A Field Guide To Catching Crickets: ( a sexy second chance tearjerker romance )

by Unknown

  “Pretty well. Live there myself. You moved in yet?”

  He lives in Silver Lake? Neighbors, then? What?

  “No. Just closed on a place. Moving in next week.”

  “Need some free manual labor? I can get a bunch of guys to help,” he says, squeezing my shoulder.

  “Sure. How could I turn that offer down? Thursday’s my day, if it works in your schedule?”

  “I have a light week. Thursday’s all yours.”

  “A light week of fucking?” I shake my head.

  He rolls his eyes. This is going to be interesting, all right.

  We drive in silence the rest of the way to the house. It’s not awkward, exactly—it’s just different. Neither of us feels the need to fill the air, and something about that level of okay is really lovely.

  I wonder if he senses anything at all. Can he tell I’ve gone through things? Things? What a way to phrase it. I force out a deep sigh when the house comes into view.

  A gathering of people mills around the grounds, and the idea of being here in this chaos when I have Hawke next to me for the first time in years makes me want to turn the truck around and drive it a hundred miles away. All I want is to sit under the stars and ask him the thousands of questions I need answers to. Starting with: Why am I so nervous around you tonight? And how is it you can still make my heart want to escape my rib cage and nestle in with yours? Then I’ll go with: When you think of me, what exactly do you think about?

  His hand leaves my shoulders, and his fingers entwine in a tender moment with mine as he parks the truck.

  “Hey, thanks for…well, not making this too weird. I mean, it’s weird-ish, but only because it’s us.”

  He grips my hand as we gaze at each other. He knows me well—even all these years later, he can tell when I’m nervous. We’re trying to pick up where we left off forever ago—not an easy thing.

  “Just for the record, what would have made it weirder than not communicating with each other for ten years, then finding you naked on the raft, and nearly fucking you right then until I told you I’m a porn star?”

  The way I see it, this night is going one of two ways. Either I’ll be nine inches in or I’ll be feeling like a sack of kittens headed for the river.

  “Here we go. Cue the dancers,” I mutter as I open the passenger-side door of my truck and help Sloan out.

  She’s a china doll. Skin so white and unmarked that the blue veins in her neck, arms, and her tiny hands are visible. Hair so black and glossy I’d swear it was synthetic. Lips red and glistening, looking painted by the hand of an artist.

  She scoops my arm into hers and I lean in to kiss the top of her head. She smells like summertime—the same way she’s always smelled. The scent makes me want to bury my face in the crooks and valleys of her body to see if she still smells that way everywhere. To see if she still tastes the same. The taste my tongue has craved for years on end, more than warm, freshly spun cotton candy on the first night of the county fair.

  I glance at Sloan as her nails embed in my arm. “Hey, you okay? You have a look on your face that says you don’t belong here. This is your home. These are your people.”

  Her eyes get glassy. Why?

  “I’m here for you,” I tell her.

  “I’m just nervous about lots of things.” She fists her sundress at her thighs, avoiding my gaze. “Including being with you again.”

  “C’mere. Don’t let anything about me make you nervous. Sloan, darlin’, look at me.”

  She looks up with tightly pursed lips and eyes wide with fright. As she nods, I throw my arm around her shoulders, my fingers digging in. “Thanks. I know you could be running the other way,” she mutters.

  No, I couldn’t. Not for anything. I could never do to her what she did to me. I won’t tell her that though. I’m guessing she’s already figured it out as her fingers find my waist in a lifeline sort of grip.

  “Hey. No, I wouldn’t. I have no reason to run from you.”

  She closes her eyes and rests her fingertips on the bridge of her nose, taking in a few long breaths.

  “Don’t be afraid of loving me again,” I continue. “I’m pretty sure what we had was able to span the ocean and time. At some point, I hope you’ll agree. In the meantime, just remember I still love you.”

  “Thanks. That really means a lot. You’re being awfully nice. I’m not expecting this. Wasn’t.”

  “Well, you should.”

  Hours after whiskey sours have been passed around on giant silver platters, the crowd loosens up. Everyone’s louder, happier, and tipsier. Rye McQueen, Sloan’s mom, ushers those of us in the wedding party over to the mowed meadow that’s been staged with rows of white folding chairs and branches waiting for flowers that sit in nearby buckets. Coco helps get everyone paired off and in marching order.

  “Well, look at us, like peas and carrots,” Sloan says, rubbing her shoulder against my bicep.

  I grip her hand, tracing my thumb over her knuckles. “Are you surprised they matched us up?”

  “No. Honestly, I feel lucky.” She stumbles then snorts out a little laugh. “’Cause I’m walking down the aisle with a guy who is hotter than four hundred Hells.”

  I laugh at her admission. Right now, everything feels just like the good ole days, and for a second, I actually believe I might get to have my Cricket all night long. I snag that decadent thought, knowing full well she has more than a little bit to chew on in regards to sleeping with me any time soon.

  “So, about this walking down the aisle with me… Does it make you look down the road?”

  God only knows why that sprang out of my mouth. Apparently, my filter has a gaping hole in it. Based on the deer-in-the-headlights look stamped on her face, my choice of words was stupid as fuck.

  I’ve just told her I’m a porn star. Then I’ve told her I’m going to marry her. Which I am. I just should have held off a bit on telling her. I jump in to save her from having to answer me. I’m also hoping I can save myself. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  The pasted-on smile she’s wearing makes my guts twist.

  “Whoa,” she mutters, shaking her head. Her hand drops mine, and she busies herself by smoothing out the front of her dress.

  We’re cued to follow her other childhood bestie, Quinn, and Granger down the aisle. As we walk in silence, I wonder what sorts of things Sloan is feeling. Because I have this “I’m the groom” moment. It’s the sappiest thing any man would admit, so of course I shut it into a quiet box and swallow it down. Amazingly, it finds its way out in the form of an awkward gloss in my eyes that Sloan notices the second the sting hits me. Now, all I need is for someone to offer me a tampon.

  “Sorry,” I whisper, chuckling into her neck.

  Excellent. Now, I’m a greeting card aisle of sorries. “Bad timing.” I huff out a long breath.

  We reach the split point and go our separate ways. What else is new?

  After what feels like a lecture of wedding garble, which sounds like blah, blah, blah, we’re free to mingle. I shoot the shit with Fletch and Hux for a half hour, then I feel a firm, albeit tiny, grip on my bicep.

  “May I steal him from you, boys?” Sloan says, addressing her brothers but unmistakably not me.

  “I think you stole him when you were a kid,” Hux says, chuckling.

  I don’t laugh because her face is all frown, from her eyebrows to her lips. I’m certain the wedding lecture won’t hold a candle to the one I’m about to receive.

  She marches us away from the crowd of partygoers nibbling on appetizers and tipping back cocktails. She takes us a distance that says, Prepare yourself for an ass-whoopin’. Then she keeps going. All the way to the cattle barn.

  Stopping in the middle of the barn aisle, I slip my hands into my pockets to ready myself for whatever she’s about to throw at me.

  A torturous silent minute goes by. “Christ, Sloan, what?” I slam my hands against the cobwebbed wall, remembering the number of times I pushed her back up
against this very wall to make out. “Just go for it. Rip the fuck into me.” Yeah, this is great. As much fun as a bucket of warm calf slobber. “What do you want me to say? I’ve apologized for everything. For being a porn star, for telling you I all but see us getting married, for my eyes watering like I have my period because all I saw walking down that aisle was me and you and a future of promise. What a dick. How fucking dare I think you’d want me now?”

  I stride over to scratch the face of a cow that looks interested in what I’m saying. At least someone is. Sloan storms to the other end of the barn, hands firmly planted on her hips, back to me.

  “Hell, you didn’t want me for the last ten years. Why would you want me now?” I continue. “Now, I’m worthless to you. And I’m sorry for that too. Now, I’m just some guy you used to love, who has a metric fuck-ton of feelings and heartache. So do it already—shoot me in the damn head.”

  I stare at Sloan as she sashays toward me with a deep flush in her cheeks and arched eyebrows.

  “Well. Look at you, Mr. Porn Star. Ejaculating your thoughts all over me.” She chuckles with the faintest trace of humor as she slowly circles and sizes me up, a smirk planted on her face. “Tonight, you’re saying stuff and it’s turning me inside out,” she says, stopping in front of me. Her lips a second away from me pouncing on them. “It’s making me wonder if I should give up on my stance.”

  “Which is what, exactly?” I back her against the wall, my heart pounding.

  “That you’re not an option.”

  I lean in and cage her small frame, placing my hands on the wall next to either side of her head. “How long do you think it takes to fall in love with someone?” I whisper into her ear. I pull back to see an answer in her eyes, which I hope to hell matches mine.

  “A glance?”

  “Maybe less in your case.”

  “Uh-huh. It’s happened to me twice now,” she says, nodding, then licking her lips. “With the same guy.” Her color-filled chest rises and falls as she inhales deep breaths. “I think that’s a sure sign.”

  Trailing one finger down her hairline to her jaw I tell her, “I’m about to steal that smile off your face and turn it into a kiss.”

  “Yeah?” Her tongue peeks out at the edge of her lip. “You’d want to do that?”

  “Yeah. ’Cause here’s the thing. This feeling I have for you, I can’t shut it off. Damn thing won’t leave me alone.” I swallow hard as I finger her collarbone. “Keeps me awake, follows me everywhere. It’s relentless in its pursuit.”

  “Of what?” she asks after a swallow so loud that I’m certain the folks outside heard it going down.

  “Of my heart. Fuck, Sloan—my heart.”

  Here we are once more. In the cattle barn. Me up against the wall, sweating like a horse that’s been rode hard. All over again, the beats of my heart go wild. All over again, there’s that funny rise in my throat that comes from my gut.

  “Fuck… Get over here…” His voice, as he grabs my cheeks, pulling me to him, cracks me open. It’s like a cocktail of emotion mixed with all the right ingredients: spice, depth, need, and it’s going down like cognac.

  Hawke’s sexy lips land on my mouth, and our tongues find each other, in soft, barely-there touches then deep licks. A kiss so familiar yet so new, my mouth jerks into a grin. The way he works his lips, sucking on mine, dragging them tenderly through his teeth, taking my air, then replacing it with his own. Our swallows and the vibration of his groan following my moan as he presses his hard body to mine. His hands slide elsewhere in exploration. His eyes stay fixed on mine when his fingertips graze my nipples through my dress in tender flicks. His wet mouth parting open as he watches my face.

  “Still?” he says, sliding his hands into my dress, finding my bare breasts and cupping them in his warm palms.

  “God yes,” I answer and swallow, arching my back.

  Closing his eyes he says, “Fuck, I’ve missed you, touching you.” Kissing my throat, he lifts the hem of my dress, both palms on my thighs. His fingers find my wet nakedness, he parts me open, groans, and asks, “Can I kiss you anywhere?”

  “Hawke,” I mutter, grabbing his shoulders.

  “Later then, everywhere.” He skates his fingers through my folds expertly and my knees buckle.

  “Oh, God, oh God. That’s—”

  “I’ll stop,” he says, talking against my mouth. “But I won’t stop later.”

  He sucks my tongue and lips, his hands coming out from under my dress. This must be what it’s like when people lose themselves and float into never-never land, happy as all get-out, leaving the world behind. This is why they come back for more; it’s why I’m here too.

  He brings his fingers to his mouth and sucks them, then kisses my taste onto my lips. Every pore of him finding every one of mine and filling them up with all the things I’ve craved about him.

  “You,” he says against my mouth, making my insides knot up.

  His love is bigger than both of us, bigger than that expanse of ocean we were separated by, and bigger than everything I’ve gone through, lost, feel guilty about. I’m sure, as he climbs into my heart, he’ll think he knows what’s in there, think he can see who I am. He has no idea, and that piece scares me. But I don’t know either, and that scares me more. Three years of intensive therapy to get here? Shouldn’t I have forgiven myself by now?

  He inhales me, stealing everything I’ve not yet offered but he believes he owns. We drown in each other, the sinking so deep that it brings us out on the other side.

  “Tonight… I need you tonight. You gonna be able to?”

  “I’m…” Our foreheads touch as I stumble for words. I know what I’m afraid of. But I can’t utter one word of it.

  “You’re scared?” he asks. A line of worry creases between his eyebrows as my throat tightens. “Shit, Sloan. You are, aren’t you? Because of what I do. Fuck.” He shakes his head, looking across the barn aisle while clenching his jaw.

  “A little.” I pull his gaze back to mine. His eyes soften and the green in them falls away to golden flecks. “But I’m in your arms and loving it. Is that okay for now?”

  “Hell yeah, that’s okay.” A cocky smirk claims his lips.

  “Hawke, I feel so many things—most of them I can’t put into words. But I promise you I’ll try. I want to show you what you mean to me, okay?”

  “You can show me in any way you want, words or no words—I don’t care. Just tell me what I mean to you.”

  His assertion makes my guts fly then tighten. One of them saying, Whoopee, the other saying, Watch your step.

  “You want a lot of things from me, don’t you?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I do,” he says as he kisses a line down my neck. “I want all of you. I’ll show you, if you’ll let me.”

  When our wet eyes meet, our smiles do too. Hawke’s sweet breath hits my lips before he kisses me. He quietly whispers, “Missed you,” then his soft mouth touches mine.

  “I missed you,” I say through a wet whisper, my heart climbing out of my chest.

  “Not sure I’ve heard sweeter words in a real long time, darlin’. Dammit, I’ve missed you so much. Feels surreal to have you against me,” he says, pulling my body tight against his. “To be able to kiss you, to touch you. Sloan, let me show you tonight. Please let me.”

  I pull his ear to my lips. “Maybe,” I answer, because even though I’m afraid of a few things, I know he’ll be tender.

  “Yeah? You think so? Think you might let me lick your sweet pussy then make love to you? Make all that time we missed seem irrelevant?”

  I nod as he lifts me onto his hips and hikes my dress up.

  He walks us away from the wall and spins us in circles. “Okay, then. I’m going to give you something to remember.” He chuckles.

  My nerve endings flare at his self-belief.

  “We should head back out to the party,” I say as he slows the spin to a stop.

  “Hey, Cricket. Listen to me. Even though I
just said what I did, you take all the time you need, okay? I’m looking at a future, not the next few hours. There’s nothing I’ve wanted more in my life than you, and if what you need is time, I have more to give. Giving is all I want to do with you.”

  We head back out to the party. Hawke grabs a Corona and jams a lime into it. I go for another silver-platter cocktail. We split up and I zero in on friends I haven’t seen in a while. I set off to find Coco as he heads over to a group of guys.

  “Why, Miss Sloan McQueen,” Coco says, flashing an acre-wide smile. “I do believe that’s a blush I see on your neck, not to mention that smeared lipstick.” She skates a finger along my lip line. “You been out in the cattle barn kissing someone, girl?” Her drawl would convince a Baptist preacher she’s from Mississippi.

  I struggle to speak through my laugh. She curtseys and trips on her dress. And we raise our glasses.

  “Shoot, girl, it’s been too long. What the hell!”

  I swing my arm over her shoulders, grateful to have my childhood best friend become my sister-in-law. Not to mention the conversation Hawke and I just shared in the barn.

  “It’s all good,” I say. “All good. Home now. We’ll catch up for some digging in soon, okay? Now’s not the time.”

  “Oh, what, you can’t snapshot your life in five minutes? I mean the parts I don’t know, ’cause your best girl’s about to be your best sis.”

  “Honey, this is a four-margarita conversation, maybe more. I know you know stuff; I know Fletch has shared a few things, but this is not a bride’s-getting-married-tomorrow, let-me-talk-about-myself sort of a thing. Seriously, this weekend’s about you. You marrying Fletch!” I squeal.

  We burst into our childhood handclap.

  Down, down, baby

  Down, down the roller coaster

  Sweet, sweet, baby

  I’ll never let you go

  Shimmy, Sloan Coco pop

  Shimmy, shimmy pow

  Shimmy, Sloan Coco pop

  Shimmy, shimmy pow

  “Sounds like pigs eating their young over here.”