by Olivia Dade
She swallowed back a raw sound, her cheeks wet and cold.
No. Belle was honest and direct, always. If she said her departure had nothing to do with Tess, she meant it.
Tess had to believe that. She would believe that.
With her thumbnail, she traced the stitching on the edge of the duvet. She breathed steadily, again and again, until her chest stopped hitching.
Her best friend had already left. In another week, Lucas would be gone from her daily life too. She’d spend virtually all her days and nights focused on work, without interruption. This year. Next year. Maybe all the years to come.
Somehow, the prospect sounded a lot less appealing than it had only a week ago.
Twenty-Two
Over a late dinner that night, Tess tried her best to stay cheery. She asked Lucas about his day. Laughed at the shenanigans of the kids in his children’s lesson. Rolled her eyes at his shameless flirtation and innuendo. Told her own stories about how she’d spent the afternoon.
As he played with her fingers from across the diner booth, she forced a grin. “So then I tried to mount the float again, and it flipped over on me again, and an elderly woman nearby looked at me with pity and offered to get me water wings.”
His head tilted in silent inquiry.
“You know, those inflatable armbands? I thought they were just for toddlers, but evidently not.”
He snickered at that.
Ducking her head, she watched the tendons in the back of his hand shift with every stroke of his thumb across her knuckles, every brush of their fingertips.
He lifted her hand, cupping it against the nascent bristles of his cheek and nuzzling into her palm. Then he simply looked at her for a moment.
“You seem tired tonight, älskling,” he finally said. “Are you ready to leave?”
She felt tired. Tired and old. “Sure.”
After giving her hand one last squeeze, he let it go and slid out of the booth. “Let’s go to my apartment.”
Minutes ago, he’d settled their bill and tucked a generous tip for their server beneath the salt shaker, so there was nothing keeping them in the diner. They walked out together, his arm over her shoulders drawing her close to his side.
The humidity hit her like a sweaty-palmed slap. “Ugh.”
“Just think of all the money you’re saving on moisturizer.” He smiled down at her. “Really, I don’t know how anyone can afford not to live near Florida.”
She wrinkled her nose. “My hotel room is closer than the clubhouse. Let’s go there instead.”
“Is Belle out with her, uh, friend tonight?”
She swallowed hard. “She left this morning.”
His head turned her way. “Left? The room?”
“The island. Her plane should be landing in Boston any time now.”
He slowed. “Weren’t you two supposed to leave at the same time?”
“Yes.” She tugged him back into motion. “That was the plan, but she decided to go home early.”
Her voice sounded thin, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He bent close and pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth. “I’m glad you didn’t leave with her.”
Housekeeping had apparently come and gone in her absence, because the duvets on both double beds were invitingly turned down, chocolates wrapped in gold foil resting on the pillows. Two new water bottles, their sides beaded with moisture, had appeared on the nightstands.
Her laugh emerged as a hiccup. “More chocolates and water bottles for me, I suppose.”
“That’s what you think.” After she lowered herself onto her mattress, Lucas grabbed both bottles and handed one to her. “I’m greedy.”
He opened the other, taking a long drink. Capping it again, he set it on the nightstand, sat down on the bed too, and settled himself against her wooden headboard.
There he remained, arms loose at his sides, eyes on her. In the lamplight, his rumpled hair was edged with gold, the well-honed muscles beneath his thin tee casting shadows across the soft cotton.
That forgiving light erased the damage from years in the sun, and he looked like what he was. An athlete, handsome and vital and…young. So young, when tonight she felt exhausted and dispirited. She might as well have bypassed middle age and hobbled directly into decrepitude. She might as well be four hundred years old.
For a minute, the disorientation of it all stole her words.
Somehow, she’d embarked on an affair with that man. Her. Tess Dunn. Her. Forty and disheveled and no-nonsense. Practical to a fault. Literally.
Then he held out his arms to her, and she crawled into them without hesitation.
“I’m not usually this tired, not even during my period,” she informed his cotton-covered chest, attempting to nestle closer and closer again to his now-familiar scent and his now-familiar warmth. “This is an aberration, brought on by too many orgasms.”
His chest vibrated with his amusement. “I can fumble a bit more next time, if you’d like. Pretend I can’t find your clitoris. Coming after two or three strokes won’t be a problem either, if I set my mind to it.”
“Oh, God, not that. I take it back.” Spying the gleam of familiar rose-colored fabric on the back of the open bathroom door, she pursed her lips. “Dammit. Belle left her robe. I’ll have to mail it to her when I get back.”
“Is she all right?” He sounded distracted, probably because he was sliding one hand down her spine, toward her ass. “You seemed surprised that she left early.”
Her voice was tight. “She says she’s fine.”
“So she was just homesick?” His shoulder lifted in a half-shrug. “I guess that happens.”
When his mouth lowered to her ear, she moved slightly away. “Not to Belle.”
Her tone was sharper than she’d intended, and he was staring at her, brows slightly raised. Dammit. Yet another fuckup in a day full of them.
“At least this means we can spend more time together in the evenings.” Letting out a slow breath, he gave her backside a gentle squeeze. “I know you were worried about abandoning her.”
“This isn’t something to celebrate, Lucas.” Her neck hurt. Tension, probably. “Not even if it means extra time alone together.”
“I don’t…” His hands lifted from her, and he gave her a little more space. “I guess I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
He looked genuinely befuddled.
So she explained everything. What she’d said, what Belle had said, how they’d left things, how she still didn’t know what exactly had prompted her best friend—her best friend—to leave. How her guilt and worry had weighed on her so heavily that afternoon, she’d half-expected to sink directly to the bottom of the ocean each time she fell off her stupid float.
Lucas listened without interrupting until she’d finished. Then he reached for her hand, stopping only a hairsbreadth away. When she bridged the distance and intertwined their fingers, his entire body seemed to relax.
“I’m sorry.” His hand tightened on hers. “I suppose I’m so used to my friends coming and going, it didn’t even occur to me you’d find it upsetting.”
She exhaled slowly. “On the Tour, you mean?”
He nodded. “When you lose, you leave. Even when my friend Nick and I were in the same tournament, we knew one of us could be gone a day later. Or we might have an entire week together. Two, for the majors. There was no way to predict.”
Tess swallowed hard, her eyes prickling. “Until she moved to Boston, I saw Belle every weekday. Without fail. I miss her.”
He slid his thumb across the back of her hand. “No wonder you’re sad she left early.”
“She’s my best friend.” That, at least, hadn’t altered with the move. “The first person I call when I have good news, and the person I cry on when things go bad. I don’t even want to imagine what this past decade would have been like without her. I’d have been lost.”
His head tilted in curiosity.
“When I brok
e up with my fiancé, I was, uh…” Her eyes dropped to the veins of his forearms, blue and readily visible. She traced them with a fingertip. “I was in rough shape for a while. I held it together during the school day, but in the evenings…”
Her finger stilled. “After school, I needed company. Distraction. Belle was there every day, supporting me until the worst of the grief was past.”
“What exactly happened between you and your ex?” His voice was low. Cautious. “You told me the bare outlines during our second lesson, but I’d like to know more. If you’re willing to talk about it.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him about Jeremy—not tonight, possibly not ever—but maybe it was for the best. Lucas should know before their lives became any more intertwined how unfit she was to deal with an intimate relationship, especially one complicated by distance and age and physical limitations and…so much else.
The words spilled from her, curiously dispassionate. Flat and matter-of-fact.
“He should have broken the engagement instead of cheating on me, obviously.” The nearness of Lucas suddenly overwhelmed her. She inched away, letting go of his hand and moving until she sat propped against the headboard too, close but not touching him. “He was right about some things, though. And I should have realized he was dissatisfied earlier. The fact that I didn’t…”
She shook her head, carefully not looking at Lucas. All she could see, all she let herself see, were his fists resting on his legs, his tendons and muscles jutting out in sharp relief.
“It was just a symptom of a larger issue.” The hem of her shorts frayed under her plucking fingers. “I’m good with practicalities. If you need to call for a plumber or make sure paperwork gets to the right place or pay a bill on time, I’m your woman. When it comes to emotions, though, I’m not especially skilled. At least, not when it really matters.”
Lucas cleared his throat in a sort of weird rumble, but he didn’t interrupt. When he took another swig of the water, the plastic crackled loudly in his grip.
In a defensive rush, she swung on him. “To be fair, though, I had to focus on all those practicalities, because if I didn’t do it, he certainly wouldn’t. He was always busy researching or writing an article or planning his classes or meeting with grad students or—” Her laugh was sharp and bitter, and it hurt her ears. “Or doing something else with grad students, I suppose.”
She’d caught him once. But in retrospect, she knew he hadn’t strayed once, or even with one graduate student. So many things suddenly made sense, once fitted into the proper context. The way those young female doctoral candidates couldn’t quite meet her eyes at his end-of-semester dinner parties, held at the home she shared with him. The quiet phone conversations he sometimes had in his home office, quickly ended when she appeared in the doorway. The way he always stayed a night or two extra at out-of-town conferences.
All the while, she’d cooked for those parties. Hired the cleaning service that dusted his home office. Made his hotel reservations for those conferences.
“I don’t think he ever scheduled a single doctor’s appointment. I don’t think he ever bought a single pair of his own underwear, not once during the entire time we were together.” Her cheeks burned, but not with shame anymore. With sudden rage. “I had a full-time job too, you know. I taught too. I planned classes too, and I didn’t have a goddamn TA to do my grading for me. But somehow, the fact that his work was more important than mine became a given, and I don’t understand how it happened.”
Her fingernails were biting into her palms hard enough to sting. “I don’t understand how I became his mother, instead of his fiancée and lover and confidante, but I did. And at least part of that is on me. It has to be.”
“Do you feel like my mother?”
Lucas’s voice was low. Tight with some emotion she couldn’t identify, because of course she couldn’t.
She didn’t even have to think about her answer. “Absolutely not.”
Not just because she wanted his tongue, his fingers, his cock inside her, but because—and the irony would choke her if she wasn’t careful—faux-playboy, easy-come-easy-go Lucas seemed to have his shit together in a way her middle-aged fiancé hadn’t.
Since their first meeting, Lucas hadn’t asked her to do a single thing for him. Not one.
Instead, he’d supplied the food for the picnic, located fluffy booties for her cramping belly, and offered her sweet-tart desserts and chocolates shaped like mountains. He woke up early and arrived to his lessons on time, and he arrived to their dates on time too.
He’d…wooed her. Like an adult, not a boy in a man’s body.
His fists on his taut thighs still hadn’t unclenched. “Just so you know, I make my own appointments. I buy my own underwear. I pay my own bills. If I make a mess, I clean it up.”
She thought she recognized that emotion in his voice now.
“Are you…” God, was she really having to ask this twice in one day? “Are you angry at me?”
“Fuck, no.” The words were loud. Immediate. “Shit, Tess, how could you even think that?”
“I told you.” The wry smile hurt her cheeks, but she offered it anyway. “I’m not great at emotions sometimes.”
Suddenly he was in front of her, straddling her legs. Cupping her face, his thumbs passing in gentle sweeps over her cheeks. Pressing a sweet, light kiss on her trembling lips.
“That’s bullshit, älskling,” he told her, his tone so tender it took her a few seconds to realize what he’d actually said. “Total fucking bullshit, and you should know better.”
When her mouth dropped open, he took advantage.
After a pleasant interlude, he pulled back an inch. “I don’t know what happened in your relationship with Jeremy”—the word sounded like an epithet—“because I wasn’t there. You were.” Another sweet, searching kiss. “I can tell you one thing for certain, though: You may be a master of practicalities, but you also have an enormous heart.”
“You don’t know that.” She wanted to believe him. She did. But how could she? “You can’t know that, not after a week.”
“All right, then. Let me prove it to you.” His lips nuzzled against her earlobe. “All your plans for the school. Are they practical? Is that why you’re working so hard on them?”
Concentrating on something other than the tease of his breath in her ear was nearly impossible, but she tried.
Hungry students. Race-based disciplinary discrimination. Bullying. All the other problems she wanted to address.
Practicality would mean focusing on standardized test scores instead. Would steer her toward saving the school’s limited resources, rather than spending more money on the children in their care. Would take her far afield from the initiatives she’d formulated with such enthusiasm, especially given the number of school board members notably unwilling to talk about race and racism.
Belle had already pointed out how much time and effort those initiatives would require. She’d cautioned that Tess might need to scale back her plans to suit a reality in which sleep was still a necessity and not everyone would agree with her priorities.
Tess was committed to them anyway.
So she had to concede the point, if only begrudgingly. “No. They’re not especially practical. I figure some of my ideas will meet with significant resistance. Or I’ll be told we don’t have enough money or people to make them work.”
“But something drove you to come up with those plans.” He didn’t even sound smug, damn him. “If not practicality, then what?”
Swallowing over a dry throat, she told him the truth. “I care about those kids, and I want their lives to be better. I want our school to be better.”
Funny. She’d been so caught up in the logistics of everything, she hadn’t stopped to consider why she’d chosen to pursue those particular goals. She hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge the raw emotions driving her onward.
Hope. Outrage. Passion.
None of them practical. All
of them essential in a good principal.
“You love those kids, Tess. With everything you have.” He tucked strands of hair behind her ears and cradled her face in his hands. “And I know you feel like you fucked up with Belle. But this is what I heard.” His eyes on hers were steady. Determined. “You came into the room. You got worried. You asked if she was okay, and she lied. You asked what had happened, and she wouldn’t answer. Then you tried to get her to open up by talking about practicalities, because she wasn’t ready to discuss how she was feeling or why. And once she’d relaxed a bit, you swung back around to check whether she was angry at you or victimized or hurting in some other way you could fix. She wasn’t.”
Put so plainly, it didn’t sound like such a failure of friendship, such a condemnation of her and her ability to read people and deal with their emotions.
Maybe his reading of the situation was generous, but it wasn’t inaccurate.
She took a deep breath, another, for the first time in what felt like hours.
His thumb brushed away a stray, stupid tear. “Tess, maybe she wasn’t ready to talk about what happened. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.” He ducked his head close, so close he comprised everything she could see. “Tonight, she said she’d talk to you, and she’ll probably tell you everything. But if she doesn’t, she may simply need more time.”
Tess would hate that. Hate it. Lucas was right, though. If Belle needed time to work through whatever she was feeling, she should get it, and Tess needed to prepare herself for that possibility.
“Even if you did screw up with her, it’ll be okay. If not now, then eventually.” Leaning forward, he nudged her nose with his own, a playful caress. “I mean, look at us. Remember our second lesson?”
Somehow, that memory had already mellowed, had already become more amusing than bitter. “The lesson where we shouted at one another in public and sublimated our unacknowledged sexual tension through harder-than-necessary serves and the ogling thereof?”
He grinned. “That’s the one.”
