That Thing You Do (A Crystal Lake Novel Book 2)

by Juliana Stone

  He thought about what his mother said, teasing him about Molly, and then his brain went further back to the day before when she’d told him that maybe something he didn’t even know he was missing was right there in front of him.

  That had his mind turning, thinking of Las Vegas and that night when Molly had come to his room. When she’d practically begged him to make love to her, when she’d told him she loved him. She didn’t remember any of that shit, and he’d never told her because he figured it was a booze-fueled admission that meant nothing more than her being horny. But the thing was? At the time, in that moment, he’d wanted Molly. In his bed. Him inside her. It had freaked him out so much that for a long time, whenever he thought of her, it made him uncomfortable. As if he’d crossed a line he shouldn’t have. He’d told himself that he could never act on it because her friendship meant more than sex, and sex was something he could get whenever he wanted from whomever he felt like having it with.

  And that got him thinking about something he’d never thought of before, not in those terms, anyway. Him and Molly. Together. In every way. Without Vegas or tequila or whatever the hell it was she’d had that night between them.

  “Come with me,” he said, reaching for her.

  “Where?”

  He grabbed her arm and looked around. The Malone fish fry was hopping, so he pulled Molly along behind him, sidestepping her parents and their group of pals as he headed inside the house, and didn’t stop walking until they were in her old bedroom with the door closed behind them.

  The room looked exactly as he remembered, deep navy-blue paint and crisp white trim. There were posters on the wall of Gretzky (his idol had been Bobby Orr) as well as Johnny Cash, who happened to be her favorite singer.

  “What the hell, Nate?” Her color was high, and she yanked her hand from his.

  “Sorry, I…” The words dried up in his throat when he spied a bunch of frames grouped together on her dresser. He crossed the room and stood in front of them, gazing down at their past. A group shot of all of them dressed in road hockey gear, they looked to be about seven years of age. Her and Zach blowing out the candles on their fifth birthday, with half of Nate’s face peeking over her shoulder. The first hockey championship they’d won. She was the only girl in the group. And then…

  He reached down and picked up the last frame. Prom. It was a lifetime ago.

  “Nate, what’s going on?” She stood beside him now, and he turned to her.

  It wasn’t the photo they’d been forced to pose for at the event. It was a casual shot from the front room of the Malone house, taken just before they’d left. He remembered it clear as day. Zach cracked a joke no one thought was funny, and then Molly whispered something into Nate’s ear that nearly doubled him over. In the photo, they were both smiling widely and looking at each other as if there was no one else in the room.

  “You were beautiful,” he said quietly, putting the photo back on the dresser. He’d never seen her that way and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.

  “What?” She was nervous now. He could tell because of the small tic at the corner of her mouth. “You’re drunk.”

  “No, Moll. Not even close.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on, because I have no idea why you dragged me in here.”

  He took his time because he didn’t want to spook her, and because he wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to say, and maybe that was because he had no idea what the hell he was doing.

  “I didn’t remember the color of your dress.”

  This wasn’t the best opening line he’d ever used, but this was new territory for him, and, at the moment, it was all he had.

  Molly ran her hands through her hair, untangling a few pieces that waved across her shoulder. “If you’re not drunk, then high? Is that it?”

  He shook his head. Normally, Nate had no problem conversing with the opposite sex. So why in hell was it such a problem with Molly?

  “My mom asked me what color your dress was at prom, and I couldn’t remember. She said you would.”

  She looked confused, and then a weird sort of expression crossed her face. She licked her lips again, which made him notice the tic, and that little thing was going off like a rocket. She was more than nervous.

  “Oh. I still don’t understand.”

  “Then she said something that made me think about some things I’ve never considered before.”

  Her chest rose and fell rapidly, the color high on her cheeks. “Nate, I—”

  He slowly shook his head and took a step toward her. “The thing is, Molly, I think maybe you’ve thought about these things too. Maybe for a while now. And maybe I’m late to the game or just plain stupid.”

  Another step and he was inches from her. The air around them thickened, making it hard to breathe. He was hot. And cold. And he felt about as far away from a grown-ass man as he was from his fourteen-year-old self. The kid who practically lost it when Daisy Brookfield had lifted her top and shown him her boobs.

  He needed to take a moment so that he made sense.

  “This thing between us, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I won’t know if it’s real or just in my head unless I do something about it.”

  Somewhere in the house, the dog barked, but neither one of them paid any attention to it.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, so softly, he barely heard her.

  Nate didn’t bother with a reply. He slid his hands into all that hair around her face. He waited for her to resist. For her to knock him in the shoulder and tell him he was acting crazy. Kick him in the groin if she was feeling particularly feisty.

  But she did none of that, so Nate leaned in and kissed her.

  Chapter Nine

  When Molly was twelve, her brother Zach caught her practice kissing a pillow, which sounds ridiculous, but she’d gotten the idea after watching an old movie about a teenage girl at the beach. In the movie, the girl had never kissed a boy and decided to use a pillow in order to get the kissing part right. Molly figured it was a brilliant idea. How were you supposed to be good at something like kissing when you’d never done it before? She’d been curled up on her bed, the overly large pillow cushioned between her arms, her head buried deep into its softness, when Zach burst into her room because he wanted to borrow her ball glove.

  Molly had been mortified. Zach had been gleeful.

  He’d threatened to tell the guys what he’d seen if she didn’t do his math homework for an entire month. Which she did. And when he threatened to tell them anyway, she popped him on the nose with a wicked right hook and told him she’d spill the beans on how long he took in the shower and what it was he was doing in there. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but figured it was pretty bad when she heard her parents whispering about it. When she found out exactly what it was they’d been whispering about, she’d been mortified.

  He’d stared her down, hand clutched to his now-bleeding nose, and shrugged. “Every guy I know does that.” He paused. “But you’re not a guy so you just kiss pillows which is stupid.”

  She couldn’t argue with him there, and she did feel stupid for kissing a pillow, but that didn’t stop her from practicing again, only this time, she made sure her bedroom door was locked. By the time she had her first kiss at fifteen, she was pretty good at it. At least that was what Jerry Davidson told her when he’d pressed up against her behind the dugout at the ballpark one hot summer night. He was just as tall and gangly as Molly, and a science nerd to boot, which made him a good first kiss because he didn’t even try to feel up her boobs. Not that she had much in that department, but still…

  Between watching Pretty Woman and every other romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts, plus all that practice with her pillow, Molly got good at it, though she didn’t think it was as amazing as everyone made it out to be. Seemed like a lot of spit swapping, tongue twisting, and wet lips to her. That all changed when Connor Brislow came into the picture. He was a sophom
ore at college, and she’d met him her first year. They began dating one night after labs when he insisted on taking her for coffee, and it didn’t take long to graduate from kissing and touching to getting naked and then, finally, sex.

  By this time, she just wanted the virgin thing to be done and over with. No one else her age was as pure as Molly. Plus, she liked kissing Connor, and after the first few times, the sex felt nice too—although the earth didn’t move, so she wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. She wasn’t even sure she’d had an orgasm. Truthfully, she preferred making out and cuddling to the actual act itself.

  By the following Christmas, she and Conner were done. He didn’t like competing with her studies, and by the time she graduated and came home to take over the clinic with her brother, she told herself she was too busy to date, though, in fact, she found it boring. Maybe there was something wrong with her? But what? She knew she wasn’t frigid, which one boy had accused her of when she refused to sleep with him, but she didn’t have anyone to confide in. All her friends were men, and the last thing she wanted to do was have a talk about sex and what it should feel like. From what she could tell, men liked sex any way they could get it and would never find it boring and would never, ever consider living without it.

  But there was always this thought at the back of her mind, a little voice that said it would be different with Nate. That maybe her disconnect with men was more to do with who she wasn’t kissing than anything else.

  And, boy, that thought was right.

  Nate’s hands slid along her jawline and sank into her hair at about the same time her insides melted. Like butter over hot toast. Or lava sliding down a volcano. Like a nun’s panties if she happened to cross paths in the dark with Brad Pitt or George Clooney, or Jon Bon Jovi if he happened to be said nun’s cuppa tea.

  His mouth was soft at first, sliding across hers like a whisper, and she froze as a multitude of emotions ran through her. She felt like that girl back at the ball diamond with Jerry Davidson: anxious and scared and completely out of her depth. In many ways, she was still that girl. But this time, instead of disappointment, the kiss was pure bliss. It was rockets launched into space. Skydiving off a cliff. Zip-lining two hundred feet above ground. It was all those things and so much more.

  And that had everything to do with the man who held her.

  He deepened the kiss and ran his hands down her body to settle at the base of her spine, his fingers splayed there lightly, as if he was afraid to go further. She felt the weight and wanted him to go further. Molly pressed closer yet, kissing him back with everything inside her. There was so much. Heat. Electricity. Their tongues tangled, their bodies fused together; so much feeling from just a kiss. When he slowly broke away and took a step back, her breaths were ragged, and she was glad to see she wasn’t the only one affected. Nate looked like he’d just run a marathon.

  For a moment, neither one of them said a word, and then Nate cleared his throat. “Moll, I…I think that…” His voice trailed off, and he stood there in silence. When had Nate ever been tongue-tied?

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, dropping her eyes because she was afraid to see what was in his.

  She felt his fingers slide under her chin and force her head up so that she had no choice but to look at him.

  “I think my mother was right. I’m think I should have kissed you a long time ago.” He bent toward her. “I think I’m going to kiss you again.” His voice lowered. “Do you want that, Moll? Do you want me to kiss you again?”

  Yes.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, answering as honestly as she could. How did she put into words the fear she felt? The mortification that waited when he rejected her? Because he would. Eventually. She was nothing like the women he’d been with.

  Wouldn’t he?

  “Moll.” He said her name as if it carried a secret, his voice low and thick, and something inside her broke apart. It filled her with such longing and something more, something dangerous, something she had no name for. She felt like Elizabeth to his Darcy. Cleopatra to his Mark Antony. Juliet to his—

  “Molly?” A knock at the door scared the crap out of her.

  Molly jumped out of her skin and her Birkenstocks. She looked up at Nate and panicked, pressing her finger to her lips. If Zach found out what she and Nate were doing in here, it would be the kissing pillow all over again. But one thousand times worse.

  “Are you in there?” The door handle rattled, and she slammed her hand against it.

  “I’m getting changed, Zach,” she said sharply, biting her bottom lip, forehead resting against the door. “I got sauce on my shirt.” She pulled the lie out of her butt and winced. What was she? Five again?

  “Oh, okay. Hey, I’m looking for Nate. Mom said she saw the two of you head to the house.”

  “He came in to use the bathroom.”

  “Huh, I wonder where he went off to. Don’t worry about it. I’ll find him. You should hurry up, though. Dad’s working his way up to some kind of epic speech, and you don’t want to miss that.”

  “I’ll be a couple of minutes.”

  She listened intently and, when she was sure Zach was gone, turned around. “That was close.”

  Nate nodded and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and Molly’s stomach turned over, full of butterflies and a bunch of other stuff she had no name for. Her heart, already ramped up, surged to the next level, making her feel faint, and she pushed past him. I can’t deal with this, she thought. She yanked open the top drawer of her old dresser and rummaged around until she found a T-shirt that had probably been folded and hidden since she’d first come back from college.

  “I need to change,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. His devastating smile was still there. So were the butterflies.

  “We need to talk, Molly.”

  “I don’t think so, Nate.” She shook her head, but the look on his face told her there would be a talk, so all she had was the power to say when and where. “At least not here and not now.”

  He held her gaze longer than he should and, by the time he reached for the door, that damn smile had infiltrated his entire face—and Nathan Jacobs’s smile could literally stop a bus. Which, in fact, happened once, but that was a story she didn’t want to think about right now either, because she didn’t have time for a trip down memory lane.

  “This talk is going to happen, Moll. But don’t worry, I’ll find you later.”

  And then he was gone.

  Molly wasn’t sure how long she stood there staring at the door like an idiot, but it was long enough for her calf to cramp. With a groan, she ripped off her shirt and pulled on the black T-shirt, which was too tight across the bust, but there was nothing else for her to wear. She was about to head outside when her phone buzzed. She retrieved it from her back pocket and quickly scrolled through several hasty messages from Jade Davenport, who was on call for the animal shelter. Someone had reported that a dog had been dumped down near old mill, but Jade couldn’t get there to check it out because her youngest child had a fever and her husband was at work.

  Molly called Jade to let her know she’d run down to the mill and see what was up. She was still on the phone when she yanked open the bedroom door, only to find Nate leaning against the wall as if he were waiting in line for popcorn.

  “I thought you left. Have you been standing there the whole time?” she blurted.

  “Excuse me?” Jade asked.

  “Sorry,” Molly replied, eyes on Nate. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll go, and please forward any more calls to the shelter directly to me.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I have to go to the dam. Can you let my parents know?” She pocketed the cell and moved past Nate. “Why are you following me?” she asked, a little confused to find him two steps behind her instead of moving toward the patio doors off the kitchen that would take him to the backyard.
/>   “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.” She couldn’t think straight with him in her space right now, and she needed to focus.

  “You might need help.”

  “No, I…” She thought about it and realized she could use an extra pair of hands, depending on the situation. Molly looked him straight in the eye. “Fine. But we’re not talking about what just happened in there.”

  “We don’t need to talk.”

  “I mean it, Nate.” She headed out the front door and got into her truck. Before they left, she sent a quick text message to her brother explaining where she was going, and then she drove to the shelter for her kit. By the time they reached the dam, her nerves were jangling, but Nate kept his word and remained silent.

  She grabbed her bag and instructed Nate to search the west side of the dam while she did the east. There was thick brush on either side that tumbled down to the river, and the dog, if it was still there, was most likely hidden. She’d been searching for a good twenty minutes or so when her cell buzzed with a message from Nate.

  He’d found the dog.

  Molly jogged over to where he squatted beside a large steel drum that was rusted out and half hidden by all the brush near the water. He stood back and pointed inside. “I think she’s going to be a mama.”

  Molly got on her knees and peered into the darkened drum. There, on a ratty old blanket, was what looked to be a black Lab-shepherd cross, with the biggest, softest brown eyes, a large distended belly, and obvious signs of lactation. A large contraction took hold and then eased, while Molly offered words of encouragement. The thought that anyone would drop off a mother about to whelp filled her with such anger.

  She was gentle and unafraid, this mother-to-be, and allowed Molly to do a quick exam.

  “We need to get her to the clinic. She’s not having these pups in here.” She glanced up at Nate and asked him to bring her truck as close to where they were as possible. Once he did that, she tried to coax the mother from her spot, but the dog wasn’t budging. Frustrated, she sat for a moment, trying to think of a way to get her out, but the dog wasn’t interested in food or treats.