by Ruthie Knox
She needed him to tell her how to protect herself from the part that was dangerous, but he didn’t.
He didn’t, which meant she’d been right. There wasn’t any way to protect herself from the part that was dangerous.
You either did, or you didn’t. You had to pick.
“It’s worth it,” he said.
“You don’t know that,” she said irritably. “You don’t even know what it is. Either of those its. It is worth it. Complete nonsense.”
“I do too know. And I’m telling you, it’s worth it.”
She sighed. “I was mean. When I left Sunnyvale.”
“How come?”
“He told me about his kid, and I freaked.”
“Can you fix it?”
She turned her head. There was Roman, looking at her with concern and understanding.
There was her friend. The reason she was in Indiana right now.
To talk to Roman.
“He texted me.”
“What, today? What did he say?”
“He said, When you’re ready to talk, call me.”
“Did you call?”
“I turned off my phone.”
Roman shook his head, smiling. “You’re a piece of work.”
“I know.”
And then they just lay there for a minute, and he picked up her hand and held it. The touch was so explicitly not sexual—so frankly and completely unarousing—that it forced her to say, “I never liked having sex with you.”
Roman started to laugh. “Thanks.”
“It’s not as if you liked having sex with me.”
“We did all right.”
“It’s nine hundred times better with her, though, isn’t it?”
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“It’s a million times better with Noah.”
Roman turned his face away and covered his eyes with his hand. “A million. Jesus. If baby angels sing when you guys are in bed together, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“I cry. Every time.”
He barked with laughter. “He makes you cry in bed. You should marry him, Carm.”
“Shut up.”
“You should have his babies.”
Carmen’s stomach did a flip.
Maybe not her stomach. Maybe below her stomach.
Possibly her baby-making equipment, quiescent her entire life, had just tucked into a little roll, a sort of happy somersault that felt dizzy and disorienting and … good.
Scary-good.
Scary to think, if she figured out how to do instead of don’t-ing all the time, she might feel it again. She might feel it all the time.
Carmen smiled. “Shut up.”
“I cried this morning with my sister.”
“You’re turning into kind of a pussy.”
He curled into a ball, laughing so hard that Carmen thought he might break something.
Except he’d already broken something.
Broken open.
She’d never seen him so happy.
Before tonight, she’d never seen him happy at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The arrival of the dusty black SUV in the parking lot startled the fawn into flight.
Ashley watched it bound into the thicket at the property line, and she flattened the palm of her hand over her sternum, excited and scared.
Scared to be excited.
Today was two weeks. Two weeks since she’d tricked him into taking this trip with her, and this was the end of it. This moment.
The end or the beginning—or both. The high point that happened when you arrived where you were going and looked out over the vista and then … and then.
She and Roman had made it to the and then, and it turned out that and then scared the ever-loving crap out of her.
And then was the stage at which her relationships usually imploded.
She didn’t want another implosion. She wanted everything to go well this morning, and she had to believe the flight of the Key deer wasn’t a bad omen.
She was crazy and shoeless, but that wasn’t Roman’s fault. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him on this pile of mulch beneath the palm tree, nor had he known when he called last night to tell her he’d be here early in the morning that she would lie awake for hours, restless and fretting, plotting and planning in her motel bed.
He’d suggested they meet at Sunnyvale, then go grab some breakfast.
It hadn’t occurred to her until she was sitting here waiting that he might have been setting the stage for a tactful breakup. He could be planning to drive her to breakfast, avoid eye contact over the muffins, and tell her it had been fun, but they both needed to get back to their lives.
She’d gone full-bore and planned a picnic, which would be awkward if he was here to dump her.
None of which was Roman’s fault. He hadn’t known what she had in mind. He probably would have tried to talk her out of it—or at least to talk her into wearing pants and a decent pair of shoes.
She’d failed to check the weather, which was windy and unseasonably cool.
She’d also failed to consider how prickly the mulch would be against the backs of her thighs.
The ants had discovered her sandals and crawled over the bare soles of her feet three times, and the third time, she’d flipped out and torn off the straps, flinging the shoes into the closest pile of rubble.
So yeah. She was shoeless and crazy, which was not, sadly, an unfamiliar state. Nor was it Roman’s fault. Even though Roman Díaz was responsible for the destruction of the place that had mattered to her most in the world, she didn’t hate him.
She loved him.
But man, she’d really been enjoying the little Key deer. It had been such an excellent distraction from all the depressing thoughts about her grandmother. And the regretful thoughts about what she’d said to Roman the last time she saw him—and what she hadn’t said.
Not to mention the low-grade, ever-present terror that she had no clue how the future was supposed to work now that she’d fallen in love with a not-remotely-evil Latino Cheesehead land developer.
It was all a little much.
To the left of where the deer had disappeared, the last gasp of sunrise washed the sky in muted pink. The mounds of rubble that had once been Sunnyvale stood in dark relief against the sky like a miniature Floridian mountain range—which would make an interesting postcard, actually.
Welcome to Florida! The Alps of the South.
Whereas the SUV was like no postcard she’d ever seen. Dingy, dented, scratched, and bouncing along with Susan Bowman’s Airstream trailer behind it, it looked like a joke whose punch line Ashley didn’t know.
The driver’s door opened, and black dress shoes appeared beneath gray slacks. The black top of his head crested the door. Ashley’s attention focused to a point, waiting for the moment when she’d see his face.
There.
Roman.
He had to detour around the remains of Turquoise Treasure, and the closer he walked, the more this rich Miami land developer looked like everything she’d ever wanted but had been afraid to ask for: tall, dark, expensive, beautifully proportioned, and—her favorite part—smiling.
Smiling as though he saw her, Ashley Bowman, and he liked what he saw.
Smiling as though he’d always seen her.
As though seeing her was the very best thing he could imagine.
And then they were kissing.
It happened so fast, it was more like an act of nature than a decision. A hurricane of stored-up desire that lifted her fingertips and made them frantically paw at his shoulders and his neck and his head until they found all the teeny little curls that had been born along his hairline in the past few days. A whirlwind of energy and grappling hands, Roman’s hands, Roman’s lips on hers. He skipped the first three stages of kissing and moved directly to the part where his tongue stroked into her mouth in that deep, delicious way that was more explicit than sex, with predictable effects in he
r underpants.
It turned out that the palm tree made an excellent sort of brace if your hot boyfriend wanted to get his thigh between your legs and hoist you up by the ass cheeks so he could do amazing, terrible, glorious things with his hands underneath your dress in lieu of saying hello.
Ashley was panting by the time they broke apart. Dizzy and happy, only halfway aware he was speaking, she didn’t realize he expected a reply until he bit her earlobe and said, impatiently, “Ash?”
“What?”
“Was that the deer?”
“Huh?”
“I think I saw the deer when I was driving up. Small, right? Brown?”
“That’s the deer.”
“Now I’ve seen everything.”
She pulled him closer, pressing her breasts against his chest. “Honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Roman smiled, and then he kissed her again.
She’d had a speech to give him, but she couldn’t remember how it went.
“I love you,” he told her neck.
“I really love you,” he told her mouth.
Her heart fluttered and settled. “I love you, too,” she said.
They’d figure the rest out.
After they finished kissing.
Which didn’t seem likely to happen, actually, anytime soon.
Episode 10:
Claimed
CHAPTER ONE
“Cheers!” Ashley clicked her plastic tumbler against Roman’s and took a long swallow. He was eyeing his cup with skepticism. “You’re supposed to say ‘Cheers’ back, you know.”
“What is it?”
“Carrot colada. Half carrot juice, half coconut juice.”
He took an experimental sip. “It’s good.”
“Only the best for my baby.”
She meant it, but she tried to sound jokey. She was afraid he would laugh—and not in the good way—if he found out she’d called in a favor to make this picnic happen. At four-thirty a.m., Ashley had roused her friend Muna, who owned the amazing vegan-grocery-store-slash-diner on Big Pine Key, to unlock the place so Ashley could raid the refrigerator case.
She’d been so preoccupied with making arrangements for their food that she’d gotten everything else wrong. They had to sit on the space blanket from Roman’s car because she’d neglected to bring a picnic cloth. The sundress she’d dug out of her bag was too skimpy for such a breezy, cool morning.
But damn it, she was trying.
It was dizzying to be sitting here with him. More dizzying than his arrival, more drugging than his kisses. Not altogether pleasant. She wanted everything to be perfect, and instead she had to keep swatting away the anxiety that was swooping around inside her rib cage like a collection of beady-eyed bats.
We can’t do this, the anxiety-bats said.
Yes, you can, she told them.
This will never work.
You don’t know that. Try.
Trying is not our forte.
I don’t care. Try anyway.
Always, before, when she started to feel this mixed up, she would bail. She’d never held a job for longer than a season or stayed in a relationship more than a few months. Ashley didn’t fix things. She didn’t bear with them or figure them out. She walked away.
The only relationships she’d managed to sustain were those with her grandmother and the denizens of Sunnyvale.
The only place she’d never walked away from was this one.
Now Sunnyvale was gone, and Ashley was determined to be with Roman. She wanted to see him and smell him and touch him, sleep in his arms, ride in his car, know what he was doing every day, how he felt, what he thought.
More than she’d ever wanted anything, she wanted that.
She wanted it enough to learn to live with the lid on the well open, even if it meant that her less desirable feelings could escape at any moment to swat at her head with their leathery wings, pricking her confidence with their sharp little claws.
Roman tipped his juice cup against hers. “Cheers. I like that dress.”
“Thanks.” His slow and appreciative ogling brought blood to the surface of her skin.
“I’m looking forward to seeing it soaking wet.”
“It’s not going to rain.”
“Ash.”
A gust of wind blew her hair into her face. She pushed it out of her eyes with a frown. The sky was the color of galvanized pipe. “I forgot to check the forecast.”
One strap of her dress fell off her shoulder as she leaned forward to place red-cabbage coleslaw on the far side of the space blanket. She sat up to find Roman watching her.
He eased the strap back into place, fingers lingering, and she wanted to throw herself at him. Pull him down on top of all the food. She was already wet between her legs from their kisses. The dress was loose enough to flip out of the way, her panties a scrap he could shove aside. One deep, slow glide, and he’d be seated to the base.
It would be so easy if this were only about sex.
“You’re going to have to eat at least one of everything,” she said primly. “Starting with these peanut tofu noodle roll things.”
“I’ve never had tofu.”
“So try it.” She managed to sound perky. He plucked a roll out of the box. After he ate it, he sucked peanut sauce off his thumb. Ashley couldn’t look away.
“What?” he asked.
“You just licked food off your finger.”
“I’m hungry.”
“You cleaned food from your skin with your own spitty mouth appendage.”
“My tongue is an appendage?”
“You never would have done that before.”
“I never would have eaten a peanut tofu noodle thing, either.”
“I can’t believe how much I’ve corrupted you.”
Roman smiled. “Give me another one.”
When she took it from the container, the sectioned spelt wrap started to unravel in her fingers. A slippery noodle escaped to slap against her wrist. “Come here!”
He leaned in, and she shoved the overlarge bite into his open mouth before it fell apart completely. He chewed with bulging cheeks, jaw working, pleasure in his eyes.
“Napkin?” he asked afterward, glancing around.
“I forgot them.”
Roman chased his noodle thing with carrot colada, reached for her wrist, and licked the sauce off her skin. “There,” he said. “Now I’ve licked you with my spitty mouth appendage.”
“I happen to like your spitty mouth appendage. You’re the one who cares about things like tidy fingers and clean suits and bacteria.”
“Hon, everybody cares about bacteria.”
“Not me! I think we need more bacteria in our lives. I bet you wipe off the doorknobs and clean the countertops with those Clorox-wipe things.”
“I have a cleaning service.”
“Do they bleach every single surface?”
“I have no idea.”
“How can you not know?”
“I want the place clean. I don’t care how they get it that way.”
“But most cleaning products are toxic. And the so-called natural stuff is just as bad. You should have them cleaning with vinegar and soap, baking soda, lemon juice—”
“Hey.”
That was all he said—just hey. But Roman’s hey was enough to bring her to a halt.
“What’s bugging you?” he asked.
We’re too much in love with you, the bats shrieked. We’re in over our heads!
“I don’t know what’s next,” she admitted.
“After breakfast?”
“Yeah, and … you know. Us. This place. All of it.”
He eased back, his expression shifting from playful to cautious—but not, she noted with relief, to the blank mask he’d once worn habitually. “You’re ready to talk about that now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
Roman cleared his throat. He looked away from her, and then after a moment, he looked back.
His eyes were earnest when he said, “I want you to come home with me.”
“For today?” she croaked. “Or …?”
“For as long as you want.”
“You’re asking me to stay with you?”
“Yes.”
Up swooped the bats. “I’ll drive you crazy. I’m not very neat. I hate to clean. I’m kind of random, and I leave cereal bowls on top of the dresser and eat cookies in bed, plus—”
He laid his hand on her arm. “Wait. You’ll stay?”
“Sure, but—”
He smiled his big everything smile, with the mystery dimple and the crinkly eyes and the blinding flash of teeth. The bats settled. “Good. Carry on.”
“I was about to.”
“I know, but now you have permission.”
“I’m worried about your apartment.”
“It’s actually a condo.”
“Oh, God,” she said.
“What’s wrong with condos?”
“Fees. Snobs. Just the word, actually. The word condo gives me hives.”
“You can think of it as an apartment if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Maybe you should see it before you hate it.”
“I should, but I have to tell you, this thing I’m worrying about? It feels like a bigger thing than just your condo. It feels like—like the difference between you and me. In building form.”
“I thought we were doing a pretty good job bridging our differences.”
“The licking?”
“If you want to take the crudest possible example, sure. Or the tofu eating, or the kissing, or the fact that you told me you loved me when I was kissing you.”
“I wasn’t sure you heard that.”
“I’ve been playing it back on a mental loop.”
“That’s … You have? Really?”
He nodded. Then, without warning, he moved in, pivoted on his hip, and laid his head in her lap. Ashley gazed down into his eyes, swamped with tenderness.
“I’m starting to think I might be a romantic,” he said. “Carmen called me a pussy because I’m so crazy about you.” Reaching up, he captured a hank of her hair and wound it around his fingers so he could pull her down to meet his rising mouth.
When their lips touched, all the bats flew away.
Ashley kissed him back, gentle and sweet. She lived in the kiss. It was a beautiful place to live. She would happily move into Roman’s mouth forever.