Chapter Eight
Shane made a right turn onto Sawmill Road and glanced at his rearview mirror to ensure the Tahoe behind him followed.
Annoyance simmered under his skin. He’d lost the car battle again. Sinclair had met him at her door this morning and announced she’d drive herself because she planned to run errands after their tour. More like she planned to keep him at a distance.
He planned to keep her guessing. When she’d asked where they were going, he’d simply told her to follow him into town and park at the public lot the city had installed a few years ago to accommodate visitors and employees of the shops and businesses downtown. Disclosing their destination would have been the mature thing to do, but after a shitty night spent stewing over the scene he’d stumbled into yesterday evening in the Smiths’ kitchen, he’d bypassed mature. She was keeping a secret from him, and he was just petty enough to give her a taste of her own medicine.
Seeing Sinclair and her mother standing close, arguing in rapid whispers, had told him there was an elephant in the room. The caged look on her face when he’d cleared his throat had told him plainly enough the elephant was him.
She didn’t want to talk about it. That much was clear. But the defensiveness she’d thrown at him from day one was starting to piss him off. If she had something to say, she could say it to his face. He deserved that much. No, things hadn’t gone the way they’d planned ten years ago, and yes, he’d fumbled the ball. But she’d ended the game. That call had been all hers. No discussion. No dialogue of any kind. She’d imposed the forfeit with a wall of silence he’d been in no position to break through—then. The USMC had owned his ass, and they hadn’t been inclined to give him time off to go confront the underage girl dodging his calls and sending his letters back unopened.
Consider her the one that got away and move on.
Screw that. Things were different now. He was here, and they were on a level playing field. She could use silence, or sarcasm, or plain old evasion, but none of those tricks would work on him. He was going to shatter her precious wall.
He signaled and slowed to make the turn into public parking. Unwilling to provide her with any clue of their specific destination, he slid into a slot in the dead center of the lot.
She pulled in next to him.
Brace yourself, baby girl, he thought and turned away to gather up his phone, keys, and wallet from the caddy between the front seats. A few seconds later he approached her Tahoe.
She sat still and straight in the driver’s seat, her long hair spilling like ink over the shoulders of a snuggly, off-white poncho-type thing, her chin flirting with the folded edge of the turtleneck. She stared out the window, ostensibly taking in the dichotomy of downtown Magnolia Grove, where buildings put up over a century ago served as a backdrop to the ebbing rush hour bustle of laptop-toting commuters fixated on their phone screens. In reality, he sensed she was a million miles away from all of it—the bustle, the buildings. Him.
A little flinch from her as he opened her door announced she’d dialed back into the here and now. “Where are we going?”
The question sounded casual enough, but Sinclair’s pale cheeks and the tight press of her lips suggested more than idle curiosity. She hid her eyes behind dark sunglasses, even though the morning clouds crowding the skyline promised rain.
“You’ll see.” He offered her a hand as she slid out of the car, and kept the light hold on her arm as he steered them toward the west end of the lot and the two-level, brick building with rounded front edges and other deco flourishes proclaiming it a landmark of late 1930s architecture.
She dug in her heels and turned to him, eyebrows so high they showed above the rims of her sunglasses. “The bus depot?”
“A very important entry and exit point in the event of certain emergencies.” Also a risky choice, considering the last time they’d been here together, they’d been teenagers, pledging their love to each other and promising no amount of time or distance would tear them apart. Then—big surprise—it had, leaving a sting of regret ten years had never completely erased. Maybe the breakup had been inevitable, given their ages, and everything else, but if he hoped to put the past behind them, they needed to have the conversation she’d been ducking for over a week. Assign blame, if that’s what it took. He’d shoulder his share, but he would damn well know exactly what failings she was holding him accountable for, because at this point, he wasn’t sure of anything except there was something she wasn’t telling him.
Everything he knew with a certainty about them ended here, at this depot, which made it the obvious place to start the what-happened-after discussion. The one that took them places she didn’t want to go. He gave her arm a little tug. “Come on.”
She fell into step beside him but took her arm back and hid both beneath the folds of her poncho. For warmth? Or to discourage him?
Yeah, sorry. Not that easily discouraged. He moved in close enough her shoulder brushed his arm as they walked. Memories swept in, more sensory than visual. Last time they’d taken this walk together, he’d had her nestled against him, anxious to soak up every touch until the last possible second. She’d rested her head on his shoulder, face pressed against his neck, hands clinging to his waist, relying on him to guide them. Together they’d woven themselves into a private cocoon of exquisite misery.
He hadn’t needed to dissuade family from coming down to see him off. His parents had moved the week before. He’d packed his shit, sold his truck, and sofa-surfed with friends until his ship-out date. Her parents had thought she was at the mall in Norcross doing some last-minute shopping for her summer in Europe. Instead, she’d met him behind the Presbyterian Church, and within five seconds of sliding into the shiny little Beetle she’d gotten for sweet sixteen, she’d somehow managed to straddle his lap, and he’d buried himself inside her one last time, rocking together with desperate enthusiasm right there in the shadow of the church. Later, riding on the bus to Parris Island, he’d tasted her on his tongue, smelled her on his skin, and endured a hollow ache of longing so deep it had felt like a hole in his chest.
He held open one side of the double glass doors and ushered her inside the depot. She perched her sunglasses on the top of her head and looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. “They’ve expanded since…” Her voice drifted off.
True. The once bare-bones facility now boasted two ticket windows, an electronic schedule board detailing a dozen arrivals and departures, a waiting area full of interlocked seats, and a concession counter complete with a couple of bistro tables lined up against the window wall facing the lot now designed to accommodate up to three buses at once. They’d hit it during a lull, after the morning rush of local and long-distance commuters but before the next wave of arrivals from regional locations, so only a few people occupied the waiting area.
He headed in the direction of the concession counter. “Coffee?”
“Um. Sure.”
“I’ll get it. Have a seat.”
With a less-than-enthusiastic nod, she headed to one of the tables. He took a moment to enjoy the way faded denim hugged her thighs and disappeared into tan sheepskin boots, and then went to the counter and ordered. The bored guy behind the register tore himself away from his phone long enough to fill Shane’s order and promptly resumed crushing candy.
Shane made his way over to the table she’d selected, aware her guarded eyes watched his every step. When he put her coffee in front of her, he said, “Let’s talk.”
Reading body language sometimes took keen observational skills, but not in this case. She pulled her arms off the table and crossed them. The rubber sole of one boot tapped out a soft, impatient rhythm on the black-and-white tile floor. Interpretation? Hell no.
“About what?”
He rested his forearms on the table, and leaned into the space she’d vacated, deliberately pursuing her. Silently telling her he wasn’t going to back off this time. “About secrets. Specifically, the one you’re keeping from me.”
Her chin went up. “You’re paranoid.”
“You’re defensive. You’re holding something against me, but I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe I don’t appreciate how you glide back into town after a decade and expect me to be waiting—ready and willing to pick up where we left off?”
Not fair. He hadn’t expected a thing, and she knew it, but he also recognized someone trying to pick a fight to avoid a conversation. He refused to return the verbal body shot and instead focused on the real question buried in hers. “Where did we leave off, Sinclair? I remember standing right there”—he pointed out the window—“telling you I loved you and listening to you tell me the same. And then you never responded to my letters or answered my calls—”
“What letters? What calls? You mean the ones that didn’t start until months after you left?” She leaned in now, too, her icy reserve burned away by a wave of genuine outrage. “You blew me off for the entire summer—longer. By the time you finally decided to give me the time of day, I—”
“You moved on.” He lowered his voice. “It’s fine, Sinclair. I get it. You could have dropped me a line to let me know as much, but you were only sixteen, and maybe you didn’t know how to say it. You don’t have any reason to feel guilty or defensive.”
She jerked upright as if he’d slapped her. “Fuck you, Shane Maguire. I don’t feel guilty, or defensive. I’m angry. Because—because—” She literally clamped her mouth shut, turned away, and inhaled a deep breath through her nose.
There was the wall again. This time frustration got the better of him. “Because it took me longer to get in touch than you expected? I was in boot camp, for God’s sake, not on a vacation. We talked about this before I left. The Marines owned me during that time. Thirteen weeks of no cell phone, no texting, no computers. Limited opportunity to write, but I couldn’t do that anyway, because you were in Europe all summer. I would maybe…maybe…earn a phone call—”
“I had my phone the entire time. It never rang. Not once. There was a point when I would have sold my soul just to hear your voice. I marked off every day of thirteen weeks on my calendar, waiting like some pathetic idiot. But after four months of silence? No. Just…no.” Still stubbornly looking away, she brought her coffee to her lips.
The sharp note of betrayal in her voice stirred his guilty conscience. Turns out he had defensive reflexes as well. “Jesus Christ, Sinclair, that was ten fucking years ago. Something I didn’t plan happened my first week of boot camp, okay, and it screwed up my timeline. So maybe you could cut me a little slack?”
Coffee exploded from her mouth on a choking cough. She coughed again, into a napkin this time, and then drew in a careful breath. When she lowered the napkin, she looked at him as if she wanted to slug him. “Something unplanned happened to you?”
Fuck it. The incident was not his proudest moment, but apparently even after all this time, he needed to justify being out of touch longer than expected. He waited until she stopped mopping coffee from the table and looked at him again. “I got sent to the brig for decking the drill instructor. One of the recruits in my unit fell out during a training run. The guy—Salcido—was down, clutching his knee and insisting he couldn’t move, but the DI wouldn’t back off. He kept yelling, ‘On your feet, recruit.’ Salcido kept saying he couldn’t. Then the DI kicked him, and I lost it. Next thing I knew I was standing over my DI, with my knuckles on fire, watching his eye swell shut.”
“You came to his defense,” she said, sounding strangely distant. Her face went blank.
“I came this close to getting bounced”—he held up his hand, finger and thumb a half inch apart—“but the other recruits in the unit spoke up. Even so, it took three weeks for the Corps to investigate the incident and clear me. They funneled me into the next group of new recruits, and I spent the following twelve weeks on my best fucking behavior, because there is zero margin for error during a second chance.”
“I-I can only imagine.” Color slashed across her cheekbones, like crimson flags against her otherwise pale skin.
“Now you know the whole story. So, here’s the thing, Sinclair—the U.S. Marines saw fit to give me a second chance. Maybe you could do the same?”
…
Her heart stuttered in her chest. So stupid, because explanations hardly mattered after all this time. Ultimately, his didn’t change a thing. But even so, her world tilted off-center, leaving her scrambling to rebalance her internal compass and get it pointed in a safe direction. That turned out to be the door, and after mumbling a weak-assed, “I’m not doing this,” through numb lips, she managed to propel herself toward it, dodging a wave of passengers flooding into the depot from a Greyhound she hadn’t even noticed arriving.
Over the din, she heard Shane call her name, but she kept moving, shoving through the double doors and gulping in breaths of burning-cold air as she broke into a run. A car screeched to a halt to avoid plowing into her. Shane called her name again—alarmed this time—but also farther away. She dug her key out of her pocket while she rushed to her car. Thank God for keyless entry and a start-button ignition, because shaking hands would have prevented her from sliding a key into a lock. The battery juiced life into the dashboard displays, but the engine thwarted her for one panicked second. She gunned the gas and got no response, until she finally realized she still had it in park. She shoved the stick to drive, and the Tahoe lurched forward.
A hand slammed down on her hood. She jumped, and looked over in time to watch Shane shout her name once more. Anger dominated his voice now. She jerked the wheel left and shot toward the parking lot exit, bouncing hard as her tire hit the curb on her way out.
Urban off-roading, she thought hysterically and gripped the wheel a little harder. All she could think of was getting away. Getting herself under control before she said something she couldn’t unsay about old mistakes she couldn’t undo.
Her cell buzzed from the depths of the purse she’d left on her passenger seat. After a moment it stopped, then started again. She ignored the noise but steered at a more cautious speed through downtown. With every mile she put between her and the bus depot, she breathed a little easier—until she got stuck behind a cement truck just outside the Whitehall Plantation and noticed a black Range Rover coming up fast in her rearview mirror.
Adrenaline kicked in again. The kind that took control of her nervous system without any oversight from her brain. She hit the accelerator and pulled into the oncoming lane. A flatbed hauling a backhoe lumbered toward her, chugging up the hill with all its unwieldy momentum. She floored it, zipping past the cement truck and swinging back into her lane before the flatbed driver finished blowing his horn at her.
The sharp turn into her driveway forced her to slow down, but apparently, Shane possessed advanced driving skills, because he took it much faster. The Rover skidded into the turn, took a hard, fishtailing drift to account for physics, and then the big back tires spat gravel as he accelerated out of the maneuver.
Physics might not be her strong suit, but she knew math well enough. How long would it take one mad-as-hell man driving forty miles per hour to overtake one chickenshit woman driving half that speed? More than the twenty feet she had left in her driveway. Running wouldn’t work. The situation called for a new strategy. Control the confrontation. Shane was about to meet the stone wall of her resolve.
She pulled the Tahoe to a halt, jumped down from the driver’s seat, and slammed the door while the Rover screeched to a halt. The driver’s door opened before the vehicle completely stopped moving. That should have given her pause, but she gritted her teeth and set off toward him at a righteous pace…until he got out of the car and she saw his face.
Holy shit. Crashing headfirst into a Peterbilt would have been the easy way out. She barely registered drawing to a stop, possibly taking a step back, as he closed in on her like a dark angel—a dark angel looking deceptively mortal with his disheveled hair, black crewneck sweater, and dark jeans, but the fury coming off him like unearthly energy belied anything casual in his intentions. It electrified the air around him, turning the atmosphere volatile and dangerous.
A stone wall, she reminded herself and lifted her chin. “Get out.”
He just kept coming, forcing her to cede ground until the back end of the Tahoe brought her up short. “If you ever do anything that reckless again, I swear to God you won’t sit for a week.”
Her control faltered, and something snide and impulsive took over. “Oh, honey, when it comes to reckless, you just saw the tip of the iceberg. You should run now, before I really show you the meaning of the word.”
He moved closer, until they stood toe-to-toe. “Bring it, baby girl. Take your best shot.”
The crack of her palm connecting with his cheek shattered the silence. His head snapped back and to the side. Vibrations shimmered up her arm while red bloomed on his cheek. A stunned part of her reeled at the unpremeditated violence inside her. She wasn’t above taking a shot at someone—she’d literally slapped sense into her own brother-in-law just a few months ago—but up until now she’d always known what she intended to do before she did it. This time she’d been a passenger in her body. A detached observer. Slowly, he turned his face back to her, his eyes cool and assessing. “Ten years, and that’s the best you can do?”
Detachment burned away so fast she went lightheaded, and control spun far out of reach. She felt her muscles tensing this time. Heard the whoosh of her hand cutting through the air, before another crack echoed around them. Words with a venomous taste coiled on her tongue, so foul and bitter she spat them out. “I hate you.”
Big hands cupped her jaw, holding her in place while hard shivers rattled through her. “No, you don’t,” he murmured and lowered his mouth to hers.
She wanted to pull away. She told herself to pull away. But God damn him, she couldn’t. And he knew it. He took his sweet time, moving his lips over hers in unhurried passes, conveying an unmistakable message with every slow assault. Hit at me all you want. I’m not going anywhere.
It shook her, that certainty—his absolute confidence, regardless of what she threw at him. Need swept in like a storm front, bigger than her anger and impervious to her boundaries. Her back arched to press their bodies closer, and his arm clamped around her waist to help her do it. “I do,” she insisted, knowing full well she was losing this battle. “I hate you…”
The words ended in a moan as he leaned into her, moving his chest over hers and dragging layers of fabric over her tight nipples.
“You hate this?” He reached under her poncho, under her camisole, and palmed her breasts. His hands were harder and rougher than they’d been in the old days, but it only made her reaction all the more forceful. Something far too intense to call pleasure tore through her, dissolving her muscles and buckling her knees.
He caught her, dragged her into his arms so her legs had no option but to wrap around his waist and her arms had no choice but to twine around his neck. Meanwhile, his mouth consumed whatever answer she might have given before it reached her lips. The trees whirled overhead as he moved, and the next thing she knew, he had her braced against the side of the Rover, one hand supporting her ass, the other busy inflicting an equally staggering caress to her other breast. “I hate it,” she managed, over another moan.
“I remember.” His ragged exhale fanned her raw lips. “I remember how much you hated this, too.”
A sharp cry of surprise jostled out of her when he hitched her up higher, shoved her clothes out of the way, and fastened his mouth on her breast. The contact immediately calmed something needy inside her, comforting an ache nobody over the last ten years had been able to soothe. Sensations, familiar and overwhelming as any long-overdue homecoming, wrung a grateful sigh out of her. She sagged forward, hugging his head, losing herself in the irresistible pull of the moment and the memories. Then his mouth began moving, and memories scattered as heat seared her from the inside out. Before, he’d always touched and kissed her breasts gently at first. Not now. He used lips and tongue and teeth to draw her in, widening his jaw to take…consume…devour.
His lack of restraint stripped her down to an elemental state, beyond flesh, or bone, to a few brutal pulse points—lips, nipples, and the biggest pulse of all, pounding relentlessly between her legs.
She couldn’t keep still. Her feet felt clumsy in her boots, but she dug the soles into his calves, clawed at his back through his sweater, and did the best she could to press every throbbing part of her against him. He must have felt her urgency. Must have. But he wouldn’t be rushed. He used that ruthless mouth on her until she couldn’t take any more. She gripped his hair and pulled hard enough to force his head up. Then she closed her eyes so she didn’t have to face him and slammed her mouth down on his.
After one heady moment allowing her ownership, he took control of the kiss. With a hand at the back of her head, he positioned her just where he wanted her and proceeded to plunge his tongue deep, retreat, and plunge again. Over and over, so her mouth filled with his taste, but it only made her hungry for more. Bigger, deeper, harder…more.
She struggled to work her hand between their bodies, but the way he had her pinned between cold steel and his hot, hard body prevented her from reaching her goal.
He eased back, lowering her by degrees until her toes scraped the gravel. When she was securely on her feet, he took her hand and guided it to the thick ridge straining the front of his jeans. Held it there, absolutely still for one long moment while a ridiculously attractive flush rose in his cheeks. He let out a tortured breath and lowered his forehead to hers. His dark gaze locked on her, he took his hand away and whispered, “How about this, Sinclair? Do you hate this?”
“Uh-huh.” Her hands shook as she tugged his fly open. “I hate it…” And then she was holding it, stroking, relearning landmarks the years had subtly altered—the smooth, blunt tip, the sensitive opening that still dragged a groan out of him when she explored it with her thumb, the flare of flesh marking the transition from head to shaft. It wasn’t until she’d wrapped her hand around the thickest part, wringing another low sound from his throat, that she realized the pressure in her chest was building to match the pressure at her core. Longing took many forms, and all of them were about to have their way with her. And she wasn’t strong enough to stop any of it. Gripping his hips for balance, she dropped to her knees. “I really hate it,” she said again, then put her lips against the tip.
His head dropped forward, and his fingers tangled in her hair. “Jesus. Show me. Punish me.”
She took him into her mouth, leading with her tongue, stretching her lips to surround him. Taste and scent unleashed vivid, sensory flashbacks…the thrill of discovering every mysterious inch of him, the pride of making him tremble for her, the joy of hearing him say her name over and over again as he lost control. The memories stung her eyes and tightened her chest. Then he groaned and gave a rough, potentially involuntary thrust. The move generated heat, and friction, and raw new needs.
Desperate to satisfy them, she planted her knees, tipped her head to the most accommodating angle, and offered him everything. Just the way she’d learned to do during those long spring nights a lifetime ago.
“Fuck, Sinclair.” He gripped her chin and stared down at her. “You have no idea how much I missed you. You couldn’t possibly. Leaving you felt like losing a vital organ.” Then he thrust again, and again, in rapid succession. She’d braced for fast, and deep. Wanted it. But he remembered a few things, too—like how easily he could reduce her to a quivering mess by holding back, teasing her with quick, shallow strokes. Punishment, she discovered, cut both ways, and could be unbearably sweet as well as heartrendingly painful. Despite his restraining hand, she went deep, gorging herself on all of it—past, present, sweetness, pain…him—knowing full well it was too much, but still would never be enough.
A sob pushed its way into her throat. She choked it back and hoped he attributed the artless noise to her overeager struggle to take as much of him as she possibly could. His big hand stroked her jaw. “Easy, baby girl,” he murmured and then sliced her heart open with one careful fingertip, running it over her lips, tracing the seam where their bodies met. How had she forgotten the way he did that? Or how one simple gesture could make her feel so…cherished?
Except he’d taught her she wasn’t the kind of girl men cherished, and now he’d come back and undermined the lesson with a single explanation. How dare he? Because in doing so, he also took away her justification for distributing blame for what happened that summer to him, which meant she had to accept it all. “I hate you,” she said, reminding him, reminding herself, and then lowered her head to finish him. Exorcise him. Claim one harshly honest moment and be done with him.
But a strong arm hooked under her shoulder and hauled her up until her face hovered just millimeters from his. Her lips throbbed from the friction of his cock sliding between them. His taste coated her tongue. Deprivation set in, sudden and painful, but maddeningly patient green eyes stared into hers, taking stock, unquestionably seeing the deprivation, and the need, but looking past them to things she didn’t want him to see. Didn’t want anyone to see.
“No, you don’t. You wish you did, but you don’t.”
“I do. I—”
His mouth slammed down on hers, cutting her off. The sense of deprivation immediately subsided, replaced by the bite of his teeth and the lash of his tongue. His leg slid between hers. A hand on her ass lifted her onto her toes. Her hands found his shoulders, and she held on as he rocked her against his hard thigh.
Her moan of pleasure couldn’t be stifled, nor her body’s greedy response. Within moments she was fighting the steady rhythm he’d set, grinding against him like some kind of animal, while their mouths came together, parted, came together again.
“You missed me,” he whispered. “Say it.”
Jesus, she had. Desperately. “No.”
Hands reached between them and tore her jeans open, then long, sure fingers delved into her panties, stroked there long enough to ensure they both knew how wet she was, and then his lips curved into a smile. “Part of you did.”
“I hate to break it to you, Shane, but a lot of men can do that for me.” She tossed her head back in a patented bitch move. “A lot of men have.”
His eyes darkened, but his smile kicked up a notch, to downright cocky. “Nobody can do it for you like me, though.”
That was all the warning she got. Her breath burst out in a shocked gasp as he slid two fingers inside her, curling upward to let her know what was coming. The heel of his hand settled against her clit like it had been made to fit there. She writhed. Couldn’t stop herself.
“You remember how I first taught you to come, baby girl? Just like this? You’d squirm around, like you’re doing, trying like hell to get yourself there. Then I’d reach up inside this tight…little…pussy”—he reached as he spoke, and she rose up onto her tiptoes—“find the magic spot, and you’d come all over my hand. Just for me.”
He found it. Unerringly. Her vision blurred, and she came in a rush—as if she’d been waiting for his touch for ten long years.