by Susan Sey
She glanced at him. “I said that?”
“Almost word for word.”
“And yet here you are.”
He drew a finger along her jaw, from the secret hollow under her ear to the point of that pixie chin. “Here I am,” he agreed.
“Why?”
Because I fell in love with you so hard I couldn’t leave if I tried. Because my heart is scattered all over the lawn like I’m having a goddamn yard sale. Because that sleeping bag is my home and I can’t fucking breathe when I think about you not being in it next time I lie down.
“Do you really want to know?”
She blinked those huge gray eyes seriously. “Probably not. But I think you should tell me.”
“You tell me something first.”
She considered that. “You need a minute to warm up to it?”
He laughed softly. “Yeah.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Why are you in my bed?”
She scowled again. “Bianca said I couldn’t stay at home anymore.”
He lifted a brow. “Since when does Bianca tell you where you can live?”
“Since she decided she’s my stand-in mommy.”
Eli stared. “Your stand-in mommy?”
“It’s a long story.” She sighed. “Suffice it to say the reporters are coming for me.” She cut him a disgruntled sideways look that he wanted to kiss off her face. “Being Diego Junior’s mommy is evidently a high-profile gig.”
He arched a brow. “But you’re not Diego Junior’s mommy.”
“I know that. And you know that. But the press doesn’t know that. All they know right now is that a mean old lady is talking smack about how Diego Davis’s brother is really his love child, and they all want to be the one to score the first interview with the supposed mother.”
He slid an arm across her waist, danced his fingers up her ribs. “I see.” He eased his thigh over both of hers, resisted the urge to rub himself against her like a horny dog. “So you decided to hide from the reporters in my bed?”
She sighed. “I’m not great at people.”
He scowled. “The hell you aren’t.”
“I’m good at you.” She fisted a hand in his t-shirt, pulled him down to her mouth. He fell into the kiss with dizzy abandon, eased back reluctantly when she broke it off. “Other people? Not so much.”
“Screw other people.” He leaned in for more, then stopped. “That came out wrong.”
“I took it right.” She sighed and leaned her forehead into his. “But let’s be honest, Eli. The reporters are swarming, and I’m not exactly captain of the debate team. Bianca thinks it would be better for Matty if I were really hard to find just now.” She shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”
“Works for me.” He eyed her mouth — curvy, sweet, not nearly well-kissed enough — and moved back in.
“Nope.” She scooted to the edge of the mattress, that sleeping bag in both fists under her chin again. “You’ve stalled long enough. Now it’s your turn.” She studied him, those big gray eyes wide and implacable. “Why did you stay, Eli? You don’t owe me anything, and I know you didn’t start that fire. This place should’ve been in your rear view hours ago.” She pursed her lips as if she was getting ready to taste the truth in his words. As if she could smell it on him. “Why isn’t it?”
“Because I didn’t want it there.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re here.” He reached for one of those fists, eased her grip finger by finger, threaded his own fingers through hers. “This is your home, and I want to be where you are.”
“Why?” It was a whisper this time, and the knuckles of the hand still gripping the sleeping bag were white and tense. He pressed her palm to his heart, left it there and speared his fingers into the wild spill of her hair instead. Her ponytail elastic had given up the ghost sometime during the hours they’d slept and her hair fell from his hand like a black river, full of eddies and swirls and invisible currents. Her eyes drifted closed with pleasure. He knew how she felt.
“Because I’m in love with you, Willa.” Her eyes snapped open at that and he shrugged sheepishly. “I know, right? It ought to be impossible, given that I’ve known you about two minutes. But there you have it. I’m in love with you. And do you know how I know it’s the real deal?”
“How?” Her lips shaped the word but evidently sound was beyond her. Eli grinned. He was pretty sure that was how he’d reacted when Jax had acquainted him with this fact a few hours earlier.
“Because I can’t leave. Oh, I know I should. O’Malley and Gerte are probably huddled over the coffee pot in the Wooden Spoon right now, discussing what to charge me with. Her honor’s at stake after I called her a nasty old bitch at the gallery—”
She grinned suddenly. “You did, didn’t you?”
“—and then I called O’Malley’s judgment into question in front of the big boys at Boise. That family’s not going to be happy until I’m good and punished, and I have a feeling they know what they’re about, punishment wise.”
“They do,” Willa conceded. “Lord, do they. Gerte is second only to Bianca when it comes to Devil’s Kettle’s Most Frightening. I don’t know much about O’Malley, except that Gerte doesn’t screw with him, which means he’s probably meaner than she is.”
“Great.” Eli sighed.
“Which means you really ought to get out of here, Eli. At least until this fire is resolved.”
“Yeah, that would be the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?” He shook his head. “But if I run from this, I run from you. I leave my trouble behind, sure, but I leave it here where you have to deal with it. Alone. And that shit’s not happening. Not on my watch.”
She gazed at him for a moment. A long sweaty moment, during which Eli realized that he hadn’t the first clue what she was thinking. He became aware suddenly of that stillness of hers. It had crept unnoticed into the air around them, had grown into a palpable presence between them, pure and absolute. It wrapped itself around him in soothing tendrils, gentled the tide of humiliation and panic trying to rise inside him. But it also made it utterly impossible for him to get a bead on where her head was. Where her heart was.
“Eli,” she said finally. The hand she still had pressed to his heart fisted on his t-shirt but her eyes were as remote as the mountains he’d grown up in. “That’s without a doubt the most beautiful thing anybody’s ever said to me.”
“But?” Eli was in love but he wasn’t a fool. He knew a but no thanks when it came rumbling down the tracks.
“But we discussed this. This thing you and I have? It’s been amazing, and I don’t have a single regret. But I’m not in the market for anything permanent.” She released his t-shirt, smoothed the wrinkles she’d put there and reached up to cup his jaw. “And neither are you.”
“I wasn’t.” He put his hand on top of hers, closed his eyes at the feel of her strong, capable fingers against his skin. “Then you happened.”
“No, then a bunch of drama happened. And you’re a good guy, Eli. You have a solid family, a good heart and a conscience as big as the sky. Losing those men broke your heart but it didn’t break you. You’re still above the ground, working for your uncle even though you don’t want to, emailing your mom occasionally because you know she worries, getting too involved in small town dramas because a girl you slept with has a rotten history.” She smiled softly. “But this is my home, not yours. There’s no shame in walking away from trouble that isn’t yours, and this trouble isn’t yours. I’m not yours. And you’re not mine. I just woke you up.” She rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone. “You woke me up, too. We’re leaving each other better than we found each other, which is more than you can say for most impulsive affairs. We got damn lucky, so let’s not ask more of this than it can give us. You’re free finally. It’s time to go.”
Eli studied her for a long moment. Then he leaned in and laid his lips to hers. Her stillness wrapped around him like a duvet, thic
k and warm and drugging. It wanted to lull him to sleep, to complacency. He eased back, smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear. “That was a good speech. You almost had me, too. It’s that stillness of yours. It’s like a tranquilizer. How do you do that, anyway?”
She blinked innocently. “Do what?”
Eli wanted to kiss her again but told himself to focus. “Produce it. The stillness.”
She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. I think it’s a defense mechanism. I think somewhere along the line, you learned how to wrap up everything inside you — all the wildness and the appetite and the want — and lay it down to sleep. It probably seemed safer that way, and believe me, I get it. Your childhood was a fucking mine field. You did what you had to do to survive, and now you’re like one of those frictionless balls from physics problems, rolling through the world without really touching anything or anybody. It’s no wonder you’re so good at your job. Animals are all about the non-verbals, and yours are like a tranquilizer dart. I’m a little embarrassed now at how well it worked on me.”
She jerked away from him — tried to, anyway — but Eli held on. He was planning to hold on forever but he’d settle for finishing this conversation. He rolled her under him in one swift move, sleeping bag and all, propped his elbows on either side of that astonishing hair of hers. The stillness broke, wisps of it dissipating almost visibly under the heat of her anger. And something else. Her fear? His heart clenched.
She said, “Let me go.”
“Willa. I get that you’re afraid.”
She glared up at him. “I’m not afraid.”
“Of course you are. You’d be stupid if you weren’t.”
She narrowed hot gray eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I just told you I love you, for Christ’s sake. With your history? I might as well have pulled a gun on you.”
She shoved at him but he twisted the sleeping bag around his hands and gave her more of his weight, pressed her deeper into the mattress. She squirmed under him and a spark of interest flared to life deep in his belly which he firmly ignored.
“I’m not afraid of you, goddamn it.”
“You shouldn’t be. I’d never hurt you.”
“I know that.” But she twisted her face to the side.
“No, you don’t.” He nudged her jaw until she sighed and met his eyes again. “But I want you to. I want you to believe that with everything in you.”
“Eli, please.” He felt the stillness gathering again, felt her revving up that mystical engine of hers that created the black hole that sucked in everything she didn’t want to feel. Or didn’t want anybody to know she felt.
“You’re doing it again. The stillness thing.”
“I am not.” She set her mouth stubbornly and looked away while it rose up between his heart and hers like a fog, impossible to touch, to strike, to defeat. “This is going nowhere.”
“But it could.” Anger bloomed inside him, red and choking. How could he fight what he couldn’t touch? “God, Willa, it could. If you’d just stop—” He broke off, struck.
“Stop what?”
“Protecting yourself.” He sighed and closed his eyes. Dropped his forehead to hers. “God, listen to me. I’m such a jerk. That stillness is the only thing in your life that’s never let you down, isn’t it? It’s kept you safe when nobody else tried or even cared.” She stiffened under him and he rubbed his cheek against hers. “It was the first thing I loved about you, too. That day you told Gerte off for slapping me? You were amazing. You defused a potential mob without breaking a sweat. The stillness isn’t a flaw, it’s a superpower, and I’m a dick for implying that it’s standing between you and happily ever after. It’s not.”
She lay under him, rigid and wary, but the stillness stalled, as if listening. As if giving him a chance to make his case. “What are you even talking about, Eli?”
He kissed her. He put everything into that kiss, too. The snarly temper, the bitter fear, the overwhelming ocean of love sloshing around inside him for her. The desperation to get through to her, to make her feel what he felt so she’d understand it. Believe it. Risk her own heart on it.
He tried to get his arms around everything banging around inside his heart, tried to corral it into some coherent mental image he could telegraph to her somehow. All he could think of was her thinnie, but not the magic, night-blooming bower she’d taken him to that first night. No, he thought instead of the storm-lashed altar where they’d come together so fiercely the night before, the place she’d gone to cry herself dry under a raging, relentless sky. The place where he’d given her proof that when shit cut loose, when she was weak, when she was broken, he’d be there. She could come undone twice a day for the next forever, and he’d be there every time, gathering the pieces up in loving arms, helping her glue it all back together when the sun came out again.
He could almost smell the sizzling rain, feel the sting of it shredding through his t-shirt. He remembered the vulnerable warmth of her shuddering back against his front as he shielded her from the worst of the storm, as he wished like hell he could shield her from whatever it was that had raged within her. Love crested inside him, threw back its head and howled like an animal, and he poured it all into his kiss. Prayed he’d found the language that might convince her wary, wounded soul to reach for him.
“Eli?” Her voice was a broken whisper, a shaking wish.
“I know,” he said and pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes shut, his soul hers. “I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous.”
“It’s too much.”
“I know.” He slid his fingers into her hair, let it sift slowly away. She allowed the touch with the wary stillness of a feral cat, as if pleasure were an unfamiliar concept. His heart squeezed. She’d earned every ounce of that wariness, and he’d spent precious little time showing her the simple pleasure of being petted. He didn’t deserve her, and yet… “But I can’t help it. It’s yours, all of it. It just is.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” He lifted his head, met those fairy eyes, still filled with uncertainty, but with hope, too. Hope, he decided, looked good on her. She should wear it more often. He’d see about making that happen. “Just understand that I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be here next week, next month, next year, exactly as in love with you as I am now.” He rubbed his nose against hers again. “Just think about it.”
She studied him owlishly. “Maybe you should kiss me while I think about it.”
He grinned. “Your wish. My command.”
CHAPTER 32
DEVIL DAYS HAD arrived, and with it the teeming masses. Tourists and art lovers had easily tripled the town’s population by Friday afternoon, something Eli had vaguely expected but hadn’t truly understood until he tried to report to the fire station. Boise was in town, and Eli’s presence had been demanded. Ben’s royal summons had cut short Eli’s morning hike, but as the only available parking was halfway to Canada, he figured he’d make up the distance, no problem.
He eventually found a spot on the north edge of town and hoofed it for the fire station where Ben had set up his Incident Command Post. He smelled the Sugar Rush before he even saw it, a hot pink fishing shack wreathed in a hot-oil-and-sugar scented cloud that had doughnut lovers swarming like groupies at a rock concert. As he threaded his way through the crowd lined up outside, he caught sight of Walt Kovacz at the counter inside, slinging doughnuts with mad efficiency under his signature bandana do-rag. He worked the cash register with one hand, poured coffee with the other and still managed to give Eli a cheerful chin-jerk in greeting.
Eli waved back. “Get the lead out, Walt!” he called. “People are hungry out here.”
The crowd murmured its agreement and Walt flung open expansive arms. “And I shall serve them all!” he boomed in a surprisingly Ten Commandments voice given his skinny chest. “My deep fryer overfloweth!”
The crowd shou
ted its approval and surged forward. Eli laughed and kept hiking. There was a crowd outside the Davis Gallery, too, though Eli didn’t know whether they were in line to see the art or to buy tickets for that night’s Diego After Dark showing. There were a handful of TV reporters, too, doing stand ups in front of the window display, speaking with a hushed earnestness that suggested Gerte had done her work and done it well.
Bianca had been right — the rumor mill was in high gear, and the press had come to feed. He took a moment to be grateful for Bianca’s foresight, and the bossiness that had Willa snugged safely away in Eli’s cabin, far away from the reporters and their ravenous appetite for other people’s business.
He arrived at the fire station and found news vans there, too. He ducked his head, attached himself to a couple of locals heading toward the door and tried to look invisible. It had been over two years since he’d walked out of the Cathedral Hill fire alone, and he didn’t think anybody would recognize him, but he’d been flooded with interview requests for months after that terrible day. He hadn’t granted a single one, but he was still getting the occasional email from New York City talking about book deals. He’d gotten one just the other day. He’d deleted it, just like he’d deleted all the others since the moment he’d become the sole survivor of a high-profile disaster.
So there was no reason this pack of reporters would know his face now, but the back of his neck itched all the same until the fire station’s dented steel door finally closed behind him.
And suddenly Eli found himself immersed in a world he understood but had sworn never to set foot in again. A world full of young men and bullet-proof bravado that smelled of sweat, smoke and coffee strong enough to power a nuclear submarine. A world that, at the moment, was full of raised voices, creative profanity and giant computer monitors devoted to satellite maps and the weather. A world he missed, God help and forgive him.
