by J Santiago
Shaking his head, he moved toward her. “Sorry.”
She shook her head, neither annoyed nor bewildered. He watched as she looked past him—to Amber, he assumed. Her eyes widened slightly, so the first emotion he could make out was surprise. He ignored it.
When he went to reach for her elbow to guide her away from his blunder, Amber spoke, “You’ll let me know.”
The hardness of the tone pushed him over the edge. He squeezed Madison’s elbow before he turned away from her and stomped back to Amber.
The smack of a hand on his back made his head snap to the right, the memory folding in on itself and disappearing back into his mind.
Tilly stood there with a silly smile on his face. “My future mother-in-law wants a tour. You up to it, or are you okay with me leading a nosy woman through your house?”
Tank laughed. He was about to offer to lead the tour, but movement at the bar drew his attention. Amber leaned against it. No one else was on the deck, and he didn’t want to lose the opportunity to have a conversation with her. He quickly scanned the scene inside, noting Madison was talking to Keira’s mom.
“Have at it, man.”
He ignored the knowing look in Tilly’s eyes and turned back to the view, hoping she would come to him.
Tilly snickered behind his back and said in a low tone for only Tank to hear, “I got you, bro.”
Tank didn’t answer. None was needed.
Tank had met Tilly on his recruiting visit to Kensington, and they played together for three years. Tilly was a good college player and probably could have landed on a practice squad in the NFL, but he didn’t want to wallow in obscurity when he had other options. Tank figured, in the next couple of years, Tilly would be managing the money of a lot of the league’s players. The only reason he didn’t work for Tank was because Tilly refused to take his business. Tilly said he valued Tank’s friendship more than he wanted to be his business manager.
After witnessing the demise of Tank’s college career and his early draft declaration, Tilly stayed with him every step of the way. He certainly didn’t agree with Tank’s choice, but he didn’t judge him either.
Tank took a sip of his beer and waited. He could hear the din of her conversation with the bartender, the cadence of her voice sounding softly behind him. When it stopped, he knew she had seen him. Some vibe in the air shifted, and the muscles in his back tensed. He tried to maintain his casual stance, his view cast out toward the city, the beer hanging loosely between his clasped hands, so when she stepped to him, she’d believe he was surprised to be alone with her.
She approached the railing, and even if he hadn’t known she was out here, his body would have responded.
When will that go away?
“Hey.”
He stood up, turned to her, and leaned his hip against the railing, his view shifting from the lights of the city to the depths of her chocolate-colored eyes. The top of Amber’s head came up higher than he’d expected. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now, he could see she was taller. He looked down at her feet.
“Heels?” he questioned, the side of his mouth lifting into a half-smile.
She grinned. “Yes,” she said, playfully raising her eyebrows. “It took me some time, but I can finally wear them.” She shrugged. “In the whole scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, but…” She paused. “God, I feel like such a girl saying this, but it’s really exciting to be able to wear them.”
“That’s awesome.” He left it at that.
She didn’t want his praise, and although he knew what it meant for her, he could sense her reluctance to acknowledge his understanding of the feat.
She relaxed against the railing, her drink held in her hand. Then, she turned. “Wow,” she murmured. She cast a quick glance at him before looking away again. “Amazing view.”
“Right? I spend a lot of time out here.”
“I can see why.”
They stayed where they were with Amber taking in the city and Tank taking in Amber.
She finally spoke again, “This place suits you.”
Her statement surprised him. “Yeah?”
“I love the neighborhood.”
“Me, too.”
The conversation was stilted, and Tank longed for their long-ago easy camaraderie, but he didn’t know how to go back there, and he wasn’t sure he’d cross the bridge if it somehow appeared before him.
“Madison tripped me up a little at our introduction.”
Her frank declaration prompted a chuckle from him. “Yeah, like you, she doesn’t do subtle well.”
“Not that I didn’t deserve it. That was a pretty shitty situation.”
Tank couldn’t help it when he stepped closer to her. He placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing quickly before releasing it. Shaking his head, he decided an explanation was long overdue. “Madison and I weren’t together at the wedding.”
Her brow furrowed with confusion. “You weren’t?”
“Nah. We were just friends. She thought it was funny, and I promise, she wasn’t mad.”
He didn’t tell Amber about the conclusions he’d drawn after their frantic fucking in the closet.
So much had happened to him in the dark, dank, confined space. The feelings he harbored for her, the hope that she’d forgiven him—it was all a festering wound that she lanced when she pushed him out of and away from her. When he removed his hands from her waist, he detached himself from their past. The transformation, over a year coming, took merely a moment when he washed the scent of her from his hands in the restroom. And then he moved on to Madison.
“Hmm. Funny.” Amber looked lost for a moment.
Tank regretted calling it funny. It was anything but.
“But you’re together now.” She bit her lip like she wished she could have somehow stopped the words or pulled them back.
Tank shrugged involuntarily. “We are.”
He could tell her the true nature of their relationship, which was more symbiotic than loving, but he needed the distance his association with Madison provided. He needed the barrier because, when Amber peered up at him with those soulful eyes, he wanted things he knew he couldn’t have.
He said nothing, and when the touring participants began to fill up the empty spaces of his rooftop deck, he found himself walking away from her yet again.
Relief raced through Amber, the tension in her muscles relaxing, as she left Tank’s town house, following the parade of partygoers to one of the micropubs down the street. The short jaunt through the neighborhood reinforced her first impressions. She longed to stroll during daylight hours, so she could peruse the little shops and feel the intimate vibe. As she walked along, her hand curved around Steele’s forearm, and she tried not to look around for Tank.
When he’d left her on the rooftop, she figured it was a good thing. The start-and-stop quality of their conversation depressed her as much as the knowledge of his relationship with Madison.
She was relieved that Madison and Tank hadn’t been together at Franco’s wedding. The disastrous encounter didn’t beg for a cheating scandal. Amber remembered the look on Madison’s face during her and Tank’s graceless exit from the closet. While it hadn’t been contemptuous, it hadn’t necessarily been friendly. Amber’s sobbing bout included a modicum of guilt for being the girl Tank had cheated with instead of the girl he cheated on. His declaration on the deck made her feel a little less horrible about their actions.
“Has it been as bad as you imagined?” Steele asked.
“No, it’s been pretty easy.”
“Good.” They continued their walking, comfortable with the small stretches of silence. “Do you think you are finally over him?”
His question halted her in her tracks. He kept his pace, and her hand stayed glued to his arm, even as he pulled away from her. He stopped abruptly and turned back to her, the distance between them and the rest of the group growing.
Steele was so tall that she normally needed to keep ex
tra space between them to save her neck. But, now, he stood a little out of her reach, and she peered across the night to him. His eyes matched his skin, so the only color was the white around his black pupils and the flash of teeth in his mouth. In his stare, she glimpsed a flash of something she’d never seen before—or maybe she had chosen to ignore it or maybe she was imagining it.
She shook her head, clearing it. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, you’re over him?”
When she nodded, he looked away from her. She felt some change between them, and when his eyes came back to hers, she knew.
“How do you know you’re over him?”
Shrugging, she answered him as honestly as she could, “I’m not angry anymore. I can look at him and talk to him and not feel that tremendous hurt. For so long, anytime I thought about him, I could feel the heat of my anger pumping through my body—like the night I’d walked in on him with his dick in some girl’s mouth. It was no different. It didn’t go away. But, tonight, I didn’t feel any of that.”
Steele took a small step toward her. For a man with a size fourteen shoe, the slight shuffle moved him infinitely closer. Warily watching him, she braced for his next action. She didn’t know what to feel. Of course she’d thought about the possibility of something more with Steele, but she always held back, not wanting to come between him and Tank. As she stood on the precipice, straddling the line between friendship and more than friendship, she didn’t know if she wanted to jump.
His go-go-gadget arm lifted from his side, and she waited as his hand engulfed her neck. His thumb touched her cheek, and his fingers curled around her nape. Leaning forward, he captured her lips in a tender kiss, an exchange of air. He hovered there, waiting for her. Indecision stayed her. Curiosity mobilized her. Closing the distance, she pressed her lips against his—once, lightly—before her tongue swiped the seam of his lips, asking for entrance. His mouth opened, and she got her first taste of him. They explored each other with sweeping strokes.
The hand on her neck tightened in her hair, and his other hand landed on her hip, pulling her closer. The angle changed with his proximity, and her head dropped back. Warmth seeped into her belly as Lamarcus deepened the kiss.
His lips mastered the feel of hers, and when he broke the kiss, he dropped small kisses across her mouth and along her jaw. His thumb stroked her cheek as he took a step away from her. Her eyes blinked open, and she found Steele studying her. The flicker of uncertainty in his stare made her nervous. They didn’t speak.
And, in the absence of conversation, thoughts began to whirl through her brain. The kiss had been good. She imagined that sex with Lamarcus would be better—better than any sex she’d had in the last two years. They were best friends; they shared secrets. He was a good man, one who wouldn’t solve his problems with stupid, hurtful decisions.
Lamarcus’s traced along her chin once more before he pulled her forward into his chest, his hands resettling, intertwining behind her back. She relaxed into the embrace and looped her arms around him. Her heels gave her an added touch of height, but even with them, his size dwarfed her. Dropping her head onto his chest, she sighed. She loved him, but she wasn’t sure she could love him in any other way than she did now.
“That was interesting,” Steele ventured.
Amber couldn’t help her giggle. “It was.”
“I always wondered, you know?”
She nodded against his chest.
“Maybe I should have done that when we first started hanging out,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“It kind of felt like kissing my sister.”
She could feel his smile in the words.
“Okay. I’m not sure that was the best analogy, but we can go with that.”
Steele must have been concerned about her reaction because he pulled back from her and set her away from him, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “It was weird for you, too, right?”
His horror of her feeling something different than him was pretty humorous, and she contemplated punking him. But she didn’t need to mess with their friendship any more than the kiss might have.
She smiled reassuringly. “Yeah, it was weird for me, too.”
“It wasn’t bad,” he clarified. “You can kiss.”
Laughing, she said, “Thanks, dude. You’re making me feel awesome.”
He chuckled and then squeezed her shoulders. “I expected something different.” The simple statement lingered in the air between them. “All this time we’ve been hanging out…I mean, you’re the perfect woman. You can talk football better than most men. You understand my injury and what it meant for me when my life plan got ripped away. You get me, and I thought we’d just fit.” He looked away from her, as if he were embarrassed by the confession.
Amber reached up and cupped his jaw. “Steele, I get it. And I’m not offended. That kiss was a long time coming. And, believe me when I say, it seemed like the a great situation. I swear, everyone has been waiting for it.” She grinned up at him. “But there’s something to be said for chemistry.” Winking, she dropped her hand and pulled out of his grip. “Let’s go get a drink.”
Steele turned and offered his arm. She placed her hand back into the familiar spot, and the two of them continued their trek to the bar. The quiet between them was comfortable, the kiss seemingly forgotten.
The uneven cadence of her walk compared to Steele’s was a broken metronome in the white noise of the street, and Amber found herself thinking about the slightly awkward few minutes when they’d both realized it wasn’t going to happen between them. Disappointment flooded her. They were a good fit for each other, and she hated the lack of a spark.
She’d known, as soon as he’d run his hand on the left side of her face rather than the right, he couldn’t be for her. How it had come to one simple motion was something a highly paid psychologist would have to untangle. Since Tank, no one had touched the marred part of her face. She didn’t know if it was repulsion because of the angry appearance, if it was fear of hurting her, or maybe it was just plain denial, but no one was brave enough to confront the ugliness of her past that illuminated her face like a beacon on a foggy night. Without even thinking about it, she reached up and ran her hand over the twisted terrain, the cold touch a welcome respite to the deadened skin running from her lip along her jawline and down the length of her neck.
The road bent to the right, opening up into a concentration of retail, with the lights from the halogen signs lighting up the street. Their destination was across the road, a couple of doors down from where they stood. Stopping for traffic, they waited on the side of the street.
Amber scanned the area, looking for people, but it seemed everyone had already made it into the bar. She could hear the whispers of music from the outside deck in the back and the chatter of voices. She had a moment and a question.
She squeezed Steele’s arm, and he turned toward her.
“Since we’ve survived the weirdness of that kiss, I need to ask you a question.”
Steele’s brow furrowed. He nodded instead of answering, so she gathered the tattered shreds of her dignity.
Taking a deep breath, she spit it out, “You didn’t touch my scar.”
His eyes widened in surprise, but she refused to stop the train of thought.
“No one has. I’ve been with my fair share of men in the last couple of years. No one touches it. It’s like they are afraid it’s contagious. I’d thought you’d be different. But you weren’t.”
She glanced away from him, the guilt in his eyes too much for her to take while she bared her deepest fears. Her face heated with embarrassment. They’d shared a lot of things—work woes, rehab stories, childhood memories. But, at the moment of her confession, she realized they’d never gone this deep. And she suddenly wanted to take it back. Her curiosity could be satisfied another way, with someone she didn’t care about, whose answer probably wouldn’t matter to her all that much.
As she struggled with her discomf
iture, another horrible thought dawned on her, and she almost flinched with the knowledge. Tank was the only person in her life who had seen her scars and accepted them and what they were. Then, he’d gotten past them. But he really never let her forget they were there. It was why he had been so special to her. While everyone else wanted to pretend like they didn’t exist, Tank Howard had claimed them and her.
Fuck. No wonder I can’t let him go.
She thought she had. When Lamarcus had asked her before they kissed, she’d been confident in her answer. But, now, she was unsure. She wasn’t over him. She was just over the anger. Tears welled in her eyes, and she was grateful she wasn’t facing Steele. Biting her lip to contain an embarrassing, sobering sob, she worked to get her emotions under control.
Then, Steele’s paw of a hand landed on the ravaged skin, and he turned her back to him. His fingers trailed over every inch of her lips and jaw and down her neck. He could basically palm the whole area in one touch. She closed her eyes, the intensity of the moment stark.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. The roughened pads of his fingers stayed against her trampled neck. “I guess I thought it would hurt or you would hate it. You never talk about it, so I just started to ignore it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said on a sigh.
He dropped his head to hers, landing a quick kiss on her forehead.
“You guys coming in or what?”
Amber’s eyes snapped open as both she and Steele jumped away from each other. Steele turned, his back now facing Amber. She wanted to stay behind him, hiding from Tank, but she took a step to the side, so they appeared as a united front.
Tank stood in front of them, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dress pants. She’d seen him dressed up a couple of times—most notably on the night he’d won the Heisman when he was decked out in a suit. Tonight, he wore charcoal-colored trousers and a white dress shirt. It was tailored to fit his shoulders to perfection, a fit you could only get customized. The white of his shirt against his cocoa-colored skin seemed to enhance his green eyes. Those eyes on a white guy would be nice, but with his mixed blood, they peered out with an eerie brilliance that could only be deemed as beautiful. With her seconds-old realizations bouncing around in her brain, it was hard to look him in the eye.