Say You're Mine: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (Southport Love Stories Book 4)

by Sarah J. Brooks

  My stomach flipped over instantly.

  “Hey,” I said softly, smiling at the sight of Skylar. I hadn’t seen her since taking the stained glass window to her house.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “I always sit here.”

  I looked around. “I think there’s room for two if you’re okay with sharing.”

  She hesitated and I expected her to turn and leave. She had made it clear that she didn’t want to spend time with me ever again. When I looked at her, it was hard to forget that only months ago I had been kissing that gorgeous, full mouth of hers. I had been touching her smooth skin.

  It felt like absolute torture knowing I’d never see her naked again.

  “Sure, why not? This day has already gone to complete shit, let's put the cherry on the cake.” She sat down heavily beside me, her arm bumping into mine. She definitely knew how to make a guy feel good about himself. She looked down at my sketch pad. “Are you drawing?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “No, I’m baking a cake,” I deadpanned.

  “That’s a pretty weird looking cake,” she shot back at me. She let out a long, pent-up sigh and leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes.

  “You look like someone just ran over your cat. Or you’ve been forced on a horrible blind date. So, which is it? I hope not the cat,” I asked.

  She signed again, rolling her head in my direction, looking at me. Her eyes had this penetrating quality that was disarming. As if she could see all of you, even the things you tried really hard to keep hidden. “I just came from dinner with my parents,” she said by way of explanation.

  “And that’s a bad thing, I take it,” I deduced.

  “The worst.” She made a face. “My parents are...how to put this nicely...horrible, fucking people.”

  I let out a shocked laugh. “Wow, Murphy, tell it like it is.”

  “They’re the kind of people that make you feel like crap. They’re always bitching and complaining. At each other, at me…” Her eyes narrowed. “You know what, never mind.”

  “You can talk to me, you know. I like learning stuff about you,” I told her, hoping she’d keep talking. This was the longest, most civil conversation we had had in months. I missed talking to her. I missed her.

  I hadn’t known her for very long, but in such a short time she had become strangely integral to my life. It was a strange sensation—to feel a connection that seemed entirely implausible.

  Skylar shook her head. “We are not doing this.” She started to stand up, but I quickly reached out and grabbed her wrist, stopping her. I held her gently, just enough of a plea for her stay

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  She looked at me incredulously. “Men really are oblivious sometimes.”

  “I hate this tension between us. Please, stay.” My words sounded strangled. I wasn’t used to showing emotion to those who are outside of my immediate family. My adult life had been spent playing a part. Putting on an act. Sometimes it was hard to remember who the real Rob Jenkins was. But I was starting to think I wanted Skylar Murphy to want to see me—all of me. God, it was terrifying.

  “The part where I spill my guts and you don’t say anything. I’m not interested in putting my insides on a show for you to have a look at and then offer nothing in return. I don’t do one-way relationships, Rob. Not anymore.” Her shoulders were rigid, her mouth was tight, she was upset and hurt, and I had made her feel that way.

  What do I do?

  I handed her my sketchpad.

  She frowned but started flipping through the pages. She stopped at a drawing I had done several months ago of flowers that had bloomed in my yard. It was simple, nothing special, but she seemed drawn to it. “You’re really talented,” she said.

  “Thanks. I’ve been drawing most of my life. Sketches mostly. Sometimes I use ink. I’m not into paints, I prefer the black and white look,” I explained.

  “I had no idea.” She continued to look through the book, stopping now and then on a drawing that caught her eye. She held up one. “I like this.”

  I had drawn a quick sketch of a pair of clasped hands starting to show signs of age. A few wrinkles there, an age spot there. “Those are my mother’s hands. She had fallen asleep on the couch. She had been up half the night with my brother Sam. He had been sick with a bad case of food poisoning. He doesn’t handle illness well, so she had to take care of him.” It felt strange telling her these things, but it felt good too.

  She watched me while I spoke, her expression hard to read. “Is your brother younger?”

  “Sam’s actually older than me.” When she seemed confused, I continued, “He has Down’s Syndrome. He lives in a residential facility most of the time. It allows him some degree of independence. It’s really good for him. He’s learned life skills and he’s surrounded by great people. It’s hard for my mom though. She worries about him and will always worry about him. I guess it’s a mom thing.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My mother is nothing like that,” Skylar remarked a little sadly.

  “I’m sorry you don’t have a mom like that. Everyone should have someone that loves them. You deserve that,” I told her.

  She gave me a quick smile and shrugged. “It is what it is. But tell me more about your brother and your mom. I like hearing about them.”

  I shared stories with her of growing up with my brother. I told her about the first time my parents took us to an amusement park and how Sam threw up on the roller coaster. I told her about how the neighbor kids would make fun of my brother and how I beat the crap out of the older one to shut them all up.

  I told her about my dad dying and the giant hole it left in the heart of my family.

  She put her arm around me, laying her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dad. He sounds like he was a wonderful person.”

  “Thank you, Sky. He really was.” We stayed like that for a little while.

  “Thank you for telling me about them. It’s nice to get to know you better,” she murmured. The sun was setting, and the soccer game had ended a while ago. Most of the kids had gone home. We were pretty much alone, still beneath the oak tree.

  “I’m sorry if I seemed evasive before. It’s hard for me to talk about things with people. I’m so used to compartmentalizing my life, that it’s difficult to try and merge it. There’s this life I have here in Southport, then there’s my mom and brother back home. They don’t overlap. I had to keep it that way.” I opened my mouth to tell her the rest. To tell her about Tiffany, about what I still did to earn extra money. I wanted to defend my choice, to explain that it made me feel good to be able to take care of my family. That now that I had been doing it for so long, it was like an addiction I couldn’t let go of.

  Maybe she’d understand.

  And maybe she wouldn’t.

  It was the fear of the latter that had me closing my mouth.

  I took her hand, lacing our fingers together. “I’d really like to go back to spending time together. But maybe we do it differently this time,” I began to say.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I turned to look at her, our noses almost touching. I could smell the mint on her breath. I reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. “I’d like to date you properly. I want to take you out to dinner. I want to see movies together. I want you to get to know me.” She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edge. “How does that sound to you?”

  She held my face in her hands. “That sounds pretty great to me.”

  Then I kissed her. Kissed her the way I’d been fantasizing about for the past few months. Kissed her the way I always wanted to kiss her.

  Like she was everything.

  Her lips tasted salty as she parted her mouth, allowing me access. My tongue swept inside as I pulled her closer. She wrapped her arms around me, her fingers going into my hair. My hands pressed into her back, wishing I could meld with her completely. W
e devoured each other, unable to stop.

  I wanted her. More than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I had experienced lust and passion before, but it all paled in comparison to the way I felt by simply kissing Skylar. Kissing her, I forgot about Tiffany and secrets, and my life possibly being blown apart. Because at that moment, none of that mattered.

  A drop of water hit my cheek. Then another. Skylar and I broke apart and looked up at the sky. At some point during our make-out session, clouds had blown in and it looked like we were about to be caught in a downpour.

  “Mother nature is such a mood kill,” Skylar laughed, just as the sky opened up and it started to rain in sheets.

  “Shit, come on.” I grabbed her hand, and we made a run for my car, which was parked across the field. I fumbled around for my keys, finally getting the doors unlocked and we scrambled inside, both soaked to the bone.

  “Your teeth are chattering.” I reached out and rubbed Skylar’s frozen hands.

  “Heat would be nice,” she suggested, her lips turning blue.

  “Yeah, good idea.” I cranked the engine and blasted the heat. The windows started to fog up from the moisture in the car. After a few minutes, we started to warm up.

  The rain was still coming down thick and fast. “Where is your car parked?” I asked.

  “I walked here from my parents’ place. It’s about a ten-minute walk.” Skylar rang out her hair. She shrugged out of her coat, which was dark with water.

  “I can drive you over there,” I offered.

  “Or we can wait here for a little while. You know, until the rain dies off.” Skylar quirked an eyebrow, her lips turning upwards into a smirk.

  We reached for each other, making up for the lost time.

  And I was happy not to come up for air.

  Chapter Nine

  Skylar

  I’ll meet you there at five.

  I was grinning like an idiot and I didn’t care. I didn’t even bother to hide it. Kyle Webber, one of my oldest and dearest friends kicked me under the table.

  I hadn’t seen Kyle in several weeks, so I was happy when he messaged me on his day off. He invited me over as he and Whitney were home for once and they wanted to see me. I jumped at any chance to see their adorable daughter, Katie, so I headed straight over.

  “Wanna tell ol’ Web why you’re grinning like a loon?” he asked as he handed his two-year-old daughter, Katie, a muffin.

  “It’s nothing. Really—” I started to deny, but then stopped myself. Why would I hide this from the Web? I didn’t do secrets. I never have.

  “I’m meeting Rob later,” I finally told him.

  Kyle raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Robert Jenkins?” I nodded. “Wow, when did that start back up? I thought you had sworn him off. I seem to remember you saying you were done with him.”

  “Yeah, well things change. Don’t go preaching to me about people changing their minds. Need I remind you of what your love life looked like six months ago?” I reminded him with enough of a barb to get him to back off.

  “You’re so defensive,” Kyle complained.

  “And you’re so nosy.” I stuck out my tongue and Katie laughed.

  “Don’t teach my daughter bad habits, Murphy,” Kyle warned good-naturedly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied, making a silly face at Katie, who erupted in a fit of giggles.

  It had been a little over three weeks since I met Rob in the park. After making out with him in his car for over an hour, he had driven me back to my parents’ house. I had felt a little unsure of what to do, or how to proceed.

  Luckily, Rob took the reins. He called me later that night. “Just to make sure you got home okay,” he had said. We then talked until the early hours of the morning. We talked about anything and everything. And the deep stuff too. He talked about how worried he was about his brother. How he felt incredibly protective of his family and was terrified that one day he wouldn’t be able to take care of them.

  We talked about happy stuff too. We traded stories about our friends and plans for the future. “I’d love to take you to this private beach I found when I was backpacking across Asia after law school. There wasn’t a soul around. It was beautiful,” he had said softly in my ear.

  “We should go there then,” I told him.

  “There are a thousand places I want to see together.” His words sent tingles throughout my body.

  “Do you ever feel like it’s all been time wasted?” he went on to ask.

  “What do you mean?” I was lying on my bed, with my feet up the wall like a teenager. I felt like a teenager. Full of butterflies and excitement.

  “That all this time I should have been with you.”

  God damn, the man was a poet. Mac never had a romantic thing to say and “pass me my beer” definitely didn’t count. But Rob was different. He felt things deeply even though you’d never know it on the outside. He and I were so similar in that way. It made us together sort of perfect.

  We had spent nearly every day with each other since then. We were moving at a pace a snail would think was slow. It was agonizing but sweet at the same time. Robert seemed concerned not to rush things. We made out like horny teenagers and there had been some above-the-clothes action, but that was about it.

  We spent most of our time talking, which for me, was better than anything. Where Rob had once been a closed book, he was now giving me whole chapters. He told me stories about his dad. What had been like for his family when he died. He told me what a dork he had been in high school and how he hadn’t even gone to his senior prom because he was too shy to ask anyone. He shared with me how hard it was for him to leave his mom and brother and go off to school, even though he was only thirty minutes away. But how he enjoyed the taste of freedom all the same.

  I knew some things about him already. I knew about his hike along the Appalachian Trail that was now in the record books. And I knew about how he dabbled in app-building when he was younger, then selling it to a bigger company for a ridiculously low price when he was nineteen because he was naive and didn’t know any better.

  He was giving me so much and I gobbled up every morsel.

  Kyle had no idea that Robert Jenkins was everything I had ever wanted and then some.

  “I’m only nosy because I care about you. After the whole Mac situation, I don’t want you jumping into something where you could get hurt,” Kyle went on.

  “My friends don’t have much faith in my judgment,” I muttered.

  “It’s not that we don’t have faith in you, we just want you to be happy,” Kyle argued.

  “Here you go, Sky.” Kyle’s wife, Whitney appeared with a cup of coffee, putting it down on the patio table in front of me. After four days of rain, it had cleared up and we were getting the last bit of warmth before winter took over.

  “Thanks, Whit,” I said, taking a sip and letting out a moan of pleasure. Whitney could make a bad-ass cup of coffee.

  “What are you guys talking about? I heard something about us wanting Sky happy?” Whitney sat down on the other side of Katie, giving the little girl a loud kiss on the cheek. “How’s my cupcake?” she cooed, ruffling Katie’s hair. Watching them together, you’d never know that Whitney was Katie’s stepmother and not her biological mother. They had an obvious bond. Kyle watched his girls with such love it made my heartache in a good way.

  “Sky’s seeing Robert Jenkins again,” Kyle informed her.

  Whitney’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. “You are not! Oh my god, Sky, why didn’t you tell me?” she gasped, practically giddy with excitement.

  “Because it just happened a few days ago. It’s not like I was going to take out a notice in the paper.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m glad to see you didn’t take that busy body from the clothes store’s advice. Because she was full of shit,” Whitney went on, then covered her mouth. “Oops, ignore Whitty. That was a bad word.”

  “What busy body at the clothes store?” Kyle
asked.

  Whitney made a face. “Sky and were doing some shopping—”

  “Sky was shopping? Did you pay her? Had she been doing drugs?” Kyle teased.

  Whitney smacked his arm. “Not the point. We were shopping and this random lady totally interrupted us while we were talking. Saying it sounded like Sky should kick Robert to the curb and he wasn’t worth it and all this nonsense. I mean, who does that? Who butts into a stranger’s conversation offering unsolicited advice like that? It was really weird.”

  “It does sound weird,” Kyle agreed.

  “She was a nice lady, is all. And I wasn’t saying very nice things about Robert, so she probably felt compelled to intervene so I didn’t go off with a total asshat,” I argued, but even I could hear how odd it sounded.

  “Well, anyway, this is good news. You and Rob make a wonderful couple,” Whitney enthused.

  “It’s early days yet, Whit. Don’t start planning the china patterns,” I chuckled.

  “Oh please, I’m not my sister. Or Lena. I’m the level-headed one, remember?”

  “Sure,” I said blandly.

  “So, I take it you’re off to meet your new boyfriend?” Kyle sing-song.

  “Oooh, boyfriend,” Whitney joined in.

  I leaned down to Katie, dropping my voice into a loud whisper. “You’re more mature than your parents, kiddo.”

  I checked the time on my phone. It was 4:30. That gave me enough time to get to Sweet Lila’s and grab a booth before the after-work crowd started filtering in.

  “Thanks for the catch-up, Web.” I leaned down and kissed the top of Katie’s head. “See ya, munchkin.”

  Whitney got to her feet and gave me a warm hug. “I’m so happy to hear about you and Rob. We need to have a girl’s night soon. I want all the details.”

  I patted her back. I was always slightly uncomfortable with my friends’ physically demonstrative ways. “You betcha,” I promised.

  “Tell Rob we said hi,” Kyle called out as I left.

  Bunch of smart asses.

  I left the Webber house and drove the five minutes to Sweet Lila’s. It was practically empty when I went inside. I scanned the room, not seeing Robert yet. I had almost twenty minutes before I was expecting him. I walked up to the bar and waved to Brad who was wiping down glasses.