by Megan Crane
“I took guitar lessons in high school. But I never played. Not in front of anyone else. I’ve never really liked performing.”
“But you moved to Nashville anyway.”
“Which is where I learned that I really don’t like performing,” he said, a current of something in his voice. She didn’t entirely understand. It wasn’t quite laughter—it was darker than that, more complicated. “On street corners or anywhere else.”
“Why not?”
He looked at her, then back at the guitar.
“I like the music. I like to get lost in it. I don’t really like having to come up with a set list. Worry about a sound check. Or the crowd. Or my voice. Some people get a charge out of that, but I don’t.”
“I would hate it.” She could feel something shift in the room after she said it, but she didn’t know what it was. Only that it felt electric. “Honestly, it’s my worst nightmare. Standing up in front of people and having them all stare at you. Having to give them something that’s supposed to make them feel something or act a certain way or sing along...” She shuddered. “I don’t mind giving presentations because that’s facts. It’s just conveying information. But something creative? That I made and means something to me? I think I would die.”
Vaughn made a low sound, like some kind of sigh. He muttered something, but Devyn didn’t catch his words, and she couldn’t help thinking that maybe that was just as well.
He set his guitar aside and reached for her instead.
She’d forgotten how strong he was. He picked her up as if she was one of the sofa cushions, and transferred her to kneel there over his lap. And as she sat, close to him again the way she’d wanted, he smoothed her hair back from her face.
“Which is this, Devyn?” he asked. She could have sworn there was almost something...resigned in the way he was looking at her. But that didn’t make sense. “Your circus or your sad little cell?”
She angled herself closer to him, suddenly glad in a deep, fierce way that he was so big. Sculpted to perfection. Hard everywhere, and especially where she’d rocked against him. Glad and something like gleeful, and she melted all the way through.
“Both,” she said softly, because here, with him, she could be everything. “And more.”
And then she leaned in to him, looped her arms around his neck, and set her mouth to his.
Chapter Eleven
The closer it got to Christmas, the more Devyn felt as if she’d been in Jackson Hole for months. Years, maybe. It was as if Chicago was a dream she’d had a long time ago and the longer she was lost in the snow and the relentless Christmas cheer, the less she could seem to hold on to memories of the life she knew perfectly well she lived somewhere else.
Not only lived there, but would be returning to in a few short days.
Everything was the snow and the biting chill, fierce and intense and everywhere. Beyond that, there was family. Greys were everywhere. On the streets of town, in the restaurants and bars, at the activities that Melody set up—or announced she wanted to do, to be more precise, and then had Devyn set up for her—each day. There was family everywhere Devyn turned, which taught her some hard truths that she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to learn about the life she’d gone off to live on her own in a faraway city.
Because she liked it.
She liked seeing her cousins at night, then running into them again at Cowboy Coffee or Jackson Hole Roasters come the morning. She liked that her grandparents were nearby at all times and could be counted upon for cheese and cracker dinners, snide commentary on anything and everything, and their own particular brand of prickly, encompassing love.
Devyn found herself wondering why it was, exactly, that she lived so far away from everyone. Why it was that she’d deliberately isolated herself from everyone who loved her.
Because even though they drove her crazy, the truth was that she loved her family. Her mother and her sister, her father, and all her crazy relatives. And Vaughn hadn’t been wrong when he’d pointed out that more than a small part of her must love all this drama too, or she wouldn’t keep coming back to immerse herself in it.
Vaughn.
Above and between and all around everything, there was Vaughn.
Friday night had been a revelation.
Not only did the man know how to play guitar, he knew how to play her body in precisely the same way. With all that same fierce attention. With the same focus and intensity and more than a little fire.
This time, she hadn’t snuck away when he’d left the room. They’d spent a long time in that bed of his, lit up bright from the outside, just like before. He’d carried her into the bedroom when the kissing on the couch had gotten a little too out of control, but when they’d lain down together he’d let her do the exploring.
And she had.
Devyn had crawled all over him, anointing him with all the things she wanted that she wouldn’t have been able to put into words. And when she’d hurtled them both straight toward the edge of reason, of need, Vaughn had watched her with eyes nearly black with passion and approval as she’d crawled up, settled herself on top of him, and taken him deep within her.
And that had only been the start.
But this time, after he’d returned the favor in kind, licking his way into her in the shower and then demonstrating his own powerful need for her back on that bed again, he’d been awake there beside her when she’d started, looked at the clock, and realized it was time to go.
“Stay.” His voice had been raspy. Hoarse and almost unbearably sexy.
“I wish I could,” she’d said as she’d sat up, when sitting up was just about the last thing she wanted to do.
It surprised her was how true it was. That she really did want to stay. She wanted to wrap herself up in Vaughn. She wanted to stay until she smelled like him. She wanted to lose herself in all this heat and yearning, possibly forever.
He’d reached out and traced a pattern across the small of her back. “Why can’t you?”
“My mother might not pay attention all that well. Or really at all, most of the time. But even Melody will notice if I keep failing to come home at night. Eventually, anyway, she’ll notice.”
Vaughn had laughed. “Are you entirely sure about that?”
It was a fair point. “Even if she didn’t, my cousins would certainly notice if I was here again in the morning. And I’m pretty sure my father wouldn’t much like it either. He once gave me a lecture on keeping it classy. I suspect staying out all night while at my mother’s for Christmas would not apply.”
“I thought his entire lifestyle was about live and let live.”
Devyn had smiled at him as she’d tugged her bra into place. “That’s his philosophy, yes. But I think you’ll find it doesn’t exactly apply to his daughter. And besides, he would never tell me not to do something. He would suggest that there’s a time and a place and this is not it.”
She’d busied herself with her long johns, then had walked out into the other room so she could begin layering on the clothes she’d need to go outside again. Something that seemed even less appealing than it normally did, here in Vaughn’s toasty warm hotel room.
Where he was hot to the touch and deliciously naked.
But Devyn forced herself to keep going. It was already two a.m. If she stayed any longer, it would be dawn before she got out of here and that was too late. When she was fully dressed, she turned back around to find Vaughn standing in the doorway to his bedroom, watching her.
“I don’t like being your dirty secret,” he told her quietly, though the look in his eyes was intense. “But if that’s the only way this can happen, I guess I can make myself okay with it.”
“I wouldn’t call you my secret, dirty or otherwise,” Devyn had argued, frowning at him. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m just not making announcements to my entire extended family.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself, darlin’.”
“I promise you that if someon
e asks me directly if you and I are hooking up, I will not lie about it.”
He’d rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t like secrets, Devyn. That’s all.”
“Nobody likes secrets.” She’d tugged on her scarf to make sure it was actually covering her neck. Or maybe because she’d felt so fidgety. “But I don’t see the point in telling people things they don’t need or want to know. This is Christmas. And my mother’s birthday nightmare that goes on and on and on. We don’t need to wrestle the spotlight away from either of those things, do we?”
He hadn’t looked like he particularly believed her. And Devyn hadn’t understood why it bothered her so much. What did it matter what he thought? Vaughn had probably known as well as she had in that moment that no one was likely to ask such a thing. Not directly, anyway. And besides, she hadn’t thought of him in years before this Wyoming week. It made no sense that now, stuck here in all this snow with too many ghosts of Christmas past around them at all times, pressing in on Devyn whether she liked it or not, she could think about very little else.
Well. That and how much she wanted Vaughn’s good opinion, which made everything far more complicated than it ought to have been. This was supposed to be a hookup. Wasn’t that what she’d called it? A booty call. Something minimizing and disposable. It was okay to want his body. That was allowed—encouraged, even, or so she thought.
It was all the other things she felt and wanted and yearned for in parts of herself she hadn’t known existed that were forbidden.
She hadn’t wanted to leave. She’d wanted to stay there, and not just because the way he used his hands all over her was fast becoming an addiction. But because she hated that dark thing in his gaze then. She hated that he thought she was...ashamed of him. Of this.
Or whatever it was he felt that made him look at her that way, as if she had the power to hurt him.
Maybe the truth was that she hated that she didn’t know how she felt about anything.
Or worse, she did know. And didn’t want to deal with all the complexities that her feelings might force her to face.
Devyn had gone over to him. She’d pulled herself up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his jaw. Then, when he ducked his head to make it easier for her, that cheekbone of his, too high and too tempting.
And then, at last, his mouth.
His perfect mouth.
“Tomorrow is the ice-skating party,” she’d whispered, her lips against his. “You won’t want to miss it.”
“Of course I want to miss it,” he’d replied, but the look on his face hadn’t matched the lighter tone of his voice. She’d pulled away from him, settling back down on her feet, and he slid his hands over her jaw, then held her face between them. “I want to miss all these ridiculous stunts. But I don’t want to miss this. So I guess that means I’m caught.”
“Don’t think of it as caught,” Devyn had said, forcing the words out past the lump in her throat she didn’t want to admit was there. Because it shouldn’t have been there. Surely that was forbidden too. “Think of it as lucky.”
But all the way back to Melody’s sprawling house there on the other side of the Snake River, she hadn’t seen the deep, starry Wyoming night all around her. She hadn’t seen the sparkle of the lights or the way the headlights of her taxi picked up the snow that had blanketed the whole of the world in the same soft, relentless white.
All she’d seen, over and over as if it was on endless replay, was the look on Vaughn’s face as she’d left.
And no matter how many times she told herself that it shouldn’t sit there inside her chest like a sob, she couldn’t make it go away.
She’d tiptoed into her mother’s hushed, quiet house, amazed that she managed to do it well. She didn’t crash into anything. She didn’t set off any alarms. Not bad for a recovering Miss Goody-Two-Shoes who’d never practiced such things in her high school years like everyone else.
Because in her high school years, it had been Devyn sitting at home staring at the clock and Melody who’d been out there carousing, night after night. She stopped moving when that hit her, standing there in the gloom of the big house, lost in the guest hallway next to an artist’s interpretive rendering of the Grand Tetons in reds and blues.
It was maybe not such a surprise that her freshman year roommate at college had called her the Resident Nun, now that she thought about it.
Devyn took a quick shower, crawled into bed and passed out within seconds, and when she woke up the next morning from a series of dizzy, impossible dreams that seemed to simmer with that fire she associated with Vaughn it was a little after nine-thirty in the morning.
And Sydney was sitting there on the end of her bed.
“Rise and shine,” Sydney sing-songed. When Devyn glared at her, bleary-eyed, she nodded toward the bedside table. “Anticipating your overwhelmingly friendly reception, I took it upon myself to come bearing gifts.”
That was when Devyn smelled the coffee, and muttered something as she pulled herself to an upright position, not really caring that the wet hair she’d slept on was almost certainly standing straight up on the top of her head.
Not that the sight of her in her morning state bothered her younger sister. Sydney rattled on about her flight from DC to Chicago late the night before, her few hours of shut-eye in the airport because she couldn’t be bothered to get a hotel, and how dire she’d been while waiting for her five a.m. flight to board. Devyn sipped at the coffee her sister always knew how to make to her precise specifications, and waited for her brain to clear a little bit.
“Mom told me to come and say hello the moment I arrived,” Sydney said, making herself comfortable on Devyn’s bed. “But you know, I’m still scarred from the last time I walked into her bedroom.”
That woke Devyn up far better than the coffee could have. “Why would you ever walk into her bedroom? Are you insane?”
“You know why. She begged me to come say goodnight when I got in from the movies and I was seventeen and obedient.”
“You? Obedient?”
“I would be much more sympathetic if you were the one who had Mom and some hideous boyfriend from Tampa, Florida, etched forever in your brain.”
“You wouldn’t be sympathetic at all. You would send me daily memes.”
“I would want to be sympathetic,” Sydney said, smirking. “Do you have any idea who’s in there this morning?”
“Our mother is a fully functioning human being, Sydney. Who has needs and desires. Perfectly normal, healthy, sexual needs and desires.”
“Ew. Stop. You’re disgusting.”
Devyn smiled. Smugly. “For all I know she’s in there by herself, sleeping soundly. On the other hand, she could have a group situation happening. The twins, for example.”
“Oh my God. The twins.”
“Or much worse, my father. I don’t intend to go find out.”
“That was my take.” Sydney shook her head. “I’m also still scarred from that time she demanded we all strip and sauna together.”
Devyn snorted. “You’re the fool who dropped her towel.”
“I thought we were all dropping towels!” Sydney retorted, still as outraged as she’d been back then. She made a face. “The reality is that I just don’t want to know. Details. Names. Or anything else.”
“Well, then, you better buckle in. Because the next few days are going to be entirely about your mother’s sex life. Past, present, and future. Welcome. And Merry Christmas to you, grasshopper.”
“We’re here to facilitate her romantic and marital life, Devyn. Not her sexual reawakening or whatever the hell she was singing into my voicemail last night before I had to bleach out my ears.”
“You go right ahead and tell yourself that she’ll be choosing between her many assembled exes by using a clever little written survey, if that helps you sleep at night. I think we both know she’ll actually be utilizing a significantly more fleshy kind of test.”
Her sister shuddered, then mimed vomiti
ng over the side of the bed. Which, as far as Devyn was concerned, more than made up for the early wake-up time.
Melody was so delighted to have her little family intact, all her girls together at last, that she was nearly incandescent with it. Once she’d trailed out of her bedroom around eleven, that was, trailing her cashmere bathrobe behind her like a train and wearing her hair in two thick braids that made her look like a twelve-year-old.
A twelve-year-old with an ornate tramp stamp tattoo, a belly ring, fluffy bunny slippers, and a pair of bootie shorts better suited to a pole-dancing class.
“This just like old times,” Melody trilled, dancing around the kitchen to music only she could hear as she waited for a new pot of coffee to brew. “Just me and my girls, against the world. The way it should be!”
“How is it just us against the world when Devyn’s dad is in the other room?” Sydney asked from her spot at the kitchen counter. She was tapping away at her laptop the way she always did, looking smart and cute. Which she also always did. She had higher, more prominent cheekbones than Devyn did, brown eyes instead of blue, and she liked to call her hair color dark auburn. But their differences hardly signified. They were obviously sisters.
No one who had ever looked at the two of them had ever been in doubt. And neither had they. Three-year-old Devyn had taken one look at the tiny baby their mom had brought home and that was it. They’d been best friends ever since.
“Just as smart-mouthed as ever, I see,” Melody was saying with that sparkling little laugh she used when she was determined to make everything absolutely delightful or die trying. “I love that both of you are just like me. You make your own way. You do your own thing. And believe me, girls, there’s nothing more powerful in this world than a woman who does as she pleases.”
Devyn and Sydney gazed at each other across the expanse of copper pots dangling above the kitchen island, each daring the other to weigh in on that remarkable claim. With its usual basis in absolutely nothing like reality.
But Melody was dancing, and neither one of them wanted to interrupt that with a little dose of facts. Maybe the truth was that they both preferred Melody’s version to the any upsetting discussion about what was real or what had actually happened.
