“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “I don’t know what else to say.”
He shrugs and turns back to me. Noticing the tears, he reaches up and wipes them away with his thumb. His ice-blue eyes flicker with the reflection of the flames. “I’ve never told anyone that story.”
I swallow hard, wishing I had some comforting words to offer. Something that could make it all better. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
He nods. “I wanted you to know. About how I grew up. About why I am the way I am. Why I don’t believe in happily-ever-afters.”
His words are dark, and there’s a thick knot in my throat. I swallow hard to get it to move. “Is that why you volunteer at Helping Paws?”
He nods once, though there’s a tiny flicker of surprise in his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so. I can’t bring myself to get a dog of my own—not after that. But I feel like I want to give back, you know?”
“I love that about you.” I squeeze his hand. “So much.”
His eyes flash again, and it’s not the fire this time. I replay my words in my head. Did he think I said I love you?
Is that what I meant?
“Your marshmallow.” I stand up and pry the roasting stick from his hand. “It’s looking a little charred. Here, let me get you another one.”
I fumble with the stick, shaking the burned marshmallow into the flames and replacing it with a fresh one.
“Ow.” I suck in a breath as melted marshmallow goo sticks to my hand, and I reach for a wet wipe to get it off.
But Dax grabs my wrist and draws my hand to his mouth. “Here, let me.” Slowly, so gently, he draws my fingers into his mouth. It’s the strangest mix of sexy and soothing, and I catch myself giving a little sigh as the burn ebbs away.
“Better?”
I nod, mesmerized by the flames and by his closeness. “Much better.”
He looks at me again, heat in his eyes that has nothing to do with the fire. “Let’s try the other hand.”
He grabs my left wrist this time, drawing my index and middle finger into his mouth with aching slowness. His tongue grazes the junction of the two fingers, and I gasp from the implication.
Drawing back, he smiles. I don’t know why, but I feel like something’s shifted between us. A connection on some level we’ve never visited before.
The heat in his eyes tells me he’s aching for a different kind of connection. The one we’ve almost perfected over the last three weeks.
I shiver, wanting it, too. Wanting it so badly my body aches from it.
“Come on,” Dax says. “Let’s put this fire out and then check the view from the tent.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dax
Lisa arches her spine and tilts her face toward the sky, breasts bathed in moonlight as she moves on top of me. I grip her hips, enjoying the show almost as much as I enjoy being buried deep inside her right now.
“Dax,” she gasps, and I know I could never get tired of her saying my name.
Especially when she says it like that.
She’s doing this unreal circular thing with her hips while her back arches so I can slide in deeper.
“That’s it,” I urge, watching her face for cues she’s close. Her gaze is lifted upward, eyes fixed on the night sky. I left the rain fly off on purpose, taking my chances that a downpour is unlikely here in Oregon’s high desert. I wanted to see the stars, but watching Lisa enjoy them is even better.
“Oh,” she gasps as I arch my pelvis to drive deeper into her. In three weeks, I’ve learned every nuance of her body. I’ve learned how her breathing grows ragged right before she comes. I’ve learned her left breast is a tiny bit bigger than the right. I’ve learned that if I drive up at just the right time, I can hit her G-spot.
“God, you’re beautiful.”
She drags her gaze off the stars and looks down at me with a smile. “Thank you. Oh!”
There. That blend of perfect manners and unbridled passion. That’s what I love about her.
Love?
No. I shake the word out of my head and focus on making her feel good. Making me feel good, too. The sight of her bare breasts dappled in moonbeams, with her blond hair bright against the night sky is going to make me come faster than the way she’s riding me now, hips moving faster as she nears the crest.
“Just like that,” I whisper. “That’s it, baby.”
“I’m close.”
“I’m right there with you.”
And I am, but not just that way. I want to stay inside her like this forever, or at least pretend forever is an option. That it’s a word in my vocabulary.
I rock into her again, and that’s all it takes.
“Don’t stop!”
That’s it. The throaty little moan she makes when she’s close. I drive up harder, gripping her hips to make sure I hit exactly the right spot.
She goes off like a firecracker, sparks flashing in her eyes as she cries out and throws her head back, riding me hard and fast and slick as I drive into her and come my brains out, too.
She collapses, breathless, on top of me, and I swear to God I could stay like this forever.
But I’m worried about her legs falling asleep, so I ease her to the side and then pull her body to me so she’s snug against my chest. She rolls onto one hip and we lie there panting in the darkness, both of us watching the night sky through the top of the tent.
“There!” Lisa points at the sky, eyes wide. “I saw a shooting star.”
“Yeah?” I smile and snuggle her closer, loving how soft she feels. “Did you make a wish?”
“Maybe.” She looks at me through her lashes with a smile that’s almost shy, and I’d give anything to know what she wished for. What she’s thinking.
We fall silent again, but there’s a whirl of words in my head. What if we really could make this work? What if we didn’t say goodbye at the end of this?
“Lisa?”
“Yes?”
I’ve started the conversation before I’ve thought of what to say and how to say it. There’s a moment where my brain tries to come up with some other topic. Some way to hide what I really want to ask.
“What do you want in the future?”
God, that sounded stupid. Like a college admissions interview—not that I ever did one. I can tell from her expression that she has no idea what I just asked her, and come to think of it, neither do I.
“Well,” she says slowly. “I guess I’d like to continue building my business. Developing my skills and becoming the best interior designer I can possibly be.”
I nod, appreciating the safe answer. I could stop this conversation right now. Forget I ever tried to broach this sticky subject.
But something urges me to keep going. “What about the rest? Now that you’ve spent all this time testing your instincts, your life choices, things like that. Is anything—different?”
I need to just shut up. I don’t think either of us has the faintest idea what I’m driving at.
You do. You’re just too chickenshit to spit it out.
Lisa’s expression is guarded, and I wonder if she thinks this is a trick question. “I suppose so,” she murmurs. “A lot of the things I always thought I wanted aren’t the things I actually need.”
“Like what?”
“Perfection,” she says. “The designer wardrobe. Luxury everything. Being seen at all the best events by all the best people.” She makes air quotes around best events and best people, and I appreciate the self-deprecation in her tone. Her expression softens, then, as she strokes a hand down my chest. “Some of that’s necessary for my career, I guess. But what I’ve realized is that those things don’t make me happy. Not really.”
“What does make you happy?”
I hold my breath, waiting for her answer. Not sure I can handle it no matter what she says. She’s quiet for such a long time that I wonder if she’s going to answer at all. When she tips her head back to look up at me, the softness of her smile makes my heart clen
ch like a fist.
“This,” she says. “I’m happy right now. Happier than I’ve ever been.”
“Just in this moment, or—?”
I trail off, not sure what I’m asking. If I’m trying to propose something beyond a short fling, or just to get a feel for whether her priorities have changed. If she’s wondering, like I am, if we could be this happy for a longer term.
Grow some balls and say what you want. Tell her, goddammit. Tell her you want more than a fling.
The instant her expression changes, I know something’s wrong. Did she read my mind, or was it something I said? I open my mouth to apologize when her brow furrows in confusion.
“Do you hear that?” she asks.
“Hear what?”
“That hissing sound?” She’s silent a moment. “There!”
I listen. Sure enough, she’s right. There’s something hissing in the back corner of the tent. I sit up and frown, trying to remember if we left the tent open at any point today. There was that one span of time when we were zipping the sleeping bags together, and then when we had to run back to the car for pillows—
“Move over there,” I command, pointing to the opposite corner. The one closest to the door and farthest from the corner. “Please,” I add, not wanting to be a bossy asshole, but needing her to get her beautiful, naked butt away from that hiss as quickly as possible.
“Why?” Her voice is shaky, but she does it.
I grab my heavy utility flashlight from beside my pillow and edge closer to the corner. “There are a lot of rattlesnakes in this part of the state. I want to be sure we didn’t—”
“Snakes?!” The word comes out in a bloodcurdling screech, and Lisa is on her feet in an instant. “OhmygodIhatesnakes.”
She’s flailing and jumping and fumbling for the zipper at the tent door. It would be funny if I weren’t afraid for her safety and mine. She’s got it unzipped now, but her feet are tangled up in the sleeping bag, which saves her from running naked into the darkness.
It’s then I realize the hissing is getting faster.
I grab her by the arm and yank her back down. “Stop screaming,” I say. “There—is it louder?”
She’s wild-eyed and panting and ready to run like hell the second I let go of her. “Yes—ohmygod, does that mean it’s close?”
I edge past her and move toward the corner, pretty sure I know what’s up. I pull back the edge of the sleeping bag and aim the beam of my flashlight at the corner.
“There,” I say, relieved to be right.
“What? A snake?”
I stretch my hand out to touch it, and Lisa flinches beside me.
“Congratulations,” I tell her. “We killed it.”
“What? Killed what, the snake?”
“Nope.” I turn and grin at her. “The air mattress. Time of death—” I glance at my watch. “Ten forty-three p.m.”
“Oh shit.”
She stretches out to look, watching as the tag from the sleeping bag flutters in the air that’s escaping the mattress at an alarming rate. I grin and pull her against me, toppling us both back onto our rapidly deflating air mattress. Honestly, I don’t care. I could sleep naked in the dirt and be happy as long as Lisa’s with me.
She giggles and snuggles against me as we descend into the sinking surface. “It’s fine,” I tell her. “I think I even have a patch kit in the truck.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“What? That we almost died from a nonexistent snake, or that we fucked our air mattress to death?”
“No, you,” she says, propping her chin on my chest. “You were going to face down a vicious rattlesnake to save me.”
I laugh, appreciating what a noble view of me she has. “Anything for you, babe.”
She smiles and folds herself into my arms, sighing as the air continues to billow from our mattress. My butt sinks to the ground, and I’m going to have a killer backache tomorrow, but right now, I don’t care.
Right now, in this moment with Lisa, is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
Chapter Seventeen
Lisa
Something changes after the camping trip, though I’m not sure how to describe it exactly.
Some of it is easy to pinpoint—the way Dax sleeps over instead of rushing home, or the way he invites me to join the crew when Helping Paws gets an unexpected influx of bedraggled dogs from a puppy mill in Corvallis.
Some of it is harder to describe. It’s a feeling, I guess. The way he steals glimpses at me when we’re driving somewhere together, or the way he holds my hand under the table when we have dinner with Cassie and Simon.
“I really like your boyfriend,” Cassie whispered when we were leaving, though the extra glass of port she enjoyed over dessert made it more of a loud hiss than a whisper. I know Dax heard her, but neither of us bothered to correct her.
Is that what he was trying to say in the tent? That he wanted to have an actual relationship? I’m not sure, and I’m almost afraid to ask. Afraid that’s what I want, and that I won’t actually get it if I voice the desire out loud.
Besides, I spent my entire twenties desperate to get married. Isn’t part of The Test supposed to be me learning how not to be in a relationship?
That doesn’t stop me from wanting it, specifically with Dax.
“Whatcha thinking?”
I shake off my daydream and see him regarding me with curiosity from across the table. We’re eating corndogs in the AfriCafe at the Oregon Zoo, sandwiched between the Elephant Plaza and the Predators of the Serengeti exhibit.
“I’m thinking the zoo was a really great idea.”
He laughs and swirls his corndog through a puddle of ketchup. “Way to pat yourself on the back,” he says. “I don’t disagree, though.”
“Well, you have to admit, a day at the zoo is more or less the opposite of spending the day mediating an argument between two clients who can’t decide whether to redo their rumpus room in giraffe print or zebra,” I point out as I reach across the table to steal one of Dax’s fries.
He pushes the whole basket toward me. “What the hell is a rumpus room, anyway?”
“It’s what pretentious snobs call a game room.” I refrain from admitting I’m one of those pretentious snobs, or at least I used to be. Now, I’m not so sure.
“I’m proud of you, Lisa.”
The comment startles me, and I study my corndog as though the explanation might be skewered on a stick and wrapped in deep fried cornmeal. “How do you mean?”
“For coming up with this idea.”
“The zoo or The Test?”
“Both. I meant The Test, but I’ve gotta admit I haven’t visited the zoo for years. Not since I was six and I came here for some special freebie day for underprivileged kids.”
His face darkens just a little, and I’m not sure whether to ask about it or change the subject. The old Lisa would gloss things over to keep the conversation bright and easy.
That’s not what I do. “Was it not a good experience?”
He shrugs and glances out over the aviary beside us. We’ve chosen a table where we can watch birds flitting from branch to branch, and his gaze follows a golden-breasted starling being pestered by a cluster of speckled mousebirds.
“Part of the deal was that poor kids got a free backpack,” he says. “It was supposed to be a back-to-school thing, I guess. I was so proud of that damn backpack, and I wore it around the zoo all day like a fucking superman cape.”
I smile at the mental picture, though there’s a twinge of uneasiness in my gut. I remember my own mom lecturing us—Cassie, Missy, me—about setting aside part of our allowance to donate to poor kids who needed school supplies. It seemed like a charitable idea at the time, but now I bristle at the memory of her words. At the self-serving place they may have come from.
“Did something bad happen with the backpack?” I ask softly.
He turns away from the birds and looks at me. “I was standing there licking
my free orange popsicle and watching the polar bears when this group of boys comes walking up beside me.” His voice sounds distant and a little hollow, but his eyes hold mine. “I heard one of them snickering and then he said, ‘Look, there’s one of those welfare kids with the ghetto backpack.’”
“God.” I wince. “Kids are so horrible.”
He clears his throat. “I didn’t realize he was talking about me at first. I had no idea—” His voice dries up there, and he shakes his head for a second before glancing back at the birds. “Anyway, it felt pretty shitty.”
“Did you throw the backpack away?”
There’s a flicker of irritation in his expression. “Hell no. I couldn’t afford to be prideful. Not then, anyway.”
I nod and start to reach across the table for his hand. At the last second, I realize that might feel like pity, and I know it’s the last thing he wants right now. Instead, I grab another french fry. “That’s really lousy. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
The words sound cliché and hollow, but I hope he knows how much I mean them. That I really do care, and that I hate more than anything that at some point in my life, I’ve probably been one of those elitist kids. Not a bully, mind you, but certainly a self-congratulatory princess doling out hand-me-downs with little thought about how it felt to be one of the recipients.
Dax reaches across the table and gives me a small smile. “Hey. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For listening. For bringing me here today and making it a great experience.” The smile gets bigger. “And for fucking me senseless last night.”
I smile back and curl my fingers into his. “You do that a lot, you know.”
“Fuck you senseless?”
“That, too. But I meant changing an uncomfortable subject by saying something crass.”
He studies me a moment, then nods. “Good point. You’re probably right.”
“I’m not complaining. Just an observation.”
He gives my hand a squeeze then lets go and picks up his second corndog. “Come on. Let’s finish eating so we can get to the Warty Pig demo.”
The Test Page 12
