Learning to Love the Heat

by Everly Lucas

  “I’m sorry because…because I care about you.”

  The pouring rain pounds the thick canopy of leaves above us and the concrete sidewalk, and I’m not sure he heard me over all the noise until he stills.

  The words I chose were beyond inadequate, but the only word that fits is the one I can’t say—not even to myself. I don’t think Andy knows how deep my feelings run, but he knows I more than care about him.

  “Don’t say that.”

  With his back to me, his voice is gruff and distant, so I move to stand in front of him, forcing him to look at me. He made me answer his damn question, so he gets to deal with the consequences right along with me.

  Frustrated with this gorgeous, infuriating man, I shove at his chest with both hands, causing him to stumble back half a step. “You asked the question, jackass. You knew exactly what my answer would be. And now you want me to take it back? Well, screw you!” I get up in his face and shove him again. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  His clothes and hair are thoroughly drenched, and rain spills over the deeply tanned skin of his arms and shoulders. How dare he look so magnificent when I probably resemble a cat trying to claw its way out of the bathtub? And fuck him for making me want him so badly when I’m trying to stay pissed at him.

  “What am I supposed to say?” he asks, his lost-little-boy eyes pleading for an answer. I wish like hell I had one to give. “Nothin’ I say is gonna change shit, and we both know it.”

  Grief and anger are a dangerous mix, flooding my body and washing away all but a shred of my control. My limbs shake with pent up energy, begging for any form of release. My lungs burn with the effort of holding back a scream.

  “You’re supposed to man up and give me the truth,” I say, my voice like steel wool in my throat.

  He can’t hide his internal struggle. There are words on the tip of his tongue, dying to be spoken. I know exactly how he feels. But, being Andy, he lets them out the only way he knows how.

  He hauls me to him, his impossibly strong arms wrapping around my body like a boa constrictor with its next meal. My lips part to free the air he just knocked out of me, and his tongue swoops in to paint my mouth with those words he couldn’t say.

  At first, I’m in shock. Not because he’s kissing me—Andy DelVecchio is a passionate man who does things passionately—but because I should’ve seen this coming. His body had been coiled so tight, even I could see he was walking that razor-thin line between fight and flight.

  He sure as fuck chose fight, because this kiss feels like a total knockout.

  I remain fixed, motionless, letting him show me how he feels. It’s only fair. I demanded his answer the same way he demanded mine, and this is him giving it to me.

  That flimsy shred of control I was clinging to is soon forgotten, tossed aside for being unwanted and useless. There’s no point fighting the heat building between us—the heat that’s been rising since the day we met, when I saw him standing in Ben’s living room wearing nothing but running shorts and sweat.

  Rain fuses our bodies together. Between that and Andy’s determined hold on me, I have no hope of breaking free of him. Even if I wanted to.

  His brutish hands knead my ass as his fingers work at inching up my dress until it’s bunched at the tops of my thighs. I’m snatched up off the ground, and my legs wrap around his hips as he spins us and forces me between his unyielding body and the exterior wall of someone’s house. The weathered brick scrapes at my back, but I moan at the bite of pain every time Andy’s hips grind me into it.

  One of his thick digits finds the opening of my sex, and I whimper as he teases my wet inner folds. I’m half-startled when he pushes it inside me to the first knuckle. It’s been almost a year since anything other than my vibrator has ventured there, but it takes me no time at all to adjust. When he plunges deeper, my flesh welcomes the intrusion, quivering around his skilled finger.

  I cling to his powerful biceps, nails digging in deep to make sure he doesn’t try to leave me. It would physically hurt me to let him go. I kiss him back with a potent desire, a carnal lust I had no clue I was capable of feeling.

  I was so right. Andy is the gasoline to my lit match. He and I together, we’re wildfire. And this kiss, this desperate passion, is about to consume us both until we’re nothing but ash.

  Then his mouth slants on mine in a way that sparks the memory of my lips on another man’s—on Ben’s—not fifteen minutes ago. The weight of my guilt crushes me from the inside out, starting with my heart.

  Needing space to breathe, I press my hands flat on Andy’s broad chest. To my surprise and relief, he slips his finger from my core and steps back without hesitation, gently setting me on my feet.

  I mean to move, to walk away from him, to stop touching him. Any one of those things will do. But his erratic heartbeat is intoxicating, and I’m hypnotized by the way my hands rise and fall with his chest on every intake of breath. When I look into his eyes, they’re blazing. I have no doubt he sees the same fire in mine.

  Just one more, I tell myself. One more kiss, before I have to give them up for good.

  Clutching at his shirt with tight fists, I reverse our positions and shove him against the wall. I whimper into his mouth the second we reconnect, and I wonder how I’ll survive without his talented lips after this.

  But I’ll have to. Starting now.

  My tears mix with the rain to stream down my face. Not wanting Andy to see them or the redness in my eyes, I lay my cheek over his heart, listening and waiting for its rhythm to slow. It never does.

  My arms circle his waist, and he holds me to him, resting his cheek on my wet hair. Our embrace is perfectly innocent, yet it feels far more intimate than when he was dry-humping me for all the world to see.

  But even this has to end.

  “You need to go back to Ben,” he says, his voice low and rolling through me like thunder. I burn the sensation into my memory. I’ll never be close enough to feel it again.

  “I do. But, Andy—"

  “I care about you, too, Peach,” he says and presses his lips to my forehead. His words are painful and perfect, and they make my heart hurt as pieces of it—the pieces that are his alone—crumble and wash away with the rain. “You need to make a choice, and Benny’s the obvious one. He wants a life with you. I know you want it, too. ”

  Andy’s right, of course. I do want a life with Ben, more than I can remember wanting anything. I want Andy just as much, but it’s still somehow not enough. I lean back in his arms to look into his eyes, but he closes them before I get the chance. He bows his head, resting his forehead on mine.

  I’m a fool for asking, because it doesn’t—shouldn’t—matter, but...“What do you want?”

  He must sense that, whatever his answer, it won’t change a damn thing. Brushing back the hair plastered to my face, he places a tender kiss on my cheek and lets me go.

  I close my eyes, not having the strength to watch him walk away one last time.

  I’m shivering even before I walk through Ben’s door. The last half hour was spent wandering around barefoot, drenched, and lost. Not lost in a physical sense, what with me never straying from his block, just circling it a couple dozen times. But, emotionally, I have no fucking clue where I am. Each time I passed his house, I’d looked at the happy red door and think, “Can I do this, yet?” Then I’d shake my head and keep walking.

  Some part of me hoped the rain would wash me clean and make me good enough for Ben again. And, sure, it erased Andy’s scent from my skin and his taste from my lips, but that man lives inside me, now, where the rain can’t reach.

  Eventually, the heartbreaking thought of Ben sitting alone and waiting for me to return drove me to confront my fears.

  Now I’m standing at the bottom of his stairs, steeling myself to face him, throw myself at his feet, and beg his forgiveness. Well, I try to steel myself. It might take a few minutes. Or hours. But the door wasn’t exactly soundless when it swung shut behin
d me, so it’s not as if he doesn’t know I’m here. The longer I wait, the more likely he is to realize I did something unforgivable, if he hasn’t already.

  What was I thinking? It would be easy to say I wasn’t thinking, at all, but that would be a total copout. When I’m near Andy, I can’t stop thinking…and feeling and craving and—

  No. There can’t be any lies. Especially since if I don’t tell Ben, Andy certainly will.

  So here I go. Just need to take that first step, then keep the momentum going. Even worse than hiding in the vestibule would be stopping halfway up the stairs.

  When I reach the second floor, the living room and kitchen are empty, so I climb the next set of stairs. The ancient wood creaks under my feet, and I steady myself with a hand on each wall. I find Ben in his room, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. He has to know his best friend and the girl he likes just got together and stabbed him in the back…then twisted the blade.

  I can’t blame him for being upset. Hell, I wouldn’t blame him if he threw me out, called me a heartless bitch, and told me to never come back.

  “Is he okay?” Ben asks, without lifting his head.

  That’s his first question? Of course, it is. He’s just that kind of person. Ben is a saint, and I’m a filthy, worthless whore. I’ve broken every spoken and silent promise I ever made him. Can there be any coming back from that?

  “No. I don’t think he is.” I pause to take a deep breath. The longer I put this off, the harder it’ll be to say, and it’s plenty hard, as it is. “Ben, we—"

  “Come here.”

  Confused and wary, I walk to the bed but leave a little distance between us. Rainwater drips from the saturated hem of my dress, forming a puddle on the hardwood at my feet. I’m exhausted, wet, and falling apart, but I’ll do just about anything he asks of me right now.

  I must not be close enough, because he grabs my hips and pulls me to him, his fingers digging deep enough to leave bruises on my pale skin. He presses his head to my stomach, and I hold it in my hands, cradling him to me. He smells clean, and his hair is damp and loose, allowing me to comb my fingers through it. I still haven’t seen his face, but that’s probably for the best.

  “Don’t leave me, Claire. Please, don’t leave me.”

  As soon as he says it, his voice thick with pain and desperation, I’m struck with the certainty that leaving is exactly what I need to do.

  We’ve all run out of options. If I’d been strong—if I hadn’t kissed Andy or chased after him in the first place—I could’ve stayed. I could’ve given Ben what he wants, what he deserves, and what I’d love to have with him. But even that would’ve been a complete mess because I’d end up failing him, betraying him, any time I’d touch, see, or think about his best friend.

  This was never going to work. The moment I met Ben and Andy was the moment we started on the course to this painful ending.

  I kiss the top of Ben’s head and step back, letting his hands fall from my body. If my tears can manage to stay behind my eyes, I have a chance of getting out the words I need to say, in the way he needs to hear them.

  “He kissed me, Ben”—fuck, this is hard—“and I kissed him. There’s no taking that back.” His head falls back into his hands, and I take a deep, fortifying breath. You can do this, Claire. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to.”

  At that, he finally looks at me. His face is bleached of all color, but his wounded eyes are a violent red. I might as well rip out my heart, throw it on the floor, and smash it repeatedly with my foot. That’d surely be an upgrade, compared to how it feels now.

  “We can work through this, Claire.”

  Oh, God, no. If he tries to fight for me, I’m not sure I’ll have the strength to fight back. This break needs to be clean and quick.

  “Can we? Tell me how we can work through it, Ben. Tell me, because no scenario I come up with ends with anything being okay.”

  “Do you want to be with him?”

  Pardon me while I give my heart another good stomp.

  “Yes,” I tell him, the steadiness of my voice startling me.

  I see no point in keeping the truth from him. But what is the truth, anymore? Is there even just one? Maybe there are hundreds, and I’ll never be able to sort them out.

  Did I mention I’m lost?

  “No, I don’t…I don’t know what I want with Andy. I know I want to be with you, but…”

  I stop myself because there’s no reason to argue this out. Nothing either of us says will change the fact that he and Andy will be much better off without me in the picture. So I’m grabbing the scissors and cutting myself out of it.

  “It doesn’t matter, Ben. I should go.”

  As soon as I turn to leave, he jumps to his feet, his face twisted in anguish and sheer panic—not cold resignation, like mine.

  “Wait, Claire. Please.” I do as he asks, but it won’t matter. For the first time today, my brain is overruling my heart. “You can’t go. I can’t lose you. You’re the best thing that’s ever come into my life. Please don’t make me live the rest of it without you.”

  He takes a few steps toward me, and I recognize the look in his eyes—Andy wore that same look, right before he kissed me. Ben is prepared to fight, but I can’t let this happen again. I like to think I’m not that cruel, but can I really claim that after all the pain I’ve caused today?

  I put my hand on his chest to stop him and give him only a quick kiss on his cheek, more for myself than for him. I just need my lips on him one last time.

  And then it’s over.

  “Please don’t try to contact me.”

  That’s all I say before removing myself from his life, and him from mine.

  Twenty-Three

  Ben

  There have been some terrible days in my life. Losing my father to cancer when I was eight topped the list for a long time. Learning my ex was purposefully sabotaging the life I dreamed of having with her was another. Even days that, in the grand scheme of things, were far from significant—like failing a design project in college or when the first girl I asked on a date laughed in my face. But every time, the sun would come up the next morning, and I’d have a period of forgetting all the bad or thinking it was just a lingering nightmare.

  Not this morning.

  It was a miracle I’d been able to sleep, at all, but the pain of loss has a way of draining any energy that might threaten to keep you awake. Unconsciousness is also an effective way of avoiding reality for a while, but it never lasts. I was awake long before I opened my eyes, and there was not a single second when I didn’t remember losing Claire. Reality was ready and waiting, and it wasted no time inflicting the pain of, well, itself.

  Aside from Saturdays, my mornings are regimented. Wake up. Bathroom. Water. Push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups. Shower. Coffee. Breakfast. Then work or whatever needs taking care of that day. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve strayed from that routine in the last five years. Even when I’m away on business, I follow those steps in that exact order.

  This morning, I lay in bed for close to an hour, having no idea what came next. Or was it that I knew what came next, but I also knew carrying on as usual would mean the start of my life without Claire?

  Eventually, I admitted to myself that life without her had already started, and my staying in bed did nothing to change that fact.

  So I went through the motions, but each one required twice the usual time and effort to complete. A minute hasn’t gone by without the words I can’t believe she’s gone replaying in my mind, followed by a dull pain somewhere between my heart and my stomach. Like now. Coffee flows from the machine into my cup, filling my lungs with its rich, bitter aroma…and I’m doubled over, gripping the edge of the counter for support.

  Like a teenager after his first breakup, I’m dressed in the same white shirt and khaki shorts I wore the day I met Claire. It’s a self-inflicted, cruel and unusual punishment, but this is as close to her as I can get. She n
ever left anything behind at my place, unless you count fallen strands of her long, red hair. Which I do. They’re proof I didn’t simply imagine my perfect woman into existence.

  The last trickle of coffee drips into my mug. I leave it black and carry it to the window that overlooks the houses across from mine. The narrow street below is darkened with the rain that fell through the night. Droplets linger on the window panes, along with the condensation of a humid morning.

  I can’t believe she’s gone.

  “Hey, man.”

  Andy stands across the room, leaning on the banister at the top of the stairs. Poor sap looks as empty and shredded as I feel. God, we’re a mess.

  “Hey.” I move back behind the granite island that separates the kitchen from the living room and grab a second mug from the cabinet above the sink, holding it up to him. “Coffee?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  I’m now officially at a loss for what to say, so I take a seat on the couch. Andy sits at the opposite end, and both of us stare at the floor. A strand of red hair captures my attention, and I suck in a breath.

  Andy breaks the silence. “Is Claire—"

  “She’s gone.” Hearing those two words in my own voice is the ultimate dose of reality.

  She’s gone.

  Andy turns to me, brows drawn together, jaw tense. I can practically hear his teeth grinding. “What do you mean, ‘she’s gone’?”

  “Exactly what I said. Claire’s gone. She told me not to contact her.” I recount the gruesome details to him, reliving them moment by moment, word by word. By the end, he’s shaking his head in disbelief.

  “That’s not how it was supposed to go down,” he says. I want to ask how the hell he thinks it should’ve gone—if he knew which one of us she’d picked before I felt her body tense up in my hands and she ended everything—but he answers before I can get the question out. “She left me, and she was goin’ back to you. She was goin’ to choose you. I know she was.”