by Serena Bell
She wasn’t even sure what she was apologizing for. Misusing her sister’s couch? Not telling her sister what was going on? Screwing around with a guy that Nate and Alia had warned her about?
“We’ll talk in the morning,” Alia said grimly, and she turned away, climbed the rest of the stairs, and disappeared.
Becca turned and slowly made her way back to the couch. Griff had zipped and was leaning back nonchalantly, doing his best to look innocent, but she could still see the deep flush in his cheeks, and he didn’t seem able to hold back his blissed-out grin.
“I think the cat’s out of the bag,” she told him.
Griff’s grin got even bigger. “Oh, baby. That pussy hasn’t even begun to free itself yet.”
26
Becca wrapped her hands around a cup of coffee while Alia spooned breakfast into the baby. Robbie had just started rice cereal, and it was not a clean process. More rice cereal was coating Robbie’s chin than was going down his throat.
“I’m not mad,” Alia said. “You don’t need my permission. I’m just worried about you.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because I knew you’d be worried about me. And you don’t need to be. I’m a big girl.”
Alia scraped rice cereal off Robbie’s chin and recycled it into his little rosebud mouth. “Are you sure about that?”
“That I’m a big girl?” Becca said, trying to lighten the mood.
“That I don’t need to be worried?”
“Positive.”
“I don’t want him taking advantage of you.”
“He’s—” For a second, she couldn’t even finish the sentence because what Griff was doing with her was so far from taking advantage that there just weren’t words. Not to mention that the whole thing had been her idea. “—not,” she managed.
Alia looked unconvinced. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I know what I’m doing. It’s just a casual thing.”
Alia’s eyebrows scrunched together in the middle.
“I swear, Alia. We’re just both, um, blowing off steam.”
“Someone’s blowing off something,” Alia muttered.
Becca rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
“Cut me some slack. I can never unsee what I saw. And I didn’t even see that much. Just the gist. But ack.” Alia’s face twisted. “Just tell me he reciprocates and it’s not always you down on your knees.”
“God, Alia!” Becca’s face flamed. “Don’t do the mom routine on me right now. He reciprocates, okay?” She took a deep breath. “I’m getting mine.” And wasn’t that an understatement. She shivered, thinking of how easily she’d gotten off last night, straddling him like a horny teenager. Or rather, like the horny teenager she would have been if Stupid Todd hadn’t asked her to wait for a promise that had never materialized. She was making up for lost time and the experiences she’d been robbed of. “Jondalar’s got nothing on Griff,” she told Alia.
Alia’s eyes got wide. “Are you having sex with him?”
“I had sex with him, yeah.”
It was impossible to keep the smile off her face. The best she could do was try not to betray her giddiness.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you lost your virginity!”
“I didn’t tell you because—”
Alia bit her lip. “I know, I know. Because you were afraid that I’d freak out, just like I am freaking out. I’m sorry. I’m just so used to—”
They both knew how that sentence ended. I’m just so used to taking care of you. Being your mom.
Not for the first time, Becca thought about the toll that being a surrogate mom had taken on Alia. All that lost childhood, all those missed opportunities to cut loose and have fun. Always having to be the responsible one. And Becca hadn’t been an easy child with all her—challenges. She knew it had been hard for Alia, later, to let down her guard with Nate, to quit being the one doing the caretaking and let him in to take care of her.
“How did this all come about?” Worry lines still etched Alia’s forehead.
Becca gave her sister the bare minimum details to fill her in—how she’d asked Griff for the V-card favor, how he’d refused, how he’d changed his mind.
For some reason, she didn’t tell Alia that CJ’s interest had provoked Griff’s about-face. She left out dirty archery, the Met steak dinner, the beautiful hotel room, the flashback, last night’s soul-baring conversation. Those details didn’t feel relevant. They felt like they belonged to her and Griff alone.
“And it was—good?”
Becca settled once again on, “Yup.”
“Look at you! You’re blushing!” Alia narrowed her eyes. “But you’re sure you’re not going to fall for him.” Her tone was fussy with anxiety.
“I’m not going to fall for him. Stop looking at me like that! It’s the twenty-first century. Tinder. Swipe freakin’ right. Women do this kind of thing all the time. And Griff was totally up-front with me. He doesn’t do serious, he doesn’t do relationships.”
The last thing Becca wanted was for Alia to rip Griff a new one the next time she saw him. It was going to be awkward enough for the two of them. Nothing like a friendship where you’ve seen the other person’s O-face.
“Yeah,” Alia said thoughtfully. “His ex-wife pretty much destroyed him. You know the story, right?”
“Sort of? Only what you and Nate have told me. He came home from Afghanistan and she was gone.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know more. She’d almost asked him last night, In the flashbacks, do you see your ex-wife? But she hadn’t wanted to pry. She’d been grateful for what he’d told her already—and afraid to find out just how much he still cared for Marina.
“That’s the gist. They were high school sweethearts. Marina didn’t want him to enlist and she hated that he was gone so much. It was during that period of long deployments—like eighteen months long, and then back out again almost as soon as he’d been home. She couldn’t get used to being an army wife. She wasn’t good at playing nice with the other army wives and she was lonely. They fought about it for years, and finally she gave him an ultimatum. Her, or the army, but he couldn’t have both. He told her he cared more about her and that he’d get out.”
For some reason, that detail made Becca’s stomach hurt. Not that she needed more evidence than she’d seen on Saturday night that Griff had loved—did love—Marina with his whole being. But she didn’t love hearing it said aloud.
“He’d finished his active obligation, so he made a clean break. Flew home all ready to make a life with her, have kids, really settle down. He walked into the house and—” Alia threw her arms open. “It was empty. Marina was gone, her stuff was gone. There was a note.”
“What did the note say?”
She was torturing herself, she knew. She wasn’t going to hear anything that would change the narrative. Whatever had gone through Marina’s head, Griff had been heartbroken by her leaving.
Alia sighed. “That she’d met someone else. That she’d been too young when they’d gotten married and she hadn’t known yet what she really wanted and needed. And now she did.”
Jesus, she didn’t even want to picture it. Griff walking into an empty house, finding only a note. The way she imagined it, it was night. And cold. She could see him, standing in the middle of the room, a slip of paper clutched in his hand, trying to make sense out of betrayal.
Who had that woman been, the one who’d made Griff want to settle down, who’d made him willing to quit the army? Who he sought with his eyes and his heart when he was most terrified?
Becca wanted to hate Marina for hurting Griff. He tried to come off as tough, and maybe most of the time he succeeded, but Becca had seen his tender side. He was the kind of guy who’d take a girl out for dinner before he took her virginity, who would buy her pretty lingerie so that she’d have something clean and dry to put on afterward. He was the kind of guy who would hold himself responsible for wartime deaths on his watch. The kind of
guy who didn’t want Becca to sell herself short.
That kind of guy was sensitive enough to get his heart torn apart and still pine for the woman who’d done it.
But there had to be another side to the story—Marina’s side—and Becca thought she might be able to see it. It must have been hard to love a man like Griff and have him be gone for months, if not years, at a time. To have him choose that goneness over and over, when she was begging him to stay.
It hurt to think about.
Becca looked up to find Alia watching her. “He’s a good guy,” Alia said. “It’s just, I know from Nate that he keeps himself—um—pretty busy, and in the time that I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him get emotionally invested in anyone.”
Becca knew all that, but hearing Alia say it aloud made her feel sick.
He’s totally not over her. He’d take her back in a heartbeat if she asked.
She knew Griff wasn’t over his ex-wife. But what about the second part? She wanted to ask Alia if she thought it was true. Would Griff take Marina back in a heartbeat?
But she knew that if she asked that question, Alia would jump all over her for not being as casual as she claimed. And then she’d tell Becca in a thousand different ways to be careful, to protect herself, to make sure she didn’t get hurt.
Worse still—
Becca was beginning to realize that this time, Alia’s warnings would be justified.
“Seriously, Alia, don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. It’s over.”
If that wasn’t precisely true, it would be soon. That much was obvious.
27
“Seriously, asshat?” Nate’s voice rang out from the doorway.
Griff was perched on the highest legit step of the ladder, screwing an LED lightbulb into the overhead socket. Jake had asked him to go around and change over as many of the old-style lightbulbs to LED as he could to try to save the resort some money on electricity. It wasn’t fun work, but it was satisfying, and the best thing about working at R&R was that no matter how menial the task was, it was always in the service of a greater good.
Unfortunately, CJ was also up on a ladder, on the other side of the room. Griff had been going out of his way to give the kid odd jobs, both because he knew how much it had helped him early on to feel part of R&R in that way, and because he figured an opportunity might come up to dig a little deeper into the driving thing. But—yeah, not the best timing, because at the sound of Nate’s voice, CJ had turned his head and was watching them both intently. Since Griff was pretty sure he knew what Nate was about to tear into him about, he didn’t exactly need an audience, and especially not CJ.
Nate leaned against the doorframe, his body language casual, but Griff could see the tension in the lines of his face. “Dude, seriously? On my living room couch? With Becca?”
“Becca?” CJ said, in the tone of someone who’d just been shot from behind by a teammate.
Griff gave him an apologetic glance. Well, mostly apologetic. He wasn’t going to apologize for winning fair and square, or for doing his level best to make Becca’s first time one to remember.
“Can you give us a minute?” Nate asked CJ, and to his credit, CJ did—although he aimed one more wounded glance over his shoulder at Griff.
Griff climbed down the ladder. He wasn’t going to do this from ten feet over Nate’s head. He’d face the music like a man.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Nate demanded, once Griff was standing on the floor in front of him. “Because if you hurt her, I will remove your insides with a teaspoon.”
“What is it with you guys and Becca?” Griff shot back. “She doesn’t need you to fight her battles. She knows what she wants. She’s tougher than you think she is. And before you get all up in my business, who says I started this?”
“I don’t give a shit who started it. You were the one with your bare ass on my couch.”
“My ass was never in contact with your couch,” Griff said, because he couldn’t quite figure out what he did want to say, and that seemed like a point that needed to be made clear.
“Good, because then I’d really have to disembowel you,” Nate said, reasonably. “And I know you weren’t the one who started it. Alia told me that Becca asked you to help her out with her little problem and you jumped like a dog for a cookie.”
It wasn’t a problem, Griff almost spat back, but he stopped himself just in time. They weren’t fighting over whether Becca’s virginity was something to be mocked or worshipped or respected or ignored. They were fighting because Nate and Alia were worried for their girl. And even if he thought they needed to let her be her own woman, he got it. She inspired fierce feelings of protectiveness—it was just that he knew enough to back the hell off, and Nate and Alia didn’t. As evidenced by the fact that there were still words coming out of Nate’s mouth.
“I just can’t believe you said yes. I mean, seriously, man, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking she asked me for a favor and I was in a position to grant it.”
It was the truth, but facing down his furious friend, Griff had to admit that it was a pretty weak argument. The truth was, he’d wanted her from the moment dirty Taboo had hit the table—and probably even before that. From the very beginning, Operation V-Card had been the perfect excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.
The perfect, well-bounded, no-strings-attached excuse to get into his best friend’s little sister’s pants.
Yeah. Brilliant work, Griff.
“I have to go with aaaanh.” Nate formed an X with his hands and made a buzzer noise like an old-style game show. “Becca’s—look, I don’t know how much you know about how Becca and Alia grew up.”
“I know their dad died and their mom had issues with depression.”
“Had issues with depression is putting it mildly,” Nate said. “She was there in body, but sometimes she didn’t get out of bed for a week. Or she got up for a couple hours, but by the time they got off the bus, she was back under the covers. They were basically on their own as teenagers. Other than the fact that she signed permission slips.”
Becca’s words came back to him. When a lot of kids still believed in Santa Claus, Li was buying her own Christmas presents. Yeah. His stomach hurt hearing it, and he wasn’t even Alia’s person.
Nate jabbed a finger in Griff’s direction. “You know what Becca learned from her childhood? That she wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.”
“Whoa. If Becca’s mom had depression, it wasn’t like she chose not to get out of bed for Becca—”
Nate’s expression softened. “Of course not. But from Becca’s perspective as a kid? How it must have felt?”
“She had Alia, though—”
Nate nodded at that, but then his eyes grew dark again. “You know about Becca’s high school boyfriend? The one who she waited for for three years and then he—” His face twisted.
“Yeah. I know that story.”
Nate’s expression said that if Griff wanted someone to help him rend that guy limb from limb, Nate would be ready, willing, and able.
“That guy taught Becca was that she wasn’t worth waiting for.”
Hearing Nate put it in such bald terms made the ache in Griff’s stomach spread up into his chest. He was no stranger to that experience. “And when you dumped her, you taught her that her sister was worth more than she was?”
To Griff’s surprise, Nate didn’t snap right back at him. He took a deep breath. And then he said, “I may feel some sense of responsibility for her shitty self-esteem, yes.”
They blinked at each other for a moment. Then Griff nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Nate rubbed a hand over his chest, sighed. “But seriously, tell me it’s not true? That she sees herself through that lens, of never being worth the effort?”
“She knows that’s not true—”
Nate waved it off. “She may know intellectually, but trust me, she doesn’t pit-of-her-gut know.”
Griff’s insides twisted tighter with the knowledge that Nate was probably right. Like Becca’s belief that she was stupid, this one could easily be buried where it was hardest to dig out.
Nate sighed. “Look. I need you to understand why Alia and I sharpen our knives when someone messes with Becca. The last, very last, thing either of us wants is for someone else to teach Becca a lesson about what she’s not worth. And you’re in the perfect position to do exactly that.”
Jesus, was that true?
“You know she wants it all, right? White wedding, two-point-five-kids or however many it is these days. She was ready to sign on at seventeen with that high school asshole of hers. And you? You live in what’s basically a dorm room and your shit is still in Marina’s basement because in your heart of hearts, you’re still hoping she’s going to get sick of her new boyfriend and come back to you.”
Griff opened his mouth to deny it, but when it came down to it, maybe Nate was right. Maybe he had left his stuff there in part to stake that slim, pathetic claim on Marina’s territory. Maybe he’d deleted that email a couple of weeks back because he hadn’t been ready to give up, not completely. He’d still been hoping. For another chance. A chance to prove he could make Marina happy.
“Tell me it’s not true, Griff. Tell me it’s not true, that you could see yourself marrying Becca and living happily ever after, and I’ll change my tune.”
What Griff saw, though, when he closed his eyes, was not Becca in a white dress and the two of them skipping off through green fields, hand in hand. It was himself, standing in the living room of Marina’s house holding the note she’d left on the coffee table.
He opened his eyes and found Nate watching him.
“Yeah,” Nate said grimly. “That’s what I thought.”
28
“Hey.”
Jenina stood in the doorway to Becca’s bedroom in their Seattle apartment. It was early Tuesday afternoon, four days after Becca and Griff had been caught pants down—one of them anyway—but it seemed like years had passed.