by Alisha Rai
Gabriel Hunter crossed his massive arms over his chest, the flannel of his shirt rolled up to reveal colorful tattoos. With his dark auburn hair and matching beard, the man looked like he should be chopping wood in a cabin somewhere, but Livvy had watched his big fingers maneuver some of the tiniest, most detailed tattoos she’d ever seen.
Gabe was the one who had originally hooked Livvy on the art—his mother had been the Kanes’ housekeeper for as long as she could remember. Gabe had been a few years older, friends with Paul and Nicholas.
She wondered if he’d spoken to Nicholas since the accident. She didn’t think so, given his close bond with Paul.
Everything leads back to Nicholas, damn it.
“The customer asked how long you’d be here for. I told her I wasn’t sure.”
Livvy eyed her boss. “Do you need a definite date? Because I’m still not sure when my mom . . .”
“No, no,” Gabe rushed. “I only wanted to tell you that if you decided to stay longer, I’m game. That girl came from three hours away and wants to bring her friend up next weekend. It’s like I have a guest celebrity artist here.”
Livvy blushed but lifted her chin, pride making her want to beam. Celebrity was overselling it, but she did have a small but fierce following. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Gabe’s green eyes warmed. Despite his outwardly physically intimidating appearance, the tattooed lumberjack was and always had been a pussycat. “You okay closing up?”
“Yup. Got a hot date?”
He winked, the move devastating. Or at least it would be if her body could seem to want anyone other than one particular, terrible-for-her guy. “Only with my remote control. Wanna join me?”
She smiled. His teasing flirtatiousness was second nature to him. She’d never take him seriously, and he’d never crossed the line into sleaziness. “Not tonight, thanks. See you tomorrow?”
“Sure thing.”
She finished cleaning up and was about to go lock up when the bell above the door rang. She glanced at her watch and grimaced. Her back was aching. Maybe it was simply a consult? She could hope.
She rose to her feet, but faltered when the curtain split and Nicholas walked in.
Goddamn. All he had to do was appear and her body sat up and panted, lips tingling, nipples hardening, the muscles in her thighs twinging. Like she hadn’t had her fill of him a few days ago.
You’ll never have your fill of him, you fool.
His gaze was locked on her. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she returned, too stunned to say anything else. What was going on? She hadn’t summoned him in her sleep, had she?
“I, uh . . . I didn’t see your car outside. I thought I’d check anyway.”
“My car wouldn’t start this morning.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It can be temperamental.” She’d considered using her mom and Maile’s car, a little Kia that sat mostly dusty in the garage, but it would have required talking to her mom, which would have resulted in Livvy being on the receiving end of that indifferent stare, which would have resulted in her being sad, and she didn’t want to be sadder. They lived under three miles away. Walking hadn’t been difficult.
“You called a cab?”
“I walked.”
“You walked, in this neighborhood?”
She was about to roll her eyes, but then she had to admit she wouldn’t have been caught dead in this neighborhood when she was in the same social strata as him. “It’s not so bad.”
He looked around, like he expected a meth addict to jump out at him from behind a chair. “Right.”
“Did you come here to ask me about Ruthie?”
“Ruthie?”
“My car. Her name is Ruthie.”
“No.” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “I, uh, came here to give you these.” He extended the hand he’d had behind his back and thrust the flowers he held at her.
Yellow roses.
She hadn’t touched yellow roses since they’d broken up.
Slowly, like one might approach a predator, she walked over to him, and took the bouquet from his hands. The cellophane crinkled in her fingers. The white tissue was crisp and watermarked with something. She tilted it to the light and made out a simple C shape.
The logo cut her to the core. She’d recognize it anywhere. Chandler’s had kept the same font C&O had used.
The pain was so overwhelming she had to remind herself to breathe. In order to cover the hit she’d taken, she spoke in a deliberately light tone. “You came all this way to bring me grocery store flowers?”
“Our floral department is considered pretty high-end now, actually. We do weddings and deliver daily and have top-notch designers—”
She forced a smile. “I don’t need the corporate rundown.” Though she wanted to appear indifferent and uncaring, she couldn’t resist bringing the flowers to her nose and inhaling deeply. She’d considered incorporating yellow flowers into her vine tattoo, but ultimately decided that was too obvious.
When they’d been dating, she’d had a never-ending bouquet of yellow roses. He’d brought them from their store then too. His store. It’s his store now. In case the lone Cs on the tissue paper weren’t enough of a reminder. “What’s this for?”
Nicholas rubbed his finger over his nose. “Why does any man bring a woman flowers?”
“Because he wants to get in her pants. Or soften her up. Or impress her. Or because he knows she really likes flowers.”
His smile was faint. “I know you really like flowers. I also want to soften you up.”
He didn’t say anything about wanting to get in her pants or impress her, she noticed. “For what?”
“My sister sends her apologies. She told me what she said to you, and I’m mortified. I apologize as well. She said she’d be happy to tell you this in person, if you ever wanted to meet with her.”
Oh. This was about his sister. “No big deal. She needed a target.”
“You shouldn’t have been her target.”
Livvy shrugged. “She’s young. She’ll learn. Is that all? That’s not really rose worthy.”
Nicholas frowned and rocked back on his heels. “You don’t think—” He stopped, his frown deepening.
“Yes?” she prompted him.
“You don’t think I ever used you as a target, right?”
Livvy cocked her head. “Are you asking if I thought you were hate-fucking me all these years?”
He glanced away, his gaze lighting on everything and nothing. “Yes.”
“No. Were you?” She was proud of how measured her voice sounded. As much as it ached to only get the physical crumbs of his affection, she’d rather be an object of lust over an object of rage.
“No, never.”
The ever-present knot in her stomach unraveled at his immediate rejection. “Oh. Good.”
“Was it penance?”
She blinked at his brusque question. “What?”
“When you fucked me.” He looked down at her. “Did you sleep with me only because you felt guilty? Like you owed it to me for what your father did?”
She jerked back. “What kind of question is that?”
“A valid one, I think.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to be a guilt-fuck any more than you want to be a hate-fuck.”
“I never slept with you because I felt like I owed you my body. It was always because I wanted it.”
“I know I was rough last week.” A muscle in his jaw clenched, his eyes dipping over her face and body. A trail of fire followed in their wake.
“Rough . . . physically?” Because she’d felt totally abraded mentally and emotionally too, not that she was about to tell him that.
A dull red flush covered his cheeks. “Correct.”
She squinted at him. Did this need to be said? “Uh. I guess I didn’t make it clear enough when I moaned every time you spanked me, but I enjoyed myself quite a bit.”
“I’ve never . . .” H
e tunneled his hands through his hair. “I’ve never raised a hand to a woman in my life.”
“You were pretty good at it.” Amusement crept through her disquiet. “Ten out of ten at spanking, I’d say.”
“You ran out. I thought maybe I’d traumatized you. I wanted to call or text you, but I didn’t want to know if you’d already changed your number like all the other times I’ve—”
She stiffened. What was he about to say? That he’d reached out to her in the past? When? “I was following our usual script,” she said.
“What script?”
What script? The unwritten script they’d been following their entire lives. “We screw. We part ways. That’s the script.”
“Not like that. That’s not our script.”
Her eyes narrowed. Now she understood. “Because you always leave. Not me.” They’d fall asleep together after multiple orgasms, and he’d sneak out while she slept. Or sometimes, pretended to sleep. She nodded when he looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, I initiate, and you terminate. You’re right, that’s our script.” She pivoted and walked to her table, placing the flowers there, trying not to care when the petals smooshed against the hard surface. “Sorry to fuck up the order of things. I adapted the rules to suit our hometown playing field, if you know what I mean.”
“There were never any rules.”
“Guidelines, then. Patterns. You love those, don’t you?” She shrugged, hoping she looked lighthearted. “I can see where you might have misconstrued my bolting, but trust me, I was fine. No trauma. I liked every second of sex we had.” She folded her arms together, trying to affect some cool. “Gawd, now you’ve made this all weird.”
He stared at her, and a deep rumble filled the room. It took her a second to realize it was coming from him. He bent over double and grasped his knees, his breath gasping as he laughed. And laughed. Each belly-chuckling laugh made her face turn hot.
She hadn’t heard him laugh like that in . . . well, forever. She drifted closer, each peal wrapping around her heart. “I don’t see what’s so funny—” But that only set him off again.
Finally he subsided, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. He shook his head, a heartbreaking smile still on his face. It lacked cynicism or icy control. It was young and boyish and happy. “Jesus Christ, Livvy. When has this not been weird?”
Despite herself, a smile tugged at her own lips. “Touché.” She tried to sober. “I should close up. You want to reestablish our usual roles? You can leave now.”
She turned away to her table, waiting to hear his footsteps, but they didn’t come. Instead, she counted each breath he took in the near silent room. “I . . .”
“What?” she snapped, when he trailed off.
“I don’t want to leave.”
He means now, so quit that little wriggle of happiness in your heart. He’d leave her eventually. “Is that right?”
“I want to stay.” He said the words quietly, and then repeated them louder. “I want to stay here with you.”
She picked up a pen and put it down again. “What do you want to talk about?”
A long silence stretched out. “Anything. Whatever you want.”
She glanced over her shoulder. No clear objective? No agenda? That was unlike him.
She’d vowed not to see him again, ever, not more than five seconds ago. But then he said, “Please,” and she wavered.
She couldn’t detect any manipulation or ulterior motive in his gaze. Earnestness. Caution. Maybe a touch of confusion, as if he didn’t fully understand himself.
As someone who felt perpetually confused, that was enormously endearing. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
A blank check to discuss whatever she wanted with him? After years of biting her tongue around him, he couldn’t have offered her a more seductive offer. Well, maybe if he’d paired it with his beautiful penis, but it was still pretty damn seductive nonetheless.
The weak-willed part of her that could never deny him blinked awake, and she nodded to the chair. She hated herself for giving in. She wasn’t capable of not giving in.
Argh.
“Take off your shirt.”
“Take off my . . . why?”
Because I really, really like how you look without your shirt.
“I told you. You want to talk to me, you have to get a tattoo.”
His lips didn’t move, but his eyes warmed. His fingers rose to the knot of his tie.
She turned away, because she couldn’t stand to watch him undress, and busied herself with rummaging through her markers. When the rustle of clothing stopped, she turned back with a Sharpie. She patted herself on the back for not swallowing her tongue at the expanse of lovely chest that lay before her.
“How are you getting more muscular every time I see you?” she asked, with a touch of annoyance.
“I haven’t been able to sleep. I’ve been working out.”
Her shallow first reaction: Keep doing that.
She hooked her stool with her ankle and kicked it closer to the chair, then adjusted his seat so he was reclining. “Maybe try some warm milk.”
“I’m trying to sleep, not vomit.”
She bent her head over his shoulder and ran her palm over the upper muscle of his chest. His pec tightened. Hot. Hairy. Hard.
She swallowed her drool and uncapped the Sharpie. She started on his left side, drawing a large fin coasting over his chest.
“What are you drawing?”
“Shh. You trust me, remember?” In this, at least.
“It took me forever to scrub that naked woman off.”
“She was a naked fairy, thank you very much. Didn’t you see her pointy ears?” Livvy filled in the detail of the fin, drawing each scale carefully. “Besides, this will be under your shirt. People will only see it when you go swimming or want to bang someone.” That’s good. Keep pretending you can think about him banging someone without it bothering you one tiny bit.
Nicholas craned his neck. “A mermaid?”
“Shh. Wait and see.”
She took her time carefully drawing in the scales of the mermaid. On someone else, with her actual needle, she’d do this in iridescent blues and greens so it popped when the person moved. The green marker made her feel a little sad, but this wasn’t the right tattoo for Nicholas.
She cleared her throat once she was half done with the fin, unable to keep silent forever. “So, like, what’s keeping you awake?”
She looked up at him. His eyes were closed, like they had been last time, furrows deep on his brow.
His lips parted, and for one bright, shining moment, she thought he would say it, that he’d confess it was her keeping him awake, but then the words came. “Work stuff.”
“Oh.” She started to work on the torso of the mermaid, giving her a slender physique and small breasts. Not covered by a silly seashell bra, of course. She assumed mermaids didn’t put stock into absurd human concerns like covering lady nipples at all costs.
Livvy couldn’t even stand underwires. Why would a majestic merlady put seashells on her boobs?
A loud vibrating pierced the silence. Nicholas shifted, his chest rippling under her palms, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and silenced it.
“You’re not even going to see who it is?”
“It’s someone who wants something from me.”
She wanted to make a sarcastic heavy is the head that wears the crown comment, but couldn’t bear to do it. Not when he looked so utterly exhausted. “That’s the job of the guy in charge, isn’t it? To be in demand?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he rested his phone on his leg. “Uh-huh.”
The phone lit up again, and she was in the right position to see the caller. Grandpa.
Pain blossomed in her chest. “You may want to get that.”
He looked at the phone this time, then surprised her by shaking his head. “No.”
“You don’t pick up calls from your grandfather anymore?”
; He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not when I know he only wants to bitch about my dad.”
She raised an eyebrow at the shit-ton of bitterness behind that statement. “Oh. Do they . . . do they not get along anymore?” Brendan and John had always struck her as a mismatched father-and-son duo, but she’d never seen them actively battling.
Nicholas’s laugh was short. “You could say that.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she murmured. “Was there a falling-out?”
He didn’t answer for a beat. Curious, she prodded. “You said I could ask you anything.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He cast her an unreadable look. “Yes. Your family.”
Her hand jerked and the mermaid’s shoulder got messed up. She’d have to give her long hair to cover it. “What?”
“Your family caused the fallout.”
“How so?”
Nicholas sighed. “When my dad bought your mom’s share of the company—”
“When he stole it, you mean.”
He didn’t argue. “It left my father and grandfather in equal power. They haven’t been able to talk to each other without fighting since that day.”
Shocked, she stopped drawing and stared up at him. “What? Why?”
“Because my grandfather can’t forgive my dad for cutting your family out.”
“John wasn’t a part of that?” She hadn’t even seen John from the time of the accident to when she’d left. He’d been too sick, and Brendan hadn’t permitted any non-family visitors to the hospital.
“No. Of course not. He didn’t even know until he was discharged from the hospital. His health was so fragile. It didn’t take much for my dad to convince us telling him could kill him.”
“Wow.” She simply hadn’t considered John wasn’t in cahoots with his son back then.
“If he’d been there, he would have blocked my dad. I couldn’t, but he might have been able to.”
Another jerk of her hand. “You tried to stop Brendan?”
He went silent.
The day they’d broken up, she’d met him in the woods and tried to make sense of her upside-down world. What’s Paul talking about? He’s stomping around and yelling at Mom and saying your dad stole the company from us. That’s not true, right? You wouldn’t have let him do that. Nothing’s changed.