“Let’s get married,” he said in her ear. “Now. Let’s do it.”
“Wh-what?”
“I mean it. Tomorrow. Go to the courthouse and do it.”
“But . . .” She rolled out from under him, scrabbled for her clothes. “My parents. Law school.”
He pulled his jeans up but made no more move to get dressed. He just sat, his forearms on his knees, and watched her. “You don’t have to go to law school now, do you? You could wait a year, or even two. You don’t need your parents. We can save. You can get loans.”
It was like he was saying, “We can join the circus.” She said, “Evan. I can’t . . . how could I do that?”
“Easy. We just do. You don’t want to sneak around? That’s fine by me. I don’t want to sneak around either. So how about this? Tomorrow, instead of meeting me at the beach, I come to your house. I come to the front door. We tell your parents we’re in love and we want to get married. Now. Soon. If you want the dress and all, we’ll do that. I’ve got some money saved.”
“I . . .” She couldn’t think. She was fumbling to button her blouse, and Evan was brushing her hands aside, doing it for her, and then his hands were closing over hers.
“I love you,” he said. “I don’t want you to go to Seattle without me.”
She didn’t want to say “but law school” again. She didn’t know what else to say, though, so she just looked at him. “I love you too,” she said. “Couldn’t you . . . maybe you could come to Seattle instead. You lived there before.”
“And not get married,” he finished for her.
“I can’t . . .” She put a hand to her head. “I can’t think. It’s too . . .” She wanted to say, You won’t talk to me, but you want to marry me? But she didn’t. She just said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Fine.” Now he was getting up, pulling on his shirt, buckling his belt. “You’re going to be late. Let’s go.”
“Evan . . .”
“No,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The ride back to the beach felt completely different. She was still pressed against Evan’s back, but he felt stiff, unyielding.
And when he pulled into the nearly deserted lot, her father’s car was there. Evan coasted to a stop behind it, and her father got out of the driver’s side. And her mother got out of the passenger side.
Oh, boy.
She climbed off the bike and tried not to feel sixteen. She was a college graduate. She was going to law school. She was twenty-one, of legal age to do absolutely anything, including have sex with Evan.
Her mother spoke first. Her dad just looked at Evan. Hard.
“When Candy told me your car was here every night,” her mother said, “I thought she must be mistaken. There are lots of Honda Civics. But then you told me you’d gone to that party on Saturday night, too. When Candy told me tonight that Melody was sorry you hadn’t come, I knew you’d lied to me. And I wondered why.”
Evan didn’t say anything. He just stood there. Beth took off her helmet, and he took it out of her hands. She said, “I didn’t think you’d want to know that I . . .” And then wasn’t sure how to go on.
“That you were seeing Evan O’Donnell,” her mother said, and then she looked at Evan. Top to bottom, from his leather jacket to his boots, and Beth curled up with shame for what he must be feeling. “Or maybe,” Michelle said, “he was the one who didn’t want us to know.”
“No,” Evan said. “That wasn’t me.”
She knew he was watching her. Waiting for her to tell them. Her mother was talking again, about trust and breaking it, and the words washed over her, a bitter tide. But what hurt most was her dad. Standing there not saying a word. Disappointed in her.
She knew Evan was waiting, and she tried. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with dating somebody. I’m not . . . using drugs, or whatever you think, and neither is he.”
“Which would be why,” her father said at last, “he never came to the house to pick you up.”
“No, sir,” Evan said. “It wouldn’t.”
She had to say something. She had to. “That was me,” she said. “It was my fault. I was . . .” She swallowed. “I didn’t know what you’d think. Evan didn’t want to do it like this.”
“No,” Evan said. “Your dad’s right. I should have come to get you anyway, no matter what you said.”
“He was . . . we were going to,” Beth said. She wanted to say the part about getting married, but she couldn’t. It was too crazy.
“There’s no ‘going to,’” her dad said. “There’s doing something or not doing it. That’s all. Come on. Let’s go home.”
She thought, I’ll fix it. Later on, I’ll call Evan, and I’ll fix it.
But when she called the next evening, after an endless day at work on the phones, parroting information with the top half of her brain while everything beneath it churned in endless unproductive circles, she didn’t fix it.
She said, “Can I see you?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said, his voice at its most expressionless. She couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t see his body, couldn’t touch him, couldn’t know. “What do you want from me?”
“Just . . . the same,” she said. “Couldn’t it be the same? But if you came to get me this time, so we could show my parents there’s nothing wrong?”
“What’s the same?” he asked. “Me continuing your sexual education, you having an adventure? Or are we doing anything else here?”
“I love you,” she said. “I do.”
“Funny that you didn’t say so last night, then.”
Her brain tried to deny it, but the cold seeping through her body told her it was true. “I was surprised. I was confused.”
“Right. You were confused. Too confused to say, ‘I love Evan, and he asked me to marry him tonight. I want to stop sneaking around, and he wants to come home with us so we can tell you our plans.’ Funny how I didn’t hear any of that. Nothing but a little girl minding her parents. I don’t need a little girl. I need a woman who’s got the guts to say what she wants. To say who she wants.”
“But . . .” She didn’t know how to go on. “I do love you. But I can’t think about getting married now. Law school and . . .”
“Yeah. Law school. That’s all I’ve heard all summer. They’re called priorities. I know what mine are. And now I guess I know what yours are, too.”
“But we can’t just . . . break up. Because I won’t marry you? People don’t . . . people take time.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I know what I want. So do you. Too bad it’s not the same thing. Too bad life sucks.”
“Evan, please.”
“No,” he said. “No.” And he hung up.
Evan was still walking. They had to, or Beth was going to freeze. The spectacular sunset was fading at least, the reds and oranges, the rose and gold darkening moment by moment, losing their glow. They’d left the marina behind, were headed around the curve and toward the Resort in the distance. Leaving the old and heading toward the new.
Beth said, “I’ve blamed myself over and over for what I did that night. For the way I didn’t fight for you, or for us. It’s hurt so much worse because I knew I couldn’t blame anyone else for it. I did it to myself, and I did it to you. I’ve made this . . . this coating in my heart around that pain, like an oyster. Except there’s no pearl. Just this hard little knot.”
Boy, did she have a way with words. The best he could come up with was, “Me too.”
“But you know,” she said, looking up at the sky, pulling her hair back with one hand and sighing, “I’m not sure, looking back, that it was all my fault. I might have gotten a different idea tonight. And if we’re going to chip that hard spot away, I need to tell you about it.”
“Right,” he said. “I’m here listening.” Not that he’d be thrilled to hear it, but she needed to tell him, so that was that.
“You didn’t talk to me,” she s
aid after a minute. “After Riley died. You just drew yourself in tight. I knew how hurt you were, how hard it hit you, but you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“If you knew,” he said, “why would I have to tell you?”
She stared at him a second, then she had both hands in her hair. “I can’t. I can’t even. Of course you have to. You can’t just bottle it up and expect me to know what you’re feeling, that you need my love, you need my support, you need my commitment. Instead, I got nothing at all except that you needed sex—and yeah, I did get that, because that, you communicated. And then all of a sudden, I heard that I should marry you and stay in Idaho, even if it meant my parents cut me off. That I should change my whole plan, my whole life. Out of the blue.”
It was a long time back. Unfortunately, he could remember it pretty much exactly, and also unfortunately, that probably was how it had gone down. He said, “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She laughed, although her voice still sounded too tight. “Yeah. I could tell. So all right, then my parents caught us, which is stupid, because how do you ‘catch’ a twenty-one-year-old woman who’s doing nothing worse than having sex with her boyfriend? But I wasn’t acting like an adult. You were right about that. I acted like a scared teenager, and I let you down.”
“Yeah. You did.” Time to say that, too, he guessed. Time to say it, and let it go.
She went on. “Maybe you were right to break up with me, too. But then—when you’re a full-grown man who’s been through so much disappointment and hurt and rebuilding in your life, and you’re with a girl who hasn’t had to grow up, a girl who’s been a princess her whole life, maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she can’t do that growing up on command. That she can’t walk away from all that privilege, all that . . . cushion. At least I couldn’t.”
“You’re right again. I shouldn’t have expected more. I just wanted it. I shouldn’t have expected to get it just because I wanted it.”
“Oh, Evan.” She turned to him, there on the path, and stopped, so he did too. She wrapped her arms around him, put her head on his chest, and said, “You should have been able to expect that. I’m sorry you didn’t get what you deserved, then or ever. I’m sorry I let you down.”
He had one hand on the handle of Gracie’s stroller, the other one wrapped around her, and he was rocking her from side to side, kissing her hair. “You could be right,” he said, “about the talking.”
She laughed against his chest. “No. I am right. And you’re so sure, always. I’ve always loved that about you. Whereas me—I’m never sure, and at that time in my life? ‘Sure’ was the very last thing I was. I wanted to talk things over, but we didn’t do that. It was like if I wasn’t sure, I was wrong.”
“I may have mentioned,” he said, “that I could have done that better.”
She stood back a bit, but she kept her arms around him, and she was smiling. “I don’t think you did mention that. This would be a great time.”
“All right.” He sighed and went for it. “I didn’t do any of that great back then. You were young, but so was I. I wasn’t too good at compromising. I sure wasn’t good at understanding somebody different from me. And yeah. I was wrong. Then, and tonight. Especially tonight. I’m not young now, and I didn’t stand with you. I should have.”
The boom took him by surprise. He was grabbing her, grabbing the stroller harder, all but diving for the bushes as the night lit up.
Beth had jumped too, but now, she laughed. “That apology was so momentous, the angels wept. Look.”
He’d figured out what it was before he turned. Friday-night fireworks at the Resort. Right now, a streak of silver was crossing the sky, followed by hundreds of tiny pops as the shower of sparks ignited and fell into the blackness of the lake.
He stood and held her, and they watched. A patriotic display of red, white, and blue. A crisscrossing pattern of green and gold. A shower of white. On and on, the explosions, the spectacle. And then, at the end, the grand finale, the same as every Friday night. A reckless, extravagant, over-the-top display, starbursts of red and gold fanning across the night sky. Portland Devils colors. Blake Orbison being larger than life, giving the people what they’d come for.
And for once, he didn’t even resent it.
They walked home, and he kept his arm around her. He put Gracie to bed, and Beth helped him do it. Then he shut the door and took her hand, and he took her to bed.
Darkness except for the moonlight coming through the window, showing her to him in shadow. Her arms twining around his neck as he kissed her, that silver hair spread around her. The way it felt to tug at the bow at the back of her neck, and the sight of her pale skin when he pulled the halter top down. His hand covering her breast, her lips parting when he leaned in for a kiss. Her sigh when he rolled her over, and the thrill that was a zipper sliding down a woman’s back, nice and slow.
Pulling that dress all the way down, then coming back for the strappy little sandals and sliding off first one, then the other. The urgency in her face when she rolled onto her back again, rose to unbutton his shirt, tugged it off him, then ran her hands over his chest, his shoulders, his arms as if she were memorizing him.
She was bold, and she let him know how much she wanted him. It was in the soft hands that pushed him onto his back, the mouth that kissed his lips, his neck as she lay over him wearing only a pale-blue thong. Her hands and mouth hungry on him, and his hands all over her. The way she kissed him, open-mouthed and holding nothing back, the way she held his head in her hands like she had to dive into him, like she couldn’t get close enough.
He didn’t know who got his jeans off, just that they were gone. They kissed and they touched and they loved like it was their last chance ever. When his mouth was on her and she was holding his hair, saying his name, he knew he was the only man who would do. And when he was sliding inside her at last, threading his fingers through hers, and she didn’t close her eyes and watched him do it, he knew the same thing.
He rocked her like her body was his own, like her pleasure belonged to him. When she sighed, he felt it, and when she moaned, the thrill was his. And when, finally, she was grabbing the comforter, twisting the fabric in her hands, and crying out? He was the one calling her name then. He was the one spiraling up like a rocket, and he was the one exploding into a thousand pieces and falling to earth in a shower of silver sparks.
Shattered. Finished. Whole.
When she was under the covers with him, wrapped around him, knowing he loved it and also knowing that this time, there was no way anybody could make her get up and leave, she said, “We never did get to the part where you come in my window. And here I’ve been thinking about that all this time. Sad.”
He smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her. Gently, and so sweetly. “Maybe we could get a rain check from Dakota. If she and Blake took Gracie tomorrow night, I could come through your window like a beast.”
She thought about that a minute. It was a pretty enticing idea. “That would mean we couldn’t go out, though, and I want to go out. I want to go dancing, because that’s one we’ve barely gotten to. I want to dance with you, and have you touch me like you wish you could touch me more, and wait all night for you to finally take me home. I want you to kiss me in the parking lot. I want to have to wonder if you’re going to wait. Or . . . what.”
He was smiling again, and he was over her again, too. She did love the sight of Evan over her. “Tell you what,” he said.
“Oh, good,” she said with a happy sigh. “Your fantasies. Let’s have them.”
“Right, then. Here we go. If you got in my van, and I was driving us to the bar?” He wasn’t looking quite so gentle now. In fact, he was looking a little . . . intense. ”If you reached under your dress and pulled off that thong real slow, handed it to me, and told me it was mine? I’d lock that thing away, and then I’d go on and take you out. I’d dance with you as dirty as you could ever want. I’d kiss you in the parking
lot and make you wonder if I was going to put you on the hood and do you right there. And then I’d drive you home and show you what your knees were for. Oh, yeah. I’d do all that and then some.”
She smiled, kissed his neck, and said, “You keep talking like that, and you’ll get everything you ever wanted.”
He smiled back, nice and slow. “I don’t know. I want a lot.”
“Mm.” She yawned, and he said, “Yeah. Long night.”
“Yep. But it sure turned out right.”
He rolled onto his side, snuggled her close, and was asleep between one breath and the next. Her last thought before sleep took her was that one thing hadn’t changed. He was still here, and she was still visiting. But at least they both knew it.
The first time Gracie woke up crying, Beth registered it only dimly. The second time, she woke up.
She opened her eyes in the gray light of dawn, which meant that it had to be six. She’d slept in, but that wasn’t what had her sitting up. Beside her, Evan was already throwing the covers back, and in another moment, he’d headed out the bedroom door and down the hall in his underwear.
It was the screaming. She’d heard Gracie cry enough by now to know the difference. And what she’d told Evan once was true—response to that kind of crying was hard-wired. At least, she was out of bed, reaching for her clothes, and in Gracie’s bedroom as quickly as she could get there.
Evan had the baby on the changing table and was fastening the tabs of a clean diaper, his hands quick and sure, and then he was stripping the butterfly sleeper off her and dropping it in the hamper. And still Gracie cried, thrashed, and tried to roll over while Evan reached for an undershirt and worked to get it over his daughter’s head.
No Kind of Hero (Portland Devils Book 2) Page 26