by Daisy Jane
“I’d help but I gotta go back into work in a few hours.” Eli looks at me and gives me a quick smile as he offloads the bags for Bastian. “Anymore in your truck?”
Bastian shakes his head, “this is it. Don’t tell Bodhi I’m using his big glass dish for animal products,” he grimaces and even though he’s in casual clothes, I can see the cop smile in him right then. The dimples in his cheeks, the fade of his clipped hair, the straightness in his posture.
“Off to take a shower then heading back in,” Eli announces, then he turns to me and presses a soft kiss to my cheek. “Have a nice night, guys.” Then he’s gone.
And I’m confused. And I have no poker face because Bastian snorts, motioning for me to unload the bags. Even though the migraine was three days ago, I still feel wiped, but I’d love nothing more than to help Bastian make lasagna and take my mind off whatever confusing, weird thing I’m feeling for Eli.
If he lets me.
“He kissed you,” Bastian says, nodding his head, lifting his eyebrows.
I can’t help but smirk. “I mean, we had a gang bang,” I say, stealing the casualness of the word from Bodhi earlier.
He nods and grins proudly. “We did.” He stills for a moment, smiling up to the heavens in an over-the-top way that only Bastian can make cute. “But no, don’t play that card. Eli stayed and snuggled with you.”
My head whips to him and my gossipy whisper-hiss takes over my voice. “I know! And I thought we had like, a moment or we were like, going to have a moment but then…” I shrug. “It just kind of, I don’t know.”
“Fizzled?” Bastian says, filling a pot and turning the stove to high.
“Never. There’s still this insane chemistry between us. Or, there is on my side.” I pull the cutting board from the cabinet near the sink and get the cheese grater out. “I think I’m reading into it. I think he’s just being nice because of what we did.”
Bastian hands me a block of cheese and tosses some ground turkey into a skillet next to the boiling water. “I don’t know,” he admits, “he’s been gone a lot so outside of our group hug and a few things here and there, I haven’t seen much of him lately. Haven’t had a good heart-to-heart man talk lately.” He thumps his closed fist against his heart. I snicker, but my heart warms a little, because though he’s being silly, he’s also serious. These would be the group of guys who have heart-to-hearts. They’re so damn in touch with themselves and each other.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say much. Instead, I poke around Bastian’s brain about his ex-fiancé Cami, and he opens up to me while we make three huge pans of lasagna. I’ve made lasagna before and so has Bastian, so we work swimmingly together and I learn a lot.
Bastian and Cami had been together since Bastian finished the academy. He said he knew right away that she was the one he wanted to marry.
“Her smile, it wasn’t just you know, lips and teeth,” he said, “it lit up her face. Like, I’ve never seen a person smile with their whole face like that. Like it was really a reflection of how she felt on the inside.”
I know smiles like that. My mom’s smile is like that. Abbie’s smile was that was talking about Devers at girls’ night.
He tells me how they met and it makes me think of a romance novel that he met her at a baseball game. “Foul ball goes up into the stands. Knocks this girl in the head. They ask over the loud system if anyone in her section was a doctor. She was out like a light.”
“Her section?”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure in a stadium full of people, there were lots of doctors and shit. But they didn’t want to cause a stampede or a flurry of people moving about mid-game.”
I nod. That makes sense.
“I was down a few rows from her, I didn’t see it happen but I’m a trained paramedic, so I went up there.” He stops moving the browning meat around the pan and his face is a heart-melting cocktail of pleasure and pain. “I carried her up to the main deck, one of the vendors gave her a lemonade. I asked her what her name was and where she was at.” The stove clicks as he shuts off the gas to the pasta and meat. “Heaven,” he recalls in a dream state. “She was looking at me. She said, my name is Cami and if you saved me then I must be in Heaven.”
I laugh because it’s totally the same reaction I’d have if I woke up from a hit to the skull and saw Bastian staring down at me.
“We were together for over five years. I proposed as soon as she graduated college. She said she never wanted to be married or engaged during school. And I respected that, even though all I wanted to do was get a ring on her damn finger.”
“When did you guys split up?” I ask, lying layers of noodles on the bottom of all three pans. Bastian is behind me, saucing. We cheese them together before starting the next layer.
“Sounds like around the time you and Brett split up. Last year. Or, I guess if you want to get technical, three hundred and ninety-eight days ago.”
My bottom lip turns down. “Bas, you keep count?” My heart breaks for him and yet, I remind myself I still don’t know what happened.
“I don’t want to,” he shakes his head and the pained pinch of his eyebrows tells me he’s being so honest and vulnerable with me right now. “I just can’t stop counting.”
I smooth my hand up and down his back for a few minutes before returning to the noodle layering. “You know you can tell me what happened if you want to.”
“She was, um, she is a twin.”
The verb correction tells me I’m on the cusp of a very fucking sad story. I swallow hard.
“Her twin, Samantha, was in an accident here in Oakcreek. Where the main road turns into the highway, right before you go up the hill and out of town,” he motions his arm to the back of the house, towards the general direction and I nod, knowingly for him to continue.
“I was working that night.”
My hand returns to his back where I stroke up and down, slowly. His knuckles grip the edge of the counter for a moment before he returns to saucing. We’re on our last layer.
“When I got on the scene, I didn’t even see the car. I thought dispatch had the wrong location or, I don’t know. It was weird though because even though I didn’t know it was Samantha, I felt different.”
I don’t speak, I don’t break this tidal wave of thoughts that rushes from him. He needs this, I can sense it. My hand still works on his tight, tense muscles.
“I see a lot of shit, Sloane. Kids that have been locked out of their house by crackhead parents, running around in diapers near busy streets. People who have overdosed and have been lying alone and dead for days. I see good people too but I see a lot of shit,” he says, his voice dipping into a timbre reserved for moments like these.
“I walked down into the shoulder; the shoulder veers off into a ditch. And I saw the car’s taillights, one of the wheels was still spinning. I approached the passenger door because I couldn’t get to the driver’s side—it was pinned shut from the way the car was turned.”
He layers the rest of the cheese as he continues and I watch his solid hands work over the glass dishes. “I put my light through the window. There was blood everywhere and that’s when I saw the windshield. It was shattered but still somewhat intact. With a big, person sized opening in front of the steering wheel.”
He takes a breath and his voice breaks.
“She never wore her seatbelt. I told her so many times. But she never did.”
Acid swirling in my belly as the weight of his heartbreak took the form of tears, two slipping past his lashes down his cheeks. He didn’t attempt to wipe them away.
“Twenty yards down the ravine I saw her shoe.”
Still, I rub his back.
“I just wanted her to be alive. Whatever the condition, I just kept saying, please don’t be dead. Please, please, God, keep her alive.” He wipes the tears from his cheek with the back of his hand and pulls the roll of foil from the drawer, covering the first dish. He smooths the edges down while he continues
.
“I loved her, she was like a sister to me because she and Cami were inseparable. Just how you think twins would be.” He moves to the next tray. “But I knew Cami wouldn’t be able to handle it. I fucking knew it would break her and I knew there was nothing I could do.”
“I walked down the ravine a little further and I found her. Just as two other units were pulling up, I found her. I’ll never forget how clearly I could see the moon in her open eyes. Her face was, on one side it was almost gone. But one side was as if she wasn’t even in an accident. Like she was playing dead.”
“Even though I knew, I pressed my fingers to her neck, I kept moving my fingers, convincing myself they were in the wrong place. I wasn’t doing it right. She had a pulse, I just had to find it.”
Tears swim down my cheeks and I wrap one around his back, fingers digging into his solid tricep as I side hug him and press my cheek to his arm.
“Cami just, it didn’t matter how much I tried to love her and understand. She was just, too broken.”
“Bastian, I am so sorry. I am so sorry that you lost Samantha and you had that trauma but that you lost Cami, too.” I don’t say she probably just needs time. Loss changes people. Life and love aren’t promised. I know not to give him false hope.
“I’m waiting for her, Sloane,” his blue eyes find mine for the first time since he started this hard confession. They’re wet with tears and clear with resolve. “I haven’t dated since she broke up with me. I’m waiting to marry her. Whenever she wants me back.”
I don’t know Cami, only the guys do, so I don’t know if Bastian’s waiting is incredibly romantic or perhaps misdirected and sad. Either way, I hug him and rise to my toes to plant a soft kiss on his cheek.
He moves away from me to pull open the oven and together we place the lasagnas inside.
Just as we begin the dishes, Bodhi walks through the back door, a sweaty, sexy mess. His man bun is loose, hair damp on his neck. His gray tank is drenched and his basketball shorts ride low on his hips. His nose piercing has been switched back to a silver ring and his jaw is making the transition from stubbled to bearded.
“Good workout?” Bastian asks.
Bodhi nods.
“I just told her about Samantha and Cami.” Bastian announces, surprising me. Bodhi walks up behind Bastian at the sink and wraps his arms around him, clasping his fingers together at Bastian’s chest. The bear hug embrace makes me grin and Bastian drops the dishes to playfully pinch his nose.
“Shower before hugs, babe,” Bastian says to Bodhi is his most feminine voice.
“I’m going,” he moves to the stairs before turning and looking to me. “I’m meeting Carissa in three days,” he says, dancing his eyebrows.
I clap my hands together, excited for him. And my excitement melts away as soon as Eli comes down the stairs, giving Bodhi a shoulder pat before he disappears out the front door, not before giving Bastian and I a universal “later guys”.
Bodhi’s delicious and easy on the eyes but he’s not right about Eli.
He doesn’t like me.
I just got “later guys”-ed.
I need to move on.
Chapter 21
Bodhi’s nervousness is interesting.
A man his size, you’d never think he was even capable of being nervous. What would possibly make him nervous?
The guys and I learned, as we watched him scrub the grout on the kitchen floor after he swept and mopped, that it wasn’t what but who.
Carissa. She’d blown off their meeting but rescheduled for one over coffee. I’m not a business woman but meeting Bodhi for coffee felt like a good way of getting a date under the guise of business, therefore eliminating the chance for her to be rejected. I understood that fear. Somehow, I’d come into the fold of these guys but I completely understood feeling nervous around Bodhi. The coffee date was two hours away and he was non-stop.
“He cleans when he’s nervous,” Bastian noted aloud.
“Cleans hard,” Eli said, tilting his head to watch Bodhi use a toothbrush to attack the grout.
“Can we help you with anything?” I offer in a soothing tone, seeing the tension in his shoulders.
“Is it too much if I bring flowers?” he asks, looking up from his faded and grimy Oral B. The designated cleaning toothbrush that existed in everyone’s home.
“No, I mean, does she think this is just about the vegan watch bands or does she know you like her?” I ask.
He pushes off the floor and sets the cleaning supplies onto the counter. “I don’t know!” he pulls at his wild hair, which is down and damp with sweat. “That’s the fucking thing, Sloanie, I don’t know! I cannot get a read on this woman.”
“Bring flowers,” I nod, firm in my tone. He is wavering enough; he needs us to be solid.
He glances at the clock on the oven. “I like that place off the highway, Blooms and Bombs. No bath bombs because that just feels too personal, but their flowers are beautiful. I’ve sketched some of their arrangements and tattooed them.”
“I can go get them for you, if you feel like you’d like to clean a little more?” I understand Bodhi’s need to be busy with his hands while his mind is chaos. In the last week since Eli had pinned me at the island and asked me if I wanted to be alone or with someone, I’d taken three extra walk-in appointments and did one color repair I’d normally turn down. Anything to keep me busy and not obsessing over my roommate who may or may not kind of like me.
“Please. And I don’t have any cash, take my card and get me some cash and flowers?” He nods to where his wallet sits on the counter. Leather-like, he made it himself with cruelty-free products. It was a beautiful tri-fold in a sepia tone with perfectly even stitching along the edges. Between his tattooing and his crafting, that man was a talented artist. Carissa needed to wake the hell up.
“I’ll drive you,” Eli said, surprising me.
Friends run errands together, I remind myself. “Sounds great.” My Prius was out of the shop last week but I’d gotten used to riding in Bodhi and Eli’s fancy new cars. Both drove top of the line EV’s, Eli’s was white and Bodhi’s was black. They cared about the environment, but deep down, I had to wonder how many girls turned their heads to see the hunk in the cool car. Not to mention, it went fast as hell and was fun to drive.
The conversation we keep as we run errands isn’t small talk. Surprisingly, Eli tells me about his parents, who were high school sweethearts and still madly in love, and his little sister. He tells me how he’s nervous for his upcoming speech he’s giving at his whiskey club, Trevvor’s. And it’s the second time in the day that I’m surprised by these guys being nervous.
“I can’t imagine you being nervous,” I admit, glancing across the cab of his car at him.
“Why?” he questions, flexing a bulging bicep in a joking way. My lady parts don’t get the joke. “Just because I’m strong doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous.”
“You don’t like public speaking?”
He sighs and rubs his chin, thinking. “I don’t think of this as public speaking because it’s the same twenty people I’ve been drinking whiskey with for five years. But I don’t like reading something I’ve written. I’m afraid I’ll say something stupid and not even know it.”
“I can’t see you saying something stupid.”
He looks at me with a small smile on his lips. “Two years into my career, I found out I was mispronouncing the CEO’s name.” I wince.
“Oof.”
“Yeah, so, I’m nervous.”
“When is it?”
“In two weeks,” he says, “the first draft is written, I just need to go through it.”
“I read a lot of stuff. Like, a lot. If you want me to read it and just look for any boo-boo’s, I could.”
He nods. “That would be good, thanks.” Progress. It’s something. I’ll take anything at this point, just to be closer to this man. Jesus, Sloane, reel in the desperation.
“I don’t know much abou
t whiskey but I can help with the easy stuff.”
He pauses, strokes his jaw which ignites the need in my belly. “You want to know about whiskey?”
Baby, I want to know about whatever you like, I don’t say, smiling at him. “Yeah.” I bite my lip.
“What?” he questions with a chuckle and I definitely notice when his gaze lingers on my lip a moment too long.
“I’ve never actually had whiskey.”
He shakes his head with faux disappointment. “We’ll have to change that.” Then, quickly and more seriously, he adds, “it’s not a migraine trigger, is it?”
My triggers are in his head and I try to not let that fact warm my brain with the fuzzies of interest. He’s just a nice guy, I repeat to myself, wishing my body would hear me.
“Well,” I say honestly, “alcohol in general isn’t really a trigger as much as it is dehydrating.” He nods. With that body, he knows all about the need to hydrate. “If I have a drink, I usually stick to one or else I have to overdo it on the water and Tylenol and then I still get worried that it will dehydrate my brain and,” I shrug, “I just live a less risky life.”
“Coming from the woman who partook in group sex,” he rumbles.
“Yeah,” I nod, unable to acknowledge the clear imbalance of my words and actions. “That’s… crazy.”
“Elaborate,” Eli rumbles, the word sounding like foreplay. I cross my ankles and flex my thighs to feel something between my legs without being obvious. I need friction in his presence.
“I just can’t believe that I wanted it and then acted on it.” I shake my head. “I’m proud of me.”
Eli’s smile does not help the pulsing between my legs. He reaches over and takes my hand from my thigh and weaves our fingers together, sending heat up my arm and into my chest. Ohmygod he’s holding my hand.
“You’re holding my hand,” I say, knowing my cheeks are giving away just how I feel about this moment.
“You like it.” I study his profile as he drives. I look at our linked hands.
“I do. Do you?”
He laughs for a moment and glances at me but I’m not laughing because I don’t know what Eli wants or thinks. That’s kind of my current conundrum.