by Shirley Jump
“Being around you, period, makes me forget.” He swallowed, and let out a long breath. He lifted his gaze to hers, and in his dark brown eyes, she saw regret, desire, need. “God, Jillian, you are beautiful. I still want you. I never stopped wanting you.”
His voice broke on the last few syllables, in a vulnerable, gruff way that erased whatever resolve Jillian had been clutching. He still loved her—she could see it in his face, hear it in his voice. For all her bluster and determination to stay away, she knew she still loved him, too. Missed him like she had cut off a part of herself. She wanted, no, needed, to be in his arms, to hear him whisper her name, to feel him enter her and hold her.
And just like that, as if they’d never broken up, she released the towel and let it tumble to the floor. “Then show me, Zach.”
SEVENTEEN
Zach had gone to Jillian’s to tell her the truth about his brother. Truly, that had been his intention. He’d realized that if he told her the truth, wiped the slate clean, maybe then they could really start over. But when he’d seen her in that towel, his brain went into total Man Mode and he forgot the entire reason he was there. Hell, he forgot his own name. All he knew, all he saw, was Jillian.
And when she dropped the towel—
That was all the invitation he needed. He scooped her up into his arms, and when she settled her head against his chest, Zach knew what it was like to hit the lottery. They might not be back together, and this might just be one of those rebound with the ex things, but he wasn’t going to let her go one second earlier than he had to. Because having Jillian against him, when he’d thought he’d never hold her again, was his definition of heaven on earth.
Zach carried her down to her bedroom, his mouth locked on hers, kissing her, tasting her, thinking he was the luckiest damned man in the world. He didn’t need to look to see where he was going; he still remembered the path past her furniture, and the slight jog around her dresser when he got inside the room. She still had twelve thousand pillows on her bed, and when he laid her on the thick comforter, a quartet of those pillows tumbled onto the floor.
The soft light from her bedside table warmed her skin and kissed it with gold. Beautiful wasn’t even enough of a word to describe her, and for a second, he wished he was a writer or a professor, someone who would have a vocabulary big enough to describe how amazing Jillian was. Something he hadn’t appreciated until after she was gone from his life.
He slid into the space beside her, and ran his hand down the flat expanse of her belly. The floral notes of her body wash teased at his senses, beckoned him closer. She smelled like spring, like everything fresh and perfect.
“I have missed you,” he said, “so very, very much.”
“Oh, Zach…” Her voice broke and her eyes watered, and instead of saying anything more, she curved into him, draping a leg over his, urging his body against her warm, naked skin. He ran a hand down her back, over the curve of her ass.
Jillian nudged him onto his back, then straddled his hips. She slid her fingers under his T-shirt, then slid it off and to the side. His hands cupped her breasts, and he thought the same thing he had thought a thousand times before when he touched her: perfect, absolutely perfect. Her nipples hardened under his palms and she covered his hands with her own, pressing his touch against her.
His cock hardened, and his pulse thundered in his head. Jillian gave him the sexy, teasing smile he loved, then she slid back and off him, so she could undo the button on his shorts and tug them off. They landed on the floor, followed quickly by his briefs, and then Jillian’s hand was sliding down the length of his cock and his brain stopped thinking.
Three months had passed since they last made love. Three months that felt like three decades. He hadn’t been with anyone else in all that time, and his body reacted to her with a loud resounding yes, yes, more, more.
“Are you…” he managed, between kissing her, between her strokes, “still on the—”
“Yes, yes,” she said.
“Good.” That was the last word he managed for a while, because then it was his turn to flip Jillian onto her back, before he trailed kisses from her lips to her belly, and then between her legs. He’d always loved pleasing her orally, the way she bucked against his mouth, the way she tangled her fingers in his hair. His tongue flicked over her tight nub, slow at first, then faster, until she was writhing and panting and moaning his name. A moment later the moans became gasps, and she arched against his mouth, and tightened her grip on his hair for one long, hot moment.
When the orgasm subsided, she grabbed his arms, then hauled him up to her. He saw hunger and satisfaction in her eyes, that devilish smile still playing on her lips. “God, that was so good. I almost forgot how good it was.”
“I love seeing that smile on your face.” He traced along the edge of her lips, and thought if it was possible for his heart to be too full, this was that moment. Damn, he loved her. He always had.
“Then make me smile some more, Zach.” Her eyes darkened and her hands went to his ass, urging him inside her. “Please.”
That was the only word he needed to hear. He slid inside her, and thought it was like coming home. Pure heaven, and surely the sweetest thing he had ever experienced. He’d fully intended to take it slow, to make this first time in a long time last for as long as possible, but Jillian was grabbing him with hungry demand, raising her hips to meet his strokes, growling snippets of words, and damn, it felt so good. So, so good.
He lengthened his strokes and sped up his pace, and she was calling out his name between breaths, and he knew she was close, knew her body as well as his own. He leaned down and whispered her name against the valley of her neck, and then she clutched at his back and curved up to him, her breath faster, harder, and then she came, and that was all he needed to get lost in the dizzying stars with her.
When they were done, he rolled to her side, and drew her against his chest. Her shampoo smelled of coconuts and tropical beaches. She fit against him just as she always had, curving into the spaces of his body like she’d been molded to him.
But now that it was over, and reality began to return, he realized he still hadn’t told her why he was here. He had left the truth about Keith and the attack somewhere out in the hall with his common sense.
He still couldn’t bring himself to tell her, not with Jillian naked and warm and sated against him. That was definitely a conversation that required clothes. In a minute, he told himself. Just a minute. Or ten.
She snuggled into him and let out that happy sigh that he had heard a thousand times before and still loved. “We probably shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Probably. But we did. And it was…amazing.”
“We were always good at this part.” She ran her fingers over his, her eyes downcast. “It was the rest that we had issues with.”
“We can work on the rest,” he said, and waited for her to say, yes, we could, but she didn’t. A minute passed, another, and he wondered if he’d made a huge mistake thinking sex with Jillian would solve anything. He just didn’t know how to get from here to where he wanted to be. Or whether it was even possible.
His gaze wandered around her room, then rested on a white notebook stacked on top of a book about music theory. The book sat on a small wooden desk he didn’t remember her having. “Why do you have a notebook from the Conservatory?”
She stiffened. “Uh, I, uh, bought it.”
“Here? On the island? I thought that was the kind of thing you could only buy if you were a student.” He had a couple friends who had gone to school there, and he remembered thinking how much he wished he’d had the money to get a degree. There used to be a savings for Zach’s education, but hiring the lawyer who represented Keith had pretty much wiped out any savings his parents had.
“I, uh, got it on the mainland.”
He propped himself up on his elbow and stared down at her. All these years, he thought he knew everything about Jillian. But never in all th
e years they had been together had she said she wanted to go to college. That she took music any more seriously than the next person.
He glanced again at her desk. A desk she hadn’t had in her room three months ago, now stocked with a pencil cup full of pens, pencils and highlighters. A little banker’s light sitting in one corner, her laptop closed but plugged into the wall socket. And then there was the book on theory, the notebook—they all added up to just one conclusion. Jillian had always had a big interest in music—it was part of what had drawn him to her and what had formed the foundation of nearly all their conversations—so he could see why she’d want to take that interest to the next level. “Are you going to school there?”
Jillian shifted under his gaze. She hesitated, then let out a long breath. “Yes.”
“That’s awesome! When did you start?” He had a thousand questions for her, but he held them back. Once again, he realized how their breakup had left him on the sidelines of Jillian’s life, and without any right to question her or to intrude.
“Pretty soon after we broke up. I needed something…something to get my life on track.”
“You? I’ve always thought you’ve had your crap together better than anyone I know.”
She scoffed. “You think I want to be a waitress for the rest of my life? Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents and I love working at The Love Shack, but I want…more.”
More than the life they had planned. More than the life she had talked about. More than the life he had offered her with that ring? “You never talked about wanting to go to college. Back when we were first dating, you always said you were happy here.”
With him. With the future they had together. Except that wasn’t the case anymore, and hadn’t been for quite some time.
She shifted onto her side and drew the blanket over her body. “I didn’t go to college back then because…” A slight rain started outside, pattering against the window like a muffled head tapping against a tom, a soft and gentle prelude to something deeper, richer. “Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what?”
“Of failing.” She toyed with the edge of the blanket, bunching, unbunching, as she talked. “I was afraid of a lot of things that fall.”
That fall.
The September that came right after the night she was robbed on the beach. By his brother. More than one thing had been changed in that single act, Zach realized. “Why were you so afraid, Jillian?” he asked.
The rain began to fall a little heavier now, ramping up to the rat-a-tat of a snare. Zach loved the music of storms, the crash of thunder, the cymbal-like surprise of lightning. On any other night, he would have opened the windows to hear the sounds, with him and Jillian cuddled up under a blanket, listening to Mother Nature’s symphony. But tonight, his attention was caught on her response, waiting in that lull between her words, for Jillian to tell him what he already knew.
The truth he had never really faced.
“He was still out there,” she whispered, so soft her voice was almost drowned by the rain’s beat. “He could have attacked me again. He could have robbed someone else. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was close, so close to me.”
Zach wanted to lie in this bed forever, wrapped up in Jillian until they fell asleep. A simple change of subject, that was all it would take to divert her from this path. From him having to tell her the truth.
He rolled onto his back, his hands under his head, and stared up at the ceiling while the rain went on, knocking on the glass. This was why he was here, the thing he knew he had to tell her. Nothing could change if he didn’t start them on a stronger foundation.
“He was close,” Zach said finally. “For about a week. Then he went back to the mainland.”
“How could you possibly know that? The police never caught the guy who robbed me. They never even had a suspect.”
Zach’s mother had told him once that there came a time in your life when you faced a choice of two paths. One that was sunny and bright and clear, and one that was dark and choked with overgrowth and obstacles. “Choosing the sunny one is easy,” his mother had said, “but it won’t be the one that brings you where you want to go. You have to take the one with the obstacles in order to appreciate what you find on the other side.”
At the time, he’d thought his mother was giving him some kind of allegory about Keith—that taking that easy path of fast money and faster drugs led to prison. Taking the one with a job and responsibilities would make you stronger and more appreciative.
But what his mother had meant was these moments, the ones where the woman you loved was lying beside you, asking you a question with an answer that could make her walk away forever—but that would bring her peace. A peace she had sought for years and never had.
For all of their relationship, Zach had chosen to keep Jillian by never telling her the truth. Denying her the one thing she needed in order to live her life fully, because he was, essentially, selfish.
“How do you know that, Zach?” she asked again, a raised note of suspicion coloring her words now.
He blew out a breath, then turned toward her. “I know…because it was Keith who robbed you that night.”
“Keith?” Confusion clouded her eyes. “As in, your older brother Keith?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know this? Did he just tell you?”
Zach shook his head. “I’ve known almost the whole time, Jillian. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I found your backpack in the trash the morning after this happened, along with twenty dollars on Keith’s dresser—money I knew he didn’t have before.”
“You…” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what her ears were telling her. “You found my backpack in the trash at your house? And you never told me?”
“I couldn’t,” he said. “If I did, you would have told the police. And they would have arrested my brother.”
She sat up now, clutching the blanket to her chest like a wall between them. “So you let me go on being scared that this could happen again, go on looking over my shoulder for years, because you didn’t want to get your brother in trouble?”
“My brother would have gone to jail, Jillian. He was eighteen then, and robbing someone and hitting them was an automatic pass to jail; do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, just go straight to prison, like some real-life Monopoly game. Only it wouldn’t be a game and it would have ruined everything for him. I would have been the one who sent my older brother to that life.” Zach let out a breath. “How could I do that to him?”
“No, Zach, the real question is, how could you do that to me?” She slid off the bed, pulling the blanket with her. She wrapped it around herself like a coat, then stepped back, until she was bumping up against her dresser.
“Jillian—”
She put up a hand. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. In fact, I think you should leave.”
Then she stormed out of the room and into the bathroom down the hall, leaving him in the bed, cold and alone.
EIGHTEEN
Jillian stayed in her bathroom until she heard the front door latch, the anger and betrayal inside her like a tight, hard ball, edged with a sadness that leeched into her bones. Everything she thought she knew was wrong. It wasn’t until Zach was gone, and her apartment echoed with emptiness, that she allowed her tears to fall.
All these years, Zach had lied to her. A sin of omission, wasn’t that what they called it? At any point, he could have told her, Keith was the one who attacked you that night.
But he never did.
It wasn’t the years that had passed that hurt so much; it was the memory of those first few weeks afterward that stung the most. The nights when he had held her while she shivered and cried, afraid of the beach, of the dark, of the things that could come from nowhere and rob her of her peace.
The times he had told her he hoped they caught the bastar
d who did this. The day he brought her a new backpack, and stuffed a note inside that read, You’re the bravest person I know.
The memories slid along a blade that sliced through her heart, and as each one hit her, her tears doubled, until she slid down against the bathroom door and hugged her knees to her chest. She sat just as she had all those years ago, waiting on the beach for the boy she loved—who later lied to her to save his brother.
When she ran out of tears, Jillian got dressed, grabbed her keys, and got in her car. She drove across town, until she got to the one place where she knew she would always be safe. To the only people in the world who she could count on, no matter what.
The Love Shack had already wound down for the night, and the parking lot was empty, save for a couple of cars. Jillian parked by the side path, then circled around to the back, slipping into the kitchen by the service entrance. Her mother looked up from wiping down the counters. “Jillian. What are you doing here this late?”
“Mom? I need…” her voice caught, as if she was a teenager again, “I need to talk to you.”
Grace dropped the rag in her hands and crossed the room in short, fast strides. She drew her daughter into a tight, warm hug. “Of course. Let’s go outside. Okay?” Grace called over her shoulder to the rest of the kitchen staff that she was going out to the deck. Then she put an arm around Jillian and didn’t let go until they had reached the private section of the deck off to the side of the building.
The night was quiet. The restaurant was closed, the only sounds the soft clank of dishes and a low murmur of music from a radio in the kitchen. “What’s troubling you, honey?” her mother asked.
Jillian heaved a sigh, and perched on the railing of the deck. It seemed like there was so much to say, too much story to tell. She realized that she had been carrying around a bigger load than she knew, now that she could feel the weight of those secrets on her shoulders. “I saw Zach tonight,” she said.
