My jaw drops as I look around to see my family smiling and nodding, just eating this shit up.
“She’s a model, Ivy,” Blaine laughs, like it’s just hilarious that I’ve misconstrued the situation somehow.
“The management company hired her for the day, that’s all.”
I haven’t misconstrued anything, I know that. Because I can remember that phone call.
“Is there another girl.”
“I don’t know how you want me to answer that.”
And a hundred other times and examples come flowing though my head. The dinners he was an hour late for with bizarre “work” excuses and a wave of his hand. The anniversaries he missed entirely. The unwillingness to commit to anything.
“No.”
I shake my head, taking another step back from him as the color leaves my face. “No.”
“Ivy-”
“No, we’re done here.”
“Honey,” my mom rubs my back. “Maybe you and Blaine should talk just the two of you?”
It suddenly feels like the walls and the ceiling are closing in - the room growing smaller and the air slowly getting thinner.
I have to get out of here.
I whirl and run from the room, and it’s not until I get to the front door that I feel a hand on my arm.
Stella.
“Hey,” she gives me a meaningful look. “You okay?”
“No,” I say quietly. “He’s completely full of shit.”
She chews on her lip, nodding. “Okay, get out of here, I’ll cover.”
“Thank you.”
“What else are sisters for besides helping each other escape horrible and awkward family encounters, right?”
29
Silas
“Hi.”
I grin at the sound of her voice as I down the pier, even before I look up to see her sitting there.
“Hi yourself.”
She’s sitting on the edge of the roof of my boat, perched by the ladder with her feet hooked onto the top rung.
“You lost, Hammond?”
She shakes her head, her teeth raking over her bottom lip in a way that makes me want to grab her and claim those lips right here and now.
“Blaine’s here. In Shelter Harbor.”
I frown, my jaw clenching at the sound of that fucking douchebag’s name.
“Oh?”
I’m old enough to understand that what happened with us the other night doesn’t mean anything more than whatever it was that night. And I’m not stupid enough to think one night with her changes any of the other shit going on in her life - with her family, with work.
With Blaine, even if they were officially split before I even touched her the other day.
We’ll look past the part where she’s legally my fucking wife.
But I’m also realizing how tenuous my newfound existence in her life is. Sure, she and I have a lifetime of history, but that history was a lifetime ago. We’ve both been out in the world, and as much as I want to bury that smug little shit Blaine at the bottom of the Harbor, I’m aware that he and her have their own history.
She must notice the look on my face, because she smiles slowly and shakes her head.
“Not what you think.”
“I don’t think anything.” I shrug as casually as I can.
“He just,” she scowls, glaring down at her feet. “The whole thing is just so stupid. I mean he cheated on me, and he left me for this other girl. And now he’s fucking at my parents’ house lying through his teeth about the whole thing being a misunderstanding, and bribing them with fucking skis!”
She’s shouting now, her face red and her eyes furious as she looks up at me wildly. “My dad doesn’t even like skiing! He just went last year because he wanted Blaine to feel like he was fucking family, and- and-”
She trails off, her shoulders heaving and her chest rising and falling as she sucks in air.
She looks up at me after a second, a crooked smile on her face.
“Can we…” She looks down at her feet before dragging those big green eyes up to my face. “Can we go somewhere?”
I fold my arms over my chest, a grin on my lips. God, she sounds just like the girl I knew right now, sitting there like that in torn cut-offs and an old t-shirt.
“Got somewhere in mind?”
She shakes her head. “Just out of this fucking town.”
I chuckle as I step onto the boat. “Gorgeous, you came to the right place.” She smiles when I offer her my hands to help her down.
“Yeah, we can definitely do that.”
* * *
The light fades over the town as we drive into the sunset, literally.
The old red and white Ford 150 bumps and creaks as we take the back roads out of town, and I know she remembers this thing. This was our escape - our ticket to do what we wanted the second I got my license.
We climb up past the promenade on Turner Hill, with the whole harbor and the port disappearing behind us. We don’t speak, but we don’t have to. We’re comfortable in this silence. At one point I see her phone light up on her lap, and I grin when I watch her ignore it.
This is just us up here.
She doesn’t ask where we’re going, but I know she knows. And I haven’t been there myself in eight years, but it’s basically on autopilot in my head. Ivy turns and smiles at me in the dim light of the cab as she sees where I’m turning off the main, knowing where we’re going.
The overlook by the falls.
Yeah, this place. This was a place of firsts. And I love that I know that even being here with me again has her flushed. I also know she’s hurt, and wounded from this Blaine asshole, and I know that means I should keep my distance.
But I’m fairly certain I’m not going to be able to. Not ever again, and certainly not now.
I grab the blanket tucked behind the driver’s seat as we step out of the cab. The trickling rushing sound of the waterfall - quieter in the summer - filling the silence across the glacial pool from where I’ve parked.
I hop into the back of the truck and kick the tailgate down, putting the blanket down before I reach out with my hand, grinning as I help her up.
It’s like second nature, being here and doing this. Hell, we did this before we were a thing, too. When I first got my license, I drove her up here so we could watch for falling stars.
It was later when we came up here for other reasons.
Other reasons like the night she gave herself to me for the first time. It was furtive and stuttered, but damn was it perfect - like a dream now, wrapped in gauze.
She blushes as we lay back, the night going dark as the sun goes down over the cliffs of the falls.
“Been a while, huh?”
She rolls her eyes in the semi-darkness. “You brought me here jut to make me blush, didn’t you.”
I laugh. “No, but I can keep going with that if you want.”
“Okay.”
I freeze, turning to look at her as she does the same. We’re face to face, breath to breath lying there in the back of my pickup. Her eyes glimmer in the light of the rising moon.
Fuck it.
I know I should keep my distance. I know she’s got a mountain of other things going on in her life right now, and I know historically, I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.
And absolutely none of that stops me from kissing her, right there and then.
It’s small at first, just lip to lip. But she opens them and it grows hungrier. Her lips press hotly into mine, her tongue moving to meet mine. My hand slides to her cheek, cupping her jaw and drawing her even tighter to me before sliding into her hair.
We’re moving closer together, writhing against the other. I roll on top of her, never breaking that kiss until I can feel her hands tugging at my shirt.
Our clothes come off in a blur, her hands pulling at mine as I slip hers away. She wraps her legs around my waist and rolls us over, her mouth dropping to my chest. She kisses my skin
, lingering over every tattooed line and every raised scar. I groan as she moves lower, and when those perfect wet lips of hers wrap around my cock, I’m fucking putty for her. Her mouth is warm, so insistent as she moves it up and down, stroking me with one hand while the other cups my balls.
I sit up, reaching over her to slide my palm over the supple skin of her ass. I slide it between her legs, finding her wet and ready for me while she hums around my cock.
She shrieks, the sound muffled, as I drag her around, bringing one of her legs over my head and pulling her towards my mouth.
She pulls away from sucking me as I slide my tongue deep inside her slit, her moans soft and high in the moonlight as I taste her. I work my tongue in and out of her, using my hands to pull her back and forth on my mouth. I drag my tongue to her clit, lightly playing it across the little nub while I slide a finger inside of her.
Her mouth drops back to my cock, inhaling me making me groan into her sweet pussy.
I tease her higher and higher, loving that even after all these years, I know what makes her tick and what drives her crazy.
I know what makes her come like I very much doubt she has since me.
She explodes above me when I push her over that edge, my tongue swirling around and around her clit as my fingers stroke that place just inside. Her legs tighten around my head before her body goes limp, sprawled across mine.
“Holy shit,” she mumbles out, idly stroking my throbbing cock as she looks back at me with nothing short of hunger on her face.
She raises off of me, sliding down my torso until she’s hovering above my hips. I reach into my pants pocket for a condom, which she takes from me with an impish look. She pulls the foil apart and rolls it down my length, stroking and teasing me as she does so.
And then she’s rising up, centering herself above me, and slowing sinking down onto me.
We both moan when I’m sheathed entirely inside, and I rise up, wrapping my arms around her. My hands cup her breasts as she slowly starts to move up and down, rolling her hips as she rides me.
I move my own hips to meet her, sinking deep on every thrust, groaning as her muscles grip and milk me. She moves slowly and purposefully, taking her pleasure as the stars move above and the water cascades across the rocks of the falls beside us.
I move a hand to where we join, letting my fingers roll across her clit and making her cry out.
“Lay back,” she whispers, turning over her shoulder at me, kissing me.
I do, and flat on my back with her perched on me like that, I watch in awe as she starts to ride me like that. Her hair tossed back, her peach of an ass rising and falling in front of my eyes, swallowing my cock again and again.
My hands guide her, reaching up to pull on her long hair just tight enough to make her cry out. We move faster, our breaths and her high, sweet moans drifting across me like honeysuckle.
When she comes, I sit up again, wrapping her in my arms and rocking her through her orgasm before I go crashing over with her. I roar as I push in deep, seeing stars and feeling the world drop away from both of us as we collapse in a tangle into the blankets.
* * *
We go again later, this time face to face. I pin her hands above her head this time, like I know damn well drives her wild. And we never break eye contact as I fuck her slow and deep, her legs wrapped around my waist.
We lie there after until it gets late, and I know it has to end even though I hate that it does.
We drive back to town with her right against me on the bench seat of the truck, her head on my shoulder and the briny sea air drifting through the open windows.
I stop a block before her parents’ house, and she grins as she looks up at me.
“Just like high school, huh?”
She laughs. “Yeah.”
I don’t want this to end. I don’t want whatever this night was and what we keep finding again and again to expire. Not ever. I just don’t know how the fuck to tell her that. Or how the hell I expect her to hear that after what happened before.
“Ivy-“
She shakes her head, silencing me with a soft kiss.
“We don’t have to go there,” she’s says quietly. “Not tonight.”
She leans into me again, kissing me softly.
“Goodnight, Silas.”
“Goodnight, gorgeous.”
30
Ivy
Morning sun steams in through the curtains of my childhood bedroom.
Not much has changed in here. The same desk, the same white dresser, the same chair by the window. Heck, I’m lying in the same bed that’s been here since I lived in these four walls. Okay, the NSYNC and Lighthouse posters have thankfully been pulled down. But aside from that?
Exactly the same.
It’s late in the morning, but I’m still in bed, still glowing and grinning about the night before. I touch my lips, feeling like the same blushing teenager I once was, lying in this same bed thinking about the same boy kissing me.
Its the same feeling I felt all those years ago. I might be twenty-six now, but I’m still getting the same butterflies I got after being kissed by Silas Hart for the first time behind our neighbor’s garage. I’ve got the same dopey grin on my face as the first time I truly let myself get lost in those sea-blue eyes of his.
And I’m getting the same blush of heat through certain places in my body that I did the first time he slowly pulled my clothes off of me - the first time I took off his.
“We don’t have to, not until you’re-”
“I am ready.”
I kiss him, holding his face.
“I want this,” I say heatedly, feeling my heart racing in my chest. “I want you.”
“You’re all I ever want,” he says softly, kissing me.
I know I’m not his first, but if I ever thought that would bother me, it doesn’t. I don’t care about anything else actually, because I’m in love. We’re in love, and nothing else comes close to meaning anything besides that.
We’re parked up by the falls, laying naked together in the back of his truck on a blanket, with the summer moon shining down and the falls gurgling like music in the background. He’s slow, and careful, and it doesn’t hurt like everyone says it will.
In fact, he’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my life.
I’m addicted after that. After that, we’re doing what we did that night all over again, every chance we get. And it’s like I love him more every single day.
Later, what starts as a joking comment turns into reality. It turns into each of us saying yes in front of a priest, and putting a ring on the other’s finger.
I never do lose those butterflies.
And apparently, I really never did lose them. They just went into hiding over the last eight years. Because here I am in my bed, my fingers tracing my lips and still feeling the delicious soreness in my body from him the night before.
I have NO idea what comes next. But here and now and whoever this is?
It’s pretty perfect.
I glance at my phone on my bedside table and roll my eyes. Twenty missed calls from my management company, another fifty texts. Utterly unsurprisingly, there are no missed calls from Blaine.
I’m sure they’re freaking out, and I can picture Lori, my agency manager, tearing her hair out about the prospect of Blaine and I not being a “thing” anymore, and what that might do to my fan-base, and more importantly, my sales power.
Fuck them. My fans are normal people, and they will completely understand the Blaine situation once I post something short and sharp about it. Hell, I’ll probably see an increase in sales and ranking after I do so.
Grudgingly, I finally slide out of bed, and I’m pulling clothes on when there’s a knock at my door.
“Yeah?”
Sierra pokes her head in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
She makes a sour face. “I heard about Blaine stopping by.”
I roll my eyes and she s
crunches up her face. “What a douche.”
“Thank you.”
She laughs. “Mom and Dad just want to see the good in everyone, you know that. I think they just really wanted to believe Blaine was…I dunno.”
“Not a douche?”
She grins. “I was going to say ’the one’. I mean, he’s not, well, you know, he’s not-” she trails off, but I know what she’s not saying.
“He’s not Silas.”
She nods, looking at the floor for a second before looking up at me with a sly grin. “Uh, speaking of which. I heard you got in pretty late last night?”
“I plead the fifth.”
She gives me a look. “Care to elaborate?”
“You do know what pleading the fifth means, right?”
Sierra laughs. “Fine, keep your secrets, even though I totally know where you were and who with.”
“No you don’t.”
She smirks. “Silas Hart? The falls?”
My eyes go wide for second, totally betraying me, and she laughs. “Dude you’ve got grass in your hair, and a serious hickey on your neck.”
My jaw drops as I jerk my hand to my neck, only to see my little sister’s eyebrows shoot up mischievously.
“Well, I was kidding, but thanks for confirming that.”
“Bitch.”
She grins triumphantly, but then I decide to turn the tables on her.
“And what time did you get home last night?”
She blushes even though she tries to cover. “Oh, I stayed over.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mhmm,” she says noncommittally, looking away.
“At your friend’s house, right?”
“Yep,” she says quickly before glancing back at me, her face still pink.
“You uh, you do actually have grass in your hair, by the way.”
“Ivy!”
Our mom’s voice calls from downstairs.
“Yeah?” I poke my head out of my room and glance down the staircase.
“There are, uh, there are some people here to see you?”
I groan.
Jock: A Secret Baby Sports Romance Page 93
