Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel

by Laura Trentham

  He wanted to know everything about her. Was her favorite color still green? Her favorite food still pizza? Had any other man come into her life and tried to hurt her? Had he succeeded? His hand tightened around hers as if he could protect her from her past.

  “There you are!” Tally jogged into the garage but stopped short, eyeing the two of them.

  The connection broken, Monroe pulled her hand out of his and tried to smile, but he could see the strain. The moment seemed to have left her shaken, too. Good.

  She shuffled backward a few steps, picked up the invitation, and held it out. “I was dropping this off for you.”

  Tally took the fingerprinted envelope from Monroe, but his sister’s gaze stayed on him as she hummed an ironic affirmative. “Looks like someone already left their mark on it.”

  “I’m going to get cleaned up. Convince Monroe to stay for dinner, Tally,” he said as if directing an underling. His sister wouldn’t let that kind of crap slide more than once, but he needed a few minutes alone. He limped away but felt two sets of eyes on him the whole way. Sawyer’s question about dinner necessitated a grunting answer before Cade closed himself behind the bathroom door.

  He turned the water to hot, propped his hands on the counter, and stared in the mirror. He was looking at someone else. Someone who looked like him but wasn’t exactly him. Not anymore. Or maybe he was closer to his real self than he’d been in years.

  Had he ever joked and laughed and teased a woman like that? He smiled at himself in the mirror, looking even more like a stranger. Probably he should be embarrassed he’d faked needing her help to tighten that nut, but he wasn’t. The feel of her body fueled desires he’d denied and squashed so many years ago when she’d been too young and innocent and he’d had nothing to offer.

  Steam fuzzed out his reflection, and he stepped into the shower to scrub off the grime. When she’d walked in with the sun highlighting her extraordinary legs, his breath had lodged somewhere behind the lump in his throat. Her vanilla-sweet scent had inflamed his imagination—images scrolled of laying her over the metal desk ready to be devoured.

  He’d come dangerously close to slamming his mouth down on hers and putting his filthy hands under that flirty little skirt of hers. His past relationships had been businesslike transactions, and he always kept the upper hand. His interactions with Monroe weren’t remotely businesslike. An old feeling he thought he’d left behind years ago had stopped him. He felt unworthy.

  He flipped the water to cold, the sting welcome. The uncertain, broken boy he’d been in Cottonbloom still existed, it seemed. Monroe was part of the past he’d tried to leave behind. She was his sister’s friend, his physical therapist, and an old … Acquaintance? Friend? Neither fit. Her place in his life wasn’t definable and seemed to be changing every minute he was in her company.

  A knot tightened and grew in his chest the longer he dallied in the bathroom. Had she stayed or gone? Suddenly he was desperate to know. He pulled on clean jeans and walked into the kitchen barefoot, tugging a black T-shirt over his head.

  His gaze caught her mid-laugh, standing at the sink with Tally. The electric connection that had formed in the garage arced the ten feet between them. With a long, slow exhale, the almost painful place around his heart eased. He didn’t want to examine why her being here was important.

  A pretty blush spread to her cheeks, highlighting her fair complexion. With her blue eyes and blond hair loose around her shoulders, she was a snapshot of innocence. But, seductive details shaded the simple picture—the edge of a lace bra peeking from her blouse, short skirt riding well above her knees, long bare legs and pink-painted toes.

  He half-tucked his T-shirt into his jeans. “You stayed.”

  “Tally twisted my arm.”

  His sister barked a laugh but didn’t comment further. Sawyer strode into the kitchen, their uncle Delmar on his heels. His uncle’s rich voice cut through the small room, a few decibels too loud for comfort. “Cade, my boy! Could you come look at my engine tomorrow? It’s acting up and I’ve got to get out on the river this week.”

  Delmar had been hard of hearing for as long as Cade could remember. His daddy had blamed Delmar’s hearing loss on a mortar explosion in Vietnam.

  Cade raised his voice. “Sure thing. I’ll drive out to your place tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Don’t want to put you out.”

  He made a scoffing sound. “Please. I have nothing going on besides physical therapy. It’ll give me something to do. Maybe I’ll have the old truck running by then, even though it’ll look a mess. Rust has been eating it away.”

  A dish clattered on the stove, drawing everyone’s eyes. Sawyer’s mouth was tight, and a now familiar tension both linked and repelled them. Anger licked around Cade’s chest. Sawyer had allowed the truck to turn into a wild animal sanctuary. What did he care if Cade drove it again?

  Uncle Del clapped Cade on the shoulder with a gnarled hand that resembled the roots of the cypress trees in the swamps. The aroma of tobacco smoke distilled from Del’s clothes even though he claimed to have quit a year earlier. The smell was oddly comforting.

  He sidled to Monroe and put an arm around her shoulders. Cade expected her to cringe away, but instead she leaned into his uncle’s hug and patted his shoulder. “I’ve missed seeing you around town, Del.”

  “You know how it is. City wouldn’t let me off for the start of duck season, so I told them to stick it.” Uncle Delmar’s laugh stuttered in his unique way, making him easy to pick out of a crowd.

  Raymond Fournette had been considered the successful brother, providing a solid middle-class lifestyle for his family. Like recalling an old movie, a conversation between his parents scrolled through his mind—his daddy urging his mama to be kinder, more patient, with Delmar because he couldn’t help the drinking and erratic behavior.

  Two quarter-sized scars courtesy of the Vietcong had faded into the wrinkles that drew his cheeks down. Delmar never talked about his deployment, but now Cade was older he understood his uncle bore more scars than what was visible.

  Before Cade’s parents were killed, he had been dismissive and more than a little embarrassed of his uncle. Delmar’s thankfully brief stint as the Cottonbloom Parish Elementary janitor had been the worst.

  Cade hadn’t yet sunk to the depths where an animal from one of Delmar’s traps was a godsend. Delmar hadn’t held any real or imagined slights against Cade and shared what he could. Cade would forever be grateful.

  Not taking his eyes off Monroe, he hooked a foot around one of the kitchen chairs and sat, stretching the sore muscles of his back. Sawyer’s setup in the garage wasn’t exactly ergonomic. He used the space to tinker on his cars, not as part of his paying job.

  If Cade was staying longer, he’d enclose the garage, put in air-conditioning, and buy better equipment. The convenience of having the river as a testing ground in the backyard was huge. The gears of his brain turned in a direction that should have him wanting to hightail it to the nearest airport. He pushed the thoughts away, not dismissing them but storing them in the “if hell freezes over” file.

  “Bartholomew has been talking about hiring some help. It would be cleaning and helping to file and such,” Monroe said. “Come on down and talk to him about it if you’re interested.”

  “That’s mighty nice of you. I’ll head over sometime soon.” That meant Delmar might show up first thing in the morning or three months from now. His concept of time revolved around hunting and fishing seasons.

  They fixed bowls of gumbo and took seats at their old round, scarred kitchen table. After the way Sawyer had let the truck molder, Cade was surprised he hadn’t chopped the table apart for kindling. With the family back together for the first time in years, the talk turned to the past.

  “Old Raymond could hit a squirrel at fifty feet with his slingshot. Never seen nothing like it before or since. And all the Fournettes can see in the dark. It’s said one of our ancestors saved a witch-woman out in the
swamps and she cast a spell for him.”

  Monroe laughed, but everyone else just nodded and her smile turned disbelieving. “Are you serious? All of you? Even you, Tally?”

  “I can’t see as well as the boys can, but better than most. Uncle Delmar’s exaggerating some. It’s not like we’re cats or anything.” She propped her chin in her hands, her eyes twinkling. Tally was as happy as Monroe had seen her in a long time.

  “The Fournettes were born night hunters. We have a leg up on the competition.” Delmar winked.

  “I never knew that,” Monroe murmured. She cast reassessing eyes toward Cade. He stared into his bowl of gumbo. There were lots of things she didn’t know about him.

  “You remember the night you tangled with that barbed-wire fence, Cade?”

  He touched his flank, knowing exactly where the scar lay even if he couldn’t feel it through the cotton. “How could I forget? Dangled there for a good half hour before you found me.”

  “You had me worried at first you didn’t have the Fournette makings for being a hunter, but you impressed me. You turned out all right, Cade.”

  Everyone’s eyes were on him, and he shrugged. No way would he admit how bone-deep scared he’d been that night. He hadn’t seen the fence because he’d been looking over his shoulder, sure something was after him—animal, ghost, he’d never been sure.

  He’d hunted and fished all his life, but that night was the first time it mattered. Catching something wasn’t a matter of pride; it was a matter of whether he had something substantial to feed Tally and Sawyer the next day or was opening another can of pork and beans. He’d never hunted with that kind of desperation.

  While he could see better than almost any man at night, to a sixteen-year-old whose imagination wasn’t grounded by harsh reality yet, danger permeated the shadows. After Delmar separated Cade’s clothes from the barbs, he’d continued with the hunt, even with the stinging pain in his side. He’d managed to bring down a buck close to dawn. There was no euphoric adrenaline rush, only relief and a numbing exhaustion.

  Delmar had given him a shot of whiskey—another first—and stitched him up. Unable to keep his eyes open a minute longer, he’d skipped school that day, promising not to miss another, but invariably he had until he fell so far behind it was either repeat a grade or drop out. It wasn’t long after dropping out he’d found Monroe in his boat.

  A touch feathered over his bad hand. It was drawn into a tight fist on his leg, pain prickling along the nerve endings. His hand unlocked like she was the key, and she threaded their fingers together, her thumb massaging up and down his scar.

  His anemic attempt at a smile fell as her blue eyes enveloped him. She couldn’t truly understand his childhood—he didn’t want to burden her with the depressing details—but she knew enough that he didn’t have to pretend with her. In fact, she knew more than anyone—even his family.

  “What do you think, Cade?” Sawyer asked.

  Pulling his gaze from hers was like separating magnets. “What’s that?”

  “If you can get Uncle Del’s motor fixed up, you want to head out on the river soon? Relive your past?”

  It was the last thing he wanted to do. His past needed to stay put. While Cade was trying to come up with an excuse, Monroe’s phone beeped. She pulled her hand from his and retrieved her phone.

  “Come on; it’ll be fun,” Sawyer said.

  Cade shot a quick glance in Sawyer’s direction. Was this a peace offering or a test? He was caught in a foreign state of indecision.

  “What d’you say, boy?” Uncle Del prodded.

  Chewing on her bottom lip, Monroe sent a return text and slipped her phone back in her purse. Was it Andrew Tarwater? Jealousy gave Cade’s words an unintended bite. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “We don’t need you to come, you know.” Sawyer’s voice took on a childlike petulance.

  Cade had failed the test and would have to work for some extra points. Pulling at the hair on his chin, he transferred his attention to Sawyer, even as he remained aware of every shift and sigh coming from Monroe.

  “No, I want to come. The closest I’ve been to a boat or body of water lately is the tank we use to optimize engine designs.”

  Sawyer slumped in his chair and toyed with his spoon. “We’ll hit all our old haunts.”

  “Dinner was amazing, guys, but I have to open the gym up in the morning.” Tally pushed up from the table. “Will I see you tomorrow, Monroe?”

  “Definitely. Will I see you at the fund-raiser?”

  “Doubtful.” Tally’s laugh sounded like someone had told a bad joke. “Not really my crowd.”

  The clap of the screen door prodded everyone into action. Monroe rose, stacked the bowls, and carried them to the sink. Sawyer waved her off. “Cade’ll wash up later, right, man?”

  Sawyer chucked his head, and he and Uncle Delmar moved their discussion of fishing lures into the den.

  “I can help clean up.” Monroe rubbed her hands down the front of her skirt and fingered the hem. It only made him more aware of her legs and what lay underneath.

  “Absolutely not. You’ve worked all day. Your feet must be tired in those shoes.”

  One corner of her mouth hitched as she cocked her ankle. “I didn’t wear this to work.”

  Her gaze streaked up, and he noted the flash of consternation in her face. Had she just admitted to dressing up for him? His mouth dried. What was his play? Dating in Seattle usually included a fancy dinner and bed. A gentleman wouldn’t throw her over his shoulder and make straight for a bedroom. A gentleman would … walk her to her car?

  “Guess I’ll be heading out then.” She backed toward the door. He stepped around her and held the screen door open for her. “You don’t have to—”

  “I know, but I’m going to.”

  They walked in silence. The oppressive heat of the day had given over to a cooling night. She slid into the driver’s seat of her SUV. He rocketed back in time, watching his laughing parents set off on their final date.

  Before Monroe could close the door, he grabbed the steering wheel, his hand next to hers. “Will you text me when you get home?”

  Surprise but also wariness came over her face. “I can take care of myself. I’m a black belt, if you’ll recall.”

  He swallowed, not sure how to express the illogical need to know she was safe. He averted his gaze. A whip-poor-will sat a few branches up, his song haunting and full of loss. “It’s not that. I saw you in action. But … what if a deer ran in front of your SUV or you broke down or something?” There were probably a hundred other people she would call over him if she needed help. Maybe even Tarwater.

  She feathered her hand over his and gave a quick squeeze before reaching for her purse. “Sure, I’ll text you. What’s your number?”

  Once she was ready, he rattled off the number, thankful she hadn’t made him admit his fears aloud. The moonlight made her appear younger and more vulnerable, casting him back a decade. She cranked the engine. Still he didn’t step away.

  “Night, Cade.”

  His stay in Cottonbloom was temporary. He had no right to kiss her. Forcing his legs to move took Superman-like strength. “Good night, Monroe.”

  Her taillights were swallowed by the darkness in the tree line at the edge of the road. He stood there staring into the night until his phone beeped.

  Made it home. Anytime you need help with your nuts, give me a call.

  The building worry crumbled like a sand castle in his wave of laughter. He had no idea if she was flirting or not, the uncertainty nerve-wracking and exhilarating at the same time. A million cockleburs tumbled in his stomach. The whip-poor-will called again, this time his song mocking.

  Chapter Eight

  Two nights later, Monroe lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling fan going round and round in an endless loop with no forward progress—mimicking her thoughts. Cade had canceled their last appointment with no real excuse. Tally had only shrugged and rolled her eyes when
asked. Now Monroe had his number, she’d started about twenty different texts, each one sounding more adolescent than the last.

  Every time their paths crossed, another door unlocked between them, the way becoming darker and more confusing. He was different from her adolescent memories, yet under the gruff, sometimes distant, façade he wore she recognized the man-boy who’d protected her that night and come to her so many times afterward.

  His insistence that she check in with him had been driven by a deep fear. A fear he refused to admit, and compassion had softened her knee-jerk reaction. She didn’t need his protection anymore, but she could at least offer reassurance.

  Her life seemed to hinge on that night, her trajectory forever changed. After that night she’d vowed never to depend on someone else—not even her mother. Especially not her mother.

  Monroe had checked out self-defense videos from the library and taught herself Jackie Chan–style moves in the privacy of her bedroom. Even with the confidence they’d instilled, she’d slept with her door wedged shut whether a man was in the house or not.

  After she and Regan had become roommates at college, Monroe had jammed a chair under the knob only once. Regan had been the picture of questioning surprise, and Monroe recognized how odd and irrational the habit had become. Still, it had taken a year before she’d slept soundly. Mastering jujitsu had added another layer of confidence and given her a new handle on her fears.

  Her phone buzzed. Nerves spiraled from her stomach. She glanced at the screen, her hand trembling. Not Cade, but one of the girls from her program. Relief, disappointment, and worry collided.

  “Hey, Kayla, what’s up?” She sat up.

  “Mon-Monroe?” Behind the girl’s teary, shattered voice came the low buzz of voices and the occasional bark of laughter.

  “What’s wrong? Where are you?” She stood and stared into the empty grate of her fireplace, her senses attuned to whatever was on the other side of the phone.