I nodded, but my stomach twisted again. Another man motivated by money. I’d seen that same look on Keith’s face as he finished dental school, right before he started his own practice. He’d lost his boyish charm, his playful smile, his adventurous heart. It’d been replaced by dollar signs and expectations.
“Well, this is me,” I said, gesturing to my driveway. “I guess I’ll see you around, Tucker.”
A wide grin split his face. “I certainly hope so.”
Tucker stood firm, tucking his hands loosely into the pockets of his J Crew Stanton shorts. He didn’t move from that spot until I was all the way inside my cabin, and he threw me one last wave through the window before turning back for Davie and Yvette’s.
I rolled my eyes, blowing out a loud breath as my head fell back against the door. Rev jumped up onto the kitchen counter with a ragged meow and a rather unimpressed look on his little face.
I laughed.
“Tell me about it.”
MINISCULE
min·is·cule
Adjective
Very small
I’d made it through another day.
Another tick on the calendar, another measurement of time, of life. I’d survived, and that was all I could ask for.
My muscles ached under the stream of hot water as I showered off the day. Years of bending and lifting and working were catching up to me more and more, but I didn’t mind. Pain didn’t bother me, not as much as numbness did.
I pulled on a pair of sweatpants when I was dry and grabbed a Q-tip, towel draped over my shoulder as I walked downstairs to make tea. It was something Dani always did at night, right before bed. She’d put a pot of water on and we’d all choose our own flavors, and we’d sit on the back porch and drink and talk. Eventually, Dani would pull out her book to read and Aunt Rose would make her way up to bed. Half the time, I’d spike my tea and bug Dani or get drunk enough to wander down the road and find trouble. It was never too hard for me to do.
But now I just made it because it reminded me of her, of a past life, of what I’d had when I didn’t even realize it and what I’d lost and missed every day since.
Once the pot was on the stove, I toweled off my hair and cleaned the grime from inside my ears before tossing the Q-tip in the trash. It was just another day, another night, and soon I’d be asleep and could start all over again. Not even the new blonde in town could change that fact, though she did throw a wrench in my day.
I wasn’t sure what it was about her that even made me stop. I’d seen plenty of tourists rent out the cabins around here, plenty of girls in cut-off shorts and shoes not fit for cabin life. But it wasn’t her clothes or her hair that I thought about as the pot of water whistled its readiness through my kitchen. It was her eyes.
They were eyes that had lived, eyes that had hurt.
I knew, because I had them, too.
A knock sounded at my front door just as I moved the pot of water off the burner and I frowned, glancing up at the clock.
Who the hell would be at my door this time of night? Or at all?
When I rounded the fridge and saw the familiar ponytail and jacket, my frown deepened.
“Sarah,” I greeted when I opened the door. “What’s wrong?”
She smiled, high cheek bones flushed from the cold as she slid in past me without an invitation. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. I came to see you. What are you doing?”
I stood with my hand gripping the doorknob, eyes on the dark woods beyond the porch as I forced a breath through my nose and shut the door again. “Same thing I do every night, and I’m about to go to bed.”
Sarah grabbed a second mug from my top cabinet and placed it next to the one I’d already pulled out, pouring water from the pot into each of them. “Oh, stop being such a grump.” She winked at me over her shoulder before reaching into the jar I kept the tea bags in. “What flavor?”
“I don’t want company.”
“Peppermint sound good?”
Sarah didn’t wait for an answer, just ripped open two packets and dunked the teabags in each cup. She handed me mine and shrugged off her navy blue jacket, slinging it over the back of my bar stool before taking a seat in it.
I just held the mug and stared at her.
She sighed. “Rev, please,” she pleaded, eyes softening.
“Don’t call me that,” I said, voice hard, but she kept her eyes on me and finally I mirrored her sigh, taking the stool next to her. “Five minutes.”
She perked up and immediately began spouting off about her day, and I held onto my mug, trying to enjoy her company, trying to remember when she was in my bed nearly every night all those years ago.
Sarah had been crazy just like me. We used to party every night, along with Davie and Yvette, before they’d even been married, before responsibility or birthdays that started with the number two. Sarah was Yvette’s best friend and I was Davie’s, but where Davie and Yvette fell in love, Sarah and I just used each other when we wanted. Sometimes she was with another guy, or I was with another girl, or we’d play the games just to piss each other off. I never loved her, even though I thought I did for the longest time. I’d never loved anyone.
I never would.
“I think I’m going to a party in town tomorrow night,” she said, and I realized it was the only thing I’d really heard. “You should come with me.”
Her eyes trailed from my eyes down my bare abdomen, and I wished I’d grabbed a shirt from upstairs. Then again, I wasn’t expecting company, and I was reminded of that fact when her fingertips reached out to touch the towel still hanging over my shoulder.
“It would be fun... like old times.”
“No,” I said simply, grabbing her mug and taking it to the sink with mine. Hers was still nearly full.
“I wasn’t done with that.”
“Now you are.”
“God, why are you such a fucking asshole, Anderson?” The stool rubbed hard against the floor as she stood, swiping her jacket off the back. “Would it kill you to just sit with another human being for a night? Are you so mad at the world that you don’t remember how to have fun?”
“I’m tired, Sarah.” It was the only answer I had, and it was true—I was tired. From the day, from her being in my house, from my life.
“Whatever.” She yanked on her jacket one sleeve at a time, ponytail swinging. Her eyes caught on the picture of Dani and she froze. “You know, your life doesn’t have to end just because hers did.”
Her words were like ice water, and I felt every drop of them in my spine, crawling slowly before rushing like a river. I shook from the force of them, teeth gritted, fists clenching.
“Out,” I growled, rushing past her to open the door.
“Shit,” she said on a sigh. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“OUT!”
Sarah pursed her lips, willing me to look at her. When I wouldn’t, she huffed and blew past me without another word.
I slammed the door behind her, growling as I picked up her mug I’d just poured down the sink and hurled it across the cabin. It hit the frame of my wood-burning stove and shattered, light blue porcelain raining down to the floor. My daily routine had been thrown into a dumpster fire, starting with the blonde and ending with Sarah.
I ran both hands through my hair and cursed.
No way was I sleeping now.
My mind raced with Sarah’s words, with memories of my old life hammering my every move as I rushed upstairs and threw on a t-shirt and coat. It didn’t matter that I’d already showered, or that I was usually asleep by now. Apparently this day wanted to be different, and so I embraced it, grabbing my toolbox and heading back to the Morrisons’. If I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to think, I’d work.
It was the only thing that made sense.
There was something absolutely freeing about not having to answer to anyone.
Never in my entire life had I been able to do what I wanted, when I wanted, without thinking of how it affec
ted someone else. First my parents, then my roommates in college, and for the last seven years since we’d married and moved in together, Keith.
But tonight? Tonight, I had nowhere to be, no one to tell me how I should be spending my night, and maybe that’s why I was dancing by the fire, dressed ridiculously in my favorite mesh lingerie one-piece from Free People with the most expensive high heels I owned strapped on my feet.
I’d tried being productive, tried sitting on the back balcony with my sketch book to work, but the truth was I didn’t feel inspired. I didn’t exactly feel uninspired, rather I sort of just existed in this liquid place between the two. I was living—breathing—and listening to what my soul told me, what it wanted from me in that moment.
Apparently, what my soul needed was a little 90’s R&B and an entire bottle of wine.
Boyz II Men blasted at an ungodly volume from my portable speaker, and I crooned along, one hand gripping my glass of wine while the other ran the length of my body, up into my hair, and back down again. I had a petite build, small waist with a barely-B cup that I was extremely proud of, seeing as how my mother was more flat-chested than my father. But the asset I loved most? My legs. Years of dancing when I was younger had toned them to perfection, and maybe that’s why I loved seeing them strapped into a very high pair of Louboutin’s. Not for Keith, not for any other man, but just for me.
When End of the Road cut off and Color of Love took its place, I plopped down onto the couch, panting, my fingers working to quickly tie my hair up and off my neck. Rev sat curled up on the arm, and he simply blinked his lazy eyes at me before laying his head back down again.
“Well, that was fun,” I said, peeling my heels off and letting them fall with a thud to the floor. Was I speaking to the cat or my nearly empty glass? I wasn’t sure. “Now what?”
I sipped from my glass, looking around the cabin, taking inventory. I could try to sketch again—I did have two full glasses of merlot on my side now. Or I could call Adrian, ease his worry over me a little. I knew where Momma Von lived now, she told me to stop by anytime...
Or...
“Yep, that thought wins,” I announced to Rev.
He didn’t even open his eyes this time as I bounded up the stairs. I grabbed a clean towel from the bathroom and jogged over to the dresser, fishing out a simple black triangle swimsuit top before pausing.
I was completely alone. Why did I need a bathing suit?
The answer was simple: I didn’t.
I laughed, a little too loudly and a little too high-pitched, but I didn’t care. I finished the last of the wine in my glass and flew back downstairs with my towel draped over my arm, hopping down each stair as I stripped out of my clothes. There was just enough wine left for one last glass, so I topped my glass off before skipping past a dozing Rev to the back balcony.
I left the door open, speaker still blasting, now it was SWV singing about weak knees. And I sang right along, feeling weak myself as I trembled in the cool Washington night. My smile was immovable, even when I flicked on the back porch light and nothing happened, even when the same was true of the light inside the hot tub. I decided then that the moon and stars were enough, and I flipped the cover off the tub, steadied my glass on the edge, and sank down into the water inch by blissful inch.
I moaned, the steaming hot water releasing tension in my back and shoulders as I slid all the way under. For a moment I existed under the water with the world morphed, eyes blinded and ears plugged. When I emerged, the cool air kissed my cheeks and I smiled, retying my hair and reaching for my wine.
Even with the music playing from inside, the quiet of the night surrounded me, and I cradled my head against the back of the tub as I relaxed. The stars shone through the opening in the pine trees, and I stared at them unapologetically.
When I was younger, my grandparents used to take me camping, and though I hated sleeping in a tent and cooking food from a can over a campfire, I absolutely loved looking up at the stars. They had once been something I wished on, and over the years had grown into thousands of shining points of perspective. No matter how big my problems felt, they were small. I was small. And in the same way their promises of wishes fulfilled brought me comfort as a child, their reminder of my size did the same now.
Closing my eyes, I let the wine burn through my veins, working with the water to submerge me in peace. I had just started slipping away when something slimy crawled across my chest.
My eyes flew open, and though it felt like slow motion, everything that happened next took place in thirty seconds or less, and all at once.
I shrieked, loud, and continued to scream as my arms flailed back behind me, searching for traction on the edge of the hot tub. One hand sent my wine glass over the edge, shattering the glass, none of which I could see when I’d finally squirmed out of the hot tub. A sharp wedge sliced through my heel, and I wailed even louder as I hobbled for the door, but before I could reach it, my uninjured foot broke through one of the rotten boards on the balcony.
And that was the moment I was blinded by the brightest flashlight known to man.
“What the—” a very deep, very male voice said.
“Ack!” I yelled back, my forearm flying up to shield my eyes. That’s when I remembered I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
I jerked my arm back down to cover my breasts as my other hand moved between my legs. My eyes were squeezed tight against the light, one foot was bleeding, the other was stuck in the hole I’d kicked through the balcony, and my entire body was shivering in the freezing cold. I tried to keep my balance and pull my foot free, but that only pressed the glass farther into the other, which made me shriek again and stumble. I fell against the side of the cabin and slid to the ground.
The light dropped from my face, and when my eyes adjusted, clearing through the fog of the wine and the flashlight, heat flooded my cheeks.
It was the guy I’d seen earlier, and if possible his frown was even deeper than when he’d stood at the edge of my driveway.
And then there was me.
Naked. Wet. And bleeding.
Awesome.
“Jesus Christ,” I murmured under my breath, cutting the flashlight away from her face and letting it fall to the ground next to me as I kneeled down.
I kept my eyes trained on her foot, which was just about the only safe place to look. She was a mess of wet skin and long, pale legs; it’d been impossible not to admire her slight frame moments before, soft pink nipples puckered and water dripping from her hair as steam from the hot tub swirled around her.
But she was injured, and that was what I tried to focus on as I reached for her.
“Hey,” she said, wiping the wet, loose strands of her hair from her face. When I was level with her, she pointed a finger into my chest. “I saw you earlier.” Her words slurred a bit, a smile playing at the edges of her plump lips.
I scowled, my fingertips finding the slick skin of her ankle as I inspected the large shard of glass lodged in her heel. Chills raced up her leg at the touch, and my eyes followed their trail as far as her knee before I zeroed in on her foot again. I lowered it a bit, bringing the wound into the flashlight’s beam from where it lay on the deck. Slowly, and as carefully as I could manage with large fingers that felt too rough to touch her, I pulled the glass free as she cringed. Tightening the grip on her ankle to hold her in place, I examined the area for smaller pieces before gently setting her heel back on the deck.
Her gaze followed me as I stood, towering over her, the moonlight illuminating her pale skin even without the help from my flashlight that I kept trained on at her foot. Her chest heaved, the swells of her breasts rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
I swallowed.
“Towel?”
She pointed behind me, and I swiped the towel that laid draped over the arm of the sectional, clicking off the flashlight before leaning down to wrap her in the cloth.
“Put your arm around my shoulder,” I instructed when I had the towel s
ecurely around her.
She clutched the corners together where they met at her side and slung her other arm over me, letting me lift her into my arms. The towel didn’t cover all of her, and I felt her wet skin against the thin fabric of my shirt as I cradled her. I hadn’t thought to throw on my coat when I heard her screaming, just ran toward the sound, toward her, and now she was naked and clutching onto me as if she was afraid I’d drop her.
I tightened my grip on her, one on her thigh and the other holding her shoulders, and she simply stared up at me, trembling, big eyes locked on mine which I kept focused on the cabin behind her.
The music I’d heard faintly on her porch assaulted us as soon as I pushed through the door to her living room, and I frowned at the noise, setting her carefully on the couch before scanning the room for the source. I recognized the song, Pony by Genuwine, and it echoed through her cabin as she sat soaking wet on the couch wrapped in a towel that was too small.
But while I was focusing on fighting a hard on from all the naked touching, she was fighting back a smile, and it didn’t take long for her to fail. She threw her head back, mouth wide as she laughed so hard her hands clutched her stomach. As I watched her, an unfamiliar sensation warmed my throat. I think I wanted to laugh too, but it was like I’d forgotten how.
When she lifted her head again to peek up at me through watery eyes, she only laughed harder—probably because I was about as charismatic as a brick wall.
“I’m sorry,” she said over the music, wiping at her eyes as she pointed toward the fire to a small barrel table where the speaker sat.
I moved quickly, cutting the song off right at the chorus, and then it was silent.
For a moment I stood there, the new quiet blanketing the two of us, making the cabin feel smaller, us closer. Water dripped from her hair down to the edge of the towel clutched to her chest, and I tore my eyes away, willing myself to focus.
She was bleeding. She was hurt.
The hardwood floor creaked under my boots as I walked behind where she sat on the couch and into the kitchen. It wasn’t my first time in Abdiel’s cabin, and I was thankful when I found his first aid kit where I remembered him stowing it last summer.
Summer Romance Box Set: 3 Bestselling Stand-Alone Romances: Weightless, Revelry, and On the Way to You Page 33
