Never in a million years did I think I’d get this close to heaven, but it’s here, all around us, if we’d only open our eyes.
When we make it back to the airport I’m so overwhelmed with everything I’ve just seen and experienced that I break down the second I step off the helicopter and I walk at a clip to get away from the rotors and the noise. Harley catches up to me and yanks me back. I don’t know how he can tell—How does he ever know anything I’m thinking?—but he wraps me up in his arms while I cry silently against his chest.
“I … that …” I stutter. “That was …”
He leans in and presses his lips to mine. It isn’t a passionate kiss; it isn’t romantic; it’s just as if he were pressing his lips to my forehead. It’s just a Harley and Rose thing, so when I pull away because it’s too much and I’m on a complete sensory overload, he knows the reason why. We might not talk freely about our past or how we feel for one another now, but deep down he knows and he has an idea what something like this means to me. But it’s more than just sharing a once-in-a-lifetime experience with my best friend—it’s everything. It’s the majesty of these islands, the magic of him, and the fact that if things had gone differently that day it would be his wife here with him and not me. That’s the thought that keeps pestering me like a mosquito relentlessly buzzing at my ear: five days ago he was marrying another woman, and now he’s not.
The ride back to the boat is a blur, and when we board and set sail the tepid breeze has all but died away and the sea spray hits my face like ice. I sit down at the front of the yacht as Harley talks briefly with Ken and his son, and then he comes and sits behind me. His strong arms and thighs wrap around my own as I lean back into the warmth of him. It’s perfect, pure torture, and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.
Later, after several more wines and hours upon hours of gazing up at the sea of stars, I go downstairs to shower the salt from my body before bed. Harley and I explored the salon, state bedroom and VIP master suite earlier, and I am impressed. I could live comfortably with Harley in this space for several days before I thought about strangling him. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that the living space on this boat is bigger than that of my apartment. The bedroom we’ll be sleeping in is certainly big enough for the two of us, and Harley doesn’t even have to duck all that much because of the six-foot ceilings. The shower is a little cramped and drying myself in the spatial equivalent of a vertical shoebox is proving difficult, so I wrap myself in a towel and hurry into the bedroom, colliding straight into Harley’s back as the boat rocks over the waves. My arms wrap tightly around his sides in order to steady myself and keep from falling.
“Ooh, naked girl,” Harley mutters, prying my hands from his forearm and holding me upright as he turns toward me. “If I’d known you were so wet for me, I’d have come down sooner.”
“Funny, asshole.” I poke out my tongue and shake off his hold, turning to the tote bag on the bed. After rifling through several times and emptying the contents onto the duvet in a plume of red rose petals, I realize that I have no clothes. There’s a sweater for each of us, a T-shirt, pair of boxers and chinos for Harley, and a single pair of lacey panties for me. I’m going to kill him. I turn and find him appraising my sunburnt skin.
“Any ideas as to why my clothes never made it into the tote bag you packed this morning?”
He feigns indifference, but there’s a grin creeping in around the corners of his mouth, so I pick up the bag and hit him with it. “Ow, ow, don’t hurt me. How was I supposed to know what you needed?”
“Oh I don’t know, Harley, maybe ask?” I abandon my assault and turn to the bed, studying the items of clothing that he did manage to pack. “I can’t help but notice that you managed to bring enough for you.”
He shrugs. “I knew what I’d need.”
“I’m not sleeping naked next to you,” I snap. I don’t mention that either one of us could take the bed in the other room, mostly because although I know we’ll be sailing all night, I’m sure Ken and Chip need somewhere to rest at some point and though they’ve been complete professionals this whole time, they’re still strangers to me. I don’t think Harley has even thought of this being an option, and if he has, he’s not saying as much.
“Fine, take my shirt,” he says, picking it up and tossing it to me from the rumpled pile I just made on the bed.
“Turn around.”
“Rose,” he protests. “I’ve seen it all before.”
“Just do it.”
He turns around and studies the mattress, toying with the rose petals strewn across it. I slip into his shirt, which is miles too big for me, and pull on the lacy panties that he didn’t forget to pack, and then I climb onto the bed, brushing off rose petals in my annoyance. “What is it with everyone and their goddamn rose petals? It’s not romantic when you have to remove flora and fauna from the bed before you lie down on it.”
“Says the woman who makes a living off selling romance through flora and fauna.” Harley chuckles, stepping away from the bed. He sheds his clothes on the way to the bathroom. I try not to look as he disappears into the shower. I’m still trying not to look five minutes later when he comes out completely naked, flicks off the lights, and climbs in beside me. And I don’t say a word when his big body slides up behind mine and he rolls me over to face him—I’m too busy holding my breath as he shoves his hand into the space between my thighs. Waking up like this is one thing, but tempting fate with it intentionally causes my heart to squeeze painfully because it’s so damn familiar. I’m sure he can feel how wet I am with his fingers wedged up against my lady parts, but he doesn’t comment on this either, so I slide my hand across his belly and snuggle in close, allowing the rocking motion of the boat to lull me to sleep.
Chapter Seven
Rose
Age seventeen
“Hey,” Harley says, crossing the drive and taking my porch steps two at a time. He sits down beside me, crushing the tulle skirt of my dress. Earlier when I’d put it on, and swished about my room in yards of ice blue fabric and silver beading, I’d felt like Cinderella, only Prince Charming must not have got the memo, because he was currently late.
“No Alex yet?” Harley asks casually, as if he were just asking the time, or if he could borrow a pencil. I ignore the fact that my eyes are pricking because I have no intention of ruining this makeup.
“Riley said she’s running late too. Maybe we should just go together and meet them there.” Harley started dating Riley a little earlier in the year. She’s cheerleader pretty, popular, and a complete bitch. Naturally, he fell head over heels like an idiot.
“He’ll be here.” I say, and Harley nods. I’m not even sure I believe it though. Alex is a stoner with shaggy black hair, startling sea green eyes, and his own car. He also gave no fucks, and that’s what I like about him. Mostly, that’s what I like about him. Tonight? Not so much.
I glance at the two clear boxes in Harley’s hand. “Why do you have two corsages?”
He shrugs and chews his bottom lip. “I didn’t know if he’d get you one, and my mom says it’s a rite of passage, so …”
It’s then, that despite all my efforts against it, I do cry.
“Shit, Rose, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Will you put it on?” I wipe away the tears with the tips of my freshly manicured fingers and hope like hell I don’t have panda eyes.
“’Course.” He sets down the other box, and I stare for a brief second at the corsage inside. Riley’s. It’s a yellow rose with some baby’s breath and dark green waxy leaves. It’s hideous, much like the girl it belongs to.
“Rose,” Harley says, pulling me from my reverie. He holds the corsage in his hands and I smile sadly and offer him my arm. Once the bracelet is on, he traces the inside of my wrist with his fingertips.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“Rose,” Harley says, but he chews his lip before saying anything more. His eyes search mine
, and it looks as if there’s some kind of internal debate going on inside his mind when he blurts out, “Don’t sleep with him.”
“Harley—”
“Just hear me out, I know it’s not fair of me to ask you this but—”
“You’re right, it’s not.” I pull my hand free of his and glare.
“He’s not the guy for you. Okay?” He’s gulping down huge lungsful of air. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
I inhale sharply too, not because what he says is a huge surprise—Alex has been a pretty sucky boyfriend—but because Harley is so strung out about this. Harley doesn’t do strung out.
“Please?” he says breathlessly. “Rose, I’m begging you not to do this.”
“God.” I throw my hands up in exasperation and stand. “You can’t say things like that Harley. You’re with Riley!”
“I know.” For a beat he says nothing, I say nothing, and then his phone rings in his pocket and he pulls it out and looks at the display. “Shit.”
“You should get that.”
He doesn’t, and it rings a few more times before the message must go to voicemail. There’s not even a five-second pause before it rings again.
“You should go before the ice princess has a meltdown.”
He frowns but he stays rooted firmly on my front porch. Harley always had to push the limits. If there was a night sky above him, he’d find a way to shove it back and let the sun through. If someone told him no, he’d work on that someone until they not only said yes, but had believed that yes was their idea in the first place.
I was smart enough to realize that he was attempting to do that very same thing with me. I just didn’t know why he cared. “Will you just go already?”
“He isn’t for you, Wendy,” he says softly, rising to his feet.
“And who is, you?” I demand. He doesn’t have an answer for me, which is telling given that Harley always knows just what to say at just the right time.
I turn and walk into the house, slamming the door behind me.
It takes Mom twenty minutes to fix my face after I get done crying. I don’t tell her what he’d said or why I was so upset when Harley left—she is my mom, after all, and would likely have kittens if I said I was contemplating sex for the first time with my stoner boyfriend. She doesn’t press me for information and I don’t supply it, but I’m sure she knows it has something to do with Harley.
When Alex finally does arrive, he’s an hour and a half late and he doesn’t get out of the car, just honks his horn at me from the drive. Mom gets her panties in a twist about us not taking pictures, but I decide I don’t want them immortalizing what a colossal screw-up this night has been so far. I just want to get through it, cash in my damn V-card, and move on with my life.
When I climb in his black, beat-up Javelin SST coupe, he smells like booze and cigarettes. Ordinarily, that might make me feel wildly grown-up, as if I were spontaneous and crazy and liked living that way. Tonight, it just annoys me.
Alex’s gaze rolls over me from head to toe, and he raises his eyebrows and says, “Nice dress. Can’t wait to get you out of it.”
I have to resist the urge to bop him in the nose. There’s no apology for his being late, and Harley had been right—there was no corsage either, other than the one my best friend had given me. When we make it to prom there’s no sign of Harley and the ice princess, and as soon as we walk in it seems as if Alex is ducking outside for a smoke.
I head to the bathroom and enter a stall. I feel like crying, only I can’t muster a single tear. It is what it is. High school sucks, life as a crazy cat lady will suck even more, and then I’ll die. The end.
Moments later, as I’m trying not to pee on my dress, a gaggle of females enters the bathroom and presumably they fluff their hair and touch up their lipstick. I can’t see on account of the door in front of me, but none of the stall doors close.
“And then I had to pay the hotel on my mother’s credit card,” one of the girls complains, and I recognize the voice as Riley’s. That means the other airheaded murmurs of disapproval belong to those in her brood of bitches, Callie and Lisa.
“You’re joking?”
“I mean, what kind of man doesn’t book the hotel for prom night? Honestly, sometimes boys are so clueless. He’s lucky he’s hot, or else I would have dumped him when I first found out that he was really friends with that freak Rose.”
“OMG, did you see her date?” Callie’s ditzy high-pitched voice bounces around the room. “He’s totally gorg, but he looks like a homeless person. Like, put on a tux already and brush your hair.”
“They’re both so weird. And why is Harley even friends with her? Did they like, sleep together?” Lisa asks, and I’m guessing Riley is the one who gasps.
“Uh, no! She’s a total stalker; she follows him around like a lost puppy. Harley said she just won’t get a clue.”
That isn’t true. Is it? Harley would never say that about me. Harley is the only person on earth who gets me, and I him. Besides, I’m not the one buying him corsages and begging him not to sleep with his girlfriend. Riley is lying through her whore teeth, and this bitch is going down.
I pull back the door and prepare to storm over and yank her hair out by the roots, but Riley and her little brigade of bitches are already exiting the bathroom, not a single one of them looking back before they get lost to the wild lights and tragic music of prom.
I glance at my reflection, at my flushed pink cheeks and my sad eyes, and I frown because I’m pretty sure prom’s supposed to be way more fun than this. I sigh, wash my hands and dry them carefully, and decide to go home. I don’t even bother looking for Alex—what’s the point? But he finds me anyway, as I stalk on my too-high heels towards the school gates. He pushes off from the wall and follows me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to him.
“Hey, what’s the hurry, baby?”
“Don’t call me baby.”
“Jesus, did you just get your rag or something?” He tosses his cigarette to the ground and doesn’t bother to extinguish it properly. Of course he doesn’t. What does Alex care if my very overpriced dress suddenly catches alight? He’d probably do it deliberately just to get me naked.
Earlier tonight, I might have jumped at the chance to get naked with him. That’s the thing about teenage girls— unless they’re religious zealots whose fathers buy them promise rings—eww, gross—no seventeen-almost-eighteen-year-old girl wants to hang onto her virginity. Especially not when her boyfriend looks like Alex Dean. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that I’ve been saving my virginity for someone else, someone who I’ll look back on ten, twenty, forty years from now, and know that I’d made the right choice. I’ve been saving my virginity for my best friend, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m destined to die a virgin.
Alex wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me close. “You ready to get outta here and finally show me that sweet pussy of yours?”
I stomp on the cigarette butt and glare at him. “I’m ready to get out of here, but I won’t be showing you my sweet pussy.” I swear to god it takes everything I have not to giggle like a little girl when I repeat those last words back to him.
“What the fuck, babe?” He moves closer, crowding my space. Alex rubs up against me, and for a moment I want to be sick because the truth is he may be hot, he may be way, way hotter than me, but Harley was right—he’s not worthy of me. I’m not punching above my weight—he is.
“Get off me.”
“You know what? Fuck this. I could walk into that gymnasium and have any one of those bitches eating my cock before we’ve even left the carpark.”
“You’re right, you could,” I whisper against his ear and step back. “Just not this one.”
Alex shoves away from me, his shoe kicking mine in the process. I lose my balance and teeter on my heels. It wasn’t intentional, I know that much. I also know he won’t reach out to break my fall either, but that’s okay because someone else does. Harley sets me t
o rights and shoves Alex hard as he’s walking away. “What the fuck, man? You hitting girls now too? Hitting on them wasn’t enough?”
“Take a fucking hike, pretty boy. This doesn’t concern you.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Harley says, getting up in his face. “You touch her again and I’ll break your fucking neck.”
“Harley,” I warn. I’ve never seen this side of him before, and I’m equal parts awed and afraid.
“Fuck this. Her pussy ain’t even worth—”
Harley’s fist connects with Alex’s face. The sound is terrible—a dull thudding crunch. It makes my stomach turn and strikes fear into my heart when Harley doesn’t just stop at one punch, and Alex doesn’t go down. He takes the blows Harley dishes out, and then comes back swinging with a dirty uppercut to Harley’s jaw.
“Stop it!” Neither one listens to me, and when I’m about to throw myself into the fray in order to break them up, I’m pulled back by huge arms lifting me in the air as I kick my feet. “Put me down.”
“I got you, Rose. You’re okay,” a low voice whispers in my ear and sets me on the ground again, but his strong arms don’t let go. I turn around and find Kordell Green, a huge defensive linebacker with midnight skin and dark chocolate eyes smiling down at me. “I got you, and my boy got this.”
I whirl around in time to see Harley throw another punch that has Alex reeling back, but Alex is a scrappy fighter. He grew up in the Tenderloin, and this isn’t his first fistfight. I know Harley’s gotten into a few fights when he’s been out with the guys, but Alex is used to fighting, and Harley isn’t.
In a matter of seconds, Alex comes back swinging and his left hook hits Harley right in the temple. I scream. Harley staggers back but doesn’t fall, which is so obviously not what Alex wanted, so he lays into him again, but Harley’s no lightweight. They hit the ground scrapping, shoving at one another with fists and splayed palms. All his football training must pay off because Harley winds up on top and throws a punch to Alex’s head that knocks him out cold. Harley rears up and just sits there astride Alex, breathing for a moment.
Harley & Rose Page 5
