Say You Love Me : a novel of romantic suspense and forbidden love (Reclaiming Heaven Book 1)

by E. R. Whyte

  Thankfully so. Strangely, I was a little short of breath.

  4

  Gunner

  chin tipped in recognition at Miles, the bouncer at Kendrick’s waves us in, replacing the velvet barrier rope as we file past. Miles punches me in the arm. “Tonight is your night, my friend. I am going to make sure you have the best night of your life.”

  I give him a dubious look. “As long as you keep Monica far away from me, we’ll be okay. She’s fucking obsessed.”

  “Give it no more thought.” Miles, perpetually cheerful, places both hands on my shoulders and steers me across the foyer and through the interior club entrance. We stand still for a moment, taking it in.

  We’ve come to the club a few times in the past year, but the initial glimpse of the gentleman’s club never fails to impress. It’s considered one of the most upscale clubs of its nature on the east coast, catering to men with deep pockets and an appreciation for a pretty girl.

  One wall is lined with a gleaming dark bar, top shelf liquor in every assortment gracing its mirrored back wall.

  It’s carpeted in a deep oriental-style rug that’s plush under foot. It complements the black and white leather seating, the ruby drapes that hang at strategic intervals around the walls. When the curtains are pulled back, they reveal stages in varying sizes for the dancers.

  And the dancers. Good God, the dancers. Kendrick’s has always sought, and found, the most appealing women to decorate its stages, wait on its tables, and perform in its peep shows. In every ethnicity, shape, and size, they are skilled dancers and trained well in the art of being alluring.

  Or, as Miles likes to say, they’re hot as fuck.

  He dragged me here tonight as an early nineteenth birthday present, saying that as one of the oldest seniors in our graduating class, I needed a gift that was appropriately mature. Seeing as how my birthday doesn’t arrive for another month, I think he just wanted an excuse to come here without his girlfriend getting pissed at him.

  I didn’t want to come. This one dancer, Monica, won’t leave me alone when I come in and it’s driving me nuts. We hooked up last summer and now she thinks we’re in a relationship. She knew the deal, though.

  But if Miles acts as buffer, I guess this place will be a welcome distraction from the shit show this year is already turning into. Resolutely I turn my mind from that, and we slide into a reserved booth near one of the stages. A waitress comes over with a few drinks.

  “Give it up for Miss Cherry Pie, the hottest teacher you fellas never had!” The disembodied voice of the announcer booms out over the audience, and Miles punches me in the shoulder. He’s almost bouncing in his seat when I shoot a glance in his direction.

  “What the fuck is up with you, dude?”

  “Just watch,” Miles says. He can hardly contain his excitement and despite the fact that we’ve been coming here fairly regularly for a while now, my interest is piqued. “You are going to love this next chick. She has the best tits and ass I’ve seen in a while, and you know I’m happy with Sherry.”

  “Huh.”

  I grunt and watch as the dancer starts her routine, and it isn’t long before I’m rapt. I can’t keep a low groan from escaping as I adjust myself on the plush burgundy bench directly in front of the stage. The dancer on stage, Miss Sweet Cherry Pie or something like that, is doing a sexy teacher routine, and if that doesn’t hit straight to the heart of every one of my dirtiest fantasies, that move she’s making with her knees spread apart sure as hell does.

  Miles, sitting beside me on the bench, elbows me and brings his beer to his lips. His eyes are focused just as greedily on the woman on stage. “No shit, brother,” he says. “I wouldn’t kick her ass out for eating crackers in bed, that’s for damn sure.”

  For some reason it annoys me, and I give him a look. He lifts his drink as if to say what the fuck, and since I have no answer for him, I turn my eyes back to the woman in front of us. I can’t tell him not to look and I have no idea why a part of me wants to. “I told you, you’d like her,” he mumbles into his drink.

  “Well, you were right.”

  I ease back on the bench and pull my ball cap down to shield the hunger in my eyes as I continue drinking in the woman dancing. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t put my finger on it. Her skin is creamy pale, but dotted liberally with freckles that I can just see, as close as I am. Lights from the stage catch tiny refractions, and I realize that she has dusted herself with some kind of shimmery powder—to hide the freckles, maybe. It didn’t work. Her hair, thick and coiling down to her ass, is the color of the bourbon in the glass in my hand. And she’s wearing fucking glasses. I give myself a little shake, aware of a need to put my hand on that skin, to tug on that hair.

  I take a long swallow. I’m vaguely aware of Miles ordering another drink beside me, but I give a slight tip of my glass to indicate that I’m fine when the half-dressed waitress asks if I need another. It’s comical, the way this club caters to Miles and me. We’re not twenty-one yet and everyone here knows it, but since Miles’s old man owns the place, there’s a tacit agreement to let us do what we want as long as we don’t make any trouble. So far we’ve managed. Miles’ father has “agreements,” as he puts it, with half the police force and county government, but we don’t want to make any trouble for him.

  The dancer moves mere feet in front of me and flings her shirttails open. “Holy shit and fuck me sideways,” I mutter, and then lapse into silence. She’s fucking with me. She has to be. That slight grin on her lips tells me she knows I’m here and turned on as all get-out. For the first time since I started coming here, I feel like a kid with his tongue and his boner hanging out. I haven’t felt this way since I was a fifteen-year-old in a closet with a hot chick at a party.

  As I watch, she crooks a finger and motions, as if to say right this way, big boy. I glance at Miles and he grins, shoves me up and forward, and seconds later I’m standing what seems to be inches away from the smooth, freckled expanse of her stomach. I don’t even look back at him as she stands before me, running her hands along that smooth flesh and making my mouth water to do the same. Standing on the stage, her thighs are slim but muscled and right at the perfect height to wrap a hand around. Her belly button is just at my eye level. There’s a freckle just above it, and I’m seized with the crazy impulse to touch it.

  So I do.

  I feel her breath catch in the clench of muscle under skin, and a fine tremor ripples under the skin of her stomach. I look up at her.

  And lightning strikes.

  The dancer on the stage is Shiloh Brookings, my one-time… long-time, if I’m honest… crush. Her face registers no recognition, and I realize that with the glare of the lights, she can’t see me. It’s a punch to the gut. I want to vomit. Why the hell is Shiloh stripping?

  I know what comes next, but I’m consumed with reluctance. Most acts end in the same general way, with audience participation in the form of one lucky guy getting to unclasp the dancer’s top. Tonight, that’s me, and up to this point, I considered myself lucky. I trail my fingers up to her bra and pause at the underside of her tit. I don’t want to expose her, feeling a weird sense of possession for this tit. And its twin. I shake my head.

  “Take it off!” Someone hollers.

  She pushes her chest into my hand subtly. Firming my jaw, I flick open the clasp of the bra with no further hesitation. Forgive me, Sammy. Sweet, full tits tumble out in front of me, but I don’t drop my eyes from Shiloh’s, seeing them instead in my peripheral. I do, however, take the opportunity to embed the feel of her skin on the tips of my fingers, moving them without hurry back down the center of her stomach to stop at the band of her underwear. I hastily tuck the hundred I’m holding into its band. I’m half aware of paper bills landing on the stage floor around us until she gives me a flirty wink and backs carefully away.

  “Thanks for the assist,” she says, letting her bra slide fully off her arms to the
tip of one finger. She tosses it at me, and I catch it without comment, watching as she walks away.

  I don’t turn to sit until she’s gone. When I stuff the bra in my pocket and take my seat, I catch a gleam in Miles’s eye that wasn’t there earlier. “What?”

  “My friend. My brother.” Miles throws his arm around my neck and pulls me in for a bro hug. “I am about to make your year.”

  “Yeah?”

  “For certain.” He pats my chest. “You know who that was?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “You are going to love me. You are going to name your children after me. No, screw kids. You’re going to name your dick after me.”

  “You’re lit.”

  “Absolutely. So, you seriously didn’t recognize that fine piece of ass?”

  “Treat her like a lady, man,” I said, edgy.

  “That was Miss Shiloh Brookings.” He waves his arms wildly about like a magician in his ta-da moment.

  “Yeah, man. I noticed. What the fuck is she doing here?”

  Miles rolls his eyes. “I don’t know. I just know that she’s here. But guess where else she is?”

  “I don’t know. Where?”

  I’m all kinds of confused about her presence here. Last I heard, Shiloh was off at college, studying to be a photojournalist or something like that. I was just a kid last time I saw her.

  I never forgot her, though.

  I feel weirdly responsible, which makes no sense. But her parents are dead and her brother’s not here, and there’s no one to give her hell for taking her clothes off for money.

  “Where have you been? Under a rock? She’s the hottest teacher in school, dude.”

  “Our school?” I cast my memory back to our assemblage of teachers at Kennon High and cannot place her. Of course, the year has just gotten underway and I’ve been more focused on my last football season than I have been on academics.

  “Yup. I recognized her name on Dad’s list of dancers and knew you would flip. I don’t know why we haven’t seen her here—she may have been doing the peeps or something. Then I realized I had forgotten to tell you she was teaching at the high school now. I figured this would be a sweet way to re-introduce you two star-crossed love birds. She’s been there over a month now.”

  I ignore his love birds comment. Shiloh hardly knows I exist. “You’re shitting me. What does she teach?”

  “This is the good part. Senior English. I have her first period.”

  “How could you forget to tell me something like that?”

  Miles shrugs. “Been busy with Sherry, man.”

  I sit back in my seat. English. I’m not doing so well in my current English class. Mr. Markham despises me because I almost always have a smart answer about something… usually because I don’t know the real answer. I need to get my grade up or I’ll end up flunking, and without English I won’t graduate. It’s frustrating as shit because I’m not stupid. I’ve been half-running our family business for years now and helping it turn more than a respectable profit. English… reading, though… that shit just isn’t my strength.

  But seeing Shiloh up there on the stage — as awful as it is — maybe I can use this to my advantage. Maybe she can help me out, one way or another.

  “Miles.” I chew on a toothpick and stand, ready to head out. I have things to do. Schedules to change. Shiloh may be a teacher, but she’s only a few years older than me and I made her blush when I was a freshman. Imagine what I could do with her now.

  “Yeah?”

  “Want to catch me up to speed on what’s been happening in English class? I’m thinking maybe a schedule change is in order.” We turn and head for the exit.

  Suddenly, I’m very eager for the weekend to end and classes to resume.

  5

  Shiloh

  “And in this weekend’s news, a sobering new mystery on the campus of a Charlottesville university. Madison Bryan, a junior majoring in nursing, is the third young woman in a six-month span to be reported missing. Police are investigating, but like the first two missing women cases, leads are remarkably scant, leaving detectives with little direction.”

  I turn the little television mounted under the kitchen cabinets up a bit and lean on the counter as I sip my coffee. For a few idle minutes, I watch the news with half my attention and scan Facebook on my phone with the other. Saturdays are, without question, my favorite day of the week. I sleep in, have a single cup of coffee in lazy fashion either on my porch or in front of the news, and then do some baking before heading out to visit Sammy at Thurston House for the afternoon.

  Somehow, I have become quite the baking connoisseur. I started baking after mom was killed while she and Sammy were out Christmas shopping. Everything basically went to hell. I had no control over anything, anymore. Everything changed, and it became clear nothing was going to work out the way I had planned and dreamed for most of my teenage life. I opened her cookbook, picked a recipe at random, and started mixing and blending until I forgot all the other things I had to deal with.

  The process was written with specific steps to get from point A to point B. The result was as described in the text, as shown in the photograph. It was expected.

  I was in control, even if only of a lemon meringue pie.

  So today... now. Saturdays are for baking.

  I pull out an ancient red and white checked cookbook from the shelf on the side of the scarred butcher block kitchen island and begin flipping through for recipes. I want something extraordinary. Something that requires touch. Banana bread, maybe? That’s an easy one, but I could roast the bananas first to dress it up. And scrape vanilla pods. Or maybe cinnamon rolls? I’m in the mood for something sweet.

  My mother’s handwriting decorates the margins of the cookbook, her scrawl nearly as illegible as mine. Alongside the cinnamon roll recipe, she wrote five stars. “Delivered for Christmas to neighbors, 1998. They loved them!” I would have been a baby at the time.

  It was around five years later that my parents split, my dad taking me with him to California and mom keeping Sammy, one-year-old at the time, with her. Although it didn’t mean much at the time, as I got older, I found it more and more difficult to understand how they could just pick one kid and virtually abandon the other. I lost out on having a mother until I was a teenager. Sammy lost out on having a dad. I still have trouble with the how and why.

  I quickly decide on cinnamon rolls and assemble my ingredients. Flour, yeast, sugar and salt, butter. Just seeing all of it—the mixing bowls, the old measuring cups that form a cow when stacked, the ingredients—sitting on the aged marble countertop in the kitchen, with sunlight streaming through the sheers and dappling the wooden floors gives me a sense of peace.

  After giving the recipe a quick scan to make sure I’ve gathered everything I’ll need, I click on Spotify for background noise. The soft beat of a classic rock mix fills the room, and I bop my head as I start blending: first the yeast, salt, and warm water, next the dry ingredients. I’m preheating the oven and beginning to mix the dough when my phone buzzes.

  Unknown Name.

  I consider not answering but quickly dismiss the idea. It could be a nurse with a question about Sammy. They all have my number and sometimes use personal phones to call.

  “Hello?”

  Silence is a tangible presence on the line. I try again. “Hello?” When again there’s no response, I click to hang up.

  The call quickly becomes memory as I continue making the cinnamon rolls. I drink another cup of coffee while the dough rises and then roll it out, feeling the muscles in my arms push and contract as I work the dough. I spread the filling on the flattened dough, then roll it up and slice it into the individual pastries. After lining several pans with the rolls, I leave it to rise yet again. The entire process is soothing and rhythmic, reminding me of a faint recollection I have of my mother doing the same thing before I left for California. It’s one of my
earliest memories and its edges are blurred, distorted by my youth and time. There were times, when I was a kid with my dad, that I thought I had imagined my mother. Then I came to Virginia and learned my imagination was memory.

  The phone rings again as I place the first batch of rolls in the oven. I answer by reaching across to the phone on the counter and tapping the speaker button. “Hello.” When there’s no reply, I think maybe I tapped the wrong button and straighten from closing the oven to look. No. I look at the display, and again it reads Unknown Name.

  Temper rises within me. “Look, I don’t have time to play games, so—”

  “I can smell those cinnamon rolls from here. They look so good.” A voice interrupts me, weird sounding, sexless. It’s nasally and oddly pitched and sounds as though something mechanical or digital is distorting it. I feel a constriction in my throat that takes me a moment to identify as fear.

  “Who is this? How do you—? What are you talking about?” My voice trails away. There’s a low, raspy chuckle, and then the sound of breathing. Mine. His. I’m not entirely sure. And then, click.

  My caller hangs up and I stand, dumb and unmoving, beside the oven in my sunny kitchen. I clutch my phone in my hand as though it might grant me some answers, but now it sits silent in my palm, mocking me. My eyes dart from one point to the next, checking the door, the window, the knife block on the counter. Half-hysterically, I wonder if I need one. Is there someone in my house? Someone outside, watching me?

  The house is silent. When the phone rang earlier the music app shut off automatically and I never bothered to turn it back on. All I can hear is the gentle electric hum of the refrigerator and the crackle of the fluorescent light above my head. Outside, the heat pump cycles. I don’t feel any other presence other than my own, and yet I’m afraid to move, fearful someone is on the other side of the island or just around the corner.