7:00 p.m., 29 hours…
August
My abs flexed, like her words had struck my gut. Adrenaline spiked my heart rate. It took three rough breaths to compute what tense she’d used.
Loved not love. Past not present.
Even worse was the heavy disappointment that crushed me at the realization.
She clutched her mother’s diary in one hand, her keys in the other. I didn’t cup her cheeks the way I ached to, or pull her into my arms. I kept picturing her face when she’d spoken about her job, how much she loved it. How she’d found her life’s purpose. A life that didn’t include traipsing around Europe with a touring musician.
But, man, the rawness in her voice. “When?”
A sad sigh slipped past her lips. “I don’t know. For as long as I can remember. Like, as kids, being around you made it hurt to breathe. During high school it got worse, especially at the end. And that shitty, lonely year after. Not just because of the lonely part, me building it up in my head.”
She tossed her keys and purse and diary on the floor behind her. Like she was angry. “I’m not talking about a teenage crush here, August. This was bone-deep love. And I was sure you didn’t feel the same. I thought you pitied me. Or it was my own lame excuse to push you away. I pushed everyone away. It’s what I did. Sorry. God.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m not making sense.”
But she did make sense. Too much sense.
Hand jammed into my pocket, I flipped my guitar pick over. Her texts nine years ago had hinted at the intensity of her feelings. That Zap she inspired had leapt from my phone the second I’d seen her name. This morning, at her mother’s, the way she’d spoken and the heat in her eyes had said all she hadn’t. My instant connection to her had been just as strong.
It had never faded. Not fully.
I’d tried to make sense of this Gwen habit over the years, how I’d pull that zoo picture up on my computer, stare at her, miss her. An addiction I could never kick. Each wallow session ended in sad songs sung. So, yeah…I understood what it was to feel like the marrow had been sucked from your bones, the hollowness that lingered. Nine years of emptiness. Nearly eleven if her previous silent treatment counted.
I also recognized the way she was breathing harder now, eyes round and wide. Filled with doubt and longing—hope that this second chance would stick.
I stepped toward her, a fraction closer. She had loved me. She loves me, my body and soul taunted. Whatever the tense, her truth had me addled. It was why I’d backed away from her earlier. This was not a woman I could casually fuck. That kiss in the street had resounded through me, like a tuning fork had vibrated through my blood.
This was a woman meant to be worshipped, strummed, discovered, possessed.
And she had a life here she loved. Friends. A great job. Not to mention I was helping her track down a deceased man.
Letting this go any further would be irresponsible. That didn’t stop my honesty from matching hers. “I loved you, too. I realized it when I started resenting Finch hanging around us. I hated him making you laugh, hated you wrestling with him or running through the sprinklers together. I wanted you to myself, but I also knew I was all you really had. That thought scared the crap out of me.”
Her hand floated up to her neck. “Why?”
“If we didn’t work, where would that have left you? With friends like Kayla who only ever wanted to social climb? Feed you false information, so she could make her move on me?” I shook my head. “I couldn’t risk it.”
“You knew Kayla did that?”
“Not until much later. The night I broke up with her, when…everything went down, she didn’t walk away easily. She badgered me awhile, and when she figured out something happened with you, she told me you hated being my charity case. That what we had hadn’t been real. She framed it in a catty way to make you look bad, but it was easy to read between the lines, that she’d turned those tables on you, too. At the time, it was more shit heaped onto a shit pile. But I know you, Gwen. I understand how your mother beat you down. How one word from someone like Kayla would infect you.”
Her spine went rigid. “My mother never hit me. I would have told you.”
“Emotional abuse is just as bad.”
She winced, and it crushed me. I’d walked in once, unannounced, to overhear Mary Hamilton call her only child worthless. Stupid. The word disgusted had been used. Always in that acrid tone, like Gwen was lice stuck in her hair.
“Thing is,” I shut the door and inched forward, walking until we were in her kitchen, her back pressed to her island countertop, “you never cowered when she laced into you. You would lift your chin and take it. Stand taller. I never pitied you, Gwen. I was amazed by you.”
She tilted her head to meet my eyes. Disbelief shone. “Really?”
“Oh, honey. I was in awe of you.” I planted my hands on either side of her, caging her body against the counter. The space between us swelled with nine years of bridled heat.
“But you don’t know me now,” she said, her voice breathless. “I also wasn’t fully honest with you earlier, when you asked why I slept with Finch.”
My grip on the counter stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“You asked if I did it to hurt you, and I think part of me did. Aside from being sad and lonely, and wishing Finch was you, I was devastated when I saw that stupid picture of Kayla. I was angry and knew sleeping with Finch would hurt you. I knew, and I did it. I wanted you to feel my pain.” She finally touched me, her hands branding my chest. “I’m sorry. It was so wrong.”
My first instinct was to wrench away from her and pace an angry line, but to what end? Feed the demons that had chased me these long years? Try to surgically remove this woman who lived under my skin? I’d only cut myself. “I understand,” I offered instead.
But she curved forward, her shoulders sloping in dismay.
“Look at me, Gwen.” When she lifted her head, I held her chin between my fingers. “You loved me. I loved you. We should have done something about it, but we didn’t. We hurt each other instead. But what I see in front of me now is a fresh start with the only person who knows I love Gilmore Girls and who spreads rumors I get the shits from eating beans.”
That earned me a smile. “I should run your fan club.”
She should be the goddamn president. I erased the inches separating us, pressed my hips into hers. My dick lengthened, got hot and heavy. She mewled at the contact, her hands snaking around my waist. She pulled me into her.
Lust blasted up my thighs. “Please tell me you want this, too. Because being with you is killing me. I’ve never wanted anything so badly as I want you right now. You have no idea.”
She latched her leg around mine and rolled her hips. “Then stop talking and start kissing.”
I slammed my mouth onto hers. There was no holding back the years I’d fought our pull, the eternity I’d dreamed of sinking into Gwen. My thrusts rocked her into the sharp counter, my lips working hers open. She let me in, sucked on my tongue, my bottom lip. I palmed her ass and pressed into her.
Her aggression rivaled mine. She pushed back so hard I lost my grip on the counter and tumbled to the floor, taking her with me. Because I wouldn’t let her go. Not now. Maybe never. Fuck, I had Gwen Hamilton in my arms, under me, on her apartment floor. Abruptly, I shoved my hand up her shirt. She gasped. My knuckles skimmed her taut stomach until her breast was in my greedy grasp. Her bra was lacy, her nipples hard buds beneath. My cock throbbed with each squeeze of my palm.
Gripping my hair in unforgiving fists, she rutted against me and sucked on my neck, her jeans abrading mine so wildly sparks were sure to light. I thrust harder; she cried out. We were dry-fucking like a couple desperate teens.
“Jesus, Gwen. I can’t last like this. I need you so fucking bad.”
“If I don’t fuck you in the next three seconds, I’ll die.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Then get to work.”
A command I’d happily follow. She pushed up my shirt and yanked at my belt buckle. I made quick work of dragging off her jeans, but mine only made it to my knees. My hand was in her underwear, the slick heat of her obliterating me. “You’re so wet.”
She writhed beneath me and cupped me over my briefs. “That’s all for you.”
A gift I’d never have dared wished for. The pressure of her hand on my cock, rubbing brazenly, had my eyes rolling to the back of my head. She pulled at my waistband, so hard she trapped my hips against hers. I eased her back. “Easy, sweetheart. I need space to get them off. And we need a condom.”
“No.” She stilled beneath me, both of us breathing hard. “I’m on the pill. Are you clean?”
Christ. Bare and balls deep in Gwen Hamilton? Fresh fire leapt up my thighs. “I’m careful and I get tested.”
“Me too.”
And I was about to lose my load.
My ass flexed as we shoved my briefs down, my cumbersome clothing hooked around my knees. Her tank top was shoved above her bra. My shirt was still on, too, hiked high enough that our abdomens touched. Warm skin on warm skin. Gwen’s skin against mine. Sweet anticipation spiraled through me, and the instant her hand circled my rigid flesh, I bucked. It wasn’t pretty. It was instinct. Her hot palm played me, my hard length singing in response. I’d never been burned up by desire. Not like this, riled and flushed with wanting.
The hard floor didn’t matter. We could be locked in a prison cell for all I cared. All that mattered was her willing body under mine, my best friend about to become so much more.
I kissed her neck, sucked on her ear. She guided me to her entrance, a firm grip that didn’t waver. I should have slowed down, eased into her, but the second I felt her cleft, the very center of her, I thrust in. “Gwen, fuck. Oh, fuck.” My Gwen.
The words tore from my throat. Her name resonated in my chest, ringing with rightness.
She clawed my ass. “August, God. How do you feel this good?”
“I’m so hard, baby. So hard inside you.”
Her inner walls clenched, sucking me deeper. I spasmed at the hot tug. I didn’t slow. I couldn’t. Hard, fast strokes followed. Skin slapping. My forearms and knees dug into the hardwood floor, Gwen’s body caged below me. We locked eyes, our mouths open but not touching. We traded grunts and pants, but the intensity didn’t allow for kissing.
There was also a hint of anger in each snap of my hips. Uncensored bitterness for what she’d done, her one senseless act stealing almost a decade from us. But it played like a dead note, a muffled guitar string that enhanced the backbeat. Made it what it was. This was our time.
Now, not then. Anger and all.
It whipped through me, coupled with the way Gwen’s eyes shone with tears, our lips still brushing but not connecting, her knees drilled into my sides.
Anyone else, and what we were doing would be fucking. Not with Gwen. This was making love to the woman I’d dreamed of most of my life.
Real, raw, wild.
“August.” She panted my name. “I’m so close.”
We clutched each other like this was the only moment we’d ever have.
“I’m gonna explode the second you let go.” I slammed harder into her, nearly winding myself.
“Oh, wow. Yeah. That. Don’t stop that.”
I growled my approval, loved her asking for what she needed. I was on a thin wire, my thighs screaming for release, my balls drawing up tight. When she called my name again, it soared with a sharp cry, her pussy clamping on me so tightly my release detonated—a fast, hot surge that blasted down my spine. It lasted an eternity, each convulsion blinding.
I kissed her then, finally, pressing my cock deeper inside her, fucking her mouth with my tongue as the waves lessened. Her tears stuck to my cheeks. I kissed her eyelids, the underside of her jaw. Worked my way back to her perfect mouth.
I couldn’t get enough.
I also had to tread carefully.
Explaining I’d ruined her opportunity to meet her father could mean this would never happen again. It could wreck our fresh start. There was nothing to be done at this point, no bringing the man back, but I could be with her on this journey, support her when she found out. Maybe we’d learn more about him during the process. If I told her the truth now, she’d stop following the clues. She’d push me away.
Both outcomes unacceptable.
I rotated my hips, still high on the heaven of her. “My knees are skinned.”
She laughed and wrapped her arms and legs around me. “My ass is bruised.”
“What a glorious ass it is.”
“You didn’t even see it.”
“I squeezed it. And I plan to see it shortly.”
She clasped me closer. “That just happened.”
I rubbed my nose up her ear. “It did. And it better happen again.”
“Don’t pull out yet.”
Her heart raced, a rapid percussion against my chest. Pounding with anxiety? “I’m not going anywhere, Possum.”
Except that wasn’t true. Another unpleasant reality. I had to get on a plane in less than two days.
Gwen
I trailed my nails down August’s scalp, and he sighed. When I clenched my core, a delicious rumble moved through his chest. Little things. New things. Precious discoveries I wanted to hoard.
He pressed soft kisses all over my face. “Stay here. I’ll get a cloth to clean you up.”
I flinched as he pulled out, the emptiness instant, but when he tripped kicking off his jeans and briefs, we both laughed; the silly intimacy of it filled me back up. The way he reached behind him and yanked off his T-shirt had my laugh trembling into a moan.
He smirked over his shoulder. “Like what you see?”
“Love it.” The defined muscles of his back. The divots at the base of his spine. How his toned ass flexed with each move. “Bathroom is down the hall to your left.” I watched him in all his naked glory until he disappeared. I tilted my hips to keep his release from spilling farther down my thighs, and the wackiest of wacky thoughts blindsided me: I wish I wasn’t on the pill.
I pressed my hands to my flat belly and almost keened. The urge to have a permanent reminder of what we’d shared ripped through me. A piece of August mixed with a piece of me. Forever. If he could read my mind, he’d probably bolt so fast the air would spin.
I focused instead on the tenderness between my thighs.
That had been life-altering sex. Moving with him, staring into his eyes while he pumped into me hadn’t been like I’d imagined. And I’d imagined it a lot. This had been more intense than expected, deeper. Like we’d never lost our connection.
Or maybe the intensity was because we had lost it. The anger, the regrets—they’d fueled our flames. And what flames they’d been. Unfortunately, flames too often left scars…and unhealthy baby-making thoughts.
While waiting for him, I removed my bra and tank top. I lay on my hard floor, naked and exposed. Instinctively I knew nothing in my life would be the same. I wasn’t the same. I closed my eyes, pressed my fingers against my breastbone, tried to tame my rattling pulse. Heat pricked my neck.
“Gwen, honey?” I opened my eyes. August knelt beside me and ran a warm washcloth up my inner thighs. “You okay?” He worked as he talked, tenderly moving the cloth over my sensitive flesh, and I melted. He was buck as naked got, on his knees, taking care of me. I was a puddle of happiness. I was petrified.
“I don’t think I’m okay.”
He frowned and tossed the cloth behind him. Leaning on his elbow, he pressed to my side, his legs stretched next to mine. With his free hand, he traced dizzying patterns on my abdomen and breasts. “Talk to me.”
“You’re going to leave. Go back to Europe, aren’t you?”
His fingers faltered. He flattened his palm on my ribs, below the curve of my breast. “I am. But—”
“When?”
His answer took too long. He swallowed one too many times. “Two days. Early Monday morning.”
If this was how getting punched in the gut felt, I’d leave boxing out of my workout regime. I curled away from him, stood and gathered my clothes, blinking the burn from my eyes. My throat stung. My belly churned. How would I say goodbye to him?
“Gwen.”
I kept moving, kept breathing, kept blinking.
“Gwen.” When I didn’t answer him a second time, he wrapped his arms around me from behind, stilling my frenetic movements. “Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you dare cut me off again. Not after tonight.”
He cocooned his naked body around mine, forced me to drop my clothes. He spun me around and locked me in his arms. “That was the best sex of my life. It’s the beginning, not the end. We have another day and a half together, and I plan to spend every second of that time with you.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
He sputtered out a laugh. “Are you serious? I’m fucking terrified.”
“How do we do this?”
“Easy.” He loosened his hold on me, stroked my back. “We take this one second at a time, while I figure out the rest. I don’t want you thinking about anything but each moment, because right now I have a beautiful, naked woman in my arms, but she’s frowning. These are not things that should coexist.”
A small smile escaped me. “One second at a time?” It seemed impossible.
“Make each one count. Leave the rest to me.”
I couldn’t pick up and leave my job. I didn’t want to. He had no clue the life I’d created for myself here, in San Francisco. The years and determination it had taken. Yet the prospect of losing this amazing man in two days—one and a half—had spots clouding my vision. I wasn’t sure I could compartmentalize my emotions, give him what he wanted. All I could do was try.
My rigid posture thawed slightly. I nuzzled my face into his neck. “Every second.”
He wove one hand into my hair and sighed. “Every second, Possum.”
When he thickened against me, I extricated myself from his hold. “But no more bikini posters now.”
“Bikini posters?”
Ainsley’s ridiculous comment about him staring at me like my scantily clad poster had adorned his teenage wall wormed into my mind. I motioned to his gorgeous cock, half-stiff and flushed at the tip. “Sex. No sex right now.”
He squinted. “Bikini posters means sex?”
“Just go with it.”
He mumbled something like “Girls are weird,” but his eyelids lowered and he stroked his length once, roughly. “But there will be bikini posters later, right?”
His searing glance had tingles erupting across my skin. “Definitely later. For now we need to go through my mother’s journal and search for more clues.” I needed to regroup. Find my feet. Reorder my upside-down world by putting on some clothes and creating emotional armor.
August
After a quick snack of cheese and fruit, Gwen and I relocated to her plaid couch, her mother’s diary and an awkward silence between us. It wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay. My Monday morning flight meant we only had a day and a bit. The timeline was akin to torture. We hadn’t mentioned my departure date again. We hadn’t said much of anything. The prospect had new lyrics looping through my mind: cruel fate, wicked ways, oceans apart.
I had commitments in Germany and France, unbreakable contracts, weeks and months scheduled on the road. But this wasn’t the beginning of the end. I wouldn’t let it be. I simply had to make a plan and figure things out. Think long-term.
Still, she was freaking out, shutting down in increments.
Which meant beginning with the small stuff, here and now, was important. Making use of all our seconds. “When did you start surfing?” I needed to learn everything I could about Gwen Hamilton.
She glanced up from the worn journal. “Sorry?”
I nodded to the board taking up the opposite wall. “Surfing, I don’t remember you wanting to try it.” Or skydiving. Or mountain biking. Gwen had always been athletic, running track and acing gym class, but she’d never been an adrenaline junkie.
Keeping the journal open, she leaned her shoulder into the couch. “During college, my third summer off, I was bartending at night but needed as much cash as possible. A daytime job renting surfboards came up, and I got bit by the bug. The job allowed me free lessons and equipment use.”
Watching her navigating a wave, water dripping down her toned body, hair slicked back would be quite the sight. “The only time I surfed involved me sucking back buckets of sea water.”
Her attention darted to my mouth. Her pupils flared, as though mention of inhaling the ocean was akin to dirty talk. “Learning is rough.”
“Have you ever taught?”
“I prefer the rush of riding.” Her gaze dropped lower, to my groin. She nibbled her lower lip.
Was she picturing riding me? A shot of lust accompanied that visual. Although making love to her had been unreal, I hadn’t explored the lean lines of her body, kissed my way up her strong thighs. I suppressed my groan. “Maybe you could teach me some time.”
Although too turned on for my own good, I did mean the surfing. I wanted to enjoy a lazy Sunday walking the streets with Gwen, fall into a small lunch spot, lie in the grass while she read and I wrote music, learn to surf with her, sleep next to her, wake with her. Collect all our seconds, turning each into an eternity.
She stopped the lip nibbling. She might have stopped breathing, too. “Sure,” she said. It took a moment to realize she’d answered my surfing question, but it had been a distracted sure. A we don’t have a future sure.
I really fucking hated that sure.
She returned to analyzing the diary. I kept analyzing her: the full bottom lip I’d had between my teeth, the swell of her breasts in her fitted white tank top. She had beautiful breasts, small yet lush with tight pink nipples I hadn’t gotten to feast on, since I hadn’t removed her bra.
She slid her jaw to the side as she read a section carefully. I didn’t remember her doing that when we’d studied together, and I would know. I’d spent most of those hours like this, watching her, picturing her hands on my body, tugging down my jeans. My mouth on her.
We were close enough that I could reach forward and run my fingers through her wavy hair. I followed my instinct. I couldn’t keep away.
Air rasped through her teeth. “That’s distracting.”
“You’re distracting.”
“You know what I mean.” But she didn’t pull back. She leaned toward me.
My sweet Possum. “These are my seconds, honey. I need to touch you. And I’ll figure out the rest with us. Please don’t worry.”
Already, I’d been poring over my schedule in my mind, blocking out times I’d return to San Francisco. Weeks I could fly Gwen to Europe. I’d plan it out, make it foolproof. She wouldn’t have to do a thing but say yes. Instead of fighting me further, she turned her face into my hand and kissed my palm. Not an agreement, exactly, but the tender move nearly split me in two.
We stayed like that awhile: her flipping through her mother’s journal, my hand in her hair, my heart playing an unsteady bass line.
Suddenly, she sat straighter. She lifted a flimsy cocktail napkin from inside the book. “She mentions a bar a few times, a place a guy used to take her. I think it’s the same guy who watched her dance, but she never mentions his name.”
“Considering she hid the journal in a defaced bible, I’m guessing she was worried it would be riffled through. Her parents weren’t exactly lenient.”
Gwen had snuck into my room the night she’d searched out her grandparents. She hadn’t cried or ranted, but she’d picked her nails until they’d bled and had asked if she could sleep over. I’d watched her breathing softly the entire night.
She closed the book and held the napkin gingerly. “By the sounds of things, this guy knew the owner of the bar or a bartender, had no issues getting my mother served without her ID. Mary Hamilton liked her Long Island Iced Tea.”
“I can’t picture your mother drinking.”
“I can’t picture her smiling or laughing or dancing. Drinking is tame compared to that. And this isn’t about her, anyway. I couldn’t care less what she was like. None of it changes the woman I knew.”
Her defensiveness said otherwise. Not that she’d listen to me. Gwen was stubborn like that. My fingers slipped through her hair in slow strokes. She clasped my wrist, stilling the movements. “I think this is our next clue, where we should go. If this guy knew the owner and he’s still around, we might get answers.”
Ted Mercer, I almost blurted. That’s your father’s name.
He’d lived in Oakland, only twenty minutes from his daughter. I hadn’t dug deeper, no point after learning he’d passed, but I had the name she’d sought her entire life.
I nearly spoke it aloud, but I clamped my mouth shut. Not because of my guilt or knowing my deception could obliterate our fragile footing. Not fully, at least. There were too many coincidences piling up: her mother’s letter to me, my choice to delay, Mary’s death, her luggage. A journal offering more insight into that woman than Gwen had gleaned in twenty-eight years. Like everything was happening for a reason, including learning about Mary Hamilton.
Gwen could pretend these scraps of information meant nothing. I saw how her eyes had widened when peering at that dancing photo in the TASC center, how she’d sucked in an amazed breath when Loretta Walsh had called Mary and her sister the Sunshine Girls.
Not knowing her father had always been a thorn in Gwen’s side, but living with a frigid mother had been the larger bruise on her childhood. This journey could help her understand what had stripped the light from Mary Hamilton’s world, lead Gwen to accept the woman Mary had been. That type of closure was invaluable. Plus, the odds of Gwen actually learning her father’s name before I left were slim to none. I’d have time to explain after.
“If that’s our next clue, then we better get on it,” I said.
“Badass PI partners?”
“As long as you don’t go telling anyone else I get the shits.”
She cackled. “I make no promises. And”—she held the napkin flat and read the writing on it—“looks like our next stop is the Blue-Eyed Raven.”
I reared back, stunned into silence. Three rough swallows later, I found my voice. “The Blue-Eyed Raven?” Please tell me I heard her wrong.
She nodded. “In Haight-Ashbury.”
Just my twisted luck. Another coincidence, this one as pleasant as chewing rocks.
Of all the bars in all of San Francisco, Mary Hamilton had to have set up camp where my twin brother now worked.