She rotated her head in slow, circular motions to alleviate the pain, but stopped short when the door opened and shut once again. Ryleigh went about her business despite the ball of nerves bundled within her. She could hardly fathom the idea of sharing a bed with Peter that night and there he was intruding on her bathroom time.
A violent tremor possessed her hand while reaching for a razor as the shower’s magnetic closure clicked behind her.
“What do you want?” she demanded in a whisper.
The heat of his breath cut through the steam like a knife as he craned to kiss her neck. Ryleigh shut her eyes, entranced by his mouth caressing her skin, tongue meeting her pulse. You’re angry. You’re angry. Say something.
“You’re going to get us in trouble.”
She hated herself for not being more forceful.
Rage climbed her throat but it had not been fast enough to beat the idiotic response. Is this who she had become? A desperate girl with no self-respect?
“Am I?” Peter teased.
His hand crept between her legs, one antagonizing finger skimming along her entrance before slipping inside and destroying her resolve. Ryleigh fell against him as her teeth gnashed her tongue to wrangle sounds which were desperate to escape. Beneath Peter’s touch, her bones dissolved and she turned malleable, molded and reshaped by his affection.
He spoke softly into her ear but Ryleigh struggled to hear him through her pleasure-filled haze.
“When we go home, things will be different. I’m sorry for the fights, I’m sorry for my temper, for my mood swings, for my jealousy, for trying to take steps you weren’t ready to take. I’m sorry for worrying you about my health when you already had so much of your own to worry about. I’m sorry for expecting you to spend every weekend at my place, for lying about smoking, for not taking my medicine.” His voice shattered and slashed her insides. “I’m sorry for not loving you like you deserve.”
Nora’s absence within the apology did not faze her. She was too wrapped up in ‘home,’ the newest intimate four-letter word that linked them as one.
“I didn’t pick and choose parts of you to fall in love with, Peter,” Ryleigh managed in spite of her contractions around his finger. “I fell for them all.” She shifted and stared into the red-rimmed eyes that held a part of her soul. “And on the record, paperboy, you’re the only man out there who’s capable of giving me the love I deserve.”
Her leaden stomach burst into a horde of butterflies as Peter lifted and pinned her against the shower wall, their lips crashing together and welding them into a unified being. The acidity of the mediocre airport coffee laced his tongue along with a subtle trace of tobacco from the cigarette he had desperately smoked in Detroit before proclaiming it his last and tossing out the pack.
Ryleigh anchored her arms around his neck and found herself unaffected by the taste as their mouths danced to the rhythm of his apology, understanding the things that should have made Peter unattractive only made him more appealing: how he stayed up too late and the next day it looked like someone had injected neon gas into his waterlines, how he could go a week without shaving and seemed not to notice, how he swore too much when he was overcome with any negative emotion.
How Peter only made the bed when he washed his sheets, how they drove in his car and he went from an Outkast CD to Joni Mitchell without batting an eye, how he always complained about something everywhere they went whether it was out to dinner or at the grocery store.
She supposed that must have been the true measure of love, not just falling for a person but falling for everything that came along with loving them.
“I love you,” Ryleigh choked out a hair too loud and immediately panicked at its slight echo.
“Yeah?” Peter scanned her face as he drifted into her, where he fit with startling perfection. Where he belonged. Kissing her temple, his emotion-rich whisper both tickled and made her shiver. “Yeah, I was thinking the same.”
She threaded her fingers through his curls and became hyperaware of her own breathing, short and shallow as if she were afraid to breathe at all. It felt as though she were floating in his arms rather than being held, and then it registered.
Peter was holding her.
Ryleigh remembered with excruciating clarity how he had stumbled and been unable to sustain the same position for long when she raced across the university lawn and practically tackled him.
He made supporting her weight look effortless, like the night out front of The Roast when he had finally professed his love. Presently, she felt just as triumphant.
To notice his strength, to feel it locked around her. Cheeks still hollow but not as sunken. Hip bones protruding to subtle peaks rather than jagged points.
“Peter, you look…” Good? Great? Incredible? Ryleigh’s heart stretched apart and snapped back into form. There could be no misunderstanding. “Better.” Softer, “You look better.”
He dropped his forehead to hers and spoke against her lips: “I’m trying.” Slowing his pace, Peter searched her eyes. “I hate that I worried you.”
“Can I tell you a secret? Even when you seem perfectly fine, I worry about you.”
“What am I going to do with you, huh?”
He brushed a wet tendril of hair out her face and regarded Ryleigh with such sincerity it pierced her chest. She absorbed all that Peter transferred to her in that look, everything he felt, everything she meant to him.
Perhaps it was the heat of the water, the constant brush of his skin against hers, his lips on her neck, but Ryleigh was certain that there was nothing in this life more remarkable than loving Rosenfeld.
Though her mother had hinted at a foreboding talk, the couples steered clear of each other as they prepared to head downstairs. Ryleigh would have gladly hitchhiked back to Michigan if her parents planned to give her the silent treatment the entire week.
Tension hung around them like wild vines on their trek to the beach, and no one bothered to diminish the separation. No friendly comments about the weather. Certainly no apologies about having gotten off on the wrong foot—again.
Ryleigh maintained a loose hold on Peter’s hand though it felt criminal with her parents in tow.
“Should I say something?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think they’re in a talking mood.”
As it turned out, the promised big talk had not been forgotten, just expertly delayed until the lovers could be split up to ensure the greatest impact.
A fedora-capped Dexter idled a few feet from their quilt. The transitional lenses of his glasses had darkened and his t-shirt billowed in the wind. Add a bandage across his nose and he would have looked more like a disgruntled Jake Gittes in the second act of Chinatown than a man on the first day of what was supposed to have been a relaxing vacation.
“A word, Peter.” He nodded to the white sand and wandered off without waiting for his companion.
Peter tore off his shirt—the hole-riddled one she had insisted he not pack—and tossed it on the blanket, jogging after her father with little urgency.
Ryleigh’s thirst increased as she studied the calm morning waves. Dread left her bottle of water untouched. The ocean, while beautiful, made for a poor distraction with her boyfriend and father strolling along the shore like one was not rearing to put the other out of commission.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Ryleigh finally asked.
Charlotte gathered her dusty blonde hair into a ponytail and began slathering sunblock on her arms before she sighed, “You know your father.”
A chill blossomed at Ryleigh’s fingertips as she chiseled her nail polish. Charlotte reached out and stilled the nervous behavior.
“Honey, I really wish you had told us about this sooner.”
It was easier to pretend the dreaded conversation was not taking place without her mother’s familiar hazel eyes gleaming back at her, courtesy of a pair of Ray-Bans.
Slumping forward, Ryleigh said, “I was afraid of wh
at you guys might say. Alright, terrified is more accurate.”
“Truthfully, I don’t have a problem with it. Your father, on the other hand...” Charlotte rubbed her brow and then consulted the sky. “What I do have a problem with is that you kept it from us, and for so long. We didn’t bring you up to lie, Ryleigh Collette.”
The disappointment blanketing her mother’s tone harpooned and sank Ryleigh’s heart. She licked her pillowy lips, thinking long and hard about what to say.
What came out sounded like cheap compensation for the lies. “I’m in love with him. I love him so much, it keeps me awake at night, and I know, I know that isn’t an excuse to lie, but I felt like I had to protect it. That feeling.”
Charlotte offered a weak smile whereupon Ryleigh wondered if her eyes were alight with nostalgia behind the shades, recounting what it had been like to fall in love for the first time.
“How old is he again?”
The question served as a record scratch to the minimal progress of their chat. It did not help that Peter’s birthday had recently passed.
“He’s 37.”
“I’m only eight years older than him,” Charlotte mumbled, swigging some water. She shrugged one shoulder. “You’re both adults. As long as you’re both happy, and he treats you well, I have no reason to take issue with it.”
Ryleigh stared at her toes and smiled. “He treats me like a princess.”
The guys were still a ways down the beach, but they were heading back. While they walked alongside each other, Peter stayed a gratuitous distance from her father.
“He’s pretty thin for his height, isn’t he? Please tell me he doesn’t do drugs or anything like that.”
“The fact that you think anyone could afford drugs on a newspaper staffer’s salary is hilarious, mom.”
She considered telling her mother about all of the weight Peter had fought to regain and how he constantly worried about his parents. Ryleigh thought better of it. That truth was not hers to divulge.
“It was a ridiculous thing for me to ask, really.” Charlotte laughed but turned serious in the same beat. “Are you keeping up with your medicine?”
A flush crept up her neck. “Every day, on the dot.”
The minutes of silence between the two men passed like hours, challenging the languidness of the lazy cloud formations drifting by overhead. Walking into the ocean would have been a kinder death than whatever Dexter had in mind. Peter figured he did not have much to lose.
He dove headfirst.
“We wanted to tell you guys sooner, Mr. Branson. Ryleigh found it difficult to—”
Dexter ripped off his glasses to reveal narrowed eyes. “Mr. Branson is how I’d expect my daughter’s fictitious 19-year-old boyfriend to address me, not someone who’s old enough to be my younger brother. Let’s drop the formalities.”
“Got it,” he said under his breath.
“I don’t even know where to begin. You moved to Ann Arbor? I noticed your name has been absent in the paper lately but I didn’t think anything of it, but this? This is a conclusion I never would have jumped to. It’s crazy is what it is.”
Well, he had a point.
‘Crazy’ was an apt classification of what Peter had done. But one is free from fear when acting under the guiding force of love.
“I love your daughter, Dexter. She means the world to me.”
He thrust a finger into Peter’s chest but kept his tone even, a terrifying combination. “She may mean the world to you, but make no mistake, she is my world. Ryleigh is my daughter. My only child. She’s trying to get through college, for God’s sake, she doesn’t need the distraction of a relationship.”
Peter often did not get in from work until one or two in the morning. He would have loved to ask Dexter how much time he supposed that left him to ruin Ryleigh’s life.
Snark would not get him anywhere on this quest for acceptance.
“I stay out of her way.”
“But she spends a great deal of time at your place, I imagine?”
Hook, line, and sinker.
“On the weekends, sure, she stays over. Her focus doesn’t stray from school during the week. My intentions are—”
Dexter squared his jaw. “Your intentions, as you’ve so crassly called them, were on full display last night.”
Lightheadedness cast a thin net over Peter and through its unreliable lens the sand mimicked the waves’ gentle movement.
He had understood the risk that came attached to tiptoeing across the bathroom threshold but making up with Ryleigh had snuffed out concerns over repercussions.
Repercussions that had now been mortalized in the form of a delirious father, who was poised to strike in this bizarre game of confirming information that had already been proven factual.
“Were you or were you not in the shower with my daughter last night?”
Peter had to play his part: confirm not deny.
“Yes.”
The honesty struck Dexter like the cold spade of a shovel. It took a moment for him to recalibrate, to once again hone his protective fatherly rage.
Many yards of shoreline still separated them from the girls when Dexter issued a warning dripping in malice. “There will be no relations, of any kind, for the duration of this trip. Not while you two are under any roof of mine. Have I made myself clear?”
What does he think I was doing in the shower?
Washing her hair?
Supplying a sarcastic remark would have been all too easy. It required magnificent restraint to stand tall and convincing.
“Crystal.”
Charlotte dashed Ryleigh’s plan to steal Peter away upon his return. After squabbling with her mother about sunblock as if she were 9 rather than 19, she and Peter split from her family’s makeshift beach camp.
The waves lapped at her feet as they went.
“My mom asked if you were on drugs.”
Smirking, he said, “I should be on drugs after this circus with your parents you keep putting me through.”
Ryleigh stole glances at Peter in his swimsuit, black shorts that cut off at mid-thigh. She peeked at his skinny legs and his long, skeletal feet disturbing the sand with every movement.
“If you dated someone your own age, you wouldn’t have to deal with a three-ring circus of drama.”
Peter gave her hip a teasing pinch. “Funny thing, I don’t date people because they’re a certain age; I date people I like. If dating you comes with annoying side quests, so be it.”
“What did my dad say to you?”
She was not entirely sure if she wanted to know, but curiosity won out.
He shook his head. “Cliff notes? Not to have sex in the condo. Though, he phrased it in a slightly classier way.”
“Too late for that.”
“I didn’t have the heart to tell him we’d already broken the one rule he set. Plus, you know, he would’ve strangled me and tossed my corpse into the Atlantic.”
Ryleigh smiled and caught his hand, “What makes you think he won’t do that just for the hell of it?”
“Guess my faith in humanity has surpassed yours.”
“Hmm, no, that’s definitely impossible.”
“Should we get in?” Peter asked upon venturing ankle-deep into the ocean. Looking at him in the water, regardless of its shallow depth, chilled Ryleigh down to her bones. She doubted the sun had been up long enough to heat it. “Know that if you decline, I’m throwing you in. We’re here to have fun, dammit. Clean fun, apparently. The worst kind.”
A static twinge pained her chest. Though she believed Peter, she was not entirely over the Nora thing. Discussing the details was at the forefront of her mind but it seemed a most inopportune time between her recovering heart and Peter’s uncharacteristically playful mood.
Cold beads of water slapped her legs. Ryleigh jumped back and served her boyfriend a hard stare.
“Peter, I swear to God.”
Cupping his ear, he asked, “You swear what?”
“If you even think about putting me in that water, I’m not sleeping with you for at least a month.”
She put her hands on her hips to forge a tough appearance. All the while, her stomach clenched. Like you could stay away from his bed for a month.
“Joke’s on you because I love your company.”
A wink and a flash of crooked teeth was all Ryleigh saw before he bolted over, picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Her legs and arms flailed against Peter but he did not let up.
Not until he sent her free-falling into the icy water that sent an electroshock to her every nerve ending.
Resurfacing, Ryleigh’s lungs burned as she gasped for breath. She opened her eyes through the ocean’s salty sting. Her vision had not refocused enough to look for Peter when she was met with the familiar pressure of his lips.
She felt weightless amid the water as she drowned in his kiss. As if detecting her helplessness, he hooked an arm around Ryleigh and brought them chest to chest.
He tasted like saltwater and coffee and forever.
Her heart clenched knowing that someone else had tasted her forever. His boss, of all people.
“Why did you kiss her?”
Voicing the question zapped Ryleigh’s last ounce of strength. She wiggled her arms and legs to stay afloat but inside she felt empty, flat, like she had been pricked by a needle and everything within her had deflated.
“I didn’t.” He gave her a pained look before breaking eye contact to study the surface of the water.
She scrunched her toes, joining him in examining the water. Shattered diamonds of sunlight shimmered off the ocean. Part of Ryleigh wanted to paddle back to land and forget about this minefield of a conversation she had thrown them into. The other part longed to hear whatever he might say.
“She’s been coming on to me since I walked through the door. I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve spoken with her about it, probably, but she’s my boss. That put me in an awkward position. I can’t exactly afford to lose this job.”
Having Rosenfeld (Rosenfeld Duet Book 2) Page 16
