by J. H. Croix
7
Belle
I heard the sound of footsteps approaching and ordered myself not to look over my shoulder too fast. It could’ve been anyone.
I hadn’t walked down here hoping to encounter Ty, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I might the very second I heard those footsteps. I took a breath, gulping in the chilly nighttime air. There were many things I loved about Vermont, but cool late summer evenings were one of my favorites. You could feel the impending fall coming, a subtle shift in the sense of the air at night.
The leaves hadn’t been stripped from the trees yet, but the June bugs weren’t smacking into my head by this time, and the crickets were a little quieter. I was busy telling myself to stay calm and peaceful. It was all for naught the moment I heard his voice and my pulse lunged.
“Hey there, Belle.”
I forced myself to take another breath, but it was a shallow one. Glancing over, I saw Ty rounding the end of the bench. He looked down at me, the illumination from the lights strung above casting soft glints in his dark hair. “Mind if I sit?”
My belly spun, and I swallowed. “Of course not, It’s a free country.”
My voice came out husky and a little breathless. My response to Ty kept surprising me. Oh, we definitely had chemistry back when we knew each other before, but that was when I was wild and young. The tripwire of desire hadn’t been flicked on in my body in a while, and I wondered if I’d gotten too rusty to even recognize it.
I hadn’t made the greatest choices in men. My impulsivity had led me down a few not-so-great paths.
Ty slipped his hips on the bench beside me. My eyes reflexively looked down at the space between us, maybe a foot and a half or so of the wooden bench marked the space. Suddenly, it felt as if he were immediately beside me. His presence was that potent.
“This is a nice spot after a busy night,” he said as he looked out across the river in the darkness.
The lights from Speakeasy and other nearby buildings reflected on the water, casting shimmers of light that rippled on the dark water. The sound of the river moving over the rocks was soothing for me.
“It is.”
I didn’t know what else to say and had been worrying ever since I’d gone to The Gin Mill with him a few nights ago and told him the inconvenient details of my life. It was all rather unsettling and even more so because my hormones were making a racket in my body.
Because I was me, and even though I was no longer running on the fumes of mania thanks to modern medicine, I still tended to blurt out my thoughts. “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable telling you all that stuff the other night.”
Stuff? Ugh. Eloquence wasn’t my friend when I was worried. Even though I was afraid, I chanced a look at Ty to find his steady gaze waiting. After a quiet moment that stretched through several echoing beats of my heart, he shook his head slightly. “Of course not. We’re all a little fucked up. I know I am.” He paused, his brow creasing slightly. “That’s not to say that I’m implying you’re fucked up.”
I laughed, the tension easing slightly in my chest. “I am fucked up, Ty. It’s okay.”
He chuckled. “Maybe so, but I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I hope you’re doing okay. It sounds like a lot has changed for you.”
I shrugged. That was one way to put it. I didn’t want to get all maudlin and talk about how I didn’t know how to find myself anymore. I’d been so driven academically and so on auto-pilot that I hadn’t slowed down enough to ask myself what I really wanted. I didn’t think I wanted to go back to law school, but I wasn’t sure. For so long, I’d felt like I was on top of everything and now I felt on top of nothing.
“I’m okay. Actually, I’m better than okay. I love cooking, and it calms me down. I’ve never been a person who liked to be idle and working in a busy restaurant certainly doesn’t allow for that. It suits me.”
He made a sound of agreement, and we fell into silence. It was sort of comfortable. Well, except for the thrum of my pulse vibrating through my body and the heat suffusing me from being near Ty.
I stole another glance at him and suddenly wished I could be the girl I used to be—carefree and careless. Oh, what I would give to have another hot night with him! That didn’t seem prudent. But then, I kept remembering May’s advice. Maybe I could use a fling. I knew it would be great with Ty. He held a special place in my memories. We had some seriously fun nights together, and I’d missed him after he graduated.
Restless with my thoughts, I stood up abruptly, smoothing my hands on my jeans. “I should go.”
“I’ll walk you,” he said, standing beside me.
When I looked up, he was right there, all tall and strong. He was the kind of guy who tended to make me want to lean into his strength. He carried himself with an easy masculinity. My eyes landed on that dimple in his chin, and I took a breath, biting my lip.
“Belle?” he prompted.
Just that, merely the sound of his voice, sent a shiver chasing over my skin. That was enough to galvanize me. Closing the distance between us, I tipped my face up towards his. “We had fun back in college.”
His eyes searched mine, a barely-there grin curling the corners of his mouth and sending sparks in a scatter through me. “We sure did.”
Just when I was thinking I should kiss him, he beat me to it. I had a competitive streak, and everything tended to feel like a challenge sometimes. This was no exception. The second his lips brushed across mine, I arched up, murmuring into our kiss, “Oh no, you don’t get to beat me to it.”
His answering chuckle sent a subtle vibration through my body, spinning into the sensations rushing like liquid fire through my veins. The moment his tongue stroked boldly against mine, an unexpected and startling sense of familiarity slammed into me.
Maybe he’d just been a hookup, maybe we’d only been tangled up skin to skin a few times, but Ty had been impossible to forget. Just like my body remembered, he took control of our kiss. He was that kind of guy, and I freaking loved it.
Like a flame racing up a fuse, our kiss exploded into a tangle of lips, teeth and tongues, and I couldn’t get enough. I was pressed against him, our tongues dueling, and I could feel the hard, hot press of his arousal in the cradle of my hips when I felt him draw away abruptly.
I made a sound of protest. “Someone’s coming,” he murmured as he set me back. Somehow, he managed to do that quickly but gently.
My body protested the separation, and I felt myself leaning toward him as the sound of footsteps belatedly punctured my awareness. With my pulse galloping and my breath coming in sharp pants, I gave myself a hard mental shake.
I had no business kissing Ty with such abandon. Hell, I was pretty sure I had no business kissing anyone. I needed to get my life together, not jump into a fling.
A tiny voice whispered in the corner of my mind, Why not? A fling with Ty is guaranteed to be hot.
I shushed that voice, and then May’s teasing encouragement echoed in my thoughts. I felt a little bereft to be torn away from Ty’s deliciously commanding mouth.
“Oh, hi,” a woman’s voice said.
Glancing over, I was relieved to discover that the two people approaching were strangers, at least to me. Ty didn’t appear to know them either and simply cast them a friendly smile. “Bench is all yours,” he offered, gesturing toward the couple as he reached for my hand.
Well, then. I guess we were holding hands now. It shouldn’t have felt so good to have his strong grip curled around mine. His palm was warm in the cool night. I was somehow comforted, even though that didn’t make a lick of sense. A moment later, we reached the parking lot, and Ty glanced down at me. “You live right nearby, right?”
My head was nodding instantly.
“I’ll walk you.”
See, this was where I should’ve said good night. Because I was, obviously, capable of walking myself home. Yet, I didn’t say good night because I didn’t want to let go of his hand. So, we began walking. It was only after we
turned out of the entrance to the parking lot for Speakeasy that I realized anybody who worked here could’ve seen us walking through the area with our hands entwined.
My pulse, which had barely started to slow, lunged again and anxiety churned in my belly. It wasn’t like Ty was my boss, per se. But he was a manager, and kind of, I supposed, at the level of Phoebe who was my boss.
Now wasn’t the time to freak out, so I just kept on holding his hand as we walked the roughly five minutes or so to the house where my apartment was upstairs. The elderly woman who lived downstairs was friendly and also close to deaf. I didn’t have to worry about waking her if she was asleep. I seriously doubted she would even hear if I made a racket when I came home.
When we reached the base of the stairs that led up to the upstairs entrance, my brain fired off a thought, telling me to let go of his hand and say good night. Once again, my hand, which apparently had more control than my mind in this situation, didn’t loosen its grip, and we walked up the stairs together. We reached the small landing where there was a light mounted over the door.
I looked up, my eyes colliding instantly with Ty’s gaze. I realized we hadn’t spoken the whole walk home. I never felt the need to make small talk with him, which was nice. Although, small talk hadn’t been really what we were about when we knew each other before.
Time behaved a strange way when I was around him. I had no idea how long we stared at each other, but my pulse was racing so fast, I was surprised it didn’t create a wake of sparks in the air. Butterflies took flight in my belly and desire rose swiftly inside me. My brain cells were pretty useless around him, and I couldn’t even muster my good angel telling me not to kiss him again.
“It’s really good to see you, Belle,” he murmured as he dipped his head.
“You too,” I breathed, my lips moving against his when they brushed over mine.
The contact was subtle, but it felt like fire sizzled across the surface of my lips. My knees went wobbly when he dropped a kiss in one corner of my mouth and then the other. By the time he fit his mouth over mine again, I had to cling to him for support. I wound my arms around his neck, gasping as his tongue collided sensually against mine.
I had fond memories of my times with him before, but he’d taken his kisses to a new level. I distantly wondered if it was possible to almost climax from a kiss. He devoured my mouth. By the time he drew away, catching my bottom lip with his teeth lightly before letting it go, I was plastered against the door. Without him and the door, there was no way I could’ve remained standing. I felt the cool air filtering through the fabric of my shirt as I gulped in deep breaths.
We stared at each other under that little circle of light, and I really, really, wanted to invite him in. My hormones were clamoring for it. But I didn’t want to be that easy. Back before I blew my life up, I’d been trying to make smarter decisions about men. I had a tendency to be impulsive, and that impulsivity had led me into a bad situation with a guy a few months before everything spiraled. In a weird way, my manic episode had neatly gotten me out of that ugly entanglement. By some miracle, I held onto my resolve to be sensible.
“Good night,” I said, my voice sounding ridiculous, all raspy and breathless.
His eyes searched mine, and I wished I could climb inside his brain and understand what he was thinking. I wanted to know what he wanted from me. I didn’t have much faith anyone would want more than a hookup with me.
He dipped his chin, almost in acknowledgment, I supposed. When he stepped back slowly, I felt the absence of his hard muscled body and potent presence immediately. Cool air rushed to fill the space where he’d been, and I wanted to yank him back.
“Good night, Belle.”
Just when I thought that was it, he leaned forward once again and pressed a lingering kiss on my lips. A little whimper escaped when he drew away.
I watched when he descended the stairs, glancing back once more to wave. Only then did I turn and let myself in my little apartment. I leaned against the door, trying to catch my breath and instantly berating myself for letting myself kiss him. Not once, but twice.
Desire was pulsing through me, and I was restless with need. The girl I used to be definitely wouldn’t have had the willpower to tell him good night. I would’ve had my fun and watched him go later.
I laughed to myself as I pushed away from the door. I needed to figure my life out, and it couldn’t involve hot kisses with Ty, no matter how amazing they were.
8
Ty
I was in a hurry when my phone vibrated on the counter. Thinking it was my sister because she was supposed to call me this morning, I tapped the button to accept the call without glancing at the screen. Big mistake.
“Ty,” my father’s crisp voice said.
I gritted my teeth, casting a futile glare at the phone where it sat innocuously on the counter. I was silent just long enough that my father prompted, “Ty.”
It didn’t matter that I was an adult and had lived away from my parents since I was seventeen years old. All I had to do was hear my father’s voice and it felt as if a chill entered my body, settling like a cold ball of tension in my stomach.
“I’m here, Dad. What can I do for you?”
“I’m wondering when you’re going to come to your senses,” he said flatly.
He’d never been one to waste time on pleasantries, not even for the sake of smoothing over an uncomfortable moment or situation. At least not within his family. Certainly not with me, his only son, and a failure in his eyes.
“Dad, I have come to my senses. It’s just that you don’t agree with my choices.”
My phone was on speaker, and I supposed that was for the best. I finished drying my hands and lifted my coffee cup and took a swallow.
I envisioned him gritting his teeth about now, which made us even, because my jaw was clenched tight. I opened it wide, trying to stretch the tension out of the joints.
“Ty, you know you’re welcome here at the company.”
“Dad, your definition of welcome is nothing I would consider welcoming. Please stop asking me about this.”
I considered my sister’s advice to tell my dad to fuck off. I probably should’ve, but there was a tiny part of me—I suppose the little boy who still wanted my father’s approval—that wasn’t quite ready to completely throw in the towel with him.
“How are things then?” he asked, his tone sharp.
His tone was always sharp. I stretched my jaw again before replying, “They’re good. I like my job, and I’m happy here.”
My father was silent for a long moment. Our phone calls were filled with these tense silences.
“How are you?” I finally asked.
“Fine, of course. Busy with work, but that’s to be expected.”
“You like being busy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with hard work, Ty.”
“I didn’t say there was. I’ve always been a hard worker.” I hoped my annoyance didn’t come through in my tone. I had to wrestle with my defensiveness with my father. I didn’t like that he could get to me, but he sure could.
“I wouldn’t know that, because you don’t work for me. Most sons would be happy to walk into a high-paying position in a company that they would eventually own if only they would work there.”
I wasn’t going to give my father the satisfaction of arguing the point any further. “That’s probably true. Perhaps, if you wanted a son to want that, you might’ve worked harder at your relationship with me.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” my father muttered. “Just because I didn’t baby you doesn’t mean I didn’t try to have a relationship with you.”
“Whatever you think, Dad. Unless there’s something else you wanted, I need to go.”
The line went dead in my ear. I leaned my head back, staring at the beams above. My father didn’t even really make me angry anymore, just tired.
I idly counted the beams before lowering my gaze. I lived in the upstairs
of a renovated barn. I loved the space. I’d done the renovations myself. When I’d been looking for a place to live, I’d bought this old barn and an adjoining slice of property, carved out from a larger farm. I’d gotten a serious deal because the barn wasn’t exactly livable when I moved in. I’d worked my ass off and renovated the entire upper floor over the summer. It was a beautiful space now.
Once upon a time in the last few decades, or thereabouts, someone had started work on the barn. There was already a bathroom and plumbing upstairs, and they’d added windows all across one side. No walls had been added, and they hadn’t done anything else. I’d installed new windows and flooring, gotten a kitchen completed, and more. I planned to work on the downstairs over the winter. I loved the feel of the old space.
That was another thing my father found completely ridiculous—my interest in building and renovation on my own. It wasn’t something I ever wanted to do professionally, but I loved doing it in my spare time, taking the time to get things just so.
I had refinished all the old beams and used reclaimed flooring from another old barn that had been torn down. It was gorgeous and bright with the sunlight falling through the windows. I’d built a large island in the kitchen with a subtle violet granite countertop to separate it from the main room.
Thus far, I didn’t have any other separate rooms, but I’d put my bedroom, such as it was, behind a screen on the opposite end of the expansive space from the kitchen. I’d installed a large wood stove in the center of the area, which cast heat in all directions. That was merely for extra heat because I also had a highly efficient propane stove that provided hot water on demand.
My phone vibrated again. This time, I wisely checked the screen to confirm it was my sister before tapping to accept the call.
“Hey, Jess,” I said in greeting.
“Hey, how’s it going?”