I tried not to laugh but couldn’t stop myself. “It was certainly one of my more inspired threats.”
I flipped open the Styrofoam and saw my favorite burger from my favorite restaurant. “Serena. You didn’t.”
“Oh, I did.”
She was back up on the island, legs crossed, eating French fries. I wanted to kiss her for a million years.
“So I’ll just…” I hitched my thumb at the front door.
“Um, actually.” She put her food down, licked ketchup from her fingers. “Do you want to eat in here? With me? You can worry and drink beer at the same time, like I promised.”
“I assumed you were only being nice.”
She extended her leg, hooked her foot under the bar stool and pushed it out a few inches. “Have a seat.”
There’d been a moment, just like this, right before I kissed her for the very first time. When a decision had presented itself. When I could have avoided all of this heartbreak if we’d never dated in the first place.
I sat down carefully, on the bar stool we’d picked out together, at an island in a kitchen we danced in, laughed in, fucked in. Setting my food down, I peered up at my wife sitting above me, wearing a pretty smile so hopeful all other choices were abandoned.
And just like that day, it wasn’t my brain or any type of rational thought that decided our destiny. It was the messy organ in my chest, clamoring to be heard, that said: Do it.
22
Cope
Serena ate her burger in about three bites flat, then licked her lips, satisfied, like a lioness after the hunt. She surveyed my food.
“Serena.”
“Mhmm?”
I cut about a quarter off my cheeseburger and handed it to her. “You do this every time.”
“I surfed a giant wave today,” she said with a cheeky look. “All you did was stand still.”
I leaned one arm over the back of the chair. “Have you ever tried to exude menacing while staying completely silent? It’s all in the micro expressions.”
“And what’s that?”
“The muscles in my face that subtly say I will fuck you up with my fists and witty rejoinders.”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “Are you doing it now?”
“Maybe.”
I made a series of small facial gestures. She clutched her chest and gasped. “That really was menacing.”
I shrugged and took advantage of her distraction to swipe her beer. Took a sip from it. “I don’t like to use the word expert lightly, but I think my unique set of skills speak for themselves.”
She snatched her drink back. “I believe you stealing my beer would qualify as being overly familiar, Copeland.”
“I believe you eating your agent’s food also qualifies as being overly familiar,” I said, pointing at her as she was mid-bite. “And you’ve been real fucking chatty.”
“I sat in the passenger seat too,” she said smugly.
“So you do want to get me in trouble, don’t you?”
“That’s always been the plan.”
Chuckling, I ate a French fry and smiled up at her. Her voraciousness had been one of the things I admired about her the most. She had a greed for living, for experiences, for taking what she wanted without judgment. She indulged her desires—whether it was eating one and a half cheeseburgers or dragging me on a spontaneous road trip.
I regretted not telling her that more when we were together. Losing my father had elicited dual reactions in me: a need to keep everyone I loved under lock and key so nothing bad would ever happen to them as well as an eagerness to consume all the good parts of life that people often took for granted. Both existed within me. One just had a stronger hold.
My mother had words of gentle wisdom after we broke up: We can’t protect the ones we love from this world the way we want to. Tragic accidents will happen regardless of what we do. Losing your father was the worst, the worst, thing that ever happened to me. But not fully living, not allowing those around you to do the same, isn’t the solution. I’ve certainly wanted to lock you and Billie in this house and keep you within my sight. Believe me, the impulse doesn’t disappear. It’s how you learn to live with it.
The problem was I wasn’t sure if I could do that.
Serena was still laughing and eating my food when her phone beeped with a message. She checked it, and I hoped with everything I had that it was something normal and not a creepy threat.
“It’s Caleb,” she said. “Giving me shit about you, of course.”
I swallowed a sigh of relief. We were being provided a respite from the fear and complications of the world outside this house, and I didn’t have the willpower to run from it.
“I really did expect him to punch me in the nose,” I said. “For a couple of different reasons.”
She tapped her fingers on the glass of her beer. “Yeah, well, Caleb doesn’t hate you. He never, ever did. He’s always been very respectful of my decisions.” Her throat worked as she stared at me. “Not that he didn’t, you know, see some things after we broke up. He definitely had to come over here and remind me to shower and eat. I had an all-ice-cream diet for weeks until one day I puked while doing squats at the gym and Dora made me go to the grocery store and buy vegetables.”
Knowing Serena had suffered the same way I had was as wretchedly painful as it was affirming.
“That was very nice of your brother to spare my face,” I said. “He doesn’t really hate anyone though, right?”
“No,” she said softly. “He doesn’t. Not even our parents. For him, it’s more of an erasure of their existence. The night he got me out of there, I’ll never forget the way he looked. He was only eighteen years old, but he seemed so wise and mature. Being away at college helped him to see their emotional abuse more clearly. All the mind games and manipulation. That night, he turned to me as he backed out of the driveway and said, ‘We don’t need them anymore. We’ve got each other.’”
In the two years we were together, I had never met Serena’s parents and understood that I never would. She’d made it clear from the beginning that her family was structured differently, and I admired her ability to find love when it hadn’t been given by her parents.
“I’ve missed your brother,” I said, hedging a bit. “And my family has really missed having you around.”
“Really?” she asked, sounding surprised. “They don’t, um…”
“Never,” I said firmly. “My mom and Billie were more angry with me after we broke up. And Quentin has been casually requesting that we get back together for four years now.”
Her smile was shy. Cheeks a little pink. “That’s good to know.”
She leaned back on her palms, looking satisfied. She uncrossed her legs, turning until they dangled a mere two inches from me. All that smooth, toned skin, those muscled thighs, the freckles I’d kissed and kissed. I couldn’t stop the train of my—now horny—thoughts.
Because Serena had taken a bath, taken a nap, and obliterated a meal. That left one last thing she always needed, and goddamn I was weak enough in this moment to eagerly obey if she demanded it of me. It would be no sacrifice on my part.
“Do you know what I think about when I drink Pacifico?” she asked.
I went still. “What?”
“Cordelia’s.”
Electric heat lit up my nerve endings. Serena was testing the waters, dipping a toe in.
“You mean that dive bar in Las Vegas?” I asked. “Hot damn, I haven’t thought about that place in forever.”
That was such a fucking lie.
From the moment I opened that file to find Serena’s beautiful face staring back at me, the sexy, messy, spontaneous events that led to our quickie Vegas wedding had been playing on a constant loop in my head.
“Me neither.” She took another long sip, gaze pinned to mine. “I still maintain that if we’d never switched to margaritas that night, we never would have gone through with it.”
“Huh,” I
said. “That’s funny because it was your idea to order them.”
Her jaw dropped. “You take that back.”
“What?” I laughed. “It was. I was the one who wanted to stop after three beers. You decided to then tack on three cocktails each.”
“That is such bullshit, and you know it.” Her attempt at a straight face was failing.
“Is it though? I believe I’d said something along the lines of, ‘It sure is time for us to be responsible, sober people and head back to the hotel for some quiet, polite sex and an early bedtime.’”
“Name a time when you wanted polite sex.” She crossed her arms, crossed her long, delicious legs.
I opened my mouth to argue. Snapped it shut. “I might be embellishing.”
Her eyes were flirtatious. “If we’re taking this time to air out our grievances—”
“Are we doing that? I thought I was only here to eat a sandwich.”
“—then you have to finally admit that you had an ulterior motive when you bought those plane tickets for us that weekend.”
I considered maintaining the line I’d held from the beginning. Our Vegas weekend was a spur-of-the-moment luxury because we were twenty-four and stupid in love and plane tickets had been cheap. There was a hell of a lot of truth in that statement. But it wasn’t until that night, that moment, drinking tequila under fake palm trees wound with Christmas lights, that I fully understood those ulterior motives myself.
“What if we just did it?” I said, brushing my lips against Serena’s. She tasted like strawberries and salt. “What if we got married at the Elvis chapel next door?”
“Tell me why you want to.” she’d said, breathless.
I trapped her legs between mine on the stool and tangled my fingers in her long hair. I dragged my mouth up to her ear. “I want you to be my wife. I want you for my forever. I want to be yours. I want you to be mine, Serena.”
I took so long to answer that she started to laugh behind her hands.
“Okay,” I said. “I guess we’re doing this then?”
“Admit it. You know you want to.”
For some reason, this point in time didn’t feel like it would ever come again—to get closure over beers and cheeseburgers. We only had more competitions and a corporate scandal in our future.
But right now?
I put my drink down and didn’t break eye contact. “It will not surprise you that I had decided you were the one for me after our second date. It didn’t matter where we got married or when. I know now that I pushed for us to go to Vegas because I couldn’t stop thinking about being your husband.”
She sat stunned. Silent. “Our second date?”
“I’m telling the truth.”
She chewed on her lip, studied me closely, like she couldn’t anticipate what I was going to do next.
“Can I ask you a question now?”
“Of course,” she said.
“That wedding with our Elvis impersonator wasn’t real,” I said. “It was all for show. We had no license, and it wasn’t legally binding. It’s the kind of ceremony they put on for a tipsy couple wanting to be spontaneous. It was impulsive and daring. And sexy.” I didn’t hide the lust in my eyes, didn’t suppress our honeymoon night memories. “When we got home, it could have stayed a fun and silly memory. But you proposed we file for a marriage license that weekend to make it real. Why? I was the one who pushed us to do it that night. On the flight home, I assumed you wouldn’t want it to be official.”
She looked down at the island, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I couldn’t stop thinking about being your wife. Didn’t want it to be a sexy weekend fairy tale. I wanted all of you.”
The air between us was charged with a crackling tension. I could only hear the blood rushing in my ears, my heart a heavy thud against my chest. I stood up from the stool to place our plates in the sink. I gripped the countertop as I breathed in and out, a pitiful attempt at slowing my pulse. I caught my reflection in the window. Caught Serena, staring at me. She was as beautiful as the day I met her. As beautiful as the day I married her.
“Cope.”
The raw emotion as she said my name had me dropping my head forward with a sigh. I remembered this—the sounds and sensations of what came after every truce between us near the end. On the clock or not, it didn’t matter. Our problems would find us, would crowd into every intimate moment when we let our love and lust run unchecked.
“Serena, don’t,” I begged wearily. I didn’t want to unpack the hurts and miscommunications that led to our breakup. I wanted warm kitchen light and cold beers in Vegas. I turned around reluctantly and crossed my arms over my chest. She slid off the island and mirrored my pose.
“I can’t…” She paused, stared briefly at the ground. “As comforting as reminiscing about our happiest memories is, it’s impossible for me to ignore what happened a month after we got home from Vegas. Right? Like are you really going to be my bodyguard for the next couple weeks as we never address what actually ended our relationship?”
I took a step closer to her. There was more soft frustration in those words than finger-pointing, and some part of me recognized she was trying to talk and not fight. But my still-broken heart overpowered my ability to acknowledge her intent.
“You invited me into our kitchen where you brought up all those happy memories,” I said accusingly.
Hurt sparked in her eyes, but anger flared a second later. I hated how easy it was to trick us into arguing, but the conversations that lay beyond them were still too terrifying for me.
“You mean I invited you into my kitchen?” she shot back.
“Our kitchen, Serena. At least it was until you left me to go tour in Australia three months after our fucking wedding.”
“We needed a break,” she whispered fiercely.
I took another big step towards her, lured by an irritating lust. To show her what I’d been aching to do since she stepped into that room two days ago. To demonstrate the filthy fantasies I couldn’t shake, the ones where I finally indulged in giving us both the sweaty, heart-pounding sex we craved.
“Right,” I said. “And in your mind, a break meant leaving your husband to fly halfway across the world and then not call or contact him for ninety days. We didn’t talk.”
Her dark eyes narrowed at me. “We weren’t talking before I left, so I’m not sure why that surprised you. And communication works both ways. You didn’t call me either, even though I spent more nights than I care to admit waiting by the phone for you.”
That direct hit was intended for me, and it brought up so much confusing guilt I almost walked away. But I was also—somehow—directly in her space without realizing it, and my feet refused to move.
“Then why didn’t you call?” I demanded.
“Why did you leave?”
We were less than six inches apart now. Her heavier breathing matched my own.
“How come,” she said, voice tight. “I came back to our house after my tour to find my husband had abandoned me and didn’t even leave a note?”
“I left you six months of rent.”
Her eyebrows shot up. We were one inch apart now and racing toward a dangerous temptation, the kind of impulsive act the two of us embraced when we were young and stupid. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that was an official way to dump someone.”
I closed the remaining distance. “I wasn’t going to wait around for you to officially break my heart after three months of silence.”
The truth tore from my throat—instead of sounding mad or arrogant, the words were saturated with my unresolved pain and unending want. It flipped the switch, let years of lust burn hotter than this argument, and what happened next was inevitable from the second I’d been handed that folder.
We reached for each other at the same exact time.
Serena grabbed my shirt and yanked as I scooped her back onto that island.
And I kissed my wife for the first time in four years.
Th
is wasn’t our first kiss. There was no tentative tasting, no learning the shape of each other. I claimed her mouth with a barely suppressed growl as she wrapped her legs around my waist. She gripped my face, and I dove my fingers into hair I never thought I’d touch again. The feel of it, the smell of her, had me deepening a kiss that was already frenzied. Mangoes, saltwater, sunny afternoons on the beach. She smelled like home and tasted like my favorite memories.
She opened wider for me, tongue against mine. We didn’t come up for air, only bruised our lips as we pressed every inch of our bodies together. I bent her all the way back until her shoulders hit the island and her knees rose higher on my waist. This wasn’t a tender moment of reuniting lovers. This was a wild sexual frustration that demanded we submit. This was every unfinished disagreement, every dream and fantasy, every stolen glance and connection we couldn’t deny.
My hands smoothed down her bare thighs, and the tips of my fingers dipped beneath the edges of her shorts. I let out a strangled groan of pure gratitude. I didn’t think I’d ever touch Serena again, yet here I was, in our house, with the woman I’d married writhing beneath me.
She tilted her head back, exposing her throat, and I took advantage of the new access she granted. I dragged my mouth up the side with hard kisses more bite than caress.
“I’m not going to forget we didn’t finish arguing just because we’re doing this,” she panted, digging her nails into my back.
“As if I’d let you forget,” I grunted against her skin.
“Good,” she moaned.
“Great,” I snarled, licking her neck. She gasped and yanked me back to her mouth, and I very, very dimly registered what I thought were tires on gravel outside.
That would be my partner, arriving for his security shift.
Passion chased reality away though, and Serena tasted too delicious to stop, felt too perfect beneath my hands, was too pliable and ready.
“I know what you want right now.” I cupped my hand over her breast, and we both shuddered and groaned. So perfect. “Let me give it to you.”
Out of the Blue Page 16