CHAPTER SEVEN
Kit could feel the danger in the air. The feeling of being the only two people in the world because of the storm, and the feeling of playing house, were both strong and made her want things she hadn’t let herself admit before. But now . . . Dillon Alexander, the doctor who had worked in the aftermath of hurricanes and in the midst of civil unrest in Africa, the brilliant mind who had designed emergency-room protocols that were being used around the country, the charmer who had her entire hometown celebrating his return, and the man who could melt her with a look across a crowded room, was now sitting with her in a blanket fort in the middle of her grandmother’s living room.
She had never wanted him more.
“I’ll be right back.” She was scrambling for the gap in the blankets before she even really thought about the need for escape. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt overwhelmed by Dillon, but it was the first time she couldn’t get away from him completely, and she was feeling a little claustrophobic and like she might start screaming at any second.
Or begging him to take her right there in that blanket fort in the living room she’d been having birthday parties and family movie nights and Christmas mornings in for as long as she could remember.
Once safely in the kitchen—and thank God Dillon didn’t follow her—Kit took huge, gulping breaths and did the self-talk that she taught to patients with anxiety issues. After a few deep ins and outs, she felt her heart rate slowing and the spinning in her mind straighten out.
Part of what she was feeling had to be the fact that this was a house where she had a million good memories and where she was completely comfortable and could be herself. Was she showing Dillon a new side? Yeah, maybe. Okay, yes, for sure. One of the things she believed firmly was that how you saw yourself dictated how other people saw you. She dressed professionally, always tried to look put together and sophisticated and in charge because it helped her feel those things, and she knew it helped others feel those things about her, too.
Dillon had seen her flustered and stressed and confused at times, but he’d never seen her . . . dressed in five layers of her grandmother’s clothes, trying not to freeze to death, depending on flashlights and firelight to see, and sitting in a blanket fort playing a board game.
What had possessed her to suggest the fort thing?
It had seemed practical on the one hand. The tent did trap more heat. But it had also seemed fun. And she’d wanted to see if he’d go along with it. And . . . she’d forgotten to project the always-got-it-together thing that she usually wore like a suit of armor when he was around.
She’d figured out in high school how to keep him at arm’s length. She’d had to. She couldn’t let on how she felt. She couldn’t feel anything for Dillon that he didn’t feel for her. Somehow that seemed like a contest he’d win, and she couldn’t let that happen.
Kit ran a hand through her hair, letting all those remembered emotions wash over her. How much she’d wanted him. How much she’d wanted him to want her. How hard she’d fought those emotions. And then how all-in she’d been when she finally decided to stop fighting it.
She hadn’t been trying to steal Dillon from Abi. She’d just been trying to get under Dillon’s skin. And it had worked. All of a sudden. She’d been flirting with him just because . . . she could tell it drove him crazy. She’d always liked winning contests between them, and for some reason, their senior year of high school, the contest had been to get Dillon to admit that he was attracted to her.
Probably because she was so incredibly attracted to him, but he was such a good guy and the perfect boyfriend to Abi. She’d hated herself for wanting a guy who had such a great relationship with his girlfriend. She’d hated herself for wanting Dillon. Of all people. There were several guys who did want to date her, but she was always comparing them to Dillon, and they’d come up short. And she’d hated that the only reason Dillon ever paid attention to her was because she was competing with him.
So the night they’d been prepping for their debate competition, she’d gone a little nuts. That was her professional diagnosis—temporary insanity. She’d done everything she could to seduce him, to make him crack, to make him do something that showed he wasn’t, in fact, perfect.
And it had worked. She’d leaned over to reach past him for something, and it was like he’d snapped. He’d pulled her into his lap and kissed the hell out of her. They’d gotten to third base before they’d pulled back. In all the mess of those memories and emotions, she was proud of that. They’d both stopped. She’d been relieved even then.
And then he’d stalked out and, apparently, gone straight to Abi and confessed.
They’d had a huge fight, and the next night Dillon had been back on Kit’s doorstep—yelling at her. He’d told her, loudly, that he’d been doing great resisting her for two years. Two years. Kit had been stunned. And then, in the middle of asking her why in hell she’d had to wear that body lotion and why she’d had to dress in that tank top and shorts and why she’d had to sit so close to him, he’d kissed her again. He’d backed her up against the wall in her parents’ foyer and kissed her.
While Abi’s car was crashing into a ditch two miles outside of town.
His phone had rung just as he’d gotten Kit’s bra off.
If it hadn’t been for the call about the accident, it was possible that he and Kit would have had sex while Abi was fighting for her life in the emergency room ten blocks away.
Kit felt her chest squeezing. God, they’d screwed up. She hated that they’d done that. They’d been kids. They’d made a mistake. The guilt was normal. But succumbing to their feelings and hormones had been normal, too.
All her crazy, mixed-up feelings for Dillon and about Abi’s death and how she’d handled everything were what had pushed her in the direction of mental health in medical school. They’d done some self-inventories that had interested, and concerned, Kit, and she’d found herself fascinated by the human mind and all the emotions and coping mechanisms that the mind could create. Then she’d tried to give herself a break about Abi. And it had kind of worked.
She wasn’t proud of the times that she and Dillon had fallen into bed—or up against a wall or in the middle of a floor—since then. Every time it had been prompted by intense emotions and stress and being thrown together for an extended period. Alone. But it had never been for this long. And she’d had an escape. And she’d used it. Now there was nowhere to go, and the longer they spent together, the faster her walls came tumbling down.
Dillon was very much not at arm’s length now.
Kit dragged in a deep breath. He wanted to talk. The game was just a vehicle for it. A way of making it happen with less pressure than just staring at each other and confessing everything.
Talking was probably a good idea. Lord knew she should be the one advocating for it. But she didn’t want to talk. She really didn’t. She knew what she was feeling and why. Guilt and a huge dose of doubt. Yes, she wanted him. Yes, she felt things like affection and respect and pleasure with him. But she wasn’t sure what was behind it all. Dillon had been her adversary and her motivation for as long as she could remember.
Did she really want to be with him, or did she just love the high of sparring with him? And the rush of winning? Because if getting him to crack had been the whole goal, then she should have sent him firmly in the other direction when he’d pulled up at the curb outside her house three days after Abi’s funeral.
She’d tried. He’d said, “Get in,” and she’d said no. Then he’d said, “Please,” and she’d gotten into his car. And she’d let him sit without saying anything, staring at the river. And she’d let him tell her about the funeral. And about Abi’s mom crying on his shoulder about the wedding they would now never have. And about all the people who kept telling him they were sorry and that they were there for him and that life would go on. And she’d let him take her clothes off. And then she’d gone a little crazy. The first sex of her life had been some of the hottest.
In retrospect—in her first psych class in college—she realized that she’d needed that closure, that chance at what she’d started the night she’d kissed him, to be the one he wanted, for whatever he’d needed at that moment. And he’d needed to feel connected to someone. He’d planned to have a future with Abi, and he was mourning her and the loss of that future. He’d been lonely and sad, and Kit had been there, offering him an outlet for his emotions. Not to mention a huge distraction. So he’d taken it. Why not? He had been an eighteen-year-old kid dealing with emotions and loss that no one his age should have to experience.
And since then, Kit had told herself that she was glad she had been there for him. The sex had been great, but she also knew that she’d comforted him, in a way, and that was a good thing.
Then he’d gone off to Army National Guard basic training with Jake and Max right after graduation, and she’d spent a summer in Chance without Dillon around driving her crazy. For the first time since third grade. And she’d hated it.
Then she’d gone off to college. They’d run into each other here and there on visits home, but they’d never been alone. Not until Christmas break of her sophomore year when she’d had too much to drink and he’d offered to take her home. Her parents hadn’t been home from their holiday party yet, and she’d crawled into Dillon’s lap in the front seat of his truck and given in to everything he’d still made her feel.
Then she’d gotten dressed and gone inside as soon as it was over.
Same in medical school when they’d been studying and all the stress and being cooped up with him in his apartment, and all the feelings she still wasn’t over, and all the frustration about still not being over them, had all mixed into a combustible concoction of desire and desperation, and they’d found themselves naked in the middle of his living room.
And then she’d gotten dressed and left.
She’d also been the one to leave after they’d had sex against the wall in the deserted second-floor hallway in the high school during their five-year class reunion.
And when they’d been trapped together in the storeroom at the hospital in last June’s tornado, they’d been this close to losing their clothes again. The only thing stopping them had been the sound of running feet in the hallway outside and Dillon’s phone beeping incessantly in his pocket the second the tornado had passed.
She’d still been the one to walk away first.
She hated that, as an adult, mature, intelligent woman and a highly trained and damned-good-if-she-did-say-so-herself psychiatrist, she couldn’t deal with her after-sex-with-Dillon emotions. But she couldn’t. She’d dealt with her guilt over kissing Dillon in high school, and breaking up him and Abi, and her feelings that she’d contributed to Abi’s accident by being the cause of her emotional turmoil, in therapy of her own. But she couldn’t quite shake how she felt about Dillon and the need to hide it.
So, they’d already had sex tonight. Fine. She could survive that. It was the talking about their feelings that she wasn’t sure she could emerge from unscathed. She could not tell Dillon that she was in love with him and always had been. She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t love him and wanted only to compete with him, either, because she wasn’t sure that was true. But sex and their game of one-upmanship were really what they were best at. She should stick with that. Definitely. So she’d distract Dillon from the talking. And there were two surefire ways to do that.
Pick a fight. Or take her clothes off.
And she didn’t want to fight.
Usually, she kind of anticipated fighting with Dillon. But the guy was sitting in a blanket fort wearing her grandfather’s suit jacket and telling her she was cute.
Yeah, she definitely wanted to take her clothes off.
As she thought about that, a chill went through her, and she realized the house outside of the living room was definitely cold. She glanced down the hallway. She was not sleeping in that bedroom. She’d share the couch with Dillon. Or they could just stay on their pile of blankets. Another little shiver went through her that had nothing to do with the cold.
Okay, seduction it was. Though she’d never actually seduced him before. She didn’t think it would be difficult, exactly, but they had always just kind of jumped on each other in the past. She probably could simply go in there and strip down. But for some reason the idea of teasing him sounded like fun. Kind of like fighting but without the insults.
Kit thought quickly about their setup. And she suddenly had the perfect idea.
She returned to the fort and ducked under the end blanket.
“I thought maybe you’d—” Dillon stopped as she dropped back onto her pillow, spilling her armful of supplies.
He took inventory of the graham crackers, chocolate bars, bag of marshmallows, and the stick for roasting said marshmallows.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She smiled. “Just making our fort perfect. We always made s’mores when we did this when we were kids. Do you like s’mores?” she asked.
“Who doesn’t like s’mores?” he asked. He passed her the Mason jar of cider. “Had a little bit of this while I was waiting.”
Even better. Her grandmother’s cider would take the edge off . . . anything and anyone.
“Your turn,” he said, handing her the die and then grabbing the bag of marshmallows. “I’ll get a couple of these going.”
Kit rolled. She got a three. Which put her at the base of a ladder. She happily climbed from space twenty-one to forty-two. She picked up the Mason jar, since that was supposed to be her reward for ladders. But then she had a second thought. “I think I like your ladder idea better,” she said, going up on her knees. She leaned toward him before he fully realized what she meant. She’d planned to put her lips against his neck. There was one spot along his throat that made him make the most delicious groaning sound. But he turned his head, and her lips ended up on his chin.
She made the most of it, though. She licked over the skin made rough by end-of-the-day whiskers before meeting his mouth. He didn’t move except to part his lips, but ten seconds easily turned to twenty or so before she pulled back. Then she licked her own lips.
His eyes were locked on hers, and she decided, What the hell. She reached for the zipper on her hoodie and had it down and the sweatshirt tossed away when the smell of burned sugar hit her nose.
“Shit!” Dillon pulled the stick with the smoking marshmallows on the end out of the fire. “Shit!” he said again as the blackened bits of sugar continued to smoke. He stuck them back in the fire and shook the stick until the blobs of marshmallow fell into the flames.
Kit started to giggle. She’d distracted Dillon from the simple job of roasting marshmallows. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt proud of that.
He looked at her. “That’s funny?”
“That you can’t multitask when I’m kissing you?” she asked. “Yeah.”
The next thing she knew, he’d pulled her into his lap. He held her cradled in one arm, while his other hand splayed over her stomach. “I can’t do other things while you’re kissing me, huh?” he asked. Then he lowered his head to within millimeters of her lips. “Kiss me, Kit.”
She slid her hand into the hair at the back of his head and pulled him down. Sure, she might have stretched up toward him, but he took her lips in a slow, deep kiss. While his hand on her stomach slid under the three layers of clothing she still wore to glide over her bare skin.
Bare skin in the currently cold house should have produced chills and goose bumps. But there wasn’t one inch of her body that was cold as Dillon ran his hand back and forth over her stomach, sliding ever higher. She did have goose bumps, though.
Kit felt her arms reaching to wrap around his neck almost without a conscious decision on her part. It was like that was where they wanted to be. She clung to him as he cupped one breast, running his thumb over her nipple as she whimpered into his mouth.
God, she was so . . . needy. And overcome. And at his mercy.
He lifted his head, his thumb and finger tugging at her nipple as he watched her eyes. “Need more proof?” he asked.
She, because of the overwhelmed and needy thing, nodded.
He gave her a wicked grin. Maybe not exactly surprised but definitely pleased. He ran his hand down her belly and under the edge of the sweatpants. And then the second pair of sweatpants. And then the leggings she’d been wearing before.
And suddenly she was overheating. Her skin burned wherever he’d already touched her, and when his fingers slid over her mound and then into her hot, wet core, she swore she was going to turn into a burned, melty, gooey mess like the marshmallow.
And she didn’t care.
She arched up against his hand and breathed his name.
That seemed to spur him on, and he pumped his two fingers deep. Kit pulled his head down for another kiss. As their mouths met and their tongues stroked, Kit knew that she was showing every bit of her hunger for him. But this was so much better than talking.
Or, worse, confessing.
Then again, kissing Dillon while his fingers worked their magic on a spot that no other man had ever seemed to quite reach was pretty much better than anything.
Kit realized that she was going to get another orgasm out of this setup. Dillon didn’t seem inclined to stop. And Kit would have had to kill him if he did. He kept up the exquisite torture as they kissed. Her fingers drove into his hair, holding his head tightly so she could taste every millimeter of his mouth. Her knees parted, and she pressed against him wantonly. And she didn’t care.
That was the thing about being with Dillon. He made her care about everything, more than anyone else did. Until he touched her. And then all she wanted was to let him have his way.
In a very, very tiny corner at the back of her mind, she knew that should alarm her. But she’d realized it a long time ago and had gotten used to it. Or had gotten used to tamping all that down in the face of having Dillon’s fingers exactly where they were now. Or his mouth. Or his . . . anything else.
Dillon moved his magical fingers exactly the way she needed him to, and Kit felt her orgasm building. Then he muttered against her lips, “I still have a question for you.”
His thumb pressed on her clit, and Kit moaned. He still wanted to talk? Dammit. She needed to get her hands on parts of him to fully distract him.
She wiggled, careful not to move so much that his hand shifted from where it was, and got her hand between them, right over the hard cock that was pressed against her hip.
“Kit,” he said, his voice low, “I know what you’re doing.”
“Trying to shut you up?” she asked, stroking him. She shifted again, wedging her hand behind the elastic band of the sweatpants he was wearing and then into his boxers. “You’re right.”
“That only makes me want to ask this question even more,” he practically growled, circling her clit and stroking deep.
She almost forgot what she was doing with her hand as the sensations flooded her nervous system. But she managed to wrap her hand around him. “The only thing I want to hear from you is Get on me,” she said.
He pulled in a ragged breath. “You can’t run away this time,” he reminded her.
Yeah, like she’d forgotten. “If you keep your hand right there, there’s nowhere I’d rather be,” she said, trying to ignore the fact that as soon as this was over . . . But it wouldn’t be over. Because she was stuck in this house, and if Dillon really wanted to talk, eventually it would come around to their feelings, and she was going to have to fight like hell to hold back what she really wanted to say.
“Let me ask my question or I’m not going to let you come.”
Of course, the sex was hardly one-sided. “There’s that let thing again,” she said.
Which was a tactical error on her part, it turned out. He moved his hand out of her pants.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Feel free to do it yourself. You know how ridiculously hot I find that.”
She did know, in fact, and she remembered how ridiculously hot she’d found doing that with him watching. She drew in a shaky breath and willed her competitive streak to kick in.
It did. Kind of. And she managed to push herself off his lap. “Actually, I’m okay.”
Dillon gave her a grin that said he wasn’t buying that at all. “Don’t worry, Doc. I fully intend to take one of those melted marshmallows and smear it all over your gorgeous tits and then lick them clean. But I want to talk about something first.”
Her traitorous nipples tingled with his words, and she swore she could already feel the gooey warmth of the marshmallows followed by the wet heat of his mouth.
She was glad for the many shadows under the tent to hide her reaction to that. “You’re boring me with all this blah, blah, blah, Alexander.”
“Okay, I’ll keep it short and to the point.”
She sighed, wishing she could just turn off all the reactions and feelings.
“Will you go on a date with me tomorrow night?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“A date. You and me. Out on the town.”
“The town? Chance?”
He gave her a little smile. “Yes. That town.”
She shook her head slowly at first, then picked up the pace. “Why?” she finally asked.
“Because I want to date you.”
He wanted to what? “Have you lost your mind?”
“Not even a little.”
“But why? I drive you crazy. And I’m already having sex with you.”
“Because . . . you drive me crazy. And I love it. And I want to keep having sex with you. But I want more than the sex, Kit.”
She felt emotions flittering around in her chest, but she wasn’t sure what they were. It felt a little like excitement. But there was a fine line between excitement and panic.
Okay, moment of truth. There was more here than a simple “Want to go out?”
“Do you know that you’re the only person in the world who makes me doubt who I am?” she asked.
He looked confused, then surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I know what I think and how I feel and what I want out of every person and situation in the world. Except you.”
That was the honest-to-God truth. And she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to fill him in on the major impact he had on her life. Her instinct, honed by years of working to be kick-ass and tough where he was concerned, was to hold back anything that might make her seem—or feel—vulnerable. But what the hell? Maybe this talking thing would work out, after all. Maybe he’d decide that the sex-only thing was what he actually wanted. All the emotional stuff wasn’t really his thing.
“You don’t know how you feel about me?” he asked. “Or you don’t want to admit how you feel about me?”
She took a breath and took the plunge. “I don’t know how I feel about me when I’m with you like this. And I don’t like that. Usually I feel revved up and confident and totally ready to take on the world. But that’s because you’re giving me a hard time, and I’m wanting to show you up. But when we’re like this”—she gestured between them—“I don’t know what this is. I’m relaxed and having fun, but then I think that’s not really me. But then you really like this side of me. This . . . messy side. But that’s not who I usually am.”
“Maybe it’s who you really want to be. Who you are when you’re the most you,” Dillon said, his voice husky.
She felt tendrils of heat swirl in her stomach. He seemed almost affectionate when he said that. But Kit shook her head. “I mean, sure, I take off my heels and put my hair up in a ponytail and wear sweats sometimes, but I don’t . . . build blanket forts, and I haven’t had s’mores in years.”
Dillon didn’t say anything for a long moment. But then he asked, “Do you like blanket forts and s’mores?”
She nodded. She did.
“And have you done this with any other guy?”
She shook her head. No way.
“Do you think it means something that you did it with me? Something that you like but that you don’t let yourself normally do?”
She just looked at him for a few seconds.
Crap.
Yeah, it did. Something she didn’t want to analyze. “I thought this was supposed to be short and to the point.” And she’d thought he was supposed to not be good at being insightful.
“I asked you on a date. Short and to the point,” he said. “You’re the one making this more interesting.”
“You think this is interesting?”
He pinned her with a look that said he understood a lot more here than she wanted him to. “Very interesting,” he told her.
“Okay, so what do you think it means?”
“I think it means that you really want me to know a side of you that no one else gets to know. That you’re more comfortable with me than you realize. And that you were testing me.”
To avoid studying the rest of that, she asked, “Testing you?”
“Seeing how I would respond. If I would like this side. Because if I didn’t, this was a great way to push me away, right?” He leaned in. “But I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to be closer to you.”
“And now you think that you won somehow?” she asked, wishing she felt more irritated by all this. Instead, she felt herself softening toward him. Either he’d been hiding this more perceptive side, or he was just discovering it himself. She suspected the latter, and that absolutely made her feel softer. The idea that she could help him get better at something was almost as much of a turn-on as his promise for those marshmallows. She made herself frown slightly, though, because she needed to know what he was thinking here. “You think that I threw this out as a challenge, and because you didn’t run, you win?” That wasn’t what she’d done. At least not consciously.
His eyes narrowed, clearly not overly concerned with her frown. “Maybe. Maybe I’m the brave one. The one who’s willing to take a chance here. The one who can see how fucking amazing this could be.”
She swallowed. Could it be amazing? Was this something more than her wanting the upper hand with him somehow? More than her using sex appeal to keep him off balance? Was it possible that she’d made everything between them a contest over the years because she was afraid of making it real and actually losing?
She knew he was baiting her with the “I’m the brave one” bit. And she was going to bite.
“I’ve wondered for a long time if I really wanted you in high school or if I just wanted to get you,” she said. “You were a huge challenge. With our constant battling and . . .” Was she going to say it? “And how much you loved Abi and everything.” Yeah, she was.
Abi’s name, his feelings for her, the fact that Kit had wanted to tempt him simply to prove that he was tempt-able and not perfect and not above all the complicated emotions Kit was dealing with, all needed to be out there between them if they were going to actually talk about things like doing more than spreading marshmallows over interesting body parts.
But Dillon didn’t even blink. Not a flinch, not a frown, not a grimace. “I know,” he said. “And you never got to see what really having me was like. Abi died, and I was supposed to be the grieving boyfriend, and then you and I both left town.”
Kit nodded, unable to get words past the tightness in her throat. And, horrible person that she was, the wad of emotion in her throat was less about Abi and more about the missed opportunity between her and Dillon. The accident had been tragic and had shaken the whole town. Including Kit. She’d known Abi since preschool. But yeah, she also mourned losing Dillon in that way.
She was going to hell for sure.
“But you can have me now,” he said. “All of me. For as long as you want me.”
His words took her breath. That surprised her. It was weird because she’d anticipated him saying almost those exact things, but hearing them out loud, in his gravelly, low voice, with his eyes locked on hers, inside their tent, with them in their crazy clothes and the rest of the world far, far away . . . it quite simply took her breath away.
All of me. For as long as you want me.
And she knew in that moment that maybe back in high school it had been about knocking him off his very high pedestal and proving that he could be ruled by hormones and could be a bad guy if pushed far enough—lots of not-very-nice things. But the second he’d kissed her, it had become all about him. All of him.
Then something he’d said came back to her. “What do you mean you were supposed to be the grieving boyfriend?” she asked.
Instead of answering, he asked, “If I were your patient, what would you tell me about Abi’s accident?”
“That it wasn’t your fault,” she said easily. “That even if what happened between us upset her and contributed to the accident, that wasn’t your fault. You were honest with her, and people argue and upset each other sometimes. That you were right to tell her.”
Kit believed all of that. She also knew that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
“And what about our making out the night she was killed?”
She sighed. “That we shouldn’t have done it, but that we were kids and it didn’t make us bad people. We didn’t do it to hurt her.”
He nodded. “That’s pretty much what my shrink said.”
“You talked to someone?” she asked. She hadn’t known that.
“Yep. And it helped a little.”
“Just a little?” She was surprised and pleased that Dillon had sought counseling, but she wanted it to have really helped him. Because she cared about him, and because, if she was totally honest, she wanted him to believe in what she did for a living.
He shrugged. “I just don’t process emotions the same way everyone else does. I’ve figured that out. It’s what makes me good at triage and trauma. I don’t get that emotionally involved.”
Kit knew her eyes were wide, but she was trying to understand what he’d just said. “You don’t think you process emotions normally? What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel things like I should.”
Kit frowned. “Give me an example.”
“Abi.”
Kit felt her heart thump. “You mean because you could make out with me while in love with her?” she asked. “Dillon, we were kids. We had a bunch of feelings and hormones that we didn’t really know how to handle. That doesn’t make us bad people, and it doesn’t mean you don’t have emotions.”
“It wasn’t that,” he said. “Or maybe it was also that. I didn’t really feel guilty about that. I went and told her about it because she deserved to know, but I didn’t feel guilty about wanting you. And then . . .”
He trailed off, and Kit leaned in. This was her thing. And Dillon was a subject she’d been fascinated with, on many levels, for a long time. “Then what?”
“I wasn’t devastated,” he said. “After she died. I was shocked. I was sad. Of course. I missed her. But I wasn’t . . . devastated. I didn’t want to just go to my room and never come out. Hell, three days later I was on your doorstep.”
Kit swallowed hard. She had to be a professional here. That’s what he needed. Counseling. She had to try to keep her own feelings out of it. “You came to me because you were lonely and needed closure with what had happened between us.”
He frowned. “No.”
No? Just no? “What do you mean by ‘no’?” she asked.
“I didn’t want closure. I wasn’t lonely.” He leaned in, pinning her with a look that seemed to penetrate to her very heart. “I didn’t come to you because I missed Abi, Kit. I missed you. I wanted to be with you.”
“You . . .” She cleared her throat. “At the river that night, you talked about the funeral and everything.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I was trying to process the fact that everyone seemed to expect me to be curled into a little ball in the corner, unable to talk or smile or eat or sleep. And the fact that I didn’t feel any of that. I was sad. I hated that fucking funeral. But the worst part was everyone treating me like my life was over . . . and not feeling that myself. And wanting to see you.” He took a breath. “I tried to tell myself that I could just pick up where you and I had left off. In my head, that made sense. It seemed insensitive. But I didn’t feel that. Things with Abi and me were over in my heart before I kissed you. Definitely before her accident. I was sad she was gone; I felt horrible that her life had been cut short. She was amazing and would have done amazing things. But I didn’t feel like my life had been cut short.”
Kit let his words roll around in her head. She studied his face. He seemed . . . okay. Maybe a little perplexed, even all these years later, by the reactions of others and his reaction. Or lack thereof. But he seemed okay.
She was a pro at compartmentalizing. It was, in her opinion, a necessary part of her job. She couldn’t get caught up in the emotions herself when she was talking with and listening to patients. She had to stay objective. So she firmly put her feelings for Dillon and about Abi into a box and locked it. She leaned forward, in full professional mode.
“And you feel, because you didn’t react the way everyone seemed to think you should, that you don’t process emotions normally?” she asked. “Is that right?”
He nodded.
“And you think that’s why you’re a great trauma and emergency physician?” she asked.
“It’s why I went into that field. Not getting emotionally involved is key.”
She nodded. That made perfect sense. “And you think that’s why your bedside manner . . .”
“Sucks,” he supplied with a half smile. “And yes.”
Kit felt the emotions she’d locked away banging against the side of the box, trying to get out. She stubbornly added a second lock. This wasn’t the time to realize how very completely crazy she was about him.
She took a deep breath, in and out, and carefully formulated her very professional response. “Dillon,” she started, “that’s all . . .” She blew out a breath. “That’s crap,” she finally said.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”
It wasn’t professional, but this was Dillon. He’d see through all her fancy words and carefully constructed explanations anyway. “That’s all crap. You do not lack emotions or the ability to process them normally. That is not why you’re amazing at trauma, and it’s not why your bedside manner sucks.”
“Is that right?”
“It is. You are a very caring person. You care about people you don’t know and haven’t even met. People you’ll never really get to know. It doesn’t matter to you if they are friends and neighbors—you want everyone to be healthy, happy, and safe, and you are willing to do whatever you can to make that happen. That is why you went into trauma and emergency medicine. That and the fact that you’re incredibly bright and can think on your feet and take command of a situation and that you have an amazing natural leadership ability. And the only reason your bedside manner sucks is because you haven’t worked on it. In part, because of the settings you’ve worked in up until now, and in part because you’ve been telling yourself that you aren’t good at it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, I should have been devastated, shouldn’t I?”
Kit again had to tighten the lid on the personal side of this. She hated that Dillon doubted himself. Ironic, really, considering she’d been working, in one way or another, to best him for years, to make him stumble, to take away some of his swagger. But deep down, the cocky, sure-of-himself, brilliant-and-I-know-it guy was the one she had fallen for . . . and had never really gotten over.
The swirl of panic that tried to rise up made Kit sit straighter and swallow hard. Falling. That’s what they called it. Falling in love. And when you were falling, you were out of control. It meant that you’d lost your balance or let go of what was holding you up. Kit loved balance. And she didn’t really let go.
Besides, it hurt when you landed.
“However you felt was how you felt, Dillon,” she said, her professional tone of voice firmly in place. “There’s no right or wrong way to feel.”
“But she was my girlfriend. For a long time. She was sweet and amazing and . . . loved me,” he said after a brief hesitation.
Ah. “So Abi would have been devastated if you had been the one in the accident.”
Kit felt her stomach knot. It wasn’t the first time it had occurred to her that if Dillon hadn’t been with her, he might have been in that car, too.
And she would have been devastated.
“She would have,” Dillon said. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess that’s part of it.”
“Dillon,” Kit said firmly, leaning her elbows on her knees, “you’re awesome. You feel things. You process emotions. I promise you, you’re fine. I would definitely tell you if you weren’t.”
That caused his mouth to curl slightly. “I guess that’s true.”
“I am a professional, after all.”
“Right.” He gave her a bigger smile this time.
She nodded. “And, of course, I’ve been making a list of your imperfections for a long time. If emotionless psychopath were a part of your character, it would be on that list.”
He even gave a soft laugh at that. “You have a list of my imperfections?”
“I do.”
“Because I’m your nemesis?”
She could tell by the look in his eyes that he didn’t mean that—and didn’t think she meant that.
“Because I’ve been trying to not like you for a long time.”
“And that list helps?”
“It’s supposed to.”
They sat looking at each other for a long moment, and Kit realized that no, that list didn’t help much at all, actually.
“You know,” she said, “the fact that you were even trying with Sarah, in her room earlier today and then on the phone, is pretty amazing. You think you’re not able to be good at this, but you’re still trying. That’s growth.”
“You’re proud of me?” His tone indicated he was teasing, but the look on his face was serious.
“I am.”
“You think there’s hope for me?”
She nodded, her eyes locked on his. “Definitely. I mean, you’re already the person you want to be. You just need to realize it.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“Going through bad things can actually make you a good person, Dillon.”
He nodded at that. “And if anyone else said that to me, I’d take it with a grain of salt, but when you say it, I totally trust it.”
Kit felt a warmth spiral through her. All of her and Dillon’s past, all of the bickering, all of the pushing, had gotten them here, where she could help him. That was ironic, too. And wonderful.
“You’ve always been amazing at the feeling thing,” he said. “You helped people through all kinds of stuff in high school. I remember you holding many ‘sessions’ during study hall.”
She shrugged. “Teenage girls are teeming with emotional angst.”
“But you were one of those teenage girls, and you still really helped some of them. Angela had an eating disorder. Jade had a very emotionally abusive boyfriend. You helped them both.”
Kit sighed. “And then there was me with my unrequited crush on the most ungettable guy in school . . . who was also my sworn enemy.”
He gave her a grin that did funny things to her insides. And made her flash back—not to the deliciously dirty things he’d done and said to her over the years, but to that first kiss. When he’d leaned in, his eyes going over her face as if seeing her for the first time, and the gruffness in his voice when he said, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
At the time she’d taken that as an Oh shit, I’m in trouble. But now she could hear, and see in his eyes, that it was Thank God this is finally happening. She felt a thickness in her throat and willed herself not to cry.
She wasn’t so good at the feeling thing, after all.
“Not unrequited, Kit,” he said softly.
Kit pressed her lips together.
“Are we really just going to skip past the part about me being in love with you back then, and that that’s what made it possible for you to get to me? And that knowing you had feelings for me, too, was what actually broke up Abi and me?” he asked.
She pressed her lips tighter, but finally couldn’t keep the words inside. “So you really were perfect. You never would have cheated just for the physical stuff.”
“Well, I should have told Abi before you and I made out. Obviously.”
“But you did pull back before it went too far, and you did go and tell her about it right away.”
“I did.”
She sighed. “And this is why I had that stupid crush in the first place, while still wanting to punch you in your perfect face.”
He laughed at that. “You could never have been crazy about someone who didn’t challenge all of your own ideas about how things should go and what was right and wrong.”
The truth of that seemed to hit her directly in the heart. Things weren’t black and white. She knew that, especially in her line of work. There were all kinds of colors in the world. But with Dillon, he made her look at her world and how things lined up and how they worked. Dillon made everything she helped other people with personal for her.
Because he was the only guy she’d ever been in love with.
And the only thing that she hadn’t been able to set her mind to and accomplish.
He was her greatest passion. And her greatest frustration.
“So you did leave Chance, and stay away, because of Abi’s death,” Kit said.
He nodded. “I wasn’t grieving the way everyone seemed to think I should, so being away from it all was easier. Then they didn’t know that I’d moved on quickly, and I didn’t have to think about how heartless I was.”
She took a deep breath and asked an important question. “And how about now? Being back, seeing Abi’s family, seeing her house, seeing the butterfly sanctuary?”
Her family had planted a garden of flowers that attracted butterflies in the spring and summer in her memory. It was huge, taking up the entire east edge of the park. It was beautiful. And a constant reminder of Abi. Which was, of course, the point.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I think about her. Of course. But I’m ready to move on.”
Kit gave a soft laugh at that. “You’ve moved on, Dillon. You’ve been far away, doing amazing things, for years now.”
“I mean in a relationship,” he said, not allowing her to laugh it off. “I haven’t been serious about anyone, no long-term thing with anyone. I’ve had some girlfriends, of course.”
Kit rolled her eyes. Of course. Dillon Alexander was the full package. No doubt there had not just been girlfriends but women who’d hoped it would advance to the diamond-ring stage.
“But I haven’t had anything serious. No one I could imagine being with every day, for the rest of my life.”
Kit felt a tightness in her chest listening to him talk about being that serious with someone. Another advantage to his being in Houston . . . and Africa, for that matter . . . was not seeing him with other women. “It takes time, Dillon,” she said, desperately reaching for her psychiatrist cap. “It takes a number of relationships, sometimes, to figure out what you’re looking for.”
“I kept waiting for them to make me better,” he said. “And none of them did.”
She mentally pulled her hat down more firmly. “Make you better?” she asked, kind of wishing for her notebook.
“Make me a better person, a better doctor, a better thinker. Someone who would make me try harder and who wouldn’t let me get by on just being good-looking and charming.” He paused and gave her a grin. “It’s amazing what I can get by with.”
It wasn’t that amazing at all. Dillon was a good guy. He was intelligent and caring and treated women with respect and consideration. That made him better than 90 percent of the men out there on dating sites and meeting women in bars. Add in the fact that he had no addictions, could cook, and made good money, and he was most definitely a catch.
“What’s amazing is that you could fit that big head inside this little tent,” she said, instead of pointing out all the reasons he’d had women falling at his feet.
“There. That,” he said, pointing a finger at her nose.
“What?”
“That. That’s what none of them gave me.”
“The truth?”
“An ego check.”
Kit let that sink in. “You were looking for someone to keep you humble?”
“No. I’d already found her.” His voice had dropped to a sexy, low rumble. “And I’ve compared every woman to her since.”
She cleared her throat, but her voice still sounded scratchy when she said, “That’s pretty smooth.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, looking completely unapologetic. “But I don’t feel bad because it’s also true. You make me a better person, Kit.”
She couldn’t respond to that. It was . . . really nice. And she could easily say, “Ditto.”
“And the sex with you is the best I’ve ever had.”
She couldn’t help it—this was a sweet, even romantic moment, but she felt a surge of Damn right when he said that.
“And you’re very fucking cute.”
She sat looking at him for a long moment. His face was so familiar. His voice, his smile, the way he said certain things, the way his hair laid in the front, the shape of his hands—she’d studied, and absorbed, all of it for so long. She swore she could pick his hands out of a lineup.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“Yes, you’re fucking cute?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Yes. I’ll go on a date with you.”
He took a deep breath, then gave her a single nod. Then he reached for the marshmallows and the roasting stick. She watched him put two on the end and then extend them toward the fire.
“So, that’s that, then,” she said.
“That’s that,” he agreed. “Why don’t you start taking your clothes off now?”
Heat shot through her. “Oh?”
He looked over. That sexy, mischievous twinkle in his eye that made her want to do whatever was going through his creative, naughty mind. “I told you about the marshmallows and your tits. Let’s go.”
She laughed. It was like all the emotions that had balled themselves up in her chest and gut suddenly dissolved into an effervescent explosion of bubbles that rose up within her and made her feel light and happy.
It was either her grandmother’s hard cider. Or it was Dillon.
And either way, she had plenty of both for the rest of the night. And the talking was over. Thankfully. Though she couldn’t quite work up to being sorry it had happened. Dillon had supposedly been in love with her in high school.
“Why haven’t you come back before now?” she asked. Then bit her lip. She was keeping the talking going? When he had marshmallows in the fire?
He looked over. Then pulled the stick from the fire. “Because I loved it. I loved my time in the Guard, I loved med school, I loved the work in Africa and the craziness in the ER.”
While the idea of being the only thing he wanted out of life was romantic, Kit appreciated that he truly had found work he was passionate about and that he was honest about that. “But you’re here now. It’s not as challenging and crazy now.”
“I’m good with less crazy. And it’s challenging in a new way,” he said. “Taking care of people you’ve known your whole life, seeing their entire lives—their families, their work—seeing the way what you do for them, or can’t do for them, impacts all of that is a different kind of challenge.” He pointed at his chest. “It challenges me here. In the ER, the battle is just keeping them alive. Here, it’s about what being alive means to them.”
Kit stared at him. Everything was now crystal clear. Scary, but crystal clear. She wanted to go on a date with him. For the rest of her life.
She reached for the bottom of her top shirt and stripped it off. Dillon returned the marshmallows to the fire, without looking away from her for an instant. She pulled off the second, third, and fourth shirts as well. She had just tossed her bra to the side when Dillon pulled the perfectly toasted marshmallows from the fire. He blew on them as he studied her.
Then he said simply, “Come here.”