Actually, kinda is an understatement.
I felt it alright.
Hard.
A visceral reaction to the sight of Chase interacting with a man clearly older than her, in a way that was clearly beyond platonic.
I stumbled to a halt, my grip on my bag’s strap loosening. My fingers didn’t seem to have any strength in them. Neither did my legs to move forward. It was taking all my brainpower to process what I was seeing, even as my brain fiercely rebelled against it. A few of my fellow arriving passengers bumped into me, my abrupt stop taking them by surprise as they hurried toward their waiting loved ones.
I didn’t mumble out an apology as they flicked me exasperated looks. All I could do was stand motionless and watch as Chase looked up at the older dude mauling her mouth with his thumb.
Alright, mauling might be a slight exaggeration, but fuck a duck, was he ever going to move his thumb away from her bottom lip? Was she ever going to make him?
I narrowed my eyes, watching them through the crowd. My fingers had found their strength again, now curling around the strap of my duffle bag with almost painful force. My pulse smashed in my throat and my ears, a pounding thud-thud thud-thud that drowned out the noise of LAX.
The dude lowered his head closer to Chase’s. I couldn’t miss how perfectly combed his dark hair was, nor how chiseled his jaw. His clean-shaven jaw. His chiseled, clean-shaven jaw with its square lines and cleft chin. Not a hint of a beard on that chin and jaw.
I didn’t miss the sprinkling of gray at his temples, nor the impressive width of his shoulders. Nor the clothes so artfully bohemian they must have cost more than my semester uni fees.
I saw his lips move as they drew closer to Chase’s. I saw him say something but couldn’t make out what. I saw him lower his hand from the side of her face, down the smooth column of her throat, until he was trailing his fingertip down her chest to the beginning of her cleavage.
My pulse turned to a cannon in my head.
And then I saw Chase flinch. A little. Barely noticeable, but as you may have figured out by now, when it came to Chase Sinclair, I was almost an expert.
She flinched, the slightest of frowns pulling at her straight eyebrows. The tiniest of frowns making the piercing in her right eyebrow dip.
She flinched and turned her head a fraction to the side.
I moved. Not a run, but a purposeful stride. She wasn’t happy about the situation, and I was going to bring it to an end.
I’m all about being protective. Brendon reckons that’s why I decided to become a vet: to protect those that need it most. I think it was because animals don’t complain like people do, but hey, maybe he’s got a point?
Grin in place, I reached Chase’s side just as Mr. Dude was about to do something to her ear with his lips.
Without hesitation – or contemplation, when it came down to it – I slid my hand over the small of Chase’s back, dumped my duffle bag at my feet and let out a very loud, very exhausted sigh. “Christ, that was a long flight,” I said, louder than even Chase needed me to be.
Loud enough Mr. Dude and his trendy clothes straightened away from her with a startled hiss, jerking his hand from her throat with the same abrupt speed.
Chase swung her stare at me and locked on my face. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted. “Caden?”
God, I loved the way she said my name. Even stunned, she made it sound like a promise of something she still refused to admit.
I smoothed my hand from her back, and with a quick glance at Mr. Dude – a glance that said I have no idea who you are but I’m already bored by you – signed Hello gorgeous. God, I’ve missed you to Chase.
Her eyes widened until she was gaping at me. She’d achieved maximum gape and she still looked amazing.
Gorgeous. She truly was gorgeous. I don’t know when she’d cut off her dreadlocks, but her new pixie-short hair only made her more so.
I like the new hair, I signed. It looks good on you.
She studied me, her expression unreadable. And then she lifted her hands in front of her chest. You learned to sign?
“Chase?”
At Mr. Dude’s confused utterance, both Chase and I swung to face him, me with a wide smile stretching my lips.
“Donald,” she said, that distinct inflection in her voice unique to people who’d grown up without the luxury of complete hearing. “This is—”
“What did he say to you?”
I couldn’t help but smile wider at the agitation in Mr. Dude’s voice. He couldn’t sign. Which meant no matter what he thought he felt for Chase, he wasn’t legit. He might think he was, but he wasn’t.
Nor could I help but feel a warm buzz of delight at the fact Chase didn’t move away from me when she turned to him, but instead touched my chest with her hand and drew closer to my body.
Mr. Dude puffed himself up as much as he could. He was as tall as me, and to be honest, probably a little more built. He slid his gaze over me, down to the thongs on my feet – Hey, I’m an Aussie on a long-haul international flight, what else would I be wearing on my feet? – and back up to my face.
“G’day.” I stuck out my right hand. “I’m Caden. Just flew in from Australia.”
His eyes slitted. He looked at my hand, and then back at Chase, touching her cheek with the tip of his index finger. To say I wanted to smack his hand away was an understatement. I bit the inside of my mouth instead, refusing to be ruffled.
“I’ll call you later, babe,” he said, the last word louder than all the others.
My gut clenched. Babe?
Chase nodded, a strange little up-and-down of her head I’d never seen her make before. “Okay,” she said, the single word almost a mumble.
With that, Donald the Dude gave me an oily smirk, ran another inspection over me – this one very clearly designed to make me feel insignificant – and then pivoted on his heel and took off through the thinning crowd.
I watched him walk away, my heart thumping a crazy beat in my throat. Of course he’d be one of those guys that didn’t wear socks. I was surprised he didn’t whip out a Trilby and plonk it on his head before draping a cashmere scarf around his neck.
You know what else would have looked good around his neck? My—
“When did you learn to sign?”
At Chase’s question, I turned a relaxed smile on her. Relaxed. Not Ruffled. “On the flight over.”
She rolled her eyes, stepping away from me a little. I wanted to snag her wrist and bring her back to my side. In fact, I didn’t just want to do that, the craving to do it was almost painful, a fierce tugging on something deep in my body. My soul? Was that possible?
“You still think you’re funny, I see?”
I preened. “Hell yeah.”
She opened her mouth, an acerbic gleam in her eyes, but closed it again when I held up my finger and shook my head.
Hell. Yeah. I signed, finishing with a flourish of my wrist my signing teacher had called a “quirky accent”.
Chase pulled a face, closed her fingers around my wrists and held my hands still, her stare fixed on my face. “Why?”
“Why did I learn to sign?”
She nodded.
I grinned. “So I could scare off creeps in international airports.”
I’d intended the smart-arsed remark to make her chuckle. Instead, the slight smile on her lips faded. She dropped my hands and stepped back from me. “Come on,” she said, her eyes sliding away from my face. “Let’s get going.”
As she turned I stopped her with a gentle grip on her wrist. This was seriously overstepping our unspoken interaction rules. As much as I hungered to hold her, touch her – and hungered isn’t hyperbole, trust me – the only time Chase and I touched without her initiating it was the night I flicked her ear during Shaun of the Dead.
But I couldn’t help myself. Not now. I’d just flown halfway around the world on the pretense of seeing Brendon and his family when what I was really here for was to make Chase see
what I already knew – that she liked me. Like, liked me liked me – and the guarded sadness on her face before she’d turned away ripped at my heart.
She held my gaze now for a heartbeat before she let out a ragged sigh. “You can let go of me any time you like,” she said. “And I don’t need you to protect me against creeps in international airports. Or against anything else, for that matter.”
I shook my head. “Not until you tell me who Donald the Dude is.”
Her eyebrows shot up. She let out a wry snort – almost but not quite a laugh.
“Well?” I asked.
Until that point I can honestly say jealousy wasn’t something I felt often. In fact, I think the last time I was jealous about something was when my best friend at uni managed to drop the last can of Red Bull in the dispensing machine when we were both pulling a pre-exam all-nighter. Man, I’d really needed that hit of extra-leaded caffeine.
What was twisting and threading through me right now though left that feeling for dead. Cold and hot and tight all at once, it filled me with a dark sensation I didn’t like at all.
Chase studied my face, her gaze searching my eyes. I didn’t move. Nor did I drop her wrist.
“Chase,” I finally said, “you know why I’m really here. You do. And you know it has nothing to do with Brendon and Amanda and Tanner. So you’ve gotta tell me, who’s Donald the Dude?”
A shaky breath left her and, with an expression the very definition of ambiguous, she looked away. “Donald is – was – my Art History professor at college.”
My gut clenched. I knew where this was going and I liked it even less than the unexpected jealousy snaking through me. He was a snake. I could see that after barely a minute in his company. How could she even give him the time of day? Why?
She looked back at me, caught her bottom lip with her teeth, and shrugged. “Do I need to tell you any more?”
“You were seeing each other?”
God, how sour did that question taste in my mouth?
She finally laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “You could say that.”
I swallowed, controlling my rising agitation. “Is it over?”
“You could say that as well.”
“Doesn’t look over.”
She drew in another slow breath, her gaze moving to where Donald the Dude had moments ago been standing before her. Was she imagining him there again? And if so, why?
“Chase?” I prompted, keeping my voice loud enough for her to hear but calm enough not to make those around us curious. Chase doesn’t like attention. Which is ironic when you consider they way she looks and the car she drives.
With another wobbly breath, she returned her focus to my face and smiled. “Come on, O’Dae. Time to get you to San Diego.”
Two
“Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them.”
~ Unknown
Chase
I could have solved my Caden O’Dae problem there and then. In the busy LAX terminal, with a muffled cacophony of noise in my head and my heart hammering in my throat and defective ears, I could have solved it once and for all.
Sure, we’re still seeing each other, I could have said. Yes, I still love him. He’s incredible.
I have no idea why I didn’t. The opportunity was there, and I didn’t take it.
Maybe it’s because my mom raised me not to be a liar. Maybe it’s because the idea of saying I loved Donald made me feel sick. What I felt for Donald – or should I say the effect Donald had on my ability to actually use my brain – was unsettling, but it wasn’t love. It had been, and much to my shame I’d thought more than once it was again, but thought is a misguided thing sometimes. It can be like planting a feather in the hopes of growing a chicken.
Instead, we walked to the Speeding Dragon side by side, neither of us speaking. Caden’s hand swung perilously close to mine. All I would have needed to do for our fingers to brush against each other was move the tiniest bit to the right. The muscles in my arms and legs actually began to do that very thing before I caught them. Forcing my hand to not draw closer to his was harder than it should have been.
The trouble was, even as I walked beside him, so very aware of him on levels I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before, the sound of Donald calling me babe flayed at my sanity.
Babe. He’d only ever called me that when we were in bed. Or in his office, alone . . . and semi-naked. Or in the back seat of his Porsche. I’d always thought of it as a term of endearment, but after he’d ripped out my heart I’d recognized it for what it really was: a misogynistic form of sexual control, designed to make me feel special when I wasn’t.
So why was I affected so much by him saying the word now? What the hell was wrong with me? The Douchebag had torn out my heart. He was a prick. A deceptive bastard. He’d reduced me to the lowest I’d ever been, destroyed any sense of self-esteem. He’d made me question everything about who I believed I was.
He’d done all that and so much more. I hated him. And yet he’d once made me feel more special than anyone ever had. He’d made me feel cherished. He’d made me feel intelligent. He’d given me a sense of worth I’d never really felt before. Hell, Dad sure hadn’t made me feel like I was walking the right path in my life, but Donald had.
At the start, and despite how we’d ended, I’d still find myself thinking of him, of our conversations, when a particular movie came on HBO, or when an art gallery ran an exhibition by an artist we both admired.
Those things were hard to forget. Hard to dismiss. And here he was, calling me babe again?
The very fact my heart skipped a beat when he’d said he was just back from attending a Salvador Dali opening in New York only highlighted how significant he’d been in my life. We’d spent one entire lunch break in his office discussing Dali’s influence on the art world. A lunch break that had finished with him going down on me beneath his desk, his muffled voice listing Dali’s works between swipes of his tongue.
I’d tried to tell my skipping heart to remember that tongue of his had found someone else to swipe over a few short weeks after that lunch, but my heart hadn’t wanted to listen.
And now here he was calling me babe, and as much as I didn’t want to react, I had.
Christ, was I truly that broken?
Or was I just stupid?
Stomach clenching, chest tight, Caden silent at my side, we crossed the parking lot, heading for my Volvo. We were two steps away when Caden’s fingers threaded through mine, bringing me to a halt. I turned and looked up at him, a frown pulling at my eyebrows, my heart beating fast. Try as I might, it was impossible to deny how much I liked the feel of his hand holding mine. How safe and right and genuine it felt.
God, why hadn’t I told him Donald and I were still a thing back in the airport? It would have made this so much easier. I didn’t want to hurt him, but if we kept going the way we were, I would. How could I not? When I was so fucking weak? When at just a word, Donald had me so damn flustered and confused? Why hadn’t I—
Caden kissed me.
There was no warning, no smartass comment, no doofus grin. Nothing to prepare me for the unexpected sensation of his lips brushing mine. My body reacted instantly. It was as if I’d suddenly become a live wire of charged energy, thrumming with an elemental power I couldn’t fathom.
His lips lingered on mine for a sublime moment, just long enough for my parted lips to fit perfectly against his with an infinitesimal hint of pressure. A strange whimper vibrated at the back of my throat. I’m very attuned to vibrations, one of the perks of having a hearing problem. This vibration was new to me, however. As was the funny flip-flopping in my tummy. And the prickling sensation in the junction of my thighs.
Holy Christ, Caden O’Dae was kissing me.
And then he wasn’t.
Just like that, he lifted his head and his lips were no longer on mine. Another whimpering vibration tickled the back of my throat, this one born from dismay. Before I could register the sou
nd I was making it was out there, for Caden and his perfectly working ears to hear.
He released my hand, and as with the loss of contact of his lips, a soft moan of disappointment escaped me. I frowned, channeling my confusion into a glare directed at him. “Why did you do that?”
He didn’t cup my face in his hand or smooth his palms up over my hips. He didn’t tug me to his body, or brush the back of his knuckles over my cheek. The movies had taught me that’s exactly what he was meant to do in a situation like this.
I’ve come to realize movies lie. A lot.
Instead of being incredibly romantic and predictable, he hitched his bag farther up his shoulder and grinned. “So you’d stop thinking about Donald the Dude.”
A lump didn’t just fill my throat, it damn near choked me. My mouth fell open. A wave of guilt rolled over me, as unsettling as my reaction to his kiss and equally as unnerving.
Guilt. Of all the emotions I’d experienced in my twenty-two years, guilt wasn’t really one of them. Snarky, sarcastic, almost-deaf girls have no use for guilt.
And yet, here I was, feeling it. I didn’t like it. Not at all.
Narrowing my eyes, I crossed my arms over my chest. “And it’s your opinion I should be thinking about you instead?”
His grin stretched wider. His hands and fingers moved in front of his chest. Hell. Yeah.
“Stop signing,” I snarled, snatching for his hands.
Caden was quicker. He snared my wrist and drew me closer to him, not close enough for our bodies to touch (I refused to acknowledge the hot disappointment bubbling inside me at the fact they didn’t), but close enough I could smell him: the unique, distinct, subtle scent of Caden O’Dae that I’d often find myself thinking about when he wasn’t in the country.
“Tell me why I’m here, Chase,” he said.
His voice wasn’t low enough for me to need to watch his lips move, but I watched them anyway. There was an emotion in his eyes I wasn’t prepared to deal with at the moment. His words, however, left me no other option.
Undeniable (Always Book 3) Page 3
