by Amelia Wilde
Dash steps up to me and puts his hands on the side of my face. “Tell me he didn’t hurt you,” he says, and his voice is rough, tense.
“I don’t know if he ever saw me.” I feel myself sink into his touch. “He ran away and left her on the sidewalk. My boyfriend ran in the opposite direction. I stayed. I called 9-1-1. I think someone else did too because it didn’t take very long for the ambulance to get there.”
“What a fucking coward,” Dash spits.
“Maybe he’s not,” I say, a knot in the pit of my gut releasing. “At least, he’s not more of a coward than me. I quit my job after that. I was going to be a big-time photojournalist and go where the real stories were. I thought I could handle it.”
“Ellie.” Dash moves his thumb over my cheek, and when he pulls it back, it’s wet with tears. My tears.
“I couldn’t handle it,” I say. “I finished up my degree, but I hated being in the city after that. Aunt Lisa and Uncle Fred asked me to come run the shop in the spring. I took the easy way out.”
“That’s not the easy way out. Jesus, Ellie, anybody would be shaken by that—”
“I threw all of it away.” I force the words out. “They paid for me to go to college, Dash. They bailed me out. My dad—god, this is so stupid. He quit his job to buy a farm and work on that, and it blew my college fund. I owe them so much. I only got to go because they wanted me to follow my stupid dream.” I wipe furiously at the tears on my cheeks. I don’t want to be crying over this. Not now. Not here. “I want to forget about all of it and go back. I miss taking photos. It’s the one thing I’m good at.”
“False,” Dash says, his face inches from mine. Hot damn, he is intoxicating, even in the midst of this emotional outburst. “There’s another thing.”
“What?”
“This.”
He leans in and kisses me. It’s long. It’s deep.
It doesn’t end there.
28
Dash
I’m so horrified by the image of Ellie standing there, a witness to something so soul-shattering, that I’m at a loss for what to do.
All I know is that I need to be touching her. I need to be kissing her.
She melts under my touch, her body relaxing into mine. It’s a kiss that starts out so sweet that the feeling is a pure sugar rush from my chest to my fingertips. Then Ellie arches, my clothes loose around her curves, her breasts pressing against my chest, and it becomes something else entirely.
Her fists curl around my shirt and she yanks it forward, pulling me in as close as she can get. Ellie breaks the kiss, pulling back. Her eyes are reddened from the tears, making the gray look that much more vivid, and her face is a picture of pain and lust and need. “I want to forget, Dash. I want to forget that shit. Make me forget.”
I’m already thrumming with the ache to protect her, to go into the past and throw myself between that man and Ellie Collins, even if the asshole was running away. I put a hand on the back of her head, strong and fierce, and push my face into hers. I can match her intensity. I can do anything.
The grin that spreads across my face is all heat. “Make you forget?” She takes in a short, sharp breath. “Now you’ve begged me twice.”
I forget about the spaghetti sauce.
For all I care, the spaghetti sauce can cook down into burnt embers. It makes no difference to me, as long as the house doesn’t catch on fire. Because Ellie? She’s blazing.
She wraps her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and kisses me so hard I’m sure she’s drawn blood.
There is no time to get to the bedroom. This is the Ellie who dropped it low in the coffee shop, totally uninhibited, totally herself. She’s a fucking tigress, clawing at my clothes, my skin.
I strip my shirt off first, then hers. She has nothing on underneath and her breasts are full and gorgeous. The air against her nipples makes them hard. My thumbs against them makes them harder. She wriggles out of her shorts when I drop mine and then she’s completely naked and folding herself back into my arms.
I lift her in one motion, perching her ass on the immaculate countertop. Ellie throws her head back, her wet hair hanging behind her, an invitation that I fully accept. I swirl my tongue around one of her nipples, then the other, and spread her knees open with one of mine.
She’s wet and waiting and sheer perfection. No hesitation this time. She’s as consumed by this moment as I am, and part of me wishes it would last forever.
I think you can guess which part.
“Yes. Yes,” Ellie hisses when I stroke between her legs, two fingers sliding through the juices already collected there. She spreads a little wider, her hips rising off the countertop, and I plunge two fingers into her. She tenses around them and that tightening shatters the rest of my restraint.
A low growl comes from the animal part of me, and shit starts happening fast. Ellie wraps her legs around me and I hold on hard, her hips in my hands, aligning the head of my cock with her opening. She freezes, staring down at it, and when she looks up, there’s a flicker of doubt in her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” I promise her. “You can take it.”
She gives me a wicked grin. “I know.” Then she edges forward, impaling herself on the tip with a sigh and a shudder that turns into the first inch sinking inside of her, then the second.
Ellie is so tight that with half my length inside of her I force myself to stop.
“Ellie.”
Her hips tilt back and forth in my hands, begging silently for more, her hands playing at the back of my neck. “What?” she whispers, eyes closed, cheeks pink. I won’t forget her face this way for as long as I live.
“You’d tell me, right?”
Her gray eyes fly open, a smile flitting across her lips. “Tell you what?”
“If this was your first time.”
Her mouth drops open and she goes still. “You think this is my first time?”
It’s taking every bit of self-control I have not to bury myself in her. The pressure is intense. “You’re so tight.” It’s all I can manage.
Ellie tips her head back again, engaging all her muscles to squeeze me even tighter. I am dying. I am dead. This is the best fucking feeling on the planet. She starts rocking her hips side to side, her smooth skin against my palms, drawing me in another inch, then two. “This is not my first time.” Again her eyes meet mine. “Fuck me, Dash. I’m begging you.”
“As long as you’re begging.”
“Longer than that, I hope,” she says, and my entire body bursts into flames. That’s it. I turn her laugh into a cry, taking all of her at once, keeping her steady in my hands.
It’s an explosive, raw rhythm, and Ellie is barely on the countertop. She’s wrapped around me so tightly that I feel it when she starts to come, the trembling starting down low in her hips and bursting out in all directions. She bends her head forward and muffles her cries in my skin.
But I’m not finished with her yet.
“You owe me,” I growl into her ear. “Come on my cock again.”
“I can’t,” she breathes.
“It’s not a request.” In and out, harder and harder. “Reach down between those pretty legs and touch yourself until you come.”
She braces one hand on my shoulder and reaches down, her fingers searching out her clit. I feel every pulse of desire between her legs and pick up the pace.
It’s another small earthquake a minute later, and she shakes under the weight of it, coming hard, my name on every breath.
I follow her all the way to the end.
29
Ellery
Dash catches me by the arm as I’m throwing one of his sweatshirts over last night’s sex-date clothes, freshly washed and dried after what I’m going to forever call the Spaghetti Mob Incident. He mumbles something into his pillow.
“What?”
His house is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. It makes my soul shudder to think about going outside into the dark to my car, but
today is a coffee shop day, and even last night’s mind-blowing encounter can’t change that.
“Does it have to be this early?”
“They’re already waiting for me.” That’s probably not quite true. I set an alarm on my phone that would give me plenty of time to race to my house, change my clothes, and race to the shop. The regulars won’t be prowling the streets for another fifteen minutes at least.
He rolls over. His eyes are the bright spots in the gray light coming through the window. “Don’t go.”
“No choice.”
Dash reaches up and pulls me down to him. The first touch of our lips is a spark. The second is an inferno. “There’s always a choice.”
God, do I want to crawl back into bed with him. I want that more than anything. I have a full-on fantasy vision of what it would be like to throw off these clothes and dive under the covers, next to his solid warmth, and sleep until the sun is fully up. “I have to go.”
He lets me stand up but runs his hand down my arm so that our fingers can twine together. “We’re not done yet.” It’s almost a question, almost a prayer.
“We’re done for now. Remember?” I wave a hand between the two of us. “Enemies.”
“Enemies,” he repeats, and all I can think about is his thickness between my legs, the way he spread me to my absolute limit, the way I fucking loved it.
“See you on the battlefield,” I tell him, and then I steal away out into the night.
There are too many people waiting outside Medium Roast.
Way too many.
Lou’s car is parked where it always is, down the block, but there are eleven others parked downtown.
Yes, I counted.
What are they doing here?
I can feel them watching me while I drive to my usual spot down the block, and it sends a shiver down my spine. After wearing Dash’s clothes all night, my hoodie feels too tight. I should be naked. I should be in his bed. If I can’t be there, I should be somewhere I can clear my mind. A lot happened last night. Spaghetti hitting the ground and covering me with ground beef. Admitting to him the reason I didn’t become a photojournalist.
Plus, there was the middle of the night, when I woke him up to add to the story, which is not something I ever want to do.
It struck me like lightning as I was drifting off to sleep in his bed, and I’d rolled over so quickly it freaked him out.
“What is it?” he’d whispered, the dark already settled over both of us.
“She made it,” I whispered back. “I didn’t tell you. And I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about what happened.” The worry had risen in my chest, drowning out everything else. What if he thought I was using this other woman’s horrible misfortune as an excuse for running back to Lakewood?
“Who?”
“The woman I saw. The woman who—”
“Right. Yes. I remember,” he’d said quickly, trying to shield me even then from the memory. “She lived?”
“Yeah.” My throat went tight. “There was an article in the paper about it. They called me a hero, but I wasn’t a hero. I took pictures and dialed a phone number.”
Dash had curved his arm around me, pulling me close. “You saved her.”
I’d turned away then, pressing my spine into the long lines of his body, and tried to fall asleep. I didn’t tell him that I might have saved her, but I didn’t know if I could ever save that version of myself. The one who had a dream. The one who went after it.
I’m still half-stuck in that moment when I throw myself out of the car and hustle my ass down the block to Medium Roast. Eyes everywhere. Jesus. Couldn’t they wait until six-thirty like normal people?
I start the coffee brewing and go over the stash of coffee. There’s one bag left of medium roast. A late-afternoon rush depleted it pretty well. There’s plenty of dark, though, and the espresso should last, as long as nothing crazy happens.
Famous last words.
It’s not Lou who’s first to the door. It’s Morris.
“Evelyn,” he booms as soon as he’s pulled the door open. “We’ve had enough.”
“Enough of what, Morris? Morning, guys.” Lou’s coming in right behind him, and a few other guys who I know for a fact normally fuel up at the local gas stations before they go to their hunting camps for the day.
“The usurper,” he says with a scowl, and steps up to the counter, bills already in hand.
“You mean The Coffee Spot? It hasn’t opened yet.”
“It won’t open, either, if we get our way.”
First the mob action at Dash’s house. Now this. It’s cute, in a way, and weird as hell in another. I’m glad they care about Medium Roast. I’m really glad.
But I also care about Dash.
All the feelings I’ve had about him swirl together in one giant super-emotion that hits me like a sledgehammer, right in the center of the chest. The way he makes me feel safe. The way he makes me feel challenged, bright, alive. The way he makes me feel so turned on I could die. I trusted him enough last night to tell him why I dropped out of the only career I’d made.
I care about him a lot.
I might even love him.
No. That’s crazy.
Isn’t it?
I’m so dumbstruck that Morris’s words don’t register until he’s already over at the other counter, pouring himself coffee. “Wait—Morris, what do you mean? What are you planning to do?”
He turns with a fierce determination on his face. “We’re going to have your back, Evelyn. Don’t you worry.”
30
Dash
Have I ever felt this much excitement?
Have I ever felt this much dread?
Aside from the day that Rosie was born, I can’t remember ever feeling this way. She’s safe with Norma, and I’m driving toward the unknown.
People did not like my little announcement yesterday. They came to my house. I don’t think the old guy meant to pound on the door quite so hard, but you never know. Maybe he was trying to be intimidating.
Well, I’m not going to be intimidated.
I’m doing this.
There’s an added sharpness to my vision that makes everything seem weightier, including the mist that hangs in the air at this hour of the morning. I park behind The Coffee Spot and take a deep breath.
Last night was incredible. There are no other words to describe it. Ellie didn’t hold anything back.
I did.
I didn’t tell her about Serena. I didn’t tell her about the rage that comes over me when I think about her leaving our daughter behind. I didn’t tell her how disconnected that rage has become from any feelings that might have lingered for my ex-wife.
Ellie’s the one I care about now.
Want the truth? It’s making it really fucking difficult to open the Coffee Spot. I have to do it in two days, and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a pull in the center of my gut telling me to back off the whole enterprise. How could I hurt her when she’s already been hurt, shocked, right out of her life? How could I put that kind of pressure on a business that’s already unsteady?
How could I assume she can’t handle it?
I’ve seen Ellie handle monstrous crowds with serious grace under pressure. She keeps her wry humor, her command of a room, even when there’s good reason to panic. It would be condescending as hell for me to not open because I thought she’d fold from the pressure. No. She’s resilient.
This was supposed to be simple. It’s not simple anymore.
That’s the thought rolling around in my mind as I come up the alley to go into The Coffee Spot.
The last of the furniture is being delivered today, and I go in through the side door, planning out where all of the tables will go. The espresso machine is installed. All the sinks are functional. The final deliveries we’ll need to open will arrive tomorrow morning. Tomorrow night is the city council meeting where apparently this town plans to rally against me.
I only notice
something is wrong because the color red catches my eye.
The man standing by one of the tables in front of Medium Roast is wearing the reddest shirt I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s bright even in my peripheral vision. It would be the most interesting over on that side of the street...if it weren’t for the crowd.
The crowd.
These aren’t people waiting in line to go into the shop, though there’s one of those as well. The line itself is a little smaller than the Saturday rush that put me behind that counter with Ellie. That makes sense—it’s a Wednesday on the first week of tourist season in Lakewood. Things will probably pick up even more tomorrow and be full steam by Friday, just in time for opening day.
The crowd, though—that’s something else.
A text comes in from the delivery service with the last of the furniture, and then another text from Norma—it’s a picture of Rosie laughing, and it makes my heart explode.
When I look up from my phone again, the man has moved out toward the curb and has unfurled a sign.
What the hell?
He’s faced in my direction, so I have no choice but to read it.
Lakewood’s ONLY coffee shop is HERE!
Here is underlined in bold strokes five or six times.
The moment I got the notice that I’d be taking over this building swims up into my memory. A letter from my grandfather, confirmed at the formal reading of his will. Susie always wanted a little café, he’d said in the letter. I knew what it meant to have always wanted something. A wife. A family. And at that very moment, I was learning what it meant to have that shattered.
It’s the cutest fucking protest I’ve ever seen, I’ll give them that much. All of these people have put their heads together to write out a big sign that’s going to be totally inaccurate in two days once my store is open. All I need is someone like Ellie to stand behind the counter.