The Reason for Me

by Prescott Lane

  I head off to the place that always saves me—books. There’s a great local bookstore in the Heights area of the city that I just love to go to. I used to come here all the time growing up. It’s one of those classic old neighborhood bookstores, full of charm. It’s like the store itself has a story to tell.

  Usually I surround myself in travel books, researching my next assignment and escaping my reality. But I’m not going to do that today. Instead, I find myself strolling through the romance aisle—yes, romance!

  I typically avoid anything having to do with the subject. I don’t read romance; I don’t watch romantic movies. I don’t so much as pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine—the articles on having the best orgasm of your life are just cruel. Clearly, I’m not being led by my head today. I spend a few hours lost in the world of happily-ever-afters, where the land of magical dicks and vaginas reigns supreme. And for fuck’s sake, I find myself smiling. I know better than anyone that living happily ever after doesn’t happen, and yet here I am, smiling at the pages—hoping. This is bad! Very, very, bad!

  Holt cannot equal hope.

  My eyes land on a plaque—sometimes, I swear, Logan is speaking to me. Etched into the wood plaque is a Pearl S. Buck quote.

  “His heart withers if it does not answer another heart.”

  Clearly, I’ve spent too much time in the romance section. Where is the cynic section? I’m not answering Holt’s heart—more like his dick. Yes, that’s the part I’m answering.

  Gathering up the books spread across my table, I place them back on the shelf—in order. Okay, so I’m really anal about other people’s books. Not my books, but other people’s books. I know all my fellow book junkies probably would kill me to know this, but I dog-ear my pages—yes, I’ve said it. I also highlight, underline, and scribble in the margins. I think I’m in the minority of book lovers on this, but it just makes the book looked more loved. Books aren’t meant to stay immaculate on a shelf. They are meant to be loved, cherished. The words should follow you through your life—and life is messy. So a coffee stain, or a slightly ripped page isn’t the end of the world. It simply means you loved the book enough that you took it through your life with you—like a dear friend. Okay, don’t hunt me down and shoot me.

  So I had a good day. As I step out onto the patio in the afternoon, my heart rate spikes. I want to see Holt. I probably shouldn’t be looking forward to seeing him. That’s not part of our arrangement, I’m sure. But I can’t help it. “Annalyse,” I hear Judy calling out to me. “Everyone’s coming over for the Razorback game. Join us. Carla made cupcakes.”

  “Should I bring something?” I call back.

  She tells me no. I don’t care one lick about college football. I don’t own a Razorback shirt, much less one of those silly pig hats they wear. Plus, the team isn’t that great; they always seem to come up short. But it’s not about any of that. Happily, I join them in front of their outdoor television and see that Rachel is there with her boys, the dog, and I meet her husband, Chad. Doug is there, too, but he’s keeping a distance. At the half, we are losing. Which might explain why little Nic is screaming his lungs out. Rachel looks so tired and keeps apologizing to everyone.

  “Guess I’ll take him home,” she says.

  “I’ll go,” Chad offers.

  They both look like they haven’t slept in years. I know how that feels. “How about I take him for a little stroll?” I ask.

  “Oh, we can’t . . .” Chad starts.

  “Yes, we can,” Rachel cries. “Here, take him.”

  I can’t help but smile as she passes me the red-faced, wailing little boy. He’s swaddled nice and tight, and I hold him up to my chest and walk towards the water, bouncing him as I go. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I don’t care what country I was in—there is a universal baby bounce that I’ve seen all mothers do for crying infants. It’s kind of like walking, but my arms are doing the bouncing. It’s a good upper arm workout, and he’s starting to settle a little. Then I remember a little song Meg and I used to sing at night: “Angels watching over me, my Lord.”

  So I’m walking, and bouncing, and singing, and I’m so lost in this little baby I don’t hear the television, the cheers when we score, nothing but his little breaths. And then that familiar connection of gray eyes staring at me hits.

  I turn and his eyes meet mine across the yards. For some reason, we’re connected like that. Each of us always seems to be able to sense when the other one is around. It’s weird, but this time Holt turns his head, breaking our connection, and disappears into his house.

  Telling myself I have to be okay with that, I keep bouncing the baby. But the thing is, I’m not okay with it. Even if this thing between us is just sex, I don’t want to feel used. We can at least be nice to each other.

  The baby now fast asleep, I walk back up to the party. Rachel and Chad think I’m some sort of baby whisperer, and I promise to teach them the little song I sang, but I think I just got lucky.

  Holt suddenly appears by my side, but doesn’t look at me. Carla greets him with a plate of food. He greets everyone except me, and starts making predictions about bowl games with Chad and Doug. Maybe Holt only wanted that one night? Maybe me crying freaked him out? I tilt my head down, trying to hide my face, unsure who I’m hiding from, exactly.

  “You alright?” Holt asks, touching my arm.

  I lift my eyes and pull in my pain. “Of course, some reason I wouldn’t be?”

  “I didn’t mean to ignore you. I just . . .”

  “Yes, you did,” I say softly. “And I’d like to know why.”

  “It’s a small group here,” he whispers. “I don’t want to start any rumors.”

  “Rachel saw you leaving my house this morning. You made a big deal in front of Doug yesterday. Everyone already knows. So don’t be a fucking jerk.”

  He leans down, his breath tickling my ear. “For such a bookworm, you sure do curse a lot.”

  “You gonna order me to stop swearing now?”

  His eyes locked on mine. “No, I happen to like your . . .”

  “It’s not gonna work,” I whisper-yell. “You think you can just be all brooding and sexy, and I’m just going to forget what an asshole you were?”

  “You want fake small talk now? Okay!” he says, creating a little distance between us. “So, Annalyse, how do you like living back in Little Rock?”

  Asshole! He knows I hate that kind of bullshit talk. “Oh, you know. It’s better than a UTI or a pap smear.”

  He starts laughing, and just like that, the ice is broken, and he treats me just like any of the other neighbors the rest of the night. My heart sinks—I’m not like the other neighbors, unless he’s screwing all of them. I know Carla and Judy don’t swing that way. He winks at me from across the patio, and I silently urge myself to stop overthinking this. We promised just pleasure, nothing more. That might be the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself.

  *

  After a brutal Razorback loss in triple overtime, the nearly homicidal neighbors disband, and Holt and I walk towards our houses. Shielded by the darkness, his lips land on mine. “That was harder than I thought. I wanted to kiss you all night. Come to my house,” he says, giving my booty a little smack.

  “Is that an order, or are you asking?”

  He sweetly kisses my forehead. “I’m asking.”

  Taking my hand, he leads me to his house. It’s brick like all the other houses in the subdivision, and the entire back of the house is practically all windows, but his place probably is the smallest of the houses on the lake. And as I step inside off his back patio, I know it’s also probably the cleanest. There is no way a single man lives here. Everything is spotless, shined, orderly—figures! I bet he doesn’t even have a junk drawer. This confirms what I’d suspected from the beginning: he is definitely the master-of-his-universe type of man. You know the type—strong, always in control, bossy as hell.

  I stand frozen at his back door, taking in the open concept
kitchen, dining, and living area. Slipping off my shoes, I place them neatly by the door. “How long have you lived here?”

  “A year or so,” he says, taking my hand and leading me inside. He moves me past the pictures on the console table I’m trying to snoop at. I pick up one frame. “Those are my younger twin brothers.”

  “You’ve got twin brothers?” I ask, placing the frame back down. Smiling, he moves the frame just slightly and tells me they go to school up in Fayetteville and are seniors in college. Holt’s more than ten years older than they are. “What are their names?”

  “Ethan and Eli.”

  “You see them much?” I ask, running my hand across the back of his sofa, flipping up the edge of a throw blanket just slightly.

  “Try to. Go up for football games and stuff. They spend a lot of holidays here. This year they are going skiing for Thanksgiving break, so I won’t see them until Christmas.”

  “What about your mom and dad?”

  I see my innocent question hits a nerve. Being a product of the child welfare system, I guess I should know that’s not such an innocent question. “My mom died a few years ago. Cancer.” Stepping to him, I gently touch his hand. “She’s the reason I became a gynecologist.” He tells me how she got breast cancer for the first time when he was in high school, which is when he decided to become a doctor. His eyes lower, talking about how it came back again later, and ultimately ovarian cancer took her life. He points to another frame, a picture of his mom and dad inside. “She was always cold. Wrapped herself in that scarf every day.” The corner of his mouth turns up just a little, and he takes my hand and rubs it between his, already knowing that I’m like his mom in that way.

  “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “She was the best,” he says. “And the love of my dad’s life. He died a month to the day after Mom. No reason. He was perfectly healthy. He just didn’t wake up one morning. They found him in bed, holding a pair of black rosary beads. I just don’t think he knew how to live without my mom.”

  Wow—that’s heartbreaking and romantic in some strange, sick, fucked-up way. “So you’re responsible for your brothers?”

  “They were eighteen when it happened, so not legally, but . . .” he says, smiling a little. “Yeah, I am.”

  Leading me towards a hallway, my eye catches the blanket on the sofa, now flipped back. I know I was playing with the edge of it. I know I didn’t leave it completely smoothed out. He must’ve fixed it without me knowing. He shows me the spare bedrooms, both empty, and the Jack-and-Jill bathroom connecting them. Even his laundry room is organized and spotless.

  “Do you have a housekeeper?” I ask.

  “No, why?”

  “You’re very neat.” He just shrugs and opens up the door to his bedroom. He has a beautiful view of the lake from his bed. “Wow, you wake up to that every morning?”

  “The view this morning was better,” he whispers.

  Okay, maybe I’m easy, but that just made my heart do this weird flutter thing in my chest. And not just any flutter—the dangerous love flutter. Come on, you know the one. The one that happens when you really like a guy. I haven’t felt it in forever, but you know it when it happens to you. Ignore it! “What’s through there?”

  “Safe room,” he says. “For tornados and stuff. Doesn’t your sister’s house have one?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, she should. You never know when something might happen.”

  This man really does seem to think he can prepare and prevent tragedy from happening. Before I can ask him about it, his phone buzzes in his pocket. “It’s a patient,” he says, slipping out the door and leaving me standing in perfection. I nose around his bathroom. He doesn’t even leave his toothbrush out. I think surely his closet will be a mess, but it isn’t. All his clothes are hanging in the same direction, color coded, hanging by season. I walk back in his bathroom and tousle the hand towel a little. I can’t help myself. But it isn’t enough. I hit the toilet paper roll, so the paper would hang down just slightly.

  I hope he’s not OCD because my behavior is going to kill him, but I can’t stand it. I feel so imperfect standing here. Walking to his closet, I push on the clothes so they aren’t all lined up perfectly. I can’t bring myself to switch anything around; his head might explode. Then I walk back to his bedroom and stare at his bed, betting he even made it with hospital corners. I move the pillows, but it still doesn’t look lived in. I try to mess the sheets, but they are tucked too tightly. Frustrated, I throw myself down on his bed and wiggle around.

  “Not exactly how I imagined you’d look in my bed,” he says from the doorway.

  “I’m sorry. I was just . . .”

  “Messing up my bed,” he says, peeking his head in his closet and bathroom. “And the rest of my house.”

  I try to straighten the bed, and he catches me, spinning me around, pinning my arms behind me, and looking down at me.

  “A patient called you?” I ask, but my voice is so low I barely hear myself. “Your patients have your cell number?”

  “A few of them,” he says. “I don’t give my number out to everyone, but this woman just had a miscarriage.”

  “That’s really nice of you.”

  “It’s my job. Plus, I’m on call anyway,” he says, leaning into my neck, his lips grazing my skin.

  “So we shouldn’t start anything we can’t finish,” I say, putting up a fake protest. Shouldn’t I make him work for it a little? Guess it’s really too late for that.

  “There’s no danger in that happening,” he says, pushing me down to the bed. He brushes my hair off my shoulder, leans into my neck, and whispers, “If you come quickly, it just gives me more time to make you come again and again and again.”

  He makes a good argument. His tongue makes a path along my neck, and the muscles between my legs clench. “I felt that,” he says, pushing into me.

  “Holt,” I moan.

  His phone buzzes again. “Fuck!”

  He rolls to his back, answering and giving short, curt responses. When he hangs up, he gives me the most disappointed look. “You need to go?” I ask.

  “Yep, woman in labor,” he says, stroking my cheek. “God, I’m sorry I have to leave.”

  “Price to pay when you date a doctor.”

  As soon as the word date comes out of my mouth, he freezes. But he doesn’t correct me. I’m waiting for him to freak out when he says, “Stay.”

  “But you could be gone hours, right?”

  “Maybe,” he says, nuzzling my nose. “But I want nothing more than to crawl into bed beside you when I get back. Stay.”

  *

  There was absolutely no way I could leave after Holt asked me so sweetly to stay, but it’s been hours. At first, it felt strange to be alone in his house. I’m not the type of girl to snoop around. Mess up his bed and closet—absolutely. But not go digging around. But since he asked me to stay, I figured he wanted me to make myself at home. So I made a little snack in his kitchen, which was so weird. It was like I knew where everything was, only I’d never been here before. Everything was put in just the perfect place—like it made sense that the colander would be under the sink.

  I showered in his amazing shower with all the crazy nozzles spraying at you everywhere. Then I picked out one of his long sleeve shirts that felt well-worn—you know the kind that are so soft and cozy—and I crawled into his bed.

  I have no idea what time Holt got home. It was dark, but even in my sleep, his presence stirred me awake. The dark outline of his body framed by the moonlight coming in off the lake filled the room. His back is to me, and he’s just staring. I can tell he’s holding something, but can’t make out what. “Holt,” I whisper.

  Without turning to me, he says, “Go back to sleep.”

  His mood is darker than the night. And even though winter hasn’t officially arrived yet, there’s a distinct chill in the air. I yawn and lean up on my elbow. “Everything go alright at the ho
spital?”

  He only nods, closes the curtain, lifts whatever he’s holding up to his face, then walks over and puts it in his top dresser drawer. The insecure girl in me raises her ugly head, and I wonder if it’s some picture of an ex-lover. Probably a woman who broke his heart. The one he talked about on Halloween.

  *

  HOLT

  What the hell am I doing? I tried to stay away from her and ended up asking her to sleep over. And she woke up at the worst possible time. I’d rather she woke up and catch me whacking off than see me opening up that drawer—my personal Pandora’s box. I just hope she sticks to our rule and doesn’t ask about it. Maybe I can find a pleasurable way to distract her?

  I can see the questions in her eyes. Naked, I get on my knees in the bed, helping her up, her body pressing into mine, and lift her shirt over her head. I can’t help but grin that she’s borrowed one of mine. My hands slide down the curve of her waist and under the cotton of her panties, removing them. Her hand softly strokes my cheek, and like an asshole, I jerk my head back, her soft touch doing damage to the hard defenses I’ve built. How is that? How can something so soft, so sweet, be my undoing? And damn, the way she looks at me. I can’t have her looking at me like that right now. In one move, I flip her over and yank her ass in the air.

  Her breath catches. Dammit, sometimes I wish I could be one of those guys that only think about themselves during sex, but I’m not built that way. Annalyse’s pleasure will always be more important than my own, and that’s just one small fucking step away from all her needs coming before my own. It’s a slippery slope I’m on.

  Using the tip of my cock, I outline her folds, feeling her open, drawing me in. Running my finger down the curve of her back, her body rolls, her ass pushing against me. She’s got the best ass, pure white, smooth skin, firm, but enough to hold onto.

  “Holt,” she begs softly.