by M. S. Parker
“That’s a good idea.” His words slurred together, but he at least seemed like he was in a good mood. His bleary gaze shifted to Abigail, and he squinted at her. “You’re not my cousin.”
“No, Finn, she’s not. This is Abigail. Your cousin went into the house about twenty minutes ago with a future Republican Senator.”
“Damn her,” Finn declared loudly with an off balanced stomp of his foot. “We don’t need more of those in the family.”
Abigail made a noise, and a quick glance told me she was trying to hold back her laughter.
I couldn’t stop from smiling too. “You know what, Finn,” I said in my most reasonable voice, “why don’t I take you to the house to find her? She can give you a ride home, right?”
He frowned, trying to sort things out in his drunken mind. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Yes,” I answered truthfully and held out my hand. “Give me your car keys.”
“Why should I do that?”
“Because you’re drunk,” I said, hand still out. “And I need to take Abigail back to NYU.”
He cackled. “You want to have sex with her.”
Color rushed into Abigail’s cheeks, and I smacked Finn on the back of the head. “Behave yourself.”
“It’s okay,” he stage-whispered to Abigail. “I don’t want to have sex with you. I’m gay.”
“Okay, that’s it. You’re going inside.” I put my arm around his waist to get him more upright, and then I glanced at Abigail with an apologetic look. “His keys are in his coat pocket, and the car is over there. It’s the one with the Harvey Milk bumper sticker. Get in, start it, get the heat going. I’ll be right there.”
As I headed for the house, I didn’t let myself think too long about the possibility that Abigail would simply take Finn’s car and go on her own. She didn’t really seem like the sort to steal a car, but maybe she wouldn’t look at it as stealing if she left it for Finn somewhere. I hoped she did as I said though. Aside from the fact that I wanted to spend the drive to NYU learning more about her, I had a bad feeling that the weather was going to get worse, and I didn’t know how comfortable she was driving, let alone on snow. A lot of people who lived in New York didn’t drive.
“I think you like that girl,” Finn said. “She likes you too.”
“Really?” I asked, amused. “Not ten minutes ago, you were talking to a tree.”
“That is a good point,” he conceded. “I really did think you and Joy would get along.”
“She was nice,” I admitted, “but that spark wasn’t there. We both knew it.”
“But you have a spark with Abby back there.”
“I do.” I managed to open the front door without dumping my friend on the front step. The party hadn’t missed a beat, and no one even batted an eye when I deposited Finn on the couch. “Are you sober enough to remember to find Joy?”
He shrugged. “If not, I’ll sleep here and figure out a ride in the morning.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Take care of your girl.”
I didn’t explain to him that Abigail wasn’t my girl, but I was determined to find out if she could be. The sooner, the better. The thought moved me forward, hustling back to the last place I’d seen the pretty brunette, hoping the entire time that she hadn’t taken off on me. If she had, I wouldn’t have any choice but to go to NYU and talk to every student until I found her. I was a reporter. I could do that.
But I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to.
She wasn’t by the bonfire, but I could see Finn’s car was on and still parked in the same place. By the time I got there, I was chilled clean through, but my heart was racing, and I barely noticed the cold. I got into the driver’s seat and brushed the snow from my shoulders, giving Abigail a tight smile. Now that I was in the car with her, I found my tongue tied.
“Thank you for taking me home.” She broke the silence for me. “I don’t know where Griselda went and I’m pretty sure I’m not speaking to her for a while after that disaster of a date.”
“Was it really a complete disaster?” I asked as I maneuvered the car around to head back down the driveway. “It brought us together, after all.”
“True,” she said. “But I think the fire had more to do with that than Griselda’s horrible cousin.”
“But neither of us would’ve been here tonight if it wasn’t for our meddling friends.”
“Also true,” she agreed. After a beat, she added, “Thank you, by the way. I realized that I’d been too shocked to say that before.”
“Anyone else would’ve done the same.”
“But no one else could have tackled me quite so well.”
I laughed, but the sound was strained. Not because of what she said, but because the roads were worse than I’d imagined. It was still snowing, the glare of the headlights turning the world around us into the sort of brilliant white that would’ve been beautiful if it hadn’t been dangerous.
“It wasn’t this bad when we came in.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She’d managed to find some music that wasn’t annoying while I’d dropped off Finn, and for a while, it was the only sound in the car. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence because I knew we could’ve found dozens of things to talk about if I hadn’t been worrying so much about the way the tires were sliding on the ice and snow.
And then, suddenly, we were sliding too.
I fought with the wheel as the brakes locked and we spun around. Abigail grabbed my arm, a surprised sound that was somewhere between a scream and a shout. Then, we stopped as suddenly as we’d started, the rear end of the car slamming into something at a tilt.
“Are…are you okay?” I managed to ask after taking a couple deep breaths.
“I am,” she answered breathlessly, her hand still tight on my arm. “You?”
“Yeah.” I nodded as I looked around. “I think we’re in a ditch.”
Abigail’s laugh had a slightly hysterical edge to it, and I wondered if she’d let me make this up to her or if I’d completely ruined everything.
I heard the click of her unbuckling her seatbelt and looked over in time to see her lean toward me…and then her mouth was on mine.
Twelve
Abigail
Night, December 23rd, 1984
The Hamptons
I could be a little spontaneous, but I’d never considered myself impulsive until the moment I kissed CT Hunter.
I’d been thinking about it almost non-stop since I’d been able to wrap my brain around the whole ‘tackled because I was on fire’ thing. The whole time while I was standing by the bonfire, pretending that I cared about the weather, I was wondering what it would feel like to be kissed by a man like CT. I’d been kissed before, but not anything memorable, not like how I knew it would be to kiss this particular man.
Then we ditched the car, and I decided that I didn’t want to wait for him to make the first move. I felt his surprise for only a second before he responded, his hands going to my hair, fingers digging in as his mouth moved with mine. His lips were warm and much softer than I’d imagined. He leaned into me, then stopped, jerked back by his seatbelt.
He broke the kiss with a breathless chuckle and took a minute, resting his forehead on mine. Air rasped in and out of my lungs, the sound loud inside the mostly quiet car. The snow had already covered the windshield, and every glass surface was fogged over, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere where it seemed like we were the only two people in existence. My whole life, I’d never been as aware of another person as I was of him right then.
“Well, that was…unexpected.” His fingertips traced lightning down my cheeks. “Unexpected, but not unwelcome.”
I smiled, relieved that whatever this was between us, it wasn’t one-sided.
I’d been on the occasional date, but nothing had ever gone beyond a kiss or two, and I’d never initiated any of them. It wasn’t like I’d been saving myself for someone, but I wasn’t about to give myself a second-rate fi
rst time simply because of some notion that the only way to take control of my sexuality was to have sex with multiple people as soon as I was ‘ready’ at fifteen or sixteen.
“I was worried it was all me,” he said. His thumb moved lazily along my bottom lip. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Me either,” I confessed.
He curled his fingers around the back of my neck, his eyes locked with mine. He was going to kiss me, and I knew if I allowed it, whatever was happening between us would become something more. I didn’t know how long we’d be stuck in this car, and that meant I didn’t know how far we would go. I didn’t know how far I wanted to go…
I made a small, blissful sound the moment his lips brushed against mine, and I realized that I was thinking far too much.
He pulled me over the console between us, skillfully maneuvering me until I straddled his lap. I wasn’t aware he’d removed his seatbelt until I no longer felt it between us, but it seemed like the least of things I needed to concentrate on. He pressed a hand against the small of my back, holding me tight against him even as his tongue swept between my lips. I wrapped my arms around his neck, letting him explore my mouth.
The car was still running, but all of the heat was generating between us. He pushed his jacket off my shoulders and tossed it into the seat next to us. My coat followed it, leaving me in my thin, fitted sweater, but even that felt like too much. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Crawl under his skin. I wanted to be closer to him, feel him…
His teeth scraped over my bottom lip, and I moaned, an embarrassing sound that brought heat to my cheeks. I squirmed on his lap and was gratified to hear him make a similar noise. I gripped the shoulders of his shirt, pulled at it. He laughed, breaking the kiss to pull his shirt over his head. He tossed it up onto the heating vents.
“Might as well let it dry a bit.”
I heard him, but all of my attention was on the fine specimen of manhood in front of me. I was pretty sure that I’d never uttered the words fine specimen of manhood before, but if they could ever be applied to anyone, it was this man right here. A beautiful lean body with cut, defined muscles over every inch I could see.
And ink.
“What’s this?” I asked, running my finger over the design.
“An olive branch.” His voice was shaky. “For my mom. That’s her name.”
I leaned forward and pressed my lips to the tattoo. He sucked in a breath, fingers tangling in my still-damp hair.
“I like it. Much better than a typical ‘mother’ tattoo.”
He took my mouth in another toe-curling kiss, tugging me closer until the heat from his body seeped through my shirt to my hardening nipples. I let my hands roam over soft skin and hard muscles, greedily taking in every dip and curve. His free fingers slipped under the hem of my sweater, drawing patterns on my skin that made every inch of me tingle.
How had I never known that it could be like this?
Or maybe I’d known all along and that was why I’d been waiting. I’d wanted someone who could make me feel like this.
When his hands slid around my waist and moved up my ribcage, I knew where he was going. He’d stop if I asked him to, I had no doubt about that. He wasn’t like Theo. Which was why I didn’t want CT to stop.
“Please,” I whispered. “I want you to touch me.”
He bit down on my bottom lip again. “You don’t think this is too fast?”
He had a point, but I didn’t care. “No sex…but I want your hands on me.”
CT nodded but didn’t instantly grab me the way I’d thought he would. I could feel the strength and power in him, feel how much he held himself in check. When his hands finally moved up and around enough to cup my breasts through my bra, a shiver went through me, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside. His thumbs moved over my nipples, chafing the sensitive skin with friction and soft cotton.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?” He pressed a kiss to my jaw, and then to my collarbone. “But I don’t believe for one moment that’s all you are. I want you, but I want all of you.”
Despite our current situation, I didn’t think he was only talking about sex. And neither was I when I responded, “I want all of you too.”
He raised his head, his expression serious. “This should be crazy, right? Us feeling like this so fast?”
“It should be,” I agreed. “But it’s not, is it?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t explain it, but there’s something between us. Something I don’t want to ignore.”
“Me either.”
“Then this doesn’t end when we get pulled out of this ditch.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but I didn’t need it to be. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
This was a strange conversation to be having. “Working in the morning and early afternoon, but after that, nothing. I wanted to work as much as I could at the hospital over break, so I told my parents I was staying at school.”
He smiled and twisted some of my hair around his finger. “Would you come to a Christmas Eve party my parents are having here tomorrow evening?”
“You want me to meet your parents?” I probably should have been freaking out, but I was still in the stunned phase.
He brushed his lips across mine. “I want you to meet everyone, and then I want to spend the holiday with you. The first of what I hope will be many.”
When I’d left my room with Griselda earlier today, this was not how I’d expected the night to end, but it was better than anything I could’ve hoped for. Of course, there was only one thing I could say.
“Yes.”
Thirteen
Slade
Night, December 23rd, Present Day
Hudson Valley, New York
“Mom accepted the invitation, and an hour or so later, someone driving by happened to see the car and used their truck to get them out of the ditch, get them back on the road.”
Cai finished up his story in the same matter-of-fact tone that he’d used to tell the rest of it. He wasn’t much of a storyteller, but he didn’t have to be to keep us all entranced. It was a story about our parents we’d never heard before. For Blake and me, both had been new.
For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire. No one moved or spoke, and I knew we were all trying to absorb the many emotions these stories had brought up.
A part of me that I hadn’t known about before was aching now. Each of the four of us had found our own roles to play after the accident. Jax had become Grandfather’s surrogate son and our surrogate father. Cai had hidden himself in books and tests, the ardent and accomplished student who became the brilliant doctor and scientist. Blake had been the angry one, the only one of us who’d shown genuine emotion, and the one we’d all felt the need to protect. He’d eventually turned into a recluse, only recently brought out of his shell by Brea.
I’d been the funny one. According to Jax and Cai, I’d been that way before, but I remembered making a conscious decision not long after we’d moved in with our grandparents. I would be the one to make everyone smile again. It became my shield, my way of deflecting more than dealing. I’d never let myself miss my parents or sister, and now I felt their absence in a way I’d never imagined.
The clock on the mantle chimed, breaking the silence. We blinked, shook ourselves as we came back from wherever our thoughts had taken us. Before things could get awkward, Cheyenne stood.
“I really should call Austin to tell him good night,” she explained. “He’ll never get to sleep if I don’t.”
I pushed myself to my feet, feeling almost drunk as I waited to see if my legs would hold me. I hadn’t had enough of the eggnog to even be tipsy, but I already knew that wasn’t what had me wobbly. This whole day had been strange. No, if I was being completely honest, the last few weeks had been strange. The past couple hours had only been the most recent of it all.
“I want to say good night too.”
As if my declar
ation had granted permission to everyone else, the other couples quietly excused themselves as well, and we all made our way upstairs, no one speaking even as we moved into our individual rooms. The mood that had settled on us tonight was a somber one, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the others were having private tensions as well.
“He’ll probably want me to read him a story over the phone,” Chey said, “which means he’ll fall asleep. Would you mind talking to him first? It won’t take long for me to get ready for bed.”
“No problem.”
While she headed to the bathroom to wash up, I pulled out my phone and plopped down in the odd-looking wicker chair that sat in the corner of the room. It made an ominous creaking sound but didn’t break, so I figured it was safe for the moment.
“Slade, you have wonderful timing.” Estrada’s pleasant voice answered on the second ring. “Austin and I were just settling in with some warm milk before he goes to bed. I have you on speaker.”
“Hi, Slade!” Austin called out. “I’m drinking warm milk!”
I laughed. “That’s what I hear. Were you good for Estrada?”
“Yep! I helped her wash Christmas dishes, and then we made tortillas for supper.”
“He ate very well,” Estrada put in.
“And I was allowed to have two cookies because I ate so big.”
“Really? What sort of cookies did you have?”
I smiled as Austin launched into a detailed description of the iced sugar cookies that he and Estrada had made earlier in the day. They were practice cookies for the ones they’d make tomorrow to leave out for Santa. He was still explaining to me how Santa managed to eat so many cookies without getting a stomachache – something to do with him needing all that energy to deliver all the presents – when Cheyenne came out of the bathroom, wrapped up in the fluffy pink robe I’d bought her for her birthday. It had matched her hair at the time, but it still looked cute with the blue streaks.
“Hey, Austin, guess who just joined us?”