It had been so long since she’d experienced that warmth that she’d forgotten the magic, the power, the comfort that it was. She’d started to believe that she must’ve built it into something that it wasn’t. That she’d glorified it and erected an emotional shrine to a mythical phenomenon that didn’t truly exist.
But now, post-fundraiser, she realized she’d been wrong. Not only did it exist, it was more powerful, more magical, and more comforting than she’d ever remembered.
And now that she’d felt it again, returning to the cold shadow of its absence would be torture.
Still, it was going to be what it was going to be and her procrastinating wasn’t going to change his actions.
Her hand was still shaking as she opened the door. When she entered the auto shop that she hadn’t stepped foot in since she was fifteen, she was overwhelmed with sense memories. The distinct scent, a combination of metal, brake dust, motor oil, and grease drifted through the air. The flicker of the neon sign that hung above the office. The sound of music drifting from a portable speaker. And Josh’s legs sticking out from beneath a vehicle.
If she didn’t know any better, she’d think she’d just stepped back in time.
“Did you forget something, Ramos?” His deep voice rumbled through her like a freight train on a rickety wooden bridge.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
When there was no answer, he slid out and the moment he saw her, his brow furrowed and his jaw tensed. Not exactly the reaction she was hoping for but she understood and at least she knew what she was facing. Cold, detached, and impersonal Josh it was.
“Hey.” She lifted her hand lamely.
“The shop’s closed.” Josh slid back beneath the vehicle he was working on.
“I know, I just wanted to come by and say thank you for yesterday, and for Buf—”
“You’re welcome,” he cut her off.
“What do I owe you?
“Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed.
“I’m not worried about it. I just want to pay you what I owe you.”
He let out a forced laugh and the sound made Bailey’s stomach turn. “You don’t owe me anything. If that’s all, lock up on your way out. I don’t want people off the street thinking they can just walk in.”
Bailey rolled her eyes. Subtlety had never been his strong suit. He was as transparent as a clear umbrella on a rainy day. He was obviously still in a storm of hurt because of her. And she was sorry. So sorry that she’d been willing to turn around and walk out the door and never speak to him again…if that’s what he really wanted.
But she had to make sure.
“You’re wrong. I do owe you something. I owe you an apology for the day you came to my dorm. I said things that day that I didn’t mean. I didn’t mean any of the things I said that day. You were never a distraction. You were my whole life.”
Part of Bailey wanted to tell Josh everything, but when you keep a secret for nearly two decades, it’s not exactly easy to spit it out. Plus, it wouldn’t just be opening up a can of worms. It would be releasing a swarm of bees. If he was mad at her now, she couldn’t imagine what he’d be if he knew the truth.
Would he be able to see that he’d made his decision and she’d made hers?
Would he understand the position she’d been in?
Would he even care?
Bailey was smart enough to know it was better if she didn’t find out the answers to any of those questions. Fresh start. That’s what they needed. That’s what she was going to ask for.
The past was the past. All of the hurt and pain was behind them. They were adults now.
“I wish I could tell you why I lied to you, but I can’t. What I can tell you is…,” she paused. Bailey hated showing any weakness. Her stomach ached at what she was about to say, “Josh, I miss you and I still care about you. To be honest, I never stopped caring about you. I know that you might not believe me, but it’s the truth.”
Her statement was met with complete silence. The only sound in the room was the soft music playing from the Bluetooth speaker on the counter.
“Look, you can go on ignoring me if that’s what you want, but I don’t think it is. I think, even though you don’t want to, that you care about me too.” She held her breath, knowing that she was treading on very thin ice. But she was done walking on egg shells. “Maybe you can say that what you did last night was just because it was the right thing to do, and there’s some truth to that.
“You’d never leave a woman stranded on a back road. You’d never let the hospital lose thousands in pledges if there was something you could do. But, would you take someone home, help them get undressed and tuck them into bed because it’s the right thing to do? Would you come back the next day and bring coffee and a bagel, and fix their truck, and feed their cat because it’s the right thing to do?”
Still, he remained silent so she took that as an invitation to continue. “I know that I hurt you. And I wish that I could explain to you why I said the things that I said, but I can’t. I know that it’s asking a lot of you to trust me again, but that’s what I’m asking. Trust me that I didn’t mean them. I was young and I thought it was the right thing to do. You should know all about that.”
She stared down at his legs waiting, holding her breath, for any indication of his reaction. It felt so good to say things that she’d been wanting to say for years, but not having any idea what he was thinking was nerve wracking.
When performing cardiac surgery, there comes a moment when you have to see if the patient’s heart can beat on its own. It’s merely seconds, but sometimes staring at the monitors, waiting, felt like an eternity.
That’s what this moment felt like. Except it wasn’t a patient’s heart she was worried about, it was hers. Because she knew, it had only and would only ever beat for one man.
* * *
Josh held a wrench in his hand as he lay perfectly still staring up at the transmission. The only sound he heard was a whooshing swirling around in his brain like a tornado.
He had no idea what Bailey had said after, “You were never a distraction. You were my whole life.”
He’d been waiting for that confession since the day he stood in the doorway of her old dorm. But now that it was happening, he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t quite process it.
Pressing his heels into the concrete floor, he rolled out and stood up. When he did, he felt lightheaded.
“Josh?” Concern filled her big, brown eyes. “Are you okay? You look…pale.”
She started to walk toward him, but he lifted his hand. She stopped.
“What did you say?” His gravelly words stung the back of his throat.
Her eyes shut and opened several times as she blinked in obvious confusion. “Um, well I said a lot. Could you really not hear me under there?”
“I need to hear it again.”
He could see her chest rising and falling rapidly as she swallowed and licked her lips. “Uhh, let’s see. Well, I said I lied to you that day at my dorm. You were never a distraction, you were my whole life. Um, I wish I could tell you why but I can’t…oh! I said I’m sorry and I still care about you. And, um, well…,” she paused, afraid to tread this ground again. “Well, I also said that I think you still care about me, too.”
“You think I still care about you?” He had no idea how that could even be a question in her mind.
Her shoulders straightened, the way they did when she was being challenged. “Yes, I do. I don’t think you’d do all the things you did for me unless there was still a part of you that cared. And I care too, Josh. I never stopped caring about you.”
Pain twisted in his chest and it smothered the hope that was trying to break through it. Why was she saying this now? She’d been back in town for six years. Yes, he’d avoided her, but she could’ve come and seen him sooner.
“What do you want, Bailey?” Josh felt his shoulders tense. “From me? What do you want?”
She flinched at the harshness in his tone. “I want to be friends, Josh. I know that things have been strained between us since I got back. You didn’t want to talk to me, or see me, or have anything to do with me, and I thought it was because you hated me. But after last night, I just thought…I don’t know…maybe you don’t hate me. I just…I thought…I thought maybe we can be friends.”
“No.” Josh was teetering on the edge of a dangerous emotional cliff, and being friends with Bailey would push him right off it.
“Seriously?” Confusion clouded Bailey’s beautiful brown eyes as she stared at him, searching for answers he couldn’t give her. Giving her those answers would open himself up to be hurt by her, and he’d spent enough years being hurt by her.
When he didn’t respond, her expression hardened. “Fine.”
She turned and walked toward the door.
Let her go.
Don’t stop her.
Three seconds. That was all the time he needed to wait until she was out the door.
“We’re not friends, Bailey.” He couldn’t wait.
She glanced over her shoulder and he saw that tears had welled in her eyes. But she lifted her hand, wiped beneath her eyes and spoke in a flat tone that was completely void of the emotion that she wore on her sleeve just seconds before. “Yeah, I got that. You made it very clear.”
She turned again, but he took two steps closer to her as he said, “We’ve never been friends.” Her eyes lifted up to his and when he saw the depth of emotion in her whiskey gaze it hit him like a sucker punch to the gut, but he ignored the blow and continued. “I don’t think about my friends from the second I open my eyes in the morning to the second I close them at night. I don’t want to kiss, touch, and fuck my friends. I don’t dream about my friends every night.”
Her eyes widened in confusion.
“You’re wrong, we can’t be friends. But you’re also right. I didn’t stay away from you because I hated you. I stayed away from you because I love you. Because I’ve never stopped loving you. I stayed away from you because it almost killed me trying to get over you, and I don’t think I could survive it again. I stayed away from you because I knew that if I talked to you, I would fall even harder than I did that day at the cemetery. I stayed away from you because I couldn’t hear your voice, or your laugh, or even your breath without feeling the endless void of those sounds not being in my life. Being around you is painful. Not abstractly. It causes me physical pain. That’s why I stayed away from you.”
He hadn’t planned on putting his cards on the table, but there they were. He’d been tortured by keeping all of that inside for years. It’d grown unbearable since he’d picked her up on the side of the road. He felt lighter than he had in years. It was as if the boulder that had been sitting on his chest was lifted.
Without the weight of unspoken truth tethering him to anger, resentment, and hurt, he was free to feel other things. As he stared into Bailey’s eyes, he was overwhelmed with lust, desire, and love. And he saw the vein that only came out when Bailey was mad or turned on.
He had no idea why it was making an appearance, but he was about to find out.
Chapter 11
Bailey’s mind was swirling with the things that Josh had just said.
He still loved her.
He thought about her all. The. Time.
He wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to fuck her.
She tried to remember what her objectives had been in coming here tonight, but the entire thing had taken a hard left turn and she wasn’t sure how to get it back on track. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to.
He was looking at her expectantly. She knew that they needed to talk. His confessions were so unexpected that she couldn’t think of how to respond.
“Josh.” His name escaped from Bailey’s mouth, and the sound of it on her lips acted as a rolling aphrodisiac. It started at the top of her head and rippled its way down to her toes.
She stepped back, not trusting herself to be so close to him. She was afraid she’d launch herself into him.
When the hard, cold surface of the concrete wall hit her shoulders she leaned back and flattened her palms against it. Her fingers flexed in a failed attempt to anchor herself to something solid and her knees trembled beneath the heavy weight of arousal.
Josh remained where he was, pinning her with his ocean blue stare.
“We need to talk,” she managed to speak even though her throat was tight with need.
Without saying a word, his long, lean legs ate up the space between them with predatory grace. The rubber soles of his work boots squeaked as he took two purposeful strides toward her.
He locked the door beside her and landed mere inches in front of her. And, just like that, the world disappeared. Her brain quieted. She wasn’t thinking, wasn’t worrying, wasn’t analyzing. She couldn’t. All she could do, all her brain would allow her to do, was feel and anticipate.
They’d been closer than this at the dance. Their bodies had been pressed against one another for twenty-four hours. But this was different. He wasn’t doing this out of some misplaced obligation. No clock was running in the background. No referees were walking around making sure they were in compliance.
This was voluntary. This was real. This was intimate.
With unhurried movements, Josh lifted his hand to her face, cupping her left cheek in his palm. Her eyes fluttered shut at his touch. She leaned into the warmth of his skin and he pulled his hand away. She lifted her eyes and saw him staring down at her with an intensity she never thought she’d see again.
He closed his fingers and brushed the side of her jaw with his knuckles. His eyes followed its progress and once she was freed from the laser hold of his stare, she exhaled. It wasn’t until her head started spinning with dizziness that she realized she’d been holding her breath since he stalked across the room.
“I don’t know what this means.” His voice was as rough as sandpaper. “I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow. But I know that what I want tonight is to be with you again. I know that I want you. I know that I’ve never stopped wanting you. What do you want, Bay?”
Bae (B-a-e) had become a slang word in recent years. A term of endearment that stood for before anyone else. But Josh had been using the nickname long before it was popular. Hearing him say it now sent a rush of nostalgia through her, mixed with a heavy dose of lust.
“You, Josh,” she answered honestly. “Always you.”
The last thing she saw before his lips claimed her in a knee-weakening kiss was Josh’s nostrils flare and his jaw tense. Then it was game over. His lips covered hers in a kiss that made all other kisses in her life feel like practice. Even the kisses she’d shared with Josh were not in the same league with what was happening now.
His tongue swept across the seam of her lips with a measured authority that only a man with firsthand knowledge of the territory would possess.
She let her mouth fall open a little, expecting his tongue to meet hers, but instead his lips brushed across hers as he spoke. “You taste just like I remember.”
A strangled giggle escaped from her, either from nerves or from arousal, she couldn’t be sure. “Like coffee?”
She’d had two cups during the five hours she’d just spent at the hospital.
“No.” He rasped as his thumb grazed the outline of her jaw. “Like home.”
The groan that escaped her at those words was totally involuntary, but the way she threw herself into his arms and pressed her body to his just a split second later wasn’t. No, that was very intentional.
As they melted into each other, she felt the weight of how much she’d missed him. It was such a bittersweet mixture. It felt so right, but it also made her so
sharply aware of all that they’d missed that she almost couldn’t breathe.
Nope. Not gonna think about that.
There were times that her ability to compartmentalize served her well. This moment was one of those times. Not everyone could just shut confusing or painful memories up into a tightly-locked part of their brain and fully focus on the present moment, but she could. And she did. She threw herself into the kiss with every fiber of her being, not looking back once.
Josh’s lips against hers were soft, but she could feel them trembling with barely-controlled need. She wanted to satisfy that need. She felt like it was her mission in that moment, to bring him satisfaction.
She put her palms lightly on his chest and pushed him away, just a little. Just enough so that she could bring her hands up to undress herself. Before she’d even managed to get one article of clothing off, though, he caught her wrists.
She lifted her eyes to his face, surprised. Had he changed his mind?
No. The expression on his face was a mixture of playfulness and lust, and she’d wondered if she’d ever see that look again. The edge of his lips twitched in a small grin. “Last night, when I helped you get out of your dress, I had to be a gentleman. Tonight, I don’t feel very gentlemanly. Is that okay?”
At a loss for words, her throat squeezed so tight with lust that she couldn’t have forced them out even if she could string them together, she merely nodded.
A tingling rush of heat spread over the surface of her skin in response to those words and the mental pictures they sent flashing through her brain. Josh’s hands moved over her and stripped her out of her clothes, piece by piece, in a very ungentlemanly fashion. She couldn’t think of anything she’d enjoy more.
He moved his way down her neck, going slowly, taking his time and peppering feathery kisses all along the tender skin there. God, how was she going to withstand the rest of this amazing encounter when just that small, incredible touch was making her so weak in the knees that she could hardly stand?
Short answer? She probably wouldn’t be able to take it. She felt like her body would burst into a million pieces from the sheer ecstasy of it all. And though she knew that made no physiological sense, probably better than anybody, it certainly seemed accurate in the moment.
Just One Night - Josh & Bailey (Crossroads Book 13) Page 9