Hard Edge

by Tess Oliver

  Caden held up both bottles as he stepped into the building. “One for first aid and one to drink.” He untwisted one cap and knelt down in front of me. Gently, he took hold of one of my hands and turned it palm up. I stared at the top of his dark head. His long lashes shaded his eyes as he concentrated on his task. He used his finger to lightly rub away the grit that was still ground into my palms. My skin was tender and sore, but his touch soothed me. He held my fingers in his as he trickled the cool water over my palm. It was such a simple gesture, but the way he held my hand as he took care of me sent a rush of heat through me. It circled through my whole body and then wrapped around my heart, making my chest tighten around my thumping heart.

  A fast, short breath shot from my lips as he lowered his mouth to my palm and blew on my skin.

  I stared down at him. The air pumped through my lungs in short, fast spurts as his thick curtain of lashes lifted and he looked up at me. His gaze stayed riveted on my face as he lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my wrist.

  My lips parted. I badly wanted to say something, but no words came out. He released my hand and moved to my knees to repeat the same incredibly memorable first aid. He blew my skin off as he trickled water over the scrapes on my knees. Then without warning, he pressed his mouth against the skin just above the abrasion.

  He lifted his face. “Better?”

  The words stuck in my throat. “Uh—huh, much better.”

  Caden pushed to his feet and opened the second bottle. He handed it to me for the first drink. I could hardly remember how to swallow. I was nearly shaking from his tender ministrations, but he was his usual cool, calm self. It seemed he had no idea what a tailspin he’d put me in with his caring touch and, more notably, his kisses.

  “I’ll go home and get the truck. Will you be all right here alone?”

  I actually needed some time just to come back to earth and slow my pulse and everything else that had been thrown into turmoil. I nodded. “As long as that mama bird doesn’t come back with an angry posse, I’ll be fine.”

  There was the smallest hint of a grin as he turned to leave. It seemed I’d been wrong. It seemed he knew exactly how flustered his first aid had left me.

  The short span of time it took Caden to ride back and get the truck helped me regain some of the composure I’d lost. But I could still feel his mouth on my skin, long after. That was probably not a good sign. I tried hard to remember when, or if, Jeremy had ever left me so breathless. I couldn’t pinpoint a time. Not even in the heat of sex. Again, not a good sign . . . for anything, and especially my future nuptials, something I grew less certain about every day.

  Of course, I wasn’t delusional. Caden and I were both back in Mayfair for a short time, but soon he’d travel back to his life, and, no doubt, his women friends, and I would board a plane back to the east coast. I’d given it some thought after talking with my Mom. I’d poured a lot of time, energy and brain power into my schooling. Leaving it now would be nothing short of foolish. Even with my uncertainty about the path I’d chosen, I had to at least see it through to the end. There were no set rules that said I had to go into practicing law, but I had to at least finish what I’d started. At least, that was what the logical, straight A student side of my brain was telling me. Of course, the left side, the far less inhibited side of my brain, took control the second Caden pulled up in his truck.

  His white smile flashed through the dusty windshield as he saw me step out of the depot, feeling far less steady than I had before the bike fall and before his fingers had brushed away the dirt from my skin.

  Caden hopped out of the truck and lifted the bikes into the bed. My knees were sore, but overall I’d been lucky. I hobbled to the passenger side of the truck. Caden rushed around to my side and opened the door. He helped me climb up onto the seat, and I let him, even though it wasn’t necessary.

  He climbed in on the driver’s side and turned the truck around.

  “How are you doing there, limpy?”

  I shook my head. “It seems that I’ll make a full recovery. How was my mom’s bike?”

  “The basket was a little tweaked, but otherwise, it’s fine.”

  I held my hand out the open window, letting the air cool the sting on my palm. It wasn’t nearly as soothing as Caden’s breath. “So when are you going back to the beach?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I’ve got to change the oil on the truck today. Dad and Sally are taking Aunt Bev to the airport this afternoon. I think it’ll be good for them to have some alone time.”

  He didn’t mention the beach invite again. I was both relieved and disappointed.

  “Do you have some antibacterial stuff to put on those scrapes?”

  “Yes, Dr. Stratton, I do.” I smiled over at him. “Thank you.”

  “Anything for you, Trinket.” He pulled the truck into my driveway, and I climbed out. Mom came running out of the house. One hand was covered with chocolate, which meant that she was in the middle of dipping truffles. She held her chocolatey fingers like a surgeon holding up a sterilized hand. “What happened?”

  “I was trying to avoid a squirrel, and . . .” I looked pointedly at my knees.

  “Oh, Kenna. Well, there’s some bandages in the medicine cabinet. I’ve got to get back to my chocolate. Thanks for bringing her home, Caden,” she called as she rushed back inside with her chocolate hand.

  I waved to Caden as he took the bike into the garage. I headed to the bathroom and pulled out the bandages. Then I shuffled down the hall to my room. I tossed the box of bandages on my bed and walked over to my desk. I hadn’t used it since high school, and most of my old school stuff was still shoved in the drawers. My palms were tender as I shuffled through the bottom drawer. It was still there, hidden below a stack of papers, reports and finals that I’d kept for some silly reason. I pulled the paper out. It had been pulled from a notebook. The fringed edges had curled up completely. I’d written ‘Kenna’s Life Plan’ across the top in thick pink highlighter, and I’d added a few hearts and scrolls to make it fancy. Underneath was a picture of my husband and me riding dolphins toward the beach. A shell wreath circled my head, sort of. Sadly my artistic skills had not improved much since then. I’d labeled the pictures with a blue pen. Kenna, the bride. Caden, the groom. Of course I’d never showed anyone my life’s plan because, at that time, I would have rather eaten a cockroach than let anyone know that I wanted to marry Caden Stratton.

  I smiled down at the picture and rubbed my fingertips over it before sliding it back into the bottom of the drawer.

  Chapter 10

  Caden

  Aunt Bev gave me a stiff hug and whispered in my ear to take care of my dad. Then she climbed into the backseat of the car.

  “We’ll be a few hours, depending on traffic,” Dad called over the top of his car before climbing in himself. I’d told him about my plans to go back to the beach for a few days. He’d had no real reaction except that he mentioned it would probably do me some good and it would give Sally a chance to wind down after all the visitors. Seconds after he said it, he tried to backtrack, reminding me, of course, that I was not a visitor but a part of the family. I’d stopped him halfway through his stumbling explanation and hugged him, to let him know I understood what he meant.

  I walked over to the truck and pushed up the hood to inspect the belts. A flicker of movement across the street caught my attention. Kenna stepped out of her house looking fucking adorable with a bandage on each knee. Almost from the second I’d arrived in Mayfair, the one person I wanted, needed, to see was Kenna. I was sure she’d help me hold onto Grady a little longer and she had. But there was more to it than that. Spending time with her had reminded me of all the reasons why Grady and I had been so crazy about her. She was someone who you always wanted to spend time with, and when she wasn’t around, nothing seemed quite right.

 
A long, golden strand of hair curled across her mouth. She brushed it away and tucked her hands in the back pockets of her shorts as she walked up the driveway. I’d used her scraped palms and knees as an excuse to touch her. It had been worth every damn minute.

  I leaned past the opened hood of my truck and looked down at her knees. “Trinket, you really rock those bandages.”

  “Oh, trust me, I know.” She smiled as she walked up next to me and glanced into the truck engine.

  “You smell like sugar and vanilla, a mouth-watering combination, and coupled with those bandaged knees—Lethal, baby.”

  “Yep, I know that too. What are you up to under the hood? Holy moly, wait, is that the pirate flag I sewed for the tree house?” She headed toward the backyard gate. “The tree house is still standing?” She reached over to open the gate. “I’ve got to climb up there. Is it still safe?”

  I shrugged and followed her. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

  Kenna strode into the yard and stopped beneath the giant oak. The tree house had been a summer project when we were kids. Kenna’s dad had helped. It was rustic and rough, but fairly impressive considering we’d built the thing out of old wood and our imaginations. Kenna had pounded in a lot of the nails herself. She’d also added to the coolness of our home built club house by hand sewing a black pirate flag, skull and all, to be flown off the top.

  I stood back and watched her. She’d pulled on some hiking boots, and they looked hot with her long, sleek legs and jean shorts, scraped knees and all.

  She smiled up at the flag. “That felt skull looked a whole lot more like a skull when I was ten. But I was impressed with myself at the time.”

  She walked up to the first rung of the tree ladder, a series of wood pieces that had been hammered to the trunk of the tree. She smiled back at me over her shoulder, and a memory of her as a girl, climbing up with a bag of marshmallows and playing cards, came back to me.

  “Are you coming up?” Her voice popped me back to the present.

  “I’m right behind.”

  With the athletic grace that always made her fun to watch, no matter what the activity, Kenna climbed the splintery ladder up to the tree house. She stopped near the top to look down at me. “Thought you were right behind.”

  “Yep, but I was having too much fun with the view from below.”

  “You cad. Some things never change,” she said as she climbed up into the tree house.

  “So damn true,” I muttered to myself.

  “What?” she called down.

  “Nothing.” I climbed the ladder up to the house.

  Kenna stood in the center of the box that was once a well-used playhouse, hideout and fort for keeping an eye on the enemies advancing toward the gates.

  “It looks a lot smaller now.” Kenna said as she walked over to the wall where we used to carve pictures, treasure maps and even secret messages in the soft lumber planks. It was a heavy reminder of our childhood and our time with Grady. The bright mood she’d climbed up with seemed to have disappeared.

  I watched her as she ran her fingers along the wood, stopping occasionally to read something. The smooth skin on her shoulders glowed like cream as she reached up to touch letters on the wall. Until this week, I hadn’t seen the all grown up version of Trinket, but none of it disappointed. She was every bit the heartbreaker as she was at sixteen, when she could skip into a room and stop my breath with one glance my direction. It was all still there, those conflicting feelings of wanting someone so badly, and all the while knowing she was not for me. She’d laughed off the mention of her childhood crush, and I’d spent the rest of the afternoon convincing myself that I’d always done the right thing, when it came to Kenna. I’d made plenty of bad decisions in my life. I’d done the wrong thing far more than I wanted to admit, but denying myself Kenna had been as hard as it had been right. And not just because Grady had loved her too. I knew damn well that her parents would have been devastated. Even as a teenager, I wasn’t exactly the type of guy who parents approved of. I still wasn’t that guy. Only now, as an adult, I didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. The only person whose opinion of me mattered at the moment was the golden haired woman standing in front of me, still my dream girl and still completely oblivious to the fact that I loved her.

  She stopped at the far corner of the tree house. The afternoon sun had dropped low enough that the light inside was dimmed by the shadows of the tree. Her fingers brushed over something written on the wall. “It’s my name with a big heart next to it. I don’t even remember carving it.” Her voice trailed off.

  I walked up behind her. I knew I had no right to touch her. There had been no fall off a bike and the hugs of shock and grief were behind us, but I was done giving a fuck about what was right and wrong when it came to Kenna.

  I placed my hands on her arms. She responded by leaning back against me, just as she had earlier when I’d helped her to her feet. I’d worked hard telling myself that I’d just imagined her standing there, pressed against me as if it was where she wanted to be. But it was happening again.

  I glanced down at the writing, my brother’s writing, on the wall, and as if someone had splashed a cold bucket of betrayal on me, I sucked in a breath and lowered my hands.

  She reached forward, touched her name and traced her fingertip around the heart. “Grady wrote this,” she said weakly. She turned away from the wall and walked to the small opening on the opposite wall. She looked down at the backyard. “There are these weird moments in time when I forget he’s gone. I can just pick up my phone and shoot off a text to see how he’s doing. And he’ll just write me back with some funny, poignant retort. But it won’t happen. It’s not real anymore. I can’t text him or call him or talk to him.” She wiped at a tear as she stared out the opening. “Nothing in my life is making sense anymore. The lawyer thing, the marriage thing, losing my best friend, none of it is right.”

  “You can make some things right. If you don’t want to finish law school or get married, then don’t.”

  She spun around. “Just like that, huh? I’m not like you, Cade. I can’t just make wild life decisions based on what feels right or fun at the time.”

  I hadn’t expected the turn in conversation. Her words had stung plenty. “Is that what you think I’ve been doing all this time? Cuz, Kenna, I’ve got to tell you, there wasn’t anything fun about being a soldier.”

  She shook her head and seemed to regret her earlier words. “No, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. But I can’t just change course now.”

  “So stick to the plan even if it makes you miserable.”

  “It doesn’t,” she said as she stared out into the yard again. “It will be fine. I’ll have a solid future.”

  “She said, without an ounce of conviction.”

  My ill-timed sarcasm angered her. “Don’t pretend to know me, Caden. I’m not a little girl anymore.” She hurried to the first wood rung and climbed down.

  I followed her down the tree and across the yard. “But I do know you, Trinket. Even if we haven’t seen each other in years, I know you. You haven’t changed. And I’m so fucking glad that you haven’t. Because you are incredible. You’ve always been incredible.”

  She reached the gate but stopped before opening the latch. Her shoulders relaxed but she didn’t turn around to face me. “When I think about going back, it feels like that life belongs to someone else. Not me.” She turned to face me. “I don’t know if it’s the shock of losing Grady or just being back here, in my very comfortable time warp with you, but New York and law school and—” She shook her head. “Even Jeremy seem like they’re from a different life, a life I led at another time.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.” She turned to unlatch the gate, but I took hold of her arm and spun her back around.

  “D
o you want to know what’s real, Kenna? This is fucking real, me right here in front of you. I’m real. This is real.” I pulled her to me and my mouth covered hers. She was tense, unsure at first, but slowly, her body relaxed in my arms and her lips parted, inviting me to kiss her long and hard. Our surroundings fell away, the house, the yard, the tree house, and it was just me, holding her, holding Trinket in my arms.

  Kenna seemed to come to her senses and pulled her lips from mine. Her long lashes lifted and she peered up at me. “You kissed me.”

  A nervous laugh shot from my mouth. “I did. And that damn kiss has been ten years in the making.”

  “Ten years? You’ve wanted to kiss me for ten years? But I’m just an annoying, freckle nosed Trinket.”

  “Yes, you are. An annoying brat, who I have never stopped thinking about.”

  “But I’m engaged.”

  “Then I guess I’ll let you go.”

  “No. Don’t. Don’t let go.” She curled her arms around my neck and I kissed her again. This time there was no tension in her body. This time she melted right into my arms.

  Chapter 11

  Kenna

  The morning sun filtered through the slats on my bedroom blinds. I sat on my bed with Scooby in my lap for support. The phone on the other end rang. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping he wouldn’t answer. I hadn’t worked up the courage or words yet, but I needed to tell him.

  I wasn’t delusional. I knew Caden’s kiss and these few days at the beach were just a way for Caden and me to fill in the hole left in our hearts. Caden would never be tied down to one woman. I just happened to be here, helping him get through a dark period in his life. And it worked both ways. Even though I knew nothing would come of any of it, I needed to do this. I wasn’t being fair or honest to Jeremy, and he deserved better.