by Brooks, Abby
Before he could say a word, I zipped past him and headed straight for my room. My heart thundered as I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the bracelet I had talked myself into and out of giving him since I made it. Leather, dark stones, wooden beads, and a pop of blue…warm, masculine, and inviting, just like Wyatt.
When I returned to the kitchen, I dropped it into his hand and then hopped back onto the counter before he had a chance to speak. “I know it’s kind of silly,” I said. “I don’t even know if men wear bracelets.” I shrugged, eyeing him as he studied the gift.
“You made this?”
I nodded. “You’re always there when I need you. And I’m not always very good at saying thank you. I thought…” I dropped my eyes to my hands. “I thought maybe that would be a start. And the next time I forget to say thank you, you could look at it and know what you mean to me.”
Wyatt crossed the room, the energy between us sizzling with each step. I wanted him closer at the same time I didn’t want him anywhere near me because I didn’t know what to do with the way my nerve endings sang at his approach. Or the way my stomach twisted. The way my heart rejoiced and my thighs tightened. I didn’t know what to make of the low throb in my belly. I remembered the way he smelled and wanted to breathe him in, to wrap myself in his strong arms and sink into his strength.
“Thank you.” Wyatt stopped in front of me, just out of reach. He slipped the bracelet onto his wrist, then stared at it for a long time. He had more to say, and by the look of him, I wasn’t going to like it. “This will be the last time I see you,” he finally said, his eyes lifting to capture mine.
My entire being rejected the statement. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t live like my Dad. All this sneaking around is killing me. I bought myself a house and moved out of The Hut. Told Dad I would keep his secret, but I couldn’t be involved in it anymore. I came here to say goodbye to you.” He ran a finger along the beads at his wrist. “I didn’t want you to wonder where I had gone.”
Wyatt smiled weakly and panic rushed through me. I had just made room for him in my heart and now he was leaving. “Why?” I asked, anger chasing away any of the good feelings I had left. “Why even bother to say goodbye at all?”
“Because…” He shrugged, and his eyes spoke of so many things left unsaid between us. “You deserved to know where I went.”
As much as I resented all of his preaching and soap-boxing, Wyatt had become the only stable part of my life. “I don’t want you to leave.” I huffed a sigh and gripped the edge of the counter.
“Keep my number.” Wyatt leaned in close to meet my eyes, his hands on my knees. “I’ll always be here for you if you need me. Always.” His voice was heavy with emotion and his gaze flicked to my lips then right back to meet my own.
He leaned back and looked away, but in that instant, I realized that somewhere along the way, Wyatt had become interested in me. And, somehow, I had become interested in him. The thought of him distancing himself from my mom and me set my heart into a tailspin. I grabbed his shirt, pulled him close, my legs parting to allow room for his body, and pressed my lips to his.
I had been right about one thing. Today would be the day of my first kiss, but I had been wrong about so many other things.
It wouldn’t be stolen from me; I would give it freely.
I wouldn’t regret it; I would remember it forever.
It wouldn’t be a thing of violence; it was a thing of beauty.
I wouldn’t be disgusted and ravaged; feelings I’d never experienced before would bloom in my soul.
He made a sound I couldn’t understand. A sound that did something to my body that both terrified and excited me. I tilted my head, parting my lips, making room for him nearer the aching throb between my thighs…
…and Wyatt pulled away.
“This can’t happen,” he said, though everything about his posture said his body didn’t agree with his mouth.
“Why?”
He hesitated and I kissed him again, slipping my tongue tentatively out to meet his. He groaned and I melted, my face blushing as he put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me away. The warmth that had been growing inside me faded.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“What? God no. Everything about that was right.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “But that’s why it’s wrong. You’re only seventeen. We can’t—”
The front door swung open before Wyatt could finish. My mother froze in her tracks as she took in what was happening in her kitchen. Me, on the counter. Wyatt, nestled between my thighs, his hands beside my hips, caging me in. His frantic backwards step and the embarrassment on his face as he murmured his excuse to the floor.
Her knowing smirk told me everything. This day would be filed away in my mother’s brain and saved for later use—right alongside all the other times she thought she had seen something happening between the two of us.
The only difference?
This time she didn’t simply think she walked in on something happening between us. This time she had walked in on something happening between us.
Something I wanted.
Something I would never forget.
Something that might never happen again.
Chapter Twelve
Wyatt
A year passed, and I expected Kara to fade into a faint hum in the back of my mind. I expected the space that had appeared for her in my heart to close up and make room for someone else. To heal like the wound it was. Perhaps there would be scars, but I could deal with that.
It didn’t heal. I never stopped thinking about her. She was always there, a question without answers. She meant something to me, with all that barbed wire covering up her delicate soul.
At the end of each day, after closing up shop at The Hut and heading back to my house—a small, one-bedroom on the beach—I found myself wondering what had become of her. Her eighteenth birthday had come and gone. She was an adult now, and a high school graduate. Had she made good on her promise? Had she taken her money and set out on her own to forge her future out of nothing but hope and determination? Had she found her dream?
Or had she fallen into a spiral of self-destruction and mistakes?
Who had she become since the last time we were together?
I never forgot that kiss and spent more time than I wanted to admit wondering if it meant anything to her or if it was nothing more than an emotional reaction to what happened that day.
I hadn’t heard from her since and I hoped that meant she had stopped finding herself in dangerous situations, though it was just as likely her pride had kept her from contacting me. That when things went bad, she had nowhere to turn, and so, all she could do was suffer the consequences.
It was late on a Friday night, with a spring storm rumbling in the distance when I finally heard from her. My phone pinged with a text and my stomach knotted when I saw her name.
I need you.
Three simple words that went straight to my heart. The thought of her needing me after all this time excited me as much as it scared me. I didn’t hesitate to reply.
What’s wrong? Where are you?
And then, her response…
Can I come to you?
I shot off my address and paced my small living room until I heard a car in my driveway, then the gentle thump of a door closing. I yanked open my front door as Kara raced up the walk and straight into my arms.
“What’s wrong, sweet girl?”
The soft patter of raindrops started falling against the roof over my patio, releasing the smell of damp earth to mingle with the ever-present scent of the ocean and the sweet perfume of Kara’s skin.
“She took it. She took it all.” Her voice was thick with tears and I ran a hand through her hair. The year separating us didn’t exist. I felt just as strongly for her as I did in her mother’s kitchen. My desire to protect her flared to life and I tightened my grip, as if I could physically shield her from the pain I heard in
her voice.
“Who took what?” I asked, though I assumed she was talking about Madeline.
Kara pulled back just enough to look me in the eyes. Light from inside my house spilled through the open door and illuminated her face. She had matured in the last year, the softness in her cheeks replaced by sharper angles that only further highlighted her shocking eyes. Her hair, still long and dark, now hung in gentle waves over her shoulders, and her lips, those delightful, full lips, were painted a dark red. Tears stained black by makeup trailed down her face.
Kara swallowed hard. “My mother stole all of my money. All of it. Every last cent that I had been saving since I was twelve.” She choked back another onslaught of tears and stormed into my house in a swirl of pent-up emotion and lilac perfume.
I followed after, closing the door behind us, fully aware that she was even more beautiful in the light. She told me about the money she had hidden in a shoebox in the back of her closet, then finding the box, empty and open on her bed. “Did you confront her?”
“Of course I confronted her. And she denied the whole thing. She even had the balls to tell me she never touched the money in my bank account, even though I know she’d been helping herself for years!” Kara collapsed into a chair and dropped her head into her hands, her long hair forming a curtain between us.
“But why would she steal your money? Isn’t my dad still supporting her?”
“He hasn’t been as free with it, since you stopped helping him.” She offered a weak smile and I saw zero judgement there, zero resentment. She knew why I had to step back from Dad and his craziness. She knew and she understood.
“What am I going to do?” Her question was born of sorrow. Of desolation. “That money has been my escape plan for the last six years. It wasn’t enough that she stole my childhood. No. She had to steal my future, too. Now, I have nothing. I have to start over.”
I crouched at her feet, my hands on her knees. “I am so sorry this happened to you.” The words barely encompassed what I was feeling. I searched for something more appropriate to say, surprised to find I wanted to drive to Madeline’s and confront her myself.
Kara’s eyes met mine and they were softer than I remembered. Smarter. And jaded as hell. “It was stupid of me to think I could escape my mom.”
“It’s not too late to walk away from her.”
“And how did that work with your dad?” Kara asked with all the fire I loved to hate about her. “Still show up for work every day?”
“I do,” I replied, then explained how much better my life had become since distancing myself from him. How his mind games had less power over me and that I chose to keep my job at The Hut because I liked working for my family. I believed in my mother’s dream for the place and fully intended to take over running the hotel when my dad passed. “Maybe there’s a way you can create some space between you and Madeline,” I finished.
Kara scoffed. “Experience would say otherwise.”
“I’m not saying it won’t be difficult. I am saying it will be worth it. And how many times have I seen you come back from some awful experience, stronger than ever? You can still open that jewelry store. This doesn’t have to be the end of the dream. It’s only the end of this road to it.”
She shook her head, then fell silent as her gaze settled on mine. A slow smile lifted the corners of her lips. “It’s good to see you, big guy.”
I returned both the smile and the sentiment. “I’m sorry it’s under such shitty circumstances.”
“You and me both.” She sat back and took in her surroundings as the rain fell in earnest, pattering against the roof and the windows.
I stood and took her hand, giving her a gentle tug. “Come with me,” I said.
Kara looked at me, doubtful, but relented, allowing me to lead her through my house and onto the covered back patio. I leaned on the railing and invited her to do the same. “Take a deep breath,” I said. “Close your eyes. Listen to the rain and the rush of the ocean. Feel the wind on your face. Breathe in the salt on the air.”
Kara did as I instructed and I allowed myself the chance to study her profile. The wind blew her hair into her face and I brushed it away, then let my hand drop as desire surged through me. I wanted her more than ever and was fully aware that she was no longer a child.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, giving my attention to the rain instead of the hungry thoughts slipping through my mind. “What do you need?”
“When I found that shoebox, the first person I thought about calling was you. Not my best friend, even though she knows me better than anyone. Not the police, because it would be my word against hers. But you.” Kara turned to me, her voice gentle, her posture exuding confusion. “Why? I haven’t seen you in over a year and we hated each other more than we ever liked each other. So why, when my world fell to pieces, was the first person I thought about you?”
I wrapped an arm around her, intending to give her a quick hug and then pull away, but she melted into me, turning so her breasts pressed against my chest. “You were my first kiss,” she said. “I thought it would be stolen by that awful man. Instead, I chose to give it to you.”
“That’s how it should be,” I said. “We choose how much of ourselves we give away.”
She dropped her chin. “Those are pretty words, but that’s just not how it works. Everyone we meet takes what they can from us. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Each of us are scattered across our histories, held in the hands of those who saw something they needed and took for themselves.”
Her words hit me. She would forever live in my heart, this girl I tried so hard to hate, bits and pieces of her life twined with mine. I would keep her there until the day I died. She would be mine to remember, to cherish, to despise. I had to wonder if she felt the loss of the things I kept.
“Do you think she feels bad?” Kara murmured against my shoulder. “Do you think even one little part of her regrets what she’s done?” She looked up at me with such a painful mixture of emotion that I couldn’t be immediately honest.
“Do you want the truth? Or do you want more pretty words?”
“I only want pretty words if they’re the truth.”
Thunder rolled across the water and the wind picked up around us. “Then no. I don’t think your mom has thought twice about any of her actions. I think you are a pawn and she moves you around the chessboard of her life to maximize her own pleasure. Nothing she does is about you.”
Kara tensed in my arms and pulled back to look at me. Her soulful eyes hit mine, then drifted to my lips. Her chest heaved—the soft swell of her breasts pressing into me—and she placed her open palms against my chest. I thought she was about to push me away. She didn’t.
“That kiss? Our kiss? I’ve never had one like it since,” she said, as if she had never changed topics in the first place. Her hands snaked up my shoulders, along my throat until she cupped my cheeks. “I haven’t had many, but none of them compared to what I felt with you that day.”
I grazed a finger along her lips and they parted as she gasped. A tiny sound, so feminine and filled with the need I felt for her that lust surged through my body.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” Kara said, her eyes hot with adrenaline, excitement, desire. “I haven’t stopped wanting you.”
She closed her eyes and angled her face. As much as I knew I shouldn’t kiss her, as much as I knew she wasn’t for me, I crushed her lips with mine, gripping her back and drawing her close so my erection ground against her stomach. She moaned and parted her lips, rolling her hips against me, urging me on.
I threaded my fingers into her hair, so soft, so luxurious, everything I always thought it would be. She tasted of honeysuckle and I gripped her ass and lifted her to sit on the railing, just as she had sat on the counter the first time I kissed her. She wrapped her legs around my waist and pulled me closer, inviting me into the warmth between her thighs as rain drenched her back.
Her sweet gasps and moans
made me hungry for more. I wanted to bury myself in her. To yank off her clothes. To fuck away the pain and confusion we had felt for each other over the years. I rolled my hips, the length of my cock pressing against her most sensitive parts.
If I was her first kiss, then I wanted to be her first lover. Her first love. I wanted to take all those firsts from her so I would be forever in her heart for the rest of her life, just like she would be forever in mine.
I palmed her pussy. “Has anyone been here before?”
She dropped her head back, moaning as she enjoyed the pressure of my hand. “No,” she replied, so quietly the sound was almost swallowed by the rain.
Her admission dredged something up from deep inside me, the desire to have her mixed with the desire to protect her innocence.
“Take me, Wyatt.” Kara met my gaze. “I want to give myself to you. You’re the only one I’ve ever imagined giving myself to.”
As much as my body rejoiced to hear those words, I felt myself pulling away. “Not like this.”
Fear danced in those wonderful eyes. “Did I do something wrong?” she asked, an echo of the same question from that day in her mother’s kitchen.
“No. Not one damn thing.” I ran a finger down her tear-stained face, rubbing at her streaked mascara with my thumb. “You’re hurting. I can’t take something so precious from you when you’re hurting.”
“It’s mine to give,” she replied full of the defiance I so admired in her.
“And you don’t know what you’re giving. I’ll be one more person with a piece of you that you can never get back. And while I want to have it, believe me, I want you so bad it hurts.” I took her hand and placed it on my erection. Her eyes went wide and her lips parted as she gripped my length through my jeans. “I don’t want to take it under these circumstances. If you go home and calm down. If you wait a few days, until you’ve figured out what you’re going to do about your mom. If, after you’ve gotten everything in order, you still want me, then you know where to find me. Until then, I can’t. I just can’t.”
