He licked his smiling lips, eyes still squinted with a hint of confusion, and then he shrugged. “Okay.”
“Okay?” she asked. “That’s it?”
“Okay. I mean…” He shrugged again, looking off toward the stream while tilting his head and scratching his eyebrow, appearing deep in thought before holding a hand out and reclaiming her eyes. “Uh… what do you like to do for fun?”
Her heart soared. He could’ve so easily ended it right there. So easily told her that if they weren’t talking sex, then there was nothing left to talk about. That they were as good as dead. But instead, he’d asked her a totally G-rated question. A question that confirmed he still wanted her around even when the topic of conversation wasn’t one sentence away from gracing the pages of Playboy.
He really wanted to know her. To keep her talking. To keep her around. In any way he could.
“Uh…” She twiddled her fingers. “Uh… I—I like video games?”
Was she asking him or telling him? Some part of her was still so taken off guard by his unexpected interest that she worried any word she uttered from that moment forward would always be bookended with a question mark. Every sentence teeming with a hint of doubt at its core. A doubt that would never fail to betray her deepest insecurity—an insecurity based on the fact that, at any moment, he’d realize he didn’t actually give a shit what she liked to do for fun, whether she preferred dogs or cats, or what her favorite video game was.
“What’s your favorite video game?”
Her eyes nearly exploded from her head. Was he reading her mind? “Uh… Call of Duty?”
“You sure? ‘Cause you don’t sound sure.”
“No, I’m sure. I’m just… It’s just now hitting me that the conversation we’re having would’ve been much more appropriate to have before we put our mouths on each other’s genitals the other night.”
“Thought you didn’t want to talk about sex.”
“I don’t! Just making a general observation about how screwed up we are.”
“Yeah, I guess we are pretty ass-backward, huh?”
Fighting a gleeful smile, she cleared her throat and made a concentrated effort to ditch the question marks. “Call of Duty. Call of Duty is definitely my favorite game. Um… what…. What do you like to do for fun? I mean, besides the obvious.” She motioned to the guitar, leaning on the rock beside him.
“I love to travel. Luckily I have a job that lets me do it for free.”
“What’s your favorite place in the world?”
“Rome.”
She gasped. “That’s a good one. Definitely on my bucket list.”
“Maybe I’ll take you there one day.”
Both of their eyes widened the moment those words left his lips as if realizing at the same time the insanity behind what he’d said. That if he were taking her to Rome, it would only be with Milo on their heels. There was a silent understanding, however, that the trip to Rome he was imagining definitely didn’t have Milo in the picture.
Viola’s eyes fell to the ground, and she kicked at the dirt with the toe of her boots.
Cheeks red, he stood from the rock while running his hands over his jeans. “You wanna walk around?”
Her eyes flew back up to his. Ass backward as they were, he still wasn’t trying to make his escape. Hell yeah she wanted to walk around, and she made herself clear by coming up next to him, never breaking her eyes from his. He waited until she was less than a foot away from him before he turned and began a slow trek deeper into the forest.
“I love tattoos,” Viola chimed in sometime during their walk. “I’ve been dying to get one for the longest time, but I just can’t decide what to get.”
“Where would you get it?”
She jutted her hip toward him and tapped at her hipbone. “Right here. Somewhere where no one would even know it was there unless I chose. For me and my lover’s eyes only.”
“Mmm…” He licked his lips while letting his gaze rise slowly from her hips to her eyes.
Viola found herself unable to tear her eyes away, even as his unrelenting eye contact caused a shot of anxiousness to zap through her. He was looking so hard. Was it possible she had a piece of snot hanging from her nose? Food in her teeth? Was it finally hitting him how utterly plain she was? Suddenly remembering that he only dated fitness models? Would it have killed her to throw on a little mascara before making the trek out to the stream that night?
So entranced with Jon, Viola didn’t even notice the boulder in her path until it was too late, tripping over it so furiously she was sure a wipeout was inevitable.
His hand was around her forearm in an instant however—instincts sharper that an MVP baller—and he held tight until she found her footing, guffawing against the full-on laughter that tried to escape his smirking lips. He ensured she was upright before they continued walking once more.
During their walk, five minutes turned to ten and ten to twenty. A new question came flying from Jon’s lips with every step they took, hopping back and forth between borderline nosey and utterly mundane. There was never a lull in the conversation as they walked—a lull that would illustrate he was dying for it to end or trying to escape it. No, he always appeared more excited with every answer she gave him. Letting those answers segue into new questions and even answering a few questions of hers as well. Slowly giving her pieces of him, letting her build on the puzzle that was Jon Baca in her mind with little to no hesitation.
Viola didn’t even notice how deeply they’d walked into the forest, and how far away from the outside world they’d traveled until a sound in the distance stole her attention and ripped her out of the pleasant little bubble they’d built around themselves. Until that moment, nothing in the world could’ve pulled her out of that bubble except the sound that blasted her ears. An utterly distinctive sound that was impossible to ignore.
She froze in mid-step when the sound came again, louder this time, and looked up at Jon.
He’d stopped walking too, bringing the crunch of their shoes to a complete halt and encasing them in utter silence. He cocked his ear in the direction of the noise—proving he’d heard it too.
“The hell was that?” Viola whispered.
Another heartfelt moan, just faint enough to kiss their ears like a whisper, but passionate enough to prove that, had they been a little closer, it would’ve been loud enough to crack glass. Those muffled moans were followed by an equally impassioned, baritone grunt. Coupled together, the croaked bellows, growls and screams left no question to how the sounds that’d interrupted their conversation had originated.
“Damn, is he screwing her or murdering her?” Viola whispered, frowning toward the sound that had now become unmistakable. All she saw before her was a thick brush of trees. “Where is it coming from? I thought the family cabin was the only house for miles?”
“It’s coming from Mr. and Mrs. Washington’s place.” Jon pumped his fist through the air a few times, angled toward the moans and groans that had only grown more feverish. “Go, Mr. Washington.”
Viola took his arm, was momentarily entranced by the hardness of his bicep, and then tugged. “I wanna see.”
“You wanna see?” Jon resisted. “Damn freak. They’re senior citizens.”
“When I hear two people having sex, I have to see it. And I’m not alone, okay? The porn industry didn’t become a billion dollar empire by accident, and I know you watch it too. Probably ten times more than I do. You know damn well you want to see it too so don’t even pretend.”
“Did you miss the part where I said they’re senior citizens?” Jon’s face tightened as if he were trying to hold back a laugh. As if it had just hit him that he and the little pervert holding his arm were nothing short of kindred spirits. “Yo, something is wrong with you, Viola, like for real—for real,” he accused, even as he allowed her to pull his arm, following with a laugh.
They tiptoed through the brush and, soon, the expanse had cleared, and a one-story cabin app
eared, a little smaller than the Moore house but esthetically almost identical. Viola and Jon sporadically shushed each other when one of them accidentally stepped on a branch and caused a noisy crack, creeping toward the glowing windows of the cabin as quietly as they could.
“They’re still going,” Jon whispered.
“They are getting it in,” she agreed.
As quietly as they could, they came up to the wall of the house alongside the bedroom window, the sounds of lovemaking now bordering on deafening.
“I’m surprised they haven’t cracked the damn windows,” Viola whispered.
“It’s just now hitting me that I haven’t seen Mr. and Mrs. Washington in ten years. That means he’s almost eighty. You sure you wanna see this—‘Cause I’m not.”
Viola guffawed breathily, her nostrils expanding as she did everything she could to keep her laughter in her belly. After shushing Jon one more time, with a finger over her smiling lips, she cradled her hands on the wall of the house for leverage and leaned forward, peeking into the bedroom window to get a gander at the crazy old kids that’d spent the last several minutes filling the forest with their lust-filled music.
The sight that greeted her, however, caused her mouth to fly open, a gasp to fill her lungs, and a wave of dizziness to consume her body as she realized what she was looking at. She couldn’t even appreciate the hardness of Jon’s chest as he laid it against her back so he could peek inside the window as well—too busy noticing the exact moment when he saw what she saw. When he gasped so hard, she felt it tightening his abs against the small of her back. When every bone in his body immediately began shaking wildly against hers. When he cursed under his breath.
For a long moment, they were speechless. It wasn’t until Mr. Washington—an eighty-year-old black man who was more husky and broad than most of the trees in the forest behind them—put Betty on her hands and knees on top of the bed and entered her from behind that Viola squealed at the top of her lungs.
Her uncontrollable scream was muffled the instant it came as Jon clapped his hand over her mouth in the next second. Then, her feet had left the ground, and she was airborne. She kicked and screamed as Jon carried her away from the house and back into the forest, the vision of Betty’s naked breasts burned into her brain for all eternity. Infiltrating her body like a deadly sneak attack, so much so that she found herself pounding her fists into the arm Jon had locked tightly around her waist. She couldn’t tell if her every breath left her lips in a gasp because she was screaming, because she was traumatized, or because Jon’s forearm was digging into her ribcage and making the act of breathing impossible.
So lost in the dark world that the sight she’d just seen had taken her too, Viola didn’t even realize Jon had carried her all the way back to the front yard of the Moore house until he set her down on her shaky feet, took hold of her shoulders, and shook her.
“Calm down.” He tried to keep his voice a whisper even though it was as unsteady and wobbly as every bone in her body. “Breathe, Viola.”
Viola tried to draw in a deep breath, but her chest was heaving too quickly, her heart racing too ferociously. She shook her hands wildly in front of her body as she struggled to speak, feeling on the verge of all-out panic.
“Boobs! Betty’s boobs! Eighty-year-old Betty’s boobs!”
“Please don’t remind me.” Jon clenched her shoulders tighter.
“Betty—naked—doggy style—getting railed—boobs! Wrinkled… jiggling… sagging…”
Jon sucked in a breath and let his chin collapse into his chest, his brown hair falling forward and blowing with the breeze.
“Oh my God,” Viola clapped both of her hands over her mouth as she slowly came back down to Earth, her eyes wide as saucers as she continued speaking, voice muffled in her hand. “Oh my God. Betty’s fucking a married man. Your grandmother is fucking a married black lumberjack.” Her hands fell from her lips and collapsed down to her sides, face growing more stunned by the second, spluttering. “The complete… absolute…fucking nerve—the gall…” She struggled to find the right words and finally exploded. “That… fucking hypocrite!”
Jon raised his eyebrows high, pressing his lips into a thin, trembling line.
Viola studied his face for a long moment, frowned, and then bent forward at the hip, a deep belly laugh flying from her wide open mouth so violently it felt like her lungs were trying to climb up her throat.
Jon blew a raspberry a second later, his face going beet red, unable to hold back his own heaving laughter at the sight of Viola falling to pieces before him. They cackled until they grew breathless, stopping only long enough to fill their lungs with much-needed air before collapsing into sniggers once more. They clutched at each other’s arms as their laughter grew so strong it made it impossible for them to breathe at all, causing them to grow dizzy and unsteady, stumbling over their own feet.
As the laughter nearly took her to her knees, it hit Viola that it was the most joy she’d felt since touching down in Utah. A joy she was sure wouldn’t leave her body for many moons to come.
Eighteen
The memory of Betty’s naked breasts had haunted Viola well into the night. Horrifying as the memory was, she still found the act of holding back her laughter bordering on torturous when she awoke the following morning. All day long, she’d been fighting the good fight, trying to hold herself together.
The family had woken up that morning excited about their annual fishing trip, setting off at the crack of dawn for a campground about an hour east of Salt Lake City. Even though the thought of camping was almost as alarming to Viola as the memory of Betty getting pounded, she’d still allowed the Moore family to convince her that climbing onto a dirty fishing boat and sailing into the middle of a muddy river was nothing short of a rip-roaring good time. She’d promptly embarrassed herself by not catching a single fish, even though every other family member had nailed at least a guppy in the four hours they’d spend on the water. Regardless of her subpar hunting skills, however, the amusement in her belly remained every time she snuck a look at Betty Moore.
Only when the family had returned to dry land after sunset and set up their tents at the campground they’d be spending the night in, did the consistent urge to burst into a fit of cackles finally seem to ease within Viola. Probably because the nippy sixty-degree night air was rapidly catching up to her. Not even the hunter green parka she had zipped up to her chin, or the roaring campfire before her, was enough to warm her bones. The entire family was dressed in their thickest winter coats, apparently much higher quality coats than Viola’s, since she appeared to be the only one freezing to death.
She pulled the furry hood of her parka lower on her head, shivering softly. Four logs lay on the ground, surrounding the campfire Robert had built as he prepared a fish dinner for the family. Milo sat beside Viola on one log, Jon and Jackson on the log to their left, Mary straight across and finally, Betty, closing the circle on the log to Viola’s right. Beau rolled a Tonka truck in the dirt at her feet, attached to his grandma at the hip as always.
Six tents had been set up on the forest floor around the fire. Once again, Milo and Viola had been expected to sleep in separate tents until, as Betty had insisted, “you make an honest woman out of her.”
Viola slammed her eyes closed as she shot back to what a dishonest woman Mr. Washington had made out of Betty the night before. The thought of Betty’s flagrant hypocrisy nearly took Viola to the ground in uproarious, hysterical laughter, threatening to rise up her throat with every second that passed. She could feel Jon’s blue eyes burning into her from his log, but Viola didn’t dare look at him, knowing she’d burst out laughing if she did.
As Viola fought for control, Betty and Robert had somehow found themselves entrenched in an argument. The kind of argument that had started off as a “joking” comment that wasn’t really joking at all and, upon being called out, quickly evolved into a full-on argument.
“Ma, I’m not trying to figh
t with you,” Robert said, poking at a piece of the massive trout he’d gutted and laid across the cast iron skillet on top of the campfire grill, it’s skin undergoing a slow sizzle to the perfect crispness. “I’m just telling you, I can’t stand waking up in the middle of the night, and you’re not in the house. Especially when you know there’s a sex offender that’s been on the loose in our neighborhood for months. God only knows when he’s gonna strike again, and you’re a prime target.”
Betty rose her chin high in the air while ignoring Baby Beau, who was desperately seeking her attention by rolling his toy truck up and down the arm of her white winter coat and making growling sounds with his pursed lips.
“Robert Moore, I am a grown woman, and in Jesus’ name if I want to take a walk I’m going to take a walk whenever I darn well please.”
“But at 3 a.m., ma? Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for a woman your age to be out alone at that time of night?”
“A woman my age! I never!”
“Where in God’s name do you disappear to, for hours at a time?” Robert demanded. “Hell, last night I woke up in the middle of the night and stayed up until 5 a.m., sick to death worrying about you. And you come strolling in grinning like a Cheshire cat!”
Jon and Viola shared a look across the logs and pressed their lips together at the same time, both fighting the same battle not to burst out laughing. The orange flame licking at the night air made Jon’s blue eyes seemed almost grey, lighting up the amusement in them and proving that he was moments from losing the battle.
He did lose, chortling softly while dropping his chin into his chest, catching the attention of everyone around the fire but Robert and Betty.
“Mind your business, son,” Betty said. “You’re my child, not the other way around. You have no right to tell me what I can and can’t do, or where I will or won’t go.”
Robert turned to look at her, trout on the verge of burning. “Ma, I’m just saying—”
“Mind your business, son!”
“But, ma—”
Refrain (Stereo Hearts Book 3) Page 22
