by Kennedy Ryan
“I could never hate you,” he says, his tone suddenly quiet and already repentant. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have said that. You’ve given up everything for me. I know this.”
I let loose a frustrated breath. We may both be a little stir crazy. Other than his appointments and treatments, we don’t go out much. With Zo’s immunity so compromised, there aren’t many allowed in. His diarrhea has been crippling, and the only way he can leave the house is wearing a diaper, an indignity he can suffer only so many times. He’s sick as fuck. I’m exhausted, and we’re both stumbling through the flames of a Hell we can’t see the end of.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now, Zo.” I clamp my teeth together and stave off the tears I can’t afford and that won’t stop once they start. “You’re my best friend. Nothing will change that.”
He grins, even though his eyes are already drooping from the meds that make his nausea and pain bearable.
“It’s probably good you stopped me,” he slurs. “I would have fallen asleep at second base.”
Our fight passes as quickly as it came. We’ve never been able to remain angry with one another for any amount of time. At least that hasn’t changed.
I tiptoe out of the bedroom and close the door behind me. I can get some work done now. Maali is supposed to call in the next hour or so to discuss a few things I’ve left in her more-than-capable hands. When the phone rings, I assume it’s her and don’t even check the screen.
“Hello.” There’s silence on the other end for a beat or two. I’m ready to pull the phone away and check the caller when he speaks.
“Hey, Ban.”
My poor unsuspecting heart is unprepared for his voice. How it releases a fall of feathers in my belly and takes my breath hostage.
“Jared?” My voice sounds high and thin.
“Yeah.” He hesitates before going on. “Is it okay that I called?”
God, yes.
“Sure.” I bite my lip and search for my cool, my collected, but it’s nowhere to be found. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
“I’m in town.”
“Here?” I point to the floor. “In Palo Alto?”
“Yeah. I’d like to see you. Maybe we could meet?”
My hopes, my excitement sink. Fuck my life.
“I can’t leave the house right now,” I say quietly. “Zo had a rough couple of days, and the nurse isn’t coming ’til tomorrow.”
“Of course,” he says too quickly, like he expected me to shut him down. “I get it. Maybe next time.”
“Oh.” My mind clamors for something to keep him on the phone a few minutes longer. “So you . . . you have business here? An appointment or something?”
It’s quiet for too long, and for a second I think I’ve lost him.
“Jared?” I ask again. “You have business here?”
“Just you. I came to see you.”
There’s something so raw in his voice, and it’s like he ripped a page from my heart and is reading it. That the same loneliness I ache with so does he. That maybe he dreams about me, too, and wakes up wishing for our island villa. For the sea breeze. Every night my skin relives his touch and my lips reminisce about his kisses.
“Zo’s sleeping,” I say softly, hopefully. “You could come over for a few minutes if you like?”
“I have some sponsor contracts for the golf tournament I could say I was dropping off since I was in town,” he says. “But are you sure?”
I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t have sex. I don’t have an office. I don’t have a life right now.
The hollow sound of my own words throb in my ears. I’m closer than I’ve ever been to breaking. I’m cracking inside, and I’m so afraid of what will come out. Of what I can’t hold. I need something.
I need him.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
36
Jared
She must have been watching for me because the door to the townhouse swings open before I can ring the bell.
“I didn’t want to wake Zo,” she says by way of explanation.
We stare at one another, absorbing any changes the last two months have wrought. She’s not pulled together. Not the boss I’m used to seeing with her suits and stilettos, but she’s still Banner. I’ve seen several incarnations of this woman, but there is this steadfast strength to her, this obstinate light that refuses to dim. It’s still easily detected under a messy bun, slightly stained tank top, and yoga pants. She’s still my badass girl.
A gust of Northern California wind whips stray strands of dark hair across her face, and she shivers, crosses her arms against the cool breeze.
“Come on in.” She steps back and I follow her into a living room outfitted with a large sectional, low tables, throw rugs, and a mammoth mounted television.
“We have it month-to-month,” she says, licking her pretty lips and looking around the room. “It came furnished.”
“Oh yeah?” Don’t give a shit.
“Yeah.” She nods, rubs at the back of her neck and points a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s ideal because there’s an office down here and a bedroom. The stairs would be hard for Zo some days. I sleep in the office down here so I’m close if he needs anything.”
A shadow passes over her face, and I wonder what he has needed at night to cause that look. This separation has been hard on me, but I wonder, not for the first time, how hard this has all been for her. And I suspect it’s worse than I imagined.
“So I work out of one of the upstairs bedrooms,” she continues, her voice thinned with nerves. “It works. And I—”
“This isn’t what I came for,” I interrupt. “This banal thing you’re doing. This small talk. All this conversation. It’s not what I came for.”
She blinks at me, her skin free of makeup, my freckles dusting her nose.
“It’s not?” She slides her hands to where back pockets would be, only to grimace when she realizes she’s wearing yoga pants. “Um, okay. What-what, then?”
I scope the layout of the room, spot a door leading to what might be a kitchen. I grab her hand and drag her in that direction. The door swings open and closed behind us. A pantry door is cracked enough to show a few shelves of food. I head there, still gripping her hand tightly in mine.
As soon as the pantry door shuts, I’m pressing her into a shelf, one hand at her ass, the other at her neck, holding her steady so I can get inside. I’m literally trembling like an untried boy, like an addict tasting his demon-drug. I’ll take Banner any way I can get her. Snorted, smoked, shot in my veins. I want her with marrow-level hunger, the kind you have to dig inside your bones to satisfy. I suck her tongue too hard. I grip her waist too tightly. Every part of me fears this won’t last. Knows it can’t. And this kiss is not enough. These clothes are in my way. I growl, frustrated to finally have what I want and not be able to get it down fast enough. I shove her tank top up and push my hand under her bra, squeezing her breast, pinching her nipple, reminding her body how this works. How we feel together. I drag the yoga pants and her panties down over the delicious curve of her ass.
Skin. I need it.
I sink to my knees, turn her around, and bite one firm globe, spread her cheeks and swipe my tongue along the puckered ridge.
“Jared,” she gasps, bangs her forehead to the shelf. “Jesus.”
I follow the line of her ass with my fingers until I reach her pussy, wet and empty. Waiting. My mouth waters when I stroke her clit, when it grows plump and slick under my attention. Her muffled moans spur me on. She spreads her legs, silently begging me to penetrate. One finger. Two fingers. Three fingers pushing in, caressing her pussy walls while she humps my hand.
“Oh, God,” she cries out. “We have to stop.”
“No.” I want to take her with him just yards away.
“Jared, please.” Tears fill her voice. “I don’t want to do this again. I can’t lie to him. I can’t hurt him. Not now.”
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Her words trail off, break.
“Please.”
My fingers go still inside of her, and with his usual bad timing, August’s voice speaks in my head.
The things you love about her—the good, the compassion, the sense of right and wrong–will all be deconstructed and set aside for you.
And I can’t do it. As much as the animal inside of me wants to fuck her right under his nose, wants to punish Zo for keeping her from me, I can’t to do it. Because to do it to him is to do it to her, and I can’t.
I rest my forehead against the bare curve of her ass and release a heavy sigh. Resignation. Deprivation. With one last kiss on her butt, my fingers slip out of her. She leans against the shelf, looking down at me with wet eyes, with spiky lashes.
“Thank you,” she whispers, brushing away her tears.
I nod, but unable to resist one more sensual act of defiance, I shove three fingers, shiny and wet and pussy-scented, into my mouth and lick every drop of her from them, holding her eyes with mine the whole time until she closes hers, shuddering and biting her lip.
“I miss your pussy,” I say abruptly.
Her eyes pop open and a startled laugh floats past her kiss-swollen lips.
“You’re not supposed to say that,” she chides, adjusting her clothes, reluctant affection in her eyes.
I tug on her hand and bring her down to the pantry floor with me. I scoot until my back is against a wall and she’s seated between my bent knees, her head resting on my shoulder.
“You’re supposed to say romantic things,” she continues, glancing up and grinning at me. “Not I miss your pussy.”
“What kinds of romantic things should I say?” I lift the fine hairs curling at her temple. “Should I say that I think about you all the time?”
She goes still against me, long lashes lowered and painting shadows under her eyes.
“That would be a good start,” she says.
“Or that I actually watched An Affair To Remember because it made me think of our night at the drive-in?” I confess. “That I dream about us waking up together? Or that every time I see a sunset, I think of that orange dress you wore the night we had dinner on the island?”
Wide, espresso-colored eyes find mine over her shoulder, and her smile grows.
Our stare holds until the moment smolders and the air grows smoky with lust and need and something much too tender for me to keep dismissing or misnaming it.
She tips back and presses a kiss to my lips, and it’s so sweet, so pure, when she pulls back, I palm her head and hold her there for a few seconds longer. Not to deepen it or to ask for more, but to record it. To save the feel of her lips on mine just this way.
“You taste like pineapple,” I say against her mouth. “You hate pineapple.”
It’s a silly thing to notice, and I’m not even sure why I said it or why she looks guilty, lowering her lashes with cheeks flushed.
“I . . . yeah. I do hate pineapple.”
“You made an exception?” I trace her thick brows with one finger.
“Um . . . not really.” She blows out a quick sigh before meeting my eyes. “Zo likes pineapple in this smoothie I make for him.”
I lift my brows, silently encouraging her to go on, to explain how this all fits together.
“He, well, he kissed me earlier.”
My teeth clamp down and my hand curls into a fist on the pantry floor.
“Jared, it’s not what you think. It’s a long story.”
“One that ends with his tongue in your mouth?”
“Nothing’s been going on,” she assures me, pushing my hair back from my face, sinking her fingers in at the roots the way she knows I like. “It was a moment of weakness.”
“His or yours?”
“Maybe both.” She shrugs, her eyes weary. “Not me wanting him that way, but feeling . . . I don’t know, bad that I don’t?”
“It doesn’t help when you tell me shit like this.” I rub my tired eyes.
“This is an impossible situation,” she says softly. “But, Jared, what do you want me to do?”
“You don’t want to know what I want and I won’t tell you because you’ll think I’m mean and selfish.”
She dusts her fingers over my cheeks, my chin, over my mouth like she’s soothing me. I hate that if we sit here long enough, it’ll start working. I trap her fingers against my mouth.
“Maybe not,” she finally replies with a sad smile. “Sometimes when the day is filled with things I don’t want to do, wouldn’t choose but have to, I just look in the mirror and say out loud all the things I would do if it were up to me.”
“And this helps?” Because I doubt it.
“It does. I just say it, even if it’s awful, and I don’t judge it. Then I go and do the right thing. I know it sounds silly.”
“It does sound silly.”
She leans forward, almost teasing me with a look—but not quite because this is so hard, and she probably senses how close I am to doing something stupid.
“But you haven’t tried it,” she says. “What could it hurt? Try it. Just tell me what you want. No matter how bad it sounds. I promise I won’t judge it.”
“You don’t get to judge?”
“No, I don’t get to judge, but when you’re done, when it’s out of your system, we do the have-to thing. The right thing.”
“Okay. You want to hear what I want. Here goes. I want you to leave him and come to me. I’m not assigning right or wrong to it. I’m just telling you that every night when I’m in my bed alone, I keep hoping you’ll show up at my door. And you’ll tell me that I’m it for you. That nothing else is as important to you as I am. Because I’m saying that to you. I’m telling you that nothing else is as important to me as you are.”
It’s as close as I’ve come to confessing what’s getting harder to deny every day, to keep calling it something else, but I’m still not ready to say it, not with Zo holding all these cards. All of the advantages.
“Oh, Jared, I—”
“No, listen. I want you to leave him and come to me, but the irony is I want you so badly because you never would. Your heart, integrity, strength of character . . . they draw me to you.”
I pause to cup her face in my hands.
“And I . . .” I cough, clear my throat, and search for a word to settle on “. . . I care too much about you to corrupt that.”
She scoots in closer and wraps her arms around me, tucking her head under my chin. She’s so warm and soft and good and sweet, and she smells like her Pretty Pastel dryer sheets.
“I care about you, too, Jared,” she says softly. “If I could do what I feel is right and still be with you right now, I would. I hope you believe that.”
A distant ring robs me of my chance to answer. She scrambles to her feet, adjusting her yoga pants as she goes.
“That’ll be Maali,” she says, regret in her voice. “I have to catch this call. A couple of my guys have contracts on the bubble.”
She opens the pantry door, letting the world back in.
“Okay.” I haul myself to stand and follow her from the pantry and out of the kitchen.
“Give me a few minutes.” She looks at me from the foot of the stairs, her expression uncertain. “Wait here?”
I nod my agreement and sit to stew in frustration. I tip my head back on the couch and try to evict images of him kissing her from my brain. I’m too tired, though, to exert that much mental energy, and I paint a full scene in my head with him touching her, taking her. A weary sigh is all I can manage. I wrapped up a shit ton of stuff so I could afford the day off up here. I just got on a plane. Didn’t call or ask in case she told me not to come. I’ve been going out of my mind missing her and being horny.
Okay. And jealous. Of a dying man. I know it’s insanity, but hearing that he actually kissed her brings my concerns to life.
“Jared.”
I open my eyes when my name is called. Zo is standing at the doorway leading
down the hall. I fix my face, disguising my shock at how wasted away he has become. I’ve seen him on television and in a few photos since his diagnosis, but it’s been awhile. He’s still tall, of course, a few inches taller than I am, but he’s painfully thin. He holds a mask over the gauntness of his face and studies me with brows drawn together.
“Zo, hey.” I sit up, but assume with the mask, I shouldn’t get too close.
“Why are you here?” he asks with, unless I’m mistaken, some underlying hostility. I’m not usually mistaken about someone wanting to kick my ass. I pick up on that kind of thing.
“Uh . . . I just dropped off some papers.”
“From LA?” Skepticism and irritation clearly mark the visible half of his face.
“I was in town.” I shrug and lean forward, elbows on knees. “Hope it isn’t a problem.”
His face relaxes. Maybe he realized he’s scowling at me.
“No, of course not.” He walks farther into the room, takes a seat a few feet away, and pulls the mask off. “After all, I understand you and Banner go way back.”
I’m not sure what she’s told him, so I just nod, keeping my face neutral.
“So how are you feeling?” I ask.
“Like each of my organs is systematically being attacked.”
“Sorry.” I twist my lips, self-deprecating. “I guess that was a dumb question. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
“It would be a thousand times worse without Banner.” A tiny smile crooks the sober line of his mouth. “She takes good care of me.”
He watches me through a veil of thick lashes camouflaging his thoughts.
“I’d probably already be dead were it not for her. Loyalty like hers . . .” he shakes his head and looks down at his hands “. . . a woman like Banner comes once in a lifetime.”
I don’t acknowledge his statement with anything other than a steady stare, giving nothing away. Our eyes lock, and I drop mine first. Even I’m not interested in a staring contest with a dying man.
“So you were at Kerrington with Banner, yes?”
“Yeah. We were there together.”