by Unknown
I turn my head to attach a face to that voice. All I think to say back is, “Look who’s here. ‘Slick’—as deer guts on a doorknob.”
Oddly, that doesn’t make him do a one-eighty and walk the other way. Hmm. Just like my one year in public high school when he could not get over the fact that I wanted no piece of him, quarterback star or not.
“Been years, Sloan. You look real, real good.”
Macleod Hickey, a.k.a. Mickey Hickey.
“Thanks.” I choke out a snicker, as he palms my ass.
“Don’t make me regret you again, princess,” he says, stealing a kiss from my neck and grabbing my waist like it’s a chunk of raw meat and he’s a starved Rottweiler. Clearly his hands are still searching for something between us.
“Was that an oversight on your part, Mick?” Hawke’s smooth, deep voice comes from behind us. “Me, that is,” he says, sounding like a papa bear about to rip some heads off.
“Hawke. Well, well. How’s everything hanging in Pornoville, m’man?”
“Happy as a baby in a barrel of tits.” Hawke gives me a wink along with a shit-eating grin.
“Whatcha lookin’ for here, Mick? Because all I see if you don’t walk away is forty miles of bad road ahead of you.”
“Just saying hello to the ladies, haven’t seen Sloan in years.” He raises an eyebrow. “You still got dibs on her? Not getting enough with your day job?”
“Yes, I do have dibs on Sloan. And it looks like you’re getting too much candy for your penny.” I double over chuckling.
Mick nods knowingly and walks away, not without checking me out once more head to toe over his shoulder before he says, “See you ’round, Sloan.”
“Is this normal for you? People getting up in your face because of what you do for a living?”
“Cricket.” He takes a swig of his beer, smiling against the bottle top. “I love your innocence. Hell yeah, people love to poke at me. You think he’s happy with his pocket full of degrees, working at the local bank as a branch manager? Probably wants to hang himself with one of the tellers’ panty hose.”
I set my glass on a passing cocktail tray and adeptly grab another, although not without spilling half of it on Hawke’s arm. He doesn’t flinch, just brings his arm to his mouth, flicks me an amused smirk, then proceeds to lick it off, his wet lips and tongue dragging along the dark hair kissing his muscled forearm.
Coco waves her hand in front of my face. It’s a wonder she doesn’t need smelling salts to lure me back to her.
“I didn’t tell you—we’re going to be living in Silver Lake,” I say with my gaze still on Hawke. “You and your almost-hubby should hop over from your side of town for a cookout so we can all catch up.”
Her eyes flash with surprise and she claps her hands. “Whoa, you guys are moving in together? That was fast! I can already hear the wedding bells.”
My cocktail shoots out of my nose as I choke out a laugh.
“Not yet,” says Hawke.
“Yet?” My eyes bulge.
“Does it seem so impossible?” he asks, trailing his fingers up and down my bare arm. “I’m a visionary.” He brings his face to my ear, his breath giving me a chill chased by a hot spark. “And you should start seeing your future, Miss Going To Get Fucked Hard Later.”
“My, my, my,” Coco says. “I heard that, even if it was not meant for my ears. Well, then.”
Hawke ignores her and zeros in on my eyes. “You are wearing quite a story on your face, and I don’t like it. What about that and us seems impossible? Living together, marriage down the road—I can see it all.”
“We just need to talk in the next few days. There’s a lot of unanswered things.”
“I can answer all sorts of things.” Hawke pins me to his body as if we’re alone in the woods. This chemistry thing we have is tough for my mind and heart to fight.
“I’m going to let you two do whatever it is you need to do.” Coco shakes her head as a twisted smile grows across her lips. “Maybe you should consider getting it out of your systems. In one of the cabins, horizontally.”
“Twenty minutes ago I could have sworn we were headed in the same direction.”
“Circles?” I ask with a raised brow. But what I want to say is, I see unwashed sheets smelling of us and sex. Hands shoving me back onto the bed then roaming freely. Tongue running down between my breasts—then lower. Spooning into the dark night then waking up together.
I look into his eyes as he says exactly the words I was thinking.
“Us, me, you—together.”
Sloan’s gran approaches us as we’re mid-embrace. She’s a lovely, but frail, bag of bones draped in a floral, fringed shawl and floor-length dress that looks plucked out of a costume closet on Broadway.
“My God, it’s been years,” I say as she beelines to me.
“My God, you’re a man.” She chuckles, her gaze sliding up and down my body.
“Indeed, I am.” I waggle my eyebrows at Sloan then Oma.
Her face crinkles with laughter as she walks into my arms for a hug. Then she backs away a step while she places her palms on my cheeks as if to study what’s behind my eyes. Her voice is filled with years of velvety texture.
“Leave us be, Sloan.” She shakes her wrinkly, ring-encrusted hand at Sloan, shooing her away.
“Oma?” says Sloan. Her voice is tight and strained, and her entire body tenses.
“Don’t you ever, you know me better than that,” Oma admonishes.
A frown creases Sloan’s forehead as she inhales a breath while staring at Oma.
“Fine. I’ll catch up with Quinn,” Sloan says. “Don’t be selfish with him.”
“Don’t be egotistical with me, young lady.”
Sloan growls at Oma as she walks away.
Oma stands in silence for a few tongue-tied moments. Then a shimmer forms in her eyes, the shock of blue transforming from the pale cornflower—which I know Sloan’s eyes to be—to a vivid indigo. She licks her crumpled lips and opens her mouth slightly as though she’s about to share a secret. She grabs my hands. Her words come out in a low vibration that hits me at my core. “Been a long ten years. Not easy, not without loss and pain.” She looks away from my eyes for a beat. Then she begins speaking again, every word sounding deliberate. “Might take her some time. Might take you some time as well. She’s a different girl than she was. Stronger, but also filled with disbelief. Don’t let her fool you into thinking she doesn’t want you. You’re the reason she made it through.
“Girl has a heart and soul bigger and wider than this whole damn mountain range.” Her voice holds a proud note of triumph. She opens her arms and turns a three-sixty. “She loves you, all right. Deep in the marrow of her bones. You’re inside of her—more than any of us will ever be. Yet you have a lot to see of her, son.” Her voice is patient and drawled out. “Give her the time she needs to let you know. Be patient. Be forgiving. And you’ll get exactly what you want.” Oma looks around as though she’s trying to find something.
I follow her gaze until my eyes rest on Sloan, who’s standing thirty feet from me, talking with her girlfriends.
“All of her.”
We both nod, as if I was just handed a bag full of keys, and I’ll need to try every one of them on my girl.
“She okay?” I ask.
“Will be. Now that she has you.” Her voice is sure and hypnotizing, and I believe every ounce of what she’s saying.
“Did something happen to her?”
“Child, it’s been a decade.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “You’re damn right something happened—more than something, and almost everything. Nearly lost them both.” She cringes. “Her. Nearly lost her,” she corrects. “She’s here now. I’ve done my part. She needs more than me now—needs you. She’ll tell you herself in time.”
“No pressure.”
What in God’s name happened? Who is them? Was that a slip? Was she married? Oma’s right: A decade’s gone by, time we’ll nev
er be able to recapture.
“Mama, you flirtin’ with Hawke?” Sloan’s mom says, approaching us.
“Flirtin’? Hell, trying to convince him to move to Amsterdam. You seen this boy naked? Even my dried-out eighty-two-year-old vagina gets mad as a hatter. I’ve been on that website of his. Fletch showed me.”
“I think I’m blushing, Oma. Can’t say a woman’s made me blush—ever.” I chuckle and bow down.
A wicked smile curves up on her face. She sends me over the top with a wink and a slap on my ass. Nice.
“Nuff said.” She coughs up a laugh. Her eyes are filled with humility wrapped in a certain self-assurance. “My work is done. You’re on deck, Rye. Go get ’em, girl.” She turns and nudges Rye in the side with her elbow. Then she saunters away, beelining it for the bar.
“Hawke Slater,” Rye says, a motherly smile in her eyes. “You’re my fifth son, child.” Her long, licorice-colored hair tipped in blue whips across her face as she squints into the gold of the fading sunlight.
Rye stands as tall as Sloan, about mid-chest on me, but reads three feet taller. She’s Sloan in twenty-five years. Everything about her, from her poised voice to her smile, says poems, songs, and the graininess life has offered her. Her laugh is a burst of color that matches her attitude about living, her feelings about her family, and just about everything else.
“I appreciate that, Rye. I feel the same, you know.”
“Oma trying to steal you from Sloan?”
“Nothing’ll get between me and Sloan. Not if I can help it.”
“Glad to hear that. You’re exactly what she needs. I want you to know, Buck and I know how hard it’s been on you. Your folks have been clear. It’s not been easy.”
“Certainly was not. I missed the shit out of that girl.”
“I know. We all did.” She nods with pursed lips. “She did what she had to do.”
“Which is what, exactly? Run off with some other man? What exactly was she doing over there? And why the fuck won’t any of you tell me a goddamned thing?” Heat smokes off me. “Am I the only one in the dark?”
She crosses her arms over her chest then reaches one out to touch my hand. “I know she hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. It wasn’t intentional.”
“Hurt?” I laugh out loud. “Nearly killed me. But shit, I love her. I’m going to marry her one day.”
“I’m sure that’ll happen once you two heal. Which you will, that’s what hearts do.” She sweeps an errant bit of hair off my forehead the same way she did when I was a kid.
Her face is tilted up to mine, studying me just like Oma was doing minutes ago.
“Hearts let things back in, light, hope, and love. They feel things: togetherness, sadness, lust, love. Need. They want things, promises, and yes…futures.”
I let out a deep sigh then sink my hands into my pockets. All I’m getting from the McQueens are warnings wrapped with all kinds of questions multiplying by the second. As for answers, looks like there isn’t a damn one within a few hundred miles of here.
“At what point did you stop loving me? Tell me the truth.” Hawke’s chest presses against my back, his hands on my hips, sliding around onto my stomach.
What have they told him? I never stopped. Not ever.
I stare at the wedding aisle I hope to walk down someday with Hawke, thinking about the words I need to say. “I never did.”
“Love me, or stop?”
“Jesus, Hawke.” I grunt out a laugh. “I never stopped loving you.”
“You sure?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m sure.” He grips me tighter, pressing himself against me. “You’re not a figment of my imagination.”
“Really? ’Cause I’m feeling very virtual reality right now.”
“What exactly did they tell you?”
God help me, can they not let me be the one to do it? No, he wouldn’t be hugging me if he knew anything. Not that they know all of it, either. I wonder if, someday, when I tell him everything, he’ll ask who I am. And I wonder what I’ll say back. Maybe I’ll say, She isn’t me. Then he’ll ask, Who is she? I won’t know what to say then.
“They basically said to get behind the wheel of love.”
“Funny.”
“So I said”—he places his mouth against my ear then glides his tongue around as he pulls my head back—“your pussy, my mouth—later.”
“You’re filthy.”
He continues, and all I think is, he’s Hawke at eighteen times man, need, and every other thing that wraps its erotic self around my greedy craving.
“I want to know something.” He licks a line down my neck as Quinn walks past.
She winks at me. I feel like we’re the Christmas window at some department store, all moving parts and shiny bits and pieces everyone is dying to watch. It’s a feeling I know well, and one I wonder what Hawke will think of once he finds out.
“What do you want to know?” I wince, praying for things he won’t ask.
His breathing is heavy on my neck. “What would you do if I gave you a kiss right now? Right here. The kind that shouldn’t be given in front of anyone else.”
“I’d take it, long and slow between my lips, on my tongue. I’d breathe it in then return it.”
“Sloan…fuck, that makes me hard.”
“Good,” I moan out as my head falls back onto his shoulder. Maybe it can stay there permanently. I’m so aroused I can hardly stand it. His voice, his scent, his breathing.
“And, as my breath finds your neck as it is now, what would you say it feels like?”
“Heaven,” I answer with need, “and the truth colliding.”
He groans into my ear. “And, if my hands found their way into your dress, what would you say?” He skims the front of my dress, stopping for a second too long on my hardened nipples as his thumbs graze across them.
“Don’t stop touching me…ever,” I pant out. “Give me more.”
“If they wandered between your legs, my fingertips touching you there?” His whisper is quiet, only for me. “What would I find?” His fingers press against my ass then grip my hips as he yanks me to him. His arousal evident.
I feel every digit, pulse, and vibe. I close my eyes and will everyone to disappear. Too bad they’re still here when I open them up.
“You’d…” I swallow the pool of liquid as I salivate at the idea. “You’d find wet, needy… A place for you…a—”
“Sloan.” He groans. “Yes. Yes, I would.” His heavy swallow makes me crave his naked body against mine. “And, if I stripped you down, stark naked, and climbed onto you? Tell me—how would you move? I need to know. Fuck, I need—” His hands surround my neck as he kisses into my mouth, quick and hard, as though lingering would kill him. The kiss is filled with such urgency it pains me.
“Like water searching for freedom,” I say, interrupting his thoughts and the kiss.
He spins me around, pressing my body against his, pinning his forehead to mine. “Cricket, let’s continue this conversation elsewhere.”
My heart goes wild, erratic, and then it tries with all of its might to reach his.
“The beach?” I ask, picturing us lying on the sand as we did so many other times, long, long ago.
“I was thinkin’ more along the lines of your bedroom.” His voice drops down, settling into the cellar of my soul.
“Yeah. Okay,” I mutter.
We silently slip away from the crowd. No one will notice, miss, or need us. No one needs anything in this universe more than we need each other.
Hawke grips my hand and walks in front of me—then, once we’re alone, next to me.
As we walk, he whispers in my ear. Every word feels like a poem of promise, a prelude.
“How do you feel when you’re near me?”
Before I have a chance to answer, his words slice into my thoughts. He doesn’t need an answer. He knows what he’s doing to me. I might be a different girl—I might be a woman—but he still knows. At least he knows one
part.
Shivers scatter across my skin like sleet.
“Do I make you nervous? Or excited? Tell me what I do to you.”
“You sort of intimidate and thrill me.” My words rush out. “Not in a scary way, but in a beautiful, skydiving way that makes me want to jump and find out who you are now.”
“Too intimidating,” he asks with genuine concern, “to trust me?”
“No, not like that. And I would ask you the same…of me.”
“Am I about to see someone else in you?” he says stoically.
His comment pisses me off a little. He thinks he knows me still. He has no idea.
“You think I’m playing mind games?”
“No, I think you’re hiding ’em.”
“You know what?” I grind my front teeth, stopping the fire in my gut for a second. Don’t be angry. He’s ready for another piece of me.
Dammit. What the hell did they tell him?
“I have this little trick I do when people piss me off. I picture a brick in my mind, then I picture it hitting them in the face a couple-two-three times.”
“I can relate,” he mocks. “Tossed a hundred of those your way over the last few years.” His whisper hushes my ornery tongue.
“I don’t want to let you down.” My hands shake when I think about it.
“Then don’t.”
“What if I’m not who you think I am?”
“And what if you are?”
We have miles and miles of things to learn about each other. It’s a starting-from-scratch feeling. Except we know the important things, and those are what matter the most. The how-do- you-spend-your-time questions will come out in time. What we need to uncover, are matters of the heart.
The “what happened to you and why?” The “where do we go from here?” The “can I help you become the most important person in my life all over again?” Blind spots.
As we climb into my truck to make our way back to the lake, I glance over at Sloan, whose eyes are on me. She’s smiling. A smile that could outshine a gamma-ray burst. She has a long piece of grass in her mouth, and the look of her chewing it takes me back as she hums John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which we used to hear on the radio when we were teenagers. We knew all the words, and we blasted them out every time it played.