For Better or Worse

by Lauren Layne

  He didn’t respond, for once, not willing to engage in flirtation as he walked back toward her, ripping the condom wrapper open with his teeth before rolling it on as he positioned himself behind her.

  There was no warning. His hands closed around her hips at the same moment he plunged inside her. She cried out at the unexpected invasion, arching her back in pleasure.

  He gathered her hair in one hand, winding it around his fist, holding her captive as he slammed into her over and over again. There was no gentleness tonight, but she didn’t want it. She wanted this—this unapologetic carnality that had come out of nowhere and somehow was exactly what she needed.

  His other hand slid around to her front, his fingers stroking her in light teasing flicks until she was practically sobbing for a release he kept just out of reach.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He grunted in gratification, stroking her harder still, his motions growing smaller and more precise until she shattered against him.

  He’d been waiting for her, and the second she clenched around him and cried out, he came with a low groan, one hand on her hip, clenching and ­unclenching in a helpless surrender that mimicked her own.

  Her knees buckled, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, lowering them both gracelessly to the ground.

  Josh rolled to his back, his chest still heaving with exertion, and Heather did the same, so they lay shoulder-to-shoulder, basking in the aftermath of the hottest, most intense sex of her life.

  • • •

  “What was that?” she asked several minutes later, still splayed out on the floor next to him, when she finally stopped panting.

  “Fantastic,” he said, his voice raspy as though his throat was dry.

  “Well, yes, that. But why?”

  “Hell if I know,” he said. “I just saw you there, wielding your little spoon, and I just wanted. So I took.”

  His words sent a shockwave of forbidden want through her. Nobody had ever wanted her this way. And she had never wanted anyone else.

  Maybe it was okay that this was all they were. Friends and neighbors who could make each other lose their minds in the most raunchy, unapologetic kind of way.

  “So do we talk about it?” he asked quietly.

  “Talk about what?” she replied, keeping her voice light.

  He turned his head slightly and looked at her. She looked back. For a moment his expression seemed almost tender, and she could have sworn she saw a thank-you in his gaze. Maybe a sorry somewhere in there, too.

  But then he reached down by his side, picked something up, and flicked it against her bare thigh.

  “Ouch,” she yelped, realizing she’d just been slapped with her own spoon.

  “Come on, 4C. Let’s make banana bread.”

  Heather groaned, but let him help her to her feet. “Not that again.”

  As usual the banana bread never happened.

  But round two definitely did.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I KNEW IT. SHE looks just like me,” Josh said as he gazed down at his days-old niece, and felt his heart lurch as one of her tiny arms flopped outside of her tight pink swaddle blanket, her features peaceful as she slept.

  “Sure, if you look like an adorable Craisin,” his sister said, coming to peer over his shoulder at her infant daughter. Jamie leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the baby’s forehead, then each of her cheeks.

  “Did you just compare this lovely lady to a dried cranberry?”

  “I did. She’s all sorts of wrinkly pink goodness, and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Josh didn’t disagree. Marian Margaret Clyde was pretty much perfection in his eyes. His niece had come into the world hearty and healthy, if a bit late by her mother’s preferences, and Josh had been on the first flight down to Nashville once his brother-in-law had given him the go-ahead.

  Kevin was off fetching BBQ to satisfy his wife’s post-pregnancy craving, which meant it was just the twins and new baby hanging out in his sister’s comfortable suburban home. He supposed he’d have to give Marian back eventually, but not anytime soon. At least, not until she started crying.

  “I never really pictured you as the baby-swooning kind of guy,” Jamie said, giving him a thoughtful look as she leaned back and resumed folding the mountain of towels on the couch beside her.

  He snorted. “Just because I don’t go up and coo at strange children on the subway doesn’t mean I’m not completely enamored with this little princess.”

  “If you and Kev keep talking like that, you’re going to turn her into a spoiled brat,” Jamie said fondly.

  He glanced up. “Oh, so is now not a good time to bring in the pink pony I brought her along with an IOU for a Porsche on her sixteenth birthday?”

  His twin merely rolled her eyes as she moved the stack of clean laundry to the side. “How are you, anyway?”

  “’Bout the same as I was last time you saw me a few weeks ago,” he said.

  Jamie shook her head. “I don’t think so. There’s something different about you.”

  Oh great. Not this.

  “You’re my twin,” he deflected. “Aren’t you just supposed to know?”

  “All right, then, if that’s how you want to play it,” she said, leaning back. “I think there’s a woman in your life. I think that’s why you’re down here twice in one month. Not just to see me, not even to see the baby, but because you’re running.”

  “Yes, there are women in my life,” he said, dodging the last part of her accusation. The part that hit way too close to home. “Lots, actually. You. Mom. Your little Craisin. Two grandmothers, both of whom have deemed me their favorite. A handful of aunts. Also who insist I’m their favorite.”

  “Who is she?” Jamie asked, refusing to be sidetracked. “The girl you took to Thanksgiving?”

  He glanced up sharply, and his twin shrugged. “Mom told me how you brought her and how you both fell all over each other insisting you were just friends, but she’s never seen you so happy.”

  “Mom sees what she wants to see. You know that.”

  “Well that’s what I figured . . . that you were just taking pity on a lonely neighbor. I know how you like to take care of sad creatures. Cats, dogs, even that weird turtle.”

  “Agatha wasn’t weird.”

  “She bit me.”

  “Probably because you called her weird,” Josh said.

  “Seriously though, tell me about the girl.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her to mind her own damn business when he caught a whiff of something less than fresh. “Ah, I think we have a cleanup on aisle baby.”

  Jamie sighed. “Yeah. She does that. A lot.”

  His sister didn’t seem too bugged though as she pushed up from the couch and came to gather the now-waking infant in her arms. “I’d make you change her, but you’ll probably withhold information to get back at me,” she said over her shoulder as she headed upstairs.

  “I’ll withhold information anyway,” he called after her.

  His sister disappeared upstairs, and Josh started to take out his phone to text Heather, just to check in, but decided against it. As much as he’d teased her about not reading his mind, the truth was, Jamie was as good at it as anybody. Even more annoying, his twin had a tendency to figure things out about Josh before he’d had a chance to figure them out.

  He was having a hard enough time keeping his own thoughts off Heather—he didn’t need Jamie’s weird twin juju to make a mess of things he was struggling to keep under control.

  They’d emerged mostly unscathed from their fight-and-fuck the other day. Both were doing a damn good job of pretending it hadn’t happened. And while he was grateful, he was also feeling like something was missing.

  It made no sense. The sex was great, both the makeup sex and the not-mak
eup sex.

  He liked Heather. She liked him.

  They were enjoying each other, which is all he’d wanted from the very beginning.

  And now that he had what he wanted, it was somehow not enough?

  What the fuck was that about?

  Maybe it was just the guilt talking. He still bit her head off anytime she tried to talk to him about something real. Things with Heather were starting to feel a good deal more complicated than he’d been prepared for, and not because she wanted to know about his personal life.

  But because he wanted to tell her.

  A small, fragile part of Josh wanted Heather to know the whole him, the risks and the danger of who he really was, what life with him would be like. But he was too terrified that in letting her know about his past, she’d also have to discover what life without him would be like.

  He wouldn’t do that to someone he . . . liked.

  “Okay, she’s asleep again,” Jamie said, coming back into the room and fiddling with her baby monitor, disrupting Josh’s rather disturbing train of thought. “I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to be this easy. Do you think I’m going to pay for this later?”

  “Probably when she’s a teenager.”

  “Ugh, I don’t even want to think about that.” Jamie resumed her spot on the couch. “Okay, so, seriously, I want to know what’s going on with you and this Heather girl. You might as well start talking, you know I’m not going to relent until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Josh grunted. He did know. His mom won the award for meddling, but his sister took first prize for persistence.

  “You already know the important parts. Her name is Heather, she’s my neighbor and my friend. End of story.”

  “And you’re sleeping with her,” Jamie added helpfully.

  “Ah—”

  “Right. End of story, my ass. Is she your girlfriend now? Mom said she seemed like your girlfriend.”

  Maybe. “No,” he said out loud, annoyed by how defensive he sounded.

  “So let me get this straight. You like her. She’s your friend. You live next door to each other. You’re having sex. But she’s not your girlfriend.”

  It sounded as ridiculous coming out of her mouth as it had Trevor’s, but Josh held firm. “Right.”

  “Okaaaaay,” Jamie said in a skeptical tone. “And what would make her your girlfriend?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So you’re a pig.”

  Josh laughed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s not like that. She knows the score. She’s not exactly dragging me to meet her parents.”

  “And yet you dragged her to meet your parents,” Jamie said smugly.

  Shit. He’d walked right into that one.

  Josh took out his phone and pretended to scroll through his sports app, affecting a casual tone. “I’m not interested in a relationship.”

  “Why not?”

  He glanced up and gave her a steady look. You know why.

  Her look was a mixture of sadness and exasperation. “J. You’re not sick anymore.”

  But I could be at any time. I could relapse in an instant, and I don’t need yet another person I care about mourning me.

  He said none of this. Josh knew it was wrong to keep his family in the dark, but they’d already been through so much—his parents and sister, even his brother-in-law, had all lost years worrying about him already. The least he could do in return was to give them peace of mind now, however false it might be.

  “You’re not sick, right?” she said, her voice a little bit higher than usual.

  “No, I’m fine,” he said quietly. It was the truth. His last regular doctor’s appointment had confirmed that he was still in remission. “But think about what not being able to help me did to you. That almost killed you, and in turn almost killed me. I can’t put someone else through that. I won’t.”

  “Because you care about her,” Jamie said.

  Josh lifted his shoulders. No use denying it. He did care about Heather, which is why he wouldn’t do either of them the disservice of falling in love with her. Or letting her fall in love with him.

  “You’re not doing that thing, are you?” Jamie asked with narrowed eyes.

  “What thing?”

  “That guy thing. Where you push her away for her own good, or some shit?”

  “I’m a cancer survivor, Jamie. Not an egomaniac with a playboy complex.”

  “Exactly, you’re a survivor,” she shot back. “Meaning you’re not sick anymore, and you should get married and have babies and be happy.”

  “I am happy,” he said automatically.

  “No. You aren’t. You’re content, and you smile a lot, and you’ve still got the best sense of humor of anyone I know, but you’re not happy, Josh. You want everyone to think you’re living life to the fullest with the music and the laissez-faire ’tude you’ve got going on, but you’re really living a half life because you’re too scared of having no life.”

  “That’s deep, sis. Also, bullshit.”

  She threw her hands up. “I should have listened to Kevin. He told me not to get into it with you.”

  “Smart man,” Josh said. “Speaking of, was that the garage door opening?”

  “Saved by the BBQ,” she muttered as they both stood. “Hey, Josh,” she said, touching his arm as he started to walk past her toward the kitchen.

  He tensed but turned toward her. “What’s up?”

  “I love you.”

  His throat tightened. “I love you, too.”

  “I also think you’re an idiot.”

  Josh smiled. “Noted.”

  “Heather’s not coming for Christmas, right?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. She’s going back home to Michigan to spend it with her mom.”

  “Ah. Maybe next year, then,” she said, patting his arm with a smile.

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell his sister that in no universe would his and Heather’s fling last an entire year to next Christmas.

  But the words never made it out.

  Because somehow, the thought of him and Heather parting ways just seemed . . .

  Wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  CHRISTMAS HAD NEVER BEEN one of Heather’s favorite holidays.

  She didn’t dislike it. She enjoyed the lights and the carols and the general festivities as much as the next person.

  But when it came to the actual day, Christmas always felt a bit like a letdown. After a month of parties and selecting the perfect gift and ogling the window displays on Fifth Avenue, you were left with a strange sense of disappointment, knowing that you have to wait a whole other year to do it again.

  But Christmas did mean spending time with her mom. And even though once again Heather found herself back in Michigan, in the same tired trailer at the same tired table, Christmas meant family.

  And family was Joan Fowler.

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t fancier,” Joan said, nudging her plate away with the base of her wineglass.

  “If I ever choose fancy over homemade mac and cheese, just put me out to pasture,” Heather said, picking up her own glass and leaning back in her chair with a contented sigh.

  Her mom was right. Dinner hadn’t been fancy. Macaroni and cheese with bacon. But they’d grated the four kinds of cheeses together, stressed over how much salt to add to the water together, and eaten half the bacon together before it ever made it to the pasta dish.

  The perfect Christmas.

  “I still can’t get over cooking bacon in the oven,” her mother mused. “That’s going to be very dangerous to my waistline. Who’d you say taught you that trick again?”

  Heather gave her mom a look. “Mother. You’re fishing.”

  “Guilty,” Joan said with a wide grin. “It’s just that you
’ve been here for three days and have told me next to nothing about your young man.”

  Heather shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “I’ve told you, there’s just . . . not much to tell. I like him, we’re having fun, but he’s told me in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want anything serious, and I’m trying to respect that.”

  “What about you? What do you want?”

  Heather groaned and stood before flopping on the ugly old couch directly behind the kitchen table. “I don’t know. Are the brownies cooled yet?”

  Her mom didn’t let her off the hook. “If you want something more, you should tell him. Men appreciate honesty.”

  “Respectfully, Mom, I’m not sure they do,” Heather said, closing her eyes and laying her head back. It was times like this that she appreciated her mom’s casual lifestyle. Christmas was so much better in yoga pants.

  The couch sagged as Joan sat beside her. “He must think you’re more than a piece of ass if he took you home with him for Thanksgiving.”

  Heather let out a horrified laugh. “‘Piece of ass,’ Mom? We’re going there?”

  Joan didn’t say anything, and Heather opened her eyes and turned her head toward her mom, surprised to see a sad expression on her face.

  Her mother was one of those chronically happy people; always determined to see the bright side, quick to lose her temper, but even quicker to forgive and forget.

  “I want to talk to you about Thanksgiving,” Joan said.

  Heather stilled. “Okay?”

  “I know you were upset with me.”

  “I was,” Heather said slowly. “But I got over it. Really.”

  She was like her mom in that way. Had never really gotten into the whole “holding a grudge” thing. Way too exhausting.

  “May I speak frankly, dear?” Joan asked.

  Heather blinked. “Depends. May I have more wine?”

  Her mom smiled, reaching for the bottle of merlot on the table behind her and topping them both off. “Okay, here we go. This is going to come out a little tough love, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I love you, so it needs to be said.”