by Ryan, Lexi
I knew that somehow Marston had planned it that way.
“Dance with me?” he asked.
I nodded and stepped into his arms. We let our bodies sway to the beat, his arms wrapped around me, my cheek against his chest.
The memory grabs ahold of me, and I can hardly breathe as Marston takes me in slowly, from my strappy black heels to the nearly inappropriate hem of my sexiest LBD. Every inch of his visual perusal feels like a caress, and by the time his eyes meet mine, I’m a live wire.
* * *
Marston
I give myself three beats to stare, to look my fill and memorize every inch of her. She’s beautiful. I’ve known this since the night we met, but seeing her dressed like this and knowing she chose to doll herself up for a night with me?
I swallow hard and offer her the rose. I didn’t expect to be nervous, but here I am. “For you.”
Her lips part as she takes it, then she blinks up at me. “Like prom night,” she says softly, and warmth floods my chest. She remembers.
“Ready?” I ask, gesturing toward the car.
Her eyes widen and she lets out a long, low whistle. “Trying to impress me, Marston?”
I grin as I follow her gaze toward my Porsche 911 Cabriolet. “I got sick of the rental. I’d had my eye on these for a while, and there happened to be one available nearby.”
“She’s gorgeous,” Brin says, but she’s looking at me again. She’s having as much trouble not staring as I am. Good.
I turn to the car and rush to open her door before she can get there.
She laughs as she climbs in. “Such a gentleman.”
“You don’t mind a bit of a drive, do you?” I ask when I settle behind the wheel.
“Where are you taking me?”
I start the engine. “If you have time, I thought I’d take you into the city.”
“Atlanta?” she asks, eyes wide.
“A business acquaintance of mine just opened a new restaurant there. A farm-to-table place. He said their soft-shell crab is excellent, so I thought we’d check it out.” I cut my eyes to her. “If that’s okay with you.”
She seems to think it over, then shrugs. “I have nowhere to be. Why not?”
“You won’t regret it,” I say. I back out of the driveway and navigate my way to the main road. I’ve only driven to Atlanta a few times since returning to the OV, but it shouldn’t be bad this time of day. Though it takes me more than an hour on a weekday morning, it should take us less than forty-five minutes tonight.
Brinley leans forward and flips between stations on the satellite radio until she lands on a modern rock station. She keeps the volume low enough that it’s just background noise. “I don’t go to Atlanta much,” she admits. “Roman lives in the northern suburbs, so even when I take Cami or pick her up, I never bother going all the way into the city. We make time for a trip to the aquarium once a year or so, but that’s about it. Though I can’t deny it’d be easier for Cami if her dad and I lived closer—she spends too much time in the car getting back and forth between us.”
“I’ve learned to appreciate my driving time. Especially when it’s a beautiful night like this,” I say, taking my eyes off the road for a beat to look at her. “Want me to put the top down?”
Her eyes light up but she bites her bottom lip. “My hair will be a disaster by the time we get there.”
“Does that bother you?”
She shakes her head. “Not really, but I don’t want to embarrass you.”
I want to kiss her. I want to drag her over to me and kiss that idea out of her head. “You couldn’t embarrass me.” And I’m sorry your parents taught you to always worry about that.
But I push that aggravation aside, lower the top, and revel in the joy on Brinley’s face as she rides with the wind in her hair.
* * *
Brinley swirls the wine in her glass and tips her head to the side, studying me.
“What’s that look about?” I ask.
Her smile says it’s about something very specific, but she says, “What look?”
I prop my forearms on the table and lean forward, happily satisfied after a relaxing drive and a delicious meal. “Out with it. We’re on a date. Ask me anything.”
She takes a long pull of her wine, as if gathering her strength. “Okay. I keep thinking how strange it is that you don’t have someone back home.” She chews on her bottom lip for a beat. “But you admitted in Vegas that you’ve had relationships.”
I nod and laugh softly. “I have.”
“Tell me about them?” She wrinkles her nose. “I promise not to go all jealous girlfriend on you. I’m just curious about your life.”
“Okay.” I lean back, trying to figure out how to condense a decade of romantic relationships. Do I start with college and move forward, or do I start with the most recent and work my way back? “I’ve been with several women, casually, I mean, but only with a couple of them have I had anything I’d qualify as a relationship.”
“So mostly random hookups, or . . .?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean, a few in college, I guess, but I’ve never gotten much of a thrill out of sleeping with women I don’t know on some deeper level. Even if that deeper level is just friendship, I needed more than sex for it to be worth it to me.”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?” she asks. “I mean, if we’re going to be stereotypical about gender roles here?”
I laugh. “I don’t know that it’s a predominantly female trait. Alec is like me in that way.”
“But he slept with Savvy, and that was just a one-night thing.”
“Sure, but—” I catch myself, shake my head, and laugh again. “Oh, no you don’t. I’m not going to analyze our friends’ relationship.”
“Party pooper,” she says, grinning into her wine.
“Is that the way it is for you, though? You prefer your casual sex to be unburdened by emotion?”
“Oh, hell.” She drains her glass, then sets it on the table and waits for me to refill it before speaking again. “Right after you left, obviously, yes. But that wasn’t about pleasure so much as . . .”
I wait, needing to hear her explanation without tainting it with my own interpretations.
“After you left . . .”
“After you asked me to leave,” I correct her, because it burns every time she refers to me leaving. I didn’t fucking want that. But then I regret my words, because she sinks into herself almost imperceptibly. “Sorry,” I whisper.
“It’s fine. You’re right.” She swallows and swirls her wine, watching the eddies splashing up on the side of the glass. “That summer I felt like I was drowning in the middle of a crowded pool. There were all these people around me, and no matter how much I flailed, it was as if no one could see how much I was struggling to keep my head above water. The partying, the booze and sex . . .” She doesn’t lift her eyes to mine, and I wish she would. I need to see the emotions she’s trapped inside. “It was the only way I knew how to make them hear me.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach across the table and cup my hand over hers. “I’m sorry I let you push me away when you needed me the most.”
Her eyes well with tears. “I’m not.”
I’ve pulled my hand back before I even realize it. She’s not sorry I left, and it’s one of my biggest regrets. That burns.
“I can’t regret Cami,” she says, meeting my eyes. “I won’t. Not ever.”
I let out a long, even breath. “Of course not. She’s a great kid, and you’re an amazing mom.”
She huffs softly. “I’m okay. Not the best, not the worst, but luckily it’s not a competition.” She forces a smile then sighs. “Obviously my pregnancy slowed down my hookups, and after Cami was born, there wasn’t anyone for a few years. Then, yeah, it was easier to do the random hookup thing than try for a relationship. I remembered you talking about your mom’s revolving door of boyfriends and—”
“It wouldn’t have been the sam
e. You are not the same as her.”
She shrugs. “It made an impression, though, and I was fine. I have the best friends and I have Cami. I didn’t need anyone else. Cami came first, and while I know there are guys who would’ve respected that, I couldn’t do anything that might bring instability to her life, and I didn’t see anything they could offer that would be worth the risk.”
“Until Julian? Or was there a real relationship before him?”
“No. He was the first, but I don’t know if I’d call it real.”
I cough on my wine. I want to shout, “I knew it!” but I refrain. Barely. “Explain that to me?”
She wrinkles her nose like the subject smells bad. “You first. Tell me about these real relationships you had, and I’ll explain me and Julian.”
I brush some invisible crumbs off the tablecloth in front of me. I feel like I need to give her something good, but there’s not a whole lot to share. Nothing has ever been as real as me and her. “The first was Dierdre, and I met her in college. We were friends, but we started dating our senior year. It was . . .” I drag a hand through my hair and try to remember those days with Dierdre. The study sessions, the parties, the wasted Sunday afternoons snuggling on the couch. “It was nice. Before she convinced me to give her a chance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in a committed relationship again.”
Brinley flinches. “That was my fault.”
“And mine.” I clear my throat. “I’d pinned so much on my first love that when I lost you, I felt like I’d lost everything. Dierdre showed me I could still have love and affection, that loving you didn’t preclude me from loving someone else.”
“What happened?”
I shrug. “We graduated. Alec and I decided to start our own company, and Dierdre got an assistantship in a graduate program in Oklahoma. We were young and didn’t want to do the long-distance thing, so we decided to split.”
“Just like that?”
I laugh. “It happens every day.”
“But if things were so good—”
“I said they were nice. But it wasn’t the soul-shattering kind of love. It kind of sucked to say goodbye, but we were both okay.”
“You don’t miss her?” She searches my face as if she might find some emotion there that I’m even hiding from myself.
“I used to, maybe, as a friend, but it’s been so long. Mostly I’m just happy she didn’t let me get in the way of her dreams. That would’ve been a disaster.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and nods. “It’s awesome that you get that.”
And her dreams are in Orchid Valley. No questions asked. Fuck, I get that it’s a problem, but I hate that she shuts down any talk of our future because of it. My first instinct is to brainstorm solutions, possibilities, but I know if I start, she’ll push me away. “So . . . Julian?”
She wags a finger. “Not yet. You said there were two. Who was the second?”
I chuckle. “I can’t decide if you’re really this interested in my past romances or if you’re dodging the subject.”
“Maybe a little of both. Tell me about her.”
I pause for a long time. Honestly, if I could skip this part, I’d like to. It seems unnecessarily dramatic, and that doesn’t actually match up with my feelings toward the woman in question. “Her name was Bridget.”
Brinley rolls her eyes. “And what was Bridget like?”
“She was . . . ambitious, which I could relate to. We both worked and traveled a lot, so she didn’t resent my job, which was refreshing.”
“What’d she do?”
“You know . . .” I take a sip of wine. “Some acting or whatever.”
She blinks at me. “You don’t mean Bridget Schaffer?” When I drop my gaze to the table again, she shrieks softly. “You were in a relationship with Bridget Schaffer? How did I not know about this?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. The media found me boring and was more interested in reporting on every time she was spotted with her ex.” Bridget’s ex is a British pop star, so their possible reunion made a much more interesting story than her steady-but-quiet—and mostly secret—relationship with me.
“I don’t know whether I should be jealous or impressed.” She giggles and does a little hair toss. “I’m going to go with impressed. Look at me, on a date with Bridget Schaffer’s ex.”
I arch a brow. “Look at you, married to Bridget Schaffer’s ex.”
Her blue eyes go wide. “Right! Damn, I must be a catch.”
My smile falls away. “You’re better than a catch. You’re . . .” I scan her face as I look for the word. Catch sounds like she’s just another woman and this is just another date, when she’s always been the one for me. “You’re even more amazing now than you were ten years ago.”
Her smile wavers, and she swallows. “I’d like to think so. I was just a kid back then.” She shakes her head, as if not letting herself dwell there. “Tell me what happened with Bridget.”
I suck air through my teeth. “Well, unlike me and Dierdre, it was not an amicable split.”
“Did she break your heart?”
I study her and wonder if she understands, truly, that she’s the only one who ever had the power to do that. “It wasn’t like that. She was still in love with her ex, but she didn’t want to give me up, either. It was ugly.”
“She cheated on you?”
I turn up my palms. There isn’t a single piece of me that still longs for Bridget. I’m where I want to be right now. But at the time? I was angry. So fucking angry. “They were caught making out in a club, and I didn’t find out about it until the pictures were all over the gossip sites. She swears it was just that once and that nothing else happened but . . .” I study Brinley’s parted pink lips and remember how I sat down with a bottle of bourbon and did a deep dive into some self-pity. It wasn’t just Bridget—though the days those images were everywhere were some of the most embarrassing of my life—it was that I’d never felt anything for anyone that came close to what I’d felt for Brinley Knox when I was a teenager, and I wondered if I’d ever feel that again. “I broke it off with Bridget, told her to get the fuck out. Then, after inadvisable quantities of bourbon, I picked up the phone and called you for the first time in years.”
Brinley lifts her hand to her mouth. “You did? When was this?”
“It was a couple of years ago.” I close my eyes. “You still had the same number as when we were in high school. I couldn’t believe I still remembered it, but it was imprinted somewhere deep in my brain, and even loaded and in no position to talk to anyone, I was able to dial your number.”
“I don’t remember . . . I didn’t see a call from you.” She shakes her head. “But I didn’t have your new number until I saw you in Vegas.”
“Exactly. Maybe that’s why you didn’t answer. Or maybe you wouldn’t have if you’d known it was me.”
“I would have,” she blurts. “I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t know, but if I’d known it was you . . .”
I shrug. As if it doesn’t matter. As if I wasn’t lonely as fuck that night and so many nights before and after. I called three times just to listen to her voice asking me to leave a message. Hi! You’ve reached Brinley. Sorry I can’t make it to the phone, but leave a message and I promise to get back to you as soon as I can. She sounded so damn happy, sounded the way she’d looked the day I came back to Orchid Valley and saw her holding Cami on the patio behind her parents’ house. “I didn’t leave a voicemail,” I say unnecessarily.
She bites the corner of her mouth. “What would you have said if I’d picked up?” She smiles. “Hey, this gorgeous Hollywood starlet just broke up with me; come over here and kiss me better?”
I have to laugh. “I like to think I would’ve done better than that, but like I said, there was a lot of bourbon involved.” I swallow. “I imagine I would’ve just said I missed you every day, and I didn’t think I’d ever love someone else the way I loved you.”
She drops her gaze to her wine
. “You always say sweet things.”
More words lodge themselves in my throat—sweet things she probably doesn’t want to hear. “Tell me about Julian.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Do I have to?” When I just arch a brow in response, she sighs. “Julian moved to town about six years ago. We met at Smithy’s and hit it off.”
“Six years ago?” I lean back in my chair, fighting every possessive, jealous asshole instinct I have. I want to hear this story, but this isn’t some random hookup she’s telling me about, and unlike my old girlfriend, Julian’s not just an ex I can process in an intellectual way. This is the guy she almost married. This is the guy I almost lost her to. And they were involved for six years.
“Like I said, a long-term relationship was never a priority to me. When I went home with Julian that night, he was supposed to be another random hookup. One and done. I wasn’t looking for more.”
“But he was,” I say. “He’s thought of you as his since that first time.”
She rolls her head from side to side as if she needs to release tension in her neck. “I’m not sure how you know that, but yeah. It’s becoming very clear to me that despite my warnings that I wasn’t interested in more than easy hookups, Julian’s been playing the long game since the beginning.” She closes her eyes. “I feel like such an ass, in retrospect. I should have realized he was falling for me.”
“But you did at some point—realized it and realized you returned his feelings? Or was it not that at all? Was there another reason you were planning to go through with this marriage?”
When she looks up at me, her eyes are guarded. “If you’ve already figured it out, please don’t make me explain. It’s mortifying.”
I scoot my chair halfway around the table and brush my knuckles down her arm. “I haven’t figured anything out. But I know you came home from Vegas and got engaged days or, at most, weeks after. When I first found that out, I made myself crazy thinking what we had that night was nothing more than a last-minute fling. Cold feet.”
