by Serena Bell
“Sawyer.”
It’s Diane behind me. “Come help me stack the presents up for Jonah to open.”
“You start. I’ll be right there.”
Diane tips her head to one side, eyeing Elle and me, then drifts back to where the presents are strewn across the kitchen counter.
When I look back at Elle, her eyes have followed Diane into the kitchen.
“You don’t have to go.”
Her gaze snaps back to mine.
“Stay for the presents.”
She smiles, faintly, but shakes her head. “Send Madden back when you’re done with him.”
Then she scoops up her purse, does a quick round of polite goodbyes, and is gone.
Chapter 29
Sawyer
“You’re fucking her,” Brooks says mildly.
The party’s over; the guests have gone home. Lucy’s parents have left, and my parents are tucking Jonah in upstairs while Brooks and I clean up the kitchen.
“What are you talking about?”
“That woman. Ellie.”
“Elle.”
“You’re fucking her.” He gestures with the frosting-covered fork he’s holding.
“I’m not fucking her.”
Okay, that’s a technicality. I did fuck her. And if all goes according to plan, I will fuck her. But presently Elle and I are post-fucking and pre-fucking, and thus not fucking.
“You want to fuck her,” Brooks says. “You’re going to fuck her.”
The man can read minds. It is his best and his worst trait.
He crosses his arms and glowers at me. “Don’t do it. She isn’t that kind of woman. You can tell just by looking at her. The kind of woman you can fuck and walk away from is like dark chocolate. You know that cracking noise dark chocolate makes when you bite it or break it? That’s called snap. Dark chocolate has snap. It has a strong backbone. It knows what it is. Ellie—”
“Elle,” I correct involuntarily, and he gives me another look: Oh, Jesus, man, you are a mess.
“—Elle has a soft-and-chewy center. She’s a caramel.” He jams the fork into the dishwasher, following it up with another handful of silverware.
“You’re a lunatic.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Tell me you don’t know what I mean.”
I close my eyes, briefly.
“Sawyer, she’s your neighbor. Bad idea. Don’t do it.”
“I think it might be too late.”
Brooks stares at me.
I tell him about the wedding and the agreement Elle and I made. I give him a quick rundown of the foreplay situation, details omitted, just enough so he grasps the lay of the land. No pun intended.
“We both totally know what we’re getting ourselves into,” I say in conclusion.
“No one ever knows what they’re getting themselves into,” Brooks says. “Sex is like a giant black hole. You think you’re in charge, but there’s all this gravitational pull and antimatter, and before you know it you’ve been sucked into something that even the world’s best scientists don’t know shit about.”
I eye him. “Does this have anything to do with that woman you said you shouldn’t have slept with? Your friend’s girlfriend’s friend?”
“We’re talking about you, not me,” Brooks says.
“Sure we are.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
I grab a handful of paper plates and shove them en masse into the kitchen garbage. He’s wrong. He’s wrong about Elle, and I need him to know it.
“She’s strong,” I say. “Her asshole ex-husband cheated on her in the worst way, and she didn’t fall apart. She’s raising her kid on her own. She stands up for herself and her people. Give her some credit, okay? She’s not a caramel. She knows her own mind, and she knows where she and I stand, so mind your own black hole of sex nothingness and let me mind mine.”
The look Brooks gives me now is in a whole other category. Like I just told him I’ve taken up ballet dancing.
“You like her.”
I shrug. “ ’Course I like her.”
“No, I mean, you like her like her.”
“What are we, in seventh grade?”
“I just wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t see you getting over Luce anytime in this cent—”
“I’m not over Luce.” My voice is hard.
Brooks puts both his hands up and takes a step back. “Yikes, man. Sorry.”
“I’ll never be over Luce.”
My heart is pounding with anger and a deep, gut-clenching sadness.
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Brooks takes a step toward me and puts his hand on my arm. “I shouldn’t have said that. Look, I think it’s a good thing. A real good thing. It’s okay to be happy, you know? Luce would want you to be happy. You know that.”
I shake my head.
What I know is that it’s complicated to give up the person you love most in the world, and knowing you have no choice in the matter doesn’t make it any easier.
When Lucy knew she was dying—I mean, when she really, really knew there was nothing left to do—she told me, I know you’ll have to move on.
We were home—in the old house—downstairs in the living room, where hospice had set up a hospital bed for her. Her hand worked convulsively at the thin sheet. I want you to move on, in the good, big part of my heart. But there’s this mean, selfish part of me that wants to throw things when I think about you falling in love with someone else.
By that point, she’d been too weak to actually follow through on the threat to throw things, and yet, she grabbed my hand so hard it hurt and drew me in. Her lips were perennially chapped, her eyes huge in her thin face, her skin smelled strange and feverish, but I still wanted to be as close to her as I could get. I’m pretty sure that when I die, the mean, selfish part will die and the good, big part will be the only part left. And all I’ll know, and all I’ll care about, is that you’re happy. So I guess what I’m saying is, even if it hurts to think about it right now, I want you to fall in love again.
She took a deep breath. It rattled, just a little, in her chest, like her rib bones were leaves blowing in an early winter wind.
Just make sure she deserves it. Because your love, Sawyer Paulson, is the best thing I know, and you shouldn’t go around squandering it on anyone. Make sure she loves you like you deserve.
I pull myself together, swab at my eye with the back of my sleeve. I think I got something in it.
I glare at my brother.
“I’m not over Luce.”
I’m expecting Brooks to back down, if only to avoid the potential of my losing my shit again, but he levels a stare at me that’s surprisingly fierce.
“I get it,” he says. “You know I loved her like a sister. There’s no one like Luce. But don’t forget I’ve known you your whole life. You’ve fucked a lot of women but you’ve only really liked one, ever, and that was Luce. So I take it kind of seriously that you like this one—Elle—”
He’s gotten her name right, and he nods at me to acknowledge it.
“—enough to invite her to your kid’s birthday party. To stand up for her when your brother calls her a caramel. You like her,” he repeats. “You like her like her. And that’s gotta mean something. So I guess I’m just saying, as your brother…”
He takes a deep breath.
“Try not to fuck this up too bad.”
Chapter 30
Elle
After I get Madden to bed, I change into my rubber-duck pajamas, brush my hair and twist it into a bun, wash my face, brush my teeth, and throw myself down on the couch in the living room with a package of Oreos. My plan is to eat too many of them and feel sorry for myself.
I’m halfway through one row of cookies when the doorbell rings.
I can’t stop myself from liking him more and more. And it was pretty clear to me today at the party that I can’t stop myself from being jealous of his dead wife. And it felt so much like the way it used to feel to be with Trevor and hear him talk about Helen. Helen this. Helen that.
But I’m with you, Trevor used to say, when I called him on it. Don’t be ridiculous, he sometimes said, when I told him I was jealous of her.
Only he wasn’t with me. And I wasn’t being ridiculous.
Sawyer’s knock sounds again. He knows I’m in here.
He’s leaning casually on my railing when I open the door. His dark hair is rumpled. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt that’s a little too tight (in the best possible way) and a pair of cutoff sweats. I want to grab him, haul him inside, and run my hands over every square inch of his body.
Instead, I say, “Where’s Jonah?”
“Asleep. Brooks and my parents are with him. Can I come in?”
“I don’t think you should.”
His eyes move over my face, probing. “Why not?”
“I don’t think we should do—this—anymore.”
He doesn’t seem surprised, which shores up my conviction that I’m right.
“What if I told you I just want to talk to you? And that’s not code for anything else, I swear.”
I hesitate. I worry that if I let him in, I’ll let him kiss me, and if he kisses me, I’ll lose the resolve I forged this afternoon. If I let myself have feelings for Sawyer, I’m going to be in a world of hurt. I’m going to spend every minute I’m with him knowing that I can’t measure up.
He holds up a hand. “Five minutes.”
I hold the door open and let him walk past me. I follow him into the living room, where we sit on opposite ends of the couch with a broad stretch of upholstery between us. Even then, I don’t feel safe, not with how much I want to slide my hands under his clothes, feel the heat of his skin.
Or with how he’s looking at me.
“Brooks pointed something out to me today,” he says.
I’m silent.
“He reminded me that I don’t like very many women. Or people, period, I guess. I don’t open up easily. I don’t warm up. I don’t make friends everywhere I go.” He rubs his palm over the evening scruff riming his jaw.
I’m not sure where he’s going with this.
“He’s right. I don’t feel comfortable with most people. But I do feel comfortable with you. Like I can be my real self.”
A warm vine twines itself around in my chest (not to mention several other parts of me), but my voice, when it emerges, is still wary. “I’m—glad.”
“And there’s the sex thing. I’ve had a lot of sex.”
“Yeah. I gathered,” I say darkly.
“But I haven’t had sex twice with anyone other than Lucy.”
“How is that possible?” I demand, forgetting caution completely in my shock.
“Just never wanted to. Before you.”
Before you. I feel breathless, almost giddy, but I remind myself that all he’s said so far is that he feels comfortable with me and—which I knew—rarely goes back for seconds. Hardly a ringing endorsement of whatever is going on between us…
He leans in, face earnest, eyes serious, and reaches for my hands. “But I want to. I want to have sex with you again. I want it a lot. And it’s not just because you’re hot or good in bed, because lots of those other one-time women were those things, too. It’s because you’re you, and I like you.”
“Oh,” I say, trying not to get bowled over by the marching band blaring happy songs straight through the middle of my chest. I want to make sure he’s saying what I think he’s saying before I let myself join the celebration.
“I guess what I’m saying, not very well, is that I think we should try to make this work. You and me. A—” He squints. “Relationship.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, despite how cautious I’m still feeling, I burst out laughing. It’s the way he says it, the way some people would say eels.
“You don’t sound enthusiastic,” I say, both eyebrows raised. At the same time, I’m wildly hopeful. Because before he said relationship like it was greasy or squirmy or furred with mold, he said you and me.
He leans in, his breath brushing my lips an instant before his mouth seals mine.
“Mmm,” I whimper, and I can feel the curve of his smile, and mine answering.
He breaks the kiss. “I’m enthusiastic about you,” he says. “I just find that word relationship hard to say. Like moist or bulbous.”
I cringe. “You just killed my sex drive. Dead. You can go home now.”
His turn to raise an eyebrow. “Really?”
“No hope for resuscitation.”
“Not even if I do this?” He brushes his lips along the line from my earlobe to the corner of my mouth, and I shiver with delight. “Or this?” He tickles around the shell of my ear with his breath, then laughs at my moan. “What about this?” He lets his fingertips trail down the side of my breast so they barely caress me through my shirt.
“Maybe,” I say, but it comes out a gasp, and we both know I’m toast. For good measure, he lowers his mouth to mine and kisses me until I make whimpering sounds at the back of my throat and wrangle handfuls of his T-shirt.
He pulls back for a moment, his eyes serious. “So? What do you think?”
“I think you give good foreplay,” I say.
“No. I mean about giving it a go.”
I extricate myself from him, slowly untangling my fingers from the soft cotton of his shirt and climbing off from where I had straddled him somewhere in the middle of the kiss.
“What would it mean?” I ask cautiously.
“Dinner with me one night this week. Going to Trevor’s wedding together as a real couple, not a fake one. Evening brain dumps—honey, I’m home, here’s what happened today. Lots of sexting. If you want.”
“I want,” I say, a little more eagerly than I mean to let him see.
But he doesn’t draw away in horror. He smiles at me, a smile so warm and so different from those early barely-there quirks of his mouth that I need to hold myself together at the seams.
Then he does something I’m not expecting at all. He pulls me close and hugs me.
He is big and warm and when he wraps me up, I feel completely at home and completely—
I was going to say safe, but the truth is, it’s really more like:
Scared. Shitless. By. How. Much. I. Like. It.
Chapter 31
Sawyer
As promised, I take Elle out to dinner on Wednesday night.
We leave Madden and Jonah with Brooks. Brooks grumbles a bit when he finds out I’m leaving him in charge of both boys, but I can tell he’s secretly thrilled to participate in their Nerf gun fight. He gazes down at the Nerf machine gun that Jonah has lent him, looking like a boy at Christmas, and by the time I leave, he’s chasing the boys around the house, bellowing nerfy death threats.
Elle had offered to walk Madden over, but I told her I wanted it to be a real date, by which I meant that I would ring her front doorbell and escort her to my truck.
The truth is, I want the chance to start over and do things right. We did everything backwards—crazy monkey sex first, foreplay after, getting to know each other third. But now I have a chance to make up for it. I can take her on a real first date, woo her, seduce her, treat her the way she deserves.
She opens the door wearing a blue dress made out of some soft-looking knitted fabric, with a deep scoop neck. Her skin is pale, pure porcelain where the sun hasn’t touched it, lightly freckled above, and I want to bury my face—actually, pretty much my whole self—in those generous curve
s.
Apparently, no matter how much I want to give her the first date she deserves, I can’t turn off my body’s caveman response to hers.
“You look amazing,” I tell her. I hold out the big bunch of black-eyed Susans in my hand. Her eyes get big and her lower lip trembles as she reaches out to take them.
“You brought me flowers.”
I think, Trevor Thomas is the world’s biggest asshole.
She runs inside to put the flowers in water, then comes back, beaming at me.
That fucking smile. I’d bring her another ten bunches to see her smile like that again and again.
She gives me a once-over. “You look pretty great yourself.”
I’m wearing a pair of gray slacks and a button-down shirt. Nothing special, but I’ll happily take the way her eyes rake over me.
She locks up the house and follows me to the truck, where I open the door for her, then stand back and not-so-surreptitiously watch her climb up.
She’s wearing high-heeled sandals that tip her ass up and make her calves even more shapely than usual. The flirty skirt of the blue dress skims her thighs, milk pale and so soft I can barely keep myself from reaching out to stroke the skin on the inner surface.
“Are you looking up my skirt?” she inquires.
Honesty is the best policy, especially when you’ve been caught out. “Yes.”
She casts a wink and a smile over her shoulder at me, then flips up the back of her skirt so quickly I catch only a fleeting glance of red lace against pale skin before she hops up into the truck.
Elle has changed since I met her at Maeve’s. She was subdued that night, sad, with a streak of darkness and an air of defeat. Tonight she is all lightness and fun, and I want to take as much of it into me as I can. Or—my dick hardens in anticipation—submerge myself in her. Not that that will happen tonight. I’m determined to keep to our schedule: foreplay tonight, the real thing this weekend when we have time to enjoy each other. Brooks will stay tonight with Madden and Jonah as late as we want, but tomorrow morning, Elle and I need to wake up in our own beds.