by J. Haymore
He cups my cheek in his palm as he kisses me again. His hand's so warm, I press my face into it. But then his lips gently release mine.
My lids flutter open, and I look at him, my arms still clamped tight around him.
"Shit," he murmurs, and turmoil sweeps through his expression. How can I make it go away? How can I make him want me without all these reservations I don't understand?
He doesn't let me go; instead, he cradles my cheeks in both his hands, tilting my head up so I face him, and his gaze locks on to mine. "Shit. Shit. Fuck." His voice is quiet, a complete contrast to the harshness of the words.
I feel like my toes are dangling off the edge of a precipice, and he's about to push me over.
His fingers tighten over my cheeks. "You're so damn young," he whispers gruffly.
He's twenty-nine. I'll be twenty-two in two months. That makes him only about seven years older than me, not really old enough to call me "so damn young."
He holds me there, balanced on that edge…of what, I don't know. Whatever is over that cliff is dangerous, but a part of me wants to leap into that danger and not glance back.
"You tempt me. So much. You're so…" He pulls back abruptly and runs a hand roughly through his hair. He looks shaken, like he did when he pulled me out of the water. "Fuck."
"I don't understand." My gaze remains locked on him. Yesterday, I probably would have blushed and turned away, but today, Kyle almost drowned, and I'm different. Stronger. "You need to explain this to me." Quietly, I add, "I deserve an explanation, Ethan."
He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, as if he can't bear to keep the eye contact a second longer. Then sentences snap out of him like firecrackers, his body straightening, growing more tense with each one. "You're fucking beautiful. You're smart and sweet. You're so damned loyal. You make a man want to protect you with everything he's worth. But you've got to understand…this can't happen."
"You're giving me mixed signals"—my voice is quiet and steady—"and that's not fair to me. You talk to me, then avoid me. You treat me like a stranger, then like someone you want to sleep with. You kiss me, then you act like you don't want to touch me—"
The expression on his face is bleak—so bleak my heart clenches. "I'm sorry," he says gruffly. "I know I'm being an asshole." He makes a low, growling sound that seems to come from deep in his chest. "I want you. A…a whole hell of a lot. But I can't do this. It's wrong to do this. I can't—" He breaks off abruptly.
"Why?" I demand, but something clenches in my chest. God...maybe he has a girlfriend back in California...
He pulls farther back from me, and I sense his withdrawal, that door slamming shut on me yet again. Coldness spreads in my chest. "Is there someone else? Someone in LA?"
He blows out a heavy sigh. "No. There's no one else."
"Then why…?" My hands flail in a frustrated gesture.
"I can't be in a relationship, not now."
I shake my head, because that's a lame line.
"Not now, and not ever," he clarifies. "A relationship just isn't in the cards for me. I don't do them, and I never will."
"A kiss doesn't make a relationship," I say quietly. "It's just a kiss."
It's just sex. Or, it could be…
His deep inhalation pulls the T-shirt taut across his broad chest. "You don't know anything about me. And I guarantee there are things you don't want to know. Trust me when I say I'm no good for you." He slides a single finger down the side of my face. "It's not you. I promise you that. It's me."
Oh God, the lines are coming hard and fast now. It's the old it's not you, it's me brush-off. I feel like I'm spiraling into a B-grade movie.
"If things were different"—his scorching blue eyes set fire to every single inch of my skin—"you'd be in my bed tonight."
That's exactly where I want to be... If things were different. If he wasn't jerking me around. I don't speak. I press my lips together to stop myself from saying something I might regret.
The way he's looking at me...it's the first time I've seen the tiniest bit of vulnerability in his expression, and I want to melt...I want to accept anything he tells me...
No.
Grabbing on to a scrap of pride that seems to be blowing away in the breeze, I clutch it tight and hold it close.
He's messing with my head. He might not mean to, but he is.
I straighten, pulling back from him a few inches. My lips tighten, and my eyes narrow. It's annoying how he simply assumes he is the only one with the power to decide whether I'll be in his bed.
"Don't be so sure about that," I tell him flatly. "If I go into your bed—it's going to be my choice. Not yours."
He stares at me hard, then tilts his head in acknowledgment. "Of course."
We both know my bravado is nothing more than hot air.
"I want to be your friend, Tara."
I gaze at him for a moment, then nod. "Sure."
Right.
"Shit." He closes his eyes again, then opens them. "I'm not doing this right. I didn't expect this. It's thrown me off."
Me too. I can't stop staring at his face. Thinking how hot he is. Thinking how I want to touch it everywhere…with my lips.
"Don't look at me like that," he growls.
"Like what?" I whisper.
"Like you want to eat me alive."
Well, too bad. I do. But he's not going to let that happen. I bring my hands up to my face and cover it, breathing into my palms. And all of a sudden, I just want to be alone. I rise from the sofa and stand just as the Temptation tilts forward, slipping down the backside of a wave. Adjusting my stance so I don't tumble over, I take in my surroundings for the first time since Ethan came to sit beside me. Kyle and Nalani's conversation drones outside. There's movement near the stairs leading down to the starboard bunks, and I glance over there quickly. No one's there. But it feels like ants are skittering down the back of my neck. Was Mick listening in on our conversation?
Ethan gets up, and it looks like shutters are closing over his eyes. The heat in them fades to a simmer and then flattens until his gaze is completely unreadable. Impenetrable. It's the expression he had on the phone with Donna. It's the expression he uses on me when he's digging that chasm between us. I already know that expression too well.
He gazes into my eyes, cool and distant. "As I said, I don't do relationships. And that's what you need. Someone who'll be there for you. That's not me."
Kyle told me about how Ethan hasn't been photographed with a woman for eight years. Has he not had a girlfriend for eight years? "But why?"
He doesn't answer. The most he'll give me is a shake of his head.
I want to pull out my hair in frustration. It seems simple: I want him. He knows it. He said he wanted me too. Then why not act on it? All this "I don't do relationships" crap—who cares? This isn't a happily ever after. This is just being together.
He's being presumptuous to think he knows what's best for me, anyway. There's no way he could possibly know what I need.
A thought slams into me. While my nature is to care about people I'm physically close to, maybe I can switch that part of myself off. I want to be with Ethan, and if I enter into a physical relationship with my eyes wide open, then there will be no concern of bringing emotions and thoughts of "relationships" into it.
Our time together is limited anyway. There's no reason this needs to go beyond the time parameters of this trip.
I can do it. I can control this. I want to do it.
"You're wrong about me." The steel hardens in my own eyes. "In a few weeks, I'm going to be starting a new job, and I want to focus on that. But we're out in the middle of the ocean, and this isn't the real world. We can do whatever we want out here—be whatever we want to be."
The shutters over his eyes fly open suddenly, and there's a storm raging behind them.
"Do you think I haven't thought about that?" he grits out, taking a step closer to me. Energy bristles from him. "But what happens when we go home? We go our separ
ate ways, back to our lives? It's not going to be that easy, Tara, and you know it. I don't want to hurt you, damn it."
I want this—want him—so badly, I'm going to fight for a chance. I'll wash my hands of him and go on with my life when we get back to LA. I can do that—I know I can.
"You're not going to hurt me, because I understand what you're saying. I understand that this can't continue once we're home, and that you don't want a relationship. I get it. I don't need or want a relationship either. I have a life to go back to in LA, too. But for now, I want you, Ethan."
He closes his eyes and makes a low noise that sounds like a groan.
"Give me two weeks." In two weeks' time, we'll be in Hawaii, and he'll probably be heading home.
I remember that night at the convenience store a year ago—how leaving home and walking down the block was the bravest thing I'd done since the accident. But it doesn't even hold a candle to this.
This is the bravest thing I've ever done—before or after the accident. I've thrown myself out there, laid myself out as some kind of a temporary offering. But that's exactly what I want, and I'm going after it.
Where did this assertive Tara come from? I like her.
My face is blazing hot. Tiny shudders skitter over my skin from my toes to my hair.
But I know he wants me. And judging by the look on his face, my offer has tempted him. He stares at me, his expression torn.
Then his lips tighten, the shutters over his eyes slam shut once again, and pain stabs at me, bitter and cold, in my chest. I know what his next words are going to be.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
He turns and walks away.
Chapter Six
I've kept quiet for the past five days, avoiding Ethan whenever possible. Avoiding everyone—even Kyle and his inevitable questions. When I'm not on watch, I spend most of my time down in my cabin reading biographies and romances and trying not to think about what could have been—if Ethan wasn't so damned convinced being with me was such a bad idea.
Still, he surrounds me. Everywhere I go, I see him. Feel him. There is no escape. And I hate it. I have begun to keep track of the miles we have left, counting the moments until I can be away from him.
Even then, though, a fear niggles within me that I will never be free of this man. That some part of me has been marked by him. Branded somehow.
I can't let that happen. I need to scrub him away. Getting away from him is the first step in that. But I can't get away. I'm stuck here, like an animal in a cage with watery bars. There's no way out.
Tonight, the air is quiet as I sit on the trampoline on watch. There's only a light breeze, and the ocean has been calm, the waves rolling ever so gently beneath the catamaran as if sensing my fragile state of mind.
It's my own fault—I put Ethan in a position where he could hurt me, and he did. It was so stupid. Even stupider because I convinced myself I could avoid an emotional attachment if Ethan agreed to be with me. He didn't agree to be with me, and I'm already hurt.
It's late, almost one in the morning. I take off my PFD and lay it beside me before stretching out on my back on the trampoline. Ethan is on watch with me, but he's keeping his distance, just as he has been for the past few days. As always, though, I'm very aware of where he is and what he's doing. Right now, he's in the captain's chair at the wheel. From his position, he has a good view of me lying on the trampoline.
He's watching me. I sense his gaze on me without a glance in his direction.
This adds an edge of anger to my hurt. When he rejected me, he gave up the right to look at me. But he hasn't stopped looking. Even from a distance, he drinks me in with his gaze, and the heat in his eyes warms me to the core. My own treacherous body responds to him, as much as I order it to ignore him.
The night is alight with stars. Who knew there were so many stars in the sky? On cloudless nights, there's none of the flat darkness in the sky out here like in LA. Instead, the stars shine so brightly, the whole sky glows in a silvery-purple hue. It's beautiful.
A shooting star streaks above me. A wish… I should make a wish, shouldn't I? Once, when I was twelve and Emily was seventeen, Aunt Jo took us camping. Em and I went outside our tent and lay on the picnic table gazing up at the stars, searching for a shooting star. And then, both of us saw it, just over the treetops. Em said I needed to make a wish, because that's what you do with shooting stars.
I squeezed my eyes shut and wished for my parents back. For them to be alive and with us. When I opened my eyes again, Em was watching me.
"What did you wish for?" she'd asked.
I shrugged. "It's a secret. What'd you wish for?"
She gave a dramatic sigh. "That Jason Krakowski will invite me to prom."
I was glad I hadn't told her my wish.
Of course, my parents hadn't come back. And four boys asked Emily to prom, but Jason Krakowski wasn't one of them.
I don't wish on this shooting star. Those wishes don't come true.
It has been a long few days, but Kyle's okay, and so am I. I don't need Ethan Williams. I've been all right on my own for a while now.
But you haven't been all right, that annoying voice inside my head says. You've been anything but all right.
The last year and a half is a blur of schoolwork and depression. I needed antianxiety meds to cope in the daytime and to sleep at night. Is that surviving? Maybe not.
Now, though, I'm not on anything. I'm stronger. I can survive. I need Kyle but not Ethan. I'm attracted to him—okay, not just attracted, infatuated. Yet we've only known each other for a short time. You can't need someone after knowing them for only a week and a half.
A shuffling movement comes from the direction of the navigation area. It's Ethan, of course. Without trying to—without wanting to—I track his every movement whenever he's near.
The trampoline grows taut beneath me as he steps on it. He sits beside me and stares up at the sky for a moment. Just having him this close washes heat over my skin.
He's spoken to me over the past few days, of course. It's unavoidable. He's put on the mask of the unflinchingly polite gentleman again. It's no wonder he's good in business. He can be hard, terse, and commanding, but he can also be gracious and charming.
He turns to me and asks quietly, "Are you okay?"
This is the most personal question he's asked me in days.
I give him a tight smile. "I've been through worse."
"Yeah." There's a gruff edge of emotion in his voice.
He doesn't know the half of it. I told him about my parents, but not about Em and the accident and the cause of my limp. He doesn't know that I was almost killed in a convenience-store shooting, and that the only reason I'm lying here right now is because of a Good Samaritan who took a bullet for me.
Ethan lies beside me, stretching his tall form out next to mine. He's large, and his weight makes the trampoline dip. My muscles tighten so my body doesn't roll toward him. "Look at the stars," he murmurs.
"I know."
"I never thought I'd find it so peaceful out here."
"What did you think sailing across the ocean would be like?"
"Dangerous," he answers. "Uncomfortable. Miserable, actually."
I turn to him, raising a brow. "Really?"
He nods.
"Then why did you come? I know you said it was something you needed to do. But if you thought it would be dangerous, uncomfortable, and miserable, then why?"
He laughs quietly, but he doesn't answer.
Fine. By now I know how private he is.
I stare at the stars brightening the sky. Below us, the Temptation dips and rolls. All is silent except for the gentle slosh of water against the hull.
"Tara," he murmurs. His tone draws my gaze. He turns fully onto his side, propping his head up on his hand as he watches me.
"Yes?"
"Have you ever been on a runaway train?"
I give a soft snort.
"That's what I feel like I'm on ri
ght now."
My lips twitch up, but they don't quite make it to a smile. "Then put on the brakes, and you'll stop moving before you crash."
"It's not that easy."
"Why not?"
"Because… I've tried to stop it since I… Since the first moment I saw you on that ramp and every day since then. But it isn't going to work. I've tried, and... And I can't." He swallows hard, but his gaze doesn't leave mine, not for a second.
My heart starts to pound. Emotions grab at me, excitement and fear and hope, along with a sharp edge of anger. "You've been doing a fine job of it for the past few days."
He reaches out and touches my cheek. It's just the gentlest touch, but it sends a bolt of electricity through me. "No. I've been doing a shit job of it. I'm good at pretending, but if you knew what was going on in my head—" He breaks off abruptly. After a quiet moment, he adds, "I can't stop it. I can't ignore it. Trying to is only going to make me crazy. So I'm done trying."
Oh… My mouth goes dry. Out of all the things I expected him to say when he sat beside me, this is definitely not one of them.
He's flip-flopped again. Again! Just when I was telling myself everything was going to be okay without him, he's telling me he wants back in.
It's too late.
No, damn it. No, it's not too late. I might be weak, but it'll probably never be too late for Ethan when it comes to me.
Have I lost all sense of myself that I can say, Oh, it's okay that you hurt me, and just throw myself back into his arms?
I look back up at the sky as if begging the heavens for an answer. For strength. Why am I so drawn to this man, who has pretty much guaranteed that things can't go anywhere between us? Why this perverse need to cling to him, hold on, and never let him go? I don't even know him!
Still, I cling to sanity, even though it's slipping rapidly away. "You said it would be a bad idea."
"I know. And it is. But I…can't stop it."
A tight, sarcastic laugh bursts out of me. "Way to make a girl feel good about herself, Williams."
"I've told you again and again that it's a bad idea. I'm being honest. There are things about me—"
"That you don't want me to know. I know."
