by Amelia Wilde
You’d think that being in a high-pressure situation like the emergency room all day would give me some extreme powers of decision, but something about this is making me second-guess just about everything. What if Crosby wants burgers more?
Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself in a stern voice. He said anything was fine.
I hesitate at the exit of the parking lot, then turn toward O’Malley’s anyway. Ten seconds later, I pull off into an auto supply store’s parking lot and call ahead for a couple of burgers, with everything on them, cooked medium well. I can hear Crosby ordering now.
By the time I find a spot in front of O’Malley’s and head in, going straight for the bar, the two containers are ready and waiting. I don’t recognize the bartender, but I slip him a five after I pay the bill with my credit card.
“Hey, thanks,” he says with a grin. “My name’s Scotty, by the way.”
“You’re welcome.” I lift the bag in my hand. “Mine’s Lacey.”
“I know.” He snaps his fingers then points at me. “You and I were a few years apart in school.”
“Yikes. Sorry I didn’t—”
“Remember me? Well, you will now.”
“I will now.” This is on the verge of flirting. I don’t bother with flirting most of the time because I’ve never been able to find anyone who even remotely measures up.
To Crosby.
It’s a silent admission in my head, but the excuse I’ve been making all these years is that the men I meet just aren’t good enough.
But Crosby is the bar I measure against.
He’s always been the man to beat.
And nobody ever has.
“Have a good day,” I say, smiling idiotically at Scotty.
“See you.”
I feel his eyes on me as I leave.
This is much worse than I thought. Much worse.
If nobody’s ever going to beat Crosby, then what do I do?
Do I take the risk?
A voice in the back of my mind resounds with one thought: I can’t afford not to.
Chapter Eighteen
Crosby
The door swings open so hard that it hits the entryway doorstop with a smack, and a gust of cold air breezes all the way down to the kitchen. My heart pounds against my ribs.
Lacey’s back.
I stand up from where I’ve been kneeling on the floor. I’ve covered the counters in plastic sheeting to protect them from any stray shit that might go down. I’ve torn up the first layer of wood flooring. It was nice, once, but whoever owned this place for the past forty years didn’t care much about it. I’ve started to rip in to the subfloor. It’s all going to have to come out. I’ll know how far the rot has gone after a couple more hours of work.
Plastic bags crinkle in the hall. Lacey has three of them over her arms, and she leans carefully forward to press the door shut and flip the lock. There are still snowflakes settled in her hair.
“Are you expecting other company? Party of six, maybe?”
My voice cracks through the quiet, and she turns quickly, heat rising to her face, a nervous smile playing over those lips. I don’t care about the food. I want her.
But I am hungry.
“I couldn’t make up my mind.”
The aroma of the food hits me a second later. There’s meat involved, but what the hell did she get? Definitely something spicy and hot. But six containers in four bags is an incredible amount of food. Way too much for two people for lunch. My gut goes cold. What if she did invite someone else? That would be fucking weird, and it would also make this even more awkward than it already is. Especially after what happened between us before she left.
Lacey takes a right into the small dining room next to the kitchen, and I put down the floor bar I’ve been using and follow her.
She puts the bags down on the table, and then shrugs off her coat, hanging it over one of the two chairs around the table. It’s the kind of used furniture you see at garage sales every weekend, but it’s been pretty carefully painted. I wonder if she did it herself. Knowing her, she probably did.
Lacey opens the first bag, then glances over her shoulder at me. Her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. Coming up next to her, I can see that her smile is verging on shy. She’s sure as hell not shy when my mouth is on hers.
She opens the first bag, then peers inside like the blank container is going to tell her what’s inside it.
“I went to Cinco Amigos first,” she says, her voice even and smooth with just the hint of a question. She leaves a gap long enough for me to say that I don’t like it—which is true, because I don’t like it, I fucking love that place—and then barrels on. “They have that fajita platter with—well, you probably know. But then I didn’t know if maybe you’d want burgers instead.”
“So you went to O’Malley’s, too?” My heart literally fucking warms.
“I did.” She pops open one of the containers, glances inside, then shuts it again.
“You didn’t have to do that.” For once, my voice is laced with a sincerity I don’t think I’ve felt for about eight years.
Lacey looks up at me, eyes wide. “Didn’t have to do what?”
“Get two meals for me.”
She shrugs, the hint of a smile lighting up her gorgeous face. I want to see her smile like that, bigger than that, every single day for the rest of my life. “You’re doing something nice for me.”
It’s a knife in my gut to realize that that might only happen if I get the hell out of here.
“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” I salute her with a jaunt motion of my hand. Who the fuck am I right now?
That does make Lacey smile, but the smile falters, turns into a more serious expression. “But you don’t have to be doing it on a Sunday afternoon.”
“There’s a hole in your floor.”
“I can live without the sink for a few more days.”
I lean in close, like I’m about to tell her a secret. “You’re going to have to anyway.”
They’re innocuous words, but being this close to her, breathing in her scent, makes my cock go painfully hard. Lacey draws in a sharp breath, but she keeps it quiet, like she’s trying to hide it from me. Then she laughs, her voice a little shaky.
“Well…” She shakes her head a little bit, eyes shining. “At least there’s takeout.”
“Damn right.”
With every word I say to her, the ice melts a little more. The wall comes down, brick by brick.
It’s not good.
The easier things become between us, the greater the chance that I’ll shatter her once again. I could break her heart. Or worse.
But I can’t fucking help it. Every single step we take toward the closeness I’ve been craving for almost a decade gives me more of a high. I want to breathe her in. I want to taste her. And I never want to leave her side.
That doesn’t matter.
I tell it to myself in the most authoritative voice I can fucking muster.
I can’t make her life any better. I can’t protect her. And she deserves those things.
So even if I fall in love with her during this short little window we have to be together—together in the sense that I’ll be in her house for a few more days, maybe a week, maybe a little more—there’s an expiration date.
There has to be.
For her sake.
Like a complete fucking prick, I ignore it.
Because today’s not that day.
Today she’s brought me food from two different places just to make sure I’m satisfied, and a woman who still hated me wouldn’t do that. A woman with no interest in Crosby King wouldn’t have gone out of her way on a bitterly cold day to bring me a goddamn burger and a ridiculous amount of fajitas.
“Damn right,” I say again, jolting us both out of whatever the hell nonsense we’re thinking. “Takeout is fucking great. I’m starving. What about you?”
Lacey smiles up at me, then turns back toward the containers,
opening one at random. It’s got a thick stack of tortillas inside, surrounded by fixings, ready to become fajitas. “How about an absurd amount of Mexican food?”
“Nothing has ever sounded better.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lacey
“Plates.”
“What?”
“We’re going to need plates.”
“Try not to destroy any more of the kitchen floor.” Crosby’s half-smiling when he says it, and I stick my tongue out at him as I head back into the kitchen to grab the plates. They’re in the cupboard on the right side of the sink—an Ikea set that I bought toward the beginning of med school for dirt cheap—and I grab two of them, stepping carefully around the hole in the floor.
Something’s broken open between us. The tension is starting to thaw.
Maybe food really is the key to happiness.
When I get back to the dining room—I’m not even sure it should be called that, since it’s the size of small bedroom and barely fits the table and chairs—Crosby has all four of the fajita containers arranged on the table.
“The bathroom’s across the hall,” I say primly, cocking my head in that general direction.
He gives me a look.
“To wash your hands.”
Crosby rolls his eyes, then laughs. “Who the hell are you, Lacey?”
“Lace.”
“Lace.”
I don’t know when I started to hate the name Lacey, but sometime between the beginning of college and graduation I got sick of the way it sounded coming from other people’s mouths. I don’t exactly hate hearing it from Crosby, but I can’t force myself to break the habit of correcting people.
He disappears through the dining room door, and seconds later the bathroom door closes. Water runs. Then he’s back.
He took his coat off while I was gone, giving me a view of his body sans the green army surplus canvas, which would look stupid on anyone but him. I want him to take off the hoodie, too, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to—
“Are you going to be too warm?” The words come out before I can catch them in my palm.
“What?” His forehead wrinkles.
“That seems like a warm sweatshirt.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Are you worried I’m going to get overworked from eating fajitas?”
The heat is back in my cheeks. “No. Anyway, it’s my turn.” I flounce off to the bathroom. Once the door is closed behind me, I put my hands to my face and hold them there for a second. I need to get a grip. Even if things are slowly improving between us—although there wasn’t much lower we could go, after the way he left me—it’s going to be a disaster if I get completely swept away.
I straighten up and look myself in the eye in the mirror hanging over the sink.
Why the hell can’t I spend some time with him, see where things go?
Don’t I have the right to get myself into a disaster if that’s what I really want?
I don’t want to admit to him—at least not yet—that I haven’t had a serious boyfriend in eight years. That every single time I enjoyed a date, it was marred by the fact that I missed him more than how much I wanted to be on the date. That at night, when I lay in bed, it was his face that flashed through my mind and filled my dreams, and nobody else’s.
Now is my chance to find out if I really and truly still belong to him. If there’s any chance, any chance at all, that I’m only for him and nobody else.
I spin around, ready to yank open the door and head back to the dining room, and then stop dead.
I came in here to wash my hands.
Thirty seconds, and I’m ready for take two.
Crosby has grabbed silverware from the kitchen and added them to the containers, and he’s even set out the paper napkins that were shoved into the bags at the Mexican place. And, like he’s been reading my mind, he’s removed his hoodie. It’s a struggle to keep my eyes focused on his face when I take my seat across from him because the t-shirt he’s wearing underneath it is short-sleeved, and holy God, has he come into his own as a grown man.
His muscles are firm and defined, but not overly done. He’s clearly earned them through years of hard work, not an obsessive interest in the gym, and I am into that. I am so into that. There was always something about Crosby that drew me to him. When we first met, back in the dark, unattractive days of middle school, it was his eyes, the same piercing, fiery green ones that they are now. When we finally split off from our friend groups in high school and admitted that we liked each other, I finally noticed that behind the smooth, wise-guy act was a face that grew more handsome by the day and a body that really took to the weight-lifting required to be on the football team.
But more than that, it was the way he so easily stood between me and the world. I never had to worry when Crosby was with me. My parents might not have been in love with him, but they didn’t have to worry, either. He wasn’t the type to get drunk at weekend parties, and if he did, he’d never dream of driving me home afterward. Not that I ever attended one. I was too busy following the rules.
Well, now I’ve followed the rules. I’ve followed them so well that I’m a doctor, and Crosby is playing his own game.
Only he’s eight years stronger, more rugged. More dangerous, in a way that radiates from underneath his skin. Somehow I’m not afraid of him. Somehow it just makes me want him even more.
“Should I turn the heat down?” I crack a half smile and reach for a tortilla.
“You’d do that, just when I took off my hoodie?”
“I’ll leave it on, if you’re that delicate.” The filter has slid away from my mouth. It’s just me and Crosby, alone at my dining room table, and it feels like it did back when we used to go on dates and spend hours eating the free chips at the restaurant.
“I’m the least delicate man you’ll ever meet.” It’s a joke, but he delivers it so convincingly that I look up into his eyes, my heart pounding.
It takes all I have to swallow my desire and make another joke. “But you cut your hand. I had to stitch it up again.”
He looks me straight in the eye. “Every man has a weakness.”
Chapter Twenty
Crosby
“What’s your weakness, then?”
Lacey’s dark eyes are wide, her cheeks are pink, and her lips are slightly parted. I want to put my thumb against her teeth and open that mouth, then thrust my tongue into it and devour her.
It would be best if we went upstairs.
The moment teeters on the edge of some fucking boundary, and for a long moment I don’t know if I should stay on this side of it or jump the hell overboard. Lacey sits across from me, an empty tortilla in her hand. But she’s not reaching for any of the containers, where I’ve fucking thoughtfully put out some silverware so we don’t have to pick up refried beans and seasoned ground steak with our bare hands.
“You.”
I watch the word travel across the air and register in Lacey’s eyes, sending a ripple across the pools there.
She puts the tortilla onto her plate.
“Me?”
It’s like I’ve torn off the final piece keeping a dam in place, and now the truth is coming out in a fucking cascade.
“You’ve been on my mind—” My throat starts to close, and I clear it with a single cough. “You’ve been on my mind, damn it, since the day I left State.”
Her eyes widen a little more. She breathes a little harder.
“I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you, Lace. I’ve never been able to—” Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be. “I swore that night I’d never put you in a position to get hurt again, and now I’m fucking here, and I can’t tear myself away.”
“Why would you want to?” It’s a choked whisper. Lacey’s eyes are glittering.
“Because I’m not—” I grit my teeth. This is not a conversation I ever thought I would have with this woman. I never thought I’d see her again. I thought I would go t
o my fucking grave knowing that I’d given up the love of my life to protect her from me. “I’m not the kind of guy you should be with.”
Lacey’s hand, resting against the tabletop, bunches into a fist. “And what kind of guy is that?” No whisper now. She’s pissed, and it sets me off.
“This is exactly—” My own hand comes down hard against the table. She doesn’t flinch. “I’m not good for you. I’m dangerous. The people around me—they get hurt. They get expelled.”
“Expelled?” Lacey’s forehead wrinkles, her eyebrows drawing together. “What are you talking about, Crosby?”
“Do you honestly think I left you just because I wanted to? Just because I thought it would be a good idea to come back to fucking Lockton?”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but she doesn’t lean back in her chair. “Why the hell would I think otherwise? That’s what you said to me the night you left.”
I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. “You believed that horseshit?”
Now both of her hands come down on the table, and one tear escapes from the corner of her eye. “Of course I believed it!” Her voice is loud, sharp. “Of course I believed it, you ass. I always believed you.” Lacey’s chest heaves, and she locks her jaws together and looks away, the muscles there clenching tight. It doesn’t matter. Her lower lip quivers anyway. She presses those lips together in a thin line, staring at some spot on the floor. It’s like I’m seeing her every time she was ever upset, which wasn’t often, and it always cut me to the core.
The instinct to go over to her is overwhelming.
So I give the hell in.
I’m out of my chair in an instant, kneeling by her side in one step. I put one hand on her leg, just above her knee.
“Lacey.”
She doesn’t correct me, just drags her eyes off the floor and looks at me. Red spots are high on her cheeks, and I can tell she’s struggling to keep it together.
“I never told you what happened that night because I was fucking embarrassed.”