"Lock--"
"And then I got..." I tap my chest, over my heart...Oliver's heart-- "this. And now I have a life to live all over again. And I don't know what the fuck to do with it."
"You live." Her eyes meet mine, blazing, piercing. Seeing into me, seeing my weakness, my fear. "You love. You do what needs doing."
"You make it sound so easy. Like, oh just do it! Life isn't a goddamn Nike commercial."
Niall shoots to her feet, paces away a few steps, then stops and turns to speak to me from where she is standing. "It's not easy, Lock. I mean, shit, if it was easy, I wouldn't be hiding out way the hell down here in fucking Ardmore, Oklahoma, taking temperatures and blood pressure, would I?"
I stand up now, too. Close two of the steps between us. "Niall--"
She stabs a finger at me, angry now. "You think you're the only one who doesn't know what to do with their life? You think you're the only one afraid of letting someone in? I lost my husband...I lost myself, Lock. He was--Ollie was--" She tips her head back, blinks hard, pinches at her tear ducts as if to physically prevent the tears from falling. "He was everything to me, Lock. He was all I had in this whole world. He died, and I couldn't cope with being alive and alone. I still don't know how to cope, but I want to try. I want to live again. You make me want to try." She says the last sentence so quietly I almost miss it.
She's closer, somehow. Her breasts are brushing against my chest, and she's staring up at me, eyes wide and the exact shade of green moss on brown tree bark. She's not blinking now, just breathing deeply, her tits swelling in that tight orange tank top. God, I just cannot help checking her out. Old habits die hard, I think. But fuck, is she beautiful. And the way she's looking at me? It hurts so goddamn bad, cuts me right to the bone, to the marrow, to my very soul, because there's...hope in her eyes. Belief. Desire.
All directed at me.
Hope that I can...what? Be the kind of man that could deserve a class act, tough-as-nails, hot as hell, hardworking, talented woman like Niall James?
Can I be that man?
Shit, I want to be. So bad, I want to be.
But am I? Can I become that?
Hell if I know.
"Me?" I ask, the word a whisper, a breath, disbelieving.
"You, Lachlan Montgomery. You."
"Why?" I scrape my hands through my hair and fight the onslaught of emotions, but they come out of my mouth anyway. "I'm empty, Niall. I'm no one. I have no career. No marketable skills. I walked away from you, shit, I ran away from the best thing I've ever experienced, from the most amazing woman I've ever met, because I'm afraid of my own emotions. Why would I of all people make you--make you want to live again? It doesn't make any sense, Niall."
"Because you're...alive, Lock. I don't know how else to put it. You're...vibrant. Vital. Larger than life. You're just so...much."
We are faced off, now. As if we've both run out of words, momentarily. And then Niall sways in place, blinking, as if she's been struck by sudden dizziness. I grab her; hold her close, mindful of her side.
"When was the last time you ate?" I ask her.
She shrugs in my embrace. "I have no idea. It's been a while."
I steady her and we walk back across the street, to a long tent erected over several picnic tables. There's a food and drink station set up on one end, with repurposed livestock water troughs full of ice, soda, and water, and another small table piled high with handmade, plastic-wrapped sandwiches and little bags of chips. I guide Niall to a bench, fetch us food, three sandwiches each, soda, and some chips. We dig in with gusto. I honestly don't remember the last time I ate either. Probably yesterday, sometime. I left in a hurry, stopped in this town for gas, and was planning on hitting the diner when both Niall and the tornado hit town. And that was hours ago. I don't know what time it is, either. Past midnight. Nearer to dawn, maybe? The sky beyond the jagged horizon is tinged with lighter shades of black and gray, the precursor to impending dawn.
Apropos of nothing Niall glances at me over her sandwich, alarm on her face. "Where's Utah?"
I jerk a thumb at my truck, parked in the grass beyond the cluster of HQ tents. "Asleep in the back of the truck."
"I heard talk about her, people saying she was helping find people in the rubble."
I nod. "She's amazing. She'd sniff around, listen, and if she found someone, she'd go crazy, pawing and digging. She never ceases to amaze me. I've never had a pet before her."
Niall stares at me in shock. "You...what? You've never had a pet before? Never?"
I shake my head. "Not so much as a goldfish. My dad was allergic to cats, my mom didn't want a dog, and they never allowed anything else in the house. Then after high school I moved onto my boat, and it never occurred to me to get one." I smile.
"Utah sort of adopted me. I've never done a single thing to train her. She just...does what she wants. She was neglected when I found her, though, had a rope tied around her neck, but it was so tight her fur was staring to grow around it. I didn't know what else to do with her, after I'd cut the rope off, and she just...took to me. I washed her, cleaned her up, brushed her fur, all that. And then, somehow, the thought of her not being around just didn't make any sense."
"So you adopted her, too."
I shrug. "She's the only thing I've ever bothered to take care of. And she doesn't need much. Food, water, and some love."
"Imagine that." Her voice is low, amused, laced with meaning.
I hang my head; eat the crust of my last sandwich. "Niall, about how I left--"
"You're an idiot," she says, around a big bite of ham sandwich. "We've established that."
"It's just--"
"It fucking hurt, Lock." She looks at me now, chewing slowly. "It hurt so bad I don't...I don't even have words. I thought it meant something, what we shared last night. Or the night before, or whenever it was. It hurt. I expected you to be there. I thought we'd...I dunno. Have breakfast. I thought--"
"You thought I could be someone I'm not." I hate how bitter I sound. "I've never been that guy. I've never been there the next morning."
"So I'm gathering."
Her words burn like acid. I feel sick to my stomach with what I'm about to say. Heat fills me. My pulse hammers in my veins, like drums in the depths. "Doesn't mean I--um. That I don't want to try. If you...if you're willing."
She eyes me, her expression carefully blank. "If you can't figure that out, you're more of an idiot than I thought."
Always landing on a lost bet
Lock doesn't seem to know what to do with that. To hell with it--I'm not going to hand-feed him every answer, or make it too easy on him.
"I'm falling asleep right here at the table," I say. "I need to lie down somewhere."
He stands up, offers me his hand. I take it, but warily. He leads me to his truck. I can hear Utah snuffling and snoring in the bed, and as we round the tailgate, I see that Lock found a mattress at some point and shoved it into the bed of the truck. He tugs open the rear driver's side door, pulls a rolled-up sleeping bag out of the backseat. He unzips it to turn it into a blanket and tosses it into the back. I'm too tired to care about the assumption that I'll sleep with him--I totally will. Sleep, that is. Nothing else, not even if we had privacy. He hasn't earned that back, yet. He has to own up to his feelings enough that I'll trust him.
We fucked, and it was good. But that was just fucking, because I was horny and he's hot.
Then we had sex that bordered on making love, and it was the most amazing thing I've ever experienced.
And then his stupid, cave-man ass ran off on me, because he's too sissy to handle his own emotions.
So now he has to man up, and I'm not waiting around too long for him to get his act together. So, in the meantime, I plan to sleep on this scavenged mattress in the back of a pickup truck, under the stars, between a dog and a man for whom I have complicated feelings.
I'm about to hop up onto the tailgate when I feel his hands on my hips, and he spins me in place.
He lifts me effortlessly, sets me on my butt on the tailgate. And damn him, because my knees just sort of slide open all on their own, admitting him, letting him wedge his trim waist between my thighs. He cups my jaw in his hand.
I'm not doing this with him, I tell myself.
Yeah...that's a one hundred percent big fat lie.
He's inches away. His chest is a cliff-face blocking out the world beyond him. I hear sounds, but they're faint, distant, and irrelevant. He has my face in his big, rough hands. He's staring down at me. Sea blue-green eyes lit by the moon and the stars, and by the klieg lights behind us. He sucks in a deep breath, lets it out slowly, brows furrowed, as if searching deep within himself for something.
Feints for a kiss, teases me with it. I can't help letting my lips part, can't help lifting my chin to seek the kiss. Damn him, and damn me.
I wasn't going to do this, I wasn't going to let him pull me under the hypnotic vortex of his hotness, his charm, his magnetism. When he gets close like this, I lose all sense, all reason. I've always had extreme distaste for storybook heroines in the romance novels I read, the tittering numbskulls who go all breathy and stupid when some sexy hunk gets close, and then they'd let him do whatever he wanted.
I get that, now.
And it's not fake; it's real.
I'm turning into a tittering numbskull, I'm breathy and stupid, and I'm seconds from compromising myself, right here and now.
Just because some sexy hunk swaggered up close to me, staring at me with big beautiful eyes and holding me with big beautiful hands, surrounding me with big, hard muscles.
"Lock...don't--" I manage to breathe out. "Please don't."
"Don't what?"
"Try to distract me by kissing me."
"I'm not."
"You are too. You can't kiss me out of dealing with your emotions. It might work temporarily, but not long-term. Not on me."
"Damn." He rests his forehead against mine. "You know all my tricks."
I laugh, and taste his breath. "Yes, Lock. I do. Problem is, you're only tricking yourself."
"I know, Niall. Just...give me time. I'm working up to it."
He releases me, and I'm finally able to breathe properly. A hop puts him on the tailgate beside me, and then he's scooting us backward, onto the mattress. Which is dry, but not precisely clean. Beggars can't be choosers, though, I suppose, and it's better than a reclined truck seat. Utah is stretched out on one side, and Lock positions me in the middle, up against Utah, and then settles in behind me. He drapes the opened sleeping bag over us. Utah is warm, soft, and smells like dog, obviously, a pleasant, earthy aroma. I dig my fingers into her fur; rest my head on my arm, my forehead against her back. She snuffles, and her tail thumps a few times.
And then I feel Lock behind me, wriggling to press up close against me. His arm is around my waist, cradling me just beneath my breasts. His hips are against mine. His chest to my back.
I'm bone tired, the kind of exhausted that leaves your eyes burning, your limbs heavy, and your head foggy. But this? This is too perfect, too warm, too right, and I don't want to fall asleep just yet. I just want to enjoy it, and relish it.
Between a dog and a man is a good place to sleep, I think. Warm, safe.
I slide under the edge of sleep slowly, deliriously, happily. Hoping that when I wake up things will still be this simple and perfect between Lock and me.
*
I wake to warmth, to a burly arm draped over me, a slack hand possessively cupping one of my breasts. Horndog, even when he's asleep. The problem with me is that I don't mind--even in the slightest. I like the feel of his hand on me. I like the hard presence of his body behind me. Speaking of hard...I feel his morning wood through his shorts, huge and thick against my butt.
God, I want him.
If I didn't hear voices nearby from the HQ tents, I'd probably be doing something about his erection, right now. Something about the throb between my thighs.
I can't, though. And I won't. Not until or unless he owns up to his feelings for me. I know he has them. I just need him to be open enough, and vulnerable enough, and man enough to own them.
And what about my own feelings? They're damned potent. Scary. It's impossible, in some ways, because I know every time I lay my head on his chest and hear his heart beating, I'll think of Ollie. I'll never not be able to think about Ollie, and I'm worried that'll mean I won't ever truly heal. Is that fair to me? Is that fair to Lock? Could we have a successful relationship if I'm reminded of Ollie every time I feel or hear Lock's pulse?
I mean, it's so crazy. My husband dying meant that Lock lived.
As I wake up I'm reminded about the tornado and the subsequent hours of trauma. That all reminds me that life is short. That you never know what's going to happen. Even losing Ollie didn't show me that. Rather, Ollie's death only put me into denial, forcing me into a shell, deep down behind mile-high walls. It made me afraid of life. Afraid of myself. Afraid of the future. Afraid of doing the job I'm best at. Afraid of my body, of my desires, of my heart and its needs.
I could have died yesterday. If that two-by-four had hit the windshield a few scant inches to the right, I would be dead.
That knowledge changed my thinking in an instant. I don't want to waste any more time being afraid. I don't want to live alone, shut down, going through the motions, empty, listless. A becalmed ship on a glassy sea.
There's a radio playing somewhere. Low, but just loud enough that I can hear it.
It's a country song. A man's voice, singing with guitar and piano accompaniment.
I can just make out the words. And they...wreck me:
I was a boat stuck in a bottle
That never got the chance to touch the sea Just forgot on the shelf
No wind in the sails
Going no where with no one but me
I was one in one hundred billion
A burned out star in a galaxy
Just lost in the sky wondering why
Everyone else shines out but me
But...
I came to life when I first kissed you
The best me has his arms around you
You make me better than I was before
Thank God I'm yours
I was a worn out set of shoes
Wandering the city street
Another face in the crowd
Head looking down
Lost in the sound of a lonely melody
Empty pockets at a roulette
Always landing on a lost bet
Just live for the spin and hope for the win Go all in just to lose again
But...
I came to life when I first kissed you
The best me has his arms around you
You make me better than I was before
Thank God I'm yours The worst me is just a long gone memory
You put a new heartbeat inside of me
You make me better than I was before
Thank God I'm yours
I was a boat stuck in a bottle
That never got the chance to touch the sea
I came to life when I first kissed you
The best me has his arms around you
You make me better than I was before
Thank God I'm yours The worst me is just a long gone memory
You put a new heart beat inside of me
You make me better than I was before
Thank God I'm yours Thank God I'm yours Thank God I'm yours Thank God I'm yours
"No wind in the sails, going nowhere with no one but me..." That's it, that was my life exactly. I find myself crying as I listen to the song, and the repeated refrain.
I'm so thankful I had Ollie.
But he's gone, and I can't bring him back.
I can't pretend he's coming back, and I can't keep hiding from my own life.
"God, that fucking song," I hear Lock say behind me.
"I didn't know you were awake," I say.
"I felt you wake up." His hand fl
exes, and then freezes as he realizes how he's holding me. But he doesn't let go, and I don't make him. Instead, he clutches my breast more tightly.
"You heard that song, then?"
He nods against the back of my shoulder. "Yeah. I heard it while I was driving yesterday, and I..." He trails off, shaking his head. "I had to pull over to listen to it."
"I've never heard it before. It could be describing me."
"Yeah, me too." His voice is quiet, a low murmur. "You know, I never really believed in the other part of what that song is about."
I try to wrap my head around his convoluted statement. "What? Love?"
"Yeah."
"You can't even say the word?"
"The word is just a word. The meaning behind it is what I've always been skeptical about."
"What about your parents? Didn't they love each other?"
A long silence. "Eh. I mean, they liked each other okay, I guess. My dad died young, and my mother never remarried. I don't think she's ever even been on a date since. She just doesn't...care. She's not like that. She's all about business. She and my father were more business partners than anything, I think. They weren't openly affectionate, and I never heard them say they loved each other. When Dad died, she didn't cry that I ever saw, didn't really mourn. She just...took over the business, and that was it."
"That's...sad."
"What's the story with your family?"
I hate talking about my family, because it's one of those subjects better left in the past. I'm not really bitter about it, and I don't think I have any lasting hang-ups about it, I just...don't like talking about it. But I guess I have to with Lock at some point.
I shrug. "Not much to tell. My father ran off with the nanny when I was eleven, and Mom wasn't...she couldn't hack it as a single mother of two, I guess you could say. She relinquished custody of my younger brother and me to my grandparents and then she left. I haven't seen her since. Don't know where she is, and I don't care anymore. My grandparents died when I was in nursing school, and my brother is a drug addict living somewhere in the bowels of LA." I roll in his arms, face him. "My dad abandoned me. My mom abandoned me. My brother abandoned me. My husband died. So I guess my point is, if anyone has a right to be cynical and bitter about love it's me."
Yours Page 22
