by Paula Graves
Now orientation was going to be horrible. And it was all Mama’s fault for going away.
She pushed off her mama’s bed and crossed to the window, looking out across their lawn at the house across the street. A new family was moving in, her father had told her. The Stiles family. Daddy had been in the Marine Corps with Captain Stiles, and he said the man was a good enough sort for a gol dang officer.
He hadn’t actually said gol dang, but Mama had taught her she shouldn’t cuss or use the Lord’s name in vain, and even though she was really, really mad at Mama right now for going away just before sixth grade started, she still lived by Mama’s rules.
A boy came out of the house across the road. A tall, skinny boy with dark hair that flopped across his forehead and braces on his teeth that glittered in the sunlight as he said something to his father as he passed.
The old man answered in a voice loud enough for Tara to hear it all the way across the road, though she couldn’t make out the words. Whatever the man had said, it made the boy look down at his feet until the man had entered the front door with the boy he was carrying and closed the door behind him.
Then the boy’s head came up and for a moment, Tara was certain he was looking straight at her.
She felt an odd twist in the center of her chest and stepped back from the window, not sure what she had just felt.
* * *
TARA WOKE SUDDENLY to darkness and a bone-biting cold that made her huddle closer to the warm body pressed close to her own. Owen, she thought, because of course it would be Owen. It had always been Owen, ever since she’d first laid eyes on him the day of her mother’s funeral.
The unchanging constant in her life.
He made a grumbling noise in his sleep, and his arm snaked around her body, spooning her closer. A humming sensation vibrated through her to her core, spreading heat and longing in equal measures. Oh, she thought, how easy it would be to let go and just allow this tension between them to build and swell to fruition.
She had a feeling it would be amazing, because Owen himself was amazing, a man of both strength and gentleness. She’d seen his passion—in his work, in his hobbies, and yes, even his passion for her, which flickered now and then like blue fire behind his eyes when he couldn’t control it.
Keeping things platonic between them was difficult but necessary. Because Tara had lost enough in her life. She wasn’t a coward, and she knew how to take calculated risks in order to achieve rewards.
But she could not lose Owen. She couldn’t. Things between them had to remain constant or she didn’t know what she would do.
Even when her body yearned for him, the way it was doing now. When it softened helplessly in response to the hardness of his erection pressing against the small of her back.
His hand moved slowly up her body, tracing the contours of her rib cage before settling against the swell of her breast. One fingertip found the tightening peak of her nipple through her T-shirt and flicked it lightly, making her moan in response.
Was he awake? His breathing sounded even, if quickened. Maybe he was seducing her in his sleep, giving sway to the urges they both kept so tightly reined in during their waking hours.
If he was asleep, it didn’t really count, did it?
His fingers curled over the top of her breast, cupping her with gentle firmness. He caressed her slowly, robbing her of breath, before he slid his hand down her stomach. His fingers dipped beneath the waistband of her jeans and played across the point of her hip bones before moving farther down.
Closer. Closer.
He jerked his hand away suddenly, a gasp of air escaping his lips and stirring her hair. He rolled away from her, robbing her of his heat.
His breath was ragged now, ragged and uneven, a sure sign that he was no longer asleep.
“Tara?” he whispered.
She stayed still, her body still thrumming with hot need that would never be satisfied. That, she understood with aching sadness, was the cost of keeping her relationship with Owen the same as it had ever been.
But she could spare him the embarrassment of knowing she’d been awake for his dream seduction. Spare him knowing how very much she’d wanted him to keep touching her, to keep driving her closer and closer to the brink of ecstasy.
Behind her, Owen blew out a soft breath and sat up, being careful not to jostle her as he rose to his feet and headed outside the tent.
As soon as she was certain he was out of earshot, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the top of the tent, her heart still pounding wildly in her ears. She felt flushed and unsatisfied, and the urge to finish what Owen had started burned through her.
But she’d earned this frustration. She was the one who’d decided that it was too risky to test the sexual waters between them.
She would just have to live with the consequences.
Chapter Twelve
That had been close. Too close.
Owen let the water in the sink grow icy cold and splashed it on his face and neck, despite the chill bumps already scattered across his flesh from the walk through the woods this cold March morning. Another early riser, an older man brushing his teeth at the next sink over in the camp’s communal men’s room, glanced at Owen with curiosity but kept his comments to himself.
Owen could remember only a few tantalizing fragments from his dream, but the very real memory of Tara’s hot flesh beneath his exploring fingers remained vibrant in his mind.
Thank God she’d still been asleep. Thank God he’d awakened before he’d allowed himself any further liberties with her.
He soaped up his hands and rinsed them, as if he could somehow wash away the sensation of her skin on his fingertips, but the feeling remained, on his skin and in his head.
He should feel ashamed. Dirty, even. But all he felt was a ravenous need to finish what he’d started in his dream.
He tried to gather his wits, get himself under control before he returned to the tent. But the man staring back at him in the mirror looked fevered and hungry, his blue eyes dark with the memory of touching Tara the way he’d longed to touch her forever.
He closed his eyes and bent his head, feeling tired. Tired of pretending he didn’t feel what he most certainly did. Weary of denying himself the very natural desire he felt for Tara.
If he were going to be around her, he’d have to find a way to rein in that desire for good. He just didn’t know if that was possible, which left one other option.
He could leave her life for good. Put her behind him, cut himself off from the constant temptation she posed and try to live without her.
As terrible as the idea of excising Tara from his life seemed to him right now, the thought of a lifetime of pretending he didn’t want her as much as he loved her was even worse. It was a lie to behave as if he was okay with being nothing more than her friend.
He wasn’t okay with it. He couldn’t keep doing it.
The bearded man at the next sink had apparently watched the spectacle long enough. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Owen lifted his chin with determination. “I will be,” he said.
He felt the other man’s gaze follow him out of the bathroom. Outside, frigid air blasted him, reigniting a flood of goose bumps down his arms and back. Only belatedly did he realize that he shouldn’t have drawn attention to himself the way he had. Even now his face might be plastered across TV screens throughout Kentucky and nearby states. How long before someone realized the scruffy-faced, bleary-eyed man in the hipster beanie they’d seen in the campground bathroom was the fugitive from Bagley County?
He didn’t know whether to hope Tara was still asleep or awake when he got back to the tent, but when he ducked back into the tent to find her up and snugly dressed in a down jacket she’d bought back in Abingdon, he found he was relieved. The extra clot
hing she wore seemed like armor donned specifically to cool his ardor, which made him wonder if she’d been awake for at least part of his unconscious seduction.
But the smile she flashed his way was pleasant and unclouded by any sort of doubt, so he decided she couldn’t know what he’d almost done.
“I’m starving,” she announced. “I was thinking, we should probably use up the eggs and bacon in the cooler, don’t you think? Before the ice melts and they start to spoil? And I bought a little bottle of syrup back in Abingdon in case I got the chance to make my famous French toast. What do you think? French toast and fried bacon?”
He forced a smile. “Who could say no to French toast and bacon?”
“I’ll go get the stuff from the cooler. Can you get the camp stove started?” She passed him in the opening of the tent, her arm brushing his. Even with the added layers of clothing they both wore, Owen could swear he felt the same tingle in the skin on his arm he’d felt in his fingertips when he woke that morning with his hand under her shirt.
He lowered his head until his chin hit his chest. How was he going to keep up appearances with her? Already, he was one raw nerve, acutely aware of her constant nearness.
It had to be because they were forced together by these circumstances, stuck in a situation where neither of them could go far from the other for any length of time. Back home, he could escape to his own apartment, indulge his fantasies about her and, on occasion, indulge his body’s demands as well, without Tara having to know about any of those feelings or urges.
But there was nowhere to escape to now, no way to channel his desires without Tara knowing what was going on. He was stuck between the blissful heaven of being close to her and the burning hell of not being able to do a damn thing about it.
He forced himself out of the tent and went about the business of firing up the camp stove, glad for the distraction. But it lasted only as long as it took Tara to return from where they’d parked the SUV with the styrene cooler they’d picked up during their shopping trip. He felt her before he heard her footsteps crunching through the undergrowth. Her presence skittered up his spine like the phantom touch of fingers.
“I thought I’d bring the cooler to us so we didn’t have to keep going back and forth to the SUV,” she said as she set it beside him. “The ice has barely melted at all. I guess the cold snap helped slow the melting. I think we’re good with the perishables for another day or so.”
“Good,” he said, mostly because he could think of no more cogent response. He backed away and let her take over at the camp stove, turning his back to the sight of her while pretending to take in the rain-washed beauty of the sunrise just visible through the trees to the east of them.
“I wish we’d thought to buy a radio,” Tara said over the thumping of her spoon whipping the eggs into a batter. “I’d like to know what the news folks are saying about us after this weekend.”
“Probably better not to know,” Owen murmured. “I’m sure Quinn will keep us up with the latest news.”
“I don’t know,” Tara muttered. “He’s not exactly been a font of information to this point.”
“He called when he said he would last night.”
“And told us blasting nada.”
He couldn’t stop a smile. Tara had a thing about making up her own versions of profanities in order to avoid cursing. She’d told him once that her mother loathed swearing, even though she indulged her leatherneck husband’s proclivity toward salty language. Tara didn’t talk much about her mother at all, but he’d gotten the feeling that her attempts to temper her own language were a result of her mother’s influence.
“Maybe there’s nothing to tell yet,” he said.
“It has to have hit the news by now, at least in Kentucky. Robert’s family is very influential in Lexington.”
“I’m sure it’s been on the news.”
“Which means whatever photos of us they could find are being plastered all over local Kentucky news stations. And maybe Virginia ones as well, if they’ve figured out we were headed for here.”
She was right. But what else could they do at this point? They’d already changed their appearances. His beard was growing in thick enough to change the way he looked, and the beanie and glasses made him even harder to recognize. Tara was almost unrecognizable with her new spiky haircut and ever-changing streaks of spray-on color in her hair.
He knew a few ways to go completely off the grid. Change their names, assume new identities with documents that would pass all but the most in-depth scrutiny. But that would be the act of someone who’d lost all hope of justice prevailing.
Had they really reached that point?
“Maybe we should have turned ourselves in to that Virginia state policeman I almost ran into back at the rest area,” he said.
“They’d just send us back to the Bagley County Sheriff’s Department and we’d be right back where we started.” Tara rubbed her eyes, smearing the remains of her heavy mascara and eyeliner.
Without thought, he reached across the narrow space between them and ran his thumb under her right eye to wipe away the worst of the smears.
Instantly, heat flared between them, searing in its intensity.
She trembled beneath his touch, her eyes darkening with unmistakable signs of desire. He’d seen such a reaction in her before but never this strong, this undeniable.
And in that instant, he knew. “You were awake.”
She licked her lips. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you wake me up?”
She looked away, closing her eyes. “Because I didn’t want you to stop.”
He touched her again, tipping her chin up to make her look at him. Her eyes fluttered open and again he was struck by the potency of desire he read in her gaze. “Tara...”
She drew away from him, shaking her head. “We can’t, Owen. You know why we can’t.”
“Because you’re afraid that it’ll all go wrong and you’ll lose me.”
“I can’t deal with losing you, Owen.”
“Do you know what I was thinking about this morning? When I went to the restroom?”
She stared back at him mutely, the desire in her eyes replaced by apprehension.
“I was thinking that if things between us didn’t change, I was going to leave Kentucky. Go to Texas or California or, hell, I don’t know, maybe Idaho. Anywhere you weren’t, so I could get you out of my system once and for all. Because I don’t think I can live in this endless limbo, Tara. Maybe you’re okay with our relationship staying as innocent and platonic as it was when we met in sixth grade. But I’m not.”
She stared at him in horror. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do, Tara. I’m sorry. I know you want to keep things the way they are, but people change. Circumstances change. I love you. Desperately. In every way a person can love another person.”
“I love you, too.”
“Then you have to let me go.”
She shook her head violently. “No.” She rose to her knees, reaching across the space between them to cup his face between her palms. “I don’t want to let you go. I can’t. You’re all I have anymore.”
He saw her expression shift, as if she finally realized what she was asking of him and why. Her eyes narrowed with dismay, and she looked so stricken that he wanted nothing more than to put his arms around her and promise her everything would be okay.
But he couldn’t do that anymore. He’d finally reached his breaking point.
He put his hands on hers, gently removing them from his face. “I can’t be your safety net, Tara. I don’t want to do it anymore. If you can’t take a chance on us, then that’s fine. I’ll accept it and go so we can both finally move on.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away, anger beginn
ing to drive away the hurt he’d seen in her expression before. “You promised you’d never let me down.”
“I know.” He hadn’t let go of her hands, he realized, as if holding them was as natural as breathing. He gave them a light squeeze before letting go. “I just don’t believe the status quo is good for either of us anymore.”
Anger blazed in her eyes now, giving off green sparks. “Is this an ultimatum? Sleep with me or I won’t be your friend anymore?”
“That is totally unfair, Tara! You know that’s not what I’m talking about here.” He turned away from her, anger beginning to overtake his own pain.
“That’s the only thing we don’t have between us, don’t you see?” She caught his arm, tugging him back around to look at her. “We have everything else. Friendship. Understanding. Loyalty.”
“We don’t have marriage together. Children together. We won’t make a family together or grow old together. If you think you can find a man or I can find a woman who’ll put up with what we do have together, you’re wrong.”
“Robert was going to.”
“Tara, Robert was already trying to push me out of your lives.”
She stared at him, shocked. “No, he wasn’t.”
“Not where you could see it, no.”
She sat back on her heels. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to come between you that way.”
“If I’d known what he was doing, there wouldn’t have been an us to come between,” she said fervently. “Robert knew what you are to me. I made it clear from the beginning. One of the reasons I thought we could work together was that he took your presence in my life so well.”
“Please, don’t do this.” Owen sighed, hating himself for even bringing up Robert’s issues with him. “I don’t want you to remember him badly.”