by Abbi Glines
He cupped my face with one of his big hands and brushed his thumb over my lips. “Are you telling me you won’t be able to let anyone else touch your body?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes tightly and inhaled sharply before his eyes opened back up and the green had darkened. “That’s good, sweetheart. Because that means I don’t have to go to prison for tearing a man apart for touching what’s mine.”
A giggle burst out of me, and he smiled, then bent down and captured my lips. It wasn’t a hungry kiss. It was slow, delicious, and deep. I sank into his arms and decided I’d worry later about how I’d survive if he left me again.
When I opened my eyes this time, the sun was brighter outside, and I was in Tripp’s bed alone. I much preferred waking up in his arms on the sofa. Stretching, I turned over and looked around his room, which hadn’t changed much since the last time I was in here. The best thing about it was that it smelled like him. Snuggling in the Tripp-scented sheets was tempting, but I missed him being here with me.
I sat up and swung my legs off the big bed and grabbed a T-shirt he’d left lying over the chair in the corner. After pulling it on, I ran my hands through my hair and went to find Tripp.
The first thing I saw was his back. Even when he did something as simple as pour coffee, his back muscles moved. The sweats he’d pulled on hung low enough that I could see the dimples in his lower back and the cut of his hips. My hands itched to touch every inch of him. I really wanted to see his backside naked.
“You keep looking at my ass like that, and I won’t give you this coffee I just made for you. I’ll spread you open on the bar first and make you come again.”
His mouth. I really liked his dirty mouth. “That’s not much of a threat,” I replied. I walked over to take the cup he was holding in his hand.
He slipped his other hand around my waist, cupping my bottom. “Glad you feel that way. Not sure you’re getting out of here anytime soon.”
As wonderful as being locked up with Tripp and having sex all day sounded, I had to be at the course by three. I was working the last shift of the day because I had worked so late last night.
“I have to go to work,” I reminded him. “And you need to stop touching me while I’m holding hot coffee. I don’t want to burn you.”
He sighed and slipped his hand away. “When will you get off work?”
“Close to seven,” I replied, then took a sip of the warm goodness in my cup.
He ran his hand through his hair and looked at the wall behind me for a moment. I knew he was thinking, and that made me nervous, but I drank my coffee and waited. We didn’t have a definition for what this was we were doing. I had my own fears, and I knew he had his.
If I hadn’t attacked him this morning after waking up to his hard cock pressing between my legs, then things wouldn’t have escalated. Now that they had, we were going to have to reevaluate. This wasn’t casual dating with sex. We had history. We had feelings and emotions already running deep, and then there was the way he looked at me after sex. All that made this a lot more.
“After this morning, I don’t think I can be without you. I want you with me. I don’t want space. I want you here. With me. All the fucking time. I want to be able to hold you when and where I want. I want to go to sleep and wake up with you in my arms. Bottom line, I need to know where we stand. Where’s your head at?”
My head was still replaying the amazing sex we’d had. I wasn’t ready to think past that. “I have to get ready and go to work. And you’re right, we need to talk. But for now, can we just be us? No labels. Just us?”
He frowned. “Does being ‘us’ mean that if I want to grab you and kiss you in a public place or call you just to hear your voice, I can? And that you’ll come sleep here with me every night?”
Sleeping with him every night was the one thing I wasn’t sure of. I wasn’t ready to depend on him. My questions about his plans for the future and his relationship with his parents still hadn’t been answered. I wasn’t sure he could answer all that now.
“Yes to everything but the sleepovers. I think for now, we should have a few boundaries. Lines we don’t cross. Just to make sure we aren’t moving into something we aren’t ready for.” Or that he wasn’t ready for. He loved living on the road and moving from place to place. How long before he remembered that and resented me for being the thing holding him here?
He let his head fall back as he muttered a curse. He didn’t like that line.
I set my cup down on the bar and slipped my arms around his waist. “It’s not that bad. You just . . . you need to make sure this is the life you want.”
“Sweetheart, you in my bed every night is exactly the life I want. I’ve wanted it since I was eighteen. I don’t need to make sure of anything.”
I so wanted to believe that. “Here’s where we stand, Tripp. You didn’t go to college, and you’ve only got experience as a bartender. I’m not sure how you’re living without a job right now, unless you get paid really well to be on the board at the club. Me, I didn’t go to college, and I’m a drink-cart girl at a golf course. We don’t have any idea what our plans are for the future. I’m the girl from the trailer park who’s used to growing up living paycheck to paycheck, and you’re the boy who was supposed to be the heir to the Newark legacy. But you ran from that life because you didn’t want it. So here we are. Do you really want to get a job as a bartender in Rosemary Beach when your savings run out? I doubt that very much. And this condo isn’t big enough to raise a family in, so when you get married, you’ll need to get a house. We both know you can’t afford a house here, so you would have to move.” I stopped and felt panic rising in my chest. This was all the stuff I didn’t want to think about. “All of that is why I need boundaries. I need to protect my heart some. Because when you leave here, because you will—you’re meant for bigger things than being a bartender—I will be left here to pick up the pieces.”
When I moved away from him, he let me go. I was afraid to look him in the eyes after that. He hadn’t been thinking about any of it. He had been living in the now. I had just shown him the future.
I couldn’t trust Tripp with my heart, because with him, it was forever. I didn’t think about any of this with Jace. He had thought I wanted a proposal because I’d mentioned it once when I was drunk. But the truth was, I didn’t plan the future with Jace. Deep down, I had expected him to leave me, too.
“You’d better get ready if you don’t want to be late,” Tripp said, breaking the silence.
My stomach sank, and tears stung my eyes. There were no reassuring words or even emotion in his voice. He wasn’t even trying to convince me that there would be a chance with us. He knew I was right.
I stepped back and nodded without looking up at him, then hurried to his room to get the clothes in my bag and leave. I changed and threw the clothes from last night into my duffel. I would not cry. The pain in my chest would not shatter me. I was going to be OK. I was going to be OK. I was going to be OK.
He didn’t move toward me to hug me or tell me good-bye. So I took his lead and went for the door. If what I had said pushed him away, then I was glad I knew it now. Because all I’d described was a list of scenarios. What would happen when we had to face those facts in reality?
“Why me, Bethy?” he asked, and I glanced back to see him standing in the hallway, watching me leave.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t question any of this with Jace. You just lived in the present. I know he had no idea what he was going to do or what path he was going to take. He was living off his parents’ trust fund and enjoying life, his degree unused. Yet you were his. You were happy and trusted that everything would be fine. So why me? Why do you need to know all this with me?”
I hated to say it out loud. Admitting it made me sound like I hadn’t loved Jace enough, and that was never the case. I did love him. He just hadn’t been my big love. I’d had that and lost it. After that, you can survive a
nything. “With Jace, I didn’t worry about how I’d continue breathing if he walked out of my life. With you, I want it all. If I get a taste of what it could be, I won’t ever want to let it go. I fell in love with you when I was sixteen, and that’s never changed. But trusting you with my heart again is different. With you, I need to know it’s forever.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, and he didn’t try to stop me as I opened the door and left.
Tripp
Woods leaned back in his office chair and smiled as he rubbed his chin. “I’d ask why, but I already know the answer. This is you putting down roots.”
“It’s time. I’m twenty-six years old,” I replied.
“And there’s Bethy,” Grant added with an amused tone.
Yes. There was Bethy. She was the reason behind every decision I made.
“I know I’ve been preoccupied over the past year and a half, but how did I not know your grandfather passed away? I feel like a jackass,” Grant said.
My mother’s father, King Montgomery, had been a traveler. He rarely set foot in Rosemary Beach. He didn’t believe in sitting behind a desk all day. He loved to see new places and experience new things. He’d had a heart attack on a hunting trip in Africa. I couldn’t imagine seeing him suffer from an illness, bedridden. Knowing he died fast doing something he loved had made it easier to accept.
He and my father had never seen eye-to-eye. I think it was one of the reasons I loved the old man. He believed I should choose my own destiny. That was why he gave me the condo when I graduated from high school. I think it was his way of giving me a home to come back to if I did, in fact, choose to run.
“I wasn’t back in Rosemary Beach yet. No one here knew him that well,” I explained.
“Well, I think it’s a great idea. I’ve played around with the thought more than once. But I never did anything because I have my hands full with the club. But I stand behind you. The property isn’t technically for sale, but for you and for this, it is,” Woods said.
I looked to Grant. I needed to hear his reply next.
“Heck, yeah. It’s what I do. Bring it on. I love the idea,” Grant said.
Standing up, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “I want to move fast. I have to deal with some other things. I’ll handle any extra cost to speed the paperwork along.”
“No need. I’ll make it happen fast.”
Bethy
I stood at the door leading into the dining room. Tripp was in my section with a woman I didn’t know. It had been five days since I walked out of his apartment. He hadn’t called me, he hadn’t texted, and until today, I hadn’t seen him at the club.
In those five days, I had gone through the motions, but my heart wasn’t in it. Last night, I had finally broken down and sobbed until I fell asleep. He had been so easy to push away. But then, hadn’t he left me before and not looked back? When was I going to stop believing the man? Did he have to crush me over and over again first?
Jimmy was headed my way, and I backed up and waited around the corner, out of sight from the dining room.
“Chick’s old. Like in her late forties old. He ain’t hitting that shit. Something’s up, but it ain’t what you think. Wipe that pitiful look off your face and shake it loose, girl. Walk out there and strut your stuff, and show that man what he’s missing. Don’t act like he hurt you. Don’t act like you miss him. And stop thinking he’s on a date. Tripp’s fine ass ain’t messing around with that woman. Seriously, she could be his mom.”
He was serious. I hadn’t gotten close enough to see her. From the back, she had nice hair and legs. I couldn’t tell about anything else. “Are you sure she’s older?” I asked, praying he was right. If I walked out there and he was flirting with this woman, I was going to burst into a million pieces right in front of everyone. My heart could only take so much.
“Trust me, Bethy, it’s not what you think. Swear it, baby. Go get their drink orders. And when you walk away, shake that ass. He’ll be looking. You know how to strut. Do it.” Jimmy winked and walked past me toward the kitchen.
I took a deep breath and prayed I didn’t lose it out there and do something crazy, like cry. I could do this. Jimmy said she was older. Maybe she was a relative. Truth was, I did want to see him. I missed him.
Before I could get worked up again, I headed for the door and went to his table. He was talking and had a serious expression on his face. Almost as if he was discussing a business matter. Which made no sense. He didn’t have any business matters.
His eyes glanced up, and he stopped talking as they locked on mine. He was surprised to see me working the dining room during lunch, since I didn’t usually. He knew that. But there was also a hungry look there. Like he had wanted to see me as much as I wanted to see him. Which couldn’t be the truth, because he hadn’t called.
“What will you be drinking today?” I asked as I stepped up to the table. I was supposed to share the specials first, but my tongue was so tied I didn’t even try.
I looked directly at the woman. She glanced at the menu she hadn’t opened yet, then up at me. “Sparkling water for now,” she replied. Jimmy was right. She was way too old for Tripp.
I turned my attention to Tripp, and he was still looking at me like I was his last meal. “Hey,” he said simply.
What did I do with that? He’d ignored me for a week. I’d pushed him for answers about our future, and he’d backed away. Closed me off. Now this? “Hello, Tripp,” I managed to get out.
“Uh, yeah, I’ll have a Coke,” he said. I nodded and turned to leave, and his hand closed around my arm. “Wait.”
I couldn’t make a scene in here, but I wanted to jerk my arm away and run. Turning back around, I noticed the lady beside him watching us with interest.
“Bethy, I want to introduce you to someone.”
What? He was introducing me to the strange woman. Why? I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say to that, so I remained quiet.
He looked at the lady. “Quinn, this is Bethy. I mentioned her to you earlier. Bethy, this is Quinn. She’s an interior designer. She does all the decorating here at the club,” he explained.
OK. Odd. I nodded and smiled at her. I was sure she wasn’t interested in being introduced to the help. Her smile, however, was very genuine. She held out her hand to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bethy. Tripp’s told me so much about you.”
The surprise on my face was hard to mask. My emotions felt raw and open at this point, because he was making no sense at all. You would have thought I had just crawled out of his bed this morning and kissed him before coming to work. Not that I’d been completely ignored for five days.
I shook her hand and mumbled something before getting the hell out of there.
Jimmy was waiting for me with his hands on his hips as he peeked around the corner. “So who is it?” he asked.
“The interior designer Woods hires to decorate stuff, I guess. I have no idea what that was about. She acted like she knew who I was and shook my hand. I swear, Jimmy, I think I need to start taking anxiety meds. Tripp is fucking with my head, and I don’t think I can take much more.”
Jimmy pulled me into his arms and patted my back. “There, there, Bethy. I’m a pro at this. It’s all gonna be OK. I’ve watched Blaire and Della go through this. Just hang in there.”
I leaned back and looked at him. “Blaire and Della had men in their lives who worshipped the ground they walked on. This is so not the same.”
Jimmy cocked an eyebrow at me. “Bethy, love, you need to snap out of it. Open your eyes, girl. That man is so obsessed with you he can’t see straight.”
If only.
I didn’t argue with him. I walked past him and into the kitchen to get their drinks.
Tripp’s eyes never left me. When I was in the dining room, they followed me everywhere. It was a miracle I hadn’t dumped food on someone. I had taken their orders without making eye contact and refilled their drinks with a smile. By the time they were al
most done with their meal, I was so tightly strung my head was hurting.
I massaged my temples and rested my head back against the wall. I didn’t get off until six, and I could not afford a headache. When migraines hit me, I got sick. This could not happen. Not today.
“Lover boy paid, and he tipped you well. I grabbed it for you so they could clean the table.
Jimmy held up three hundred-dollar bills, which was ridiculous. I was not taking that much money. Their meal had only been a hundred dollars. I groaned and took the money and stuck it into my pocket. I would deal with him later, although I wasn’t sure when that would be.
Tripp
She was upset with me. I knew she would be, but seeing it was hard. I wanted to grab her and haul her outside right then and tell her everything. But I had suffered five very long days without her to ensure that I never woke up again without her in my arms.
She wanted reassurance. She needed to know I was in this forever. Then that’s what she’d get. I had already started making plans for our future before she demanded to know what they were. But telling her my ideas was not the same as showing her I meant business.
The only way I let her walk out my door that morning was because she had said, With Jace, I didn’t worry about how I’d continue breathing if he walked out of my life. With you, I want it all.
In that moment, I realized I wasn’t her second-best. What we had was bigger than anything else she’d had. Even with Jace. Knowing I meant more to her was a game changer. I’d move fucking mountains to give her what she needed.
Looking back over the past five days, that was exactly what I did. Having friends in high places sure came in handy.
Bethy stepped out of the club’s back entrance, and I straightened up from my relaxed stance on my bike. She didn’t notice me until I was almost within reach. Her surprise quickly turned to anger. I bit back my grin. She was pissed at me. I would fix that soon. She’d demanded, and I was about to fucking deliver.
