by Laura Brown
Nikki nodded. “Fine. Then kiss him. Because you two need to calm down, and those are the only options I have.”
“You’ve never suggested that before.”
“You’ve never fought like this before. You’ve never really fought, not until now.” Nikki rolled her head and glanced at Pete. “This is going to be bad.”
He nodded, but by the look on his face, I wasn’t sure he was nodding about us.
This was a mess, one big fucking mess. But Nikki was right, we all needed to relax. I circled the table until I reached Jas. She didn’t move away, but a hesitance lurked on her face. I wrapped a hand around her neck, not missing the goose bumps popping up on her skin. A knot uncoiled deep inside as I realized I still had this effect on her. I tried to convey with my eyes the love I had for her, but even if she got it, I didn’t know if it would help or not.
I brought my mouth down to hers and kissed her. Not sweet, not hard. Us. I kissed her until she relaxed, until a connection sprouted between us again.
When I pulled back, part of her hard shell had cracked. She’d just apply more duct tape, like she always did. My new goal was to get her to give it up. For good.
I pointed to Pete and Nikki and the drinks now in front of them. “Go ahead. Drink.” They both glared at me, and I nearly laughed; this was going to be good. “We all have problems today, but I want a nice evening. So drink, talk, or kiss, anything so we can all settle down when the pizza arrives.”
Jas patted my back, sliding under my arm. “He’s right.” I rested my arm across her shoulders. It had been far too long since we’d acted like a team.
Pete studied his hands, shuffled a foot, acting twelve. Nikki stared at him with a longing in her gaze. Anyone with a set of eyes would know where this headed.
Jas stomped on the floor. “Start responding, or I’m making you another shot. And another, until this situation between you is solved.”
Pete reached for his drink, but Nikki stopped him, placing her hand over the rim before he could make contact. “You surprised me yesterday, that’s all. Not in a bad way.”
Pete didn’t move. He stood stiff. Nikki shook her head, signed stubborn, then rose to her toes and pressed her lips to his.
Jas leaned on my chest, signed sweet against my chin. So many words came to mind as I wondered if we were like this or if they were going to have the same issues as us. Instead, I tightened my grip around her waist.
Pete and Nikki pulled apart, both looking embarrassed as all hell. “Feel better?” Jas asked.
Nikki shook her head and tossed back her shot. Pete wore a big-ass smile but did the same. The doorbell flashed, and I untangled myself from Jas to get the pizza. Things were changing all around, but tonight the four of us would hang out, as we always did. And tomorrow, with any luck, we’d still be able to.
THANKS TO JAS’S mixology skills, I woke up in the morning with the light filtering in through my eyelids causing splintering pain and the taste of sawdust in my mouth. I rolled over, ready to press my head into my pillow, only to find I had no pillow.
I didn’t move, though I wanted to sit up and investigate my surroundings. The hard surface beneath me was the first thing to register. My bed was the floor. With a turn of my head, I tried to let some light in, only to have my hearing aid create a high-pitched feedback in the process.
I hadn’t even taken the aids off. What had she given me?
I managed to open my eyelids, letting in no more than a crack of skull-crushing light. My eyes watered, but I blinked in the area. The living room. I’d slept in the living room. And so had Pete, on the floor as well, and Nikki, on the couch.
The only one missing? The sober one.
My back ached from the hardwood floor as I rose to a sitting position. With a tug, I removed my aids—the removal feedback noise only making my head worse—and used my shirt to wipe down the wet wax left behind.
As my senses woke up, the scent of coffee drifted to my nose. I would have guessed the savior to be Blake, but Jas walked in from the hallway. Unlike how I felt, she looked wide awake and happy.
She noticed I was awake and cringed. “You OK?”
I placed one hand on my head. “My head on? It feels like it fell off and rolled into a pile of shit.”
“I’m sorry. You all kept asking for more, and I forgot to keep count. I have pain meds.”
I pulled myself up from the side of the couch. “That’s a start. What time is it?”
“Eight. I had hoped the coffee would wake you all up.”
Whatever had woken me, it wasn’t the coffee. I tapped Nikki’s foot and kicked Pete’s on my way to pain meds and coffee, not letting the black coffee cool before it burned the pills down my throat.
“So you slept in my bed all alone while I slept on the floor?”
She didn’t react to my joke, biting a corner of her lower lip. “I tried to get you up and into your own bed, but you were dead weight, I couldn’t move you. And Blake stayed at Shawn’s, so I had no help. I’m sorry.”
I pressed my throbbing head against hers. I didn’t mean to make her feel bad. “It’s OK. Do we wake them or let them sleep?”
“I’ll make cheesy eggs. They need food; maybe the smell will wake them.” She moved to work, but I held onto her wrist.
“Are we OK?” It could be the hangover, but I swore the divide between us had expanded.
She threw on a fake smile. “Of course.” She made to leave, but I didn’t let up my grip.
“Don’t change us. We are who we are. Dating doesn’t change that. Your job doesn’t change that.”
She pulled her hand back. “Everything changes everything.” Then she set about cooking. The smells did wake our friends, who were just as miserable as I was. Coffee, meds, and cheesy eggs didn’t make much of a difference, but we did manage to fake normal.
Something we were all too damn good at.
“It will be a long time before I accept another drink from you,” Pete signed to Jas.
She scrunched her eyebrows. “I know. I guess it’s a good thing I no longer work in a bar.”
He shook his head, then placed a hand on top. “A long time means maybe a month. Keep searching.”
Jas focused on her food, defeat written in the slouch of her shoulders. I couldn’t sit back and watch her self-destruct. I had to do something. But she had to be willing to accept help.
I walked Pete outside when he left. Nothing like fresh air to point out how much stress the apartment held.
“I need to help Jasmine,” I signed.
“Good luck with that. She’s shutting down hard because of all this.”
I glanced up at the apartment. “She shouldn’t have to. I want to take care of her.”
Pete shook his head. “Have you met her? She won’t accept that.”
“What other options does she have? If we save together, she can open her bar.”
“In what, five years? How much do you think you’ll make as a social worker?”
I rubbed my neck. “Her happiness is what matters. If she’s not happy, it doesn’t matter what job I have.”
Pete narrowed his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop.”
“It’s for the best.” I didn’t have to tell him my thoughts, he knew.
“You’ll be miserable working with your father.”
“Jasmine will be miserable working anywhere else. Once she’s happy, then I can reconsider.”
Pete shook his head and pulled out his keys. “I’d suggest you think this over; you’re setting yourself up for a rude awakening.”
Maybe so, but it was something I had to do.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jasmine
NIKKI LEFT SHORTLY after Pete did. I tried to tempt her with a movie, but she spouted some bullshit about homework. I suspected her intent was to give Dev and me time to talk, not realizing we needed the distraction.
Dev closed the door behind her. The place was large and empty with just the two of us. I wo
uld have set about cleaning, but I had already done that while the hangover victims nursed their heads.
No other distractions remained. I wrung my hands together, staring at the many feet of hardwood floor between us. Dev’s eyes burned my skin, but I kept my gaze down until his foot tapped, forcing me to look up.
“You know that part of being in a relationship is accepting help, right?” Dev asked.
“Jump right into hell, why don’t you,” I muttered with my hands.
“I’m serious. It’s killing me to see you in pain, but you won’t let me help. And anything I do makes it worse.”
“Maybe I want to be on my own.”
“Maybe I thought I had a best friend and girlfriend.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means that best friends, couples, they work together. They lean on each other. They support each other.”
I laughed, even though it tasted bitter on my lips. “True. That’s what’s happened for our entire lives. But now I need to stand alone.”
Dev stomped. “You have stood alone. You’ve lived alone with no help from anyone else. Did you really never want more than that?”
I kept my hands at my sides. Some days the answer was yes, other days no; an easy response wasn’t possible.
He ran his hands through his overgrown hair. “I’m going to shower.”
“We have to finish this fight at some point.” As much as I hated it, all the going around in circles might be worse.
He scratched at his scruffy jaw, wariness lurking in his baby blues. “I know. I’m not ready to lose you.”
He left, and I crumbled to the couch. We both knew where this headed. But we wouldn’t know how bad it would be until the moment arrived. I rubbed at the ache in my chest. Life without Dev, it wasn’t something I could envision. No one else understood me like he did. No one else had that connection he had. Add in the feel of his body against mine, and I knew there would never be another like him. Even if I also knew I never got to keep what I wanted.
One thing was clear: I wasn’t ready to lose him either.
I followed him down the hall and turned the bathroom handle. Unlocked. I slipped inside. Steam filled the room, and his shampoo or soap already teased my nostrils. His clothes were scattered on the floor. Through the white curtain, I made out the tantalizing outline of his form, but nothing more.
I undressed, tossing my clothes in a pile. My heart beat fast, and anticipation licked through me, as if this was somehow taboo, even for our new sexual relationship. I pulled back the curtain, and there was Dev, eyes closed, head back as he rinsed shampoo out of his hair. The entire front of his body was available to my view, and he had a lovely body, all hard muscle and a light dusting of hair.
He lowered his head and opened his eyes, catching me standing there. I didn’t know if I’d let in cool air and alerted him, but I hadn’t dared move farther and startle him. His gaze roamed over the little bit of me visible, focusing on my bare breasts. His gaze alone caused my nipples to harden. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
I stepped in and closed the curtain behind me. “I think that’s obvious.”
“You need to shower?”
I shook my head. “I need you.”
He held out his hands, offering all I ever wanted, and I moved to him, pressing my dry body against his water-slicked one. He kissed me with wet lips, his body stirring between us, melting me with heat and promise. I wrapped my arms around him, wiggling against him, all but desperate for a physical closeness while our emotional one remained strained.
Dev spun me. The water cascaded on me as he pressed me against the wall. “I love you,” he signed, before kissing my neck and shifting a leg between mine. He didn’t give me a chance to respond. I wasn’t sure I could, with my own emotional upheaval. I ground against him as his hand found my breast and teased my pebbled nipple.
A sense of exhilaration consumed me. After the last few shitty days, this was exactly what the doctor ordered. I ran my fingers up his thigh, down his abs, and wrapped around his silky length. Dev let out a breath as I began to pump, then retaliated by sucking my breast into his mouth.
All in all, pretty top-notch retaliation.
I let go of him to wrap my legs around his waist, giving him greater access to my chest. The steam of the shower competed with the steam in my veins, a combustible combination. My core throbbed with need. I grabbed his hand and brought it to where I needed him most.
He shot me a sexy-as-hell smile. “You want?” he asked, before putting his hand back where I had requested and slipping a finger inside.
I arched, and my nerve endings did a happy dance and clenched around him. “I love you,” I signed, meaning it more than ever before with his hand inside me.
His smile widened, and he sucked on my neck, fingers sliding in and out. My body tightened and climbed. I dug my nails into his back. When his lips met mine again, I burst, my orgasm spinning on and on until the very last notion of reality left.
And then Dev was inside me, and everything built back up. I forced my eyes open, wanting to see the same euphoria I felt on his face. He thrust me into the wall, our bodies moving as one. The moment was so special, so rare and wonderful. Nothing outside of this shower mattered. Here we were—us. We gave and took and came back for more.
He set me off again, then followed. We clutched each other, somehow not breaking our connection. Because once we did, reality would settle in.
Unfortunately, it settled in before we parted, as realization hit us at the same time. We had not been prepared for sex in the shower.
Dev slipped out and stepped back. “That was dumb.”
I half laughed, not knowing what else to do. I’d never forgotten a condom before. “Yes. It’ll be fine.” I hoped. According to sex ed in high school, I was close enough to my period that everything should be okay.
He rubbed his neck, then tossed me the bar of soap. “You promise you won’t cut me out of anything that happens because of this.”
I soaped up. “Nothing will happen.”
His jaw set hard as he glared at me.
“I promise.”
“We should pick up the Plan B pill to be sure.”
It was for the best, but I couldn’t deny that something felt off about the suggestion. Not that I was 100 percent confident, just that the notion felt so final. “Fine.”
He brushed his hair off his face, leaned against the far corner. The tension built back up. The fight brewing. I tossed the soap back to him. “We are not fighting in the shower. Not after sex.”
“I could grab a condom, and we could end happy.” Only his smile faltered. The happy moment shattered.
I rinsed myself off. “How can we know what’s coming so well and not have an answer?”
He switched places with me so the water could remove his soap. “Because we’re us.”
I nodded and stepped out of the shower. I dried myself off before wrapping the towel around me. Dev opened the curtain, unease following. I wiped a spot on the fogged-up mirror and picked up my comb. Better to attempt to tame my unruly curls than deal with the elephant in the room. Dev came up behind me. We looked darn cute together. “Maybe it won’t be that bad,” I signed.
He leaned into me until his hands came in front of us both. “Until you are willing to accept help, it will be.”
I spun around to face him. “What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to have this conversation while naked?”
I had a towel around me. “Yes.”
He rubbed his neck. “We both know it may take a while for you to find a job. If we are a true couple, then I’ll help support you.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“You have any better offers? If you don’t lean on me, who helps?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“So you’re not willing to accept help.”
I stared at him, and my eyes drifted to the water droplets on his chest. “You’r
e right. We need to get dressed.” I moved to the door, only he stepped in front of me.
“No. Not another delay. We need this out so we can get through it.”
I clenched my jaw but didn’t move to escape. I didn’t want anyone’s help. And I suspected that was our breaking point. Devon Walker was biologically wired to help.
“I have an idea,” Dev began slowly. “I’m going to drop it out there. You finding a job will be hard. I have two available to me. One will allow us to save money that can go toward your bar fund.”
A cold dread settled into my stomach. “My bar is my responsibility.”
His eyebrows shot up. “And if, in the future, you got married, you wouldn’t share finances?”
I hadn’t given marriage that much thought before. He shifted, and I knew he’d read my answer in my expression.
“Well, I have thought about marriage, and that involves sharing things like money.”
“But your social work job is the lower-paying option.”
“I know.”
I backed up. Mom’s story. My parents fighting. Her giving up her dream. That’s what Dev laid at my feet. “No. You can’t do that.”
He banged a hand against the door; I felt the vibrations beneath my feet. “Why the hell not? How can you stay alone, without anyone else? What good will that do you?”
I clenched and released my fists. “My mother gave up a dream for my father. She resented him and his bar. The day he died, he thought she was going to divorce him. You want that to be our future?”
He shook his head. “It won’t be.”
“Really? Are you sure? Because if you start working for your father, do you think that’s going to end? And if the bar keeps needing some of your paycheck, when will you ever make it back to social work?”
He pulled at his damp hair. “You’re being stubborn.”
“I’m not stubborn. I’m practical. The only person I’m responsible for is me.”
His shoulders slumped, and a trace of pain crossed his face. “I can’t believe I never saw this before. Where are you in ten years? Twenty years? Outside of your bar, what does home look like?”
