The One That Got Away (Kingston Ale House)

by A. J. Pine

  She nipped his bottom lip with her teeth.

  “And maybe some not-so-nice things?” she teased.

  “Jesus,” he growled, and he slid open the glass door. He stepped out first and then scooped Brynn into his arms before she had time to argue. She yelped with laughter, and he carried her to the bed where he laid her down on her back.

  “Just before the nice and not-so-nice things happen, I need to say one thing.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “You’re perfect,” he started, and she took in a sharp breath. Encouragement.

  “And you’re beautiful,” she said, cutting him off from his own declaration.

  He pressed a finger to her lips, and she tried to suppress her smile.

  “And I’m sorry I let ten years go by without telling you how crazy in love with you I am. You’re it for me, B. Always have been.”

  He removed his finger, allowing her to speak.

  “Are you still scared?” she asked.

  “Terrified.”

  “Good,” she said. “Me, too. But here’s the thing, James David Kingston.”

  He laughed. This must be serious if she was using his real name.

  “You’re it for me, too. So no matter how scary this gets, you’ll always have me to help you through it.”

  He took her glasses off then, figuring she could do the rest by touch. She made no objection. Jamie kissed her neck and her collarbone, inching his way toward her breast. Her nipples rose in tight peaks, and he’d almost taken her in his mouth when she pushed his head up.

  “Wait,” she said. She raked her fingers through his hair, and he closed his eyes as he reveled in her touch, realizing he didn’t care anymore how long it took her to get here, only that she was. “You had my name on the reservation.” He loved the sound of joy in her voice. “I found out this morning. You wanted the week to end up like this.”

  He opened his eyes and nodded. “Am I in trouble again for not telling you?” he asked, and she shook her head. “I wanted you to be happy, and if that meant…if I stayed here alone…I would have done it for you. But yeah, I kinda hoped I’d be the reason for your happiness.”

  She pulled him down to her, into her, and he gasped out her name. She was so ready for him, and he sunk deep inside, enveloped in her warmth. What happened in Amarillo was beyond anything he could have hoped for, but he was too caught up in the fact that what was happening was actually happening—and maybe a little inebriated—that he’d missed out on the realization that they were as close as two people could get, no barriers between them.

  He rocked against her, a tiny cry escaping her lips.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, and she nodded.

  “It’s just…”

  “It’s different, now,” he said. And Brynn nodded again.

  Slowly they moved, taking their time. His hand splayed against the small of her back while she anchored her legs around him. He remembered what he’d meant to do when he first had her sprawled on the bed, and his head dipped down, his lips leaving hers so they could find the breast he’d so rudely neglected.

  Brynn gasped, arching her back, and he smiled against her. It still stunned him that he could make her feel this way, that she wanted him the way he’d always wanted her. And yes, it also still terrified him to love someone this much, with every ounce of himself, and know there was always a chance he could lose her. Nothing was certain. He understood that now. But he also understood that loving his best friend was worth all the risk, because trying not to love her? Well, that wasn’t an option anymore.

  He could have tasted her like this for hours, but he decided not to leave the other nipple out. He was a gentleman, after all, one who enjoyed the nice and not-so-nice things he would do to this woman today.

  “To think we could have been doing this for the past ten years,” Brynn said, her breath coming in pants.

  “It’s pretty tragic if you think about it.” His voice was low and hoarse, and he wasn’t sure how much longer this was going to last, but they had at least another thirty minutes before they needed to head back to the tent. And then tonight. Plus all day tomorrow. Shit. He was going to need a nap at some point.

  “Can we make a vow?” she asked, then paused to gasp out his name as he buried himself deep inside her and used his thumb to take care of her outside as well. “Jamie…oh my God.”

  He kissed her, long and slow and deep. He savored the taste of her, the feel of her, the knowledge that her heart was his just as his heart had always belonged to her.

  “This vow?” he reminded her.

  She grabbed his wrist, and he eased the pressure off her clit so she could speak.

  “To make up for lost time,” she said. “I think we might need to do this a lot more in the years to come.”

  He laughed, let his hand go back to work, and then nearly fell apart at the seams as she bucked against him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But all I heard was something about coming.”

  With that he felt her start to throb against him, and he rocked harder, faster, and kissed her like it was the first and last time he’d get to do it, yet he knew that was far from the truth.

  “Uh-huh.” She strained to get the sound out, and he knew they were almost there.

  “Love you,” he said, their momentum building.

  “Love you.”

  And when they climaxed together, her warmth pulsing around him, Jamie fought to keep his arms braced so he wouldn’t collapse against her. It wasn’t just a physical release, but an emotional one, as well, one he’d bottled up for far too long. Only now, in the safety of his best friend’s love, could he finally let go. He shuddered, kissed her lips, her jaw, and the hollow of her neck where a bead of sweat trickled toward her breasts. Only then did he let his arms give out as he fell beside her, their legs still tangled and bodies connected in the most perfect fit.

  Neither of them spoke for several seconds, both needing a moment to collect.

  She smiled and squinted at him, so he reached for the side table where he’d put her glasses and gave her back her sight.

  “It’s good to see you like this,” she said, and he raised a brow.

  “Like what?”

  “Like your heart is finally mine.”

  He tugged on her hair, loving the mess of curls spilling around her.

  “Always was. Just took me a while to tell you.”

  “I should have known,” she said, and he hated that tinge of regret in her voice. Enough with punishing themselves for what they missed. It was time to celebrate what was still to come.

  “Now you do.”

  She kissed him, her lips languid and soft against his.

  “You have my heart, too, you know,” she said. “I lost it to you ten years ago. Just took me a while to find it again.”

  He nodded and kissed her back. He knew that now. And he made himself a promise not to forget it.

  Chapter Thirty

  L.A. was perfect. Jamie was perfect. Their trip back through Amarillo on the way home—yeah, there were no words for that. But now they were in Chicago, best friends like they were but also something more.

  Brynn groaned.

  “First-date jitters?” Holly asked, and Brynn pushed past her sister and into the bathroom for the final step in Operation Look-as-Hot-as-I-Can-in-Jeans-and-a-T-Shirt. “I’d like to remind you that this was your idea.”

  Brynn took off her glasses and unscrewed the cap on her contact solution. After the first contact was in, she spun to face her sister.

  “I know. I know. And it was a good idea, right? I just can’t help thinking of how this could royally backfire, you know? Like, this will either be really good for him, or it’s going to bring up painful memories about his parents, which will remind him of what happened between us ten years ago, and then he’ll fall out of love with me, and life as we know it will be over.”

  Holly burst into a fit of laughter, which did not entertain Brynn in the slighte
st. She closed the eye that was still contact-free so she could glare at her sister without getting dizzy.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly said, swiping at tears. “But I thought I was the drama queen around here.”

  Brynn crossed her arms but said nothing, grateful for the few moments she could let her unfounded anger hide her very real fear.

  “Sweetie,” Holly continued. “You know I am no romantic, but even the most cynical person could look at you and Jamie and just know that you two are the lucky ones. You found what some people spend lifetimes searching for, and tricking your boyfriend into attending a playoff game to see his favorite team is only going to make him fall harder. If that’s even possible.”

  Brynn turned back to the mirror, wanting clarity before she digested Holly’s words. Contact poised on her fingertip, she startled when Jamie’s patented knock came at the door.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” she yelled, and Holly cracked up again on her way to the door.

  Since Galena, Kansas, Brynn had gotten into the habit of always putting her contacts in over a closed sink drain, but that didn’t change the fact that Jamie could still throw her off-balance like this—enough to send the contact sailing from her finger. What was new were the butterflies in her belly, darting back and forth at the anticipation of his arrival.

  She stood in the frame of the bathroom door and, through her good eye, watched him enter their apartment.

  God, she loved this man. He startled her, infuriated her, calmed her, and right now, when she saw the broad smile spread across his still unshaven face, he warmed every part of her, all the way to the tips of her toes.

  “Need some help there, Sleepy Jean?”

  He wore his gray hoodie over a plain black T-shirt, dark washed jeans, and those red Pumas. She couldn’t help but smile, though, when her eye (the good one) trailed up his body to where his Sox hat rested on his head. She could tell he’d had his hair trimmed, but the facial hair remained. Yeah, she liked this look on him—different but the same. An incarnation of Jamie that was just for her.

  She nodded, all anger and fear dissolving at the nearness of him. She breathed in his scent—one that she knew was nothing more than freshly showered, walked-a-few-blocks-in-the-city-breeze Jamie—and the butterflies rested for a moment while he retrieved her contact and placed it safely in her palm.

  “Even cleaned it off for you,” he said, but she would have known that anyway.

  She turned to the mirror for a brief moment to insert the lens and then looked back to him, blinking him into focus.

  “You look even better through both eyes,” she said.

  He cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her without further pretense or warning, and she sank into him, her arms curving around his waist and up his back. They hadn’t seen each other in two days, which was more than normal before they started…whatever this was. People who just met were dating. People who’d been in committed relationships for months or years were together. But this thing with her and Jamie had a definition all its own, and they were still figuring out what that was. Not that it mattered. All Brynn cared about was his lips on hers after two days of not being on hers, and…

  She let out a soft “Mmmm” against him. What was she thinking?

  “I missed you,” he said. Then he stepped back to take her in.

  “Brynn Chandler, are you wearing a White Sox T-shirt?”

  She did a slow twirl for him, his smile giving her encouragement.

  “You like?”

  “I love,” he said. “Though I didn’t expect such team spirit to go sit at the ale house to watch the game.”

  Brynn’s smile threatened to fall, but she held it in place, reminding herself that what she was about to tell Jamie was a good thing.

  “B?” he asked. “Why are you smiling like you’re going to murder me?”

  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t quite pulling off the happy nonchalance she’d been hoping for.

  Her teeth grazed her top lip.

  “See, that’s the thing,” she started and then grabbed his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Though she was the one who needed reassurance right now.

  She slid the two playoff tickets out of her pocket and held them up for Jamie to see.

  “We’re not going to the ale house,” she said. “We’re going to the game.”

  …

  He was still holding her hand. Jamie was sure of that—her skin on his, keeping him grounded. Tonight was game seven, and he was pretty sure the Sox weren’t going to the Series…again. That didn’t stop him from hoping, and having Brynn watch the game with him would make whatever the outcome was worth it.

  But at the park?

  “Okay, you’ve been quiet a long time,” she said. “So, let me start by telling you that, yes, the tickets cost a few bucks, but Annie got them from one of the shop regulars who couldn’t go at the last minute, and I just thought…it’s been so long, Jamie. And you love baseball more than anything, and I hoped…”

  He still hadn’t said anything. He probably should before she continued her nervous verbal vomit, but it was kind of adorable.

  The tension eased in his shoulders, and he felt a tentative grin spread across his face.

  “You’re wrong,” he said and watched her expression fall. This only made his smile grow wider. “There’s one thing I love more than baseball.” With that he pulled her to him again, obliterating the first kiss he’d given her with one he hoped said everything he couldn’t articulate with words.

  “Get a room already,” Holly said as she walked by. But Jamie didn’t relent, only smiled against the woman he’d loved for ten long years, who stood in his arms kissing him back. Loving him back.

  “Brynn Elise Chandler,” he said, “I love you more than anything.”

  The corners of her mouth quirked up.

  “More than baseball?” she asked.

  “More than baseball.”

  “More than beer?” she added.

  He scrubbed a hand across his lightly bearded jaw, but a few seconds was all she would take. Brynn backhanded him on the arm, and he chuckled.

  “More than beer,” he said, “but let’s keep that our little secret.”

  She took off his hat and rested it backward on her own head, her wild curls spilling out from underneath it. She ran her hands through his hair, over his cheeks, and down to his neck.

  “And it’s okay…the tickets? I thought it would be good for you. For us. To do this together.”

  Jamie nodded and kissed her forehead. A lot had changed in the past ten years, even more so in the past two weeks.

  “I don’t want to be stuck where I was for a decade,” he told her. “Not anymore.” She pulled him tight and rested her head on his chest, and Jamie let his chin fall to the top of her ball-cap-covered head. “There’s no one I’d rather do this with—go to a place I once loved with the girl I love more than—”

  “Baseball and beer,” Brynn interrupted, and they both laughed.

  “Baseball and beer,” he confirmed.

  The Sox were down by four with two outs at the top of the ninth, but that didn’t stop Jamie from loving every minute he sat in the stadium. Perched above home plate, a Lagunitas in one hand and Brynn’s palm in the other, it didn’t matter that his team wasn’t going to the Series, not without a miracle. In fact, his eyes had turned from the game after the last out, focusing on the woman beside him instead. He observed how she watched the game with sheer delight, and he knew it had nothing to do with what was happening on the field and everything to do with what made him face her now.

  “What?” she asked, turning to meet his gaze. “You’re staring.”

  “You’re it for me, B.”

  Her eyes glassed over, and his heart squeezed with a sweet ache that he could bring her to tears with one sentence.

  “Jamie…”

  “I don’t want to be apart from you for two days again.”

  Her brows furrowed. “But you had two lat
e nights at the bar, and I’m short on days off after the trip and—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand, and she quieted.

  “Even when I work until two a.m., I don’t want to come home to an empty bed. I want to come home to you. Every night.”

  Brynn’s eyes widened, and he removed his hand. She’d need to be able to speak to answer his question.

  “Move in with me, B.”

  He pulled her to him and whispered the request to her again before his lips fell to hers.

  Whoever was at bat must have done the unthinkable and hit a homer, because the fireworks usually reserved for the end of the game shot off with a bang.

  Brynn jumped in her seat, then let out a wild laugh as she watched the display up above. Then she looked at Jamie, nodding as the first tear slipped over the ledge.

  “Yes.” She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him between words. “Yes. I’ll move in with you.” She laughed through her tears, peppering Jamie with kisses—his cheeks, his mouth, his neck. And he laughed right along with her until there was a lull in the fireworks and the kissing and they had a chance to breathe—to take in the moment, the night, everything. And it was perfect.

  Jamie couldn’t let the perfect evening end without dragging her back to the brewery for one final celebration. He pulled her behind the bar where Jeremy greeted them both with a friendly salute.

  “How was the game, Kingston?”

  Jamie laughed. “You knew, too? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He pulled Brynn in front of him and wrapped his arms around her waist. “It was perfect,” he said, burying his face in her curls and kissing her neck.

  Jeremy chuckled. “Dude, you do know the Sox lost, right?”

  Jamie nodded, unable to contain his goofy smile. “But I won.”

  His hands still resting on Brynn’s stomach, he felt her muscles contract as she took in a sharp breath. He would never get tired of all the different reactions he could pull from her.

  “Look,” Jamie said, positioning her in front of the tap.

  It took her a moment to say something, but when she did, his heart soared.