by Amelia Wilde
He raises his eyebrows and his lips curve in an echo of the way he’d smile at me in bed.
“And I’m not sure it’s a good life for the baby, always traveling.” The truth comes out in a rush, as if I’ve pulled some stopper out of an invisible drain. “And I don’t know if you…if you’re the kind of guy who would want to settle down, or if I’m the kind of girl who can live with it if the father of her baby’s always crisscrossing the country while I’m in New York with the baby, since I got a job. And my job…”
“God, I can’t stand it.”
I tear my eyes away from the deck and back to Driver’s face. “What? Me?”
“I can’t stand how, even though I’m pissed at you for keeping this from me, I still want to kiss you. And make you pancakes, if that’s what you want. I must be a fucking fool.”
My stomach growls. “Honestly, you could…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “You could make me anger pancakes, if that’s what you wanted.”
Driver steps closer and reaches tentatively toward my face. The moment his fingers brush against my cheekbone I lean into the touch. It’s like magic. The clean scent of him, the careful way he makes contact as if it’s our own secret language…
“I’m not giving up the road,” he says softly.
“I know,” I answer back.
“I’m going to kiss you. We can fight later.”
I tilt my face toward his, relief flooding my chest. “I know.”
10
Driver
Holiday takes the plate with the grilled-cheese sandwich with huge eyes and her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “This looks so good.” Her eyes meet mine. “Thanks for making it.”
“It’s no problem.” I settle into the deck chair across from hers and put my own plate on my lap. Despite the sunshine warming the deck, the moment feels surreal and strange. One second, anger curdles at the center of my chest. The next, I remember she’s pregnant. In those moments, it’s like I’ve taken an exit off the freeway at the last minute without knowing where it’s going to lead or whether the road continues at all.
Holiday lifts the first half of her sandwich from her plate and takes a bite. Chews. Swallows. She closes her eyes for another bite, and I dig into my own so I have somewhere else to look. There’s no way we can have a real discussion when all I can think about is the way her dress is inching up her thighs or how pink her cheeks are or how she pretended for days on end that nothing was out of the ordinary at all.
“Where’d your friend go?” I saw her through the sliding-glass door a few minutes ago, giving Holiday what looked like an encouraging wave.
“Sophie went into town to do some shopping.”
I want to be petty, to demand to know when Sophie found out about all this, but I’m a grown man and there are bigger things to worry about. “Doesn’t she know the housekeeper does the shopping?”
Holiday huffs a laugh at my joke. “She probably wants to bake pies. That’s what she does for a living.” She looks at me from beneath her eyelashes. “The two of you would get along.”
“Would we?”
“She lives on the road, too. Well—out of a vintage Airstream in Portland. Soph runs her business out of a food truck.” Holiday studies me. “She wouldn’t give that up, either.”
The air is thin out here on the back deck. Was it always this thin, or is it just during conversations like this? “What are you not willing to give up?”
She grimaces. “Home.”
“I’m not trying to be a dick, Hol, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
A smile spreads across her face, and she takes another bite of grilled cheese, still grinning.
“What?”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by a nickname.” She picks up the rest of her sandwich and finishes it in three bites. “I didn’t hate it.” Holiday sets the empty plate on the low table next to her chair. “I can tell you hate this, though.”
“I don’t hate talking to you.”
“No—I can tell you hate not being in motion.”
“What gives you that impression?”
“Your face.” She comes over to my chair and takes my half-empty plate out of my hands. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Out by the water. We can walk here. Look for sea glass.”
There it is—that familiar jolt, like a prompt from the universe. How can the universe be prompting me about someone I’m still so righteously pissed at? Pissed or not, I stand up, Charlie’s words echoing in my mind. I can’t run away from this, or drive, even if this conversation is an endless circling about the heart of the matter.
Maybe we can get there if we’re closer to the water.
We walk out toward the lake, my bare feet sinking into the sand. Holiday’s hair, loose and straight, blows in the breeze. Close to the shoreline she makes a right turn, strolling in the direction of the Bliss Resort. She keeps her eyes on the ground.
“I get it, you know.”
It feels right to settle in beside her and scan the sand for colorful bits of glass. “Get what?”
“I get why you’re angry.”
My instinct is to lie to her. To tell her that I’m not angry. To put a mask of calm on my face and drive away. “How are we supposed to make this work if you can’t tell me anything?”
Her cheeks redden. “I don’t know if we can make it work.”
It’s a wound through the heart, even if we’re essentially in agreement.
“We basically just met,” Holiday says. “I kept things from you, and…”
“I didn’t keep anything from you.”
“No,” she agrees. “You’ve been up front about the things you’re not willing to change.” She bends and picks up a green sliver of beach glass.
“I can’t stay here forever.” The beach breeze does nothing to soothe the nagging sensation of being trapped in place.
“Here, or…any other place?” She straightens up, looking into my eyes, and I feel myself bend toward her on some cellular level. It doesn’t matter how tall I stand. I am always going to feel her this way, even if I have to spend the rest of my life being apart from her.
You can’t be apart from her.
The thought is the same volume as the waves at my feet.
I can’t stay here, either.
“Any place,” I tell her, because it’s the truth. “I can’t stay any place for long.”
HOLIDAY
This is it—the impasse.
Driver lets the water rush over his ankles as he tells me this, his muscles tensed and his blue eyes the same hazy color as the sky. “Well, I can’t go.” My body rebels at the thought of hotel rooms and endless stretches of road and never knowing who you’re going to meet or what they’re going to do. “I have other plans.”
“And that’s what you want for…for the baby? A rat race life in New York City?”
My stomach turns over. “I don’t want a rat-race life in New York City. I’m hoping it’ll be…a better life than that. A life with some stability. Predictability. People need to be able to predict things. It’s raw, out here in the wind like this. It’s stripping away the shield I’ve built up against the knowledge of what’s happening, and another wave of shock rushes up onto the shore. “Let’s go back inside. I want to go back inside.”
I don’t wait for Driver to answer. I stalk up the beach and take the stairs to the back deck two at a time. The sliding-glass door sticks when I yank at it and it sends panic spiraling through my veins. I want to be inside, and I want to be inside now. One last pull and it flies open, slamming hard against the doorframe.
“Holiday.” Driver’s voice is calm and level. I keep moving into the living room, deeper into the house. Away from the sunshine and the windows and the breeze off the lake. The door slides shut behind me, closing with a soft click. “Wait.”
I don’t wait. I go toward my bedroom. In the bedroom, I can close the door and lock it. I can pull the covers over
my head. I can pretend all this isn’t happening.
I reach the door first and fling it closed behind me, but it connects with something. I whirl around to see that it’s Driver’s hand. He steps all the way into the bedroom and closes it behind him.
“I had plans,” I tell him, my voice pitched too high. “I had plans to go to New York and leave all this behind.” I motion to myself, to the woman who wants to be at home so badly she can taste it. “I was going to live a new life. You weren’t supposed to be part of it. You’re—you’re the wrong man for me.”
He takes a deep breath, but says nothing.
“You always want to be gone. That’s—that’s the polar opposite of what I want. If I never had to go on a road trip again, I’d be perfectly happy. I was going to move to New York and make that my permanent base. There’s enough there for a lifetime, but I still know it would never be enough for you.” I put my hands to my head, smoothing down my hair. “Why did it have to be you?”
“I don’t know.” Driver shrugs. “Fate? Destiny? I like the beach. You can’t blame me for that. And you like the beach, too, otherwise I never would have met you in the first place. You know, Holiday, for somebody who insists she’d rather be inside, I’ve met you on the beach plenty of times, out there in the broad daylight. Or moonlight. Whatever it is, there’s no roof between you and the sky. You keep saying you want stability—”
“I do,” I thunder, my voice breaking. “I want—I want something solid, something I can depend on, and it’s so embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing because…”
“Because?”
“Because I want you.” I ball up my hands into fists at my side. “You feel solid. You feel dependable. And I know it’s all a lie.”
Driver’s at my side in an instant. He wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. “How’s this for solid?”
The laugh that escapes me is also a strangled half-sob. “You have really solid abs. God. They’re so fucking solid.”
He puts two fingers under my chin, pulling gently upward so I have to look at him. “You’re pretty solid yourself. Almost too solid.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, you drive me crazy.” He sighs, his eyes warm, then hot. “And I still can’t resist you. Come on. Delight yourself with my abs a while, and then we can keep fighting.”
11
Driver
Inside the bedroom, with the door closed tight and the lock flipped, Holiday strips off her clothes and dives onto the bed like it’s her only safe haven. Her cheeks are still red, gray eyes wide, but she’s not looking at me like she’s waiting for me to fight with her.
She’s looking at me like she’s ready.
Her lips are slightly parted and she watches with rapt attention as I tug my t-shirt over my head and drop it to the floor. T-shirt, then the shorts. I hook my thumbs into my boxers. “How much do you want this?”
She pouts up at me. “This isn’t a good time to tease me about my needs, Driver.”
“A minute ago, you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“Yeah. And then you reminded me that your body is my favorite thing in the world.” Her voice is low and sultry and with any other woman, at any other point in my life, I’d have called it a day. Only with Holiday, it makes sense. “Your personal feelings toward me don’t affect how I feel about your abs.” She says it so seriously that I can’t help but laugh.
“I know what you mean. Lay down.”
“No. I want to see the boxers come off.”
I shove them down off my hips and step out of them.
Holiday nods. “Just as I suspected.”
“You are the worst.” I clamber onto the bed and press my lips to the side of her neck, drinking in the sigh she exhales. “Just the worst.”
“I know,” she whispers. “Give me the abs, Driver.”
“No.”
Her eyes fly open, and she stares at me from inches away. “What?”
“You need more than abs.” I tilt her back onto the bed until her head is on her pillow, and then, because I am a gentleman, I work my way down in increments of lingering kisses. Holiday rests her hands on my head, putting no pressure there, just running her fingers through my hair and following along as I map out a path between her breasts and down over the hard ridges of her ribs, covered in her soft skin. When I reach her hips, she bucks up toward me. “Oh, I don’t think so,” I warn. “People who keep secrets don’t get to be in charge.”
“I am in charge, though,” she murmurs. “In here, I’m in charge.”
“You’re going to have to give up that fantasy for the moment.”
“Why—oh.”
I’ve moved down between her legs and spread her thighs open wide to reveal the perfection that is her pussy. The pouting lips are creamy, tinged with pink, and she’s ready for me. I test that theory with one long lick between her legs.
Sweetness.
It’s so sweet, even though so much about this day has been jarring and more than a little bitter.
“This is so bad,” she whispers, her hips shuddering against the bed. “It’s bad.”
“You’re delicious.” I only surface long enough to tell her that, then I’m back down between her legs, opening her further with every stroke of my tongue.
“I shouldn’t fall for this. It’s—it’s dangerous.”
“Yes. I’m a very dangerous man.” That coaxes a shiver out of her.
“You like dangerous things.”
“I like you.” I more than like her. I tease her clit with my tongue. Once. Twice.
“Driver.”
Three times.
“Driver.”
Four.
“Driver, please.” I hold her hips down tight to the bed so she can’t go anywhere, and being pressed into the sheets like this makes her even wetter.
“Please?”
“Please, I need more of you.”
My cock pulses between my legs. I’ve been neglecting it in favor of Holiday’s body, and it’s been worth every minute, but I’m not going to make her beg for longer.
I climb up between her legs, our faces close, and she traces my lips with one finger. After a long moment she raises her head two inches, closes the gap, and kisses me—long and deep and hard. Holiday moans into my mouth.
“You like that, you dirty thing?” I can’t wait any longer, and neither can she. She bucks her hips up toward mine and if she feels anything like I do, her entire body is aching for contact. “You like tasting yourself on my mouth?”
“Yes.” The word is half agony, half hope, and I tilt my hips to line myself up with her opening.
“You like the way this feels?”
I press in half an inch into her slick heat.
“I love it,” she whispers. “I love...I love how you feel when you’re...when you’re fucking me. It keeps me from floating away.
“Then hold on tight.”
Holiday throws her arms around my neck and I slam into her, forcing a gasp from her lips. It’s like bottled lightning has been released straight into my bloodstream and if I was hungry for her before, now I’m ravenous. I sink my mouth into the side of her neck with a growl. She tightens around me, and then—only then—does it occur to me that we could really be living on the edge.
I force myself to stop, to hold still, and look her straight in the eye. “Are you sure about this?”
Holiday writhes beneath me, her hips dancing. “Yes. Driver, yes.”
“But what about...”
“The baby?”
She heaves in a breath, her breasts pressing against my chest.
“Tell me the truth.”
Holiday locks eyes with me. “I haven’t had an appointment yet to ask, but from what I’ve read online it’s completely safe to have sex during pregnancy.”
“What you’ve read online?”
“From legitimate sources. The Mayo Clinic,” she grits out. “I trust the Mayo Clinic. I really, really do.”
“The Mayo Clinic...”
“Please. I am begging you.” She takes my face in her hands. “Please do not make me talk about how much I trust the Mayo Clinic any more during sex.”
“But are you sure?” I insist one more time because I can feel it starting to break—that hard bubble of anger that’s been sitting behind my collarbone since I overheard Holiday with her friend this morning. “Are you absolutely sure? Should we go into town and have an appointment first?”
“Nobody takes appointments this early.” The sweet thing is still trying to fuck me, even though I’m holding absolutely still. From the concentration on her face she might actually be succeeding. “Nobody—wants to see me—until eight weeks at the earliest. Not—there—yet...”
“And nothing’s...you know, there are no warning signs...”
“Driver!”
“Okay, okay. I got it.” I lean down and take her jaw in one hand, putting enough pressure that she has to open her mouth and let me in. I’m rewarded for this with another shuddering moan.
Her hips work against mine so insistently that I turn us over, pulling Holiday into place, my cock still buried deep inside her. She throws her head back and digs her fingernails into my chest, the tiny spikes of pain twisting together with pleasure as she rocks herself back and forth, deeper and deeper and deeper.
How can I stay?
How can I walk away from this?
My entire soul is fractured, even as it warms to her again, and before I can think about it another second Holiday comes, pressing down hard on my hips, digging in.
“Do that again,” I tell her as she tries to catch her breath.
She opens her eyes. “Oh, I can’t. There’s no—there’s no possible way.”
“I beg to differ.”
“What—”
I catch her wrists in one hand and hold them between us. She could get away if she wanted to, but after a couple of experimental tugs against my grip, she looks me in the eye.
