And in one expression, it was all right there again.
It was all the heat and curiosity from the night of the opening days ago, and the same from just hours ago. He wasn’t just looking at me.
He was staring into me.
He licked his bottom lip, his hold growing tighter again. “I need to tell you something,” he said. “Or rather, ask you something.”
“All right.”
“I don’t remember calling you Al, but I can see why I did,” he said. He shifted in his seat, rounding his body to face me directly. “I like it.”
“Okay,” I replied with confusion. “Thanks?”
“I think I should call you that. I want to call you that if it’s okay?”
“You’re asking me permission to call me a nickname of my name?” I asked.
He smirked, and I could swear, even in the darkness, under the blond beard, I saw him blush for the second time ever. “Yes. I’m asking if it’s okay if I call you Al, because I can’t fucking identify you by either of your other names.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew Lexie. I knew her well, and you’re not her anymore. There are parts, and I’m even speaking apart from physical appearance, I see that are familiar, but you’re so different. Alexis is this new person you created to run away from Lexie. I think she, or you, whatever, is a hell of a business owner and an amazingly talented baker, but she has such a sadness around her it makes it hard for me to breathe when I’m too close to her.”
“And who is Al?”
“Al is the girl I can’t stop thinking about, the girl who is getting under my skin and is so off-limits to me it makes my head spin to even go there.”
I knew it wasn’t my imagination.
He felt it, too.
And he felt exactly how I did.
I was right.
It was wrong.
Or maybe it was drugs talking.
That was a much more logical explanation.
“Marshall,” I said softly. “I—”
“Al is the girl who sat with me for hours at the hospital and tried to make me laugh. She’s the girl who had always been beautiful, but now I’m beginning to see how beautiful she is in a completely different way. Al is the girl, you are the girl, I think about kissing endlessly.”
I wanted him to stop, to tell him it was the drugs, the possible head injury talking. I wanted to tell him when he remembered, if he remembered, he would regret it.
But I didn’t want him to stop because it may be the only time he would say it.
I was tentative when I asked, “And then what?”
“And then I wake up and know it’ll never happen. I can’t go where my best friend was before me.”
His hand lifted away from mine, and with it what was left of my dignity. A fleeting moment, something that I put a minute amount of hope in, came and went. Maybe it wasn’t even hope. It was foolish to even imagine, and as much as his words built me up and then tore me down, they were the truth.
No. It was a moment. We had a few of them. There was a familiarity between us from long ago. It was a natural reaction to something, I didn’t know what, and once verbalized, once it hit air, the truth destroyed it.
The truth often did that.
He was already struggling to get out of the car by the time I refocused. “I told you to wait,” I snapped. “Do you want to hurt yourself further?”
I flung my car door open, stepped out, and slammed it shut. It was no surprise that by the time I reached Marshall, he was already standing, ignoring my instructions once again.
“Do you have to do the opposite of everything I say?” I asked. “Do you do it just to irritate me?”
I waited for him to argue back with me, but he didn’t. He went back to staring like he was in the car, with his hot and cold intentions making me feel like I was losing my mind.
“I have to tell you one more thing, Al,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” he said.
His blue eyes shimmered from the moonlight. It was clichéd and silly that I was even noticing, but it made him appear so handsome. It was another moment—both of us standing under the moon, the sky watching everything that was happening. How many others were standing under the same sky, wondering and waiting and thinking how different their lives could be?
“For what?” I asked, finally responding to him.
“For still understanding me.”
* * *
I got him situated on his couch once inside his apartment, complete with him moaning and groaning.
“This is gnarly,” he said, trying to tug his shirt off over his head.
I rushed to his side. “Here,” I said, assisting him.
He didn’t resist, and with minimal amounts of cursing, we had it off. My eyes wandered around his chest, the smoothness of his skin and hard lines of muscles decorated with endless stories. He leaned back against the couch, and I was back on nurse duty.
I hurried off to get him a fresh shirt and pain medication, but when I returned, he was already asleep. He’d gotten himself onto his back, resting his head against a stack of pillows, with his hands folded neatly in front of him.
I didn’t know whether to be concerned that he dozed off so quickly or not. Aside from poking him awake or using a mirror under his nose to check his breathing, I concluded I was overreacting. At least, I hoped I was.
Grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch, I laid it across him. I slid to the floor next to him, beyond exhausted myself, resting my head on the cushion of the couch near his face.
“What am I going to do with you?” I whispered to a sleeping Marshall. “Why now? Why you?”
A pain radiated from the center of my chest outward, and I knew what it meant. I lifted my hand and gently brushed it across his hair that had fallen into his face. Instead of retreating after, or perhaps I never should have been doing it at all, my hand hung in the area until I found myself touching his skin. The tips of my fingers lingered above his arm, his chest, before a feather-like touch brushed across them, tracing the lines of his tattoos.
”She’s gone, but she’s everywhere,” read one in a beautiful script in the center of his chest, large enough to extend from shoulder to shoulder. It was flanked by enormous angel wings spreading across his rib cage and inward. It was difficult to make it all out in the dark, but the empty space was filled with flowers, timepieces, and a lion’s head.
My eyes focused on his forearm, scattered with dragonflies surrounding a lighthouse reaching from wrist to elbow.
And there was the Superman symbol, brightly colored and appearing to emerge from torn skin on his right shoulder.
So many stories.
I wanted to know them all.
I drifted off to sleep but would startle awake. I’d take a few moments to make sure he was okay, and he was, still asleep in the same position. When I woke, the sun had already shown her face, and I was lying flat on the floor. My back ached as I pushed myself up, tossing off the blanket that had found its way from Marshall to me.
Marshall.
He wasn’t on the couch.
And when I checked the rest of the apartment, he was nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t until I checked my phone that I saw a text from him.
Marshall: Early start. Didn’t want to wake you, even though you looked uncomfortable as fuck. See you later at drop-off.
Four minutes after he sent the first message, another one came through.
Marshall: Thanks for everything. Really.
* * *
I returned home just before Phoebe arrived, and we made the daily cupcakes together as I told her the full details of the night before. Her questions were endless but were a great diversion. I didn’t want to think about anything relating to the part of the ending I wasn’t telling her.
The eyes.
The energy.
Us.
I didn’t know if it was all real or not, and that made me
frightened so much so that I had to keep my distance.
I had to keep her behind to finish up some other orders and then make some deliveries. It was up to me to do the drop-off at Ginger. By the time I got there, I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know what to expect.
“Hey,” he said, emerging from the office.
He looked like hell, and…not. He’d cleaned up well from the night before, and while he seemed to be standing a tad taller, I could tell he was still hurting from the bruised rib. The swelling around his eye had gone down, but now the entire area was an angry purple color. Even with all that going on, the plain black T-shirt and jeans he was wearing looked anything but.
“Hey,” I answered, setting bakery boxes on top of the bar. “How are you feeling?”
“Not bad.” He shrugged. “Sorry for taking off this morning. I just, you know. Anyway, what’s in here?” he asked, tapping the top of the boxes and looking everywhere but at me.
I was half hurt he wasn’t going to say more about leaving without saying good-bye, but the other half was fine with avoiding everything altogether that happened the night before.
“They’re chocolate bourbon pecan pie cupcakes with a butter pecan frosting. I have the others in my car.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Chocolate bourbon?”
I smiled. “No, I’m not kidding, and yes, they are that good.”
His fingers ran along the top of the box before sliding one under the taped edge. My perfectionist tendency emerged when I wanted to tell him he was going to tear the box, but I held back. The lid flipped up and Marshall’s face lit up, as my heart started beating faster.
There was something about seeing a person get so enthusiastic about a creation you made. It always thrilled me, and seeing Marshall do it, after the plethora of treats of mine he’d had, was another level.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered to the insides of the box. “How much will you rage if I eat one?”
“Not at all. I mean, you need to taste to know how to sell right?”
I watched as he lifted one out and carefully peeled back the decorative wrapper before biting into it from top to bottom. His eyes fluttered shut as I heard a soft moan leave his lips.
It was almost indecent to watch.
So, I left him alone with his edible orgasm, which seemed like a good name for some treat I made in the future, and went back to my car to gather up the rest of the boxes. When I returned, he was licking his fingers of the remnants of the butter pecan frosting.
“Al,” he said. “Those are…I don’t even know. What’s a word for more than fucking incredible?”
There was never a time when someone complimented my sweets that I wasn’t pleased, but it was the other thing he had said that made my heart skip a beat. He called me Al. I didn’t know what it was about it. Maybe it was that he adopted a name only for me, that he was the only one to call me that, but it was endearing.
I smiled. “I think fucking incredible is the right term for it.”
“Is this it?” He pointed to additional boxes of beer brownies, margarita doughnuts, and Fireball turnovers I brought in.
“Yeah.”
“Awesome. Before you take off, there was one other piece of business I wanted to talk to you about.”
Shit. He was going to go there. He was going to bring up last night and what happened in the car. I’d hoped he’d save both of us the embarrassment of reliving it, or maybe it was just me that wanted to be saved from it. I needed to play it cool and not let him see how the whole thing had affected me.
“Oh? What other piece of business?” I asked.
“Well, I assume you were here last night to talk to me, you know, before you saw Monday Night Raw go down, because Phoebe told you I needed to talk to you.”
Or maybe it wasn’t about the car situation.
“Yes. That’s what brought me in. What’s up?”
“Tipsy Treats aren’t lasting long at all here. Everything is sold out by a couple hours after opening, and while you’ve been bringing in more than initially contracted for, I think we need to talk about how we can keep the inventory flowing.”
“Phoebe and I are stretched as thin as we can be. Keeping up with you guys along with other orders has us at max.”
“I get that, and while it’s your business, maybe you need to think about hiring another employee.”
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it, but the way Phoebe and I worked together was so perfect. It was hard to find someone like her, and the notion of adding another person into that wasn’t a thing I wanted to do. I gripped the end of my hair and started twirling it around my finger as I considered how to handle this. On one hand, it wasn’t a bad thing to do for the expansion of the business, but my intention with Tipsy was never to be something bigger than I could handle on my own and with just one other person.
“I see that you’re panicking or some other shit,” he said. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything, but know we need to come up with some solution.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know what?”
“That I’m panicking. I’m not.”
“You’re twirling your hair,” he said, pointing to my finger. “You only do that when you’re freaking out. And by the way, when did that start? You never used to do that, did you?”
“One, I’m not freaking out or panicking. I’m only thinking. And I don’t know when I started doing it. It seems like I’ve been doing it forever, but I guess not. No one else around me knew me…before.”
He ran his hand down and across his beard as he shook his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“For what?” I asked.
“For…whatever. I don’t know.”
We were silent for a few moments before our eyes were back on each other’s, and we locked.
Hard.
And the moment was there again.
I took it all in because I knew there would be a time later, when I was alone in bed surrounded by quiet, that I’d want to remember it. I wanted to dissect every single breath, every blink, so I could try and decipher what the hell was happening. What was this thing between us that was growing and deepening despite us trying to avoid it?
“You know, Al,” he said in a tone that exuded suggestiveness. “I know I was high as fuck last night, but I can’t shake something from last night that keeps coming back to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Where were you last night after you left me on the couch?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m asking you.”
“Well, someone had to watch you.”
“You were close.”
“I was.”
“I felt you, smelled you. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or dreaming. Your hands were in my hair, running across my skin.”
“Yes.”
His head tilted to the side. “You slept…on the floor? Like where I found you?”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer, running his tongue along his lower lip, as his eyes fixated on my mouth. “And why did you do that?”
I could’ve lied. I wanted to lie.
But I’d lived a lifetime of them, and I didn’t want to anymore.
“Can you walk me to my car?”
He appeared confused but nodded before following me out the door. No words were exchanged as we crossed the parking lot to my car. It was only the energy.
What had happened.
What was happening now.
There was no way he didn’t realize why I asked him to walk me to my car.
Every guy knew.
When we reached it, I paused next to the driver’s side door, and there was zero hesitation when he stepped in front of me.
Close.
And then closer.
Almost nose to nose, our heights matched. He was so close I could smell him, the sweetness of the cupcake he’d only just eaten and his cologne. Or maybe it was soap or shampoo. I n
ever asked what he wore or what it was because it seemed like a violation of rules, like I wasn’t entitled to know. I did conclude that whatever it was, it worked. It worked on him. It was clean and sexy and the perfect balance between.
I started to panic, turned my head, avoidance being my only defense.
“Why did you want me to walk you to your car?” he whispered, his warm breath of words against my ear.
I shrugged, but I was lying. I’d been alone, so very alone, for so long. Physical contact, conversations that made me think, and mutual intentions were such a distant memory that getting an unexpected breeze of them into my life had me reeling. I wanted him, and it scared me that I was following that. That destruction that would be the follow-through was too overwhelming to consider. I could see the wreck in front of me, and I was walking directly into the devastation.
His fingertips fluttered next to mine, the subtle touch making me shiver from nothing to do with the weather. I knew he was staring without looking and that one small close of the gap between us, one turn of my head, would light the world up in flames. It wasn’t what I intended, nor was it what I wanted. Just a walk to my car to keep him next to me a little while longer, but now that lie I told myself was about to give me away.
My eyes continued to focus on the pavement and the orange embers of a discarded cigarette, someone had tossed from the street, next to the toe of my shoe. It seemed strange I was so close, but I didn’t destroy it.
“Al?” he muttered.
And then it wasn’t about what was right or wrong, or needing or wanting.
It was about me.
It was about him.
Us.
I rotated my head to bring my eyes back to his.
And then there was nothing else to say.
No more questions.
No more answers.
His lips touched mine, so tentative at first to gauge if I would kiss him back. I did, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. We sighed against each other’s lips as heat rose all around us. One kiss, and we retreated only slightly, glancing into each other’s eyes for reassurance, before our mouths, our lips, were back where we both wanted them to be.
So Wicked Page 10
