1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Nine

by Carrie Ann Ryan

“And I’ve never seen you in a sex club!”

  “Have you been to that many? Who knows? I could have a whole secret life you don’t even know about.”

  “I know who you are, Amber. I know how you are.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Amber, you stayed a virgin until you were nineteen. That puts you in the, like, one percentile of girls in our high school.”

  “How do you know that? I never told you that!”

  “I had my sources.”

  “You were keeping tabs on my virginity? That’s rich. I thought you were too busy starting fistfights outside Valley View Mall so you didn’t have to feel anything.”

  “And you were too busy tending to my wounds ’cause it gave you an excuse to look at my chest.”

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Amber—”

  “Get out!”

  He bows his head. A lesser man would ignore her request, but he knows he’s bound by it.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Caleb whispers. “I’m sorry.”

  He turns to leave.

  “You know, I forgave you a lot because you lost a lot. But don’t you pretend for one second that you joined our family with a smile and a thank you and that was that. Those first few years, it was like living with a tornado. You were impossible! And you were nothing like the guy I’d...”

  He turns away from the front door. “The guy you’d what?”

  “All I’m saying is that even if I’d wanted to…”

  “Wanted to what?”

  He’s closing the distance between them. Her head wants to run from him. Her soul wants to run to him. Her body’s forced to split the difference. She’s got no choice but to stand there while he advances on her, nostrils flaring, blue eyes blazing.

  “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go,” she hears herself whisper. “Tell me why you—”

  He takes her in his arms and rocks them into the wall, so suddenly she expects her head to knock against the wood, but one of his powerful hands cushions the back of her skull just in time.

  His lips meet the nape of her neck, grazing, testing. It’s hesitant, the kiss he gives her there, as if he’s afraid she’s an apparition that will vanish if he tries to take a real taste.

  He gathers the hem of her shirt into his fist, knuckles grazing the skin of her stomach. She’s trying to speak but the only things coming out of her are stuttering gasps. She’s been rendered wordless by the feel of the forbidden, by the weight of the forbidden, by the power of the forbidden.

  It’s the first time they’ve touched since that night on the boat dock, if you don’t include the light dabs of hydrogen peroxide she’d apply to the wounds he got fighting, usually while they sat together in the kitchen, her parents watching over them nervously. So many years living under the same roof and they never shared so much as a hug after that night, nothing that might risk the feel of his skin against her own.

  And now this.

  Now the intoxicating blend of the cologne he wore as a teenager mingling with the musky aroma of his belt and boots. Now the knowledge that he’d asked after her virginity years before, that the thought of her lying with another man had filled him with protective, jealous rage then just as it does now.

  She feels boneless and moist. One of those feelings isn’t an illusion.

  If this is what it feels like to be bad, she thinks, no wonder so many people get addicted.

  “Tell me,” she whispers. “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go.”

  “I am,” he growls.

  He presses their foreheads together, takes the sides of her face in both of his large, powerful hands. It’s torture, this position. It’s deliberate, she’s sure. It keeps her from lifting her mouth to his. Keeps her from looking straight into his eyes. He’s fighting it, still. Just as she’s fought it for years.

  She parts her lips, inviting him to kiss her.

  “Please,” he groans. “Just, please don’t go.”

  “Caleb…” She reaches for his face.

  She’s reaching into open air.

  The door slams.

  He’s gone.

  By the time she realizes what’s happened, the truck’s engine has already started. His headlights swing across the front of the house.

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispers to no one. “Coward, bastard son of a bitch!”

  But real anger, the kind of anger she feels toward Joel, can’t make it to the surface through all the other emotions she’s feeling.

  She wasn’t nuts. She wasn’t some deluded freak who’d made too much out of one kiss twelve years before. He’d wanted her as badly as she’d wanted him, and he’d been just as tortured by it. They’d had all of the anger and fighting of siblings, but with none of the loyalty and companionship. To try for either of those things would have awakened desires her father had declared off limits. Still, every argument they’d had, every time they’d forced themselves to look away from each other, every frustrated attempt they’d made to connect since the night his parents died, had just been another step in one long dance of desire leading up to this very moment.

  But what was this moment?

  Where the hell are they now?

  Would he disappear again? Maybe for ten years this time. Or twenty!

  Her father—their father—was gone, so why is this still so hard?

  Dazed, she walks in circles around the living room while these questions assail her. She’s holding her phone in one hand, waiting for anything. A text. A call. An e-mail. Something from Caleb that proves she didn’t just imagine what happened.

  Part of her wants to cry, but every time she starts, the smell of him, the feel of him, the sounds of desire and struggle that came from him turn her sadness into something more like exhilaration. Even the speed with which he left is proof that everything just changed. And maybe it will keep changing. And maybe changing means no more running and no more avoiding and no more shame.

  Maybe.

  But he still fucking left.

  No text. No missed call.

  What did he expect her to do? Chase him down the front walk, screaming his name?

  The front door creaks. The truck hasn’t come back so it can only be one person.

  “Girl,” Belinda says quietly.

  Amber had completely forgotten her boss was lingering outside.

  “When do we leave?” Amber asks.

  “Uhm. Never.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not going, honey.”

  “Why? Because I told my mother?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because Caleb doesn’t want me to?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why, Belinda?”

  “Because you don’t need to find out what you want. You already know. He just stormed out of this house.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “On paper, you said. So what’s that mean? Adopted?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, is he adopted or isn’t he?”

  “Yes. My parents adopted him when we were fifteen.”

  “I see… Well, people will talk, but they always talk, so who cares? And if you ever want to get married, you just dissolve the adoption before you—”

  “Belinda, it’s not that simple!”

  “It is if you want it to be, Amber.”

  “Belinda. Come on, now. You promised me and I want to go. Seriously!”

  “No, you don’t, Amber. You want to avoid what you’re feeling for this man again. And forgive me for saying it, but it’s starting to look like the last time you avoided it, you wound up jumping into marriage with a cheating, lying bastard.”

  “Oh, come on! That is way too simplistic. You don’t—”

  “Honey, if you’ve got something that good knocking on your door here at home and you won’t let him in, nothing they’re going to show you at The Exchange is going to help you either.”

  “You don’t even know him.”


  “I know how you two look at each other. And trust me, if there was someone in my life who looked at me like that, I’d never turn my back on him. Unless, you know, we were about to try a little—”

  “He’s the one who left.”

  “You told him to!”

  When Amber shoots her an angry look, Belinda throws her hands in the air and says, “Oh, come on. You know I’m an eavesdropper. Stop acting all surprised every time I do it.”

  “I told him to tell me why. Why he didn’t want me to go.”

  “And he did. Don’t worry. I only watched part of it.”

  She sinks to the sofa, fully intending to sit, but she goes over backward the second her butt meets the cushions. Suddenly she’s sprawled out just like she was when she arrived home earlier that day, her breaths feeling more like ideas than actual grabs for air.

  “Shit!” Belinda says. “We missed one!”

  Belinda takes a framed photo of Joel, in full fishing regalia, off the wall just above the mini-bar. She looks for a place to put it, doesn’t find one that meets her needs and shoves it in her purse.

  “I’ll toss it out the window on the ride home,” she says.

  “Am I fired?” Belinda asks.

  “No. Why do you always go to that place? Do you want to be fired?”

  “No. I just want things to…change.”

  “Oh, honey. That’s not your problem. They’re changing all around you. What you want is for them to change on your own schedule, and trust me, that’s never gonna happen. I got all the money in the damn world and even I can’t slow time down. I mean, I can fill it with spa treatments, but that’s not the same thing.”

  “What are we talking about?” she asks.

  “Nothing. We’re stalling. Like you’ve been stalling for, well, a good decade, it looks like.”

  “Fine. I’m not going to The Desire Exchange.”

  “Because you don’t need to.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it, considering I still don’t know what the place even is.”

  “And you never will. Because you, Amber Watson, already know good and well what you want. You’re just afraid of it. And you’re going to have to get over that fear all on your own. However, I’m happy to give you some time off to do it.”

  “No,” Amber says. “I need to focus on something.”

  “Yes. And that something is you.” Belinda starts for the front hallway. “I don’t want to see you for five days. Take a drive down to Chapel Springs and see your momma. Maybe ask her why she thought it was a good idea to squeal on you to your alleged brother.”

  “What does that mean?” she asks, sitting up.

  “Five days, Amber. Show up at my house before then, I’ll take a shot at you. I swear to God.”

  “Wait. What did you mean about my mother?”

  By the time she makes it to the front hallway, Belinda’s already out the door.

  “Does anyone else want to storm out of my house tonight?” Amber calls out. “Maybe one of the neighbors?”

  A barking dog answers from next door.

  She dials her mother’s number.

  Voicemail.

  Fifteen minutes later, she dials it again.

  Voicemail again.

  She can’t remember the last time her mother let her go to voicemail. Her mom hates going to the movies, maybe because the nearest theater is forty-five minutes away. She also covers so many positions at The Haven Creek Inn, she never turns off her ringer.

  Amber would love to be worried about her mother; she really would.

  But she’s not.

  Because her mom’s hiding, that’s all. And that’s why Amber heads for her bedroom and starts stuffing her favorite weekend bag full of blue jeans, halter tops, and T-shirts. First thing in the morning, she’s got a date with a few hundred miles of blacktop and a little town called Chapel Springs. And if her mother calls back before then, well…Amber’s got voicemail too!

  Chapter 7

  If only he hadn’t touched her.

  If he hadn’t touched her, he could leave her in his rearview right now, along with Watson’s, Dallas, and the entire State of Texas. Maybe he’ll hit Colorado this time. Or Canada. Canada isn’t that much farther, but maybe an international border was just what he needed to protect his heart.

  But there’s no way he can go that far now.

  Because he’d touched her.

  And it wasn’t like he’d had to either.

  There were other ways he could have kept her from going to some crazy sex club.

  Like reasoning with her. Or teasing her. Or begging her.

  Telling her how he really felt, that should have been the last option. The absolutely dead-last, nuclear apocalypse option. And touching her? Well, that was beyond the nuclear option. That was a “zombies are breaking down the front door and the only way out is through the nearest window” kind of option.

  And yet he’d gone ahead and done it anyway, touched her like he was some idiot teenager who couldn’t control his hormones. He’d also tasted her, inhaled her scent, felt her heat on his skin. Sensed that her hunger for him was equal to his own. Heard that hunger with his own two ears, a vibrating pulse under her every desperate breath as he’d held her in his arms.

  And now it’s all falling apart. Now he’s flying down a Dallas freeway with all the windows in his truck rolled down because he’s hoping the wind will drown out his crazy thoughts. He’s been driving for hours now, aimless circles around the city. Sometimes he’ll head in the direction of old landmarks, old places he used to visit, but as soon as he gets close, he forgets about them altogether and goes back to thinking of Amber. Amber’s eyes. Amber’s skin. Amber’s anger. Amber’s passion.

  Bye, bye scrapbook, he thinks angrily.

  Over the years, he’d come up with all sorts of ways to keep his feelings for her under control. But the thing he called the scrapbook had been the most effective.

  Early on, after he’d moved in with the Watsons, he’d forced himself to think of her only in her most unflattering moments. Her furious expressions during dinner table fights after which Abel would send them both to their rooms; her shuffling walks to the coffee maker first thing in the morning, replete with hay bale hair and baggy pajamas. The times a cold or the flu turned her into a red-faced phlegm machine. Out of these awkward, everyday moments, he’d made a scrapbook which he opened whenever Amber, the wickedly smart doe-eyed girl he’d fallen in love with that long ago summer, threatened to tilt him off his axis.

  The scrapbook had not been without its problems, however.

  Every now and then he’d try sliding in an image of how awful she’d looked the night her appendix burst. But the cruelty of this, using one of her most painful moments to dampen the fires of his desire, shamed him into further confusion. Worse, it would often backfire, serving only to remind him of how he’d wanted to protect her in that moment. How he’d wanted to take her into his arms and carry her down the stairs once it was clear it wasn’t just a stomachache, that she was truly and terribly sick. Instead, he’d shouted for Abel and Tina. When they’d burst into her room, he’d hung back, shaking and trying to hide tears, but refusing to break the rule they’d both set for each other, however silently.

  No touching. No grazes. No brushes. No hugs. No kisses, even on the cheek.

  The scrapbook is as good as burned now. Now, every time he thinks of her from here on out, he’ll see the pale creamy skin of her throat bared, her lips parting for him, inviting him to taste. Fuck that. He’ll see that smoldering intensity in her stare when she said Tell me why you really don’t want me to go.

  Sometimes he’d hoped that if they ever did make a move on each other, they’d realize instantly their desire was an illusion. Kind of like prison love, or some outdated teenage fantasy they’d held on to for too long even though it had lost its fire years before. They’d try to kiss each other again and crack up laughing because the whole thing would seem ridiculous.
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  Some days he hoped for this. Other days he feared it.

  When he finally did make his move, everything was very real. All of it. Too damn real.

  Danny Patterson answers his phone after the first ring. All Caleb has to say is that he needs to meet, and Danny’s giving him directions to the hotel, right down to which escalator he should take to get to the lobby bar. Maybe it’s the tone of Caleb’s voice that does it.

  Caleb pulls into the motor court at the Hyatt Regency, hands the keys to his truck to the first valet.

  Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum are just a couple blocks away. Caleb knows this because Abel took him there several times when he was a kid.

  Inside the hotel, there’s a soaring atrium with a sloped glass ceiling that allows you to look right up at the glittering orb that is Reunion Tower. Caleb knows this because Abel brought him here to see visiting friends when he was a kid.

  And that’s half the problem, isn’t it? In Dallas, Abel is everywhere, because Abel loved Dallas as much as he’d loved his own children. Both of his children.

  Danny’s waiting at the top of the escalator, a beer in hand. He’d probably have one for Caleb too, but he knows Caleb barely drinks. Caleb prepares himself for some smartass comment about how wrecked he looks. Instead, Danny steers them to a table and chairs. Rowdy law enforcement types fill the bar. Men, mostly, patting each other on the back, sharing loud war stories about shootouts and crazy arrests. Glass elevators whisk people to their rooms on the floors above.

  The place is loud as hell, but Caleb hears the racquet as if he’s underwater. Underwater and struggling to breathe.

  “I did something terrible,” he finally says.

  “You finally put the moves on the sister who isn’t really your sister?”

  “Are you kidding me? You knew the whole time?”

  “Figured it would mean more if you said it,” Danny says with a serious nod.

  “What would mean more?”

  “I’m just kidding. I left my room key at Watson’s and when I called back, Annabelle answered and I got the story out of her.”

  “Which story? Wait! Annabelle? She hated you!”

  “Nobody hates me. They just need time to…get used to me, that’s all.” Danny frowns and takes a sip of beer. “Do you hate me?” he asks, suddenly sounding twelve years old.