by Marni Mann
We had rushed back to my place from Quincy Market.
Once we arrived, that was when the hurrying stopped.
That was because I wanted to take my time with her body.
I tasted.
I nipped.
I licked, starting at the center of her ankles and then moving between her legs. I stayed there until she came, until she squirmed against my mouth, until I thought she was going to rip my hair out from pleasure. That was when I rose to her lips and pressed mine against them.
By then, my cock felt like it was going to fucking explode.
I didn’t want her mouth on it.
I wanted her pussy.
Her wetness.
Her tightness.
The way it would squeeze my dick when she got off.
I’d felt all three.
Multiple times.
And, now, we were catching our breaths as we rested on top of my bed.
The little bit of makeup she’d had on earlier was gone. Her cheeks were flushed, her long hair a mess.
This was Alix.
Vulnerable.
Raw.
Perfect.
Not just for me, but in general.
She had a body that was even more beautiful out of clothes. A smile that hit me like a fist, shocking the hell out of me each time I saw it. A softness that was present long before I stripped off her uniform.
I took in the darkness of her eyes and skimmed her jaw with my thumb. “Are you hungry?”
“Hungry?” She laughed. “We just had lunch and chocolate cake.”
That sound.
The lightheartedness of it.
It was something I could listen to every day.
“We’re going to have dinner, too,” I told her.
Her brows rose. “Tonight?”
I nodded, thinking of which restaurant I wanted to order from and how I would send my driver to pick it up.
“What if I already have plans?” she asked.
“Cancel them.”
“Just like that?”
I stared into her eyes. “Yes, Alix, just like that.” I paused. “Unless you’re ready for this to end?”
She didn’t speak for almost a minute. “Does anyone ever say no to you, Dylan?”
It wasn’t typical in business.
Not in my personal life either.
From a young age, I’d learned how to get what I wanted.
Still, I needed to make something extremely clear, so I said, “Alix, I’ve told you, you can always say no to me.”
She leaned her face into my hand. “I told you, I don’t think I can.”
I remembered the last time she had said that to me.
I lifted my head and pressed my lips against the shell of her ear, whispering, “I’m never going to let you go.”
The color her cheeks had turned told me she liked my response.
What I didn’t tell her was, in that moment, I knew this girl was going to be my wife. And, at some point soon, I would make that happen.
There had been so many women in the past.
None mattered.
None measured up.
They had all been steps that led me here.
Alix was the one.
It wasn’t her vulnerability or the way her lips touched my skin when she nuzzled my hand or how her eyes revealed everything to me—all things I liked very much.
It was her smile.
That slight lift of her lips told me everything would always be okay.
And it would be.
As long as I had her.
Fifteen
Alix
Present Day
I arrived a few minutes late to the restaurant.
I was nervous about having dinner with Smith, but that wasn’t the reason I was here twelve minutes past eight.
That was because it had taken me a while to get out of bed. To get myself together. To put on enough concealer to cover the darkness under my eyes and the puffiness around my lids.
At one point during my life, I’d barely worn any makeup.
That wasn’t true anymore.
I loosened the light scarf from my neck and unbuttoned my jacket as I walked into the restaurant. “Hi,” I said to the hostess as I reached the desk she was standing at. “Reservations for Smith Reid.”
She glanced at her tablet. “Yes, I see it right here. Looks like the other member of your party has already arrived.” She looked up. “Please follow me.”
I stayed behind her as she led me into the main dining room.
I wasn’t more than a few steps in when I saw Smith.
He was sitting at a table against the window on the other side of the room, and he was typing something into his phone.
As though he could sense my arrival, he gazed up.
Our eyes locked.
I could feel his stare.
It hit my face first.
My chest.
My legs.
It wasn’t a feeling I was used to.
Not unless it came from Dylan.
My God.
As I closed the gap between us, still quite a distance away, I compared Smith to the pictures I’d looked at of him online and the small details I remembered from the night we’d met. He was photogenic. There wasn’t a bad shot of him. But he was definitely more handsome in person.
That made me even more nervous.
He stood when I was only a few feet away, the hostess already gone, leaving us completely alone.
“Alix, thank you for coming.”
There was two seconds of awkwardness. He didn’t know whether to shake my hand or reach in for a hug.
I solved the problem by lifting my fingers into the air.
When he gripped them softly, I said, “Sorry I’m late.”
“Not a problem.”
I pulled my hand away and moved to the other side of the table, hanging my jacket and purse over the back of the chair. My nerves were making me unsteady, so I was careful when I sat down and pulled myself closer to the table.
It was a moment.
Eventually, once I calmed down, I’d be able to celebrate it.
“How’s Joe doing?” I asked.
He placed a napkin on his lap and gazed back up at me.
His expression was suddenly full of worry, the same amount he’d worn when the medics put Joe in the ambulance.
“The doctor isn’t happy with the way his kidneys are functioning, so he’s trying a new course of treatment. I’m sure he’ll be discharged once his numbers level out.”
The worry faded, and in its place was a look I recognized.
He was exhausted.
“Have you been spending a lot of time at the hospital?” I asked.
“His ex won’t go, and she won’t let their kids see him. The rest of his family is in California, and he doesn’t want them to know.”
“That leaves you.”
He nodded.
He was a Rose.
A tingling flared in my stomach, causing me to shift in my seat.
“He’s at the best hospital in Boston,” I said. Since I’d read the paramedics’ notes, I knew which one they had taken him to. “I have all the faith in the world he’ll have a full recovery.”
I smiled at the way his eyes lit up.
I couldn’t help it.
“Thank you again for what you did.” The grin was still there; it had just turned a little more serious. “You handled the situation so well. I’m assuming you must work in the medical field.”
My job wasn’t listed on my profile online. Neither were my hobbies.
There was just an emoji under my name.
A sun.
“I’m a dispatcher for the Boston Police.”
He pointed his face a little to the side, as though he was going to emphasize what he was about to say. “Well then, I’m impressed with the city’s training. For not being out in the field, you knew exactly what to do and what to look for, and your diagnosis was accurate. You’d make an excellent p
aramedic and an even better doctor.”
“The thought of going to med school isn’t exciting.”
“Neither is law school.”
“But you made it, and now, you’re an attorney. So, how did you survive?”
His personal profile didn’t have anything about his work on it, so now, he knew I’d looked him up.
He didn’t seem affected by it.
Maybe he was just hiding his reaction.
He was an attorney.
He knew how to do that as well as I knew CPR.
“Every time I wanted to quit,” he said, “I would think back to the way my father had treated my mother and then how he’d fucked her. That was all the motivation I needed.”
It took two sentences for me to learn that Smith hadn’t had an easy childhood.
And that he was a Massachusetts native because a little bit of an accent had popped out.
As I opened my mouth to respond, a waitress came to our table and asked if we wanted anything to drink.
I waited for Smith to tell me what his recommendation was for dinner and the red wine that would pair well with it.
But it wasn’t Smith who did that.
It was Dylan.
Will I ever get used to this?
“Champagne, please,” I said.
The waitress then looked at Smith, and he voiced, “Tito’s and soda with two limes.”
Not even their drink orders were similar.
If Dylan wasn’t having wine, he preferred his booze straight with no ice.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Smith after the waitress told us the specials and left. I wanted to get this out before he changed conversations. “I didn’t know your decision to go into law was such a personal one. Had I known, I never would have gone there.”
“No need to apologize. I could have given you the answer I say to everyone else, but I decided to get personal.”
As he stared at me, I wasn’t sure how to respond.
Part of me wanted to hide beneath the scarf because this amount of attention was overwhelming. The other part of me wanted to ask him why he had chosen to tell me about his family.
“What made you get into dispatching?” he asked, saving me from making that choice.
Dispatching was a job, not a career. It wasn’t something anyone dreamed of becoming. You went in and worked your shift and the rest of the ones you were scheduled for that week.
Month after month.
It was the same.
“All my life, I wanted to work in the medical field. While I was finishing my undergrad, I realized med school wasn’t for me. So, I stayed in Boston and started working for the city.”
“I’m going to take a guess and say, Boston University.” Before I could reply, he continued, “No, I’m going to retract that and go with Northeastern.”
There were over thirty colleges in Boston.
“How did you know?” I asked.
He laughed. “Wait a minute. I’m right? You really went to Northeastern?”
The look on his face told me it had truly been a guess.
I was relieved to hear that he hadn’t looked me up.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”
As he laughed, he gripped the edge of the table with both hands, and his head tilted back.
It was the most laid-back sound.
I wondered if I’d ever laugh that way again.
“My sister, Star, goes there,” he told me. “I know the campus well.”
“She’s getting her master’s?”
He shook his head. “Bachelor’s.”
She was much younger than him.
From my estimate, at least by ten years, which put Smith somewhere in his early thirties.
The same age as Dylan.
“So, you went to school in the Back Bay, and you work in the city. What do you do for fun, Alix?”
I met my best friend for happy hour several times a week.
I spent time with Dylan whenever he came home.
I dreamed about waking up to a sunny day.
“You’re going to laugh,” I said.
This was a question I was comfortable with.
He put his elbows on the table. “I won’t.”
“I’m from Maine. This small, quiet, quaint town in the southern part of the state. While I was living there, I craved noise. I used to play the radio just so I could fall asleep at night.”
“You wanted a city.”
“More than anything. When I was seven, my parents brought me to see the Boston Pops; my dad had won tickets through work. My dad parked along Mass Ave., and the second I got out of the car, I knew this was where I’d live.”
“Why would I laugh at that?” His voice softened.
Dylan’s never did. He was all business, all the time.
That was something they didn’t have in common.
And it surprised me enough from Smith that I looked up at him, realizing that, at some point, I had broken contact to stare at my empty plate.
“Well, you asked me what I did for fun. My answer is Boston.”
He continued to gaze at me for several seconds before he said, “I want to view the city through your eyes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Show me what a day in the life of Alix is like.”
I squeezed my napkin with every bit of strength I had, and then I twirled it around my fingers. “It’s not that interesting, I assure you.”
“I’ve lived here almost my whole life. I left for college and law school but came back right after I graduated. I don’t think I appreciate the city the way I should. I want you to change that for me.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
He smiled, and it was warm.
Heat I could feel all over my skin.
Skin Dylan had touched just this morning.
“I think you’re more than capable,” he said.
He was asking me out again without using any of those words.
As I attempted to respond, the waitress returned to our table.
She set the cocktails down and took our dinner orders.
And then, once again, we were alone.
Smith held his vodka and soda into the air and said, “To Joe.”
“To Joe.”
When his glass clicked against mine, our fingers brushed.
It was just enough contact that I had to go searching for my breath.
Sixteen
Alix
Present Day
With my head on the pillow, I faced Dylan’s side of the bed, waiting for the familiar noises.
The slight squeak of him opening the bedroom door.
The sound of him walking on the floor.
I heard none of that.
The room was silent, except for the quiet murmur of HGTV.
Dylan was punishing me for going out with Smith tonight.
I should have expected this.
I shook my head, angry that the fluffy down was so soft, wishing it were hard, that it would hurt me, that it would take away everything I was feeling.
I’d left the restaurant this evening with Smith’s phone number saved and a date at the end of this week when we’d be spending the entire day together.
When I got home, I climbed into bed and hoped Dylan would show up.
That he’d put his hand on my lower back.
The same place Smith had put his when he walked me outside after dinner.
Something was wrong with all of this.
I didn’t know how to fix it.
I didn’t know if I could.
I just knew I was completely in love with Dylan Cole, and Smith Reid had made me smile tonight.
I gripped the blanket with one hand and the pillow with the other. I opened my mouth, and everything I was feeling came out.
This time, it was a scream.
One that the entire row of townhouses could hear.
Seventeen
Dylan
Three Years Ago
It was a period that had gone by quickly because I took it in as fast as I could, and I stored it, so I wouldn’t forget.
When it came to her, everything was important.
It was the smallest details that made the biggest impact.
Like the afternoon I’d brought fries to the firehouse from the pushcart in Quincy Market. Fifteen large bowls for everyone on duty to share.
Not my baby though. She got her own. One I’d drizzled with vinegar and salt with a side of ranch and ketchup. She liked to alternate dips.
She was so taken aback by the gesture, especially when she saw I had brought her both condiments.
But I wanted to do more than just feed her addiction to fries.
I wanted to be able to look at a menu and know what she would order. I wanted to pair that meal with a wine she would enjoy. I wanted to know what sentiments made her smile, what movies caused her to cry, why her skin always smelled like lemons.
I had gotten those answers within the first thirty days.
During that time, the only nights we’d spent apart was when she was on for her twenty-four-hour shift, which she did twice a week.
If we weren’t at our jobs, we were together.
And then things began to move fast.
There was no reason to slow them down.
She wanted to go to sleep next to me, and I wanted to wake up next to her.
There was only one small bit of turbulence.
Alix hated to fly.
And the size of the five-seater, single engine that I used for personal travel made her anxious as hell.
It took a few weeks of talking to her about it, showing her the aircraft and where she’d be sitting, before she even started to warm up to the idea.
Eventually, we went.
I kept the first trip short. Twenty minutes. Just enough for her to get comfortable with the space, to feel the different shifts of wind and how they moved the plane, to get used to the view while she sat next to me in the cockpit.
It was a lot to take in for someone who didn’t like to be in the air.
During the next flight, I extended our airtime to forty-five minutes. I got her to laugh after takeoff and hold my thigh instead of gripping the seat while we descended.