by Karina Halle
How far can you fall for someone until you have to call it love?
I hope I never find out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kayla
At work on Friday, the time passes by like molasses. I stare at the clock on my computer monitor, counting down the minutes, the seconds, until I can go home, get my bags, get Lachlan, and head to Napa.
But when the proverbial whistle blows and I’m all ready and waiting outside his apartment, whatever excitement I had all day has been replaced by acute fear. This is the last time I’ll be here, picking him up. After Sunday, he’s gone.
Even though I didn’t sleep with him after my mother’s on Wednesday night, yesterday was a different story. I went right over to his apartment after work, strode inside, and fucked his brains out. In his bedroom, of course, away from the judgemental eyes of Emily. Whatever strange melancholy that had gripped me at my mother’s house wasn’t present. I lost myself to his body in every way that I could, literally screwing him sideways until two in the morning, when I finally pried myself away and went back home to sleep.
But now, now that I’m waiting for him, now that we’re about to embark on our last few days together, that melancholy is back, humming in my soul like a tune you can’t forget.
It gets a little better though, as things often do, when I finally see Lachlan.
He takes hulking strides toward the car, duffle bag on one shoulder, pet crate in hand. He’s wearing his hiking boots, blue jeans with rips in them, a white t-shirt that perfectly showcases those traps, those shoulders, the swirl of tattoos down his arms. My breath hitches, my legs clench, the heat inside burns and burns. His effect on me will never be duplicated.
He opens the back door and puts the crate inside. I look behind me at Emily. Her scruffy little face is at the gate. I’m prepared for her to growl or at least show some teeth, but she just eyes me for a moment before her gaze goes back to Lachlan. It’s obvious the dog adores him; she can barely look away. I wonder if that’s how I appear.
“Hello, love,” he says to me as he gets in the front seat. He leans forward, cups my jaw in his hand, and gives me a long, slow kiss that makes my heart skip a few beats.
I grin at him, wiggling in my seat from excitement, and then jerk my thumb at the back seat. “She seems to be warming up to me.”
“I told you she’d come around,” he says, putting his large hand on my bare thigh as we drive off.
The journey to Napa is a gorgeous one. I opt for the longer route, heading over the Golden Gate Bridge, purely because it’s more scenic and it gives me more time alone with him before I have to share him with everyone else. The temperature climbs as we head inland. Soon, the sun is baking us, our windows are down, and we are blasting down two-lane highways, the smell of vineyards and warmed fields blowing through the car.
“What if we keep driving forever?” I ask him dreamily, the soulful lament of Lana Del Rey’s “Honeymoon” pouring from the speakers.
“What if we do?” he asks, playing along.
“Where would we go?”
“Does it matter?” His voice is so beautifully hopeful that I have to look at him. He gives me a quick smile and props his elbow on the open window, running his fingers over his chin and staring off at the dry hills.
No. It wouldn’t matter. We could find a field, a cabin, a mountain stream. We could go north or south or east. We could pull down the next country road and set up camp around the car, just him, me, and Emily. We could take time and stretch it between our fingers and spend an eternity in each other’s arms.
But reality doesn’t work like that. Not that reality has handed us such a bum deal today. When we reach Napa and I pull the car into the massive parking lot of the Meritage Hotel, I’m incredibly grateful that Bram organized this whole thing—a way for him to see his cousin before he goes and a way for me to do the same.
“Well this is bloody nice,” Lachlan says quietly as we get out of the car and gather our stuff. The heat blankets us as we cross the lot and enter the hotel lobby. Immediately we see the gang.
“Heeeeeeeeeeey!” Bram yells with a big smile, glass of red wine in his hand, coming over to us. He pulls Lachlan into a hug, slapping him on the back, and then does the same to me.
“My god, Bram, are you drunk already?” I ask as he pulls away.
“We got here early,” he says, and gestures to the rest of them. Linden and Steph stroll over, also with wine, while I spot Nicola in the background talking to someone at the front desk.
“Hey you two,” Steph says, hugging me as Bram did, though she doesn’t do the same to Lachlan. Her eyes wander up and down, almost as if she’s intimidated by him. Maybe because Lachlan is frowning at her something fierce. I know that being around a bunch of people has probably put him on edge already, and I reach out for his hand, giving it a squeeze.
He seems to relax before my eyes, and Steph’s gaze bounces between us. She gives me a small smile, and Linden steps in to give his cousin one of those handshakes that takes up the whole forearm.
“Glad you came,” Linden says before he spots the dog carrier. He drops to a crouch and says, “Aw, who is this?”
Emily immediately starts barking at him which makes Linden jump back and up. “Jesus, Lachlan, he’s as surly as you.”
“She,” Lachlan corrects. “This is Miss Emily.”
Linden snorts. “Bit of a pansy name for a dog. And you named her?”
“Aye,” Lachlan says, staring Linden down with a hint of crazy eyes.
“Let’s get us checked in,” I say, pulling on Lachlan’s arm and leading him over to the front desk.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
He grunts in response. I assume that means he’s fine. Or that I shouldn’t worry about it anyway.
We say hi to Nicola when we check in, and once we get the keys to our room, she tells me to come meet them at the wine cellar on property for a group wine tasting, even though it seems that they’ve been doing plenty of tasting on their own already.
Our room is on the ground floor and done up in the Mediterranean style. Lachlan lets Emily out of the crate, then sticks her on a leash, opening the door to our patio and leading her outside to pee. I quickly freshen up in the bathroom, stretching my limbs after being cooped up in the car, and then flounce on the king-size bed, testing the firmness of the mattress. It feels like a dream. I could fuck all night on it.
When he comes back in, Emily hops up on the bed beside me, and I realize that fucking the day and night away might be difficult when the dog will be watching our every move again.
Lachlan lies down beside me on his back, putting his thick arm across my stomach. I watch him inhale and exhale, his chest rising and falling.
“Already feel like being antisocial?” I ask him.
“Mmmm,” he says, staring at me. “I’d rather be in here with you.”
“Well, if you have anything amorous planned, we may have to do it outside. Miss Emily here will be watching our every move.”
He shrugs. “So we’ll put her in the bathroom.”
“She’ll bark.”
He sighs. “Yes, she will.”
I turn into him and run my finger over his forehead, smoothing out the creases. “Always so expressive,” I tell him, pressing into the notch between his brows. “Always thinking about something.”
“I’d pay to have someone turn off my brain, to be honest,” he says. I trail my finger down his nose, over the slight bump, then the curve of his lips. He opens them, taking my fingertip between his teeth and biting down gently.
I watch him closely, and I can see those wheels turning. I lower my voice a register. “I know just the thing to make it stop.” I take my finger out of his mouth and kiss him softly. He lets out a faint moan that I can feel in my core. I put my hand on his chest and push myself back. “But first, let’s go to the wine tasting.”
He shuts his eyes and his head flops back onto the pillow. “Do we have to? Why can’t
we just stay here and you do that thing that turns off my thoughts, and I’ll do that thing that makes your cunt wetter than a waterslide.”
“Come on,” I tell him, throwing his arm off me and getting up. “We’re doing this because you want to see your cousins before you go, and they want to see you. Let’s just have some wine and disappear.”
He grumbles at that, but gets up. We leave Emily with her dinner and some water then head out into the hotel.
The building itself is huge, and we find ourselves strolling through courtyards and past the opulent pool area. It’s busy, and everyone seems to have a glass of wine in hand which makes something in my head stutter and pause. Maybe a vineyard wasn’t really the best place to bring Lachlan.
I glance up at him as he walks beside me, eyes darting around, never resting in one place. I take in what I know about him. Behavioral problems. Tattoos that hint at a past shadowed with downfall and demons. The fact that he doesn’t drink much, if at all, might not just be about the rugby training. It might be about a whole other thing.
But he hasn’t said anything to me about it, and because it’s so personal, I’m not going to ask. People who are fucking for a week don’t need to disclose the nitty gritty, perhaps painful, details of their lives to each other.
The wine cellar is located in the Estate Cave which is set right into the rolling hillside of grape vines that flank the back of the property. Inside it’s cool and dim, with the spa entrance to the left of us and the wine tasting bar to the right. Ahead of us are big dark doors that just beg to be pushed open.
I’m in the middle of doing so, peeking my head inside to see a large, empty cavern with curved stone walls and hanging chandeliers, when Lachlan pulls me back and Steph is screeching in my ear.
“Yay, you came!” she says, and when I turn to look at her, she gives me a sloppy kiss on the cheek. I exchange a look with Lachlan. She’s even drunker than before.
“Of course we came,” I tell her as she beckons us to follow her into the bar. There are a few people lined up along its length, looking over lists and being doted on by wannabe sommeliers, but we follow Steph to the back where they’re all sitting around a private table.
They all cheer when they see us, and I give them a quick one-handed wave in response.
“So,” I say, looking over their empty, wine-stained glasses. “You’ve got quite the head start.”
“We’re just one drink in,” Nicola says, gesturing to the two empty seats next to her. Lachlan and I both sit down, and the wine girl appears immediately.
“Hi,” she says in an overly bubbly voice. I guess you have to be bubbly if you want to sell expensive crates of vintage. “Let me top you two off. We started off with a light sauvignon blanc blend.” She reaches with her bottle, expertly pouring in a mouthful, but when she moves for Lachlan’s glass, he puts his hand over it.
“I shouldn’t,” he says, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
I look at Bram curiously to see if this is odd behavior from his cousin or not. Bram in turn is watching Lachlan carefully, though he doesn’t seem surprised.
“Would you like another kind of wine?” the girl asks.
“Give him the red,” Linden says. “He seems more like a red wine kind of guy. Right? Less sugar in red wine.”
Bram gives his brother a conflicted look and opens his mouth to say something when Lachlan shrugs and removes his hand from the glass.
“Sure, red is fine,” he concedes.
I feel like everyone around the table has suddenly tensed, making Lachlan the center of attention so I quickly say, “Bram, thank you so much for arranging this.”
And then everyone’s attention is on Bram with numerous expressions of gratitude. I put my hand on Lachlan’s leg, his muscles flexing as he anxiously taps his foot on the floor.
The wine girl, whose name tag reads “Jennifer Rodriguez,” comes back and pours Lachlan a hefty dollop of their red grenache blend. She’s actually quite attractive in the white teeth, tanned skin, wavy, honey-colored hair, overly obnoxious way. She won’t stop making eyes at Lachlan either.
But she doesn’t even appear on his radar. While she’s giving him all the information on the wine, babbling on, her eyes flitting over his tattoos, the bulk of his arms and shoulders, he doesn’t even look at her once. He just takes a sip of the wine and nods.
The rest of us don’t get the same amount of attention, although the wine is quite good. Bram asks a million questions about everything we drink, but Jenn’s attention is always on Lachlan. At one point she actually touches his bicep and coos over it.
“I love your tattoos. My ex-boyfriend used to have a fleur-di-lis on his arm and a quote across his chest. I always thought they were very sexy on men.”
I’m so close to telling her to step off but Lachlan folds his hands in front of him and calmly looks up at her. “Just pour the wine, darling.”
Jenn immediately looks flustered, her pouty mouth dropping for a moment, but then she steps into professional mode, sparing herself from further humiliation. I feel like giving Lachlan a high-five but keep my small triumph to myself.
We’re a few wine glasses in and Bram has started filling out an order form to bring back a crate of his favorite when Lachlan leans into me and whispers, “Meet me outside in a few minutes.” He then gets up and strides out of the bar.
I turn around to face everyone else and they’re all looking at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask, finishing off my wine.
“What’s with him?” Linden asks.
“He’s your cousin. You know how he is.”
“Yeah,” he says, “but at this point, I think you may know him better.”
I look at Bram for backup but he just goes back to filling out the order form. “I’m afraid Linden is right, Kayla. You’re the expert now.”
“He is so sweet on you,” Nicola adds, her eyes all warm and gooey.
“So sweet on me?” I repeat. “First of all, we’re not in the fucking south, okay? Second of all, that man is not sweet on anything. Except maybe dogs.”
Well, and he was pretty sweet with my mother the other night.
Steph violently shakes her head. “No, no, no. Then you don’t see what we see. He wants you, Kayla.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, that’s a given at this point.”
“No,” she says, louder now, and Linden has to shush her. Good lord, they’re all getting drunker by the minute. “No, let me say this,” she says, pushing her hand against Linden’s face and smushing it. “Let me say this, okay? Let me say this.”
I stare at her and gesture with open palms. “Okay, drunky. Say it.”
She leans forward, eyes wide with urgency. “He wants you. Like…he’s in love with you.”
That proclamation emits a simultaneous groan from both Linden and Bram.
“Don’t get carried away,” Bram chides.
“You women think that any man who gets his dick in you is in love with you,” Linden says to her.
“Hey,” I say sharply, jabbing my finger at him. “Please don’t lump me into the ‘you women’ category. And I happen to know for a fact that none of us here think that, especially your little wife who was in love with you loooong before you got your stupid dick in her.”
Steph glares at Linden, and I continue. “And for fuck’s sake, we barely know each other. We’re fucking, so let us fuck and shut the hell up about it.” I look at Steph. “And please, the last thing I need is for anyone to get crazy, unrealistic notions inside my head. No one loves anyone. I don’t know Lachlan and he doesn’t know me, and we’re both fine with that. We have to be fine with that because he’s leaving in forty-eight hours for a land far, far away. So please, just let us have our time with each other until then. We don’t need any complications. We don’t need love, or even feelings, because what we do have is hot as hell and fleeting, and I’m going to suck up as much good fucking sex as I can with him. Got it?”
Bram, Nicola, Steph, and L
inden are staring at me wide-eyed.
“Jeez,” Linden finally says, “I was just joking. Touchy, touchy.”
“Well I’m not joking,” I tell him, getting out of my seat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find him. When we come back, I hope to god none of you utter the L-word or any other word except for ‘goodbye,’ okay?”
I turn on my heel and march past the wine bar, half the patrons looking at me as I go, since my outburst was probably a little too loud. Still, that made me angry as hell. Why did people always have to try and complicate shit? Why couldn’t people just fuck and that be the end of it? I mean, my friends never even knew the names of any of the men I slept with after Kyle. Why does it have to be so freaking difficult with Lachlan?
Because you do have feelings for him, my inner voice whispers to me. Because you are falling for him.
“Argh,” I growl to myself, hands on my ears, turning around in circles in the cave’s foyer. “I don’t want Steph to be right.”
“Kayla?” I hear Lachlan’s voice.
I stop spinning and look up to see him on the other side of the heavy door, in the dim cave I looked into earlier, staring at me with his usual concern.
“Yeah,” I say, feigning normalness. “Hi.”
He frowns deeper then gestures with his head to come inside.
I step in through the doors and he carefully closes them behind me. I look around. The cold stone walls are curved with buttresses, making the room take the shape of half a wine barrel. I take a few steps forward and peer down the rest of the empty hall. It looks like the kind of place where you’d have a Game of Thrones wedding, complete with alcoves and elaborate candelabras.
“What were you saying out there?” he asks softly, coming up behind me and placing his hands around the small of my waist. His breath smells like wine. “You don’t want Steph to be right about what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, closing my eyes and leaning my head against his chest. “Stupid girl nonsense.”
“Mmmm. Sorry I took off like that,” he murmurs against the top of my head. “There’s only so much I can handle.”