The need in her brown eyes deepened until he swore he could see her heart. A tentative smile spread across her face. Her tongue was a flirty temptation, caressing her bottom lip. His body tightened just shy of pain.
“Really?” she whispered. Her chest rose and fell in rhythm with his. “I couldn’t forget, either. This. All the rest. The hours we’d just sit and talk, or sit and do nothing, out back by the camellias, in town somewhere, some quiet place where no one would find us. I could never forget you. And when I run now, to clear my head so I can think . . . I never can, completely, because you’re always there.”
“I thought I’d never see you again,” he confessed. “And I couldn’t be in Chandlerville without you. I’m starting to understand that. Without you I couldn’t face coming . . .”
“Home.” She kissed him.
Oliver drew her hands from around his neck and placed her palms against his chest, knowing he was taking a risk. She’d just had a shock. Camille was still in the hospital. And Parker was ramping up the pressure to get Selena and her daughter back. Selena was off balance and still not one hundred percent sure of Oliver, or of them. But what if this was their last chance?
“We’re both here now.” He searched her expression, seeing her love and fragile strength. Craving both. But did she really see him—the way he was, instead of the mixed-up kid she’d once known? “We’ve been circling this for days, for years. You can’t tell me what you’re going to need next—for Camille or yourself. And I can’t promise I can be that person for you, not until we sort things out. But we can have this.”
He gave her the gentlest kiss he could. Like their very first kiss—when she’d shown him how to love again.
“This can be ours,” he said. “No being afraid. No one, nothing between us. Please, Selena. Be with me one more time.”
She watched him for what felt like hours. For too long. She smoothed her palm over his heart like she would push him away. But then she was in his arms again, holding him as if she’d never let go.
“God, Selena.” He crushed her closer. “I love you. So damn much.”
It was his last coherent thought.
Selena surfaced from drowning in Oliver’s kisses, her vision as clouded as her mind.
“We can’t do this,” she gasped.
“We can’t?” Oliver gritted his teeth, his jaw tightening in brutally harsh lines.
She drew him into a soft kiss this time, afternoon sunlight slanting through the windshield of his truck, nearby trees caressing them with swaying shadows.
“Not here,” she explained. “Where anyone could drive by and see us.”
They’d been the talk of the town since the night of the AA meeting, since before that. Now they were making out in his very recognizable truck, in her mother’s driveway.
“Right.” Oliver fumbled his keys out of the ignition. “Inside.”
He was beside her door before she could get it open. Hand in hand, they hurried across Belinda’s yard and to the porch and through the front door that was still slightly ajar from Selena and her mother rushing Camille to the hospital. Selena closed it behind them, turned, and Oliver backed her into its wooden surface. He pressed his body to hers. His mouth tortured her again, everywhere, anywhere, not nearly enough places at once.
She stretched into him, wanted to feel every inch of him.
“Too many clothes,” she panted, tearing his shirt from his jeans.
“Bed?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I sleep on a couch in my mother’s sewing room.”
His attention strayed over his shoulder. “Couches can be good.”
“Yes, they can,” she agreed and was swept off her feet and carried across the room to her mother’s love seat.
“This one’s closer,” he insisted, “even if it’s so small I’ll be a cripple before we’re done.”
She giggled as he lowered her to the cushions. She inhaled when his chest pressed against hers, his body pinning her again, right where she wanted to be caught. She wrapped her arms around him and dragged his shirt completely off. He buried his face in her neck, kissing the sensitive skin behind her ear, setting her body raging for more. She caught a flash of color over his heart.
“Let me see,” she said.
He pulled back, his expression questioning. When she brushed her fingers reverently over her discovery, he stilled.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. So delicately done, it could have looked feminine, but not on Oliver. Not even with its crimson-red flower and the soft curves of its petals and leaves. “It’s a—”
“Camellia,” he said. “So I’d have something to remind me of you.”
Like Selena had had Camille, and prayed in her most secret heart that her daughter was Oliver’s.
A rush of . . . rightness blinded her. She blinked away the emotion so she could see Oliver clearly. She caressed his tattoo, the strong beat of his heart answering her touch.
“You okay?” he asked. “If this is too much . . .”
“No.” She smiled. “It’s just been a long time . . . since I’ve let myself want something as much as you make me want.”
He smiled, too, with wicked intent. “Wanting can be good.”
She kissed him again and again, while he made fast work of her jog top. “Very, very good.”
His breath hissed in at the sight of her. His hands and fingers caressed while hers did, too, relearning his touch and, with her tongue, his taste. His mouth took its own journey, worshiping her breasts and then her belly. While her nails scraped down and back up and around, and then down again to the quivering muscles of his belly, the buckle of his belt.
“Hurry.” She needed more. She needed now.
“Yes.”
Oliver helped her make quick work of her running pants and socks and shoes. His jeans and the rest of his clothes melted away. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, rocking with him, kissing him and needing him.
“Yes,” he chanted. “Selena.”
They became one slowly. The world stopped completely. Her body thrilled, shimmering all over, as he held them both still, held them back, keeping her from rushing.
“Oliver. Please . . .”
“Look at me.” His thumb tilted her chin up until her eyes opened. His face hovered above her in the deepening shadows of the unlit room. “Stay with me.”
He began to move, set the rhythm. She reveled in the perfect feel of it, of them. He took her slowly, as if he wanted to make it last. She didn’t want it to end either. Ever. But she couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t nearly enough. Not when her body knew what was coming, what they’d always found. A place only theirs, where need became love and they’d never be alone again. Wild. Untamed. Desperate. But never alone.
She urged him on and cried out when his next kiss deepened, seduced, dragged a groan from her lips. His hands lifted her higher, held her, encouraged her to want more of him, all of him.
“Now,” he breathed, “take me with you, Selena.”
She saw stars, she saw him, them. She saw their perfect connection mirrored in the brilliant green of Oliver’s eyes. And then they were flying, clutching at each other, loving each other, on fire and soaring and tumbling and knowing nothing but the truth neither of them had outrun. That this, their bodies straining closer, deeper, harder, and then caressing softer, holding, comforting . . .
This was intimacy. Belonging. True love.
And it would destroy her again if she had to give it up.
Chapter Twenty
Selena pulled the hand-pieced throw from the back of Belinda’s couch, while Oliver stood and slipped his amazing backside into his jeans. The lean muscles of his shoulders and torso disappeared under his T-shirt. Only then did he turn around.
He’d said nothing since they’d finished making love. He’d grown quiet almost immediately, slipping away emotionally even while he’d still been holding her. Now they were back to staring at each other without saying a word, the same as
when he’d first pulled into the driveway next door. Her body was shaking. Her heartbeat might never settle. Entirely too weak and wanting him back, she’d felt . . . relieved at his withdrawal. And flash-fire furious.
“I didn’t know a man could do the walk of shame,” she said, “practically standing in one place. If you need to wash up before you head to your mother’s, there’s a hose out back. Feel free to drown yourself under it.”
Absorbing her uncalled-for outburst, he ran both hands through the dark hair she’d mussed. He sat in Belinda’s recliner.
“I don’t regret what we just did,” he said.
God, Selena.
“Making love?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I can see that, what with half of the room between us and all.”
He clasped his hands together, his forearms propped on his thighs. “It meant a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”
She’d felt that while he’d been holding her, like she was his everything again, exactly the way she’d needed to feel. But he was regretting it now. Or maybe she was just overthinking things, worrying too much, looking for all the ways this could still end badly.
You can’t tell me what you’re going to need next. . . And I can’t promise I can be that person for you . . . But we can have this.
She was freezing without him. The way she’d been frozen inside for the last seven years. And she was tired. Tired of landing on her ass, on the letdown side of yet another dream. And that’s what this felt like. She’d always known it would, and she’d let herself wish her way here, regardless.
“This isn’t your fault,” she conceded. “You’re a good man, Oliver.” He was the best. The best for her. There was no denying it. Just moments ago, in his arms, all she’d been able to see was forever.
“But?”
“But we’re looking for different things, I think.”
“Are we?” His voice was clipped, deeper, warning her to be careful. Maybe warning himself.
You don’t know how not to love, honey. . .
“Do you want me?” she asked. “Camille? A life with us? A real life, where you’re a part of our every day, and when you’re away you can’t wait to come home to us? Can you tell me that?”
He looked down at his linked fingers. She looked back at the two other times she’d been at this crossroads. When she’d made a destructive choice and broken up with Oliver the first time around. And when she’d made a healthy decision to walk away from her marriage to Parker.
“You don’t know what you want,” she said to the man who carried a reminder of her over his heart. “Except that you don’t want to let anyone down. You’re not sure what any of this means. Except that it means we have to do this—really talk about us.”
“And we have to do that now?”
“I won’t be careless with Camille’s happiness again. Or mine. You care about my daughter, obviously, and I’m grateful for that. And for your family’s acceptance. But if she turns out to be Brad’s, or even if she’s yours, you’re not sure what any of this will look like to you tomorrow, or next week, or when Joe’s better and it’s time for you to get back to your real life.”
Oliver stood and slowly returned to the couch, sitting beside her. He stared at where she was clutching her mother’s quilt to her chest. He looked down to the tennis shoes they’d both kicked under the coffee table—lying in a jumbled heap like they might every day if he and Selena lived together, ran together, came home together on a free afternoon to sneak a chance to make love while no one would miss them.
“This is a lot for me,” he said. “I’ve turned my life inside out in less than a week. I’m still trying to do the right thing for everyone.” He shook his head. “Like any of us knows what that is. Except that I was terrified this morning. From the moment Belinda called until I could get to you and Camille at the hospital, I was terrified of losing my chance to have you and your daughter in my life. Of never knowing what that could be like again—a forever family of my own.”
A forever family. That’s what foster kids called it, he’d told her a lifetime ago. What they all secretly wanted, even the ones whose behavior and choices made it impossible to find. A place to belong to forever, no matter what. Exactly what Selena had been searching for, too, ever since losing her father.
“Oliver . . .” She curled into his hug. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“You’re right about one thing.” He kissed the top of her head. “I don’t dwell on long-term things. Now is what I’m good at. Making money now. Where I’m going to be making money next, so other people can live their lives and take care of their long-term things. I’m good at doing that for my family. I haven’t let myself want more than that for a long time. But I swear, Selena, back in the truck with you . . .” He kissed her again. “When I held you in my arms just now. Since I first caught sight of you Tuesday morning . . . I’ve realized how much I still need you in my heart.”
“Today. But what about tomorrow? When you’re gone from here tomorrow or next week, how much of us will still be in your heart then? How long will it be before we see you again?”
She wanted to beg him to reassure her. Except the truth was more important. It was the most important thing they could give each other.
“It’s complicated,” he admitted. “We’re complicated.”
Yes, they were. “There are other things, other people to consider—besides how good we are when it’s just us.”
He stared at their bare feet, so different but so right resting beside one another under the coffee table. “I know I want to give you and Camille everything I can.”
“Then I guess it’s up to us to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“If that everything is going to be enough. If the complications are worth it. Or . . . we get honest with ourselves about how different our lives are. We leave well enough alone and agree to stop fighting reality. And this time, we at least stay friends.”
“You’d really walk away without even trying? Because I need time before we put a label on something that just started up again. We’re supposed to give up now? Because it’s too hard for you to keep trying? What does that make what we just did—a booty call?”
“It was what it was.” The first step toward her having Oliver’s heart forever, or him breaking hers for the last time. “It was a moment. A wonderful moment. But now it’s back to the real world. No fairy-tale endings. No completely right choices. No instruction manual for what to do next. We have to figure us and our families out. To make that work, it’s going to take being together for more than a moment. It could take a lifetime—Camille’s lifetime. And you don’t even know where you’ll be next week.”
“You don’t trust me, Selena. That’s what this is really about.” Oliver walked over to stare through the gauzy front curtains, at the waning light beyond. “Not enough to stick things out until they run their course. You never did.”
Her phone sounded off, making them both jump as it played “Danger Zone.” Oliver’s cell rang, too. He retrieved her purse from the entryway table beside the front door. Handing it over, he fished his cell from his jeans and read the display.
“Brad,” he said without answering.
“Parker.”
Selena was surprised it had taken her husband this long to make his next move.
“Shit,” she said on an exhausted sigh.
“Trade with me?”
“What?”
Oliver held out his phone. “You set up a meeting with Dru and Brad, to discuss Camille. I’ll deal with Parker.”
“But you—”
“I understand his type, too. I can work with you to get him out of your life. You work with Brad and Dru and me to make the right choice about Camille’s paternity.”
Selena couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move?
“Trust me, Selena.” Oliver laid his phone on the coffee table. He held out his hand for hers. “Let’s start dealing with the complications a
nd the confusion and figure out today and tomorrow and next week—together. This is it for us. This is our chance. Are we in, or are we out?”
Oliver answered Selena’s phone. The tight-ass slime on the other end began talking immediately in his slick, Upper East Side accent.
“This is ridiculous, Selena,” Parker said. “You’re being ridiculous. My tactics are unseemly, I know. But you know I’m not going to stop. Come back and talk with me like an adult instead of running away. You’ll be free of that Podunk place and your mother for good. You don’t need anyone else’s help for you and Camille but mine. If you’d just—”
“Neither of them are coming back to New York.” Oliver kept his tone reasonable. He wanted to reach through the phone and strangle the guy. “Selena doesn’t need your money, your two-timing, or your help for her child. She has friends here, real family. And she’s the best mother I know. There’s no way you’re going to convince her to come back. Give it a rest, man. It’s over.”
Selena nodded—at what Oliver had said, or to whatever she and Brad were discussing on Oliver’s phone.
“Tonight?” she asked both him and Brad. “At the hospital, you two will come over after the Whip closes?”
Oliver nodded in agreement.
He’d cover the house and the kids for Travis until then, so his brother could check in on Joe or whatever else he needed to do. Travis wouldn’t mind stepping back in for a while tonight, once he heard what it was for.
“I want to speak with my wife,” the slimeball insisted.
“Ex-wife.”
“Not yet.”
“Soon.” Oliver bit out. “Very soon.”
Selena flinched at his fraying control. He took her hand.
“You can speak with her lawyer from now on,” he said more calmly. “You’re done manipulating Selena with money and everything you think she should still want with you. Leave her alone.”
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