Actually, Chloe had a hard time believing in it.
Knowing tonight was the big date, she stabbed the poor egg again, since it was defenseless on her plate and therefore easy to abuse. Harper and the Millers continued to speak but all that roared through Chloe’s mind was the knowledge that Jack wanted marriage, two point five kids, and happily ever after.
And though she planned to go out with him tonight, she still didn’t believe it was a realistic desire. She couldn’t have kids, miscarriages proving that when she was younger, and she sucked at relationships.
Why the hell did she suddenly wish she didn’t know those very important factoids?
***
The movie theater was dark and the smell of hot buttered popcorn a rich temptation in the air. Chloe watched the people moving across the screen, but her attachment to the plot was tenuous at best.
How could she even pretend to care what happened to the actors in this stupid movie with Jack, smelling clean and absolutely edible, right next to her?
And his arm kept brushing hers.
Stupid. It seemed unbelievably stupid to feel a zing of awareness each time his arm brushed hers, but she did.
When his hand curled over hers, in a completely comfortable and wholesome way, she couldn’t help but watch a movie of her own, played behind her eyelids—them as horny young kids in a movie theater doing things that got them kicked out.
She couldn’t remember what movie that had been either.
His fingers ran slowly back and forth across her wrist, causing a fresh wave of lust to break over her.
Did someone just learn to fly in the movie? What the hell was this flick about, anyway?
Not sure, but wishing the people on the screen would distract her from the man currently filling her thoughts, she tried to focus.
His laughter rumbled out of his chest, undoubtedly because of some funny bit of the movie, but the sound rolled her under.
It wasn’t fair she was dying in unrequited lust while he just sat there, enjoying the film.
She released his hand to take a sip of soda. Then, using her newly freed fingers, she trailed a touch up his knee, not looking at him. Casually, she stroked his leg, hearing his breath catch when her fingers dipped in to run along the crease of his jeans.
He didn’t stop her, so her wandering hand became bolder.
Ending the pretense of casual touch while she watched the movie, she shifted her weight to focus on the man sitting in the darkness beside her. He kept pretending to watch the movie, but as she grazed her fingertips around the shell of his ear then along the hard line of his jaw, his breath hissed out.
Leaning closer, she traced his ear again, this time with her tongue, and his soft whisper slid across her skin. “I can’t pay attention to the movie when you’re doing that, Red.”
“Yeah?”
He turned his head, capturing her lips and tasting them. Tracing the seam, his tongue teased as he danced kisses along the corners of her mouth.
Then he melded their lips, feeding her hunger, and she was lost. His kiss was both so familiar and entirely new all at once. She wasn’t sure if she was starved for the memory of him or the present feel of him, and she determined she’d not break away until she figured out which.
Until a bright light glared beyond her eyelids.
Opening her eyes, she was blinded for a minute by the flashlight in the hand of the theater employee. “Jack?”
“James. How’s life?”
“I can’t believe you two are making out in a movie theater. Get a room. You’re a cop.” James, a kid that Chloe babysat for when he was little, flicked off the flashlight and strolled back down the aisle. “Thought you were a couple of horny teenagers, for God’s sake.”
Giggling, Chloe covered her mouth.
“Well, maybe a movie wasn’t the best idea, Chloe.”
Turning to face him, she tried to stifle her laughter. “Wanna go stargazing?”
“Naw. Let’s finish the movie.” Curling his arm around her, the rest of the movie went by in a blur. No one felt quite as comfortable as Jack did. When he took her home, she was silent for the ride.
Pretty secure that he was staying the night, she let him walk her to her door. When he spun her, pinning her to the door, and closed his mouth over hers, the kiss tasted like a victory.
Until he stepped back and said, “Goodnight, Red.”
As she watched him walk back to his truck, she unlocked the door. Making it inside, she drooped against the door once she closed it again.
Really?
He was just going home?
Peeking out the window, she saw his truck still idling outside.
Biting her lip, she mentally begged him to change his mind. Just turn off the truck and come back up the walk.
She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she released it in a whoosh when the truck turned off and he turned the lights back off.
***
Resting his head on the steering wheel, he listened to the truck idle while his body and mind argued over his best course of action.
Every cell in his body cried out to stalk back up her walkway, pin her to the door and kiss her until her eyes went foggy.
His brain said the time wasn’t right yet—that he needed to wait her out. She meant more than hormones and hot skin. She was the woman he wanted to spend forever with.
His heart…
Aw, hell.
Turning off the engine, he covered the space between his truck and her door in record time. A spark of joy lit his soul when her door flipped back open before he could knock. She’d waited, watched, maybe hoped he’d come back.
Her face, the one that haunted his dreams and tempted him with what might have been, seemed full of questions. His only answer was to sling one arm around her waist, lifting her off her feet so he could kiss her with all the need and passion only she seemed able to stir.
A whimper sounded in the darkness, a tiny cry of need from the back of her throat, and he sank into her warmth, her welcome, and took what he’d so long craved.
Her passion.
She was liquid fire, a hot and needy woman demanding he fulfill her and his cock pressed against his zipper, begging to answer. The feel of her breasts, round and soft, made him want to suckle just to watch her come undone.
And to feel them, and her, his again.
Stopping at that point was akin to punching himself in the gut, but he slowed his kisses, raining them across her temple, not quite ready to release her from where he’d pinned her to the door.
She wasn’t his yet.
If he slept with her tonight, by tomorrow she’d be full of reasons why they might not work out, ready and willing to push him a safe distance away again.
He wasn’t Gary. They weren’t her parents.
She still didn’t believe in them. She wanted him, maybe just as bad as he craved her, but she still hadn’t admitted she needed him.
“Jack?” The question was, in and of itself, a temptation, an offer.
Catching her wrists, he kissed each of her hands. “Goodnight, Red.”
Sure that if she said it, if she actually asked him to stay with her, he wouldn’t be able to walk away, he double-timed it back to the truck. A single wave and he pushed on the gas pedal quite a bit harder than he needed to.
The wind, as it cut through the window of the truck, cooled his ardor.
He couldn’t mess it up again. This time, unlike the last time when he’d proposed to her drunkenly and not proved he meant his words, he’d do it right.
She’d see.
Chapter Seven
“Did you ever wonder if maybe Jack was gay?”
Harper choked, sputtering on her coffee and appearing to inhale some of it. After a moment to collect herself and a slap on the table of the diner, she blinked past tears to meet Chloe’s searching gaze. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Uh,” stirring her drink, she searched for answers in the clouds of crea
my froth. “I mean, he’s had no serious relationships since me.”
“I hardly think that makes him gay.”
Chloe shrugged. She didn’t really think he was gay, either. The hardness of his dick when he held her, the fascination with her breasts…none of it set off the gaydar.
Harper’s hand came into her line of vision, clamping on her wrist. Glancing up, she saw concern etched on her friend’s face. “You ever consider he’s not the one who has…issues with relationships?”
Chloe snorted. “I’ve had lots of relationships.”
Gnawing her lip, Harper seemed to search for words, waving her hand as if she was going to pluck them out of the air. “You’ve had lots of men you slept with for a while, like you were waiting for the other shoe to drop, not like you were a big slut but…”
“So you’re calling me a little slut?”
Blowing out a breath, Harper scowled at her. “Yes, dear, I’m calling you a slut. Because I’m all judgy like that. Get real. What I’m saying is your heart didn’t seem to be in a single one of those relationships.”
“Still kind of hearing slut.” Pretending to be offended wasn’t working—Harper knew her too well—but it seemed safer than telling the truth.
My husband left me because I was broken inside when we got together, but everyone was so nice to me—the poor young widow. The poor fake.
Thinking it, wanting to say it, reminded her of the young, sweet woman who wept over Gary…she’d known, seeing her, that she’d loved Gary in a way Chloe never had. That she grieved the death of the man she loved and no one comforted her—distracted by the woman they thought they should comfort, the wife he would have left.
I can’t ever love like you do, Harper, and besides…even if I could, Jack deserves a family, a happily ever after.
I can’t be any of that. I can’t have kids and I’m not made for long-term.
Blinking back tears, Chloe lifted her own hand to signal for more coffee.
Harper sighed. “I wish you’d just tell me whatever it is that holds you back. No one can help you fix it if you don’t tell us what is wrong.”
I’m wrong. “There’s nothing wrong. If I was like you, I wouldn’t let the fires of hell itself stop me from finding happily ever after. Not everyone is wired like that. I enjoy my freedom, enjoy not being tied down.”
Harper snorted. “Okay, well, if you ever want to talk…”
Pasting on a smile, Chloe focused on Harper’s hair since she didn’t feel right looking her in the eye. “It was a simple question, Harp. I thought Jack was hot and horny last night and he got my motor revving. Then he left. It seemed weird, is all, so I just wondered…”
“Nope,” Harper answered, relaxing back in her seat as their coffees were topped off by the waitress. “Never struck me as anything other than a woman hungry cowboy cop.”
Chloe shrugged. “Still, weird that he left.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?” Chloe chewed over possible reasons why he left all night and most of this morning. Nothing made sense, hence her broaching the shaky territory with her best pal.
“I think he’s trying to keep you off balance. If he sleeps with you, it becomes easy for you to lump him in whatever category you’ve lumped other men. By waiting, I think he’s showing you that you mean more than a turn in the sack.”
Chloe snorted. “Or, well…”
“What?”
“Maybe he’s not attracted to me?” She didn’t mean it to come out as a question and bit her lip.
“Honey, the man stares at you like you’re his oasis in the desert. He’s mooned after you since we were kids. I think he fell for you the moment you got out of that over packed U-Haul and moved in next door to him. Attraction? Yeah, that’s not the issue.”
Chloe shrugged. The idea bothered her, more than she could admit.
Maybe she was getting old, less attractive, losing her mojo.
“I think he might love you, Chloe.”
Rolling her eyes, Chloe sipped her coffee. “Yep, and I believe in Santa. If by love, you mean cares about me and always has? Sure. He loves me. I love him. But in love? Like happily ever after, in a Dylan and Harper sort of way? That kind of thing happens so rarely…the odds alone say that’s not what’s up here.”
“If you say so.” The secretive smile curling Harper’s lips annoyed her so much that she stood, flipping some money onto the table.
“I got breakfast. I’ll call you later.”
“Mmm-kay.” Harper tugged her cell phone free of her purse and began clicking. “Give it some thought, though. Remember when you asked me what was holding me back with Dylan? The fear of what might go wrong…might being the key word. What’s the worst thing that will happen if you just relax and let the Jack thing play out?”
“Lots. Not all love stories end like yours, Harper.” She headed out, but couldn’t escape the memories.
Bright and clear as if she relived it, Chloe pictured her mother, crumpled in a corner in the bathroom.
The light slanted through the window, tinted by gingham curtains and reflected off lovely walls. Their house was the kind of house that screamed American Dream—stereotypical in all the best ways and always smelling of something her mother cooked.
Curled in that corner, next to the toilet and looking as out of place as could be, her mother huddled, eyes red from crying, broken like some china doll discarded by a careless child.
Seeing Chloe staring, her mother stood, wiping snot and tears on the sleeve of her well-pressed blouse. “Baby, I’m sorry.”
Shaking her head, Chloe ran from her. Daddy would fix this. Everyone always said she was Daddy’s little girl. Down the stairs, skipping steps, she raced.
The slamming doors, the yells, they’d just stopped so he was still here. He hadn’t left yet.
The sound of the engine starting filled her with panic, with silent screams that battered her brain and ripped at her chest, begging to be set free. Letting the door connecting to the garage gape open behind her, she ran at the car, flinging herself on the hood. “Daddy!”
The engine turned off and his car door opened. “Chloe, let go of the car. Go back in the house.”
His voice, so distant, made the screams in her head louder. “Don’t leave, Daddy. Take me with you.”
Any emotion that lingered on his face vanished, leaving a cold mask. “I’ll come back for you, baby. I have to go now—”
Her mother’s hand closed on her shoulder, fingers digging too hard, like the talons of some angry bird. “She’s not going anywhere, Liam. She’s mine. Go to your whore, leave us be.”
“Screw you, Stacey.”
The words, angry words, like she’d heard through the walls, but never directly from her parent’s mouths in front of her, were like a slap.
“Daddy…” She managed to whisper it, hoping she’d misheard him.
“Oh, Liam, never again.” Dragging her backwards, her mother’s fury was just as poisonous as her father’s.
“Chloe is mine.” Her dad got back in the car, slamming the door.
“Over my dead body!” Her mother shrieked it, voice louder than the engine turning over. In a squeal of tires and a cloud of burnt rubber smell, her father was gone, leaving her with her still panting in anger mother. “Don’t you worry, Chloe. He won’t take you. This is our home and we’re staying here.”
Divorce. She knew the word, worried that the arguments would lead to it, but the reality suddenly weighed down on Chloe. She couldn’t stand it. If she just ran away…
Maybe they’d both search for her. Maybe they’d realize they loved her. Maybe she could fix this. Escaping the hold her mother had on her, she fled out the open garage door. Mom called after her, but she kept going, feet pounding the pavement, tears blinding her.
She ran, not sure where she was headed, but far away. Where they couldn’t find her until they talked, not argued. At the pond, she stopped, sides aching and breaths coming in wheezes. They w
eren’t supposed to go to the pond, not without a grownup, but she and Harper’d snuck here a few times. At the rattling sound of a bike with a card in the wheel, she bounded down the dock and hid in the tiny boathouse.
Feet thudded behind her and then stopped. “Chloe?”
Jack. The boy next door, the one who pulled her hair at recess and always smelled, just a little, like horse poo.
Tucking her body lower, hoping he wouldn’t come in after her, she waited, sure he’d go away. He couldn’t see her like this, couldn’t tell his parents… The thought of him telling on her made her respond, “Go away. You didn’t see me.”
The door scraped open and his footsteps came closer. “I’m not a liar and if you want me to lie, you’re going to have to do more than tell me to for no reason.”
Punching the floor, she came out of her hiding spot, brushing at her cheeks to hide her tears. “Just forget you saw me.”
He stood, jeans patched at the knees, tee shirt faded and a little short at the waist, like he’d grown and not gotten new clothes since the spurt. “You okay? Why were you crying?”
Rubbing harder at her face, she stomped one foot. “I said go away, you hear? Leave me alone.”
He wouldn’t understand. His family, she’d seen them at town picnics and school stuff. They didn’t have as much money as hers, but they had some kind of dewy glow about them. You could tell his dad didn’t go home and call his mother names. That they didn’t scream at each other and throw stuff, as if he couldn’t hear them.
She hated him, just a little, right that moment, for what he had. He couldn’t possibly understand her.
Leaning back on the doorframe, he suddenly looked older than twelve. “Try me.”
Something about the way he said it, the tone and seriousness of his voice, made her think he’d try.
“It’s your parents, isn’t it?”
He guessed it and she couldn’t quite find the lie to make him believe otherwise.
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
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