Truck Stop Tango

by Daniels, Krissy

  “Shut up, Tango. Shut the fuck up. I can’t hear this right now.” I wiped the moisture from my cheeks. Hearing Tango replay the events of that night sliced deep. I didn’t want to talk about it.

  He looked up with tear-soaked lashes. “I’m so goddamned sorry. So fucking sorry that I was weak, and cocky, and out of control. I just wanted the pain to go away. When I saw you standing there, with that look on your face—”

  “No more,” I screamed, yanking my hand free. “Are you trying to break me all over again?”

  “No.” He raised a palm to my face, dropping it when I jerked my head away.

  His wide shoulders slumped in defeat. “What else can I say? What can I do to make it right?”

  I stared at my hands, because the pain in his eyes was too much to bear. “There’s nothing left to say.”

  There was so much I needed to say. So many words, six years’ worth, each syllable superglued to the tip of my tongue.

  “What do you want from me, Tango?” she asked, such delicate strength in her voice.

  “Forgiveness,” I whispered.

  I wanted her, I left unsaid. I wanted Slade Mason to be mine again. I needed to wake up to her smile every morning. I’d missed my best friend. Missed her every godforsaken day I’d been gone.

  “I already forgave you. You can go now.” The cold snap to her reply sent a shiver through me. Not much could do that anymore.

  “No, you haven’t,” I argued, leaning closer.

  She turned her head and picked up the frame she’d been holding when I walked in. When I spied the subject, wicked anger, mixed with shame and a shit ton of regret, slithered through me. I snatched the photo away.

  “What the hell?” She grabbed for the picture. I held it out of reach.

  “Did you forgive her?” I asked, pointing at the image. “Did Addy get a second chance?” That name was acid on my tongue.

  “That’s none of your damned business.” Slade rose to her knees, chin held high, and claimed the photo back.

  “Why Rocky?” I asked, forcing my gaze, with great restraint, to stay above her shoulders.

  “What?” Her eyes widened.

  “Why did you name him Rocky?” Fuck. Saying the name out loud brought back an unwelcome flood of emotionally charged memories.

  “Don’t make me do this,” she pleaded.

  “Why Rocky? To spite me?” Growing up, Rocky had been her nickname for me. It was our secret. I’d always hated my name, the moniker given to me because my parents had fallen in love in Argentina, over a tango. I’d confided in Slade once that I’d wished I’d been given a badass name, like Rocky, after my favorite movie. She’d loved it. It stuck, and on numerous occasions, she had teased that our first child would be named Rocky, regardless of gender.

  Slade plopped her butt next to me and placed a hand on my thigh, tempting the beast in ways she couldn’t fathom. “God, no. Not to spite you. To remember you.”

  I was jealous of the tyke. I wanted to murder the man who fathered him. “How could you give another man’s child our name?”

  “That name was all I had left of us,” she whispered, running a finger over the length of the plastic frame.

  I had no right to be angry, or envious. If only someone could explain that to my wounded ego.

  She turned her head my way. Her body trembled against mine. “You took everything from me when you disappeared.” As she rose to stand, her voice rose, too. “I had nothing. You stole my future.” She flung the frame across the room and screamed, “You ruined everything,” before storming out of the room and leaving me to process her outburst.

  Finally. We were getting somewhere.

  I found her in the kitchen, fighting with a box of coffee filters. “You want me to forgive you?” she asked, stabbing the cardboard with a knife and prying it open.

  “I need you to forgive me.”

  “Then you’re going to listen. I’m only saying this once.” Slade pointed the knife my way, then to the door. “When I’m finished, you need to go.”

  I dropped my ass into a chair, and rested my elbows on her well-worn kitchen table. Instinct screamed at me to go to her, to hold her, to dance the fight clean out of her, to beg, and scream, and cry until the past six years disappeared and there was nothing left but Tango and Slade.

  “I can’t even begin to describe how deeply you destroyed me that night. You left. No explanation. No apology. Did you even try to contact me?” she asked, pacing and waving the box in the air. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. You were gone. Your parents wouldn’t talk to me. I had no one. No one. I was lonely. I did things I’m not proud of. Things I thought I needed to do to feel better, to make sense of everything. We were supposed to be together forever. You were my rock, my best friend, my family, my future. Then you were gone. It was like waking up and being the only person alive on the planet.”

  “I’m sorry,” was my pathetic response.

  Slade slammed the coffee filters onto the counter and turned to face me. “Sorry doesn’t mean shit anymore.”

  Fuck. I hated seeing her so undone. I hated being the cause of it. I rose from the chair and pulled her into a tight embrace. Words couldn’t patch her wounds. Words, and not even good ones, were all I had.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, kissing the top of her head, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you reach out to me?” she asked, wiping her tears on my shirt and burying her face in my chest. “Why wouldn’t your parents tell me where you were?”

  A vicious anger brewed in me. “I knew nothing about that.” My parents had told me they’d made efforts to talk to Slade, only to be rejected. Dad had some explaining to do.

  “What now?” she whispered. “What if I can forgive you? You want to be friends? I can’t do that. It hurts too much. Right now, you being here, it’s making me physically ill. My stomach is a mess. I can’t think straight.” Slade tilted her face up to meet my eyes. “You’re not my future anymore. Rocky is.”

  Her words ripped me to shreds. Didn’t matter, though, because I knew, deeper and truer than I’d ever known anything, I was supposed to be her future. I was her future. I was her past. I was her right-fucking-now. Whether she could see it or not. She was, and always would be, my girl.

  “Rocky is my life now,” she muttered, unconvincing.

  Again, shitty as it was, the little green monster reared his ugly head. “Where is the munchkin?”

  “He’s gone for two weeks with his—” Slade coughed. “He’s at summer camp.”

  Summer camp? He was only five. Fuck. I hated that she was lying to me. “Where is his father?” I asked, biting back the anger.

  “He’s gone,” she mumbled.

  “Does he help? Does Rocky even know him?”

  Slade pulled away and leaned against the counter. “No. And I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “That isn’t right, Slade. Jesus.” I paced the length of the kitchen, hands to hips, sucking in a few calming breaths. “What kind of man walks away from his kid?”

  She seemed to study something on the floor. A smudged crayon drawing, maybe a dinosaur. “The kind that doesn’t know he has a child.”

  My gut tightened like she’d hit me with a two-by-four. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “I couldn’t tell him, and I won’t talk about him. Not with you.” Slade wouldn’t look up.

  She was hiding something.

  I fucking hated secrets. If she was keeping things from me, it was out of fear, and damn if that didn’t piss me off. Swear to Christ, if Rocky’s father had hurt her, I’d hunt him down and kill him.

  “Did he hurt you?” That thought alone made my hackles rise. Instinct took over and the urge to protect had me breaching her personal space.

  We were too close. My body reacted the way any healthy man would, by sending a shitload of blood and desire straight to my cock. Shit, she was a sight. Messy, fuck-me hair, pink
cotton boxers, a black clingy tank top with no bra.

  Angry eyes pierced me when she said, “I’m done talking about it.”

  I stepped closer, taking a cleansing breath. Forcing my shit to cool. I could let the conversation lay for a while. What I couldn’t do was leave without her knowing that she still owned me.

  I leaned close and claimed her lips. Then I cupped her ass and lifted it to the counter. My girl was too light in my arms, but there was a roundness to her hips that hadn’t been there before. I pushed my body between her legs and yanked her hard against me. Made sure she felt my arousal between her thighs.

  Our tongues brushed, and she opened wider for me, softening in my arms. She slid her hands around my waist and under my shirt, scorching my skin everywhere her fingers traveled.

  I kissed her deep and with no restraint. Apologizing. Reacquainting. Reclaiming. When I’d given everything to her mouth, I grazed on her neck, her shoulder, every delicate, soft patch of skin I could find. It wasn’t enough. I needed all of her, everything, body and soul. Fuck, I needed her. I needed us. Together was where we belonged. Slade was my home.

  Sliding her hands down to my waistband, then under, she danced and teased her fingers across the top of my ass. Holy shit, the rush of sensation made my head spin. I brushed my thumb across her breast, over the thin, stretchy fabric, groaning when a tight bud formed underneath.

  She pulled away from my mouth and looked down, watching me stimulate first one taut nipple, then the other. With hitched breaths and parted lips, she let me play, and it didn’t go unnoticed that her thighs had tightened around my hips.

  Arching against me, she moaned and let her head fall back. Fucking hell, she was perfect.

  I curled one hand around the back of her head, pulling her lips back to mine. I was ravenous. Insatiable. I pulled away, gasping for breath, stealing a moment of sanity. She braced her arms behind her and stared up at me, lids heavy with lust, chest heaving.

  Blood pounded through my cock. Pressed tight against her warm core, I suffered an excruciating, beautiful hell.

  I was in a hell of my own making, brutal, beautiful, and so wrong. What was I doing? Sex with Tango was not an option. I wanted him. More than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. He kissed like he was claiming me, marking his territory. His erection pressed hard and thick between my legs, prompting an ache in my gut and a fire in my cheeks. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see through the desperate need eating me alive.

  But I could not let him in. He would know. He would discover the one lie I could not talk my way out of. We had to stop. Tango needed to leave. I could never see him again.

  With those impossibly perfect eyes, he gazed down at me. “I want you, Slade. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.”

  “No.” Despite my mental commands, my arms wouldn’t move to push him away. “I can’t do this.”

  Dropping his forehead to mine, he released a frustrated sigh before asking, “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  “Tango. I can’t—”

  His lips brushed my cheek, sending sparks up and down my spine. “I’ve missed your soft skin, your scent, how you shiver every time I touch you.”

  I wanted him. Oh God. I needed him. I hadn’t been touched for so long. My body sizzled and crackled with the overload of sensation, with the heady feeling of want, of being wanted. And, oh my, he wanted me. I could feel it, smell it, taste it, get drunk on the thrill of it.

  “Your body is so attuned to mine. Do you feel that?” he asked, dragging the back of his knuckle down my cheek, my throat, and resting his hand over my bleeding heart. “Just say the word and I’m yours.”

  “No.”

  “Please. Let me in.” He pulled my hips closer to the edge. Closer to him. When he lowered his head to my chest and dropped a kiss on the exposed skin, I started to cry.

  “Fuck. You’re perfect,” he whispered, his lips traveling lower.

  How many nights had I fantasized that scene? His mouth on me. Mine on him. Pleasuring. Loving. I’d always known he’d be tender and selfless in bed. That was who he was.

  We couldn’t go any further. If we did, I’d be helpless to stop, and I would destroy everything. I shuddered with emotion, frustration, regret. Tears fell freely down my face, and I raked a hand through his hair.

  He moaned.

  I pulled tight. “Stop.”

  Tango snaked his arms around my middle and pulled me closer. His mouth crashed to mine, his erection nestled snug and tight into the aching spot between my legs. I writhed against him, unashamed, unconcerned with the past, or the future, obsessed with the right now—the present that brought Tango and I together one last time before I had to let him go again.

  It was shameful, really, how easily I melted into him, how desperate I was to cling to his warm body, knowing that the longer I held him, the more danger I was putting myself in. Oh God, I had to let go.

  “You have to leave,” I mumbled into his mouth, bracing my hands on his shoulders. “Please,” I begged. “You have to walk away, because I can’t seem to let go right now.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” he whispered, his arms tensing.

  The pain in his voice cut me to the core.

  I buried my face in his neck and cried through the onslaught of emotions. Cried for the years he’d stolen from me, cried for the loss of my best friend. Cried because I wanted him to stay forever. Cried because I loved him. I loved him so hard that every part of me ached.

  There would never be another man for me.

  We would never be together.

  I wanted to tell him everything. But I could never confess, because when he’d disappeared, on the night I was supposed to give myself to him, he’d set in motion a series of events that made it impossible for me to ever be honest with him again.

  Tango carried me, coiled around him, up my stairs, and back to bed. He held me tight until I fell asleep, emotionally drained.

  “Addy.” I brushed an oily chunk of hair away from her eyes. “Did they turn the water off again?”

  My friend nodded.

  We headed up the stairs and into my room.

  “Can I use your shower?”

  “Of course you can. Where is Walt?”

  “He’s with them.” She shivered. “Took Dane to Montana, for some rally. Walt is stupid enough to think they want him in the club.” Addy pulled her shirt over her head and shimmied out of her jeans.

  I could count her ribs. “When was the last time you ate?”

  Naked as a jaybird, Addy headed down the hall toward my bathroom and shrugged. “Yesterday morning.”

  I followed behind and stood in the doorway. “You don’t have to stay there anymore. Mom says you can live with us. We can share my room.”

  Addy laughed. “And have to watch you and Tango rubbing against each other all the time? No, thank you.” She rolled her eyes, then turned to reach for the shower faucet. Fading bruises marred her pale skin.

  I waited, holding in the cuss words that I wanted to scream on her behalf. When she disappeared behind the curtain, I snagged her dirty clothes and headed downstairs to throw them in the wash, but not before I heard her say, “I’m gonna snag me a rich boy-toy, like you. Then I’m getting out of this shit town.”

  Shit. This town. My town. I’d missed it so goddamned much. I listened to the group of kids, all squeals and giggles, spraying each other with a hose two houses over, and mourned the years I’d wasted by running from my fuck-ups.

  A dog barked incessantly somewhere in the distance. Next door, Marion sat on a wobbly stool, brushing white paint on the fence that shared a property line with Slade. I’d only just finished the fresh baked blueberry scone she’d brought me earlier. This is the life, I thought to myself, unsure what to do with the contentment flowing through me.

  I finished tightening the screw in the strike plate of Slade’s front door when the loud revving of a motorcycle engine drew my attention to the street. I looked up just in time to see a
large bike slow down in front of the house. Its driver, hidden behind dark glasses and a half helmet, nodded my way, then disappeared around the corner. At the same time, I heard footsteps padding down the stairs behind me.

  My ticker kicked into high gear.

  I turned to face my girl, hungry for a slow gander. The summer heat had already choked the cool morning air from the house, but the sight of Slade had me melting into the floorboards. Hair in a messy coil on top of her head. Blue eyes bright, despite the redness around them from her breakdown earlier. Long, lacy tank top. Jean shorts. Those damn legs. Bare. Long. Delicious. And of course, flip-flops.

  “I thought you would’ve left by now,” she said, crossing her arms and resting a hip on the shaky banister.

  I pulled two screws out of my back pocket. “I did. Then I came back.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked, gaze bouncing from my face to my naked torso.

  The girl was killing me with that damn blush. I flexed my abs, not enough to be obvious, but enough to rile her. The glow in her cheeks spread. Yeah. Too easy.

  “I’m installing new locks.” I hit her with a warning glare and pointed the screwdriver her way. “And you will use them. You have a child to worry about. There are dangerous people out there. You can’t leave your doors unlocked anymore.”

  I waited for her to argue. Instead, with a smile, she said, “Thank you,” and hopped off the last step.

  Slade disappeared down the hall. I watched her retreat, willing my dick to behave, and forcing myself to stay put. By the time I’d finished my job and dropped the last screw back into Slade’s tool drawer, a plate of eggs and toast waited for me on the kitchen table. I wasted no time digging in. Nothing better than a home-cooked meal. Especially when the chef was more edible than the food.