by Chloe Cox
“Who would?” Lola said, picking out another cupcake. “Sounds like a nightmare.”
“Well, it’s not all bad,” Adra said.
Lola grinned in a manner that could only be described as “saucily.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“There’s actually a lot of good.”
“There would pretty much have to be,” Lola said. “Hey, I have a question. If Ford’s your best friend, how come you’re not talking about this with him?”
Well, that broke Adra’s brain.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. But nope, she still had nothing. Because Lola had a point. If Adra couldn’t talk about this with Ford, he wasn’t really her best friend. It meant she’d already lost him in a way. It meant the current situation wasn’t working.
Lola raised her eyebrows like, Mmmhmm, I thought so.
Adra tried to untie the knots in her brain and took another cupcake.
***
It didn’t happen like she planned.
It wasn’t even meant to happen at all.
Adra had gone back to Ford’s early again. She’d paced, and thought, and argued with herself out loud. She’d tensed up when she heard him come home and then she’d waited, both nervous and dying to see him, until she heard his footsteps outside the door of her room. “Her” room—it was his house; that she thought of it as her room was kind of ridiculous.
He’d only knocked, and then when she flung open the door, insanely anxious because she still didn’t know what to say or what to do, he’d taken one look at her and asked if she was ok.
“No,” she’d said. “But I will be. Give me time?”
And then he’d asked no more questions, and made her dinner.
Now it was late. It was past late; it was that hour of the night that felt like a separate island from the rest of the world, at least up here in the Hills. Back at Adra’s place, she could always hear some sort of city sounds. But here, in Ford’s private house, she felt like she was in another world.
Maybe that actually helped what came next.
She’d been up all night. Trying to figure out how to maintain her friendship with Ford and keep the sex, because, well, she had to face it: the sex wasn’t going anywhere. The sex was like a force of nature. Which obviously wasn’t sustainable, right, if Ford was going to one day…
She couldn’t even think it. Which was screwed up; if she was his best friend, she should want him to be happy. She should want him to find someone to love and build a life with.
And she didn’t.
But she couldn’t be in love with him. Or, if she was, she couldn’t act on it.
Adra went around in these circles for hours, until the moonlight crept across her bed, until the night settled on everything like a deafening blanket, until she had actually driven herself out of her mind.
And it was at that point that she got up.
She walked, shaking, down the hall.
She knocked on his door.
She let herself in.
Ford was sitting up in his huge bed, rubbing his eyes, his bare, muscle torso a pale blue in the light from the window. Adra smiled softly at the sight of him waking up, the gentleness of it, this rare moment of softness. It only lasted a moment and then he was up. Fully present. Full attention on Adra.
It was like a spotlight.
“Adra,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
She twisted the ends of the shirt she’d worn to bed in her hands. It was one of his old button downs, worn soft and smooth—that’s why she’d told him she’d taken it to sleep in. But it was also because it smelled like him, ever so faintly.
Fuck, she had no idea what to say.
“Adra,” he said, and he got out of bed, his face worried, his body…
Oh God. His body.
Boxer briefs.
Adra snapped out of it, remembered what she was here for. “Wait,” she said.
“Whatever it is, we can fix it,” Ford said.
Adra closed her eyes.
“Just…be quiet for a second?” she asked.
“Ok,” he said.
Now or never.
Adra opened her eyes. “I came here to say…”
And she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. She tried to speak, and realized that she still hadn’t pulled a coherent thought out of all that mess, still didn’t know what she could say to herself, let alone him. Because once again there weren’t really any words that did any of it justice, not words she could say, and so she choked.
She didn’t want to be talking. She didn’t want to screw up anymore by saying things that weren’t true or only half true or just a shadow of the truth.
She could have cried in frustration. Because there he was, Ford Colson, watching her from just a few feet away, and it felt like he was a million miles away. It felt so far, and the distance made her cold, and it made all those words weigh down on her when she already felt too damn heavy. She knew she couldn’t tell him how she felt.
She just wanted to show him.
“Adra…” he said again.
“No,” she said. “I can’t talk. I’m sorry, but I can’t…I just…”
Fuck it.
Slowly, Adra worked at the buttons on her shirt. Ford’s old shirt. He was watching her, his expression still worried, his brow furrowed.
One button.
Two.
“Adra,” he said again. This time his voice was hoarse.
“I’m not good with words,” she said. The buttons were done. The shirt hung open. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “Let me show you.”
Silently, Ford put his hand on the side of her face. She leaned into it, savoring the feel of his hand on her cheek. And then she shrugged the shirt off, stood on her toes, and kissed him.
And after that, she didn’t know what came over her.
She’d never been too much of a sexual aggressor. She wasn’t lazy, either—she was adept at the ways a sub could initiate and contribute to the game. But she’d never felt the need to take; she’d never wanted to leave a mark.
She did now.
She’d never felt hunger like this.
She’d been starving. These days without him, these days without his touch, without that feeling of being with him—she’d starved. She kissed him with such manic desire that it took them both by surprise. Adra threw her arms around his neck and pressed her whole naked body against him. She felt him come alive, inch by delicious inch, felt him grow hard and huge, felt him match her hunger with that insatiable force that she’d come to crave.
Felt him pick her up with a growl and throw her on his bed.
He stood over her for a second, running his eyes over her body while she panted. Taking it in. Taking her in. Taking her.
And then he was on her.
He ran his hands down the length of her body like he was claiming every curve, every hollow, every dip. Ford was the one who would leave his mark, and holy God, did Adra want him too.
He kissed her again, roughly, deeply, his hand in her hair, his weight between her thighs, and then he entered her. There wasn’t anything controlled about it. Nothing formal. There was no game, no rules. He just took her with a ferocity that mirrored her own, and as he slid inside her, she found relief.
As they began to move together, Adra brought his head down to hers, his forehead against her own. She felt tears come to her eyes and this time, she didn’t fight. She let them spill down her cheeks as her back began to arch, as Ford drove her higher, tighter, brighter.
And the world went back to right.
chapter 19
Ford came awake slowly. Truth be told, he thought he was still dreaming.
Adra was asleep on his chest.
Adra, who usually fled to her own bed each night like some modern-day Cinderella who was afraid of intimacy instead of…what the hell was Cinderella worried about? Pumpkins?
Yeah, he woke up slowly.
His brain wasn’t doing
much anyway. Everything he had was focused on the woman in his arms.
He’d known it was something big when she showed up in his bedroom in the middle of the night. He’d had to stand there and watch while she shook where she stood, while she tore herself up on the inside trying to tell him something.
The goddamn self-control that had taken, not to just sweep her up. She would never know. But she had obviously needed whatever it was she was doing, so that meant it was going to happen. Whatever she needed, he’d make sure she got it.
And then he had done exactly that.
It had been so raw. So naked and honest. If Ford had had any doubts about the way Adra really felt about him, they were gone now. They hadn’t fucked—they’d made love. That’s what she come into his bed to do. Ford hadn’t needed to hold back; he’d been able to show her exactly how he felt, too. He’d loved her like he’d always wanted to and then held her while she clung to him, listening to her breathing as it slowed, as her body relaxed, as she finally let herself fall asleep. He’d laid awake for a long time after that, just to listen to her, to feel her. And while they were both old enough to know that sometimes love wasn’t always enough, he figured at least they’d have that night.
At least they’d given each other that.
Now he was awake, and trying to figure out how he could give her more. Because he knew this woman, and he knew she was due to be stressed about the whole thing. And he also knew exactly what he wanted.
Her.
“How long you been awake?” he said.
Adra curled her fingers on his chest. Her breathing had gotten shallower.
“A little bit,” she said. “Thinking.”
Ford couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I figured.”
Adra propped her chin up on his chest and narrowed her eyes.
“Are you making fun of my tendency towards anxiety? Implying that I perhaps, sometimes, on occasion, overthink things?”
“Of course I am.”
She blew her hair out of her face, and smiled slightly. “Well, I suppose that’s fair.”
“Don’t think I don’t like it,” he said, smoothing his hand over her hair. “You start freaking out, it gives a Dom something to do.”
Adra laughed softly. “I…had not thought of it that way.”
“So you going to tell me?” he said.
“What I’m freaking out about now?”
“Of course,” he said again.
She was silent for a while. Almost long enough for Ford to push her, because this time, now, he was going to push her. She was too close to give up now, and if she needed his help, so be it.
But instead Adra pushed herself off his chest, wrapped the sheet around her, and gave him the most earnest, vulnerable look he’d ever seen.
“I’m just going to talk for a while, and I need you to be quiet, because there are things I have to say and I don’t know why they’re so hard to say to you, but…”
She stopped, and managed to breathe. Good. He wouldn’t have to remind her.
“But that’s already a lie,” Adra said. “Already I’m lying. Jesus Christ.”
Ford sat up, leaned against his abused headboard, and pulled Adra closer to him.
“Be nicer to yourself than that,” he ordered gently.
“But I do know why it’s so hard to say things to you,” she said. “It’s because you’re real, and telling you things makes them real. You matter, Ford. You’re…”
Ford kissed her forehead. He’d never seen her like this, not since they’d had sex. No, not since ever. If he could have taken away every painful thing she felt, every fear she had, every little thing that was screwing with her head, and put it all on himself, he would have done it. It was worse to see her hurt.
“You’re my best friend,” she said, looking away. “And you deserve better than a coward, even for just a no-strings-attached sub.”
“Hey,” Ford said. “What did I say about being nice to yourself?”
Adra finally looked at him again, hitting him square in the goddamn heart with those big doe eyes.
“Please just listen,” she said softly.
And then she told him all about her brother, Charlie.
What was weirdest about the whole thing was that Ford could tell, even as she was telling him about her brother’s tendency to do a runner, even as she kind of glossed over her family history and her dad in a way that made it clear that that whole part of her life was way more relevant than she let on, it was clear that she was skirting around something else. It was clear that the reason she was scared to tell Ford this stuff wasn’t because it made her fears about her brother real. That situation was what it was, no matter who she told.
It was because it made her fears about Ford real. Because now they were close again. Because now they talked about personal things, in bed, naked. They made love. They cared about each other.
That’s what she was afraid of.
But that was nothing new, not really. It just put a name to some of it. What struck him the most, while she sat in his bed, a sheet wrapped around her beautiful body, her fingers worrying the fabric while she tried to keep herself calm—what struck him the most was how much she freaking apologized for being upset.
Adra didn’t even believe she had good reasons to feel the way she did. But a while ago Ford had reason to read up on child psychology and child-rearing and every other child-related thing like it was his damn job, and he knew that habitual neglect or repeated trauma was often worse than a single painful event. That kind of thing never made for a good story or an easy personal narrative, but it would leave its imprint on a person just the same, and they’d have no idea why. Until years later, when they found it so hard to do anything different, so hard to snap out of a groove they’d worn down over the years of learning the same dumb thing, over and over again…
Watching Adra, the most beautiful heart he’d ever met, talk her way through exactly that while she fucking apologized for it, damn near broke his own heart.
What he wanted to do was fix everything. He wanted to love her until she forgot about anything that had ever hurt her. He wanted to go knock some sense into Charlie, give him some money, just do something. And years ago, when he was younger, he might have tried that.
Now he knew it wouldn’t work, because people don’t work like that.
So he just had to sit there, against every instinct he had. He listened. And he planned ways to take care of the woman who was prepared for everyone she cared about to screw her over at all times.
“Anyway, that’s what’s been upsetting me so much,” Adra was saying. She was over the worst of it. “I really believed Charlie could make it. That of the two of us… I don’t know, maybe that’s a lie, too. Maybe I just really wanted to believe, you know?”
It was a rhetorical question they both knew the answer to. They both knew the answer to the implied follow up, too: Adra didn’t believe in love for herself or her brother. For other people? Sure. But not for herself.
Ford shook his head, slowly, and pulled Adra to him, knowing he couldn’t do anything other than hold her tight at the moment. What he wanted to do, beyond fixing everything, was find every lowlife asshole who had hurt her, who had made her believe that there were no happy endings, and put their heads through the same wall he imagined putting Derrick’s head through.
It was so much easier to feel angry, and it didn’t do her any damn good.
“That’s not all that’s been upsetting you,” Ford said.
Adra stiffened in his arms. He felt her stop breathing, start again.
“But let that go for now,” he went on. “Just know that I’m not going anywhere. Anywhere. You got that?”
Adra was too quiet.
“Adra,” he said.
“That’s not necessarily true,” she said quietly. “People have hurt you. They’ve lost you.”
Ford blinked.
“You’re talking about Claudia?”
Adra sighed softl
y. “Yeah.”
What in the actual fuck? Ford wasn’t usually stumped about what was going on inside Adra’s head, but this was like be smacked in the face with a freaking mackerel. Comparing herself to Claudia made no goddamn sense.
“You are not a cheater,” Ford said.
“And we don’t have that kind of relationship,” Adra added, sitting up to look at him. “But it’s just…I know it’s complicated, but…”
She looked down for a second, and he missed her brown eyes. And when she looked back up, Ford could tell that she knew there was more.
She knew there was something he wasn’t telling her.
He felt that pang of grief he always felt when he thought about Andrew, only this time, it was different. This time it felt, for a second, like a thing that kept him from Adra. He hated that. Hated it.
And he couldn’t fucking tell her.
He looked at Adra’s sweet face, thought about how hard this had all been for her, to be this vulnerable and come this far, and how she still didn’t want to talk about what they really were…and all he could think was how much more freaked out she would be if he told her about the child he almost had.
~ * ~ * ~
Well, this was unexpected.
She’d done it. Somehow she’d pushed ahead and jumped off a cliff—ok, a mini-cliff, the smallest cliff she could find—and she’d told Ford about Charlie, and the world hadn’t ended.
It hadn’t ended, but it had confirmed one thing: she felt immeasurably better having confided in Ford about Charlie. Like she’d stopped wearing the wrong size shoes or something. He was her best friend, after all.
And it wasn’t like she’d gone ahead and confessed everything that had been stressing her out, because wow, that would be crazy. She hadn’t just casually dropped bombs about maybe, possibly already being in love with him and how that would ruin everything. Or about how deathly afraid she was of losing him. Or about how no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think of a way that this situation ended well, because in the end, Ford deserved to be happy, and if Adra couldn’t give him what he deserved because she was such a mess…
But Adra was kicking all those habitual, worrisome thoughts aside now that she was looking at Ford while he very clearly kept some worries of his own to himself.
