by LK Collins
“You know why they have open spots? Because it’s near that creepy ass ghost town of Salem, and no one wants to go there.”
“Whatever, you know that’s all a myth, right?”
“Fuck you, those witches still live there.”
“And what, you think they are gonna come to the campground and fuck with me?”
“Absolutely I do, man,” Chandler says, and I can’t help but chuckle at him.
“You’re out of your mind, you know that? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you should come camping, too. You need some fresh air to clear your head.” It’s a hollow suggestion. There is no way in the world he’d go camping.
“Fuck you!”
“Sure thing. I gotta hit the road.”
“Sounds good, have fun being murdered by a cult of witches.”
“Bye, douche bag.”
“It was nice knowing—” I hang up on him and shake my head. Only Chandler would be scared of witches.
Regardless of how busy it’s gonna be, I’m still excited to go. We’ll have our own spot and our peace and quiet to recharge.
I slam the back of my SUV closed and head inside, yelling, “Ready?” to the girls as I head to the basement.
“You’re not bringing that,” I hear Rianna yell and it stops me short. Maisy and Rianna are standing at the bottom of the stairs, and they have a framed picture of Georgia between them.
“It’s only a picture.”
“Yeah, and it’s weird you wanna bring it. Mom isn’t dead. If she wanted to be here with us, she could be. She left us, Maisy.” Rianna tugs the frame, but Maisy doesn’t let it go.
As I look at Maisy gripping onto the frame, I can tell she is hurting. I make my way downstairs. “What’s wrong?”
“She wants to bring that with us, and it’s weird, Dad.”
“Give your sister some slack, okay?”
“Why, you don’t give me slack?”
I take a deep breath, doing my damnedest not to fight with them this weekend. “Will you give us a second?” I ask Rianna, and she trudges up the stairs with her backpack in hand.
Maisy sniffles and I reach for the photo out of her grip, which she hesitantly gives over to me. “Don’t cry, honey.” It’s a photo of Georgia fishing from when she and I first started dating. She was pregnant with Ria and looks so young.
“Why did mom have to leave us?” I’m not sure how to answer her. In the years since Georgia left, she’s never asked me that. I can’t say it’s because I wouldn’t stop fighting or because she chose drinking over her own family. There is no way I’m telling her that her mother just didn’t love us enough to stay.
“Sometimes people change; one day you’ll understand.”
She blinks at me with her big blue eyes, watching as I flip the picture over and pull open the back of the frame. “Here, keep this in your pocket,” I say as I hand Maisy the picture.
Chapter 12
Mia
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Chandler complains as he drives us toward the coast.
“Whatever. Just enjoy getting away from life.” When Chandler told me that Roan was going camping and invited him, I knew that was my in. It was my way to force Roan to talk to me and not run like he did the other day. I need to explain so much to him. I’m sure it will initially piss him off that I’m there, but I’m following my heart, I have to.
“How much longer until we are there?” he asks.
I pull up the map on my phone, the reception is getting spotty, and it makes the app crash twice before I get an updated estimated time of arrival.
“About another half mile and then the entrance is on your right.”
I cross my arms and sink into my seat, preparing myself to see Roan. I look out my window and hope that this goes well. Even if we don’t end up together, I want us to be friends like we used to be and I want him to know I am there for him.
The sun is starting to set as Chandler slows and pulls into the campground. The place is packed with campers, RVs, and tents. Chandler makes the loop, and we both look for Roan. “What kind of car does he drive?” I ask him.
My answer is Chandler slowing and pulling to the side of the narrow dirt road. Roan and his two girls are sitting around a campfire to our left.
Shit, his daughters are here?
Chandler parks and shuts the car off. Roan is looking at us, and I’m frozen, suddenly too nervous to get out. “What’s the matter?” he asks me.
“Oh, nothing. I just didn’t know we were camping with his girls. I thought it was just the three of us.”
“Shut up, I told ya they’d be here,” he says and gets out of the car. No. No, he most definitely didn’t. I would’ve remembered something like that. Sometimes, I swear he thinks shit, and since his mind is all over the place it never comes out of his mouth, but he truly believes it does.
Roan begins to walk toward us, and I consider sinking down to the floorboard in hopes he won’t see me.
This was a bad idea. What was I thinking?
“You coming?” Chandler asks as he pushes open his door. I so wish I had another option. I thought I was ready to face Roan, but . . . I’m not. I’m the last person in the world he’ll want to see and how am I supposed to handle being around his daughters. If they so much as get a sniff that I’m into him, they’ll hang me.
“Come on!” The door shuts behind him, and I force myself to move.
Roan’s eyes are on me the second he lifts his sunglasses. His face is scruffy as if he hasn’t shaved in a week and his eyes are cautious. He’s wearing a hoody and snug jeans that hug him perfectly. There is also a beer clenched in the palm of his hand.
“You don’t mind that we crashed your party, do you?” Roan shakes his head at Chandler, then sips his beer.
“Not at all, I told you that you needed some fresh air. Mia, how are you?”
“I’m . . .” I’m fucking nervous. “Good.”
Chandler goes to the back of the car to unload it, and Roan turns his intense eyes back on me. “Your boyfriend know you’re here?”
“He isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Whatever you say,” Roan responds unforgivingly before chugging the rest of his beer, tossing the bottle into the fire, and walking off.
Shit! This is going to be harder than I thought.
Chapter 13
Roan
I can’t believe she’s here. I mean, why? Part of the reason I came camping was to get away from all the shit that is spinning inside my head about her. After her boyfriend barged in on us, my mind just got more fucked up. I don’t care what she says about him, a friend wouldn’t do that. I saw the way he looked at us, at her . . . so she’s only lying to herself.
“Would you sit?” Mia scolds Chandler, and I can’t help but grin. He’s dying without his phone. Like, I think it is literally killing him. And every noise in the distance has him looking around, scared that a cult of witches is gonna jump out.
“How is there not a cell phone tower close by?” He doesn’t even miss a beat as he holds his hand a bit higher in the air. I want to ask him what he will do if he finds a signal but has to hold his hand like that, but Mia laughs at his desperation. The sound hits me in a way it shouldn’t.
“We’re camping, that’s how,” she says in response to him.
“What if we have an emergency?”
“The witches wouldn’t let you make a phone call, anyway,” I tease him, and he walks farther away.
It’s late as hell, the girls crashed in their tent about an hour ago. I’m not sure how they feel about Mia and Chandler being here, but they seemed okay about it.
“Dude, sit the fuck down,” I yell at Chandler as his pacing makes the smoke billow in my direction.
“This blows,” he says.
“What did you expect?” I don’t want to be rude, but he doesn’t have to be here. He made a choice to come out here with Mia in tow.
“I don’t know, I expected more than . .
. this.” He waves his arm, gesturing to our surroundings.
I open the cooler next to me, pull out a beer, and toss it to him. Maybe if he gets drunk, he’ll calm down and just chill a bit.
“Fuck that, I’m going to bed.” The beer comes flying back in my direction, and I catch it in one hand.
“Sleep well, the witches will be here soon to take you to your séance,” I tease to his retreating back.
He flips me off. “You coming, Mia?”
“I’ll be there in a bit. I’m gonna finish my drink.” He nods, and then he’s gone.
I’ve been in a lot of uncomfortable positions in my life, but this is by far the worst. I have no idea what to say to her. Mia is sitting across from me, and the campfire is casting her in an orange glow that makes her even more gorgeous.
I pick at the label on my beer as the tension between us gets thicker. It shouldn’t be there at all. I shouldn’t be mad about the guy who walked into her apartment. I have no right. Everything should be kosher between us. She is not mine in any way. We had a one-night stand so fucking long ago, and we are both adults. We . . . I should be able to just get past it. But fuck . . . she makes me want so much more.
“Roan?” Her voice is just a whisper, but every syllable awakens my insides.
“Yeah?” I respond, holding her gaze.
“Will you take a walk with me?” My mind spirals as all sorts of thoughts run through it. From my pinning her against a tree and fucking her to her falling asleep in my arms, sated. I don’t know why I’m all over the place when it comes to this woman, but I am.
It’s probably better if we don’t. That’s what I should say, but instead, I nod and tell her, “Sure.”
She stands and stretches. A tiny moan leaves her body as she lifts her arms high above her head, causing her shirt to ride up. The skin of her sexy stomach peeks out at me, and I almost tell her to stop.
I get up myself and focus on staying in the moment. Mia sticks her hands in her hoody pocket, and then we both begin to head away from camp. The stars, the moon, and a few dying campfires are all that light our path.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For giving me a chance to explain things.”
“You don’t need to explain anything, Mia, you know that, right?”
“But I do. That guy at my house the other night is not my boyfriend. He really is only my friend.” I want to believe her, but for some reason, I can’t.
“Okay,” I tell her and let her keep talking. She’s the one who asked me to come on this walk.
“He and I did hook up in college, once. We were drunk and somehow got carried away. Regardless, he’s gay and in a relationship and one of my very best friends.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask her, not giving a shit who she has or hasn’t been with. Though, I’m sure her sleeping with a guy who turned out to be gay is an interesting story.
“Because I want you to know that I’m not with anyone.” I open my mouth to tell her that where she’s about to go is a bad idea, but she keeps talking. “Yes, you and I had one night of completely mind-blowing sex that I can’t seem to forget. But when you stormed out the other night, I realized that, even if we are never together again in that way, I couldn’t stand the thought of you not being in my life. Roan, I’ll always be here for you if you need me.”
“I appreciate your honesty, but my problems aren’t yours to deal with, they’re mine and mine alone.”
She stops walking as we reach a bench and exhales, looking up at the night sky before taking a seat. I sit next to her and can tell she’s thinking about her next words carefully. Then, when she says them . . . I’m shocked. “Roan, I’m done playing games. Don’t you see that I want your problems to be mine, too?”
“No, Mia. Please don’t go there.”
“Why? Because Georgia fucked you up so royally that you can never move on and love again? What she did really sucked, Roan, but we’ve all been through some shit in our lives, and what happens to us, doesn’t make it okay to just roll over and give up.”
“I’m not giving up,” I challenge back, hating how fucking well she knows me.
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m trying. I really am. Every day, I fucking try. You think I want to be this way? You think I want to feel stranded and alone, as if I can never love again because I’m too goddamn scared that person will leave me, too?”
She shakes her head, her gorgeous fucking head with that long hair piled high and those big eyes, those big innocent eyes that do things to me. I grab the sides of her face, holding on to it as she breathlessly says, “I don’t know what to think because you won’t talk to me.”
“I tried that night we were together, and . . . I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Do what?”
“Ask you to give up your life for me.”
“I wouldn’t be giving up a thing. Being with you is something I want, Roan.”
“Why?”
“I have no fucking clue.”
“There are so many men in the world, Mia,” I whisper, and she nuzzles closer against the palm of my hand. I’m still holding onto her face as she closes her eyes like she’s fearful that this is all going to end.
“There are, but all I see is you.” She opens her eyes, watching me. Since Georgia, Mia is the only woman to make me feel anything, and in this moment, I know she sees all the things I’ve held back. “Like I said earlier, if nothing ever comes of us, I just want to be there for you.”
“I can’t be your friend,” I tell her with a chuckle. But it’s the truth. “You deserve better than me.” I keep trying to push her away, knowing I shouldn’t let her sacrifice herself for me. Hating that fate keeps trying to shove us back together.
I should pull away and walk off. It would be the right thing to do. Before I can pull my palms away from her face, she runs her hands up the front of my chest. Electricity charges everywhere she touches. Then she’s sinking her hands into my hair and tilting her face just a bit as I lean in closer to her.
I groan and drop my gaze to her lips, remembering what they taste like, what she tastes like. And like that, our mouths collide with as much force as a jet taking off.
Fuck, there is no stopping this.
I hold her tightly, and she climbs on top of my lap, straddling me. She tastes just as I remember and feels the same, if not better, in my arms as she did that night. God, she is so fucking perfect that it terrifies me. It’s part of the reason I left. If things end badly, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.
Chapter 14
Mia
Being in Roan’s arms again feels unreal. I want to pinch myself to wake up.
This can’t be real, can it?
His short hair is soft between my fingertips, reminding me of how it felt all those years ago. His hands roam my body while his cock grows insistent between my legs. I don’t care that we are in the middle of nowhere. I’d let him take me right here, right now.
“We can’t do this,” he says. His words don’t touch the inferno inside me.
“Yes, we can.” I continue on and bravely begin to fumble with the button of his jeans. But he clenches my wrist in his firm grip and says, “No, I mean here.”
“I can’t wait any longer.”
“You have to.”
“Please,” I beg him and peck his lips. He kisses me back, and I do it again and again, each time he returns the gesture, sending a tiny spark into the air above the inferno that is still raging. I get what he’s saying. He means out here in the open, but I don’t care, it’s dark, and I don’t want to wait a second longer.
This is what I’ve wanted for so long. He grips my hips in his strong hands as I’m straddling his body. The strength of them pulls an indulgent noise from my lips a split second before I lean down and smash my lips against his once more.
“Please,” I whisper, softly nibbling on his bottom lip. He tosses his head back and reache
s between us, unbuttoning his pants. I can’t see what he is doing, but I can feel it, and when he takes my hand and wraps it around his cock again, I remember every detail of his hard shaft, and it causes me to scoot off him. Kneeling between his legs, I don’t waste a second, sucking and swallowing as much of him as I can.
His hand knots into my hair with a tight grip pushing and pulling me along with my movements. Each thrust of him against my mouth makes my pussy clench.
Fuck, I want him.
“God, I love your mouth,” he grumbles and then pulls me off him. I stare up at him, panting, wanting more. I know my eyes are full of lust as his hands lift me to a standing position. Immediately, his hands find the button on my pants. He flicks it open, and then I shimmy, helping him work them down. My jeans are still bunched around my ankles when he pulls me toward him, my knees touching the rough wooden bench as he spreads my pussy wide open, rubbing back and forth across my sex with his skilled fingers. The friction makes me shudder, and I feel like I could collapse.
“I don’t have a condom,” he says. Neither do I, but I’m on the pill and haven’t been with anyone in so long that I know I’m clean four times over.
“I don’t want to use one,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You on the pill?”
“Yes.” With the one simple word, he pulls me down onto him. His body is so warm against mine that I want to blend into it. My feet are bound together by my jeans, and our thighs are skin to skin. But nothing compares to the feeling of him inside me . . . again.
God, what I’d do to be completely naked with Roan.
My daydream breaks when the head of his very stout shaft presses against me just where I need it. I move slowly, trying to cherish this moment. Roan’s dick throbs inside of me, causing me to moan loudly, and he clamps a hand over my mouth. I stare down at him, the moonlight barely illuminating his face as I try to get a read on what he’s thinking. But all I can see in the reflection of his dark, alluring eyes is myself.