I didn’t think about his past as he laid himself over me. How could I think now? I only stretched beneath him, my arms over my head. He smiled at that, then bent to kiss the tip of one of my breasts.
I arched up to his mouth just as he pulled away, and he laughed low in his throat. Then he gave me another bad-boy look as he kissed my other nipple.
Sparked by his seduction, my body reacted, my hips churning upward so that I brushed against his hard-on. The tip of it slid against my panties, against me, and he sucked in air as I lay back down.
“Shit, you really know how to own me.”
Did I? But he had a way of making me feel like anything I did couldn’t be wrong—not with him. He didn’t judge or shame me in any way. He was a part of me that’d seemed to be missing until I’d truly found him today.
I wanted him close again, and I surged up against him once more. But he was ready this time, sliding one hand underneath me and palming my butt, bringing me up to his . . . cock—yeah, that’s what it was, so why not think it?
He prodded me, and I made a soft sound of need. “Micah . . .”
He had to be as fevered as I was, because he cursed, then let me go, starting to rip open the condom packaging.
“Hurry,” I whispered. Prickles of fine sweat danced over my skin, heightening my sense of bareness, making me feel sexier than I’d ever felt. Making me feel more wanted as he gave me another sizzling, long look that told me the wait would be worth it.
Then, just as I thought I’d poof away from the heat, he gave me a rascal’s grin. It was that particular Micah look that always tweaked my heart a little, even when I’d tried to fight it off.
But now I was dying for him.
He slid the rubber on, pausing and then looking me over from head to toe. Slowly, he hooked his thumbs into the sides of my panties, running them over my hipbones and making me shift before he brought the material down.
“Easy now,” he whispered as he revealed more of me second by second, lowering my panties past my thighs, my calves, my feet, then tossing them away.
With another voracious gaze, he parted my legs, and I bit my lip, not knowing how much longer I could bear this.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” he said, running his hands up my legs. “In my bed. With me.”
Before I could answer, he braced his hands on either side of me, his biceps straining. Then, he gently pressed his tip against my clit, making me grasp his arms and dig my nails into his skin. And when he slipped himself down between my folds, stopping just short of entering me, then back up again until he exerted more pressure against my tightest spot, I nearly cried out.
“How does that feel?” he asked. “You need more?”
“No, just . . . come on.” I planted my nails into him a little harder as he rocked toward me, pressing my clit harder. “Stop teasing . . .”
“Anything you say.” He backed away, his gaze changing so subtly that I barely recognized it. It was like his eyes were kaleidoscopes clicking into a different shade, a different emotion.
He lowered himself down to me, his fingers threading into my hair, his own hair brushing my face. His lips were inches from mine.
When he lifted one of his hands to touch my cheek, I saw that he was shaking. Not a lot, but enough so that my eyes widened.
He saw the change in my expression, but all he did was press a kiss to my lips. Everything true about him was in that kiss, and I fell through it, spiraling through a warm, color-flecked hole that led right into him.
I knew at that moment that there was no other woman he wanted to be with—there was just me, Shelby.
And he was all I wanted, too.
He ended the kiss but kept stroking my cheek. “I don’t ever want you to leave,” he whispered, his hair covering part of his face. “Not ever.”
He didn’t?
“I—”
But I swallowed the rest of whatever I was going to say when he entered me with a smooth thrust that stole every word, every thought from my mind. All I could see were those gray-green eyes and a new world in them. All I could feel was a rising ecstasy, gathering and going from hot to hotter.
And every time he slid in and out of me, I lost more and more of my senses. I became mist, breaking apart, floating, formless and free. I stretched in the air, then came back down as I moved with Micah. But every time I went up, I stayed there a little longer while wisps of smoke wound through the mist in me, heavier, pushing at me from the inside out . . . pushing, rising, falling . . .
Soon everything was getting tied up together in me, mist, smoke, and steam tangling into a shape that filled me up as we rocked together and made me cry sweet little sounds that I tried to hold back as that new shape pushed at me, pushed at me—
When I came, I came hard, my face buried against his neck, but he wasn’t done yet, and I churned with him, pulling at his hair, urging him on and on until he climaxed, too.
I hadn’t expected sex to be like this. Then again, I was getting used to my expectations being wrong.
Or very right.
Afterward, all I did was I lay against him, hearing his breath smoothing out as I looked up at him, his eyes closed, his face still bruised but more peaceful than I’d ever seen it before.
That’s when I realized that I truly didn’t want me to go anywhere at the end of the summer, either.
***
It was still the middle of the night when Micah finally walked me to the car shed, where the moon breathed down over the landscape—the same one where my biggest nightmare had happened today.
Now, everything was silver and perfect. So was the kiss Micah gave me as we stood by my pickup, his arms draped around me as I leaned into his chest.
I reveled in him, swoony and smitten. I didn’t want the kiss to ever stop, even when he pulled away and looked down at me. We didn’t say anything, though. He didn’t need to, because it was all in his gaze: how he felt about me and how he didn’t want me to go anywhere, even if it was only back to my room until he could see me tomorrow.
And I wanted to see him again so badly. But I had the rest of the summer with him. The rest of . . .
He kissed me again, cutting off all thought once more, then let me go.
As I drove away, I watched him in the rearview mirror, just as I’d done the first day I’d met him. But instead of wanting to get the hell away from him, all I wanted to do was stay.
***
The first thing I did after I woke up the next morning was peer at myself in my bathroom mirror, like a morning-after virgin.
Of course, I wasn’t anything close to that anymore. But it stunned me how different I looked now than when I’d seen myself after Rex had popped my cherry. Back then, I’d been Little Miss Unsure in the mirror, a girl who’d been wondering if she’d done the right thing by sleeping with the boyfriend who’d been putting pressure on her. Now, though . . .
I couldn’t stop smiling. Me and Micah. Micah and me.
But even through the happiness, there was a trace of something else in my smile—Marvin Wyatt and his story about my mom and . . . Well, my dad.
What the hell was I going to say to her when I went in the house this morning? She hadn’t gotten home yet when I’d arrived last night, but I’d spent hours telling myself everything would be okay with her and this new knowledge about my father, just like Micah had said.
She respected you too much to lie, and maybe she’d hope for the same respect from you as far as her decision goes . . . I don’t know why your mom did what she did. But she kept you, loved you . . . loves you today more than anything.
His words gave me a shot of confidence, and I put on my flip-flops to go with my nightie. Mom wasn’t anyone to hide from, and the last thing I was going to do was stay in here and hide away from her.
I was all set to go, but just as I was
walking toward the sliding glass door my ancient computer on my desk caught my eye. Lana Peyton’s home.
Was I going to keep hiding from her, too?
Yesterday had changed me in a lot of ways, and I didn’t even think twice as I booted the computer up and finally did what I should’ve done a long time ago.
With a few keystrokes, Lana Peyton was gone. Afterward, I stood with my hands on my hips. Well, erasing an account on ParlorFly hadn’t been so hard. And you know what? I felt like I’d just learned how to fly, like you do in dreams sometimes.
No more Lana. No more punishing myself with the reminder of her.
Done.
But when I heard someone open the sliding glass door that led to the main house, I came back down to earth once again. Was I ready and willing to face Mom now? Yes. Hell, yes. I only hoped that she wouldn’t see any difference in how I looked at her.
I took a huge breath then let it go, walking out of the pool house and into the main one, finding Frannie in the kitchen preparing bran muffins for breakfast. That meant my mom was still in her room.
With my pulse flailing, I climbed the stairs, went to her door, and rested my ear against it to hear if she was already up.
I heard some scuffling around inside and I quietly knocked, my heart hammering even louder now.
“Entre!” called Mom.
She sounded like the same sweet mom I’d always had. And she was, dammit. Why should the way she’d had sex with someone change anything about her for me? I’d been shot down in this town for how I’d had cybersex with Rex, so shouldn’t I be the most understanding person around?
When I found her in her bathroom, brushing her short blond hair and bopping around to a ’90s song coming from an old radio, all my worries slid out of me like they were melted candles that I’d been burning since I’d heard her story.
My chest cupped into itself. She was my same mom.
Why did I need to keep telling myself that?
Probably because I could picture her as a teenager, getting ready with her friends for a big night out—one that she was never going to tell her parents about. She’d probably made some excuse to them about hanging out with her usual good friends, cruising by the bowling alley like they always did on the weekends. She’d probably hopped in the car with her new, wild, country club staff buddies instead, thinking she would have more fun than ever that night, that she was fifteen now and she could handle anything at the out-of-town party they were taking her to. Maybe she’d even lied about her age to them. Maybe she’d already caught a glance of one of the older boys who’d be there, and her new friends were going to introduce her. Or maybe she’d seen Dirty Dancing and she was looking for her own rough, lower-class Patrick Swayze . . . or Swayzes.
Maybe she’d thought she was going to fall in love that night until she’d had one too many wine coolers.
Sadness choked my throat now, but I cleared it away. “Morning, Mom.”
“Morning to you, too.” She turned down the radio. “What can possibly warrant a pre-breakfast visit from my favorite daughter?”
Her favorite. She kept you, loved you . . . loves you today more than anything . . .
I gulped, thinking of an excuse for me to be here. It came easily. “Don’t kill me, but I didn’t get those invoices done last night. Is it okay if I do them this afternoon?”
“That’d be great. So you were off partying again, huh?”
“I was socializing, yeah.” If you could put it that way.
She gave her hair one last fluff, and her lightness almost slayed me. What if she knew that I knew? What would that do to her?
“Good for you, Shelby. All work and no play . . . Well, you know my philosophy on that.”
Oh, God, I sure did. Now more than ever.
She smiled at me. “Since you’ve been helping Mr. Carmichael at the Ritz, that means you’re actually doing two jobs.”
“Not really. The work at the theater is light. I’m only helping him with some marketing ideas.”
“You’re such a sweet thing.” She winked at me and dug into a makeup tray in an open drawer, coming up with a tube of lipstick. “Speaking of the Ritz, thanks again for letting me have a day off so I could catch a movie. Mr. Carmichael couldn’t say enough about you, so that made the trip extra pleasant.” She uncapped the lipstick, then ran a pearled pink shade over her lips. After she used a tissue to blot, she said, “So how’s life otherwise?”
I wasn’t sure how long I could stand here, bursting with what I knew. But she was Mom. She’d sacrificed so much for me. Couldn’t I deal?
“Life’s good,” I said, smiling, wishing I didn’t have to remind myself that it was what I did around her and it’d always come naturally before.
She latched her gaze onto me, and for a second, I thought she knew. But how?
Then her eyes darkened, and I crossed my arms over my chest. Sadness stuck in my throat again. I didn’t want to go here with her. I wanted the mom I’d always had—the single woman who’d defied everyone to raise me, no matter what they said about it. I wanted the world we used to live in together, just the two of us against so many others.
“Have you been seeing him, Shel?” she asked.
At first, she threw me off with the question. She wasn’t talking about her pregnancy. What was she talking about?
She threw the lipstick tissue away and shut the drawer. “It’s only that you seem . . . Well, like you’re not telling me something, and Micah Wyatt’s the only something I can think of that you wouldn’t be talking about with me.”
Everything coalesced in my brain then: Mom, and how she didn’t like Micah. Marvin Wyatt and his eyewitness account to that night . . .
Was this why she disapproved of Micah? Because she’d known that his dad was there on the night she’d gotten pregnant? Was she afraid that Marvin would tell Micah and Micah would tell me?
Just seeing the slight fear in her eyes was enough to confirm what I believed in my heart—that revealing I knew her secret would change everything, would make her think that I wouldn’t see her as the woman I’d always loved and respected.
One day, maybe she’d tell me the truth herself, but I couldn’t force her hand now. When she was ready—if she ever was—I’d be there to listen and support her. But it really wasn’t up to me.
I went to her, throwing my arms around her. My mom, my defender, the most admirable woman I could’ve ever hoped to have in my life.
“I love you,” I said as she hugged me back, obviously bewildered by my behavior.
But I wasn’t so confused, because I’d just realized something else—if I wasn’t hiding Lana Peyton anymore, and if I’d faced Mom this morning, I needed to get someone else in my life out of hiding. Micah.
And the coming out had to start here.
I drew back from her, still holding her hands. She was frowning, like she knew she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear.
So I started off easy. “I have been . . . hanging out with Micah.”
“You’ve . . . ? Oh, Shelby.”
“He’s not a bad guy. I think if you talk to him next time he’s in the Angel’s Seat, you’ll find that out.”
She was already shaking her head.
“Mom, I’m not going to do anything I’ll regret. Trust me on this. Please?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned doing something with a guy who I’d regret, because Mom turned a clouded gaze on me, and I knew she was thinking about what she’d done at that party, thinking about how Marvin Wyatt was there.
I hugged her again, much harder this time, because I couldn’t see her like this. I couldn’t put her through watching me make so-called mistakes with boys I shouldn’t be around. She needed to trust me.
“He’s not the guy you think he is,” I repeated.
This time, she clung to me like
I was going to float away. She hugged me and hugged me, and I felt like the luckiest daughter in the world to have someone who cared so damned much.
“Shelby,” she said in my ear, “you’re my little girl. You always have been, and I would move mountains to see that you never get hurt.”
“I know.” Words got hooked on their way out of my throat. “I’d do the same for you.”
Hadn’t I proven that this morning by not mentioning the secret? And now, more than ever, I was certain I’d made the right choice.
“I just don’t want you to make a rash decision that might affect the rest of your life,” she said. “You’re a woman now, and I can’t stop you if you set your mind to something, but sweetie, be careful. Just watch every step you take.”
“I will,” I said into her hair. “But I survived what happened with Rex, Mom. I’m a survivor, just like you. And I’ll always be your girl who loves you more than anything, no matter what.”
She held me closer at that, and I clung to her as tight as I could.
For as long as I could.
***
I didn’t dare tell Evie about that story.
Even when I called her a few hours later, after I’d used the elliptical, eaten, and showered, I knew that this was between me and Mom and, of course, Micah. But I made up for it with Evie by presenting the good news of last night.
“Oh my God!” Evie yelled into the phone. “You didn’t with him!”
“Yes, I did.”
“And?” Evie didn’t wait for details. “I’m sitting here fanning myself like Scarlett O’Freakin’Hara. Was it good? Of course it was. Do you wish you could take it back? Or do you—?”
“It was really good,” I’d said on a sigh, smiling and missing Micah so deep that the pit of my stomach felt empty whenever I thought of him. And as I filled Evie in on almost all of the rest—minus anything about my mom—she sighed, too. There were also a lot of “oh my Gods,” to go along with the romantic drama, but when I told her about the moment when I’d seen Micah’s hand shaking, she went quiet.
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