7
T E N S I O N
See me through hooded eyes.
Bend me to your will.
THERE I WAS, SITTING ACROSS from a room full of people wishing I had the flu or some form of virus that would give me a plausible excuse for not being there. I knew better. Knew I’d run into him eventually. I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. And I hadn’t expected to come unglued by his presence. I’d prepared for this… for our first real encounter. Prepped myself to pretend like we never kissed. Convinced myself it would be easy to do so.
Looking at the stubble along his jaw, his gaze hiding experience and heartache, and the full head of dark hair he’d grown out, I realized I was so utterly and completely wrong.
Those eyes—the color of the leaves on a sugar maple just before they were about to turn for fall—green with floating specks of gold.
It was like flashes of lightning… the intensity in which the memories crashed over me.
The way his lips felt—demanding and inviting. The way his hands slid deliciously slow under my shirt, his touch warm and rough. The way his tongue moved with mine, swirling and tasting, taking everything I’d almost given to him. His eyes had been fire. His mouth, the gate to heaven.
Taste my sin,
Set fire to my soul.
“Andrea, did you hear me, dear?” Mother said from the end of the table. From right next to Dean. His eyes were galvanizing. Somehow, they kept finding their way to my direction. Every single time, I felt like I was caught under a heat lamp.
I wished he’d stop. It was like his eyes were yelling, announcing to the room that he’d tasted me and he wanted more. I already felt my face flushing to shades I’d never reached when he finally let go of my gaze and directed his attention back to my mother… who was staring at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Andrea,” Mother barked again.
“Hmm?” I rushed out, wishing I could excuse myself.
Mother laughed, and then looked to Dean, shaking her head as if she were dealing with a child. “I said…” she drawled in her best southern accent, “our boys seem to have grown into handsome men overnight. Wouldn’t you agree?”
She batted her long, thick lashes at me.
Handsome men, I thought as a storm of words washed over me.
Kiss the forgotten parts of me.
Clear the cobwebs of time.
Charlie tugged on my arm as my tongue twisted in knots. Maybe it was a coping mechanism—a way to keep from saying something I knew I’d regret. Everyone stared at me… waiting for me to say something.
Dean was staring at me.
The intensity in his gaze alone was enough to make my mouth go dry.
“Yes. They sure are,” I agreed, feeling like I’d found a way to harness solar energy in my cheeks.
A small smirk lit Dean’s face before he resumed eating.
Anger shuddered down my arms. Throughout my entire being. He was finding amusement in this. He was… he was seeing right through me, and it irritated me beyond words.
Let me cuff you up and watch you unravel.
There was a clearing of a throat. “The fish Charlie caught was amazing, but this ham… it’s delicious,” Jack said from beside me. He’d worked for my father for years. Currently, he was my mother’s newest project.
Unfortunately for me, her little project was trying to set us up.
I’d met him when I was in college at one of Dad’s work parties shortly after he was hired by their firm. I only ever thought of him as one of Dad’s colleagues. Someone who attended their parties and hung in the background, complacent with his position.
Never once as a possible love connection.
“Thank you, Jack. It was my mother’s secret recipe handed down from her mother but…” Mother said, pausing as she leaned forward, forearms pressed against the edge of the table. Her eyes twinkled as if she were about to let him in on some secret. Let him into our world. But she always did this. It was a part of her charm.
And he was falling right into it.
“Instead of clove, she used oranges. Fresh juice and garlic pressed into the meat.”
“It’s the best ham I’ve ever had,” Jack said, smiling at her as he continued cutting into it.
She smirked. “We only serve the best here. If Andrea had paid a little more attention to her when she was still alive instead of laying around with her head in the clouds, then maybe she’d have a better hand in the kitchen. Lord knows she burns just about everything she tries to cook.”
Everyone chuckled right on cue.
Everyone except Dean.
“That’s not true. Momma makes the best macaroni,” Charlie said in my defense, smiling up at me. His eyes alone brought a calm to my heart.
Mom pursed her lips at me. “And I’m sure it’s the box kind, isn’t it?”
“Lizzy,” Dad said, chuckling. He held up the wine, offering her more, but she waved it away.
My fingers danced under the table, carving into the air. Hell.
“I don’t burn everything, Mother,” I said, picking at the food on my plate. “And the box kind is just as good as any other. Do you always have to be so dramatic?”
“Dramatic?” she repeated, flinching back. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the one storming out the back door this afternoon?”
“I remember that,” Josh said, goading her on.
I was about to lose my temper when Dad talked over me, asking my brother, “How is the job hunt coming, Josh?”
I was grateful for the change of subject, but a little bitter I hadn’t gotten the chance to say what I truly wanted to.
Josh was looking at me when he answered. More like smirking in the smug way he always did when he had ample opportunity to throw me under the bus to cover up his misgivings. “Good, Dad.” He leaned back in his chair. “But who wants to listen to the boring details of my life when we’re on such a tantalizing subject only Andy could be the center of?”
“Josh,” I muttered, wishing I were within kicking distance.
Josh’s smile was hard and shiny. “Tell me, Jack, are you good with kids?”
“Sure,” Jack shrugged, looking in Charlie’s direction.
Josh leaned forward. “You have to be if you’re ever going to have a chance with my sister.”
I shouldn’t have noticed, but Dean went rigid, the lines between his eyes deepening.
“Joshua,” Dad warned with quiet intensity.
But once Josh got started, there was no stopping him. “Andrea is good with kids too,” he continued, his words like chisels, picking at my composure. “She was also good at writing, but that took a backseat the moment she met Matt and let her hormones take over her rational thinking. Kids these days, you know?”
“Josh,” I hissed as I covered Charlie’s ears. The room had grown so hot, stifling.
“What?” he asked, callously shrugging. “It’s true. You could have finished your degree. Everyone would have helped with Charlie.”
There was never a moment that anyone in my family, save my father, let me forget I was knocked up at nineteen and a college dropout. It was like they didn’t think it bothered me just as much as it bothered them. Like I didn’t crave writing with every fiber of my being.
“Look, if you’re going to berate me in front of Charlie, we best get home.” I grabbed Charlie’s hand and pushed our plates away from us. It was moments like these that made me wish I hadn’t been so careless in college. But in life, there was only three directions possible. Left, right, or forward.
Never backward.
I stood from my chair.
“Typical Andrea. Always running from her problems,” Mother said under her breath. “And here I was trying to set you up with such a nice, suitable man.” She looked to Jack. “I apologize on my daughter’s behalf. She tends to get carried away.”
“I’m standing right here,” I said through my teeth, heat building behind my eyes.
“Lizzy,” Dad said again. This time, the name rolled off his lips in a warning.
Josh took one look at me and withdrew his smug look. “Oh, come on, sis. Sit down. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I heard the repentance in his tone, but it still wasn’t good enough. “And our family could be compared to The Waltons,” I said in my best sarcastic tone.
Dean elbowed Josh in the side, and I felt exposed. Like he could see the frustration in me, rattling against the cage of my bones.
Don’t go, he said with his heavy gaze. Sit.
I took my seat.
Swallow my words with your kiss,
Heat up my insides,
Wreck me until there’s nothing,
But the rawness of your love.
“Really, Andrea. It’s rather unbecoming of you to act out at the dinner table,” Mother said as she passed Josh the potatoes.
I felt like I was being pinned again. Repressed by all the bullshit family ties.
Dad started up a conversation about the meals she’d planned for the annual party, and I mouthed a thank you to him.
After a while, Jack leaned in when no one was watching and said, “Sorry. I don’t want you to think I came here seeking anything. I just didn’t want to be rude to your mother. She was so insistent on trying to set us up.”
My skin went hot. It was just like my mother to be pushy when it came to my love life. Never once thinking about what anyone involved wanted. “I’m sorry about that, Jack. I don’t want you to think I’m not interested, but—”
He smiled. “But you’re not. It’s okay,” he said easily. “I get it. I think you’re nice, Andy, and if you ever wanted to try it out, I’d love to, but please don’t be embarrassed on my part. I come from an uptight family as well. I know how things work.”
I smiled at him, feeling my nerves settle just a little. “Thanks.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t mention it,” he said, and then he went back to eating.
By the time dinner was over, I took my first breath of air by sneaking away from the group after they decided to enjoy after-dinner drinks in the parlor. I waited long enough for Charlie to settle in with a glass of milk and cookies to dunk, and then bolted for my usual hiding spot near a hedge a little way from the house.
Once safely protected from prying eyes, I pulled out the pack of cigarettes I bought before leaving Tennessee from my back pocket. I hated smoking. Always had. But for some reason, being under the same roof as my mother always brought on the need to have a cigarette.
Why? Why do I let her bait me like that? Why do I let myself fall into it even when I know it’s happening? Her intention was all too clear. It was as if my mother wanted to prove to everyone that I was still the same old Andrea, with the same old problems, using the same old methods to solve them.
But that wasn’t me anymore.
So much had changed. It was Charlie and me against the world.
A lighter flickered next to me, and I jumped.
“Still scare easy?” Dean asked, holding the lighter out. His voice was quiet, but loaded with meaning I didn’t want to decipher. Even in the dark, I couldn’t mistake the way he seemed to fill a space with just his presence, no matter how wide and open.
Heat formed behind every visible surface his smoldering eyes passed over. “Shouldn’t you be in there canoodling with the rich and desperate?” I leaned my cigarette into the flame, trying to ignore the fact that his proximity made me nervous. The heavy scent of his woody cologne. The heat that rolled off his body in comforting waves.
He chuckled, the sound rich and throaty. “Canoodling? Is that even a word?”
I took a drag, rolled my eyes, and then blew out the burn. “I don’t know, Mr. Editor. You tell me.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “I was just joking, Andy. It actually is a—”
I shook my head and cut him off. “Look, I came out here to get away from the questions. I don’t need anyone else giving me a hard time. Especially not you.”
The lines in his forehead deepened, but he didn’t leave. “I didn’t come out here to give you a hard time. Only to make sure you were okay.” He paused, searching my face. “Tell me, Andy. Are you okay?”
I stole a deep breath, feeling Pandora’s box inside me break open. It always did in his presence. He had a way of making me feel safe, even when I wanted to be alone.
But that box needed to stay shut.
I chewed my lip for a moment, and then let it all out. “I was okay until I got here,” I said as the heat built in my words. “She always so eloquently labels me as dramatic. And maybe I am. But she acts like the last ten years never happened. Like once we sat at that damn dinner table, time did some sort of dance and warped us into the past. I’m not a teenager anymore. I don’t owe anyone an explanation.”
The cigarette began to burn out in my hand, so I dropped it and stomped it out before picking up the butt, pacing in front of him.
“And you know what?” I said, finger pointed in the air.
He was all ears, smiling and waiting for me to let it out.
“She damn sure has no right to give me a hard time about my choices when I never asked her for a damn thing! But leave it to her to rub her opinions in my face, all the while pretending like she was doing something special for me by inviting a man to the table who could be a ready-made husband for me and a father to Charlie.”
I dug my hands into my hair, feeling like my mind would explode.
“That was embarrassing not only for me but for him. I don’t need her help. Why can’t she see that?”
He watched me for a moment. There was such an intensity in his eyes. Like he was taking in everything I’d said and was trying to think of the best response. The right response.
Silence played hopscotch between us. Let the breeze wrap me, cooling my temper.
“It’s a nice night.”
Above us, a spattering of stars twinkled in the velvet sky, easily visible away from the harsh city lights. It was not at all what I thought he was going to say. Then again, Dean always knew how to calm me down… and talking about my mother was never the cure.
I took another drag and blew it out harder than I should have. “Yeah.”
“I like to sit on the roof of my apartment, but the view is never like this. I miss this.” There was a certain wistfulness to the way he looked up at the sky that took my mind places it didn’t belong. Stirring things that shouldn’t be stirred.
Let me take a ride on the back of your wings.
I shook the words from my head. “Don’t tell me you’re going to lay a line on me about how you like to stare at the stars? I know you, Dean. I’m not some silly girl who needs poetic musings.”
He jerked his head in my direction, eyes furrowed. “When did you become so hard to talk to?”
I flinched back. “Hard to talk to?”
“Yeah. Defensive. Jaded. Cynical.”
Wow, I thought, feeling the words bubbling out of me like they always did before I had a chance to stop them. “What can I say? I’m just a cynical girl living in a cynical world.” I gave a cold shrug, feeling like this night couldn’t get any worse.
He plowed a hand through his thick hair. “I’m just trying to talk to you about something other than what you hate talking about. Josh was being a jerk, and your mother, well, she was out of line, but she’s always been like that. I thought I’d come out here and give you a reprieve in conversation, but talking to you is like trying to have a conversation with a wall.” He inhaled and looked to the ground. “You were never like this with me.”
I didn’t even have words. He’d never… he’d never spoken to me like that before.
“You do know there are people with good intentions in this world, don’t you?” he asked, his voice a notch calmer as he stepped closer.
“If there are, they aren’t on my side of the hemisphere.”
He went quiet again, and I hated how I noticed this. How it made me feel uneasy, like I should fill the silence to keep him from thinking I was as bitter and cold as he must have thought I was. I knew I was being harsh, but I felt like I was watching myself from overhead, unable to stop acting out against the one person who understood me the most.
I just… I’d had enough of today.
“You still like climbing trees?” His voice cut through the silence, a tinge of constraint to his words.
My forehead creased as I looked over at him. As memories I was trying so desperately to forget heated my insides.
“I saw you,” he said. “Earlier today I mean, when you ran that way. Did you visit the tree house?”
He didn’t have to say it out loud. It was in his eyes. It was written on his lips. The kiss we shared. The love of words.
I took a step back.
“Are you spying on me now?” I asked, confused and a little bit embarrassed.
He chuckled and shoved his hands in his pockets. “If you call sitting on the back porch while you plowed by Josh and me spying, then I guess so.”
This is my life. My middle name should be embarrassment. My face should be put next to the word in the dictionary. “Yeah, well, I’m sure you two had a good laugh at that.”
The weight of this day sat like a boulder on my chest.
“Why would I laugh?”
How did he manage to keep jolting me with one look? That look, when memories glazed his eyes, and his lips parted, full and soft.
My pulse gave one hard beat at the base of my throat. Heat stirred between my legs.
“Whenever I think about you, I think about you in your tree, dreaming. Writing. Do you still write?” he asked, moving even closer to me. He hovered, his scent and desire filling my personal space.
He… he still thinks about me?
“I… uh—”
“You were always writing, viewing the world different from anyone I’ve ever known. Deeper. Braver.”
Read the fluttering pages of my heart.
Read me into reality.
He stepped close enough I could smell the mint on his breath. See the creases in his lips I wanted to run my tongue over. I looked up at him as my heart rate pulsed out of sync. A fog rolled through my brain as the heat between us reached a new level.
He lifted his hand. Hovered it near my cheek, heat radiating off his palm, but he never gave me the full satisfaction of his touch. “I bet you are still writing, and I bet you’re only just hitting your potential.”
“And you’re so infinite in your wisdom, Mr. Editor,” I said as I tried to step back, butterflies hammering against the cage of my chest. “I didn’t know the secrets to life were unlocked at twenty-four.”
His gaze darkened. “Age is only a number. It bears no weight on the maturity of the mind. You shouldn’t fixate on it so much.”
His eyes were charged with tantalizing threats and bittersweet promises.
“That… that sounds like something a twenty-four-year-old would say,” I stuttered.
He shrugged. All at once, he was out of my space, taking his heat and his scent. “Think what you want. I just came out here to tell you what I thought, and now you know.”
And then he walked away.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Fuck.