by Hawk, Maya
My jaw slacks. I deliberately ignored his attempts at reconnecting over the years. I ignored his Facebook friend requests back in college. I ignored his random texts every six months asking if it was still “Lauryn Hudson’s number”. No part of me wanted anything to do with him. Not after what happened.
I still want nothing to do with him.
“God, that would be so weird if I…” He grabs a speculum and clicks it open. He’s doing it to torment me. “Never mind.”
“Still tactless after all these years.” I roll my eyes. “Good to know that even becoming a medical doctor hasn’t changed the man you are at the heart of it all, Sutton.”
“You know I like to tease.” He places the speculum back on the tray by the exam table. “I wish you’d lighten up a little, Lauryn. Has anyone ever diagnosed you with a big, fat stick up your ass?”
“Why are you here?” I cross my arms until the paper gown slides down my thighs and then I quickly retrieve it. “When I made my appointment with Dr. Brown, I didn’t notice your name listed on the physician roster.”
And I made damn sure to check too. I knew he was an OB-GYN, and I knew he was living in Miami. I did everything I could to ensure our paths didn’t cross, though it took some careful maneuvering from time to time.
“I thought you were a hospitalist anyway?” I add, quickly realizing I’m giving away the fact that I’ve checked up on him.
“I fill in for doctors every now and again.” He slips his hands into the front pockets of his lab coat and subsequently pulls it against the ever-present bulge in the front of his pants. “We do that for each other.”
His piercing. Oh, God. Completely forgot about that. His enormous cock. And all those tattoos.
I wonder if anyone else knows what lies beneath his doctor McHottie façade. Knowing Sutton, every hot nurse within the greater Miami area probably knows exactly how he looks beneath his white coat.
Ugh.
“How’d you know I’m a hospitalist?” he asks.
My lips part before the words come out, and I try to buy myself time to think of an excuse. “I’m a drug rep. I know a lot of the doctors and practices in the area. I’ve seen your name come up.”
Boom. Perfect.
Never mind the fact that I know his schedule. He works overnights – the weekend package. Mostly delivering babies and performing emergency gynecological surgeries. Who’d have thought my tatted up, muscled, cock-pierced stepbrother would grow up to deliver babies? I both love and hate that fact more than I’ll ever admit to anyone out loud.
“Uh, huh.” He doesn’t buy it, and the phone in his pocket starts ringing with some God-awful metal music. Same old Sut. Our eyes lock as he retrieves it. “This is Dr. Pierce.”
I glance up at the clock on the wall, silently cursing Dr. Brown for taking so long.
“More overtime,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re in the thick of baby birthing season at the hospital.”
My lips press together as I stifle all the questions I want to ask him. Why didn’t he want his own practice? How long had he been working at Miami General? What brought him here? Was he seeing anyone? For a split second, I nearly forget all the reasons I hate him. For a split second, I’m simply staring across the room at the guy who’d once been my best friend.
“You think Dr. Brown will be in here soon?” I change the subject. “Kind of need to get back to work.”
“Want to get dinner sometime?” He ignores my question. “Catch up?”
Yes. No? I don’t know. “Um…”
“Fine, Lauryn. We can catch up right here.” He takes a seat on a rolling stool and pulls it up to my table with the most obnoxious smirk on his face. I can’t imagine any woman in their right mind letting him near their vagina for medical purposes.
“This is so inappropriate, Sutton.” I refuse to make eye contact with him. My hands hold down the paper sheet, and my sweaty palms melt what little coverage I have left. “Please send Dr. Brown in.”
“Lighten up, Laur,” he teases me again, standing up. I almost wish he’d stay. I almost wished he’d bug me a little longer. I was just beginning to realize I kind of missed it. “How long have you been in Miami?”
“A little over two months,” I say. “It’s just temporary. For work. We’re launching a new drug soon, and they have me stationed here because apparently there’s an overabundance of women’s medical centers in this city. Highest per capita in the nation.”
Maybe that’s what drew him here? Well, that and the overabundance of beautiful women in Miami.
“Come over sometime.” He isn’t asking. “I live downtown, not too far from here.”
Me too.
“I don’t know, Sutton. I get busy with work, and my boyfriend flies out every other weekend…”
“Boyfriend.” He stares off to the side for a second as if he has to digest the fact that I could even possibly be with someone. “I’d love to meet him sometime. Welcome him into the family.”
Rolling my eyes, I say, “Won’t be necessary.”
“What’s his name?”
“James.” I say his name with a quick huff, as if Sutton’s question is invasive. It kind of is. “If you must know.”
“James, eh? God, that’s so safe and boring.” He rubs his full lips together and spreads them into a subdued smile, though his eyes aren’t smiling in the least.
“For your information, he is anything but safe and boring,” I lie. I lie so hard. James is the epitome of safe and boring, and that’s why it only makes sense for me to wind up with someone like him. He is everything my father isn’t and everything Sutton isn’t.
Sutton rolls his eyes playfully and releases a full breath. “Anyway.”
I glance up at the clock again. “Can you please send my doctor in now?”
He rises from the stool, unwilling to take his penetrating stare off of me, and smiles. “I’ll leave you alone. But I would like to see you sometime. We’re different people now, Lauryn. I’d love to get to know the person you’ve become.”
It’s difficult to say no to that. In that moment, he seems so nice. So sincere. So likeable. And then I remember my mom. My loyalty. My allegiance. My priorities.
“Lauryn,” he says, snapping me out of my trance. “Dinner? Tonight? Seven?”
“Yes,” I blurt, saying anything to get him to stop badgering me.
His mouth arches into a pleased smile and he stands, placing one steady hand on the silver door handle. “Excellent. I’ll send Dr. Brown in.”
TWO – LAURYN
Brentwood, CA – Summer before senior year of high school
Voices trail in from the pool. The closer I get the more it sounds like laughter. I peek out the window by the terrace and see my father sitting between my mother and Sandra Pierce. They’re running lines, reading off thick scripts that sit nestled between tumblers of expensive bourbon and resting cigarettes, though it doesn’t seem like work. Sandra is laughing her infectious laugh and my mother is red-faced. My father, internationally known jazz trumpeter DeVonn Hudson, mutters something that forces my mom to gift him with a dirty glare.
They do that – Sandra and my dad. They gang up on my mother and package it like they’re only teasing. Sandra is effervescent in nature, and my mom is more serious. Somehow those two are best friends, though I’m told the friendship started when they both had co-starring roles on some 1980s sitcom. Dad says they balance each other out. He says it just works and not to question it. Kind of like how no one wants to watch how sausage gets made.
“Why are you just standing there staring at them?” It’s Sutton, Sandra’s son. We used to be best friends until last summer when he decided it would be a good idea to date Kerrigan Zanuck – the bane of my existence. “It’s weird.”
“Why are you here?” I spit. I fold my arms and turn to face him. He’s sprawled out on our sofa, the screen of his phone illuminating his face. I don’t know how I didn’t see him there before.
“My mom
made me come,” he says with a sigh that tells me he doesn’t want to be there.
I casually run my hand along the length of a curled tendril. “You grounded or something?”
“Yep.” He rolls over to his stomach and fires off a text. The fact that he won’t look at me is a red-hot burn under my warm, caramel skin. We used to be best friends. I used to love him.
Scratch that – I still love him. For some insane reason I can’t comprehend, I’m still carrying a torch for him. Nobody said love was easy, especially young love propelled by hormones, fueled with rumors, and magnified by the human instinct that makes us want the things we think we shouldn’t have.
I’ll die before I ever tell him that.
“Kindly remove your shoes from our sofa.” I’m picking. I want to pick at him. I want to dig and nag and annoy, and perhaps I’m sort of doing it to test him.
He sits up, sliding his legs across the pale, gray-beige Belgian linen my mother’s decorator had so lovingly picked out for our family room. “There. Happy?”
I nod, though he doesn’t see. His face is still buried in his phone.
“What’s wrong, Lauryn? Just say it. Whatever you’re thinking right now, just say it. Stop standing there fidgeting and burning holes into the back of my head with that fucking scowl on your face.” He places his phone on the reclaimed wood coffee table next to a book about Marilyn Monroe, leans back into the cushions, and twists around to face me. Now that I have his full attention, I’m not quite sure what to do with it.
“I don’t miss you,” I fib. “For the record. I don’t.”
His golden eyes flash, holding my stare for far too long before releasing me. “Aw, Lauryn. Sure you do.”
He rises from the sofa and steps carefully toward me. My arms are still crossed, as if I’m protecting something. My heart, perhaps? My dignity? My self-control?
“I’ve missed you.” He’s encroaching into my territory. I can smell him. He’s wearing the cologne I picked out for him two summers ago during a lazy Saturday trip to the mall. I close my eyes and breathe him in, willing myself not to enjoy it. It’s no use. I inhale him like the oxygen I need to survive. “I’m not afraid to admit it, unlike you.”
I open my eyes. Our body heats mix and swirl before evaporating into nothing. My heart gallops, and I receive it in my ears as it blends with a swishing sound.
“The ship has sailed, Sutton.” I step away, inching toward the open bannister that surrounds the stairs that lead to my wing of the house. “You could’ve had me last year.”
“Apparently, you didn’t make that abundantly clear because I thought you were just being a cock tease.”
“Cock tease?” My mouth hangs open in disgust.
“Fuck, Lauryn.” His head tilts back before snapping forward. “You flirted with me all summer. We spent every single day together. And the second we started fooling around in the pool, you ran off crying like some schoolgirl on a playground. Then you refused to take my calls. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“Not run off and hook up with Kerrigan Zanuck.”
“It didn’t happen quite like that, Lauryn. You’re making it sound worse than what it was.”
“Maybe you should’ve tried harder.” I unfold my arms and step back. He comes toward me, closing the space between us again. “Maybe I was scared.”
“Scared of what?” He doesn’t get it. “We’ve been best friends since before we could walk. You’ve known me your whole life. What’s there to be scared about?”
“I don’t know.” Lie. I was afraid of falling for him. Getting hurt. And I was afraid of losing the best friend I’d ever had. It all happened anyway.
Sutton’s hand reaches for my hip, and he pulls me into him. He towers over me even at seventeen, and I’m quite certain he’s been hitting the school gym hard since our year of estrangement. Junior year was lonely without him, but my hurt ran deep enough that it overrode the pain of not being able to pick up a phone and call him.
I never should’ve run off that night.
We were in the pool, salt water lapping over our skin as he picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist. He carried me to the grotto, kissing me hard as we ducked under the waterfall.
We’d broken into my father’s liquor stash, and I was quite positive the only reason Sutton Pierce was kissing me was because he was drunk and horny, like a typical teenage boy.
With hormones running wild and free, I untied my bikini top and pressed my skin against his, tasting the rum on his tongue as tingles of excitement ran rampant through every part of me.
Sutton’s palm slid along my thighs until his fingers took a detour, untying my bottoms. Tracing his hand between my thighs, my body jolted and stiffened when his fingers found my most sensitive area.
Sutton Pierce, the boy who used to chase me with frogs, the boy who took family vacations with us to Aspen and the Hamptons, the boy who threw sand in my bed and pulled on my pig tails, was becoming a grown man with the power to own my body and soul with a single, solitary kiss.
His fingers slipped inside me, my body clenching around them as my breath halted.
“Relax,” he whispered between kisses. “I’m going to make you feel amazing, Lauryn. Trust me.”
My thoughts scattered like leaves to the wind.
What if he doesn’t mean it?
What if he’s just doing this because he’s horny and that’s what guys do?
What if things get weird between us and he never talks to me again after this?
My body tensed harder, going to war with my brain, which refused to shut off and enjoy the ride.
His mouth lowered to my breasts, taking a single nipple in his mouth and grazing his teeth across it as his free hand massaged my opposite breast with the kind of experienced touch a man much older than Sutton might have had.
Something hard brushed against the underside of my thigh. Sutton had a hard-on. For me. I turned him on. Me. He wanted to fuck me.
Our dynamic was shifting faster than I could comprehend. Confusion swirled inside me as my body and mind went to war. Sutton was the only thing that ever mattered to me, and giving myself to him was going to change everything.
“Stop. I can’t. I…”I pushed off of him and plucked my bikini pieces from the water before swimming to the ledge and climbing out. I ran inside, leaving a trail of wet footprints. The house froze my skin the second I flew through the sliding doors, and I bolted up to my room before our housekeeper could catch me. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window, I watched as Sutton climbed out of the pool and dried off. He shook his head, and his lips moved as if he were muttering something under his breath. He entered the house after that and five minutes later, he squealed out of our circle drive, disappearing over the hill in his jet black Range Rover.
I tossed and turned all night long, replaying every tantalizing touch, every ill-intentioned glance that had led up to that moment in the pool. My body scolded me for not fucking the shit out of Sutton Pierce when I had the chance, but my mind assured me I did the right thing.
I ignored his call the next morning, unsure of what to say. I’d hoped that after a few more days passing, we could pretend like it never happened and things would get back to normal.
And then I saw a picture in his newsfeed. Kerrigan Zanuck, my arch nemesis, posted a selfie of the two of them kissing and tagged him in it.
“That fucking asshole.” I threw my phone across the room, not giving a fuck when it skidded across the carpet and slammed against the wall.
Of all the people in the world he could use to get me back, he used her?
Unforgivable!
“I think you do know what you were scared of, you just don’t want to say it,” Sutton says, snapping me back to the present moment. “They say the truth can set you free, Lauryn. You should try it sometime.”
Replaying last summer in my head sends me into an instant state of resentment all over again. I stare down at the floor, jamming my toe into th
e wide-planked wood floor. “I was worried things would change between us.”
He furrows his dark brows. “Yeah, Lauryn. They would’ve changed for the better. But you ran off and everything changed anyway so…”
He steps away, releasing me and tossing his hands in the air.
“I know.” I shake my head. I miss him terribly, and the only way I’ll ever get him back into my life is if I swallow my pride. “Can we try again?”
He bends his head to the side. “We’re going off to college in a year. You’re going to Pepperdine, and I’m going east. Why start anything now?”
“I mean, as friends,” I say. I’ll settle for just being friends if it means having him in my life again. Young love is all kinds of complicated, and this is just par for the course.
Sutton’s face softens, his golden eyes locking into mine. “Yeah, Lauryn. We can be friends again. I can’t promise I won’t be thinking dirty things about you all summer, but we can be friends.”
His words send my heart into a tailspin as a slow burn reaches my core. He’s going to try to fuck me this summer, and I just might let him this time. He’s my best friend, I love him, and nothing will ever change that.
CHAPTER THREE – SUTTON
Present
“You can just set that there.” A humid breeze rustles past as the sun falls in the western sky. The table is set up on my balcony. A white cloth. Candles. Our dinners professionally cooked and being kept warm by metal cloches. A young man from a catering company lights the candles and flits off to grab his things and leave.
A knock on the door five minutes later tells me that my dear stepsister has finally arrived. My heart knocks in my chest. She was cute in high school. All the guys wanted her. But college and young adulthood have magnified that. She seems to have stepped into her skin a little more, wearing it like a finely tailored coat. Finally comfortable with being attractive.
“You’re early,” I say as I pull the door open. She brushes past me just as the catering guy is rushing out the door. She’s taking in my apartment, soaking in every square inch of industrial loft ceilings, stained concrete flooring, and reclaimed oak furniture. Her face is frozen. I’m not sure if she likes what she sees, though I’m not sure that I care. I didn’t decorate the place, some schmuck from Restoration Hardware did.
