by Ruthie Knox
Jesus.
He kept walking for a minute, unable to give up his momentum. By the time he stopped, he was a hundred feet away from the building at the edge of the kids’ soccer fields.
He looked at the sky, hands behind his head, breathing hard.
Get a grip.
What was he even angry about?
Patrick was being Patrick. He’d been like that since the accident.
He didn’t take responsibility because he didn’t think he deserved to be forgiven—that was what everybody said. Even though Tony and the rest of the family had forgiven him years ago, he wouldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t move forward. He was stuck in the past.
But what was Patrick supposed to do, stop thinking about it? Stop caring? Stop remembering? It was pointless even to try. It didn’t go away. You just had to live with it.
They both had to live with it.
How long before you’re done?
The memory of Amber’s quiet question hit him behind the knees, and he folded in half, bracing his hands on his thighs.
This wasn’t about Patrick. Just like his asshole brother had said, this was about him.
How long before you’re done with your penance?
He could never be done. He and Patrick—they didn’t know how to be done. But Christ, if Patrick needed to figure it out, so did he. If Patrick deserved forgiveness, surely Tony did, too.
A couple of days ago, he’d told Amber that Patrick ran over his daughter in the driveway. This morning, she gave him half her sandwich.
She’d given Tony a lot more than that. Trust and understanding. Her arms wrapped around him, her body wrapped around him, even after he’d told her the worst of it.
She didn’t care what he’d done wrong in the past. She wasn’t worried about what he might fuck up in the future. She’d opened up her door, let him in her bed even though she was nervous as hell and had plenty of reasons not to trust that he could make it good for her.
She thought he was strong. She believed in him, and he was throwing that away.
He was being a fucking moron. Just like his brother.
Tony took a deep breath and lifted his head, looking out over the expanse of the soccer field toward the front of the building, where they were hooking Amber’s car up to a tow truck.
He didn’t want to lose her down the road by screwing up what they had. But he didn’t want to lose her over nothing, either, just because he was too scared to try to figure out his shit and reach for her.
If she wanted him, he had to try to be the man she saw when she looked at him. He had to try, because God knew he wanted her.
She could be his future.
For the first time in as long as Tony could remember, he wanted to have one.
Chapter Fourteen
Amber said goodbye to Rosalie at five and took her place by the phone, waiting for the building to clear out.
The younger construction worker had taken off around four thirty, leaving just Tony and his brother.
Patrick came out first. He stopped in front of the counter. “Wait for him,” he said.
She didn’t know how to reply to that. Did he mean she was supposed to hang out a few more minutes while Tony finished putting away tools, or that she was supposed to hang out for a lifetime, waiting for him to repair his damage and claim her?
After the way he’d looked at her earlier—a Neanderthal who couldn’t so much as grunt a greeting, much less operate a phone—Amber wasn’t inclined to do either.
Except for the part of her that was.
Thankfully, Patrick didn’t seem to expect an answer. He let himself out the front, and she shut down the computer and listened to the sounds of the community center going still.
At five after five, the radio in the director’s office flipped off, and her boss said his goodbyes.
At ten after, the sneakers quit squeaking in the gym. A basketball bounced and then rolled across the floor to hit the wall. Two boys emerged, talking animatedly as they crossed the entryway and pushed out the front door.
The seconds ticked past.
At five twenty, the building had emptied, and he finally came out.
Afraid to look directly at his face, she looked at his fingers on the counter instead. Short, blunt nails. Plaster dust on his knuckles, caught in the dark hair on his forearms. The crease at his elbows.
His neck.
His jaw.
His mouth.
She stopped at his mouth.
“You want a ride home?” it asked.
“I was going to walk.”
“I’ll walk you.”
Probably she was supposed to say no. By her old, discarded codes of behavior, certainly she was. There were words for what Tony had done, none of them nice. Took advantage of you. Used you.
Words for what she’d done, too. For who she’d been. Spread for him. Slut.
He hadn’t even said hello to her earlier. He’d just nodded like an angry jerk, and his furious expression had burned up all the tender little shoots of hope she’d cultivated over the past forty-eight hours.
But here he was, and her heart was leaping again like a stupid puppy. Happy just to see him. To hear his voice.
She lifted her eyes to meet his.
His eyes said, I mean it.
Whatever that meant.
“All right,” she said.
She locked up, and they crossed the parking lot. At the road, she slanted to the left, and his fingers brushed her elbow. More fluttering in her heart, in her stomach. More hope.
She shouldn’t hope. He could hurt her again. He could hurt her even worse.
She didn’t know how to stop.
“Let’s go the long way,” he said.
“There’s a long way?”
“Through town.”
So they turned right and walked in silence past half a dozen small houses, spaced out in their patches of lawn. Then left, up the steep hill past the elementary school, three blocks from Camelot’s tiny downtown.
“I like that house,” Tony said.
She turned to look. Mrs. Everidge’s place. It had gray siding and big windows. An ordinary house.
“I used to want to build houses. I thought I could work for my dad and expand into home construction, instead of just commercial.”
“Do you still want to?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“Maybe you should think about it.”
“I am.”
He reached out and took her hand. His fingers wrapped around hers, his grip solid and sure. His stride was like that, too. Like he knew exactly where he was going.
He didn’t. The inside didn’t match the outside. Tony was beautiful, but he was damaged.
She wanted him anyway.
“Can I buy you dinner?” he asked.
“The Cove?” Camelot only had a few options to choose from. The Cove was greasy pizza and subpar Italian food.
“I was thinking the pub.”
“I could have a drink,” she said.
“You don’t drink.”
“I was thinking about starting. I need to keep working on my misbehaving. I don’t want to lose any ground, you know?”
He slanted her a look. Not quite mischievous, but interested. “Don’t go thinking it’s as easy as it sounds, babe. It’s tricky, figuring out how to misbehave properly.”
Then a silence as the words sank in. He probably hadn’t meant to remind her, but there it was. He’d done a lot of misbehaving, and the end result was a lost child. Ruined lives. Terrible guilt.
She wished she could make it better, but she understood that there really wasn’t any way for him to atone. He could stay put, sink into the past, or he could move forward. She wanted him to move forward with her, but it was too soon to assume that he wanted that, or that he could even do it, just by wanting to.
“I imagine it’s tricky to misbehave just the right amount,” she said cautiously. “Too little is bad,
of course. It sucks all the joy out of life, trying to be good all the time. Trying to be safe. But then, if you overdo it, that’s dangerous, too. I think maybe everybody should have somebody to help them figure it out. Keep them in check. Misbehave with them, you know?”
“A teacher,” he mused.
“A partner,” she said.
“You asking me?”
“Do you want me to be asking you?”
He squeezed her hand and then let it go.
She couldn’t read the expression on his face. Another rejection, or indecision, or fear? So hard to tell, looking at him, what was going on inside his head.
The pub sat on the corner right at the edge of downtown Camelot, a two-block stretch that also contained the deli, bookstore, and market. On the other side of a gravel path that cut right through campus was the post office, bank, and Village Inn, where there was another restaurant.
The pub turned out to be less depraved than she’d expected. Just tables and chairs, the bar on one side, and plastic-coated menus sitting in a caddy with ketchup and mustard.
“What does one eat at the pub?”
“They do decent cheeseburgers and fries.”
“Sounds good.” She stuck the menu back where she’d gotten it. He hadn’t sat down yet, which didn’t feel like a good omen.
“I’ll order at the bar. What do you want to drink?”
“I have no idea. Not beer.”
One corner of his mouth curved up. “You don’t like it?”
“I tasted my dad’s once, and it was vile.” She cast around for some kind of sophisticated drink to order, then blurted out, “Oh! Can you get me, like, whatever the alcohol version of a Shirley Temple is?”
That earned her a real smile. A bubble of hope expanded in her chest.
“I’ll see.”
She glanced around while he ordered. Most of the tables were full, and she saw several familiar faces. A woman who worked at the bookstore was sitting alone with a beer and a book, but she’d set the book down in favor of staring unabashedly at Tony.
Amber couldn’t blame her. His jeans were old and faded, the thighs covered with smears of caulk and drips of paint. His T-shirt hung loose over his waist and hips but strained across his shoulders. His ass looked delectable.
The man was sex on legs. A blue-collar hunk of an Italian stallion.
He was also kind, and funny, and deeply uncertain.
And she was fairly sure she’d already fallen in love with him.
He came back with an iced tea and something for her in a Coke glass, settling into the chair closest to hers.
She liked that. Not on the far side of the table, separated by the condiments, but right up close, where his knee could touch her thigh.
He pushed the drink toward her on its coaster.
“Ooh, with a sword and a cherry and everything. This is the classiest drink ever.”
“It’s called a Jack Rogers.”
She took a sip. “This has alcohol in it?”
“Whiskey, Coke, and grenadine.”
“It’s delicious. How many of these would I have to drink to get tipsy?”
He cocked his head. “Two, maybe? You’re a little thing, and you’ve got no tolerance. Three would get you plastered, I bet.”
“I want to try that sometime. Getting plastered. I could drink three of these, and then you could take me home and we could play pirate.”
“Pirate?”
“It’s the tiny swords. They make me think of swashbuckling.”
Another grin, this one a little dirtier. “I have a sword,” he said. “But it’s not tiny.”
“I remember.”
“If you want to swashbuckle again, I’m game.”
“Was that some kind of romantic declaration, disguised as a filthy pirate sex offer?”
Their eyes met. His smirk faded, and his hand covered hers on the table. His palm felt clammy, the way it had in the basement.
“Yes,” he said.
“Maybe you should go ahead and declare it. So I don’t get my hopes up and start thinking this is a date, if you meant it as an entrée to my … you know. Booty.”
“I want your booty, Amber.”
She laughed nervously. “I know you want my booty, you pervert. I’m asking if you want anything else.”
“I do. I want to see where this goes between us.”
She nibbled a cherry off her tiny sword.
It wasn’t I love you and I want you to bear my children.
It wasn’t even I’m feeling reckless and full of despair because I’m head over heels for you.
It was pretty tepid, as declarations went.
Not good enough.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she said. “I cried for more than an hour on Saturday morning, and I ate a lot of ice cream with my mom. She doesn’t like you very much, by the way. She says you need to grovel.”
And Amber was being flirtatious and silly, because she was afraid of what he would say if they had a real conversation. She was afraid of what she would feel if he took her hope away.
He seemed to know it. He lifted her hand off the table and clasped it between his. “Amber? Look at me.”
His brows were drawn together, which probably would have scared some people off, but his eyes were Tony’s eyes, and his hands were Tony’s hands. All of him so dear and familiar to her, even though she hadn’t known him for very long.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know I tried to warn you off, in the basement, because I’m not … I haven’t been the best bet.”
“I think you’re a good bet.”
“I know you think so, honey.” He sighed. “I want to be able to promise you that everything’s going to work out perfect. I want to say I can give you forever, and a little house with a fence and babies and all that stuff you deserve, if you even decide you want it from me somewhere down the line. But I can’t promise, Amber. I can’t know.”
“Nobody can.”
“I know. That’s what I’m saying. And for as long as I can remember, that was enough to make me say, ‘Fuck it, it’s not worth it.’ I don’t do risks. I don’t take risks anymore, not ever, but I took one with you, and it scared the shit out of me, because it made me want to take a hundred more. Big risks.”
The hope bubble got bigger, expanding until it filled her chest and made her eyes tear up. “What kind of big risks?”
“Like the kind where you move in with me, or I move in with you, and you mix all our videos together so we can’t tell whose are whose.”
“Mine will be the chick flicks.”
She needed to stop being frivolous, but she was so happy and so scared, she couldn’t figure out how. He meant it. He was going to try. For her.
“Like the kind of risk where you sleep with me every night, and I get used to holding you close and leaving the light off, and I tell you all kinds of stuff I never told anybody else.”
“You already told me about the spiders.”
A hint of a smile, and then his brows drew together again. “Like the kind of risk where I might fall in love with you.”
She made a noise. Kind of a gasping, inelegant noise, and Tony grimaced.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You haven’t shocked me. Or, okay, maybe you did a little bit, but it’s only because you’re doing such an excellent job with the groveling.”
“I want you, Amber. Bad. Not just your booty. I want to have breakfast with you in the morning. I have this fantasy of you cooking me eggs and bacon in that pink robe.”
“That’s a very male fantasy. Do you also get a blow job?”
“Not in that one. We just talk and eat breakfast.”
“I like that. Can I tell you one of mine?”
A little smile. “Anytime.”
“I have this fantasy of taking you to my parents’ for dinner and introducing you to everybody as my boyfriend.”
She waited for him to turn white or gulp or run away, but he didn’t d
o any of those things. He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand. “I’d be okay with that.”
“Good. Don’t worry, I didn’t want to do it tonight. Tonight, I was hoping for more debauchery.”
“There you go again with the big words.”
She leaned close, so they were just a few inches apart, and whispered, “It means ‘fucking.’ ”
“I know what it means.”
His hands clamped around her waist, and he pulled her out of her chair and into his lap.
“In public, Tony?”
“This is a bar. All kinds of debauched shit goes down here.”
When he kissed her, her whole body filled up with light, and she threw her arms around his neck. She wanted to cry, so she kissed him back, and she did cry, a little.
He wiped the tears off her cheeks with the flat of his hand, somehow managing to look both alarmed by her womanly display of sentiment and deeply fond of her.
“You’re really sweet,” she said.
“Don’t tell anybody.”
She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“So am I forgiven?” he asked.
“Yes. This time. Don’t run away from me again, though. I probably gained two pounds from all the ice cream.”
“I’ll help you work them off.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “That sounds like fun.”
“You want to come over to my house sometime?” he asked. “I’ve got a bigger bed than you, and it’s not gonna bang into the wall when we make love.”
“We’re going to make love?”
“We might have to start, in a week or two. If we got bored with all the fucking.”
“Just so long as you don’t forget to fuck me sometimes. You know, for variety’s sake.”
He chuckled and buried his face against her neck. When he exhaled, his breath came out ragged, as though he’d dredged it up from the very bottom of his soul. Some of the tension drained out of him, the muscles of his thighs and his arm relaxing around her.
Amber held the back of his head, stroking her fingers through his hair. His palm drifted along her spine, up and down in a slow, soothing caress that felt like sex without the sex.
She thought it must be intimacy.
He raised his head and met her eyes. “I’ll do the best I can.”