Sweetest Obsessions - Anthology

by Anthony, Jane

  I stood, towering over her with the extra height of my skates. “Ready when you are.”

  “Then let’s get to it.” She glided toward the DJ booth, smooth as a pro figure skater floating over the ice.

  Hell, I was in trouble. As I struggled to catch up to her, I wobbled a little.

  “How long do you want to go tonight?” She bit her lower lip, catching it with her teeth then letting it slide out real slow. Suddenly it didn’t seem like we were talking about skating any more.

  “I can go as long as you want.” My chest puffed out a bit. Even though I knew I was in over my head, whether we were talking about laps or something much more intimate, I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.

  Her finger gently poked the center of my chest. “We’ll see about that.”

  I resisted the urge to wrap my hand around her finger and pull her into me. Getting tangled up with Misty again would only hurt me in the long run. So no matter how much I wanted to call her out on her intentional innuendos, I didn’t.

  “Last one standing wins, isn’t that what we said this morning?” I reminded her.

  “Yep. Whoever can stay off their butt the longest.” She accentuated that point by wiggling her ass.

  Blood rushed to my crotch. Mentally, my head was in the game. Physically? She had me by the balls, always had.

  I chose not to acknowledge the way her body teased me into a hot and bothered mess. “Let’s do it.” I kicked off first, barely missing a couple holding hands.

  Misty’s laugh followed me until she swept past me. She wasn’t kidding, she must have been practicing. Her feet crisscrossed over each other without missing a beat while it took everything I had not to stumble.

  “Hey, Jake.” The team’s backup pitcher skated by.

  I lifted my hand to wave. All of a sudden my right foot veered off, and I awkwardly recovered before I tumbled to the ground.

  Misty lapped me once, then twice, before I made it all the way around. Didn’t matter how many turns she took around the rink, what mattered was who stayed upright the longest. At the rate I was going, I might make it around a few times before they played the last song.

  After an hour, my feet hurt, my leg muscles screamed in protest, and I’d been mocked by the majority of the team for my cautious approach. Finally, the DJ called the last song of the night.

  Misty and I hadn’t talked about what we’d do in the case of a tie. As I looked around, trying to locate her, she skated up next to me.

  “Last song.” She gave me a gentle nudge with her hip.

  “There you are. What do we do in the case of a tie? We didn’t talk about that possibility.”

  She shrugged. “What do you say we put aside the bet for the last skate? It’s a slow song.”

  It was a slow song, one of our favorites from back when we ruled the Ventura every Friday night.

  “Can I have this skate?” She whirled around in front of me and held out her arms.

  Without thinking about the repercussions, I reached for her. Her arms snaked up over my chest, her hands clasping together behind my neck. I settled my hands on her waist. My pulse ratcheted up. There was something so familiar about having her in my arms, my body went on auto-pilot, pulling her closer, nudging my nose into her air.

  As the music wrapped around us, insulating us from the other couples on the floor, I looked into her eyes.

  And I was gone.

  11

  Misty

  Jake’s hands clamped to my waist. I wanted to lean into him, just like we used to when we skated round and round the rink every Friday night. Neither of us had won the silly bet I’d forced him to make, but it had brought us here. Together. Where I could get my fill of his warmth, his scent, and his sheer closeness

  I closed my eyes, letting him navigate us around the rink. Other skaters moved past, but I didn’t pay them any attention. All that mattered was Jake. We were back where we were supposed to be—in each other’s arms. What else did I need to do to make him realize that this was where we belonged?

  His hands shifted, and I took the opportunity to nestle closer, pulling him tighter against me.

  “Misty?” His warm breath tickled my ear.

  “Yes?” I opened my eyes to meet his gaze. The disco ball glittered in the center of the rink, sending dazzling sparkles over the room.

  “What are you trying to do to me?” His feet slowed. We came to a stop under the glittering ball.

  “I’m not trying to do anything to you. I want to be us again.” Couldn’t he see how hard I was trying? How much I wanted to go back to the way things were?

  “We didn’t work the last time we tried. Why can’t you leave it alone?” He turned his head and glanced toward the ground.

  I put a hand on his cheek, gently nudging his gaze back to mine. “This time will be different, I promise.”

  The hurt, fear and hesitation in his eyes gutted me. “You can’t make a promise like that.”

  Before I let myself consider the ramifications, I pulled his head closer and pressed my lips against his. Warmth flooded my system as our lips touched. It had been so long—way too long.

  He hesitated for a moment then slid his hands around to the small of my back and crushed me against him. His tongue teased past the seam of my lips. My knees buckled as he deepened the kiss.

  This was what I’d been missing in my life. I poured my heart and soul into that kiss. Everything faded away until it was just the two of us. My fingers toyed with the hair at the base of his neck then stopped to run over the soft cotton of his T-shirt. His muscles twitched under my palm. What I’d been looking for, it was right here in front of me.

  Jake’s arms tightened around me. His hips nudged forward, making contact. I forgot we were in a roller rink, surrounded by most of the students at our small alma mater. But then someone cleared their throat. We parted. I blinked, dazed by the emotional tidal wave that had rolled over me.

  Robbie stood next to us, still in his street shoes. “Um, easy on the PDA, okay?”

  Jake squinted at his best friend, his arms still holding me close. “Yeah, okay.”

  I clung to him, not ready to let go, afraid that if I did, we wouldn’t find our way back to this kind of closeness. I’d breached the walls of Jake’s defense. What if he didn’t let me back in again?

  He let his hands fall from my waist. “Um, let’s go trade in our skates for shoes, okay?”

  My heart sank at the loss of contact. I reached for his hand, twining my fingers with his. He tolerated my grip but the urgency was gone. As we skated toward the bench where we’d left our shoes, I tried to figure out my next move. No one had won the bet. Unless one of us fell, I wouldn’t have any guarantee of seeing him again. Based on the way Jake had cooled off, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on him, I wasn’t sure where things would go after tonight.

  So I did the only thing I could. I faked a stumble. Jake held onto my hand as I tumbled toward the floor. My skate twisted on the way down, causing my ankle to roll.

  “Ouch. Oh, crap.” As my knee hit the ground, I let go of Jake’s hand.

  “Misty, are you okay?” He squatted down next to me, lost his balance, and ended up flat on his ass.

  His eyebrows crunched together. “Oh, shit.”

  Even though pain sliced through my ankle, I couldn’t help but laugh at his reaction. He didn’t have nearly as much padding on his backside as I did. He’d be feeling that for days.

  Jake jerked the skates off. In stockinged feet, he reached down and pulled me up. “I’ve got you.”

  I half-limped, half-skated toward the edge of the rink. My fake fall wasn’t supposed to result in an actual injury.

  “You okay?” He helped me ease onto the bench.

  “Yeah, just lost my footing there for a minute.” I bent to undo my skates but Jake beat me to it. He knelt in front of me, his attention on undoing the buckle on the side.

  “It looked a little fake to me.” He glanced up, meeti
ng my eyes briefly before he moved on to my other foot.

  “Are you accusing me of throwing the challenge?” I asked.

  He grinned. “I’ll admit, that doesn’t seem like something you’d do.”

  “Never. Remember the time we got in trouble for breaking curfew when I wouldn’t give up at the batting cages?”

  He ran a hand over his chin. “Yeah. I bet you still can’t hit a ball.”

  “Hey, I connected with one.”

  “One out of how many? I think I spent close to a hundred bucks that night for you to get one measly hit and prove your point.” He wrapped a hand around my calf and eased my foot out of my skate. His touch sent chills up my leg, causing a shiver to roll through me.

  I slid my other foot in front of him so he could remove that skate as well. The easiness between us returned. I’d missed this so much: the way his hands felt on my skin, how my body immediately responded to his. We’d always been this good together.

  His hand connected with my leg and he looked up. “So I really got the win tonight?”

  “Yep. Dinner at Sal’s on me. How about tomorrow?”

  “Saturday night? That’s date night.”

  “So?”

  Jake shook his head. “You go out with someone on a Saturday night around here and people assume things.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” As far as I was concerned, letting people assume Jake and I were back together would only work in my favor. I was all for assumptions.

  “It’s true. You know it as well as I do. How about Sunday?” He got up from his knees to sit on the bench next to me.

  “My mama’s got Sunday dinner all planned out. You’d be welcome to come over for pot roast and potatoes instead.” I only offered because I knew he’d turn me down.

  “Monday, then?” He pulled out his phone and opened up his calendar. “Oh wait, Monday’s no good. We have practice.”

  I wrapped my hand around his arm. “Are you afraid of Saturday night?”

  “Of course not. But it’s not a date.”

  “Fine.” I shrugged. “Not a date.”

  “It’s not,” he insisted. “We made a bet and you lost. That’s all it is.”

  “All it is,” I echoed.

  His forehead creased. “You don’t look like you’re taking me seriously.”

  I squeezed his arm. “Oh, I know you mean it. Just dinner. Fulfillment of a bet.” That’s what I said. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. In fact, I was hoping it would help him. Because I had no intention of letting the opportunity to go out on a Saturday night in Swallow Springs be lost.

  12

  Jake

  I showed up at the church parking lot right at nine. Robbie and some of the guys were already there, running hoses from the outdoor spigots and setting up tables. I wasn’t in the mood to work a car wash all day. My mind was reeling from my time with Misty last night. I hadn’t had a chance to make heads or tails of it, and I needed to before she picked me up for dinner at Sal’s.

  “Hey, where do you need me?” I joined a group waiting for instruction from Robbie.

  “Why don’t you take a few of the guys and set up some signs on the corners,” Robbie said. “The rest of us can start on the cars that pull in. After an hour or so we’ll switch.”

  “Sounds good.” I grabbed a poster board sign some of the guys made earlier in the week.

  “Hey, you okay this morning?” Robbie asked.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

  He moved closer so the kids couldn’t hear us. “How did things end up with you and Misty last night?”

  I shrugged. “She tripped and fell and owes me a steak dinner at Sal’s tonight. No biggie.”

  Robbie’s eyebrows shot skyward. “Y’all looked like you needed to get a room. That’s it? No biggie?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head as I tried to come up with a way to put everything into words. “She’s still Misty, you know? Nothing’s changed in that area. I get a hard-on just thinking about her.”

  “Whoa.” Robbie put his palm out. “No hard-ons at the car wash, please.”

  I let out a chuckle. “You know what I mean. It’s like the time apart didn’t even happen. If I wanted to, we could pick right back up where we left off.”

  “But it did happen.” Robbie planted a playful punch on my chest. “And you were a mess.”

  “Yeah, I know.” That was the reason I had to hold my ground and not give in. She’d wrecked me once, and I couldn’t let her do that to me again.

  “So dinner tonight at Sal’s?” he asked.

  “Yeah. She’s buying. I’m planning on the thirty-six ounce rib eye.”

  “That’ll teach her.” Robbie grinned. “Just be careful, okay?”

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Now get on out there and drum up some business for us. We need to wash some cars.” Robbie gestured to the street corner where a few of the baseball players stood.

  “You got it, boss.” I made a move to head that way but a glimpse of red, caught my eye. My mouth fell open. Oh, hell no.

  Robbie must have wondered what I was gaping at. He turned around and caught sight of her too. Misty came around the side of the building in cut-off jean shorts and a red tank top. A tight red tank top. A low-cut, tight, red tank top.

  One of the kids on the corner whistled. I whipped around so fast my baseball cap flew off my head. Torn between decking the kid who’d whistled and rushing to Misty’s side to shoo her back to her car, I stood paralyzed.

  Robbie was the first to move. “Hey, Misty. What are you doing here this morning?”

  “I figured I’d come help with the car wash. You need an extra set of hands?” Giant black sunglasses covered her eyes so I couldn’t get a read on her expression.

  “We’re set.” I reached out and touched her shoulder, whirling her around. “Why don’t you go on home? I’m sure you need time to get ready for dinner tonight.”

  “Jake, don’t be silly.” She snagged my hand in hers and let them dangle between us. “I’ve got the whole day. Besides, as I recall, you made it very clear that dinner is just dinner. So I wasn’t planning on doing much primping.”

  “I guess we could use some help.” Robbie shrugged.

  The glare I shot him should have shut him up for days. But he shook it off.

  “Why don’t you take a sign and see if you can get some folks to pull in?” Robbie took the sign from my hands and held it out to Misty.

  “This is a team event.” I gestured around to the guys who’d stopped doing whatever they’d been doing and now stared at the throw down between me, Misty, and Rob.

  “Well, I like the team,” Misty said with a smile. “I just want to show my support.”

  “And we’re happy to have it,” Robbie said. “Now why don’t you take that corner over there?”

  “Rob?”

  “Yeah?” Robbie finally made eye contact.

  “Can I have a word?” I ground out.

  “I’ll just be over there.” Misty wiggled her fingers in a wave before scampering over to the busy street corner.

  “What’s up?” Rob asked.

  “She can’t be here.” I felt like a two-year-old about to have a full-blown tantrum.

  “She’ll be good for business. Just look at her.” Rob nodded toward the corner where Misty stood talking to a guy in a convertible who’d stopped at the red light.

  “She’s not good for me. I can’t have her prancing around all day in that…that…hell, she barely has any clothes on.”

  “Why don’t you soap the cars? That way you won’t even have to look at her?” Robbie suggested.

  I didn’t want to soap cars. All I wanted was for today to start over. Without Misty in it.

  Robbie clamped a hand on my shoulder. “We need to raise as much as we can. If she’s willing to help, why not let her?”

  “You literally just told me to watch it around her.”

  “We need the cash, right?”<
br />
  I nodded.

  “She’ll be all the way over there. Just focus on what you need to do and pretend like she’s not even here.” He squeezed my arm then let his hand drop. “Besides, she’ll be good for business.”

  He was right, we did need all the help we could get. And as much as I hated to admit it, Misty would be a draw. I shot a glance her way where she stood directing a line of cars into the parking lot. Dammit. I stalked over to where the guys had set up a few washing stations and grabbed a hose. It was going to be a very long day.

  13

  Misty

  Jake hadn’t said two words to me since I showed up. Coming to the car wash was a risky move, especially since we already had plans for dinner. But I was short on time. I needed to plant myself in his presence as often as I could, especially over the weekend.

  I was about to take a break and wander over to where I’d last seen him. Being on my feet had aggravated my ankle. I needed to sit down for a few minutes. Still, no matter how much pain I was in or how much my pride had been bruised, it would all be worth it in the end.

  Robbie headed my way, a bottle of water in his hands. “Need a break?”

  “That would be great. And I’d love a water.” I reached for it. Even though it wasn’t noon yet, the sun beat down, causing sweat to bead along my hairline and run down my back.

  “Want to take a turn with the hose?” Rob asked. “You can cool off a bit and let the boys take over here.”

  I shot him a grateful smile. “That sounds good. It’s getting pretty warm out.”

  “You know who’s looking a little hot under the collar?” Robbie nodded toward where Jake stood. He’d taken off his shirt and was casting worried looks our way as he soaped up a minivan while a family waited nearby.