Chapter Twenty-One

Landon

 

My phone rings. And rings. And Goddamn rings.

I ignore it. With Luci so warm and close beside me, it’s easy. Sunlight streams through the large windows. In the distance, the sea’s lyrics calls out a good morning. Or afternoon. Can’t really say I know what time it is. Can’t really say I care.

Ever since we started seeing other, I’ve looked forward to waking up with Luci naked in my arms. I knew it would happen, we’ve grown so close. I just didn’t expect it to mean as much as it did. But I suppose I didn’t expect it to mean as much the first time.

Last night was different than the first time she came home with me. I like what she did, and how hard she took me. Her aggression was a turn on, making me hot and surging my lust several degrees.

I wanted to return everything she gave me. But when I flipped her around and saw the look on her face, I couldn’t do that to her.

She made herself vulnerable to me, in her actions and in what she claimed. I make her happy she’d said. It was amazing to hear and what I want. But to then hear happiness was something she’s never had was enough to tear me open.

The final blow came when she told me she loved me. I saw what it took for her to be so honest. I saw it in her gentle features and how it left her raw when she looked at me. Whether she planned it or not, Luci had exposed her soul. She wanted me, sure, but I wanted something better.

Lust is one thing.

Luci is something more.

My eyes close and I settle back against her, only to groan when the phone starts ringing again, and again, and again.

Luci stirs, the strands of her hair tickling my nose. “Babe?” she says.

God damn, she has the nicest way of saying, “Answer the fucking phone.” I grin, although that ring has me ready to smash the phone to bits.

I flop over and away from where I’m curled against her, swearing when I knock my phone off the nightstand. I reach it as it stops ringing, noting two missed calls from Trin. I place it on the stand, guessing it will ring in five, four, three—

Ring. Damn. Ring.

“Hello?” I mumble.

“You still in bed?” Trin asks.

I mutter something that may or not have been polite. She laughs. “Why, Landon, what on earth are you still doing in bed at this hour?”

She’s lucky I like her. “Did you need something, or did you just call to piss me off?”

“My, you’re cranky. What’s wrong, couldn’t sleep?”

“Trin,” I mumble.

“Poor thing, were you up all night, tossing and turning, trying to get just right?”

“Trin!”

She sighs, ignoring me per usual. “I remember that feeling. The only difference is now when Callahan and I are up past ten it’s because the baby’s up, not because we’re reliving the night of his conception. Although the other night, Cal, Jr. did go down early. We were able to sneak onto our deck. Have I mentioned how limber my man is—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I say.

“Why? This is where the story gets good.”

“I’m sure it does. Just as I’m sure I don’t want to hear it,” I tell her. “You want to talk about what you and your man do, call Becca, that’s what she’s there for.”

“Oh, believe me, I do. Why just the other night I told her about the time me and Callahan were out in the woods and—”

“Trin,” I beg, falling back against the mattress. “Knock it off.”

Luci giggles beside me. I turn, sweeping back her hair to kiss her neck.

“Is that Luci I hear? Oh, what am I saying, of course she’s there. How could she let a catch like you go? Lovely girl, just can’t wait to see her, or talk to her again. Put her on, will you?”

“You want to speak to Luci?” I say, lifting off her.

Luci adjusts what remains of the bedsheets around her, smiling as Trin yaps away.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Trin asks. “She’s all sorts of nice, pretty too. Are her eyes lavender? I thought they were. I haven’t had a good look at them. But I’m sure you have all those times you’ve whispered sweet nothings in her ear, between praising your sugary sweet sister, I mean. You have praised your sugary sweet and intelligent sister, haven’t you? What am I asking? Of course you have!”

“She can hear you,” I say, when Luci laughs. “Not that it’s hard.”

Trin doesn’t miss a beat. “Well in that case, put her on. I don’t want her thinking I’m rude or that I’m talking about her instead of to her.”

Luci holds out her hand. I stare at her palm, as I continue to talk to Trin. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” Trin says.

“Don’t embarrass her,” I warn. “And don’t embarrass me.”

“Now, why would I do a thing like that?” Trin asks.

“Because you’re you and that’s just what you do.”

Despite my well-founded reservations, I concede and hand Luci the phone. “Hello?” she says.

“Luci, I’m so glad to find you there. Landon is such a good man, and I’m not saying that because I love him. He can be annoying, I know, like when he leaves the toilet seat up or squeezes the toothpaste from the center instead of from the bottom. But we all can’t be perfect. Anyway, we’re having dinner at my parents’ house tonight and Momma and I would just love for you to join us.”

Luci turns enough that the sheet falls away, revealing the swell of her breast. She seems hot, bless her heart. I do the right thing and pull the sheet the remainder of the way. She yanks it back up, narrowing her eyes and pointing at me.

But damn it she’s hot. I don’t want my woman to suffer.

“That’s so nice of you to think of us,” she says. Stop it, she mouths when I snatch the sheet away and toss the crumpled mess to the floor.

Stop being so damn sexy, she means.

“What would you like us to bring?” she asks instead.

She squeaks when I pull her onto my lap, my fingers sliding over the round globes of her ass.

“Just yourselves,” Trin says. “We’re having crown roast.”

“Sounds wonderful,” she stammers. She points at me. Behave, she mouths.

To be honest, I don’t know exactly what she said. She might have meant “more” or “don’t stop” or something like “I can’t live without you, you sexy beast. Kindly pleasure me with all your alpha might.”

All I know is, Luci enjoys art. To be nice I start painting the Mona Lisa across her breasts with my tongue.

“I’d love to bring something if I can,” she manages, her body shuddering when my teeth graze the stiffening points of her breasts. “Would you like dessert?”

“Oh, yes, I would,” I murmur between her breasts.

Poor thing is jerking so hard she screws up my perfect portrait and I have to start all over again.

I return to her nipple seeing how that’s probably what Mona would want.

“When would you like us to come?”

“The sooner the better,” I whisper, dragging my tongue further down.

“What time can you get here?” Trin asks.

My fingers turn circles against her back. “Later, much later,” I mutter.

“Six?” Luci asks, her lashes fluttering.

“Perfect,” Trin says. “Tell Landon—”

I swipe the phone. “Goodbye, Trin,” I say, and disconnect.

The phone slides across the mattress when I toss it. “You hung up on your sister,” Luci accuses.

“And?” I say.

“And that was rude.”

“No, rude would be saying no dinner to make sweet love to you instead.” I think about it. “But my parents would understand if I opted for the lovemaking. They’re good like that.”

Her arms wrap around me. “You’re trouble, mister. I knew it from the start.”

“Then why didn’t you run away screaming?” I tug on her bottom lip. “Instead of flashing me like you did.”

She lifts a finger and drags it along my jaw. “I didn’t flash anything, but a smile.”

“That’s all you needed.” I pull her into a bear hug, she melts against me, her soft hair cascading along my arms. “You could have said no to dinner.”

I don’t have to see her to know she’s smiling. “I wouldn’t do that. Your family is so welcoming. I’d never want them to think I’m keeping you from them.”

Yet another thing that makes Luci so special. I trail my fingers down the sweep of her waist. “They would have understood. We came here for us, not them.”

“Does this mean you don’t want to have dinner with them?”

“No,” I say, realizing how much time with Luci and my family would mean to me. “I just want to make sure you want it too.”

“I do.” She kisses that delicate spot behind my ear. “They’re sweet. Like their son.”

“All right. We’ll go, later. For now, let’s just make it about us.”

The taut centers of her nipples graze my chest. If I allowed it, I’d let them get me hard and we’d pick up where we left off earlier this morning. Except the more I think about last night, the more I realize too many things have gone unsaid.

“I’m sorry about what happened.” I ease away from her slightly. “I mean what didn’t happen.”

I don’t have to spell it out. By the way her hand passes along my cheek and the gentle way she speaks, she knows what I’m talking about. “I don’t want you to tell me something you don’t feel.”

The problem is, I feel it. Fear can cripple a man, make him less than he is. Combine it with the heartache only betrayal can bring and it’s enough to fire that final bullet into his heart.

“I want to tell you something about me, something that happened during my marriage that I never got over.” I loosen my hold slightly. “Maybe then you’ll understand why I hold back.”

Her hands fall to hold mine, steeling herself for what she’s about to hear. “She hurt you, didn’t she?”

I nod slowly. As distant as that memory feels here with Luci this close to me, it’s a vicious undercurrent threatening to pull me down. “I thought we were okay,” I admit. “Not great, and definitely not perfect, but where we should be.”

“And where was that?” she asks.

“Married,” I say. But that’s all I can say me and Bernadette were.

Luci waits, not quite understanding what I mean. I do my best to explain as messed up as it sounds. “I’m not sure what I expected when I proposed. Maybe something better than what we had. I thought in showing her how committed I was, she would commit to our relationship and prove we did belong together.”

“It sounds like you had problems even before,” she says.

She’s not judging. If anything, she seems concerned.

I straighten my legs, keeping Luci on my lap. She hangs onto me, afraid to let me go. “We did, but I wanted us to be good together. You saw my parents, right? How dedicated they are even after all these years and how much they genuinely like each other.”

“They’re wonderful together,” she agrees quietly. “Something I’ve always dreamed of having.”

She means what she says which only makes me feel like more like an ass. “I never dreamed of it,” I confess. “Like a fool, I just assumed I’d have it.”

“What do you mean?”

It’s hard not to sound like an arrogant son of a bitch. I manage well enough. “My parents instilled a lot of confidence in me, praising me when I deserved it, all the while slapping me upside the head when they felt I deserved that, too. But since my achievements always seemed to outnumber my screw-ups, and because I honestly cared about the people around me, I thought I was a good man, and would get some good back.”

“You are a good man,” she interrupts. “And you’ve earned everything you have.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” I tell her, lifting my chin although I hadn’t realized it dropped. “But I wasn’t a smart man, not when it came to Bernadette. My folks knew each other only a couple of months before my father fell on one knee and asked my mother to marry him. He told me he knew she was his forever.” I press my lips, not wanting to admit what I do. “I expected the same thing to happen to me. In my head, I did all the right things, worked hard, earned my degree, did right by others. Why would marriage be any different? Why wouldn’t I pick the right one?”

Luci listens as she always does. I only wish I didn’t have so much to say.

“I wanted to help her,” I tell her, even though I’ve told Luci as much before. “It should have been a good thing, but it ended up blinding me to all her faults. Call it a superhero complex, but it’s like I needed to swoop in and save her.”

Save her from those damn clear heels and all that techno shit she used to dance to is more like it.

Luci’s shoulders droop and she seems to struggle to speak. “You’re sweet.”

“Ah.”

“And generous,” she adds, because I’m not feeling like enough of a moron.

I turn toward the long setting of windows. It’s better than looking at her and all the guilt stabbing my spine.

“Landon, why do you look so angry?”

“I picked the wrong woman to help. I thought she was a victim, seeing the household she grew up in and how fucked up her family was.”

Luci falls perfectly still. I want to say guilt and shame clouds her gaze, but that doesn’t seem right. It’s not like she’s done anything wrong. “Bernadette wasn’t a victim,” I say. “Not anymore. Be it life or just her, but she became the victimizer.”

“Maybe she didn’t mean to.”

“What?” I ask, unsure why Luci feels the need to defend her.

“Maybe she was desperate or down on her luck?”

“More like up on a pole,” I mutter.

She tilts her head, appearing confused until realization smacks her awake. “She was a stripper?”

“Exotic dancer,” I mumble.

She blinks back at me. It’s better than shoving me away which is what I was expecting. “I’d taken my friends to a gentleman’s club.”

“A gentlemen’s club,” she repeats, like I couldn’t possibly be this dumb. Except I was.

I clear my throat. “She caught my interest.”

“I’ll bet she did.” She cuts herself off. “Is that what your sister meant about the tassels, and, and, the glitter? Oh, God, and the bedazzling? Tell me you didn’t marry a woman with a bejeweled vagina.”

“Of course not!” I snap. She looks at me. “Okay, yeah.”

“She was dancing to pay for her college,” I offer. Hey, I already sound stupid, might as well keep going down the imbecile expressway.

“That’s understandable,” she says, nodding. “Most colleges take singles.”

“I know how it sounds. Believe me. But some of those women are genuinely decent and trying to make a living. She just wasn’t one of them.” I swipe at my face. “I wanted to help her,” I remind her. “But in spite of everything she did to me, it took me finding her blowing her manager in my kitchen to make me leave.”

“What?”

Again Luci stops moving. “I caught them together, saw everything she did to him. It shouldn’t have taken so much, but it did. Like I said, I wanted it to work and would have done anything to make it happen.”

Luci buries her face in her hands, her petite frame quivering.

“Are you laughing at me?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, her body continuing to shake. “All right, fine. But believe it or not, I was trying to do the right thing. All I got was a shit ton of depression and more regret than I can stand.”

I bite back a curse, all the anger that lingers finding its way out of me. “We had more blow-ups than I count, and too many moments where she humiliated me in front of my family and colleagues. Every fight, every harsh word, every time she pushed me away was bad, but it didn’t compare to finding her with another man. She never intended to be mine, and she sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me.”

Luci’s hands lower carefully, revealing the tiny tears glistening in her pretty eyes. The shimmer across her gaze and the gentleness she meets me with dissolves all the bitter memories and extinguishes my remaining anger.

She kisses me softly, as if I’m the one crying, not her. “I’m sorry she couldn’t be your everything,” she tells me.

Luci should be calling me out for being naïve. She should be leaving my arms and my bed for being such an idiot. Instead, here she is, allowing her heart to shatter all because mine did.

“I’m sorry she hurt you,” she whispers.

“I’m not,” I say, sounding harsher than I intend. “Not anymore, not when that loss gave me you.”

She cups her mouth, stunned.

I lower her hand, enclosing it with mine and placing it against my chest. “I may not be ready to tell you I love you,” I say. “Not after everything I went through. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it every time I look in your eyes.”

Her head bows. “Don’t say that just to placate me.”

Her words, and the way she says them, reminds me how rough she’s had it. I won’t be another asshole who hurts her. But I also can’t be the hero she needs. Not yet, even though I mean what I say.

“I’m not trying to placate you, Luci.” In the tears filling her eyes, that final part of me finishes breaking, the one that stowed my happiness good and tight, and made believe I’d never find it. My knuckles skim to the curve of her spine. “I swear, I’ve never meant anything more.”

A small tear escapes her eyes. Yet she smiles, conveying her tenderness and beauty, and reminding me how much she means to me.

Tell her, I think. Tell her you love her.

Despite how my soul awakens, prepared to love her in return, I don’t speak the words she needs to hear.

Instead, I show her, through the kiss I greet her with, and everything that follows.