That fateful day Freshman year, when I’d accidentally elbowed her in the nose, had been the best day of my life. Of course, as a punk kid, I hadn’t known it then—I’d been stunned by the beauty of her dark eyes, the slight curve of her hips, and those full pink lips of hers—but I hadn’t known she’d make my life.
I knew she was mine, knew that I loved her within the span of a few sentences—one of her telling me I was coordination challenged—but if I had known then what I knew now, how deeply my love would run for her after all this time, well, I might’ve tried harder in those early days. The days where I’d still tried to be the cool high school kid who hid the fact that he was completely strung up on a girl.
Maybe I should’ve tried harder in the years leading up to this moment, but I honestly didn’t know I hadn’t been. I thought our lives were pretty close to perfect. Sure, there were times work held me late or sent me out of town, but we were still…us.
I’d thought.
But with Tara getting more and more distant and with each foul up we had at this damn resort, I was starting to wonder if I had been living blindly in a dream this whole time, or if there were some things she’d simply never tell me.
I peeled my eyes open, the incredible mountains filling my view once again, and a new anger raged in my gut. Tara should be here talking to me about whatever the hell she was down there spilling to Grant right now.
We were the only ones who could fix whatever was broken between us. And, yet, Grant was the one who knew what that was. How was that fair? What made her willing to talk to him and not me? What did he have that I didn’t?
Besides degrees in psychology, the past career of a rock star, and a five-star resort?
My shoulders sank. Right. The man had much more than me, including my wife’s attention, and for the first time since we checked into this place I realized…I didn’t like it.
11
Tara
Quinn had been more quiet than usual once I’d returned from another session with Grant, so I’d decided to get him out of the suite and into the restaurant for some dinner, hoping the change of scenery would help his mood.
“Is your back still bothering you?” I asked as we slid into a booth.
“No.” His tone was clipped, yet it was also…sad?
I pressed my lips together, wondering if the swing disaster had been one too many for him. Had him getting injured in the process ended up hurting his pride? Damn. I’d been so hopeful too. Those hopes crashed and wilted the longer we sat there in silence pretending to decide what we wanted to eat but not really seeing the words on the menus.
Grant had finally come up with a fantasy he thought would be perfect for us, and I had firmly agreed. I was to carry it out tonight…but with the mood Quinn was in, I didn’t know if I should even bother. The disappointment sat heavy in my stomach, and the ticking clock to prove how sexy and desirable I still was seemed to have sped up its countdown. Maybe everything I’d felt yesterday, the hope that I’d been mistaken about Quinn, about everything, had truly been what was wrong. With how closed off he was now, it only reaffirmed my first instincts when I’d seen him pulling up to the divorce lawyer’s building.
Hot tears welled up behind my eyes but I quickly swiped them away, and when I glanced up I saw Owen and Presley entering the restaurant. Owen had his arm around Presley’s waist, and he whispered something in her ear that made her blush. Her hair was fluffed and mussed, her lips swollen, and her eyes downright blissful. If I didn’t like them both, it would’ve made me sick. The ease in which they acted around each other made me envious in a green color I didn’t like on myself, and I desperately wished it could be that easy with Quinn again—like we used to be before everything had gotten so twisted between us I honestly didn’t know what the hell to think anymore.
“Want to sit with us?” Quinn asked Owen once they got closer and it shocked the hell out of me. He hadn’t been acting up to socializing—and after the walk in on their Wonderland room yesterday, I was sure he wouldn’t want to face them again—but if it loosened him up, I was more than happy to entertain the boxer and his beyond pretty fiancée.
“Sure,” Presley said, and the two slid into the seat across from us. She flipped open a menu, sharing it with Owen as opposed to handing him his own. “How has your day been?”
I glanced at Quinn, the tension in his shoulders radiating off of him and tightening my own. “Good,” we said at the same time.
“Ours too.” Presley chuckled softly, mistaking the strain between us as shyness over what we’d done that morning—which had been nothing outside of breakfast before I went to my session, only to return to find him still sleeping off his back problem.
“Good.” Again Quinn and I had spoken at the same time, and under different circumstances, it would’ve been funny.
Owen casually, almost as if it wasn’t even a thought, slipped an arm around Presley’s shoulders, and my heart ached. Yesterday I had thought Quinn and I were getting so close to regaining that easy intimacy about us, but today had shown my thoughts were merely silly dreaming. It had to have been the swing scene that had pushed him over the edge from intrigued at all the experiments, to annoyed. I sighed, completely defeated.
“How much longer do you two have?” Presley asked after we’d ordered our food.
I cut my eyes to Quinn, half wondering if he’d announce we were leaving tonight instead of the three days we had left.
“Few more days,” he said, and a small amount of relief uncoiled within me.
Owen tensed beside Presley, withdrawing his arm from around her, and for a moment I thought he might be choking.
“Are you all right?” Presley asked as she touched his back.
“I’m fine,” Owen said, and his tone made me think him and Quinn should go off and bro it out together. His cold blank stare made me wonder where his head was at, but then Presley asked for my cell number in case she needed another source for the article she was writing about Inhibitions, and I was relieved to have something else to think about other than the current moods of our men.
“Thank you so much,” she said after I’d handed her phone back to her. “I’m not sure if I’ll need it but having another couple to talk to as I’m writing will be wonderful.”
As we ate, the silence around the table became just to the point of awkward, and I couldn’t stop stealing glances at Quinn, wondering what I’d done to change his mood so much.
“I’m full,” Owen said, breaking the silence. “Want to shoot some pool, let the girls have…girl time?” he asked Quinn, and my heart swelled just a fraction. The man must have noticed the tension and had graciously given me a break.
“Sounds good to me,” Presley said after what looked like a silent exchange between her and Owen.
I shifted to let Quinn out of the booth, reaching for his hand instinctively, but our fingers barely brushed as he moved by me. He followed Owen out of the restaurant without another glance toward me.
“Want to talk about it?” Presley asked the second they were out of sight.
“What?” I asked, shocked at her forwardness. We were practically strangers, despite the look we’d gotten at them yesterday, but I did enjoy her and her fiancées company. It was nice to think we’d made some friends here, if only for the rest of our stay.
“I don’t mean to pry,” she said, raising her hands. “It just seems like you’ve got something on your mind and I’m here if you want to vent. Off the record, of course.” She cracked a smile, and I laughed.
It felt good to laugh about the situation when every second of the day I’d been agonizing over it—even though Grant had told me not to do that anymore. Hey, I had tried, but it wasn’t exactly easy when every time I closed my eyes I either saw Quinn walking inside the divorce lawyer’s office or his expression whenever we’d had a fumble when “almost” having sex.
“This place…” I said, taking a drink of water when I couldn’t find the right words.
&nbs
p; “It’s pretty intense,” she filled in for me.
“You can say that.” I tilted my head. “It’s exciting and unnerving at the same time.”
Presley nodded. “You haven’t been enjoying what Grant picks out for you two?”
My eyebrows raised. How could she be so open about it all? Not everyone has a communication complex like you do. I rolled my eyes at myself.
“You don’t have to answer that,” she said, and her eyes shifted downward.
“No, honestly,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I keep messing it up.”
“No way!” She leaned closer over the table. “Me too.”
“What? I don’t believe you.”
“Seriously,” she said, nodding. “The first fantasy I practically knocked Owen unconscious.”
“You didn’t!” I nearly spit out my water from shock. “What were you doing?” Red dusted her cheeks, and I shook my head. “Never mind. Don’t tell me.” I chuckled and leaned back in the booth. “I thought it was just me.”
Presley arched an eyebrow, her beautiful blond hair framing her face as she gave me a genuine smile. “You’re not alone. Promise. I’m just happy Owen has been such a good sport about it all because that wasn’t the only time I messed it up.”
My heart sank, and my stomach twisted. Owen had been taking it in stride when it appeared Quinn and I had only become more strained from it.
“Oh,” she said, noting the shift in my mood. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean...”
“It’s fine.” I waved her off. “We’ve been married a long time. We’ve just hit a…phase. One I’m not sure about.”
She scrunched her eyebrows together. “I’m sure it’ll pass, and you’ll come out stronger on the other side, right? Isn’t that what marriage is all about? Trials and strength?”
I smiled softly. “Sure.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this trip had been my last ditch effort to convince my husband I was still the woman he’d fallen for—not that he knew that.
“He loves you,” Presley said, and I blinked a few times from the scene that continued to play in my head. His damn truck pulling up to that office, my whole world shifting after it had already been altered dramatically by Blaire’s moving out.
Tears bit the backs of my eyes once again, but I refused to let them fall.
“Hey,” Presley said. “What is it?”
I clenched my eyes shut, gathering myself. “I know he does,” I said, finally. And that much was true. “But time has a way of changing the way it works.”
Her eyes went wide for a moment as she digested what I’d said. “I understand that.”
Did she? Could she grasp eighteen years of love? I didn’t know, but it was sweet of her to try and be sympathetic to my situation.
“Here’s what I know about love,” she said, moving her hands on the table like she was showing all her cards. “Love is ever-changing. It never stays the same. It dulls and flares just like any well-made fire. And true love? The kind you two have as a result of being married for as long as you have? Well, that transcends flames and embers—it’s the stuff that makes fire jealous.”
Chills broke across my skin. “You believe that about us?”
She nodded. “I do.”
I chuckled nervously. “You really are a writer.”
She cracked a grin. “Doesn’t make the statement any less real.”
Hope returned to my chest, blooming like the last breath of a flower in a frost. “I want it to be, trust me.”
“You want to give me the rest of that story?” She arched an eyebrow at me, reaching across the table to gently grip my wrist.
A part of me wanted to. I’d gotten great at opening up to Grant, but that was because I knew I had to in order to push myself in this resort. To get the answers I desperately needed. “It’s too long to tell, but thank you for being there. You certainly don’t have to be, seeing as we’re practically strangers.”
She took her hand back, a sly grin on her face. “Strangers, Tara? Come on; you’ve seen me naked. I hoped that at least earned me a friend spot on your roster.”
A laugh ripped from my lips, chasing the tears and worry away. “Wow. I can see why Owen loves you so much. I swear if I wasn’t married to Quinn, I’d go for you.”
She raised her glass, and I clinked mine against hers, a silent cheers to our solidarity as two women navigating—and destroying—the fantasies within this incredible resort.
“I’ll say one last thing, and then we can change the subject,” she said after we’d reeled in our chuckles. “Whatever is going on between you two…if it isn’t big enough for a deal-breaker—and I won’t pretend to know because I don’t know anything about being married to someone for as long as the pair of you—but if it isn’t something…unforgivable,” she sucked in a breath like something had stung her after she’d said the last word but then pushed on. “Then I’m really rooting for you two. Because this place can be a real treasure trove if you let it be, and the rediscovery of each other is just around the corner, especially if you make your problems look insignificant when you realize that they really aren’t that big at all.”
I leaned back in the seat, surveying the woman across from me. It was like we were old friends and she knew my ability to overanalyze an issue to death until I’d made the problem so big in my head that’s all I could see. But she had no way of knowing what it felt like to see your husband of sixteen years walk into a divorce lawyer’s office, either. And that was a big problem, even if he hadn’t dropped the ball on me yet.
He hadn’t hit me with the truth.
Even after all the disasters we’d encountered here. Which meant I still had time. Tonight may be my last shot.
“You know,” I said, smiling. “You make the kind of sense that shouldn’t make any sense at all.”
“It’s a curse,” she said. “Or a gift. I haven’t decided.”
“Well, in the spirit of changing the subject,” I said, eager to get the spotlight off me. “Tell me how you and the boxer hooked up.”
An easy smile played at her lips, and a wistful look took over her eyes. “We’ve been friends—” Her words died in her throat, the blissful happiness on her face overtaken by a cold dread in the span of a blink.
“Presley?” I asked, reaching across the booth as if touching her hand would snap her out of it. I followed the trail of her gaze, shocked when a man and woman walked up to the side of our booth, the man staring down Presley like a deer in the headlights. “Are you all right?” She finally blinked, and pulled her hands away from me, dropping them beneath the table.
“Yes,” she said, but I barely made the word out. Whoever this guy was, he’d done a number on her. I immediately hated him.
“Is this who you’re here with?” The man directed the question at her but looked at me as he snaked an arm around the woman who stood next to him.
“No,” she said and rolled her eyes at the exact same time I did. “This is my friend, Tara,” she continued.
The man reached out his hand to me after it was clear Presley wasn’t going to introduce him. “David,” he said after shaking my hand and then pointed to the woman on his side. “Sarah.”
I glared at him simply because Presley was, and in the past half hour we had established a bond that would be unbreakable—even under the scrutiny of what I assumed was a horrible ex-boyfriend.
“So,” David said, glancing around. “Who is the lucky man you’re here with, then?”
Presley snorted, but that was all the answer she gave. I licked my lips and fastened on my best friend bitch face. “I wonder if Quinn and Owen have finished their pool game yet?”
“Owen?” David asked, his tone sharp.
Whoa, he knew Owen? Whoops, that might’ve hit a nerve I hadn’t intended. I just wanted to take the attention off of her because she was clearly having a hard time with his sudden and evidently unexpected presence.
They had a silent stare down for the span of two minutes
and just when I thought I’d have to blurt out some other completely inappropriate words, Owen was at her side, taking her hand in his. The sight of him and Quinn was enough to make me sigh with relief, and this wasn’t even my battle.
“Let’s go back to our suite,” Owen said to Presley just as Quinn came to stand beside me, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Owen?” David repeated as I let Quinn pull me from the booth. “You’re with him?”
“Yes,” Presley said with a strength I admired. Good for her. She shouldn’t let whoever this guy was alter her happiness.
“I see,” David said, and I threaded my fingers through Quinn’s, enjoying the connection we shared in that extremely awkward situation.
“Bye Tara, Quinn,” Presley said as Owen motioned toward the exit.
“We’re right behind you,” Quinn said, almost as if it were a threat to David if he tried to follow them. Well, we were on the same page in more than one thing tonight. Go us. “Good night,” he said and squeezed my hand, pulling me through the restaurant after Owen and David had another colorful exchange before finally leaving.
Quinn kept hold of my hand the entire walk back to our suite, which I spent shooting glances behind us every now and then, as if David would be following us in hopes to track down Presley. I didn’t know what had happened between those three, but I could tell from the heat in the room it wasn’t a pleasant past.
“How long was he there?” Quinn asked as he opened the door and let us into the suite.
“Not long.” I let out a breath. “Long enough, though.”
“Yeah, there is something nasty there.”
I nodded. Then realized we were back in the suite, alone, and this was the time I was supposed to initiate fantasy number three. The one that Grant was sure would apply to both of us, and was totally fuck-up-proof.
Intimacy Page 10
