by Julia Kent
“Wait and see,” he muttered, shrugging.
Meribeth rolled her eyes. “We’re at one of the best cardiac facilities in the world and that’s the most medical science has to offer?” There was no bite to her words. Just resignation. Her sigh punctuated it.
The four of them sat, while Jeremy’s legs turned to tree trunks. I have to get out of here.
“Anyone want coffee?” he asked in a forced, neutral voice.
Three yeses. Thank God.
“I’ll come with you,” Lydia said. An equivocation bounced inside him, rippling like a chime intoned at an off angle, making the reverberations a source of unease. Did he want company?
No choice. She stood and they walked out, her dry hand catching his, the fingers interlacing.
Take that, Dr. Perfect.
“Nice guy,” she said under her breath as they walked down the hallway, the scent of antiseptic overwhelming, the glare of the fluorescent lights taking him back to his own mother’s hospitalization.
Her last one.
His hands broke out in a sweat.
“You seemed to think so,” he said in a flat voice, too overcome by competing emotions to measure out his response. His heart sped up and her hand felt like a dry noodle in his slippery palm as she turned to him slowly, brow creased, eyes confused.
“What does that mean?”
Her tone should have been prickly and pissed, but instead it was perplexed and, he noticed, a bit hurt. Ah, fuck. Open mouth, insert foot.
He wasn’t the jealous type. Ever. Live and let live. Move on if a woman wanted someone else. Let people be with whomever they wanted to be with. Those were his mottoes. Hell, he’d watched Mike with Dana, and with the women back in Thailand that one time, and not felt even the tiniest tinge of envy or possessiveness. In fact, what he’d felt most was pure lust.
Right now?
He didn’t know what the hell he felt.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out clipped and rushed as he pulled his hand away and wiped it on his jeans. Lydia’s vulnerability lulled him and made him feel like even more of an asshole. Being open was the only way to handle this, wasn’t it? Just be truthful.
“I don’t know why I’m like this,” he added. Yes, you do.
“It’s okay,” she said in a voice that told him it wasn’t. It really wasn’t.
“Lydia.” Bending over, he put his hands on her shoulders. As she tipped her face up to his he could see her struggle, how her eyes were just a little too shiny, the red rims of her lower lids raw from crying, how she thought she was just going on an errand to get coffee and now they were…arguing? Over a doctor they’d just met?
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and decided to leap. “The last time I was in a hospital was the day my mom died.” There. It was out. The flash of ICU, of his mother’s ventilator, of being the only person in the room who had to make the agonizing choice to remove her from the machines as ten thousand eyes, all dressed in scrubs and white coats seemed to stare him down with a mixture of pity and practicality, his mother’s life in his hands.
At least when his dad had died, those decisions had been his mother’s to make.
“Oh, God.” The whoosh of her breath, the way tears pooled in her eyes, how the prickliness between them dissolved as if it had never been there, gave him a rush of emotion he couldn’t name. Telling someone anything about his inner life—someone other than Mike, that is—had been taboo for so many years.
And now it wasn’t.
She wrapped her arms around him as she stretched on tiptoes. “I didn’t know. You’ve never told me anything about your family.”
“It hasn’t come up.” Warmth. Softness. Lush body with loving embrace. Lydia’s presence and her willingness to reach out didn’t just comfort him. It aroused him in a sensual manner that felt so appropriate, yet connected with a deeper layer he couldn’t name. Breathing in her neck, the light scent of her soap mixed with the desperate fear she’d carried on her skin for all these hours, he wanted to strip her naked, climb under the sheets and bury himself in her, finding solace where no one else could wrench him away from being lost in her.
Because if you have to feel lost anyhow, it might as well be with a gorgeous, creamy, divine woman in bed, right?
The expected hard-on descended on him slowly, but with a lingering effect Lydia soon noticed. She took a step back and grinned a half smile. “Even now?”
His kiss came out of nowhere, his body finding her mouth without thought. Dry lips soon turned wet as he was tender, then eager, then insistent, her lips parting for his tongue, his neck aching as he bent down to touch as much of her as was polite in public, wanting her with such desperation he vaguely wondered if he could just take her off into one of those doctor on-call rooms that people on television shows were always locking and using for afternoon delight.
Or a stairwell?
Elevator?
Expecting her to pull away, instead she melted into it, needing comfort, too—and he remembered Mike’s apartment. Before he’d left town, Mike had given him carte blanche to use the place. Not as if Jeremy hadn’t, plenty of times. He’d given up his own apartment years ago, instead settling for a patchwork of places on the rare stretches he found himself in the city.
Could he suggest it? Should he?
Lydia pulled back at just the right moment, breathless and flushed. “This feels really dirty,” she said.
If that was supposed to make him feel bad, he must have some really screwy wiring, because all it did was make him want her more.
Sandy’s appearance at that exact moment pushed every boundary of how much he could keep it together. “Get lost on the way to finding coffee?” she said in a cheerful voice. Expecting sarcasm, Jeremy was disarmed by her genuine joking.
Meribeth was right behind her. No Alex, thank goodness.
“Um, sort of,” Lydia murmured, running a hand through her hair. They hadn’t even made it to the elevator.
The two older women exchanged a glance. Meribeth looped her arm through Sandy’s, the women sharing a meaningful look. “We’re going to grab a coffee nearby and talk. You don’t need to get us anything.” And with that, they walked away, heads together and giggles coming after ten paces.
It felt like permission.
It should have felt like a reproach.
“That was awkward,” Lydia mumbled.
“You think that was awkward?” he sputtered, finally finding his voice. “How about the fact that we just plumbed each other’s faces for the past God-knows-how-long while the janitor went past us on a vomit mission?”
“You are such a romantic.” But she reached for his hips, fingertips playing with the band of his jeans, his zipper feeling like a chastity belt. A small groan of anticipation vibrated in the back of his throat like a gong.
“Am I a pervert for wanting sex right now? My grandma’s down the hall and she might be dying, and all I want is…” She sighed, leaving the thought unsaid, those magic nails scratching lightly against the small of his back as he struggled not to take her right there, in the hallway, next to a cart marked Colostomy supplies.
“You,” he said, completing the thought. Pulling back, he grabbed her hand, and five sets of stairs later they were on their way to the car.
To Mike’s place.
The drive home felt so fake. Fall in Maine had a luminous quality, as if Thomas Kinkade had gone into Photoshop and turned the leaves into a mockery of what nature really could produce.
It was real, of course, but it felt like pretend. Nothing in his own reality was as breathtakingly gorgeous as this.
Except for Lydia.
Pete had assured him that everything was under control as the talent show wound down, and Mike had a slow awakening to what he knew needed to come next.
Leaving.
Performing his act in the show had been great fun, his song well received. The intended audience wasn’t there, though, so the reception was bittersweet. The chorus o
f his slow melody looped through his mind as he drove:
Come with me behind the mask
Join me in the shadows
Let the darkness wash over us
As our inner light sets us free
They say we can’t do this
The rules won’t allow it
But all I want from life is
Authenticity
It felt so...teenager-ish, but people in the crowd had held up their smartphones and lighters, swaying with the tune on the third go-around of the chorus. Mike had felt as if he were singing to the universe, that the worlds stretched beyond Lydia and into some communal part of himself, and now...
Now he was just in his own way if he stayed.
He was too close to the edge staying at the campground. Lydia and Jeremy would come back, and when that happened, the pain he would cause Lydia would be overwhelming. His disguise, his deception, the video, the job in Iceland—and now, for her to learn he had been living at her parents’ campground for the past month by casually bumping into him?
No way.
Fleeing back to the city was the only rational answer. Finding his own authenticity was more important than forcing anything on her.
When he’d told Pete he’d be moving on a few days early, Pete had started to offer a prorated refund, but Mike waved him off. According to his latest financial reports, he was more than fine. Forever. He’d never need to work another day in his life.
The drive to the city wasn’t a reclaiming, though. It was a reckoning, and he didn’t know what he planned for himself. Check his mail, get the apartment in shape, regroup and maybe—just maybe—see if he could help in any way, however small, with Lydia’s grandmother. Connections through charities gave him the opportunity to pick up a phone and get a top specialist there if need be. Money could also help with so many issues that average folks, like Pete and Sandy, might struggle with.
If he could be of help, he would.
Cruising through the tolls in New Hampshire, then driving down the thin strip of the coast, he marveled at the giant sailboats that dotted the inlet. Those wouldn’t be out on the water for long, with New England’s storms soon thrashing the shoreline. Then again, a few mild winters had made the legend of nor’easters seem to lose some punch. Global warming? Climate change? Who knew. All it meant to him was a brief interference with going to and from business meetings and trips to make deals. For the past ten years he felt as if he hadn’t done much in nature other than fitness runs and the occasional outdoor charity event.
A month at the Charles’ campground had changed all that.
The sterile apartment he was headed to would be a distant memory soon. His plan was to pack everything up, ditch the lease and start anew. But first, there was lingering business to take care of.
Lydia.
And, to a lesser extent, Jeremy. Sending his best friend on a mission had succeeded—a bit too wildly, he confessed to himself, the memory of watching their bodies from the sea kayak now so jarring that he gripped the steering wheel with a death force. Jealousy wasn’t the word for it—he never felt that when it came to being with a woman with Jeremy.
The correct name for what he felt was regret.
And pain.
Jeremy was the man Lydia wanted now. He’d found his way into her body and, perhaps, into her heart. But the trick with Jeremy was that he was like a puppy, easily distracted by shiny new things.
What would happen when the shine wore off Lydia?
The thought made his gut ache and his fingers twitch, because for as much as Jeremy was enjoying her—lavishing her with attention and lust-filled trysts in the crisp Maine woods—Mike knew exactly what came next.
Jeremy would leave.
Aside from Dana, that was exactly what Jeremy had done with every woman he’d ever dated. A few weeks, a month or two at most, and he was gone, his interest fed and sated, his desire thwarted by some immature sense of what it meant to love and be loved. Mike wasn’t a psychoanalyst and, frankly, he had no desire whatsoever to try to figure out that part of Jeremy’s brain.
But.
What if this was like Dana? Jeremy had been so heartbroken it had shocked Mike, vibrating to his core, making him question what he thought he knew about his friend. The three had shared everything—time, money, a bed—for nearly a year, and when she’d balked at the question of permanence Jeremy had tentatively suggested, her leaving crushed him.
Tryst after tryst and drunken lovers on various beaches worldwide had seemed to help Jeremy heal, but the lingering sadness made Mike wonder…was Jeremy as immature as he’d assumed? Was the cavalier, goofy man-child image just that?
A facade?
As disingenuous as Matt Jones had been?
Lost in thought, he barely noticed the Massachusetts border, eyes glossing over the cheap liquor store that New Hampshire hawked (no sales tax!). Mike slid through the tolls, on his way to clean up a past he no longer identified with. The apartment now was a transaction to manage: pack, cancel the lease, move and forge ahead.
There was no emotional reality there.
“Nice place,” Lydia said with a low whistle. Sleek gray and all windows, it looked like a playboy’s apartment. “This is yours?” Whoever lived here was the type to have a closet full of Armani. Not someone dressed like Jeremy, in faded jeans, an MIT hoodie and Skechers.
“No. A friend’s.”
“Wealthy friend.”
His breath was hot against her cheek, his body so fast she didn’t know that someone that big and tall could move like a ninja. A sex ninja, the thought making her giggle as his fingers circled her waist, pressing her against his obvious erection.
“I love it when women giggle as I come on to them.”
“Then you must love it a lot.”
With that, his arm went under her knees and he scooped her up, her nose banging into his neck, her body feeling awkward in his arms. Men didn’t pick her up like this. Too heavy and solid; on the few occasions someone had tried, they’d tipped over, falling into a heap.
Jeremy lifted her like she was a child.
“How can you—” Step by graceful step, the sentence couldn’t be completed before he plopped her on the bed, not even breathing hard.
Well, not from exertion, at least.
Flexing his biceps, he said drily, “Beer. It does a body good.” Then he patted his nonexistent belly.
She laughed. “And coffee. Don’t forget coffee.”
“I want to talk about other things I can put in my mouth,” he murmured as he lifted the hem of her turtleneck and found her breasts. Popping one out of the bra, he took the nipple in his mouth so deftly that she squeaked, the rush of warm wetness making blood rush low, engorging her clit. Lost in the sensation, she barely felt him reach around and unclasp her bra, then slowly savor her other nipple, fingers tweaking and twirling against the puckered skin of the other.
She moaned, enjoying the feel of a real bed under her, the silence of a hermetically sealed apartment, the quiet a balm and so different from the past days in the woods. Each breath was an aural caress, the rasp of cloth against skin like a poem, his mouth a sonnet. Grandma’s crisis, the missed talent show, her abandoned friends and family at the campground, the mess with Mike—it all faded off, like atoms separating and entropy achieved, as Jeremy’s hands and mouth took her out of her thoughts.
The slip of the cotton neck of her shirt over her head and the fling of her bra off the bedside made her sit up, wanting Jeremy’s bare skin against hers. His hoodie flew across the room onto a chair, and they panted on the bedspread, half naked and wild with need.
“I want to be in you. Bury myself in you. Lydia,” he whispered, cradling her jaw, those silly eyes serious and focused only on her, layers of emotion that she wanted years to study coming out in this moment. “You make me feel. Really feel. I don’t—no one has ever touched me like this.”
She knew he didn’t mean with her fingers.
Breath still, she t
ook in his words, letting them wash over her, the pounding push of arousal through her veins tempered—then driven—by what he said.
“I need you,” he said, his body over hers as he crawled to her, the long stretch of him, abs touching, the feel of his chest hair against her nipple, the soft sweetness of his neck making her unfurl and uncoil.
The words he hadn’t said pounded through her, relentless and quivering.
It wasn’t time yet.
Yet.
But that day was coming.
Rolling him to the side, her fingers flew to his waistband, unsnapping his jeans and unceremoniously pushing the pants down. With a few kicks they were off, and she did the same, then he hooked his fingers on each side of the cloth of her panties and brushed them down to her ankles, like a wizard’s touch, spinning magic inside her belly and the folds of her vulva, clit swollen with need, her release less important than the long, slow, deliciously obedient savoring they were about to do to—and with—each other.
This was no heated rush.
Jeremy joined her in being nude, stripped bare on this stranger’s bed, the holiness of silence turning the room into a sanctuary, away from all the craziness that life had delivered this past month. Just two months ago she’d been a different Lydia, that person so foreign to her as the push of his tongue against her teeth made her wet, his hand at her ribs, the other pressed into her navel, fingertips teasing and stroking her curves as he held back, not touching where she wanted him most, but instead turning his journey of her body into a rambling tour.
The stale air was warmed by their breath, the room a comfortable temperature, the cotton of the bedspread the kind of spun gold that only a very wealthy person could afford. Not the well-worn flannel she was accustomed to, or the crisp cotton sheets Madge had sworn by (and passed on to her).
Jeremy’s hands continued loving her, his mouth dragging along her neck and chest, leaving goosebumps and an unabashed sense of enjoyment at just being touched. Distracted for a moment by the unfamiliar surroundings, she took a moment to orient herself, looking down at him as his mouth rested on one taut nipple, his eyes closed, his face all-consumed by her.
