Sophia
"I’m sorry about my mam." Blake falls into step at my side. I don’t know if he’s shortening his long stride on purpose, but our feet consistently land on the pavement at the same time. I love it. It’s like we are at one, together.
This must be what it feels like to crush and swoon over someone.
His kiss whirls through my memory and I want it again so bad I could salivate. I want to kiss him for hours until my lips explode and my tongue is numb. The craving for him deeper than for the bottle of vodka in my room.
I hadn’t opened it. Remorse-filled, I stashed it like a guilty secret under the bed.
If I can focus on Blake and his kisses, and not the bottle, I will feel like I’m winning.
Blake’s mum though—wowser. I thought mine was bad. Maybe I’m not the only one to suffer from an over-involved parental unit in my life.
"It’s fine, she just cares about you." I laugh, a blurry of fog lifting from my mouth. "Although I can see where you get your intimidating stance from."
He booms a laugh and his fingers brush mine. My breath catches in my throat, but he doesn’t grab my hand the way I want him too.
"I mean, I guess she wasn't exactly expecting you to bring home an unbalanced actress," I say. Though unbalanced is probably too kind a description of myself, it sounds better than 'raving unstable fruit loop'.
He nods, his dark hair falling across his head. "Guess not." A sly grin slides across his face and I want to know what he’s thinking almost as much as I want to kiss him.
Blake guides us along winding lanes. Matilda bounds at our heels at a buoyed trot until we reach a sand covered path.
"Mind your step." He catches my elbow. "This path is notoriously slippery."
The muddy sand squelches under my newly acquired Wellington boots. Blake’s not lying, my feet fly in every direction, my dignity threatened as I scrabble for balance. When we make it to the end of the path, the battered wooden fences give way to open curves of pale, wet sand. I come to a stop, my lungs puffing out all the air they hold.
It’s beautiful.
A murky sea sparkles off in the distance, and the sand shimmers a dull bronze under the winter sun, dipping and curving, catching the light. Blake snaps Matilda’s lead off her collar and ruffles her hair, pulling me from a sea and sand induced trance. "Go run you crazy mutt," he tells her. She leaps off, pounding on powerful paws all the way to the distant sea, droplets of sandy water bouncing off her coat as she goes. "You can give her a bath." He doesn’t look at me, but I catch his lips twitching and my stomach does a twitch of its own in response all the way down to my lady parts.
He still doesn’t hold my hand. Okay, I could grab his, but honestly his mood swings are taking epic proportions, I no longer know what’s happening. One moment we are kissing, possibly on the cusp of something dark and delicious. The next—not so much.
He walks in Matilda’s trail of paw printed destruction and I follow, keeping close to his side, mainly in a bid to block the nipping wind rushing through my coat, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I’m also waving my hand about every so often to see if he grabs it. He doesn’t.
After we’ve walked in silence for a few minutes, I can no longer take the strain and begin to bumble like a blathering idiot. "Why didn’t you become a policeman, Blake?"
Inside that kitchen it felt as if there was a tight wire of protection binding Bernie and her offspring together. Yet, Blake had spent five years with me until he left. There’s got to be a story there—something doesn’t sit right.
He sighs, his dark eyes sweeping the horizon and his gaze trailing Matilda as she chases seagulls, scattering them squawking into the air. "It was a messy time."
Is that all I’m getting? He knows everything about me, down to the fact that a few months ago I tried to kill myself. My breath wavers in my throat at the memory.
I haven’t told him, outright. We haven’t talked about it, but I know he can read it on my skin, read the emotions on my face. Yet, he’s still this brick wall of evasiveness, the brick wall I tried to kiss five long years ago, the brick wall who spurned my advances, even though he now insists he’d loved me all along.
"That’s all I get?" I shift away from the dark wool of his jacket. "That’s all I get when you saw me puking and unconscious just two days ago? You really are taking this bodyguard role seriously."
A hand snakes out at lightning speed, grabbing my arm, tethering me tight into his chest. His eyes flutter shut and he breaths through his nose like he’s mid yoga practice. "It’s not that." He still doesn’t open his eyes, and he breathes deeply again. "It’s hard for me. Talking doesn’t come easy." His gaze snaps onto my face. "I didn’t grow up in the States where everyone is freewheeling with their emotions."
I struggle against his grasp. "This is supposed to be a walk, not a battering with a wooden stick of social reprimand." The vodka becomes more appealing with every second I stand with my boots sinking into wet sand.
He laughs, a loud booming shout of mirth and his hands squeeze my arms as they pull me in. "I’m a stick of social reprimand now, am I?"
Releasing my frustration, I smile, tilting my head to look into his face. "You’re a dick."
He does what I’ve been waiting for. Catching my face in his hands, his eyes bore down onto mine as he slides his mouth against my lips. It’s heaven. Better than any hit, better than any sip of alcohol. It’s better than anything. I allow my eyes to close and smile against his mouth. His own lips turn up against mine, curving at the edges, a tantalising smile come kiss.
"What are you smiling at?" His lips murmur still pressed against my mouth. His voice deepens into a low burr and my stomach flips in response. Kiss talking is as sexy as hell.
"Your kisses."
"My kisses?" He sounds as if he’s grinning now. I wrench my eyes open to check—I can’t miss a Blake grin for anything, not even a kiss. Sure enough, there it is, the blindingly gorgeous smile of Blake Henderson. Then the smile drops. "I’ve always had my guard up against you, I had to. It was my job."
Hesitation pauses my motions. "And what’s your job now, Blake?" My tongue tingles as it dries and sticks to the roof of my mouth—where it’s been permanently superglued since Blake and I embarked on the new kissing development of our relationship.
Sighing he drops his forehead until it rests against mine. "I don’t know." The tip of his nose brushes an icy trail along the bridge of my own. "This is uncharted territory."
His words sting deep in my chest and I push against him. I don’t want to be unchartered territory, I want to be discoverable, conquerable, by him. "Well, when you’ve made up your fucking mind you know where to find me." I propel myself away. His hesitation rings in my head forcing my feet on a separate path to his.