“I’m sure you won’t make a mess of things. I mean, being a parent isn’t easy, but it’s rewarding. And kids are resilient. They’re forgiving. If you come from a place of love, and hold their best interests at heart, well then even if you make a mistake, they won’t hold it against you.”
“Ya talkin’ as if ya know what it’s like.”
I turned back to the window. “I kinda do.”
Even as the words escaped me, something outside drew my attention. Down at the tree line, heading toward the water, was a lonely figure. The way the person staggered and swayed left me certain he was drunk.
In my heart, I knew exactly who it was. “Shit.”
“Is that Beau?” Cassidee asked beside me.
“I think it is. And he’s heading for the pier.” I didn’t wait for Cassidee to say anything else. I just grabbed my coat and the hotel room key. Knowing how much he’d had to drink, I worried he’d slip into the water and not be able to swim. “I’ve got to go make sure he’s okay,” I said as I opened the door.
Cassidee followed my lead to leave the room. “Take care o’ him, Phoebe.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant that night while he was drunk, or in general.
“I will. I don’t want to see him get hurt.” I wasn’t sure which I meant either.
I RACED OUT of the hotel and down across the grounds toward the dark pier. It was only when I hit the paths through the trees that I wished I had a flashlight or something to help me find my way easily.
Treading the wide cement trails, I couldn’t help but think of his sister and of the time I’d been lucky enough to gatecrash one of his special walks with her.
My heart broke for his loss all over again.
By the time I emerged onto the dock, Beau was already halfway through untethering the boat. Sensing he wasn’t alone, or perhaps hearing me arrive, he glanced up at me. For a split second, his mouth twisted upward in a smile. Then it fell—no doubt as he recalled what had passed between us not long before.
“What d’ya want?” he asked. His tone was sad—defeated rather than confrontational.
“I’m not about to let you go out on the lake alone. Not while you’re drunk.”
He waved me off. “I ain’t drunk, and I jus’ wanna be alone.”
I moved forward. “I’m not taking no for an answer. Either you’re going back up to your house, or I’m going on the boat with you.”
“Do what ya want,” he muttered. “Ya will anyway.”
“That’s not fair. Neither is what you were asking of me back in your house. I can’t turn it on and off like a tap. I can’t pretend you didn’t hurt me or ignore the fact that Xavier never has.”
“Xavier. Xavier. Xavier. I’m sick to death of goddamned Xavier.”
My chin dropped to my chest as I heard the word—the one Beau only seemed to drag out at his most frustrated. I sighed. “You have to see things from my side, Beau. He was there for me when everyone else treated me like shit. He picked up the pieces that were left when I had to watch you swanning around with Cassidee in your arms.”
He traced his hands through his hair and blew out a frustrated breath. “I shoulda tol’ ya before. Cass and I broke off the engagement. It wasn’t workin’.”
“I heard. I also know the baby isn’t yours.”
“Is that why you’re here?” He sounded hopeful.
“No. It’s not. It doesn’t change anything. How can it?”
He spun around so his back was to me. “Well, I dunno why ya bothered to come down here then,” he spat over his shoulder. “I tol’ ya I didn’t want ya round no more tonight.”
I took a step closer to him. “Do we always have to be fighting or fucking, Beau?”
His head drooped and for a moment, I thought all the fight had left him.
“Can’t we ever just be civil?” I moved close and circled around enough that I could see every detail of his profile despite the darkness.
“I can be civil,” he ground out. “Can you?” He turned to stare at me, his teeth pressed together and his brow raised in irritation.
He held the rope to cast off the boat. When he drew it closer to himself, lifting a small section out of the water, the area that had been submerged was littered with tiny crystals of ice clinging desperately to the knots of the rope. It made me more determined than ever to draw him away from the lake.
“Please come away from the boat.” I reached for his hand. “It’s freezing out here, and that water must be like ice.”
“No one said ya had to come find me.” He lifted the torch in his hand and flashed it over the boat. A bottle of Fireball sat on one side of the seat, more than a third already gone.
“Why did you come out here?”
“I need to see the stars.” He looked straight up, staggering backward a step as he did.
My hands instantly lifted, as if I could somehow prevent him from stumbling into the lake if he went in that direction. “If you get the fire going, we can lie near it and watch the stars together, Beau.” I waved in the direction of the shore campfire pit. “Just please don’t get on that boat, because I really don’t want to go out on that lake.”
“It don’t matter to me if ya stay behind. I never invited ya down here anyway.”
“I don’t have a torch though,” I said, playing on his apparent desire to protect. The one Cassidee was so sure existed. It might have been a dirty trick, but I’d do what I could to stop him from going onto the lake drunk and alone. “I might not get back to the hotel safely if I try to stumble back through the darkness.”
He glanced at the torch in his hand and then back at me, before looking out at the lake. His eyes pleaded with me to understand, but I couldn’t. It seemed ludicrous to want to be out on the moonlit lake in the middle of a freezing cold night.
He tucked his chin to his chest and sighed before lifting his gaze back up to meet mine. “Darlin’, ya gotta understand. I need this. I ain’t felt peace in months. Not since . . .” His jaw clamped shut and he groaned. “Not since the last time I was out there. With you.”
His last two words were almost silent.
“The rest o’ that afternoon, and ever since, I’ve had to deal with sayin’ goodbye. And now, I gotta say goodbye to Abby too. I’m goin’ out there and ya can’t make me change my mind.” He stared at me for a moment and then held out his hand. “Won’t ya please come with me, though?”
I glanced between his offered hand and his face.
“What’s stoppin’ ya, darlin’?”
The words we’d teased each other with that afternoon on the lake, a lifetime ago, came back to me. I changed them up slightly to recount my new adventure. “Taking on a back-to-front car in a new-to-me racing format. Easy. Getting in a rowboat on a perfectly still lake with you—”
“Terrifying,” he finished for me with a reluctant smile, no doubt recalling our conversation from that day like I was.
“Exactly.”
“No expectations,” he said. “Cross mah heart.” He drew a cross over his heart as he spoke and then offered me his hand again.
With a ton of fear and more than a little reluctance, I slipped my hand into his. “If I end up in that water, I’m going to kill you.”
“I ain’t gonna get ya wet.”
The words “that’s debatable” played in my mind. He might keep me away from the water, but even having my hand in his was reminding me of the ways his hands trailed all over my body and made me want him. I clamped my mouth shut before I could say anything though, because those words would only encourage the flirting and his hope. I didn’t want to give him more reasons to torture himself over what we could’ve had.
With his hands guiding me, I stepped onto the boat and sank straight onto the seat. While Beau was busy with the rope, I shifted the bottle of alcohol under the seat. Once it was hidden away, I curled my fingers around the edge of the wood to hold myself in place.
“I’m comin’ on now. ’Kay?” The gentleness of his
voice almost shattered me. He was trying to work with my fear rather than tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t be afraid.
I squeezed my eyes shut and nodded. Because I expected the boat to start rocking straight away as he climbed into the small space, I opened one eye to find out why it hadn’t moved. What I saw—Beau staring at me with such a look of longing it made my heart hurt—stole my breath away and left me wanting to scramble back out of the boat.
I shouldn’t be out here alone with him.
Before I could act, he stepped onto the boat and sent it listing to the side.
“Shit!” The word left me even as my hands found the side of the boat.
“Don’t s’pose I can convince ya to get on my lap like last time? That was a mighty comfortable way to row.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Then just stay still for a moment,” he said. “I won’t tip the boat, I swear.”
I nodded and then held on tight with my eyes screwed shut as the boat rocked and pitched with whatever Beau was doing.
A couple of moments later, he said, “Okay, it’s safe. Ya can open your eyes, darlin’.”
I followed his instructions and saw he’d laid the blanket in the bottom of the boat like the last time.
“Ya wanna sit there while I row us out?”
“If you’re going to insist on rowing us out, then I guess I have no choice but to sit there,” I mumbled.
He held the boat as steady as he could while I shifted to the floor. When I was settled, he dragged out the oars and rowed us to the centre of the lake. Each steady pull of the boat took me further away from the pier—further from the safety of being able to flee from Beau when his touches became too much to resist.
Eventually, he stopped and stowed the oars again.
“Can I join ya down there?” he asked. “I wanna look up at the stars.”
It was a dangerous request, and yet harmless enough that I couldn’t refuse. I wiggled down to lie on the floor and shifted over to allow him to rest beside me.
“Can I hold ya, darlin’?” he asked as he sank to the bottom of the boat. “I just need to have ya in my arms for a while.”
Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I nodded. After all, wasn’t the reason I was on the boat at all because I wanted to give him some peace? If I could give him some small sliver of calm, didn’t I owe him that in the wake of his personal disaster? It was only a hug, after all.
With a sigh, and a knot of dread in my stomach, I moved closer beside him. My body curled naturally around his. I rested my hand on his chest and my head on my hand. Beneath me, his breathing was ragged and his heart pulsed with a rapid beat under my palm.
For a long time, I just relaxed against him and stared up at the sky.
“This is what I needed, darlin’.” He was so close I could smell the warmth of the whiskey on his breath. “It ain’t gonna make everythin’ perfect, but it’s exactly what I needed.”
After a moment, he started to sing under his breath. The words were clear and the song obvious. It was one of the ones he’d sung the nights we’d spent near the campfire. The one wishing for more time. For one more day. I wasn’t sure whether it was for his sister or for me, but either way I couldn’t cope with the influx of memories and emotions the words stirred in me.
“Don’t,” I murmured, pulling away from him.
He pushed himself up so that he was above me. His fingertips came to rest on my cheek. With a tender touch, he guided my gaze to his and continued to sing the lyrics to me.
His voice wasn’t quite as smooth as it had been around the campfire, but when he stared at me like he was, it didn’t matter. An involuntary smile crept onto my face at the emotions that swam in his eyes. There was no doubt who he was singing the song for any longer.
A matching grin crossed his lips. It would have been so damn easy to give in to him. To take the thing that he wanted to give—the thing some parts of me wanted above everything else. To take everything he was offering.
But I couldn’t.
He’d hurt me. It might have been a misunderstanding. It might have been a need to lash out because he’d thought I’d cheated, but that didn’t matter. What mattered were the miles-high walls around my heart. Walls only Xavier had been able to penetrate at all—and even he’d only ever made it halfway.
I pressed my finger against Beau’s lips to silence the song.
“Beau, I’m here for you. Until I’m needed for the Racing Hub feature in a few days, I’m here to help out in any way I can. I want you to know that. And I want to be friends, truly I do.”
His eyes sank closed and he rested his forehead on mine. Each breath he took blew across my lips. The taste was cinnamon and alcohol.
I brushed my hand through his hair. “But I can’t do this again. I can’t do us.”
We’d only just gone over it, but I didn’t think he had understood—or he’d chosen not to listen. For the sake of my sanity, I needed to make him stop his pursuit.
When he opened his eyes, his gaze found mine. “Why not?”
“Xavier.” It was one word that didn’t cover the full length and breadth of what I needed to say, but that should have been more than explanation enough.
“Do ya love him?”
“That’s not a fair question.”
“It ain’t a difficult one.” He stared at me, refusing to back down. Obviously the gut full of liquid courage was giving him a freedom he rarely let himself have lately, at least around me. “Unless o’ course ya don’t.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“That ain’t the same thang.”
“I—I care for him.” I should have been able to say yes. That I did love him. That one statement would have taken away Beau’s arguments. And yet I couldn’t say it. “He’s the one I want to be with.”
“Ya say that, darlin’, but I don’t believe ya love him. Not like ya loved me.” His fingers played over my cheek, and I naturally leaned into his touch. He shifted, rolling closer to me. The warmth of his lips and the scent of the alcohol that lingered on his breath filled my mind. “Like ya still love me.”
I turned my head to the side, moving away from him. How could I have been so stupid, coming onto the boat with him? There was nowhere for me to go. No escape but into his arms. “How can you possibly presume to know that?”
“’Cause I can see the way ya look at me. The way you’ve looked at me ever since ya came back. It steals my breath, darlin’, and it stops my heart.” His hands caressed my face, and his lips whispered over my skin.
I wanted him to move closer still, to kiss away the burn on my lips, but I needed to pull away from him. My hands found his shoulders, but they didn’t push him away or draw him near.
His fingertips traced a path over my throat down toward my coat. “I can feel the way your pulse races when I touch ya. He don’t make ya feel that way.”
“Maybe he doesn’t. But he’s never hurt me either.”
An argument was already on Beau’s lips. No doubt about New Year’s Eve.
“Not intentionally,” I added.
“Can’t we please try ag’in? Can’t ya give an ol’ fool one more chance? If ya really don’t want me, I need ya to tell me that.”
“I—I already did.” I set my shoulders and squared my jaw. Surely he couldn’t think that him being single and hurting would fix everything. It wouldn’t change any of the things he’d done to me. It wouldn’t change the fact that he hadn’t trusted me at the first test we’d had, or remove the hurt he’d caused me. I thought we’d already covered it enough, but clearly he was going to keep pushing.
“Not really,” he said, his lips curling into a small smile.
“I’m pretty sure that’s what ‘no’ usually means.”
“I think in this case it meant ya need space. That you’re hurtin’, and rightly so. But I’m here now, humbly requestin’ . . . no, beggin’ for another chance now that all the cats are outta their ba
gs.”
“Why should I though, Beau? Give me one reason why I should let you hurt me again.” My eyes prickled and ached, but I wouldn’t let the tears fall. I wasn’t going to cry one more over him.
“Because I won’t,” he said, rolling over even further so he was completely on top of me and we were nose to nose.
I tensed, but my body wouldn’t allow me to shift away from him. I tried to justify that I just didn’t want to rock the boat and fall in, but the reality was I didn’t want to leave the warmth of his hold.
He leaned on an elbow to free his hand and then grazed his knuckles over the corner of my mouth. “I much prefer it when it curls the other way,” he murmured as his gaze followed the path of his fingers.
Despite my resolution not to let another tear fall, the welling in my eyes couldn’t be contained.
“I’ve been responsible for too many of these,” he continued as he swept his thumb over my cheek to wipe away the tear. “I made some silly assumptions and stupid choices. I’ve hurt ya in ways I prob’ly don’t understand, and that kills me, darlin’, so to answer your question ag’in: you should give me another chance to hurt ya, because I won’t. I couldn’t.”
I turned my face away from him. “This is all a lot for me to take in, and I can’t trust it while everything is still so raw. Besides, how can I know how much is just the booze talking? Or whether it’s simply a need to have somebody—anybody—near you while you’re grieving? And then there’s Xavier.”
“I understand, darlin’. Just promise me one thang?”
“Anything.” It was probably a dangerous statement, but things couldn’t get worse between us.
“Promise me ya’ll think about it. That ya’ll weigh up how ya feel. How ya really feel. Life’s too short to waste it bein’ with the wrong guy.”
I nodded before resting my head against his shoulder. “I promise I’ll think about it.”
“And please don’t leave without at least sayin’ goodbye.” He rolled back away so we could stare at the sky again.
The night air was cold—near freezing on the lake—and yet in his arms, I felt warm.
It wasn’t until after he’d rowed us back to shore and walked me to my hotel room that I realised he hadn’t touched another drop of whiskey the entire time we were out on the lake.
Phobic (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #2) Page 27
