Although he wasn’t around too much growing up, a few of the things my father taught me managed to stick with me through the years, one being how to work on any kind of vehicle, including motorcycles.
I’ve just finished my morning run, walking the rest of the way down my street to cool down. The storm clouds from last night finally cleared out, leaving the perfect weather to go for a ride on my motorcycle. I’m hoping to fit in a ride before heading into work tonight.
In truth, I am finding anything and everything to take my mind off Sloan. The indecision regarding how I feel about her is starting to irritate me. Relationships are still considered an immediate write-off to me, but I can’t get over how even the slightest of Sloan’s movements brings a reaction out of me.
At first, I thought it was the way she wears those fucking crop tops or the way she seems to bite down on her bottom lip when she’s concentrating. But I know my attraction to her is more than that. The biggest thing is her stubbornness when it comes to accepting help. Her defiance and insistence only make me want to push back harder. It only makes me want her more.
I’ve been fighting the same battle in me ever since we went to the furniture store last week. I keep my interactions with her short, only speaking to her when needed. But then when I’m home and I pass by her on my daily runs, it’s difficult to suppress the thoughts that constantly run through my mind. Most days, I end up thinking about her when I’m in the shower, hoping the scalding hot water will help.
My morning runs only hold off the tension building in me for a short amount of time. All of this is temporary.
When I make the turn onto my street, I pull my phone from my pocket to check for any messages. There’s one from Kylie sitting in my inbox. I hover my thumb over the keyboard, deciding if I should reply to her. It’s been weeks since I’ve spoken to her, not since that morning she stormed out of my house calling me an asshole.
I still don’t care what she thinks of me. Even though I know I am never going to be able to give her what she wants, I consider the possibility of seeing her again. Maybe she’s changed her mind. After all, if she knows I never want to make our relationship anything more than a good fuck, why is she still taking the time to text me?
Refusing to give in to Kylie, I ignore her text and slide my phone back into my pocket. No amount of frustration is worth that mess.
I’ve nearly made it to my house when I slow my steps. Sloan is in her front yard, mowing her lawn. This woman has truly spent an exorbitant amount of time working on her house. One day she’s trimming bushes, the next she’s shoving desks out of her front door.
Sloan can’t hear me, the sound of the lawn mower drowning out the sounds of the neighborhood. I don’t stop to watch her like I did the day I watched her trimming the bushes in her front yard. Instead, I keep walking toward my house, but she’s hard to ignore. I find myself glancing over my shoulder more often than I should.
She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead, the sweat dripping down the smooth skin of her face. The end of her ponytail dances across her back with each step she takes, and the golden highlights in her hair match the tone her skin has taken on since she moved here. The Texas sun has kissed her, giving her its signature golden color. After wiping her forehead, she runs her hand down her cheek, sliding her fingers across the curve of her jaw. Her fingers grip the back of her neck and move to her collarbone.
Sloan hasn’t noticed me walking by, even when I make it to my front door. In truth, I’m relieved she didn’t see me. My cock is hard as a fucking rock, begging for relief. I jog up the stairs and head straight for my bathroom, quickly turning on the shower. I don’t bother waiting for it to heat up. I quickly step out of my shorts, kicking them aside before stepping in. The ice-cold water shocks my heated skin, rinsing away the thick film of sweat.
I grasp my bottle of body wash, squeezing way too much into the palm of my hand, but I don’t give a shit.
I hate that this is what I have resorted to: fucking myself in the shower after my morning runs, thoughts of Sloan’s golden sun-kissed legs wrapped around me. I hate how I imagine her pink lips sucking on the same skin where my fingers grip. I tighten my fingers around the base of my cock, sliding my hand up and down. I move it faster, and the subtle numbing sensation traveling down to my toes is almost too much for me to handle. I lean forward, pressing my free hand against the tiled wall for support. It doesn’t take long for me to cum. I lean forward and rest my head against the wall of the shower, catching my breath. I watch as my cum swirls down the drain, mixing with my soap. The now hot water scalds across my back, and thoughts of Sloan still haven’t left me. The relief is immediate, yet it only lasts for so long.
After I finish the rest of my shower and get dressed, I head downstairs to my kitchen, hoping I can find something to eat.
“Hey, how do you not have any coffee?”
“Oh, shit.” I quickly stop when my sister pops out from behind the door of my refrigerator. “Vada.”
“I’m serious,” she says, holding an energy drink in her hand. She slides one to me, her expression filled with disapproval. “These things aren’t exactly healthy.”
“What are you doing here?” I grab the drink off the counter and snap open the top. The carbonation pops and sizzles before I take a long gulp.
“I came by to check on you.” My sister has had a key to my house ever since the day I moved the rest of Hailey’s belongings out of the house. There are still pieces of her scattered throughout my house. Those pieces I can live with; the rest deserved to be somewhere else.
Since she has a key, I’m not entirely surprised to see her here.
“How long have you been here?” I leave her standing across from me at the kitchen island and pull the package of eggs from my fridge. I start cracking them into a bowl.
“Not long,” she answers behind me. “Long enough to realize I should be sure to bring coffee with me whenever I come over here because you will never buy any.”
“Well, you don’t live here, so…” I’m thankful my sister hasn’t been here long enough to know I just spent the past twenty minutes in the shower, jerking off to thoughts of her new best friend.
“You’re right, I don’t. Are you still thinking of selling this place?”
After whisking the eggs in the bowl, I pour the mixture into the pan. It bothers me to my core that she’s asking me this question this early in the morning. She’s nonchalant in her delivery, not caring why I’m considering selling it in the first place.
“I haven’t decided yet.” I run my spatula through my eggs, watching as they slowly solidify.
“Okay.”
“I hope that’s not why you came over here so early in the morning, to ask me if I’ve decided to give this all up.” I wave my spatula in the air. I still haven’t turned around to face her, using my cooking as a distraction. I’m still reeling from my thoughts of Sloan earlier and what it was like to see her this morning.
“No, that’s not the only reason,” she says. She moves out of the kitchen and sits down on the couch in the living room, now facing toward me. “Sloan asked if I could help her paint her living room today. She’s finishing up mowing the lawn, but I told her I’d be over here until she was done.”
“Shit. Sounds like she’ll never stop working on that house.”
“What do you mean?” Vada sits up, pulling her back away from the couch. She’s suddenly more interested in this conversation now that I’ve brought Sloan up. “How do you know she’s changing it so much?”
Shit. I forgot I never told her I knew Sloan’s mother and have been inside her house more times than I can remember. She and I grew apart once we both graduated high school. After I went off to UT, I was too wrapped up in my own life to bother going out of my way to talk to her outside of the usual holidays. Up until I lost Hailey, she never knew much about my life. I never told her the kind of relationship I shared with Ellie.
“Well…” I shake my head, sl
iding my eggs onto my plate. “She’s always out there either working on her yard or leaving a piece of furniture on the curb. I can only assume.”
I sit down at my dining table and start to eat my eggs. She stands up from the couch and takes a few steps closer to me. The kitchen is between us, but I can feel her stare burning the right side of my body. I prepare for an interrogation.
“Huh.” She crosses the living room and the kitchen before sitting across from me at the table. Gold streaks peek out from her curls as the morning sun shines against her brown strands. She looks just like our mother, barely a trace of our father in her. I’m glad. The asshole didn’t deserve Vada.
She rests her elbows on the table, placing her chin in her hands. Her palms cup her jaw as she stares at me.
I drop my fork. “What?”
“Nothing.” She sits back, and her hands fall into her lap. “Have you talked to Colton lately?”
I pick up my fork again and stab a chunk of egg. I lift one shoulder as I chew. “Not since yesterday. Why?”
“No reason.” She chews on her thumbnail then drops her hand again. She gives me a reassuring smile. “We were just supposed to go to a movie last night, but he never texted me. At least not until this morning to apologize. He said he fell asleep studying.”
“He’s been busy with his classes. I don’t think he has many left, so he shouldn’t be as busy.”
“Right.” Her shoulders rise as she inhales a deep breath. “I was going to talk to Sloan about this but figured I’d mention it now. There’s a festival next weekend we could check out.”
“I’ll see.”
“You will see?” Her eyebrows arc across her forehead. “The other day you were all about going. You said to count you in.”
I scoff. “Not all of us have our entire month planned out, Vada. I’m not sure.”
“I figured as much.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and leans forward, crossing her arms on the edge of the table.
“What does that mean?” I stand up and drop my plate into the sink then turn around to face my sister.
“Exactly what you think it means.”
She’s right. I do know exactly what she means. For the past year, I’ve found it extremely difficult to follow through on anything. Relationships, family, business. The part of myself that once was has been drowning, but I don’t give a shit if I toss it a life raft or let it sink to the bottom of the ocean like an anchor. It’s easier to let the past fall away and hope to forget it than it is to deal with it and hope to make it out on the other side.
“Look, Vada, I’m handling the restaurant fine. I’ve been working on my bike again.” I wave toward the front door. “I even helped Sloan pick up her new desk the other day from the furniture store. What more do you want from me?”
“You what?” she asks, her eyes widening.
Shit.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh. “It’s not a big deal.” I’m a big, fat liar. It was a huge deal. There is no denying that me offering to spend my time with a woman outside of my bed sheets is a big deal according to everyone who knows what my life has been like recently. “She was struggling to get her mom’s old one out the door, and when she told me she was on her way to pick up the new one, I couldn’t let her do it on her own. Knowing her, she’d likely have broken her ankle or tripped just carrying in one of the boxes.”
“Sure.” There’s a sparkle in Vada’s eyes, a hint of amusement at my story.
“Stop.” I hold my hand up to her.
“I won’t say any more about it.” She holds her hands up and leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. “But I know how you are, Dallas.” There’s hesitancy lingering in her expression as she shakes her head, raising her shoulders. “And Sloan isn’t that kind of woman.”
“How do you know what kind of woman she is? And who says I’m into her that way?”
My own questioning doesn’t even convince me into believing I’m not into Sloan. I want to fuck her. There isn’t any other way around it. The proof is in the way I thought of her in the shower only thirty minutes ago.
Vada’s expression shifts, showing me she knows me all too well. She can see straight through my thin veil of artificial ignorance.
“I’m just letting you know, Dallas. You shouldn’t get involved with Sloan.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Oh,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Sure I am.”
“But now you have me wondering why. Why should I not get involved with Sloan?” Here I am again, pushing to find out what Sloan has against men. I lean against the kitchen counter and cross my legs at the ankle. I shove my hands into the pockets of my shorts and look down at my feet.
“It’s not really my place to say, but I’ll just tell you her mother’s death was only one of the reasons she was so quick to move down here from Minnesota. You’re both complicated, but in different ways.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why, but Vada’s words feel like a fist hitting me in the chest in one blow. Even though she said we’re complicated in different ways, there’s a brief moment where I imagine Sloan suffering the same kind of pain as mine, a loss as great as mine. Sloan never knew her mother, so she doesn’t wear her grief from that death on her sleeve, but maybe she carries the grief of another.
I rub my fingers across my chin, digesting what she’s told me. I can feel her still staring at me, and I look up to find she’s doing just that.
“One last question,” she says quietly. “Did it bother you when Gareth went up to her at the bar the first night you both worked together?”
Her question throws me off guard. It’s a shift from the conversation we’ve been having, but I’ve clearly done a poor job at pretending to have a lack of interest in Sloan and who she gets involved with in this city. I also didn’t realize Vada had paid that much attention to the man Sloan was talking to that night. I assumed she was too involved with her customers to notice.
But I did notice. It was hard to break my eyes away from her, especially when I saw Gareth sit in front of her, turning on his typical charm. I don’t know Gareth well other than the fact that more often than not, he uses my bar and a few others on the same street to pick up different women. Several times I’ve overheard him bragging about the amount of money he has in the bank and how at least once a month he flies out to his family’s vacation home in France. It’s all complete, utter bullshit and I never fall for it, but some women do, and I hope Sloan isn’t going to be one of them.
Judgment fills Vada’s eyes as she stares at me. I know she’s thinking we’re no different. Yes, we both sleep with women with the intention of knowing it will never go any further, but I know there is no way in hell we are the same.
Gareth uses his lies to pull women in. He manipulates them into thinking he’s someone he isn’t. On the other hand, I never lie. I never pretend to be someone I’m not.
“You think I care that Gareth was talking to Sloan? That asshole talks to any woman who is willing to sit and listen to the bullshit he spouts off.” Again, a thin veil of artificial ignorance. I hope if I play it off enough, my sister will lay off this topic. It bothered the fuck out of me that he was talking to Sloan.
“That’s what I thought.” She purses her lips, nodding. “Anyway, Sloan’s probably done by now. I should head out.” She rises from the table. She immediately pivots our conversation, leaving me hanging.
“I’m serious, Vada. I didn’t even notice Gareth talked to her that night, or any other one since.” I shrug my shoulder, following her down the hallway.
“It’s fine,” she says over her shoulder. “I believe you.”
No, she doesn’t. It’s clear.
She’s still heading toward the front door, but she stops when three knocks sound against my front door, the pounding traveling down the hallway. I move around her to answer it. After all, this is my house, not hers.
When I open the door, Sloan stands on the other side. Her eyes widen slightly, a
nd her bottom lip falls away from her top, making a small opening in the smooth flesh of her mouth. The smell of fresh-cut grass immediately flows in from Sloan’s perfectly manicured lawn.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I reply, realizing this is the first time she’s ever seen past the front door of my house. Her eyes move to my right, finding Vada behind me. She swings her gaze back to me. “Vada said she would be over here.”
I’m not entirely sure why she’s being so hesitant with me. She clearly sees her standing behind me. Maybe she feels uncomfortable being here. Maybe it’s because of the way we left things after the furniture store and how short we’ve been with each other since.
“Well, she’s right here, as you can see.” I cross my arms over my chest and turn halfway so she sees her behind me.
“Thanks,” she mutters.
I’m giving Sloan the cold shoulder again. It’s the only way I know how to keep myself under control when she’s around. There’s a part of me I’ve noticed growing weaker the more I’m around her. I haven’t quite figured out which part of her it is, the long damp strands of hair resting on her bare shoulders or the way her golden skin is still thick with moisture from her shower.
Sloan mimics me by crossing her arms in the same way. “Hey, Vada.” She smirks, her eyes lighting with fire, refusing to break away from mine. “I was wondering if maybe you want to go out for a drink afterward. Didn’t you say you have tonight off?”
“I do,” Vada replies, standing beside me. She grins. I can already see her mood shifting with Sloan’s idea, probably because Colton disappeared on her yesterday.
“Great.” Sloan grins. She drags her tongue across her bottom lip and breathes in. Her chest and shoulders rise in satisfaction.
“I’ll see you later.” Vada rests her hand on my shoulder as she moves past me, following Sloan down the walkway.
The Rules of Heartbreak: An Enemies-to-Lovers/Next-Door Neighbor Romance (The Heartbreak Series Book 1) Page 10
