What Matters More

by Liora Blake

  “I can’t,” he said reluctantly, trying to figure out a way to explain why without sounding a little pathetic. He ran a hand over his hair with a quiet grumble. “My mom’s expecting me home for dinner soon. She’s making macaroni and cheese. It’s my favorite.”

  Without warning, Anya barked out a sharp laugh. She carried on laughing, eventually turning her head so she could bury her face in the bedsheets. That merely muffled the sound and somehow made it worse.

  JT’s entire body froze up. What was it he thought Anya offered when they were together? Something about comfort and acceptance?

  Scratch that. It was a little hard to remember all of that crap in his head about feeling so good around her when she was laughing at him.

  “Oh, God,” she giggled. “You take yourself so seriously, JT. I mean, if you could see yourself right now. Naked, but lying there like a sulky teenage boy, talking about how you need to go because your mom is expecting you home for dinner. I can safely say that it’s been a really long time since a guy laid that excuse on me.”

  JT let out a defeated grunt. He hoped it might make her stop talking, but she simply giggled and carried on.

  “There was Jimmy Reyes, though, from my senior year of high school. I clearly remember sitting in the back seat of his Honda, feeling pretty let down about the sex we just had, listening to him zip up his jeans and rattle on about how his mom told him it was a Stove Top Stuffing night. Meanwhile I’m lying there with my favorite skirt still pushed up around my waist, thinking about how all the rumors about him were not true and how when I got home I was going to crawl into bed and touch myself the way I liked, until—”

  That did it. JT couldn’t take another second of this bullshit. Laughing at his uptight, broody attitude? Fine. He was well aware he could be that way when things weren’t going the way he wanted them to. But listening to her talk about how this little fucker Jimmy Reyes had not only touched her, but also left her unsatisfied? And then hearing her describe how she had to go home and get herself off?

  A man could only bear so much.

  A growl tore from JT’s mouth as he launched himself in her direction and immediately began to tickle her sides, the most effective method he could think of to turn her chatter into shrieking. Juvenile, yes, but she had called him out on acting like a sulky teenager, so it kind of made sense.

  Anya squealed and squirmed, laughing even louder than she had been, then rolled onto her back in an attempt to escape him. JT exploited her efforts by wresting their bodies until she was under him, her arms outstretched above her. She worked to catch her breath, grinning while she did. JT soaked up the way her hazel eyes sparkled with mischief as he threaded their fingers together.

  He met her gaze, narrowed his eyes, and did his best to fix his face as if she was in for one hell of a scolding.

  “You’re a naughty fucking girl, you know that? Everything you just said makes me want to teach you a lesson. And by ‘lesson,’ I mean spanking your luscious little ass and reminding you how good it can be when I take myself seriously. Pretty sure when I’m done with you, you won’t be able to remember anything about that little shit Jimmy Reyes. And you sure as fuck won’t have had to take things into your own hands.”

  He punctuated his words by rolling his hips so she could feel the way he had started to grow hard again. Anya’s breath caught, her eyes dropped closed, and she returned the press of his body by arching her back so her breasts rubbed against his chest. JT couldn’t help bucking his hips once more, desperate to seize back some control—even if she was bound to take it back again.

  Anya’s eyes drifted open. The mischievous gleam was gone, replaced by lust and something headier. Something that looked a lot like affection.

  “Just for the record,” she said quietly, “I like the way you take yourself so seriously. That makes it more fun to figure out how to wear you down. You’re like a human Rubik’s Cube, but in a good way. And I like that, Jericho.”

  He blinked, trying to decide if there was annoyance hidden in her words somewhere, which was what he had expected to hear. Not many people found busting through his tendency toward seriousness was fun. Tedious, aggravating, and maddening—those were adjectives he was more familiar with.

  “Don’t call me Jericho,” he said, trying to sound stern. Unfortunately, his voice cracked, so he failed miserably.

  Anya smiled patiently. “But I do think you might want to spend a little less time pissing and moaning about the fact that you’re staying at your parents’ place right now. News flash, that doesn’t make you all that unique. Trust me, I’d have shown up on my parents’ doorstep after Martin and I imploded, but they live too far away. Everybody needs a soft place to land sometimes—just be grateful that you have one.”

  JT wasn’t sure what to say. She was right, obviously, but he had no idea how to explain that while he knew that, something inside of him was stuck and he wasn’t quite sure how to get unstuck.

  “And there’s one more thing we should talk about before—”

  He cut her off with a hard kiss; that way she couldn’t speak another word. She was too good at this—at seeing right through him. Which might be liberating if he didn’t think it also felt a little like being flayed alive.

  His baser instincts kicked in, shouting that if they simply fucked until neither of them could form sentences, that would make it easy to hide from her scrutiny. Anya squirmed beneath him, working her hands free of his to slide them across his chest. Her hands then became a subtle barrier and JT reluctantly took the hint, breaking their kiss and then rolling off her. Anya’s eyes were heavy-lidded with desire as she took a moment to recover.

  “Your diversionary tactics are admirable, but I need to say this,” she sighed. “It probably would have been better to discuss this before we ended up in bed, but here we are. So we’ll just have to make this work.”

  Anya studied him for a moment. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, then she frowned a little and blew out a long breath.

  “I need to know what just happened here.”

  JT raised a brow. Anya snorted, shaking her head with a little eye roll.

  “No, not that. I’m very aware of what that was. I just don’t know what it means. Is this just us getting each other worked out of our systems? Or is it something else?”

  JT flinched a little. Did she honestly think he had an answer to that question? He hadn’t thought about it either. An hour ago, he was working off a series of impulses, nothing but fleeting, shortsighted decisions strung together. Now things felt anything but impulsive and fleeting, yet that didn’t panic him. Instead it made his heart rate slow, taking on a steady pace he’d forgotten was possible.

  JT let that notion sink in, waiting to see if this unexpected sense of contentment would disappear as quickly as it came.

  It didn’t. The feeling simply hunkered down inside him, making his entire body relax. He reached up and brushed back a stray lock of her hair that had fallen forward.

  “Hell if I know. Staying away from you sucked, though, I do know that. But I’m still pretty fucked up from my divorce, and I’m not ready to get into anything serious with someone. I don’t know where that leaves us, I just know I want to spend more time with you.”

  Anya leaned forward and kissed him. “I’m pretty sure what you’re describing is called dating,” she said lightly. “And I think that’s exactly what we should do. I just left a guy who was cheating on me, I don’t have a permanent job, and who knows where I’ll be living at the end of the summer. I’m definitely not in a place to take on a relationship, either. I say we just enjoy each other while we’re both here and then leave it at that.”

  JT wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that last part, but he ignored any urge to dig into that more deeply. At least not right now. He slipped his hand over her waist, resting it on her lower back, where he traced circles with his fingertips.

  “If I wasn’t already late getting home, I’d say we should order that piz
za and start dating tonight.”

  “But you have mac and cheese waiting for you,” Anya said, leaning forward so their lips grazed together. “And I hear it’s your favorite.”

  He grinned against her mouth. “It’s true, I do love mac and cheese. And my mom’s is hard to beat. She uses four kinds of cheese and chopped green chilies, then tops the whole thing with buttered bread crumbs and big chunks of crispy bacon.”

  Anya groaned and shoved on his chest half-heartedly. “God, I’m starving. You better leave before I cover you in buttered bread crumbs.”

  “You could come over. I’m sure she made enough for—”

  She cut him off by waggling a finger at him. “No way, you can just stop right there. Dinner with the parents is reserved for people in relationships, and we just established that we’re strictly casual.” She swatted his chest lightly. “Go home.”

  JT felt his heart sink a little, almost wishing that things were different. And whether it was real or imagined, he swore he heard regret in her voice, too.

  11

  JT

  As he made his way down the Greenes’ driveway, JT gave the collar of his t-shirt a sniff and grimaced. His body might smell better after Anya’s very special lather treatment in the shower, but his clothes actually smelled worse than they had before.

  Great. He was already twenty minutes late for dinner, and explaining that would be hard enough in a family of people who thought lateness qualified as a cardinal sin, right after pride and just before sloth. JT and his sister had learned early in life that the excuses other people used to explain away tardiness would not fly in their house, not with his military father at the helm.

  Because if you had the ass to argue that there was a traffic jam and that’s why you were late, then you’d spend the next half hour listening to a lecture about how you should have left the house earlier. The lecture would also include a colorful sidebar about how only a barnyard animal headed down the chute would just sit there, and Maxwells were not barnyard animals. Maxwells had opposable thumbs and the ability to reason, which meant a traffic jam was nothing but an opportunity for you to get in there and figure out a detour.

  And if you thought telling Colonel Maxwell that you got lost sounded like a better option? You would be wrong. Learn to read a map—it was that simple. This did not mean consulting a GPS app, either. People who rely on those things wouldn’t survive the first round of an apocalypse, according to his father.

  But the old bit about losing track of time?

  Nothing was going to save you if that was your excuse. This explained why JT’s first instinct was to duck and cover when he saw his dad peering in through the driver’s window of his SUV, which was parked in his parents’ driveway.

  Despite the burgundy tracksuit he was wearing, Ben Maxwell still looked a lot like an ambitious base MP in the middle of his first investigation, instead of the highly decorated retired colonel that he was. He clasped his hands behind his back as he examined the interior of JT’s car with a pensive look on his face. When he turned to shift his view, he caught sight of JT in the Greenes’ driveway. Ben’s gaze moved pointedly from JT to the neighbors’ house, then back again.

  JT’s core tightened reflexively, as if his body was preparing for the interrogation to come by drawing in on itself, yet at the same time, he forced his feet to move faster. Cowering wouldn’t serve him well, and there was no point in delaying the inevitable.

  “You’re late,” his father said when JT met him at the end of their driveway. “Your mother has spent the last half hour entertaining various theories about your whereabouts. She’s now convinced that someone attempted to abduct you off the street when you got home. She’ll be pleased to see that you’re upright and ambulatory, since she was sure I’d find your lifeless body out here.”

  JT groaned quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Mom when I get inside. I just need to throw on a quick change of clothes and then I’m ready for dinner.”

  His father shot a glance over JT’s shoulder. “You were at the Greenes’?”

  JT nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Helping the house sitter with something?”

  JT scratched the back of his neck for no reason other than it offered him an opportunity to avert his gaze. He could have easily muttered something about mowing the lawn for Anya, but that felt like a half-truth. One he didn’t feel good about establishing.

  He had been with Nicole for eight years, which meant it had been a long, long time since JT had had a new woman in his life. Starting again with someone else almost felt like learning a new language. Even if he and Anya weren’t serious, they were something—he just didn’t know how to explain what that was to his dad, a man who’d married the first woman he’d ever dated, almost thirty-five years ago.

  Fortunately, his dad was damn good at reading people, especially JT. He held up one hand. “Enough said. Or not said,” he muttered dryly. “What’s her name again?”

  “Anya,” JT replied. “It’s new. And . . . casual.”

  His father nodded quickly, as if he didn’t want to know anything more about what “casual” meant.

  “I suggest you keep this to yourself, please. Best not to get your mother’s hopes up if we can avoid it,” he said sagely.

  JT snorted quietly. His father turned on one heel and ambled slowly up the driveway toward the open garage, waving a hand so JT would follow him inside. But JT found he couldn’t move. Somehow this brief exchange with his dad had made Anya’s earlier comments on his living situation all the more meaningful.

  “Hey, Dad?” JT called out.

  His father stopped midstep, casting a look over his shoulder. JT stepped forward a few feet.

  “I know I said thank you for letting me stay here when I first moved in, but I don’t think I’ve said it lately.” His dad turned back toward him, and JT stood a little straighter. “You have no idea how much I appreciate that because I know you didn’t have to. I made some shitty choices, and I’m sure the fact I got myself into a mess all on my own made you question taking me back in. But I’m really grateful for your hospitality. It’s been a lifesaver. So I wanted to say thank you again. For everything.”

  His father frowned at him.

  “Jericho,” he sighed, a gentle reprimand in his voice. “This isn’t hospitality, son. This is your mother and I doing what we can to help our son find his way when things didn’t work out the way he hoped. This is what parents do when their kids are hurting. And no matter how grown-up they are, that doesn’t change anything when it comes to taking care of them. This is family, JT, plain and simple.”

  JT had balled his hands into fists at his sides, just to hold back the swell of emotion that rose up. Between his other words, JT heard his father telling him something he had desperately needed to hear—even if he hadn’t realized it until now.

  That, no, he did not think JT was a fuckup. None of JT’s mistakes had cost him the one thing he valued above all else. His father’s respect. No matter what, JT still had the love and the acceptance of his parents.

  And tonight, he had one other thing that always made him feel better.

  His mother’s macaroni and cheese.

  12

  Anya

  Anya perused the playlist choices on the Wine, Wonder & Whimsy sound system, unsure if whoever had created them was being serious or snarky when giving each one a name.

  Either way, deciding between 50 Shades of Chardonnay & Monet, Besties & Bachelorettes on Cloud Wine, Gauguin for What Ales You, and Pour Decisions, Inspired Visions for the soundtrack tonight would be difficult. She had a funny feeling that whatever musical gems lurked inside those playlists were bound to make Anya feel a little like her ears were bleeding.

  In lieu of finally choosing a playlist, she glanced at her watch and then scanned the room of paint-and-sip class attendees. Friday night classes were typically popular, and tonight’s crowd was large enough that the back row had already spilled over from the studio side of
the business into the retail area of the store.

  The front portion of Wine, Wonder & Whimsy was an art supply store, stocked with high-end products that the target clientele here—beginner artists who only painted a few times a year—didn’t really need. Even Anya, as a professional working artist, couldn’t justify investing in the bespoke European brands that lined the shelves here. She did occasionally fantasize about what it would be like, though, to use a two-hundred-dollar brush instead of a twenty-dollar one, if only to prove that bargain brushes worked just as well as anything else.

  The rear section was set up for art classes, with a raised platform facing four long rows of tables topped with easels, flanked by tall stools. Nearly all of the available seats were occupied, leaving a few lone spots at the front of the room still open.

  Tonight’s group was all female, mostly middle-aged women out for a girls’ night together. However, there was a trio in the front row who’d arrived via their retirement home’s van service, which was a good thing since the Golden Girls were already a few glasses into their chardonnay and the class hadn’t even started yet.

  A bachelorette party group occupied the entire back row. Anya suspected they had been pregaming it at the fancy tapas bar next door, and their wild fits of laughter along with the half-empty bottles of rosé on the table indicated that this class was merely a pit stop on what was bound to be a long night. The blonde at the head of the table was evidently the “Soon to Be Mrs. Ramirez”; at least, that was what the hot pink glitter writing on the back of her tank top spelled out. And, according to the front of her tank top, tonight’s festivities were all about how she was going from “Miss to Mrs. with All My Bitches.”