by Amelia Wilde
Another thought that makes my stomach jolt. I dismiss it immediately.
“Why do you live with your parents?”
“To save money.” The answer comes to my lips automatically, and it is true, in a way.
Sawyer narrows his eyes. “Is that all of it?”
“Yeah,” I say with a little shrug, but it seems stupid to tell half-truths to him, even if he’s never going to be the type who hangs around. “Actually…no.” I search for the words to describe the wave of relief I felt when I walked into my parents’ house. “Something…happened to me in high school, and it was really stressful for them for me to be away at college. Stressful for me, too. It just seemed like a good idea to…to wait a little while before being on my own.”
Sawyer considers me. “You’ve never lived alone?”
“Not really. I lived in the dorms all through college, and during the summers, I stayed on to work at the university library. In the summer, I had a single room, but there were always plenty of people who lived there with me.”
“So never with a boyfriend.” It’s not really a question, but there’s something in his voice that makes me want to answer anyway.
“No. I’ve never…been with someone like that.” His eyebrows lift toward the ceiling of the bar, and it makes me laugh. “Not like that,” I say, rolling my eyes, unable to keep a smile off my face. “I’ve been with…I’ve been with someone like that.” Then I cover my face with my hands. “God, why does everything with you always come down to sex?”
“Always?” Sawyer’s grin is sexy, sultry, and it sends another wave of electric pleasure down my spine. “This is only our second conversation ever, and I don’t think we talked about sex at the club.”
“We didn’t? Well, it must have been…implied.” I can feel his eyes on me even through my hands, so I uncover my face and look at him, letting him see the color in my cheeks. It makes me feel bold, his eyes on me, shy but also bold. “I thought about it afterward.”
“You’re not the only one.”
The heat is back sizzling in the air between us, so intense that I want to whip my shirt over my head just so I can feel a breeze against my skin.
I take a deep breath in and blow it out through my lips. “You’ve got to stop.”
“Stop what?” Sawyer’s grin tells me he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“We’re only on our first date. We’re just supposed to be getting to know each other, not talking about—”
Sawyer laughs out loud. “This isn’t a date, remember?”
“Oh, it is so a date.”
“You still don’t know my last name.”
I did say that. I did say that if he told me his last name, then we could go on a date. But this feels like a date, and I want more out of it than burgers and fries. I just want more, and I can’t deny it, and I don’t want to. Not in this moment, at least.
“Then tell me your name. But it would really seal the deal if I had your phone number.”
Sawyer looks at me for a long moment, like he’s deciding if this is worth it to him, and then he reaches down to his jeans and pulls his phone out of his pocket. “What’s yours?”
“You first.”
“I’m going to text it to you.”
“Fine.” I keep my tone light, but my heart is in my throat. The thought of having access to him like this—even though we’re first date strangers and clearly as different as two people can be—gives me butterflies. Legit butterflies, like it’s my first real crush. I reel off my number, and seconds later my phone buzzes again.
I pull it out because Sawyer’s watching me with a grin on his face, and I ignore the messages from my mother.
I open the one that he sent.
“Sawyer Mitchell,” I read out loud.
I know right then that it won’t be the last time his name is on my lips.
Chapter 18
Sawyer
When we leave Bernie’s, the sunlight is golden in the sky and Zelda’s shoulders have tensed up a little. On the sidewalk, she turns right and starts walking back in the direction of her parents’ house without saying anything.
“You okay?”
This isn’t exactly the exit I would prefer, but even as we sat talking about mainly nothing and picking at the remains of the fries, something shifted in Zelda’s face. It looked suspiciously like guilt, but neither of us have done a damn thing to feel guilty about.
I wish we had.
I match my stride to hers, and she glances over at my face for one second. “I’m fine. I just—I should probably get home.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that she could come to my aunt’s house for a while, but the whole thing seems so fucking like high school that I don’t say it. She seems on edge, anyway, and I don’t know why.
I’m betting it has to do with whatever happened to her in school, but it didn’t come up in the conversation again, and something in my gut told me not to push it.
She’ll tell me when it’s the right time, I think, and then I let out a little laugh. How long do I even plan on staying? There might not be enough time to let things go that far with this woman, and honestly, for her sake, it would probably be better that way. She doesn’t need to get caught up in a life like mine.
It’s not all peaches and fucking cream. I’m in good with Domino, but the longer I work in the city, the more people will know who I am. I’m already becoming a target. Last spring, when I was walking home from a friendly conversation with someone who owed a little more money than they should have, two guys cornered me in an alley. I got out with only a couple scratches because they underestimated me. And they didn’t have a gun.
That’s never a guarantee.
Zelda picks up the pace, walking briskly the few blocks back to the yellow house on the corner. Across the street, I see her searching the windows, her eyes scanning the curtains like she’s got strict orders to be back by a certain time.
“Hey.”
She’s just started to step forward to cross the street, but she rocks her weight backward.
“Yeah?”
“That was a good time.”
Her amazing smile spreads across her face, and my cock stiffens at the sight of it.
“I thought so, too.” The cloud comes back across her expression. “Text me?”
“No way.”
Her mouth opens in a little O of surprise. “Really?”
I give her my signature smile. “No, not really. I’ll text you. But I have a more important question.”
“What’s that?”
“What time are you meeting me for our next date?”
I shut the front door to my aunt’s house behind me and it closes with a click.
“Seven,” Zelda had said, with a smile working its way onto her face. Then she’d turned on her heel and headed across the street, disappearing up the driveway of the yellow house on the corner. My heart still hasn’t come down from it. I’ve spent the last five years thinking I was hard as fuck and that nothing could really touch me, and I’m practically losing my damn mind over the fact that she agreed to go out on a real date with me.
A real date. I laugh under my breath. What the hell are we going to do on a real date? It’s been years since I bothered taking a woman out on a date.
I have no idea how this is going to play out, either. Every five seconds, we’re getting closer to the line, dancing closer together, and then moving back out like a couple of boxers in the ring. One minute she’s flirting with me so damn heavily that it’s all I can do not to reach for her, and the next minute, she’s under some kind of thundercloud, feeling guilty for who fucking knows what.
I’m dying to unravel whatever the hell it is.
“How did it go?”
My aunt’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and my mouth starts to answer before my brain has caught up. “She—”
Then my eyes meet hers, and my stomach plummets back down to my shoes. My aunt looks so damn hopeful
because I left hours ago to walk over to my dad’s, to finally see him. For whatever reason, she wants me to make up with him before…
Before he dies, I guess.
I have to swallow the rest of the sentence. My aunt has no idea who Zelda is. Well, she might know of her just from living in the same neighborhood, but it’s not like I gave her a full rundown of what happened at the club. If I had, I might have known I’d run into her again.
Would that have changed anything?
Probably not.
I tell her the truth before I can lie. “I didn’t see him.”
Her brow furrows, and she rises halfway up from her chair. “He wasn’t home?” I can see her mind racing with all the possibilities.
“I don’t know. I didn’t go to the door.” Guilt settles in a cold knot in my stomach.
My aunt looks at me, the corners of her mouth turning down into a frown that guts me, but she doesn’t say anything else. She just stands up from her chair and goes into the kitchen. I hear her digging through her purse. After a pause, she speaks into the phone. “Hey.” More silence. “You’re at home still?” Her footsteps travel in a slow loop around the kitchen island. “No, he’s—” I head up the stairs toward the guest bedroom. I don’t want to listen to this. “He’s still here.” She waits a minute, and it’s probably to make sure I’m out of earshot, but I haven’t gone down the hallway yet, so I hear what she says next. “I don’t think he wants to see you.”
I close the bedroom door as silently as I can and sit down on the bed, dropping my head into the palms of my hands.
I’m not the kind of person who does the right thing just because it’s the right thing. If I was, I wouldn’t have the job I have right now. But my gut is churning with a sick guilt. It’s not about my dad at all. It’s about my aunt, but how the hell do I fix that without seeing my dad?
I’m almost lost in the guilt when Zelda’s first text comes in.
Chapter 19
Zelda
My phone buzzes from where I stuffed it in the top drawer of the circulation desk. I scramble frantically to pull it out and silence it at the same time I’m whipping my head around in a panic to see if Mrs. Sanders is anywhere nearby to notice.
She’s not, and my heart rate settles back down.
Then it speeds up again, because I catch a glimpse of Sawyer’s name on the screen.
It started almost as soon as I got home. It was like his number was burning a hole in my pocket.
Mitchell is a pretty cute last name
Cute???
His reply didn’t seem much like what I’d expect from the hard, confident man I met at the club. It was much closer to what I started to think of as the daylight version of Sawyer—the version that walked with me to the diner and who flirted with me, his sexy smile on full display. There’s definitely more to him than what meets the eye.
I mean…sexy.
I had to take in a deep breath before I sent that text, because even though things got pretty heated at the diner, texts seemed more…official. There’s a record of those. They just linger on the person’s phone until they get up the courage to delete them.
There’s more where that came from…
This text, which I’m reading right now at the risk of seriously irritating Mrs. Sanders if she sees me doing it, is the kind of text Sawyer sends early on in the day, when the sexual tension hasn’t had a chance to stretch out tight between us, like a rubber band.
I squeeze my thighs together under the desk. That ache never really lets up.
How’s work, sunshine?
“Sunshine” brings a little smile to my face. He doesn’t say it all the time, but when he does, it spreads warmth through my chest. It’s the kind of thing I can imagine my husband saying to me one day.
But—God. It’s way too early for that. And Sawyer’s life…
I shake my head and let myself enjoy the text.
It would be better if you were here! :D
I add the smiley face after a minute’s consideration, to make it seem like it’s not so serious, but in reality I’ve been sitting at the circulation desk every day all week thinking of Sawyer. Remembering us together in the diner. Wishing I’d gone home with him instead of retreating to my parents’ house and telling my mother that I was back, that there was nothing to worry about.
Do you really mean it?
Do I really mean it? That’s a no brainer. Of course I want him to be here, but if he was to actually walk in the door, I don’t know what I’d—
I send a winking face, double check that the phone is really on silent this time, and slip it back into the desk drawer, smiling to myself.
“Nice desk.”
At the sound of his voice, my jaw drops open and my heart hammers against my rib cage so hard I have to put a hand to my chest.
“Oh, my God.” My voice comes out a little too loud, echoing through the hallway, and I cover my mouth with my hand. If Mrs. Sanders is up on the second floor, it will be an actual miracle.
Sawyer laughs, his eyebrows raised. “Surprised to see me?”
He’s wearing a t-shirt and jeans, which would be boring except the clothing is gracing his perfect frame, and so it’s the most gorgeous t-shirt and jeans I’ve ever seen.
“Yes.”
He leans his elbows on the desk, peering over at me, and his smile sends a shiver of pleasure down my spine that can’t quite replace the rising nervousness in my chest. This is not going to be good if—
“Didn’t you just say it would be better if I was here?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Now I’m here.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “The library isn’t across the street from my house.”
“I might have already been on my way.”
“And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell me?”
“What, and ruin the surprise?” He laughs again, eyes fixated on my face, and he straightens up to his full height. “Hey, do you get a break?”
“A break?”
“Yes, a break. When you stop doing your job for a little bit in the middle of a shift, take a few minutes for yourself, and then come back afterward.”
I give him a look. “I have breaks.”
“Take one right now.”
“Well, I have to—” What I should do is hunt down Mrs. Sanders, wherever she is, and beg her permission to go on a fifteen-minute break. But the dancing light in Sawyer’s eyes makes me feel like I can do anything. And the way he’s so solid, so strong, makes me think I’d be safe if I did. “Just give me a second.”
I stand up and put out the little sign we keep under the desk that reads, “Back shortly!” Then I step back into one of the library’s many workrooms. A woman named Donna, who’s been here almost as long as Mrs. Sanders, is squinting at a computer screen. She’s probably in the middle of writing up next month’s newsletter.
“Hey, Donna.”
She smiles up at me. “Zelda. How’s the desk?”
“Quiet. Would you mind covering it for a few minutes while I go on break?”
“Sure thing.” She stands up from her place at the computer and stretches. “I could use a little change of scenery.”
She follows me back out to circulation, then catches a glimpse of Sawyer, who’s gone back over toward the entrance. Her eyebrows go up, but then a little smile comes across her face. “He’s certainly not a regular.” I blush in spite of myself, and Donna notices it, her mouth opening in delight. “Is he here for you?”
“He did come to see me, yeah.”
Donna reaches out a hand and gives me an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Well, hustle out of here, Zelda—before Mrs. Sanders comes downstairs.” Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she takes her seat behind the circulation desk, giving me a little thumbs up.
I roll my eyes at her, but I can’t hide the grin on my face.
At the entrance, Sawyer waits for me to catch up, then gives Donna a little wave. She gives him one
right back. There’s a sweetness to the gesture that I didn’t expect out of him, and he seems to realize it, because he puts his hand into his pocket and shrugs a little.
“You ready to go?”
I’ll never be able to wipe the smile off my face at this rate. “More than ready.”
Chapter 20
Sawyer
“Why’d you come to see me at work?”
We’re half a block down from the library, walking along with the sun shining at our backs, and Zelda is still grinning, her face wholly consumed with the expression.
“I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Did you get lonely?”
“Lonely for you.”
She laughs out loud. “Where’d you learn to be so charming?”
I give her a shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not usually this way.”
She gives me a look, then settles into a more leisurely pace. “You’ve been pretty charming since I’ve known you.”
“You haven’t known me for long.”
“Were you, like, Dr. Jekyll before we met?”
“I don’t get to spend much time with people…people that I like when I’m in the city.”
“Oh,” she says, her smile getting somehow wider. “But you like me?”
“I do.”
“Why?” She’s teasing, her eyes shining in the sun, but I take a minute to think about the question anyway. Zelda frowns with the pause. “You don’t have to answer if you can’t think of anything.”
It’s not that I can’t think of anything. It’s that the feeling she gives me when she’s around…
“I like that you’re doing something with your life.”
“Ha!” Zelda looks both ways before we cross onto the next block. “I’m not doing much of anything. I’m back in Greenville, living with my parents—”