by Amelia Wilde
“Come for me again.”
I press my other thumb to her clit and she rolls her hips back.
One slow circle. Two. Three, four, five...
“I can’t,” she pants. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it...” It becomes a mantra, a chant, but her body betrays her. Her body responds to my touch, wants more of my touch, can’t get enough of my touch and I savor every moment that I’m inside her, feeling her grind and twist and tighten.
“You look so gorgeous like this.” Holiday opens her eyes.
“Like this?”
“Like always. Now come. I need it. Give me what I want.”
Four more slow, deliberate circles and she gives in.
As soon as I feel her go over the edge I release her wrists and draw her in close. I need her this close, feeling every breath she takes as I hurtle over into my own release. It obliterates every thought from my mind. Every tension—gone.
She’s sleeping next to me in the bed, tangled in the sheets, by the time they come creeping back in.
I trace the curve of her spine with a fingertip, then press the flat of my palm to the small of her back.
I want her.
But it still stings, how long she hid the baby from me. I was sleeping in her house.
What else is she going to hide?
12
Holiday
“He’s hot.”
“Sophie.”
“He is.”
We’re in our usual spots on the back deck, two days later, and I’ve been busy staring at the lake.
“I know. I’ve seen him.”
“You have romped with him.” Sophie lifts her drink off the side table and takes a sip through the straw. “Did you guys talk?”
“We’ve been talking.”
She waits, a long and meaningful pause. “I’m being very respectful of your boundaries.”
“You’re being a serial harasser.”
“I’ll back off.” Sophie takes another delicate sip of her drink. “But in exchange, we have to do something. I’m withering away out here on this deck.”
“The deck is nice.”
“Holiday, the deck is boring. The deck is clearly one of your private retreats, where you feel good, but you have a guest and I am crawling out of my skin just rattling around this cottage.”
“The cottage is huge and if you don’t want to rattle, you can always—”
“Walk down the beach to your baby daddy’s resort?”
“Oh, god.” My face must look hideous, because I’m going to be sick if she says baby daddy ever again. “Let’s…not put it that way.”
She clears her throat. “Excuse me. The resort belonging in part to the father of your baby.”
“We’re not guests over there, Soph. It would be weird.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her glaring. “Isn’t that exactly how you met him?”
“Yes, but—” I don’t even know where I’m going with it, so I let the sentence hang.
“Exactly. You’re nervous about running into the man you have a big, fat crush on.”
“Fine.” I stand up from the chair so quickly that it rocks on its legs, coming to rest with a dull thud against the wood of the deck. “Let’s go. Let’s go. Stand on up, Sophie, and let’s get out of this godforsaken place.”
“Yes.” She pumps her fist in the air and abandons her drink on the table. “We’re doing this.”
We stroll down the sand toward the Bliss Resort in a peaceful silence that lasts for about thirty seconds.
“What are you going to do, Hol?”
“About what?”
“About everything. About the baby. About New York?”
“If everything goes right, I’ll have a baby.” That’s the one thing I’ve been certain about since I made the frantic drive into Lakewood. It’s the right decision, and I know it down in my bones. What I don’t know is how I’m going to swing it. With a baby, I won’t be able to hide at home, coming out only to go to work. “As for the rest…”
“Why not get married?” Sophie is absolutely causal about this question, but I gape at her nonetheless.
“Married? We’re not—no. We’re not compatible at all.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Didn’t sound like that when you two were in the bedroom the other day.”
“Ew! Why were you listening?”
Sophie shakes her head. “I didn’t know what I was walking into when I came back from doing the grocery store. Otherwise, I’d have stayed far, far away.” She giggles. “I’ve heard worse. At least you two were having fun. Plenty of fun. In fact—”
“Stop. Stop. That is so…that is so gross.”
“It’s a human function,” Sophie says with a sniff. “As natural as breathing. Or pregnancy.”
“You’re going to make me throw up.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll stop. But seriously. I get the feeling you’re more compatible than you think.”
I dig my feet further into the sand with every step. “He likes to travel, Sophie. He likes to be away from home for weeks at a time. That’s not—that’s not something I want. For the baby,” I insist.
“Sure. For the baby.”
There’s another silence.
“What do you want for you, though?”
“I don’t think I’m the most important person in this equation anymore.”
We’ve crossed the other properties and moved onto the Bliss Resort, walking close to the shore. Bit by bit, the resort buildings come into view, and bit by bit, my heart beats faster.
“He doesn’t want to be around all this,” I tell Sophie in a rush, like we’re running out of time to talk. “How is he going to feel about a helpless baby?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but whatever she’s about to say is interrupted by a loud whoop echoing down over the beach. “What was that?”
“Somebody at the pool, probably.” It didn’t come from the direction of the people down at the lakeshore. Most of them are spread out on beach towels, baking in the sun.
“Ooh. Is it a nice pool?”
“It’s pretty nice.” Nice enough that I could fall asleep near by. “I bet you want to go up and see it.”
“Hell yes I do,” says Sophie, cutting across the sand in front of me to make a beeline for the resort building. I hurry after her, rushing up the low staircase and down the path. She only slows down when the pool gate comes into view. And beyond it—
“Oh my god,” she whispers. “I knew there were brothers, but…”
It’s a sight to behold.
Two of the Bliss Brothers—Beau, who I’ve seen on the beach hosting his parties, and Roman, stand on one side of the pool, whistles around their necks.
The pool is teeming with kids.
Kids, kids, and more kids. Kids everywhere.
“Round two!” shouts Roman, and the kids standing on the side of the pool line up, bodies vibrating with anticipation.
“What is this?” whispers Sophie.
“I have no idea.”
She opens the gate and goes in, holding it open until I’ve come through. We sit on the low wall surrounding the pool.
This is a scene. Sun shines brightly down on what must be twenty or thirty kids, their parents gathered in tight bunches under the umbrella tables.
Roman blows his whistle and a line of kids—eight of them, though once they’re in the pool it looks like a hundred—jump into the pool, each doing their own version of a cannonball. They dive underneath the water, coming up with pool toys that have…cloth tails on them in brilliant multicolored hues. They scramble back up onto the side of the pool and twist at them until they open, revealing coins.
Beau comes around the side of the pool once everybody’s out, tossing another batch of toys into the pool. He whips each one by the tail, letting it fly high and arc down onto the sparkling water.
And onto his brothers. Because there’s another man in the pool who looks exactly like Charlie…and Driver.
“Heads up!” Beau shouts, grinning. “Don’t get hit by one of my missiles.”
“Keep your missiles,” yells Driver. “You son of a—”
“Party!” yells Beau, and then he looks around to see if any of the parents heard. Instead, his eyes land on me. “Hey. You look like…” He cocks his head to the side. “You look like a certain description I’ve heard from one of my brothers of a woman who—”
Blood rushes to my cheeks, searing my skin. Do they all know? Is he going to say it out loud, right here in front of everyone?”
Beau snaps his fingers. “You’re Driver’s girl. He has been obsessed with you lately. Our brother’s on the verge of firing him for insubordination.” Beau laughs, then turns back toward the pool. “Hey, Driver. Your girl’s here.”
“My girl? What is this, the nineteen fifties?” Driver snarks, and then he looks past Beau to where I’m standing with Sophie.
His expression softens, his eyes light up, and my heart skips a beat.
“Holiday,” Driver calls, shaking water out of his hair.
“Round three!” Roman yells, and another group of kids lines up at the side of the pool. Roman waits, letting the anticipation gather, and then blows the whistle. The shrill echo hasn’t melted out of the air by the time the kids are in the water.
It’s a smaller group this time, with smaller kids, and one of them struggles with his goggles, jumping on tiptoe in the water while he tries to adjust them.
“Hey, bud,” Driver shouts. “I’ve got you.” On the other side of the pool, Charlie is keeping a close eye on a group of three who’ve gone under and are kicking for the surface, breaking out into the sun with the toys in their hands.
A glance in that direction is enough to me.
I can’t take my eyes off Driver, who has scooped the kid up onto the pool steps. He tugs the goggles off the kid’s head and deftly replaces them. “You ready to go?” he says, his voice rising above the noise.
“Ready!” shouts the kid, his fists balled up by his sides. He looks like he could explode.
“One, two, three…” Driver picks up him up and stands on the first step, then throws the kid back into the water, positioned just above one of the toys on the bottom. The kid dives down and comes back up, yelling triumphantly.
“Nice!” shouts Driver. “Over here. Over here!”
The kid scrambles up the steps and goes to open the toy. A gold coin. I don’t know what that means, but by the look on his face, it’s a good thing.
Driver swims back out into the center of the pool as Beau makes his rounds and Roman calls for round four.
As if he can feel me looking, he turns around and flashes me a grin. He’s got this.
13
Driver
“You made it look easy.”
I’m toweling off over by the bar when Holiday sneaks up behind me, coming around in time to watch me rub the last of the pool water from my hair. “You make trespassing look easy.”
She laughs. “Sophie made me. It’s not my fault.”
Sophie, for her part, is nowhere to be found. “Where’d she go? She was with you at the pool, wasn’t she?”
“Some kind of pie emergency,” Holiday says, brushing the hair back from her face. I’m jealous of her hands. Her own hands. Ridiculous. To hide my jealousy, I flex, turning back and forth in my twin trunks.
“So you decided to come over and check this out.”
“I’ve been richly rewarded,” she says, giggling. “Why didn’t you tell me about your new pool gig?”
“Beau roped me into it. He caught me trying to go back to your place this morning and insisted. Hey, Rob—can you spare me my shirt?” Rob, the bartender, pretends for a minute that he’s lost it, then whips it at me over the surface of the bar.
“One shirt, straight up,” he says. “Are you going to introduce me?”
“Rob, this is Holiday. My…” My love. I’m on the verge of saying my love, even though that makes the least amount of sense of anything I’ve ever thought. “She’s mine. Keep your hands off.”
Holiday blushes deeply. “Don’t listen to him.” She shakes Rob’s hand, giving him a wide, pretty grin. “I’m an independent woman.”
“Come see me any time before you check out for a free drink,” Rob says.
“She’s not a guest, buddy,” I tell Rob, who raises his both hands in apology. “I don’t sleep with the guests.”
“You don’t sleep here, period. What are you doing, hanging around my bar so much lately?”
“Shirking his duties.” A hand comes down on my shoulder. Roman.
“I’m not shirking,” I tell him, rolling my eyes. “I’m setting things up. I know it seems like I ride off into the sunset without a plan, but I do plan. You should know that. You’ve ruined at least one of said plans.”
Roman leans around me. “Hi, Holiday. Nice to see you again.”
Holiday studies her fingernails. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Anyway, we were just leaving. No need to follow along, Roman.”
He lets go of my shoulder. “Get going, Driver.” His tone is light, but I know well enough that the phrase has a double meaning. He wants me off this resort and bringing in cash. Guilt arcs through me. I should be out there, doing my part to keep our livelihood running. And in light of what Charlie said…
“I’m on it.”
I put my arm around Holiday’s waist and lead her away from the bar. “So. You’re here.”
“I’m here,” she says.
“Do you have plans for the rest of the afternoon?”
“I had plans.”
“What happened?”
“I saw you in that pool.” She looks up at me, cheeks pink, and my heart ratchets up its rhythm to match the pulse fluttering at the side of her neck. “Now I can’t remember what I wanted to do.”
“If I didn’t know better, I might thing you were into me.” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. I’ll probably never be able to express to her how much being near her like this tears me in two. My heart—and other parts of my body—scream for me to take her back to my place and lock out the rest of the world. My head rages against the horrible uncertainty of trusting her—of trusting the plans we might make together. How can something so abstract and formless as hypothetical plans feel so much like a cage?
“I’m pretty into you,” she answers. Then she shakes her head. “But I can’t spend the rest of the day in bed with you, Driver. Don’t ask me again.”
I laugh out loud. “They were important plans, then.”
“I was thinking of a safety net.”
This is a woman who doesn’t deal in nets—she deals in walls. “What do you mean by that?”
“Look.”
I let her stare at me for as long as I can stand it. “I’m…looking?”
“I think you should take me for a ride.”
HOLIDAY
“I think you’d make a great dad.” I raise my voice to compete with the roar of the wind.
Driver leapt into action when I suggested driving, hustling back through the resort to a small parking lot away from the guest section. “Take your pick.” He made an expansive gesture at the six cars in the lot.
I don’t know anything about cars, but they looked…expensive. Paint shining. Sleek curves. Powerful engines, I’m sure.
“Are all these yours?”
“These belong to the resort. I’d take you in my personal vehicle, but I wanted to impress you.” His eyes sparkle.
I chose a red convertible.
“Wow,” Driver said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the convertible type.”
“I’m feeling wild today. What can I say?”
Now we’re out on the winding highway outside Ruby Bay, and Driver blinks. “You do?”
“I wasn’t only looking at your body at the pool today.”
He grins. “Could’ve fooled me.” Driver takes one hand off the wheel and reaches for mine. He rubs his thumb over the back
of my and and lets it go again.
“Both hands on the wheel. See? That’s what I like about you.”
His grip tightens, then relaxes. “Sometimes I think it’d be nice to be one of those guys who can drive one-handed. But I like to be in control.” He cuts a glance toward me. “Of the car.”
Of everything.
“Why’d you want to come driving with me, Hol?” It sends a thrill down my spine, the familiarity of that nickname. On Driver’s lips it sounds like we’ve known each other forever.
“Because I have things I want to say to you, and I thought it would be better if we were driving.”
“Say ’em.”
“Okay.” I focus on the road ahead of us. “I don’t know what to do, and I’m hoping you can help me.”
“About the baby?”
“No. That’s decided. I’m having the baby,” I say firmly.
Driver laughs. “That’s the impression I got.” His expression sobers. “You’re wondering about me, then. About what we’re going to do.”
He guides the car around a gentle curve in the road, his body utterly relaxed. This isn’t so bad. Letting him steer…it’s not so bad.
But it is. Of course it is. If I let Driver have his way, I’ll lose my only chance to get out of the routine I’ve been in for so many years. I don’t want to let it go, but if I stay…
Not that staying is an option. I’m seized by the bright hope that he’ll ask me to move into his house on the club side of the resort right now and make everything easier, but what would I be giving up if I did that?
My job at Windspire. The chance to make tons of industry contacts. The chance to be published.
I can’t let all that go.
“How are we going to do this from two different places?” I ask him, knowing in my heart that it’ll always be two different places. Looking at him right now tells me what I need to know—that being on the go, that being behind the wheel and cruising down the highway—that’s as much a part of Driver as anything else. Settling down in New York City would be like cutting off an arm. He’d feel it every day.
“We’ll figure it out.” I don’t look at him. “Hey.” He waits until he has my attention. “We’ll have to figure it out. We’ve got a few months.”
