by Amelia Wilde
There’s another wrenching pain. Only we did let go, once. He let go, and I helped things along. I didn’t chase after him, didn’t try to find him. I thought then that I was being understanding of his pain, letting him have the space he needed, but now my mouth is dry at the sight of him.
“Hey, Missy.” His voice breaks something open in the air between us, and now the whole place seems to be trembling with my hands. He’s not even saying my name, and there’s something hot and wet at my core that I don’t think I can ignore for the rest of the week, much less the rest of this visit to the bar.
Missy turns her head, her red curls bouncing, and her eyes fall on Beck. Her expression turns quizzical in an instant. Either they’ve hooked up before, or the fact that he’s talking to her is some kind of anomaly.
“Hey, Beck. You here with the guys?”
Now that she says it, I see them—the other guys clustered around the table Beck is standing by. They have a similar look—hardened muscles from work, a give-no-fucks attitude as they swig their beers and crack raunchy jokes about every topic under the sun. Beck both fits in with them and surpasses them on a level that’s almost not funny. If I were picking the sexy, accomplished one out of a lineup of these guys, it would be Beck, every single time.
“It’s Friday night.” He says it by way of explanation.
Missy doesn’t seem to be as taken by his godlike looks, and I wonder for the second time if maybe they’ve had something between them before. Whatever it was, it didn’t make her fall in love with him—I can tell that just by the half-smile on her face. She’s preparing to keep moving toward the bar.
Beck still hasn’t taken his eyes off me.
“So it is.” She leans a little to her right. “Hey, guys. Good day at work?”
The table erupts with laughter and “We didn’t see you down on the floor in a bikini, Missy” and she laughs and waves it away.
“We’re going to get a drink. See you.” She hooks her arm back through mine, and that’s when Beck steps forward, closing the distance between us. He’s still looking into my eyes, and the sheer heat resonating in the air between us makes my breath hitch in my throat. The floor doesn’t seem quite so steady beneath me, and the air shimmers with possibility.
“I’m going to talk to Sam for a minute. She’ll catch up.”
He’s not asking for permission, not asking if I want to talk to him. He’s making a grand leap of assumption, and I should tell him off for it. I should shake my head and follow Missy to the bar and have this discussion on my own terms, if I ever even want to.
But my mouth moves before my brain can catch up.
“Yeah. Let’s talk.” I uncurl my arm from Missy’s and give her a nod, a confident smile. “I’ll meet you up at the bar, okay?”
She looks from me to Beck, her eyes narrowing. “Okay.”
Then she’s gone in the crowd, and it’s just the two of us, locked together by a heat that’s quickly growing out of control.
Chapter Ten
Beckett
One second everything is crystal clear and the next I have a muddy view through my own eyes, like the beer has finally gone to my head. I don’t remember now how many I’ve had, but being near Sam multiplies the effect. You’d think it would have sobered me up. You’d be wrong.
Her friend Missy finally takes a fucking hint and goes to the bar, leaving us standing five feet from a table filled with guys from work. She looks up at me with those blue eyes, questions swimming in the depths, and right then Kirk lets out a piercing wolf whistle.
“Who’s your date, Taylor?”
I don’t even turn to face him, I just raise my hand to flip him off. It’s like Sam is pulling me toward her, even though she’s not saying a thing. Color rises to her cheeks at the sound of the whistle, and then the laughter from the table blends in with the rest of the background noise from the bar.
“You were on your way to get a drink.”
Sam nods, her lips parting under a shining coat of lip gloss or some other decorative shit that she doesn’t need to look like a damn knockout. “Are you going to make it up to me?” A cold pit in my stomach, a clenching, a turning. Is she talking about— “The drink, Beck. You’re between me and my first drink of the evening.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, arms crossed protectively beneath her breasts, a glint in her eyes.
I force a wiseass grin onto my face, mostly for the benefit of the assholes at the table. “Hell yes I am.” The words ring false, but Sam just smiles and lifts one arm toward the bar. Time to put my money where my mouth is.
She lets me lead her to the opposite corner from where Missy is standing, and I lean through the people standing up front and tap the surface with my fingers. Scotty’s there in half a second. “What do you need, Beck?”
“A beer, and—” I look back over my shoulder at Sam. Those first couple years in college, she’d drink beer at parties, but we split before she turned twenty-one, so I never learned what she liked when she was legal age. Who the hell knows? Maybe she’s one of those fancy-ass women now who only drinks—
“A whiskey-seven,” she says to Scotty over my shoulder, no hesitation. Okay.
I give him a nod, and his hands go to work behind the bar, producing the drinks in what’s probably record time, but it feels like a damn eternity when I’m standing here with Sam right off my shoulder, saying nothing, standing perfectly still.
Scotty hands me both of the drinks, and I give him a nod to put them on my tab. Sam takes hers right out of my hand, testing it with a sip before we’ve even stepped away from the bar.
“He knows what he’s doing.”
“I’d sure as hell hope so. This is all he’s been doing for years.”
She narrows her eyes. “Not that long. Isn’t he…Kelly something’s brother?”
“Very specific.”
“He’s young.”
“He’s old enough.”
We move into the crowd, and I can’t stop myself from seeking out somewhere quieter, somewhere out of the way. Why the hell are we talking about the bartender, anyway?
“You decided to come out tonight.”
Her mouth quirks in a smile that makes me want to lean down and take her full bottom lip between my teeth. “Missy wanted to catch up, so, yeah.”
“Has it been a long time?”
I lean my elbow against one of the standing tables pressed up against the wall. It’s the worst spot in the room, right by the narrow hall that leads to the bathrooms.
“I don’t come here that often.” Sam looks right into my eyes again, searching for something—I don’t know what. “You probably know that.”
I don’t know anything about what she does anymore. If she’s broadcasting information about her visits home on the internet, or some shit like that, then I wouldn’t have the slightest clue. I deleted all of my accounts after what happened. I didn’t want to see any more than I had to about what she was doing with her life.
“No. I didn’t.”
She nods, taking in a breath that makes her breasts rise and fall. “I’ve never looked for you, either.”
Her words are a bolt through my heart. “If you don’t think—” The twisting ache in my chest is intensified, competing with the hot urge to put my hands underneath her face and pull her in toward me, and never let her go again. “If you don’t think I’ve been looking for you everywhere I go since—you’re fucking mistaken.”
It’s the most honest thing I could have said, and I don’t even know why I’m saying it. It’s not going to make any difference.
“What—you missed me?” Sam’s voice has an edge that I don’t quite believe, because in her eyes there’s a spark of something that looks like tears, looks like hope.
“Yeah. I missed you.” An undercurrent, deep and dark, rushes between us, and Sam bites her lip.
“I didn’t miss you.” Another body blow. “I mean, I tried to tell myself that I didn’t miss you.”
She
has to speak a little loudly to be heard over the din of the bar, but the words are so intimate it’s like she’s whispering them in my ear, both of our heads on a pillow.
“You’re here for a week.”
I don’t have to explain what I mean. She’s here for a fucking week—she’s not here to get involved in some messy reconciliation with an asshole like me. The fact that she’s even talking to me right now is a damn miracle. The fact that she’s even talking to me right now is probably a mistake.
“That doesn’t matter.”
There’s something in her eyes that makes my heart beat in a wild rhythm. There’s no fucking way she’s suggesting that—
Then Sam steps closer to me, cradling her drink in one hand, and reaches up to my face.
Two fingertips against my jawline, burning my skin.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Someone has to say it. Someone has to fucking address the danger we’re both skirting here.
“I know,” she murmurs, but her eyes don’t leave mine. She runs her fingertips down the line of my jaw, then presses her thumb against my bottom lip. “I know.”
Chapter Eleven
Samantha
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, touching him. I don’t know how the hell to stop. This conversation—this weird, tense conversation—that we’re having is so unlike any of the conversations we’ve ever had before that I can’t navigate the territory.
The longer I stand here, looking at him, the warmth of my drink heating up my belly, the less I can resist my own urges.
And I want to touch him.
God, I want to touch him.
So I do.
It’s been a long time since I did anything so reckless. College wasn’t a picnic. I went to a few parties, but the landscape architecture program was intense, and I didn’t have a lot of time to let loose. And what happened with Beck taught me a lesson about being careful, always being so damn careful.
But right now, with the drink, and the hard cut of his chin, and the muscles of his body working even though he’s just standing still, I can’t keep my hands away.
This might be the only chance I have left.
His green eyes pierce right through me. Can he tell what I’m thinking? Can he sense the rapid beating of my heart, the way the world around him seems rougher and brighter at the same time?
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” His voice is low and smooth, exactly how it always was, but there’s a pain underneath that I know I had a hand in causing. He says the words, but he doesn’t reach up and pull my hand away, not even when I bring my fingertips around to the front of his chin and press my thumb to his lip.
I want to be kissing him so much that I can hardly breathe. Somehow my drink is half gone and I want to abandon it, drop it to the floor, let the glass shatter, but even that strikes me as too irresponsible. A waste. I’ve had enough waste in my life.
“I know.” Damn, do I know it. I know it with every cell in my body. “I know.”
Beck puts his beer down on the table, the glass connecting with a hard click, and I drop my hand to my side. But he’s not walking away. He’s stepping closer. There’s only about a foot of space between us, and he halves the distance. I suck in a big gulp of air and catch his scent—spice with an undertone of soap, like a clean breeze next to the lake. Beck might be eight years older than the last time I saw him, and he might use a different shampoo, a different body wash, but the base is exactly the same. It sends spikes of lightning rushing across the base of my spine.
“I hurt you once.” His voice has dropped to a dangerously low level. This is pillow talk happening right in the middle of a public place, and suddenly I can’t stand it, can’t stand being here with my back to the crowd.
I put my drink on the table next to his and grab fistfuls of his shirt, moving us both into the hallway, pressing his back up against the naked wall. I must have had more to drink than I thought, or there must have been more alcohol in the whiskey-seven than I’d usually pour myself. Or maybe it’s just Beck. Maybe I’m drunk on the scent of him. But when I tug at his shirt, he doesn’t resist.
“You hurt me worse than anyone else ever has.” I force the words out through gritted teeth, my hands still curled in his shirt, and that’s when Beck finally moves.
He brings his arms up slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me, and covers my fists, his huge hands curling around them like they’re nothing. His green eyes have gone dark in the dimmer light of the hallway. “I know, Sam. You don’t have to be here with me right now. You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to do this.”
“That’s the thing.” Something cracks in the center of my core, something comes tumbling down. “I can’t stop myself.” Both of my hands are up near his collarbone now, pressed flat against his chest, and his hands cover mine, holding them closer. I slide my hands up to his neck, behind his neck, and his hands curl around my wrists, his grasp strong but gentle, like he can’t bear to do anything but touch me. “We should both be running in opposite directions, because I don’t think you can stand to see me—”
“Damn it, Sam.” Then the stubble of his cheek is scratching delicately against my face on the way to my mouth, his lips are covering mine, and I have my arms locked around his neck like he’s the last lifeboat off the Titanic.
Oh, my God, it’s so familiar that it sends a sharp ache through my chest, sends hot desire down between my legs, but it’s so different—he’s grown up. He’s not the college boy who turned his back on me that summer. He’s not the college boy that I walked away from, too.
But beneath the beer, he tastes exactly the same.
He takes my bottom lip between his teeth, and the sharp edges dig in without causing any pain. A low moan escapes me, and I press myself in closer, press the line of my body against his. Hell no. This is not the body of a college kid who spends a couple hours in the gym every week just to keep up appearances. This is man whose muscles have been shaped by days of hard work. The sensation lights me up.
The kiss becomes hard, becomes almost violent in its intensity, and with a gasp Beck pulls away, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck, pressing my face into his shoulder, breathing hard.
The skin of his neck, unlike his hands, is still smooth, and I breathe him in, trying to steady my heart.
“Holy shit,” he whispers, and I nod, my mind racing.
I have to pull back. I have to get some space, get some perspective, because one kiss with Beck Taylor is pulling me right back to where I used to be, and I’m not sure I ever want to go there again.
He stares at me, confusion clouding his eyes, but if I kiss him one more time, it’s all over. It’s all over.
“My number is still the same,” I blurt out like an idiot, and then I turn and flee.
Chapter Twelve
Beckett
“Where the hell is your head at, Taylor?”
Ward’s voice cuts into my thoughts. It’s the end of a long fucking day at Cerberus. I haven’t thought of a single thing except Sam, and everybody can see it.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Kirk says under his breath. They’re all waiting on me.
“Fuck off,” I tell him, and then I’m back sorting through what happened at the bar again. Nothing makes an impact in the locker room, in the showers, not even the scalding water, the soap that’s irritating as hell on my skin.
My heart beats her name, and I can’t get it to stop.
It was weird as hell, how things ended on Friday night, and now it’s Tuesday and I still can’t decide what to do.
I don’t know how I became this person. I came back here because I fucking knew that’s what I deserved out of life, and I’ve shown up every day as penance for how things ended with Sam. I spend my weekends at the bar, and I never hesitate when it comes to picking up a woman for the night, as long as she wants something no-strings-attached like I do. Maybe that’s some kind of ridiculous fucking contradiction. Maybe I don’t car
e.
My number is still the same.
That’s what she left me with, before turning around and running away like I was a sudden threat, even though moments before her tongue had been in my mouth and her body had been working up against mine just like it used to when we were together.
A memory flickers into my mind of the day I told her I’d be going to State along with her. It was two weeks after graduation and hot as hell for the middle of June. I knew Sam wanted me to come to State, but I’d been flirting with the idea of another state college two states away. I wanted to get the hell out of Lockton. If I’d done that, we’d probably have been over two years before—
But we didn’t know any of that was going to happen. That morning I woke up and I knew I was done fucking around with all the other colleges. I was going to go with my girl, damn it, and I could get a job with a degree from anywhere. That day was the last day you could pay the deposit and reserve the spot, so I woke my mom up and had her pay it with her credit card before the sun came up.
My mom had been beside herself that I’d finally made a decision. “Your dad would be so proud,” she’d said, with tears in her eyes despite the dumb clichés bubbling out of her mouth. That was a fucking punch in the gut.
“No,” I’d said under my breath, and she just shook her head. He died when I was twelve. It was my fault.
But that day, all I wanted to do was get to Sam, tell her the news, so I left early for work and knocked on the door of her parents’ house. She’d answered with her blonde hair a bedhead mess, which made me want to take her inside and thread my hands through her hair and then—
“I’m going to State,” I said, and she’d whipped her hand down from rubbing at her eyes, her mouth an O.
