I had faith that he could find me. But would he look? Because, yes, I still had feelings for him, but really, when I thought about it logically, it was ridiculous that I did. Because in the seven months I’d known him before he left, our relationship really only added up to a total of two weeks time together. Ninety-five percent of that had been just sex. So what was it I was actually waiting around for? A man who had openly loved me for the space of…what? A day and a half? That and good sex. Amazingly good sex.
It wasn’t enough to justify being stuck for so long.
And if he actually did love me like he’d said he did, I had a feeling he’d say the same thing.
There was only one smart thing to do.
I looked down at the keyboard where my fingers were absentmindedly tapping over and over on the same two letters—J and C.
No. I couldn’t live like this forever.
I pulled my hands into my lap and sat back in my chair. “The Fourth.”
I’d been silent long enough that Laynie took a moment to register my meaning. “Of July?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. Independence Day. Sounds like a good day to let someone go.”
She nodded, her expression somber, her eyes both compassionate and hopeful. “It sounds perfect,” she said. “A total celebration. We’re all going to be on Hudson’s boat for the night. We’ll watch the fireworks and everyone will think they’re going off for this big patriotic holiday thing, and only we will know they’re really just for you.”
The year before, I’d spent the holiday watching the fireworks alone, missing JC with every fiber of my being. Yet somehow this year’s celebration sounded even lonelier.
“Perfect,” I said. I’d expected to feel a weight lifted from me, but instead, it felt almost suffocating to commit to this new plan. Felt like something inside of me was tightening and constricting, making it hard to breathe. Like my lungs were full of sand and my heart that had once been open was starting to close.
Chapter Two
The first slam is hard, fast. From behind.
I let out a guttural breathy sound that’s half grunt, half sigh. This, I think. How long have I waited for this? It’s so much more amazing than I remember.
We’re still fully clothed. We were too desperate for each other. Too eager. I managed to get my pants and underwear down to my thighs before he flipped me around and bent me over the kitchen table. I didn’t even see him take his cock out, but I felt his erection at the center of me. Felt his head at my hole.
Then this. The cruel, delicious thrust that slices me in two, separating the me who was without him from the me who is so very with him. He’s meant to be here. Inside me. Thick and hot and steel. Solid. Still. Something I want to clutch onto and I try to hold him there.
But then he moves, not giving me any time to adjust before he pulls out and thrusts back in. Over and over, like a jackhammer with his force and speed. The ball of desire in my belly stretches and thins like a rubber band, growing so taut that I know when it releases it’s going to shoot through me like a pebble in a slingshot. His hands slide under my shirt and push my bra up, setting my breasts free. Then he grips them, plumping them with firm fingers.
I slip my hand down between my legs to rub my clit. At this tempo, he’s going to go fast and I want to go with him. God, there. With my finger on my bud and that spot he’s hitting.
“Is that it?” he asks. “Am I hitting the right place?”
“Uh huh,” I manage. He knows my body. He shouldn’t have to ask.
Our thighs slap together and his jeans chafe against my skin. But I welcome it. I do. As much as I welcome the uncomfortable way the table edge is digging into my waist.
“Am I big, Gwen? Do I feel good?”
“Yes, yes. You feel good.” You always feel so good, JC.
My orgasm is inching up now. I increase the pressure on my clit and then it’s almost…almost there. The edges of my vision blur and my toes lift, the muscles in my calves tightening. I brace myself for the release, knowing he’s near too. Have to get there fast if I’m going to go with him. Have to…
A sharp pain shot through my breast, knocking me out of the race to orgasm and abruptly ending my fantasy. “Ow!” I cried.
At the same moment, Chandler’s climax hit, and like he usually did, he narrated his release with his two favorite words in the English language. “Fuck yes. Yes. Yes. Fuck yes. Yessssss.”
He’s nineteen, I reminded myself. If you’re going to bang a boy, you better have limited expectations. Luckily, his over-vocalization masked my groan of disappointment over my lost climax. Over my lost memory of JC.
Chandler finished rutting and collapsed over me.
Jesus, sometimes he was so smothering. Literally and figuratively.
“Uh, can I get up?” I said, as nicely as I could while still being completely sexually frustrated.
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” The second after Chandler pulled out, I had my pants up. I straightened my bra before turning toward him.
In general, I tried to refrain from making eye contact with him during or after our sexual encounters. Looking at him during made it difficult to imagine he was really JC. Looking at him after made it difficult to not bear the guilt for pretending he was someone else.
God, I was an awful person.
This time, I accidentally glanced at him. I had eleven years on him but his face was so youthful, it sometimes felt more like twenty. Especially when his features wore the afterglow of a quick fuck, every muscle relaxed, his smile goofy and blissed out.
“Damn, that was good. So good.” His post-coital dialogue never differed. “Was it good for you too?”
No. You pinched my nipple, ruined my JC fantasy, and failed to make me come.
But I lied. “It was awesome.” Then I felt guilty for being dishonest on top of everything else.
Awful wasn’t a strong enough word for what I was.
“It was awesome.” He grinned and leaned down to kiss my cheek before heading to the bathroom to dispose of the condom and clean up. As soon as he closed the door, I wiped his kiss away with my hand. It was weird that the gesture bothered me. I could let him put his cock inside me, but not his mouth on my cheek? What the hell?
Maybe it was a problem that would go away when I hit my JC quit date. When I stopped wishing that it were he I was with instead of this boy.
Or maybe I was just really a bitch.
I sighed as I crossed to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. Then I leaned back against the counter and took a long swig, wishing it were something stronger. Knowing that even if it were, it could never be strong enough to drown my guilt.
The pathetic thing was that I felt guiltier about “cheating” on JC than I did about using Chandler for sex. Not that I was using him any more than he was using me. He’d been the one to start things between us. We’d met at Alayna and Hudson’s wedding rehearsal, and he’d immediately made his interests in me known. Then at the wedding reception, he never left my side, coming on to me repeatedly with all the confidence of a preppy, rich, extremely sexy nineteen-year-old.
It had been cute. Charming. Naughty.
And I’d been lonely.
The wedding had been the first time that it had truly hit me that JC was likely not coming back. That everyone had someone but me. I’d gotten the point from the lopsided table seating of the bridal party, but just to be sure I understood, the gods of clarity directed Laynie’s bouquet to my open arms when she’d thrown it. I’d stood there clutching onto the cherry-speckled cymbidiums for several minutes after the crowd of women had dispersed, letting the awkwardness settle over me. The coldness. It was a cruel reality to face. JC had led me out of my emotional shell only to feel heartbreak. By then, it had been ten months since JC had left me. If I’d gotten pregnant the last time we’d made love, I’d thought, I would have had my baby by now.
Ten months and not a word.
Then I’d looked up, my eyes glassy from unshed tears, and the
re was this sweet kid who wanted nothing but to take me into a dark hidden place on the Botanical Gardens grounds and stick his cock in me for a little while. I’d decided right then that I had two choices—either I could go back to being the stony bitch I’d been before JC or I could use the things he’d taught me to try to be a more content person.
So I let Hudson’s college freshman brother do me against a tree.
We’d both come. And I’d felt a little better. Better enough to give him my phone number. Better enough to let there be repeats of the event.
I’d been honest from the beginning. “No strings. No romance. No commitment.” It had been the deal that JC and I had meant to have once upon a time. But with JC, I’d known almost immediately how impossible that agreement was going to be to keep.
Chandler had agreed to my terms. He wasn’t interested in getting seriously involved with anyone, let alone an older woman. Besides, he had plenty of other girls he was banging, most his age. But he liked having me in his rotation because, honestly, I was a pretty boast-worthy fuck buddy. Our arrangement had mutual benefits. He got off with a “hot chick who knew things”—his words—and I had something to occupy my downtime.
We’d kept all our rendezvousing at The Sky Launch, at first. He’d meet me early, when I was getting off of work, before he had to get to class. We’d do our thing, decide when we’d meet again—usually a few days later—and that would be it. Only recently, after a close encounter with Alayna one morning, had we moved things to my apartment.
Though he hadn’t been a replacement for JC whatsoever, Chandler had been good for me. He’d helped keep me from withdrawing into myself. And, for the most part, the sex was decent. As long as I took care of my own stimulation, I’d usually climax, and in the short moments of blissful release, I was always able to forget how desolate I was the rest of the time.
It was a good arrangement. In different circumstances, JC might have been proud.
But something had changed in the last week or so. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Chandler returned from the bathroom, and I eyed him as he zipped up his pants. The Pierce family certainly had good genes—Chandler was a hot guy. Hotter than a teenager had the right to be with his piercing blue eyes and sharp cheekbones. From what I could tell, he was pretty well-sculpted too. I’d never actually seen him with his clothes off, another one of my rules, but when my back was pressed against his chest, he felt toned. He’d be a good catch for someone one day. The girls were probably already trying to pin him down.
Now that I thought about it, he hadn’t really mentioned any of the other women he was doing in a while, and he used to do that fairly often.
I tilted my head at him. “Things still going well with that one girl?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked around the room. “You’ll have to be more specific than that one girl.”
“The one you said you’d seen a few times. You’d actually stayed the night at her house. Melissa? Or Melanie?” There were so many. He was really quite a playboy.
“Melanie is old news. It was Molly you’re thinking of.” He toed off one shoe and then the other.
“Molly, then. Hey, what are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Just getting comfortable. Molly is finished too. She was…clingy.”
Now I knew what the problem was. “Oh, no. No. You can’t get comfortable. That’s not part of the deal.”
He sat on the couch and stretched his feet out onto the coffee table, one ankle crossed over the other. “Come on. Hudson said he didn’t need me in the office until tomorrow and it’s your day off, right? So I could just chill here a while.”
Making himself comfortable, loss of interest in other women…
Goddammit. Chandler was attached.
And every ounce of guilt inside me multiplied by ten. I set my water bottle down and stomped over to him. “Uh uh. No chilling. No spending the day together.” He looked up at me with mopey eyes, gutting me. “Look, the minute after you leave, I’m just going to shower and then sleep.”
His mouth tilted up at the corner. “Then I’ll just shower and sleep with you. Or not sleep, if you’d rather.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“No, I wouldn’t rather.” I picked up his shoes and handed them to him.
“Fine, fine. I can sleep. I was up late and it’s early. We could cuddle.” His expression grew softer, even more boyish than usual. “It could be nice.”
I hesitated. I considered, truly considered what he was suggesting. Because cuddling would be nice. Sleeping against a warm body would be very nice. And so why couldn’t I have that with Chandler? There was an age difference between us, yes. A significant age difference, but Norma was eight years older than her boyfriend, Boyd, and that relationship worked well. Sure Chandler slept around a lot—the reason I demanded we always used condoms—but that’s what guys his age did. Overall, he was a really decent guy with a good name and a stable future ahead of him. Wouldn’t that be the best way to “quit” JC? To move on with someone else?
Except it would be a lie. I didn’t have any feelings for Chandler other than an appreciation for what he did for me physically and maybe a fondness of his general character. But it wasn’t love. Pretending it could be wouldn’t be fair to him or me. It wouldn’t be fair to JC either. If I was going to move on from him it needed to be to something that could grow. Not just to something that was available.
I sighed. “It could be nice, Chandler. For someone else. But not for me. It’s not what we are to each other.” Inwardly I cringed as I said words that JC had said to me once. They’d been false when he’d said them, and we’d both known that as strongly as I knew right now that they were true.
But to make sure Chandler knew what I was really saying, I rephrased. “It’s not what you are to me.”
To his credit, he managed to keep his disappointment fairly well masked. He could be stoic when it served him, it seemed. He really was more like Hudson than people gave him credit for.
“Not the arrangement. Right. Got it.” He slipped on his shoes then stood up. “See you again Sunday morning?”
Here was where JC had shown that I had meant something to him, even though I didn’t see it at the time. Because he hadn’t been able to let me go and that was exactly what I needed to do with Chandler.
So I did. “Uh, no. I think we’ve come to the end of this little fling. I mean…” Even though it was necessary, I didn’t want to hurt the kid. Which was easier said than done.
I leaned my weight onto one hip and tried to find an original way to say It’s not you, it’s me. “This has been really…fun. And really what I needed. You’ve reminded me what I need.” Namely, orgasms. “And what I don’t.” Namely, someone who liked me more than I liked him. “Now I’m taking things a different direction in my life, and I think I need to do it by myself.” Or at least with men who weren’t going to want more.
Please don’t fight for me, please don’t fight for me.
He didn’t.
“Okay. No biggie.” He shrugged, something he did a lot, I noticed. “If you change your mind, you’ve got my number.”
“Yeah. I do.”
He shifted awkwardly, as if wondering if he should hug me or kiss me. I made the decision easy, stepping aside so he couldn’t do either.
At the door, he looked back at me and smiled, his eyes hinting at melancholy. “So, uh, I hope you do change your mind.”
Before I could respond, he opened the door and left.
I let out a deep breath and then threw myself onto the couch. I hugged my arms around myself and let the tears fall instead of holding them back like I usually did. It had only been one day since I’d chosen July Fourth as the day to get over JC and two weeks until that day arrived.
That meant I only had two weeks left to miss him, and I planned to use that time missing him a whole damn lot.
Chapter Three
“He knows,” Alayna insisted. “He hasn�
�t said it outright, but he knows.”
It was Thursday, the night of our weekly dinner together, and she and I were sitting outside on the deck while we waited for the chef to finish preparing dinner. Norma was with us as well, hoping tonight would be the night she got the courage to tell Hudson about her relationship with Boyd.
Norma and Boyd had dated secretly for nearly two years now. Only Alayna, Ben, and I knew about them, and we’d each been sworn never to utter a word to Hudson. Otherwise, Boyd might be transferred. Or fired. He was her assistant at Pierce Industries—the best assistant she’d ever had, she claimed—and the company had a strict policy of no fraternization between managers and their subordinates.
Obviously, their relationship hadn’t been planned. Neither would have chosen to fall in love with someone they had to stay quiet about, though I was pretty sure that having to keep things under wraps had only added to their initial attraction. Planned or not, it had happened, it had evolved. Now they wanted to take things to the next level—going public.
“Hudson doesn’t know.” Norma was adamant. “I’d know if he knew, and he doesn’t.”
I kicked my feet against the brick of the balcony wall where I sat. “How would you know?”
“Because I know Hudson.” Norma, who was leaning against the ledge next to me, glanced over then covered her eyes with her hand. “You’re making me crazy sitting up there. What if you fell?”
I looked behind me. My butt was nowhere near the outer edge. “I won’t.”
Laynie cleared her throat, drawing our attention. “I know Hudson.” Her tone hinted annoyance, though I was sure my sister didn’t notice. “And I’m telling you, he knows. Also, Hudson would be equally crazy with you sitting there.”
I was a bit annoyed myself. Sure, we were fifty or so stories off the ground, but I wasn’t a ten-year-old. It was bad enough when Norma mothered me. I tilted my head at my friend. “Do you think he knows because you told him?”
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