The knock raps again, a little louder this time. The covers are tossed to the side. Grabbing my phone in case it’s not Machlan and I need to call 911, I shove it in the pocket of my shorts like a girl who doesn’t care about her life.
“Who is it?” I ask, hand already on the knob. A bubble of excitement is on the verge of bursting as I wait for a response.
“Who else are you expecting at two thirty in the fucking morning?”
He came back.
Running a hand over my still-damp hair from the sponge bath I gave myself in the kitchen sink, I say a prayer and swing the door open.
“Never know,” I say, trying not to show how happy his arrival makes me. “Could’ve been the guy from the other day.”
“That would be your best bet. Pretty sure you could take him.”
He’s standing, both hands shoved in his pockets, the start of a grin on his face. The wear of the night shows in the puffiness of his eyes.
Despite the late hour and the trickiness of how we ended things earlier, he came back. I don’t know what that means, but it’s a good sign. I think.
I turn away to get myself together. The door shuts softly. I turn back around to see him standing in the middle of the room. He doesn’t touch anything. He doesn’t look anywhere but at me.
This is a look I can’t decipher. He doesn’t look angry or apathetic, just like a guy in the middle of a room.
“How was your night?” I ask to break the silence.
“It was good. I kept having to refigure tabs, and Navie had to balance the drawer at the end of the night, but it was a clean, bullshit-free night for the most part.”
“For the most part?”
“Yeah.” He rocks back on his heels. “I had a girl run me up a little. She had a mishap in the bar. Went to check on her and she ended up sticking her tongue down my throat.” He can’t contain his grin.
I can’t contain mine as I buckle with relief. “Not exactly how I heard it went down, but whatever works for you.”
“Oh, it definitely worked for me.”
Staring at the wall above the bed, pointedly not looking at Machlan, I will my face to return to its normal shade of peach. I tell myself to stay calm and not put too much hope into this. He’s walked away enough times after giving me something to hold on to.
“About earlier …” Machlan says. His voice resonates deep in my core. I’m drawn to the timbre of his voice, to the way it wraps around me in the gentlest of ways.
“I’ve overanalyzed it enough for both of us.”
“I don’t want it to be that way, Had.” He sighs.
“I don’t either. And I’m trying really hard to go with the flow but …” I look at him over my shoulder as my voice falls away.
“But it’s me and you, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s me and you.”
He reaches for me. I hold my breath until the tip of his finger touches the bottom of my chin. He lifts it so I’m looking at him.
Each breath I take is much louder than it should be. My blood runs hot while my body shivers at the tiny bit of contact; the contrast enough to make it feel like I’m losing my mind. I close my eyes to regain my composure, but he nudges my chin again, and I open them.
“I thought you’d come down tonight,” he says, peering at me. “Why didn’t you?”
My insides trip over themselves as I scurry to make sense of the mayhem I’ve been dealing with all night. It’s hard to pinpoint why I stayed up here and didn’t go to Crave. I wanted to. I wanted to so badly. But something changed when he walked out.
As I laid in bed and looked at it from every angle, the only difference in this time and most is that I had some control. I chose to spend time with him, knowing damn good and well it wasn’t going to end with some fantastical proposal. I came to town and went straight to the bar. I got in his truck. I let him hold me on Bluebird, and I sat down there tonight and received his advances while giving some of my own.
I’m never surprised when he walks away. I always just go into it hoping he doesn’t push me away. Even though it stung tonight, I had the Band-Aid ready.
“You left,” I say. “I figured you knew where I was if you wanted to see me.”
His eyes burn hot as he continues to cup my face. He peers so deeply, I swear he’s searching my soul. I have nothing to hide. He won’t find anything buried in there he doesn’t already know if he’s honest with himself.
“I want you to promise me something,” he says, a grit to his tone that makes me shiver.
“What?”
“Don’t ever change who you are for anyone. Not for me. Not for some dickhead auditor. Not for anyone.” His hand falls away from my face.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I gulp.
“It means …” He twists his hat around. “You’ve always done exactly what you wanted. You have an uncanny ability to follow your gut, you know?”
I don’t answer. My stomach churns, unsure where this is going. Unsure I even want to know.
He fiddles with his hat. “Whether anyone likes it or not, me particularly, you do what you want. And that’s something I’ve always admired about you,” he says, talking in a rush. “When you’ve had enough, you leave. When you want more, you come back. And I just hope that’s something you never lose, you know?”
“Where is all this coming from?”
He licks his bottom lip. “The truth?”
“I don’t know. Would I rather you lie to me?”
He holds my gaze until we both laugh softly. He shakes his head as my stomach settles.
“I went back to the bar,” he says, “and was fairly sure you’d reappear. And then you didn’t—which is fine. But as the night wore on and the place emptied out and you didn’t show up, I hoped you stayed away because you were stubborn … and not because you were scared.”
My throat tightens as he looks at me with an uncertain glimmer in his eye. “It was probably a little of both.”
His face falls.
“The weird thing,” I say carefully, “is I’m never scared of the big things. Like when I told you I was pregnant.” Tears dot my eyes. “That’s huge, and I wasn’t scared to tell you that. It was the biggest thing I think I could ever say, and I knew you’d be there. I wasn’t scared to tell you I love you. I wasn’t even that scared to ask you to marry me.” I blink back the tears. “But to tell you I wanted you not to leave tonight? Terrified. Because that’s something you can brush off, and those are the things that really hurt at the end of the day.”
“Had …”
“No,” I say, looking up again. “I knew you had to go. But I won’t say I wondered if you would’ve left had the bar not been open.”
He slips his can of chew out of his pocket. He doesn’t open it. Doesn’t flip it between his fingers. Just slides it around his palm while he watches me.
I try to look away but feel him pulling my eyes back to his. “It occurred to me while I laid here and listened to the music blaring under me that we’ve always kind of pussyfooted around each other. We’ve never had a real adult relationship.”
His grin turns mischievous. “Oh, I think we adult amazingly well together.”
“Not that.” I swipe his shoulder as I walk by, needing the space. “What I mean is, we’ve always interacted with all this baggage.”
He glances at the messy bed and at my bag on the couch. “You ever wonder what would happen if we met each other now? Like you moved to town or came in Crave and we met for the first time?”
“All the time.”
“What do you think would happen?”
“Probably what happened up here a few hours ago,” I say.
The chew can slips back in his pocket. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t?”
He laughs to himself. “I’d want to. But I think I’d be a little intimidated by you.”
“Ha. I knew it.” I laugh. “I scare you, don’t I?”
The levity in his features melts a
way. Before I know it, the playfulness is gone.
I try to figure out how to rewind the last few seconds and bring back what we had before. It’s nearly a panic inside, a ‘no, no, no’ chant in my head not to let him start backpedaling. Bracing myself for the inevitable, for Machlan to leave, I take a deep breath.
“It’s been a long night,” he says. “I need to get home.”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
I grab the back of a chair as naturally as I can. There isn’t a breath deep enough to steady myself from that.
There’s no response from me. I wait for him to rethink his offer, for him to walk to the door on a phone call and leave me standing. But the longer I wait, the more certain he seems.
It’s a tedious ledge, and I feel myself falling over the side. This is what I want. But if I reach out and take it, attempt to walk the ledge that’s so slippery it shines, I’m risking everything. What if I can’t recoup? What if I’m not the adult I think I am? What if sleeping with Machlan and having a fun few days isn’t something from which I can recover?
When I fail to respond, he moseys toward the couch and lifts a shirt off the floor. “You have a lot of laundry here. And—”
“You know, this probably isn’t a good idea.” My eyes squeeze shut. “I’m good here.”
“I know you are. But … I’d like you to come home with me.”
My eyes open. He’s watching me with a wariness I know intimately. He wants this now. But what happens tomorrow? Letting it be was easier when it didn’t involve sleepovers. I’m already in deeper than I can afford to be.
“This can just be sex,” I say.
He tosses my shirt on my bag and walks toward me. “You and I both know it’s never just sex between us.”
“But it can be,” I offer, my hand trembling at my side.
He stops a couple of inches in front of me. I can feel his breath on my face, smell the hints of mint from the tobacco he must’ve chewed tonight.
The room is perfectly still. There’s not a sound to be heard. The only break in the silence is my ragged breaths and the energy pulsing off Machlan, something I’m sure I hear.
“I’m a little fucked up about this,” he says. “I don’t know the right answer.”
I lean away as he tries to touch me. “I don’t know the right answer either, but I do know I have to be careful with you.”
“Didn’t you come here to figure things out?” He drops his hand. “Because I feel like we’re doing that somehow.”
“Yeah, that’s why I came here. But honestly, I thought it was going to go a different way.”
“You wanted me to be a dick so you could feel good about leaving?”
“I didn’t want that,” I say, “but I expected to be able to justify moving on when I left. You’re making that super hard right now.”
He moves too quickly to stop him from touching my arm. Like a jolt of electricity, my body sings at the contact.
“I don’t want to make your life hard,” he says, his fingertips pressing into my arm. “But I don’t want you leaving and not wanting to talk to me again either.”
I focus on the softness of his words and not the way I begin to sway. “Mach …”
“Look, it’s late. You’re up. I’m up. Just come home with me.”
I want to. I might never have wanted something so bad in my entire life. And he’s asking—not assuming or manipulating and I’m not winding up there by chance.
“Machlan, I—”
He touches his finger to my lips. “Before you say no, hear me out.” He waits for me to nod before dropping his hand. “I don’t know what in the hell I’m doing, okay? I’m walking this line of trying to leave you alone so you can go on about your life, but it’s so fucking hard when all I want to do is be around you.”
I force a swallow, tears flirting with the corners of my eyes.
Seeing this side of him isn’t something I’ve seen before many times. I can count them on one hand. I know how hard it is for him to let himself be vulnerable, to put himself out there like this, and all I want to do is hug him.
This is the man I fell in love with. Not the guy I slept with first or the one who saved the day when I drank too much. This is the guy who clasped a necklace around my neck after a night at the Water Festival and told me I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen.
To think this man, the one who can be so considerate sometimes, can think he should let me go on about my life is ridiculous. But I don’t have the energy to point that out.
“It’s not as if you have anything else to do,” he points out. A hint of a grin is back.
“Are you sure?”
“You’re the one who said we need to just see where things settle between us. I’m just trying to do what you asked, and right now, this feels like where it should settle.”
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. Just stands in front of me waiting on me to break. And even though it might not be the best answer if I think it out completely, I don’t. I give in.
“But you’re sure?” I ask with a grin of my own.
He laughs, grabbing my bag. “No, I’ve stood here for the past ten minutes not sure. Yes, Hadley, I’m sure.”
“Fine.” I suck my cheeks in to keep them from breaking in half and head to the door. “If you’re sure.”
He swats my ass, making me yelp. “Keep it up.”
“That’s what she said.”
I don’t look back as he starts laughing. I make my way toward his truck with the lightest steps I’ve ever taken and the best music in my ears.
Twenty-Three
Hadley
The hardwoods creak as I make my way down the hall. The house is dark, pitch black in most areas. A night light glows from the living room, and I know without looking that it’s a little plug-in shaped like a tea rose. It’s been there since the first time I came to this house. It belonged to his mother.
I venture through the house in a pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt with a slogan from an athletics company on the front. My hair is wet from the quick shower I took while Machlan took a call from Walker.
The air is crisp as I mosey around, like a window is open somewhere. Scents of pine from the trees surrounding the house and a hint of cleaning product and tobacco flood my senses. It’s a weird combination, but one that’s definitely Machlan.
I’ve walked this hallway a hundred times before. I know each plank that will give a little when I step on it, and that the section by the front door will echo a little louder than the part in the back. The closet to my left is filled with coats and shoes, and the door to my right used to be Machlan’s dad’s home office.
Out of all the houses I’ve ever stayed in, this one feels the most like home. My mother and I had to move too often to afford rent in California. Living with Dad and Cross, and then just Cross when Dad took off for Reno and never came back, wasn’t very heartwarming. This place, though, always felt cozy and smelled vaguely of fresh flowers and home cooked food. It still does.
My movements slow as I near the kitchen. The light is bright ahead of me. Soft rustlings and the snap of a refrigerator door roll from the room. The soft material of the burgundy rug lining the last few feet to the kitchen caress the soles of my feet.
Hand over my mouth, I stifle a yawn as I reach the threshold.
Then I stop in my tracks.
Machlan is doing something at the counter with his back—his bare back—to me. He’s naked except for a pair of gray sweatpants hanging from his narrow hips. Each movement causes the muscles in his back to ripple. The pushing and pulling of his perfectly sized muscles make me gulp.
Knowing he was in the shower earlier and not peeking was super hard. The door was cracked, so it wouldn’t have been hard. But going in there and not making things even more complicated would’ve been impossible, so I didn’t. I busied myself by texting Emily instead.
“You gonna stare all night or what?” he asks.
“Maybe I’m not here.”
His body vibrates with a chuckle. “I see you in the window, genius.”
“Oh.” I yawn again, forcing it a little this time, as if to say I’m tired and not completely turned on. He grins smugly, seeing through it, but I ignore his delicious smirk. “It’s after three.”
“Nice you can tell time.” He turns and hands me a plate. There’s a perfectly browned grilled cheese sandwich cut into four little squares. “Thought you might be hungry.”
“You come home from work and make grilled cheese sandwiches?” I ask, taking the plate.
He takes a square off my plate and pops the whole thing in his mouth. “Fuck, that’s hot!” His mouth pops open, and he waves his hand in front of it. A dollop of cheese is stuck to his bottom lip, and I want to wipe it off, but I don’t. If I touch him with his six-pack abs looking all glorious, it would be the end of me. I’d have an orgasm holding a grilled cheese.
“That’s why you shouldn’t steal.” I sit at the table and pick up a piece. I hold the sandwich so it looks like I’m giving it serious attention when, in reality, I can see across the golden crust and watch Machlan pour two glasses of water. “When did you learn how to cook?”
He pads across the floor and hands me a glass. Our fingers touch as I take it. I pretend not to notice.
“I hardly think grilled cheese is considered cooking.” He grabs another plate off the counter and then sits across from me. “But I can reheat food like it’s nobody’s business.”
I take a bite. The cheese oozes out the sides and melts in my mouth. It’s buttery and gooey, and the crunch on the outside is so satisfying. He grins as he takes a careful bite of his.
“This is good,” I say, licking my lips.
“You should see what I can do with Nana’s fried chicken.”
“Oh, really?” I eat another piece in two bites. “What do you do with that?”
“You take the chicken and put it in a brown paper bag. Turn on the oven and put the chicken in there. Grab a shower and when you’re out, the chicken is warm and crispy.”
Gibson Boys Box Set Page 85