me, and communication goes hand in hand with commitment. I want to help and understand what you’ve gone through. My mom had a brother who died when he was young, and she said it was the worst kind of sadness she’d ever known but that talking helped.”

  “Jesus. I’m sorry for your mom and her family.”

  “Thank you. I can’t imagine losing a sibling, or what that would feel like. But please talk to me. Help me to understand so I can be there for you.”

  He looked away, but he didn’t want to shut her out. “I don’t…I’ve never really talked about it.”

  “All the more reason to,” she said with a small smile. “I’d love to hear about Lorelei. I know it’ll be hard, but I’d like to know what happened with your family.”

  “Soph, it’s all awful.”

  “It’s awful that you lost Lorelei and that your parents didn’t stay together, but it must have been wonderful to have had a sister for all those years. Were you close to her?”

  He felt a pained smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah. Really close. She’s the reason I know how to dance.”

  “She liked to dance?”

  “Lorelei liked everything. She had a personality that was bigger than life, and she wanted to be famous for about a hundred different things—acting, modeling, dancing, baking, trapeze…” He felt a knot that had lived in his chest forever loosen the slightest bit. “She loved old movies, musicals, and plays. She watched all the old Fred Astaire classics, and she took dance lessons down the street from our house. I used to walk her there twice a week. Her teacher wrangled me into being Lorelei’s dance partner.” Memories flew through his mind at breakneck speed, bringing a smile. “I haven’t thought about that for a long time. My family doesn’t know. I remember thinking about how my brothers would give me shit for dancing.”

  “And yet dancing helped you reel me in. I always wished I had an older brother. Lorelei must have felt so special to have that secret with you.”

  “I hope so. She liked to pretend I was her bodyguard. A few months before she died, my parents took us to a Broadway show, and she wore this fancy dress. She was so excited, and she made all these plans about her big debut. My parents bought each of us boys dark suits.” His throat clogged with emotions. They were the suits they’d worn to her funeral. He cleared his throat to try to regain control, struggling to find his voice again. “She, uh, she wanted to pretend she was an actress. When we g
ot into the theater, I put my arms out to the side and walked ahead of her, clearing the way, and said, ‘Lorelei Bad coming through. No autographs, please.’”

  Sophie laughed softly, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “She ate it up, waving as she walked through the lobby. Can you imagine? I don’t know how she did it. The girl had more guts and confidence than I could have dreamed of at her age. I haven’t been to a show since…Anyway, after we lost her, the whole bodyguarding thing tore me up.”

  “Because you couldn’t protect her?”

  He nodded. “We lost her so quickly after her diagnosis. That was the beginning of the end. We went from being a loud, happy family to not knowing what we were. My mom cried day and night, and my father worked all the time, and when he was home he completely lost his shit.”

  “It must have been awful for all of you. I can’t imagine what your parents went through. They not only lost their daughter, but they had four grieving children to try to help through it.”

  His chest constricted. “Yeah, it was tough, and the way my father handled it pisses me off. He was the man of the family, the one we looked up to. The man who was supposed to protect us. As stupid as it sounds, at ten years old I blamed him for her death. I knew then I shouldn’t blame him, but I was so angry and so fucking sad. I didn’t know what to do with it.” The words fell from his lips like bombs, exploding around him.

  “Everyone grieves differently,” Sophie said empathetically. “You must have felt as helpless and lost as your parents did.”

  He paced again, unable to stop the truth from coming out. “We couldn’t talk about it. We didn’t know what would set my father off. The overwhelming pain of losing Lorelei burrowed deep inside me, turning dark and ugly, until it was all I felt.”

  He faced her again, taking in the pain in his sweet Sophie’s eyes. In that moment, the darkness of his past collided with what he wanted for his future, and for the first time in his life he wanted to own up to his part in their family’s destruction. With his heart in his throat, he stepped closer to Sophie, holding her gaze to be sure she would hear every word he said and hoping like hell she would still want him afterward.

  “Sophie, as awful as that time was, the truth of our family falling apart is even uglier. I wanted to blame someone. I wanted to kill someone, and I’m damn lucky that I didn’t. I went out and got in as much trouble as I could. Fighting, causing shitstorms in stores, doing anything and everything to try to get that rage out of my system. Two years after she died, right before my father moved out, I was picked up by the police for trying to beat up a guy who owned a convenience store because he wouldn’t sell me cigarettes. I didn’t even smoke. I just wanted a fight.” He laughed at how stupid he was as a kid, but the reprieve was short-lived. The truth came slamming back like a boomerang.

  “You were hurting,” Sophie said as she reached for him again. “You were only a kid.”

  He kept her at arm’s length, steeling himself for the truth. “But I wasn’t a stupid kid, Sophie. You need to hear the truth before you give me any more of that sweet heart of yours. My father used his connections to get the charges dropped, but all that trouble I caused was misdirected. I knew it then, and I’m ashamed of it now. At first I was honestly trying to get past the gaping hole inside me. But as time passed my reasons changed. You know how I said I blamed my father? I turned that blame into hatred, feeding off of it. I thought if I got him and his anger out of the house, I’d feel better and my mom would feel better, but that’s not how things work. All that shit I did made things a thousand times worse for my parents. I destroyed him and decimated our family.”

  A tear slid down Sophie’s cheek, nearly dropping him to his knees.

  “I’m sorry, Sophie.”

  “Sorry?” She swiped at her tears.

  “That I’m not the man you thought I was.”

  “You’re right. You’re not the man I thought you were.” Her expression turned serious. “Because the man I thought you were before we got together was a man who would never admit to something like that. He’d make a joke about it, or get pissed if someone accused him of it. And the man I’ve come to know? The man I trust with my heart?” She stepped closer. “That man has been slowly opening up to me, and everything I’ve learned about him has surprised me. That man owns his strengths and his weaknesses. That man is brilliant. But like the rest of us, he wasn’t born that way. You were a kid when you lost your sister. I can’t imagine how devastating that must have been for all of you, but to the ten-year-old boy who secretly danced with her? The boy who protected her and loved her?” More tears slid down her cheeks. “There are no words for how horrific and sad that must have been and must continue to be when you think of her. You might have been a really smart kid, but as you said, everything you knew was upended when you lost Lorelei. You can’t blame yourself for what happened between your parents. You weren’t acting rationally, and chances are neither were they.”

  He wanted to take that lifeline and run with it, but he knew better. He needed to be sure she fully understood where his head had been.

  “I knowingly did things that would make my father angry, and that’s shameful.”

  “That’s a hurting child,” Sophie insisted. “I’m sure your parents knew that.”

  He shook his head. “Do you understand the ramifications of what I did? My mother lost her forever-kiss guy because I couldn’t keep my shit together long enough for him to get through his own grief. She’s alone now, Soph, because of me.”

  Sophie studied his face, and he wondered what she saw. The new pain slicing through him as he bared his soul? Or the relief he was ashamed to feel, because revealing that secret felt like he’d released a hundred ghosts from the cavern of his chest?

  “People get second chances, Brett. You asked if broken marriages meant the couple was out of luck.” She shook her head. “There are more opportunities to find love and even to fall back in love with an old partner. If your mom is still alone, maybe she wants to be. Or maybe she’s waiting for your father to become the man he once was, or some rendition of that person. What I’m saying is, you’re carrying an awful big burden that you picked up as a kid. I wonder if you’ve added to it over the years as you became stronger and felt you could carry more weight?”

  He folded his arms around her and touched his forehead to hers. His rational mind knew he’d only been a grieving kid, but the guilt he’d harbored had magnified. He’d kept that secret for so long, he expected others to feel the weight and shame of what he’d done, too. He’d feared that confessing would unleash demons he’d always believed could drag him so far under he’d never resurface. But just as Sophie calmed him, she made everything seem clearer.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It feels good telling you, and that makes me feel guilty, because you don’t need to be brought down.”

  “You’re not bringing me down. You’re letting me in. Now I understand more about who you are, how deeply you hurt, and how intensely you love.”

  “Sophie…” He was at a loss for words. He never realized how good it would feel to finally have someone to talk to about this.

  “It’s not surprising that you didn’t want to get close to anyone for all this time.” She placed her hand on his cheek, drawing those feelings right out.

  “And now I can’t get close enough to you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  SOPHIE AWOKE TO the sound of voices outside her bedroom door. Brett’s arm was wrapped tightly around her as he slept. She wondered if he was having a bad dream or was afraid she might run away. The thought made her smile. Like she’d ever run away from him? When they’d come to bed last night they’d made slow, sweet love, and then they’d made wild, frenzied love, and she knew they’d crossed another bridge and taken their relationship to another level.

  Her bedroom door flew open, and Brett bolted upright, putting his arm out in front of her like a barricade.

  “Rise and shine!” Nana said as she burst
into the room and threw the curtains open.

  Brett turned his face away from the bright light.

  Sophie’s mother was on Nana’s heels. She closed the curtains and said, “Sorry, baby girl! Nana! We talked about this!”

  Brett’s arm dropped, and he flopped onto his back with a groan, pulling Sophie against him, and whispered, “Thank you for making me sleep in my underwear.”

  “I told you. Personal space does not exist in this house.” Nana and Poppi lived only down the road, but she wondered how long they’d been waiting for them to wake up.

  Nana opened the curtains again. “Wake up now, kids. The day is waiting.”

  Lindsay leaned against the doorframe in her pajamas, her blond hair a tangled mess. She didn’t live far from their parents, but when Sophie was in town, she always stayed over. She covered a yawn and said, “Welcome home, sis.”

  “Nana, we’re tired. We got in late last night,” Sophie pleaded as she glanced at the clock. Holy cow, it was already nine? Brett usually woke up at the crack of dawn. Had their talk helped ease his conscience so he slept better? Or had they simply worn each other out?

  Nana set her hand on her hip with an amused expression. “My sources tell me that you two lovebirds were up all night. These walls aren’t soundproof, you know.”

  Brett’s eyes widened. Sophie wanted to disappear.

  “My apologies,” Brett said as he tightened his grip on Sophie and sat up, bringing her with him.

  Could this get any more embarrassing?

  Nana waved a hand. “No apologies necessary, but now it’s time to greet the day.”

  Poppi appeared in the doorway and put an arm around Lindsay. He kissed the top of her head. His dark eyebrows and white hair made his blue eyes look as if they were painted on, and his easy smile warmed Sophie’s heart despite the craziness of the last few minutes.

  “Nana, how about you leave these kids alone? Who’s ready to help make brunch?” her grandfather asked.