He was literally my ride. And Carmen and Sully’s. And Micah and Leo’s. Luckily and unfortunately, I now lived a whole three blocks up the street, and could walk it. And Allie and Bash had a vehicle they could bum a ride from. And, I already knew that someone was driving Nick and Lanie’s car to the hospital.
The ambulance had left. I didn’t have to turn around. They were all good. Lanie was good. The paramedics had confirmed that she was now stable, she was feeling fine, and the hospital would take care of all the post-birth details and check her out for clotting or blood pressure issues. Baby Bailey looked good, had good color and all those things they look for in newborns.
I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t look to see if anyone had witnessed that kiss. A kiss that had been probably the most chaste he and I had ever done and yet rocked me to my friggin’ core. It was real. I closed my eyes and felt it again, drawing a shaky breath.
It was so real.
How had that happened? How did I let that happen? And more importantly, how had I let him just leave?
You’re so terrified of being comfortable, of enjoying something real, that you’re sabotaging your own life.
He was right. I’d done it over and over. In his office, at the restaurant, at the meeting, on the boat, and now here. Time after time, I’d pushed it away, refusing to believe in something that could hit and take root so quickly. Being so afraid to deserve something amazing that I couldn’t even recognize it.
My shoes squished on the pavement as my feet started moving. I felt the pattern speeding up, until I was jogging through the parking lot toward Main. I heard Micah call my name, but that was a direction I couldn’t go yet. I couldn’t redeem my mistake until I knew what the fix was. If it wasn’t too late.
The irony of that thought wasn’t lost on me.
Breathing hard, I pushed open the shop door, and ran upstairs for my keys and wallet, tossing the wet hoodie on the floor and grabbing a sweatshirt to pull on over my tank top. Everything else stayed. I didn’t have time to think that out, to change, to be a girl. To maybe brush the funky pond crap out of my hair or wash my face. Put on shoes that wouldn’t give me jungle rot. I had to leave. I had to go now.
“Gabi?” Mom called as I ran back downstairs.
“Gotta run,” I said. “I’ll be back later.”
“Everything okay?” Drew asked, looking up from an order.
I paused just long enough to meet her eyes.
“Hopefully,” I said, huffing. “Oh, by the way—Lanie had her baby—stopped breathing—okay now and at the hospital.” I sucked in a breath and held my side where it was starting to hurt.
“What?” Mom said, starting to come around the counter.
I held up a hand. “Everyone’s okay. Call Micah—she’s there.”
“Why are you all wet?” Drew asked.
“Dixie threw me overboard,” I said. “Bart—”
“Overboard of what?” Mom said. “What the hell have you been doing?”
“Oh—” I started laughing hysterically, which didn’t help the gulping of air. “By the way, I’m rich now. Remind me to—fill you in on that one. Gotta go, love y’all.”
The doorbell rang overhead as I slid out the door as fast as I’d come in. I’d pay hell for that exit, but it couldn’t be helped. I was on a mission. My phone was sitting right there in the console where I’d left it when I came home from Drew’s, with the texts from Micah, from Carmen. Nothing from Thatcher.
I scrolled through my recent contacts to find what I was looking for. When I did, I hit the button and put it on speaker, tossing the phone into the passenger seat. I pulled out onto Main and listened to it ring.
“Hello?” said a male voice.
“Jackson?” I said. “It’s Gabi Graham. This is going to sound odd, but I need your brother’s address.”
* * * *
I didn’t take him seriously when Jackson said GPS would fail me. I was too nervous, too focused on breathing, on not passing out from hyperventilation. I put in the information, 92 Red Oak, Cherrydale, and let the other advice—about ignoring the right turn it would tell me to do at the red light, and turning left when it gave up and started rerouting on long loop because the backass twisty road they grew up on had its own little world—go right out the window.
Thankfully, Jackson at least had the grace to not ask me why I wasn’t just hitting Micah up for the info, even though I was pretty sure he was clear on that answer.
“Jesus, this town is smaller than Charmed, how hard can one road be?” I muttered, circling back past the same red big-mouthed bass mailbox on the corner for the third time.
Rerouting…
I took the only choice I hadn’t taken yet, and that was what looked like a narrow driveway that disappeared around some trees. Why the hell not? If it led to a house, I’d get out and ask where the living hell Red Oak was. It didn’t turn out to be a driveway, however, it led to more small streets branching off and fewer houses on them. The sign on the last one made my stomach jump up into my throat.
Red Oak.
“This is a bad idea,” I whispered. “I mean, what are you hoping to prove? That you suck at stalking?”
I hovered at the turn, willing my car to turn around without me doing it. No. I couldn’t be that person. That coward who stayed terrified of moving forward, of embracing something real. Even if he wasn’t still willing to take the chance.
Take a leap. Take a chance. Take one for me.
Tears filled my eyes as Mr. Bailey’s voice filled my head.
“Shit,” I whispered, swiping under them. I pulled down the visor mirror and recoiled in horror, slamming it back up. “Yeah, that ship has sailed.” I shut my eyes. “What am I doing?”
The memory of his kiss. Of him holding me on the floor of my house. Of all the “almost” moments of the past two weeks.
Two weeks. This was crazy.
“Big girl panties, Gabi,” I said under my breath, as I turned onto Red Oak.
More twists and turns awaited as I chanted that, adding a tune to it as I started passing houses, spread out so far that they probably never saw each other. And only a few had numbers. Awesome. I glared at my phone’s GPS, but it had long since given up the fight. I crept along a hard curve, and took a deep breath. Jackson had said it was on the left, and that there were trees. Well…there were trees friggin’ ev—
I hit my brakes and nearly swallowed my tongue.
Standing—no, leaning—against a mailbox, like one of those cowboy silhouettes, arms crossed over his chest and gazing toward the ground, was Thatcher Roman.
“Sweet Jesus,” I whispered, as my heart did some Olympic-worthy somersaults.
Breathing in fast and lowering my window, I pulled into the driveway alongside him, praying I wouldn’t say something ridiculous.
“Expecting mail?” I asked.
Yeah. That’s what I said.
Those hazel eyes lifted from the ground as if pulling rocks from it.
“Expecting you.”
I wasn’t expecting that. Any and all comebacks flew off with the dust.
“Why?” I finally managed.
Thatcher turned and started up the gravel driveway, hands in his pockets. Seriously?
I mentally banged my head on the steering wheel. Thanks, Jackson.
“He said I needed to come wait out here because you’d never find the place if I didn’t,” he said.
The nerve. To think I had been anxious and thinking all warm and gooey thoughts. Screw that. I could go back to Charmed and hit up the bakery for warm and gooey, with a hell of a lot less stress.
Except that I’d come out here to make a point to myself, and to clear the air with him, and by God, I was going to do it. I slammed my car into park and pocketed my keys, following him at a faster pace, my feet still squishing. As I got closer, he turned around, a confused look on his face.
He was staring at my feet.
“You’re still wearing your wet shoes?” he asked. “Your—your pants? Why?”
“I didn’t have time to change.”
An eyebrow shot up. “Something pressing?”
I stopped a few feet away and folded my arms over my chest. “Maybe.”
“You need to get out of those wet clothes—” He stopped and closed his eyes. “You know what, I’m not going there. Do whatever you want to do.”
He turned to walk up the steps to his porch, and I heard those words again, strong and loud. Take a leap, Gabi.
“I am doing what I want to do,” I said, letting my arms go but then folding them back again as he turned back to face me. Protecting my core. Protecting my heart. “I came here. I want to be here.”
“Of course you do,” he said. “We’re alone. There’s no one to hide from.”
“And why is it so damned important that people see us?” I blurted. “That they know about us?”
Thatcher took a step toward me. “What is it they’d know?” he asked. “That we kissed in a parking lot? Or that we’ve messed around a little? Or would it go all the way back to the very first night at group when you knocked me on my ass and made me spend a week thinking about a woman I didn’t even know the name of. That I prayed to God I’d get to see again, and hoped on the other hand that I wouldn’t, because no one’s affected me like that in a hell of a long time.”
I had to force my mouth to form words.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He nodded slightly. “Yes, I did. Your turn.”
“What?” I said, taken aback. “My—”
“Turn,” he finished. “Yes. Why did you come here?”
“You’re awfully damn demanding, you know that?”
He shrugged. “I’m just standing in my front yard,” he said. “You’re the one who called my brother to find out where to find me. Not Micah, of course, because she’s evidently the evil queen that will curse us all.”
Heat, and not the good kind, rushed up through the top of my head, threatening to take my head with it.
“God, Thatcher, do you even get what could happen if—”
“Yes!” he yelled. “I swear to all that is holy that I’m smart enough to realize what the backlash could be. But you know what? I don’t care. My sister is a grown-up and so am I. So are you. We’d all survive.”
“Would we?” I asked, feeling a burning of emotion in my throat as the déjà vu of the words hit me. I’d said the very same thing after the apartment escapade. Why did it feel so much more ominous now?
He took another step forward, and I held up my chin. I would not lose it.
“You’re scared of being hurt again,” he said. “I get that. And I’m sorry I threw that out there at the meeting last night, that was me just reacting and it was wrong. That was private between us.” Another step, and my breathing got shallower. I could touch him if I really wanted to. “But you want to know what scares me and really ticks me off? Watching two people nearly die in front of me, literally within minutes of each other, and then worrying about petty stupid things like who sees what, because time is too fucking short.”
He stopped and took a shaky breath that was more anger than angst, and turned away from me, walking up the steps. I blinked two tears free and whisked them away while I took the seconds to pull in a deep breath. He pulled the screen door open, and it was now or never.
Take the leap.
“You scare the shit out of me,” I said in a rush. He stopped and sighed, like he was exhausted. Yeah, well, welcome to the club. “You asked why I came? That’s why. You’re as real as it gets, Thatcher, and that goes against everything I planned for myself. Yet, when I’m not with you, it’s all I can think about and when I am, I’m just—drowning in it.” I blew out a steadying breath as he let the door go and turned back, his downward gaze focused on something far away. “It terrifies me how much I want you. All of—” I stopped and ran my fingers through my damp hair, my thoughts pinging everywhere. “Not just what we’ve been playing with, but everything. I want everything.” I gasped as I heard those words out loud, and Thatcher’s eyes locked on mine. “It’s not just about losing Micah or jeopardizing the business anymore, it’s about—” I put my hands on my hips to steel myself, and closed my eyes, my chest fighting the emotion that threatened to crest. “I watched you walk away like you were never coming back, and it broke me. I never wanted to catch feelings, but shit, you’re—you are going to kill me,” I whispered.
I heard his footsteps and kept my eyes closed, and when his mouth landed on mine, I let my body feel its way. Hands were in my hair, holding my head so that every kiss went deeper. Every taste drove me a little more mad. The warm scent of him swam around me, blanketing me with a need so staggering I felt as though I’d never get enough. All that anxiety and emotion that wanted to overtake me channeled into feeling more, kissing more, tasting, touching, moving up his body until my fingers raked his hair, pulling him in to me. He made a little growling noise, and my feet left the ground as he picked me up and I wrapped my legs around him.
“Would you like to come in?” he breathed against my mouth, carrying me up the steps.
“I don’t know. Any siblings hiding in there?” I asked against his, moving my lips to his ear. “Anyone expected to need you urgently? Bang a door down?”
He pinned me against the door as I said it, making me gasp as his hardness ground between my legs and fingertips dug into my flesh.
“The only person I care about needing me right now is you,” he said.
“Done,” I breathed.
In seconds, we were inside. My sweatshirt was history as I slid down his body. His T-shirt went with it. I kicked off my shoes, moved a few more steps and my wet tank top and bra came off in one swift motion, my breasts filling his hands and his hot mouth.
I moaned as his tongue sucked at my nipple, fisting his hair in my fingers. We were flying again. Screaming down the tracks, out of control and about to derail, but I didn’t care. We’d built up to this multiple times already, and something needed to derail before we both lost our minds.
Fingers peeled my wet sweatpants down my body, and he discarded them, picking me up and setting me on the cool marble of his kitchen countertop in nothing but my lacy panties.
“Your skin is cold,” he said, sliding his hands up my legs and looping his fingers on my panties.
A shiver that had nothing to do with cold ran through me.
“Yours will be too when you lose these,” I said, reaching for his zipper.
“Not yet,” he said, sucking in a quick breath as my fingers flipped the button and ran just below his waistband. “I need you, first.” His eyes held mine as he slid my panties down my legs, only dropping his gaze when he came back up.
“Sweet Jesus, Gabi,” he said under his breath. His hands moved slowly back upward, while his mouth trailed over my shoulders, my collarbone, and ever so achingly slowly over my breasts. Teasing my nipples to rock-hard pebbles while his fingers drew little circles inside my thighs. It was maddening and intoxicating, and had me moving in a rhythm already. My fingers fisting in his hair, pulling him closer, begging him for more with my body.
“Lie back for me,” he said finally, his breath hot as wet kisses trailed down my belly.
I was shaking as his lips and tongue stopped just above ground zero and moved sideways, dropping kisses back and forth on either side. Squirming with need, my mind bursting with anticipation, I nearly cried when his tongue made landfall, teasing at first with little tastes then circling in a slow dance around my clit.
It had been so long. That—that guy who—whatever his name was—he wasn’t much for this particular—
Thatcher’s lips closed in on the deal, and I bucked against him, crying out in pleasure.
“Oh, God,” I moaned. “Thatch—oh fuck—”
His fingers had joined the game, sliding inside me and curling upward for a slow caress, mocking the delicious tongue action. My legs wrapped around his head of their own accord, gyrating against his mouth. I couldn’t stop.
“Fuck,” he muttered, the gritty vibration of the word against my clit making me grip the countertop edge.
I cried out as he sucked harder, the build coming from my toes, and—oh God, everything was curling—climbing through my veins like heavy molasses, pushing—pushing—I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t take any more. Then everything in me exploded.
Sounds I didn’t recognize broke loose from me, filling the room with guttural ecstasy. I rode that sexy mouth till I had nothing left, no thoughts, no fears, no anxiety, just a limp puddle of flesh struggling to catch a breath. But when he stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the look in his eyes said he was nowhere near done with me.
I smiled and sat up. “Well, that was quite the appetizer, Clark,” I said, taking control of his zipper and releasing him into my hands as his eyes went feral with desire. “When do I get the entrée?”