I shake my head to stop her. “I know I’m brown. It’s not a secret,” I tease, wanting her to know she’s done nothing to offend me. In demonstration, I hold out my forearm just inches away from her lily-white hand. “Pretty obvious.”
As usual, she has on a long-sleeved T-shirt under her scrubs. Without a word, she pulls up the sleeve and lines up her forearm next to mine. Not touching, but close. The difference is crazy. Like whole milk next to maple syrup.
The blonde peach fuzz rises from her skin, invisible except for where the light hits it just right. It looks crazy soft. Because I have to, I lean in and let the length of my arm touch hers. I feel those light hairs whisper against my skin, and I hold my breath so I can’t make a sound. Because she doesn’t pull away. Because her skin on mine looks better than anything I’ve seen in a long time. Because it feels better too.
“Bronze,” she says, her voice hoarse and almost inaudible beneath the whir of the giant fan. I glance up to find her gaze fixed on our arms, her lashes low.
“What?” And because I’ve been holding my breath, I sound choked, thirsty.
“It isn’t brown,” she says, almost absently. “It’s bronze.” And the way she says it makes me think bronze is her very favorite color.
I swallow, heat erupting over every inch of my skin. My bronze skin.
God, I want to touch her. All over.
She’s. A. Client. No. Touching.
But before I can pull my arm away and break our connection, she wraps her other hand around my wrist, making me go stock still.
Millie looks up into my eyes, and I realize that everything—absolutely everything—has changed. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But the look in her blue eyes—afraid, but hopeful—tells me all my rules are no good here.
“Is this okay?” she asks, her voice shaky.
Dios mío. She’s asking permission to touch me.
And any quality I had resembling control—restraint, civility, sanity—snaps. My arm in her grip hooks low around her back. My left hand cups the back of her head before bringing her mouth to mine, and I groan louder than the giant fan.
I kiss Millie Delacroix like it’s my job. Like she is my Daily Three. Millie. Millie. And Millie.
Her mouth opens under mine, and the only thing sweeter than this sweetest of welcomes is the feel of her hands. One still clutching my wrist behind her. The other gripping tight to my hair just above my nape, pulling me closer.
Telling me I’m not the only one.
She. Wants. This. Too.
My tongue sweeps over hers, and she rises up on her toes, making a little squeak. Of effort? Of urgency? What other noises does she make? I want to know. I want to learn her language. I tilt my head, bite her lower lip, and suck it into my mouth. She gasps, a sound that fires straight to my balls. When I release the sweet flesh, she bites and sucks mine in return, and I’m the one making noises.
“Sagrado...”
We inhabit a new world. Nothing from the old one remains. Not the laws of physics. Not gravity. Not even the rotation of the earth. And long gone is the rule of not touching Millie.
I will touch her morning, noon, and night, I promise myself, the first decree of this new world.
I will make sure she laughs every day. This isn’t just a promise; it’s a constitution. What could be a more perfect union?
My lips seal over hers again, and when her tongue pushes into my mouth, eager and seeking, my first impulse is to drag us both to the floor, but somewhere in the attic of my brain, there’s a dusty cardboard box that holds a reason for why this isn’t a good idea. I don’t open the box. I don’t even climb the stairs to the attic. I just nurse her tongue in my mouth and lead her like we’re dancing, moving her back until we smack against the wall.
Ah, that’s it. Her kitchen. Her home. Her family. They’re all here. That’s why I can’t take her on the floor this minute.
I will lay her down where we can be alone.
But for now, I just want to taste her and hold her as long as I can. Feel her pressing, clasping, claiming me. Millie is kissing me. How long has she wanted this? I would have given it the first day I laid eyes on her. Whatever she wants, she can have.
I will give her anything she wants.
But time is against us. A light has flicked on in that attic. Any minute now, one of the kids will come searching for her. Wanting food. Needing help. Asking for a ride to a friend’s. I’ve heard it every day.
I will answer.
I will help shoulder her load.
Adding more decrees, building this world from the ground up, I break the seal of our mouths to kiss her jaw, the hollow beneath her ear, down her neck. Millie tastes like salt and summertime. Like sea breeze and ambrosia salad.
And there’s not enough time. Not nearly enough.
I will make time for her.
Unable to get enough, I keep kissing her neck. Her lips graze my ear, and the sound of gasp drives me mad.
“Oh God,” she whispers.
Yes, she’s right, I think. I will praise God for this.
“Oh God. What am I doing?”
I freeze.
And then she’s panting, pulling away. At first, I hold on. She’s afraid. I don’t know everything about her, but I know she’s afraid. Something like this scares her. I just have to reassure her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking down. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, grinning. “We both want this.”
Her gaze jumps to mine then, her eyes wide and stark. “I don’t want this.” She pulls back harder, and this time I let her go.
“Millie—”
“I don’t want this.” She steps to the right, freeing herself from between me and the wall. “Things would happen… Things I don’t want.”
Does she mean me? That I would do things? I narrow my eyes at her. “Nothing would happen that you didn’t want.”
Her face is flushed, and I can’t tell if it’s from arousal or anger. Or both. Hell, right now I feel both.
She shakes her head, eyes a blazing blue. “Trust me, Luc.” Her voice has gone throaty, and she wears a bitter smile I’ve never seen. “You don’t want this either.”
Before I can open my mouth to tell her she knows shit, Millie is gone.
And I am in this new world alone.
Chapter Fourteen
MILLIE
Before Saturday, there were two things I absolutely refused to think about. The last moments of my parents’ lives and the last day I was pregnant.
Before Saturday, my memory cooperated. It kept my brain, and, therefore, my heart, safely cocooned away from those stories so I could deal.
But I fucked up.
I tried to add one more memory to the vault—the look on Luc’s face when I pushed him away—and I broke the whole damn thing.
I bolt up in bed. Wide awake at 2:37 a.m. Heart racing. Pits sweating. Sure I’ve heard Mom calling Dad’s name.
And even though I’m awake, I’m right there. Smack dab in the middle of my personal nightmare.
The best the Fort Myers Coast Guard could tell, based on Dad’s injuries and the blood spatter on The Eloise II, the boom caught him on the back of the head and sent him overboard. Unconscious. In the middle of a thunderstorm. With night falling. And seventeen-foot seas.
The investigative team said they weren’t sure how Mom ended up in the water, but I am. She went in after him. I have no doubt about that. She didn’t waste any time. She pushed the emergency button on the DSC-equipped radio and didn’t wait to talk to anyone. The Coast Guard got the distress call with their position—nearly twenty miles offshore—but by the time the crew from Fort Myers located them, it was too late.
Did you know you can drown while wearing a life jacket? It’s true. If you’re unconscious and face down, it doesn’t take long. That’s what happened to Dad. He wasn’t dead when he hit the water. The coroner’s report was clear about that. Water in his lungs pro
ved he had drowned.
Just like Mom.
She hated wearing a life jacket. I suspect she only did it when any of us were on board to set a good example. Every time I remember her putting one on, she’d make a face like she’d eaten something sour. Half the time, she wouldn’t even secure the clips, saying that made her feel like she was being smothered.
Even after having the four of us, Mom was a gravity-defiant D cup. It probably did feel like being smothered.
But she had to have on her life jacket if she went in after him. It would have been crazy to jump in that water without it. I can’t believe she’d do that. I refuse to believe it.
Yet she wasn’t wearing one when the Coast Guard found her. Eleven hours after they found Dad.
It wasn’t on her, but her hot pink life vest wasn’t on the boat either. She couldn’t have jumped in without it. She didn’t jump in without it.
My guess? She didn’t have it strapped on. When she went in after Dad, there was no time. She was probably beside herself with panic. Jumping in. Calling his name. Watching his lifeless shape bob and disappear between every crest and trough.
This is what I can’t bear to think about. Her fear. Her helplessness. Her knowing that their lives were in her hands alone.
Did she take off the jacket, thinking she’d reach him faster if she could just swim unencumbered?
When I picture that, I can’t get enough air. The first time I did, the day after we got the news, I hyperventilated and started seeing stars. Carter made me breathe into a paper bag. It was from Meche’s Donuts. It smelled like sugar and Bavarian cream, and as soon as I could breathe, I puked on his shoes.
Carter had been grossed out, though he tried not to show it. He’d been wearing a weird tightness around his eyes since we got the news about my parents. I thought he was worried about me. About me and the baby. It wasn’t until weeks later—after the miscarriage—when he told me he was leaving that I realized it wasn’t just tightness.
He’d looked trapped.
One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. But only women who’ve lost a baby know that stat by heart. Another statistic is that miscarriage risks drop dramatically after a fetal heartbeat can be detected—at about six to eight weeks.
I miscarried at eight weeks. Five days after I heard my baby’s heartbeat.
Four weeks after I found out I was pregnant.
Three weeks after my parents died.
Two weeks before Carter left.
Saying that the end of May and the beginning of June were shit for me would be true, sort of, but shit isn’t scary.
Everyone can do shit.
Those weeks were a hell of a lot scarier than shit.
Before June 11th, I thought nothing could be scarier than learning my parents were gone and I was supposed to see Harry, Mattie, and Emmett into adulthood as their guardian. But waking up on that Monday morning in blood-soaked pajama bottoms and that unmistakable, deep inside cramping was the most terrifying free-fall-into-despair feeling I have ever, ever known.
I knew. Even before I was fully awake, I knew I was losing the baby. But I woke Carter, screaming that I needed to go to the hospital, unable to accept what was happening.
Aunt Pru was still with us then. She was already up and making coffee when she heard me. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she saw the bed sheets, my legs. The grim sorrow I saw in her eyes was unbearable. I knew that pain and more was waiting for me, and I couldn’t face it. I had to look away.
She stayed at the house with the kids while Carter took me to Lafayette General. We didn’t have to wait. They took us right through. Carter held me while the ultrasound tech searched and searched for that rapid pow-pow-pow-pow we’d heard just days before.
And then Carter had held me the rest of the day as I lay in my bed, grieving in triplicate. Mother. Father. Child. Grieving for generations.
But even as he held me, he was comforting me. He wasn’t devastated. He kept saying I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, Mil. Just like he’d said over and over about my parents. Like it wasn’t also his loss. His baby.
He never said, Maybe it’s for the best. Thank God. I might have killed him if he had.
But looking back, a part of me already knew I was losing him too. Carter couldn’t take it. The instant family. The endless responsibility. Those were his exact words. “I can’t take it, Mil. I can’t deal. This is too much to ask of me.”
I hadn’t asked. We’d been together less than a year. But it had been good. I’d believed my love meant as much to him as his did to me. I was wrong.
And now? This place in my life? This new position at the helm of my family? Navigating through yet deeper seas of grief?
I was in it alone.
And holy fuck, why would the look on Luc Valencia’s face after I pushed him away make me think of all that?
My pulse has slowed. The sweat on my skin has cooled so much it’s making me shiver. I should just pull the covers up again and try to go back to sleep, but who am I kidding?
Sleep isn’t coming back for me tonight.
Clarence is propped up on his paws, sphinxlike, watching me.
“Wanna go outside?” I whisper.
His ears perk and he does a kind of canine double-take. This usually isn’t an offer I make in the middle of the night.
“C’mon,” I say, sliding my feet off the bed. Hesitation gone, he jumps down and watches, wagging patiently while I put on fuzzy socks, slippers, and wrap up in my robe. I’m already cold to the bone.
Downstairs, the house is hushed behind the quiet hum of the heater. The only lights are the ones from the porch and the street lamps shining through the windows, making tall shadows on the floor. Passing through the living room, I go to the French doors that lead to the back porch, disarm the alarm, and head outside with Clarence.
The night is cold, sharp against my skin. Clarence lopes down the porch steps and into the shadows of the back yard. His white coat makes him visible even behind the ligustrums that line the back edge. I know his routine. He’ll do a perimeter sweep, lifting a leg here and there, before deciding his territory is secure and he can go back inside. This will take a few minutes, so I sit on the cushioned outdoor settee and wait.
I concentrate on the cold air against my face, seeping through my clothes, filling my lungs. When I do that, it’s easier to keep at bay the thoughts that drove me outside. And it works.
For a few minutes.
But when Clarence has finished his business and we go back in, I see his paws are damp. Little pieces of leaf debris and dirt speckle his white feet. I tell him to stay, and head for the laundry room in search of a towel.
Of course, that brings Luc to mind.
I can’t enter the kitchen or the laundry room without thinking of him.
Honestly? I don’t even need to be near those rooms. He hasn’t been far from my thoughts all week.
His kiss. His kisses. Nothing has ever turned me on like that. And I don’t just mean sexually.
I mean ON. Lit up. Electric. In motion. Alive.
And, yes, turned on the other way, too. A lot. Picture turned on a lot and then turn it even higher. Way, way past eleven. Break the fucking dial.
Even after thinking about it for six days, I still don’t know how I let myself go there. Maybe the hours cleaning up the kitchen wore me down. Or maybe it’s his unfailing kindness. The sight of him teaching Emmett how to use the shop vac made my bones feel like melted chocolate.
The next thing I knew, we were alone. And touching. Then I asked to touch him.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Where did I think that would go? Touching him leads nowhere safe.
Memories fire through my hippocampus in rapid succession. Two lines on a First Response pregnancy test. Carter’s quickly masked look of terror when I told him. The way the orbit of our lives shifted when my parents died to center around my brothers and sister. The way that shared orbit broke apart entirely just we
eks later.
No matter what I felt—and I felt it in every cell—kissing Luc was reckless and weak. If I know nothing else, there are two things I’m certain of:
1) The Family Curse is real. If I sleep with a man, I will get pregnant.
2) If I get pregnant, Luc won’t be able to deal. Me and my life just ask too much.
So that time-stopping, life-altering kiss? It’ll just have to be a warm memory. A really warm memory. Which is good because it’s going to have to last me a long time. The kiss—kisses—won’t be repeated.
Even if I wanted that to happen again—
Scratch that. Of course, I want it to happen again. It was Luc. Touching him… tasting him… crushing myself against him… It was as if the soundtrack of my life was a dial tone, briefly interrupted by “Ode to Joy.”
But it won’t happen again. Even if I allowed it. Even if I initiated it. The look on Luc’s face when I left him after that kiss made it clear I’m never getting that close to him again.
Now he barely even looks at me. We’ve exchanged maybe two sentences face to face all week. Whenever I walk into the kitchen or the part of the living room that’s open to the kitchen, if he notices me, he keeps his eyes trained on what he’s doing.
Or he finds a reason to go outside.
I think he saves any questions he has for when I’m at work because the only real exchanges we’ve had are through texts.
And, honestly, that’s a relief. I don’t know if I could bear to talk to him. If I’ve hurt his pride, I’m sorry.
If I’ve hurt his feelings, I’m even sorrier.
As Clarence and I climb back upstairs, that’s a thought that stops me in my tracks as it has again and again.
Did I hurt Luc?
The impulse that made me pull away was all about protecting myself. And thus protecting Harry, Mattie, and Emmett. And I’ll admit, at first, that's all I could think about. But after my heart stopped racing and my hands stopped shaking, I kept seeing that look of shocked confusion in the dark, wide open pools of his eyes, and the thought of hurting Luc hurt me too.
What I did was selfish. To run away without explaining was selfish. And cowardly.
Kind of Cursed Page 14
