Tiebreaker

by P. Dangelico

  “Words are cheap, Noah,” I yell at his heels. “And as cheap as they are I don’t hear you saying you wish you could take it back. That you wish things would’ve been different!”

  I follow after him, the rest of the hike conducted in silence. And the closer we get to the truck, the more I recognize that having him out of my life is for the best.

  * * *

  A brush fire on the way home turned an hour-long drive into three hours. Neither of us said a word. That was fun. He parked the truck in my driveway and walked across the street like we were suddenly strangers…maybe not so suddenly. I was too antsy to sit at home so I got back in the truck and drove over to my parents’ house.

  While I park at the curb, my mother’s laughter rings out, drifting across the front lawn. Her nose stuck in one of the historical romance novels she loves so much, she doesn’t notice me until I sit on the swing seat next to her on the porch.

  “Maren! Goodness, you scared me half to death.” She clutches the paperback to her chest.

  “If you didn’t have your face stuffed in that dirty book, you would’ve seen me coming.”

  “It’s not dirty, honey. It’s actually quite funny and clever. I think you’d like it. Your sister did.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Lord of Scoundrels. One of my all-time favorites.”

  “Hmm. I don’t need to read it––I could write the book on him.”

  Giving me her patent pity face, my mother throws an arm around my neck and pulls me closer. “How was camping?”

  I lay my head on her shoulder and we swing, watching the sun disappear in the distance. “Good then bad.”

  “Always thought you and Noah would eventually find a way back to each other.”

  “I was hoping we would too.”

  “You two always reminded me of a split log.” I glance up at her with a question mark in my eyes. “Different in your own unique way but made of the same stuff.”

  “You’ve been readin’ too many romance novels, momma.”

  “It’s been a long time, Maren. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive him?”

  “I want to but––”

  “People make mistakes, honey. Especially young people. Sometimes we have no choice. Sometimes those mistakes are irrevocable and we are forced to bear them, but when life hands you an opportunity to fix things…” She shakes her head, her full mouth set in a straight, determined line. “Well, then you take it.”

  My parents have a great marriage. I think my mother sometimes runs a little roughshod over my father, takes his kindness for granted some. I think my father is an absentee husband sometimes. However, in spite of all that, their love is strong, their marriage solid.

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand plenty,” she replies darkly.

  Something in her tone gets my undivided attention. “What does that mean?”

  “Your father almost had an affair.”

  Slack-jawed, I sit upright and search her face. My father? With his sturdy brown shoes and the khakis he’s constantly tugging up?

  “Daddy?”

  “Don’t look so shocked. Not that it matters, because cheating doesn’t favor attractive people––if you’re looking for trouble, you’ll find it––But your father was extremely handsome when I met him.” She casually imparts all this like I should be taking it all in stride. “Painfully shy and much too preoccupied with his studies but very handsome. The man didn’t know his own worth thanks to your dear old grandfather, may he rest in peace.” Her face tilts up with a disapproving frown. “Ronald, you were a real shit and you know it.

  “Anyway, you girls were two and one. I couldn’t shake the postpartum depression. It kept dragging on. But I had babies that needed me so I devoted every ounce of energy I had to the two of you and had nothing left for myself––or your father. I neglected his needs for far too long.”

  “That’s no excuse for him––”

  “Shush, Maren. This is my story and I will tell it.”

  My lips clamp shut and I motion for her to continue.

  “There was a new professor in his department. She was attractive, had the same interests. She saw what was goin’ on and started paying a lot of attention to him.” My mother gives me an arch look. “I found a handwritten letter from her in his coat pocket.”

  I’m on pins and needles, torn between dying to know and scared of what she’ll say next. “What happened?”

  “I confronted him,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “Asked him if he was in love with her…I would’ve let him go if that was the case.” She levels me with a direct stare. “That’s how much I loved him.”

  “Momma…”

  “He said he wasn’t. That he never entertained the thought of being with anyone else. But most of all, he was sorry that he’d let me down. That he had failed me, didn’t know how to fix what I was going through…as if he could have.” My mother gazes into the blind dark of night. She shakes her head. “He’d felt helpless and lost.” She turns to me with a small smile. “So we forgave each other. Not in the way you think. He helped me forgive myself for my part and I helped him do the same.”

  I think of Noah, of all he had lost. His family and dream in one fell swoop.

  “We all stumble. Yes, he made a terrible mistake and he should be held accountable for his actions. But you tell me what’s worse, Maren, being the injured party or having to live with the burden of what he did to you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maren

  I stare at the ceiling until I can’t stare anymore. I throw off the covers and without bothering to get dressed I hustle down the stairs and out the front door. The night sky pulses as a bolt of lightning divides it in two. I sprint across the street and still I’m drenched in seconds.

  I pound on the door for a full two minutes before it flies open to reveal Noah rubbing his face awake. He’s naked except for his basketball shorts, which are riding excessively low on his hips.

  “I want to know why. You owe me an explanation.”

  Suddenly alert, he blinks in understanding before his focus moves off to the side.

  “Why, Noah?”

  He clamps a warm hand on my upper arm and pulls me inside.

  “I’ll get you a towel.” It’s then I realize I’m standing in the middle of his foyer in a tank top and underwear, barefoot and soaked to the bone.

  “I’m fine. I want to know––”

  “You’re not fine,” he says over me. “You’re shaking.” He turns and walks away. I chase after him, into the living room and watch him disappear into a bathroom. When he returns with a towel, I go to grab it but he holds it out of my reach. Our eyes lock as he places it on my head and starts to carefully dry my hair.

  He’s so careful with me, so tender, I’m screaming on the inside. On the outside, I’m dead quiet, carefully sorting out how best to go about getting what I want––which is closure. I came for answers and by God this time I’m getting them.

  His gaze flicks down to my breasts, to my puckered nipples, very much on display in the wet tank top, and I’m yanked back to the reality that I’m standing in his darkened house wearing little else other than my righteous indignation.

  “Why?” I place my hand over his on my hair, stopping him. His chin tips down, taking his gaze with it. “I need to know, Noah. After everything. Why would you do that to me?”

  Whatever is going on in his head finally breaks to the surface. His jaw clenches, the vein pops out in the middle of his forehead. He’s about to blow.

  “Why?”

  His gaze shifts back to mine with a silent plea to let it go. I can’t do that. It’s taken me too many years to get here and I’m not about to miss my chance––he knows that about me. He shakes his head, his eyes closing briefly.

  “Why, Noah. Tell me!”

  “You wouldn’t leave!” It’s a half-shout, his voice hoarse. The look on his face floors me. He looks like a corne
red animal, desperate to escape. “I heard you speaking to your coach. You were gonna stay here for me and I couldn’t let you do that. I couldn’t let you throw it all away for me.”

  It takes me a few minutes to process his words, to rewind back to that time in my life. It was my sophomore year at University of Oklahoma. Top-ranked UCLA lost one of their best players to injury and a spot on the team opened up. They wanted me, and although my OU team was doing well, UCLA was unequivocally the better program at the time. Coach wanted me to transfer. I wouldn’t hear of it. We argued about it on multiple occasions. Then Noah blew out his knee and there was absolutely no question that I was staying.

  “You did it for me?” I say out loud, testing out the truth of those words. My heart hurts, my hands shake. “You broke my heart, my trust. You ruined our friendship because you thought you were doing what was best for me? Am I getting that right?”

  Shame and regret make a brief appearance before he shuts them down. His gaze darts away, his face going flat.

  “This is worse than I thought.” I stumble toward the front door.

  “Maren. Maren, stop.” His powerful arms wrap around me from behind, pull me back into the curve of his body. He presses his lips to my neck, near my ear.

  “You’re impossible when you set your mind on something and I was in a real bad way back then. I had nothing to offer you and I was gettin’ worse each and every day.”

  “Get off of me.”

  “No.”

  “All I wanted was you, you jerk. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” And then it dawns on me that maybe I was fooling myself all those years ago. Maybe I misread everything. “Did you not love me anymore? Was that it? Just tell me. I can take it.”

  He spins me around by the shoulders to face him, his harsh expression made harsher by the lightning flashing through the window, tracing his face in silver. He shakes me once with a grip close to painful.

  “I was so in love with you I was suffocating under the weight of it! It was killin’ me! Knowing I was bad for you and still wanting you all to myself.”

  “You were not bad for me, jackass!”

  He lets me go abruptly and scrubs his face. “I was a fucking mess, Maren! Drinking…doing drugs. If it wasn’t for Rowdy, I don’t know if I would’ve survived it!”

  The confession startles me. I knew it was bad. I just didn’t realize how bad.

  “I would’ve destroyed what was left of us,” he continues in a hollow voice, the fight gone. He turns away and walks further into the living room to sit on the couch, planting his elbows on his knees. “I knew it then and I know it now.”

  “So you decided to deal the death blow.”

  With his head bent low, he rakes his fingers through his hair. “Yes. You would’ve sacrificed your career for me––I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t gonna take you down with me.”

  “That’s why you fucked Crystal.”

  He flinches, clearly uncomfortable with my choice of words. I’m not trying to intentionally hurt him but he needs to own it. I won’t rewrite the past to smooth things over in the present. I won’t mince words to make him feel better.

  “Tell me what I could’ve said that would’ve changed your mind…go ahead.”

  I turn it over and over in my head and come up with the same answer. There isn’t a word in the English language that would’ve driven me away. Nothing he could’ve said would’ve made me leave him. My anger, my sense of injustice, it all fades. My victory feels hollow. I came for answers and all I have to show for it is the same hole in my heart that was there before.

  I kneel before him and take his face in my hands. My fingers shape every plane, reading all the changes that have happened in my absence––that I missed. Eyes closed, he presses a kiss to the palm of my good hand.

  “Noah…”

  He shakes his head. Contrition in his weary exhale. Defeat in the slope of his shoulders.

  And then I kiss him, a kiss worthy of all the kisses we missed over the years, absent of resentment or bitter history. He stands abruptly, takes me with him, and kisses me back. Charged with so much emotion, it’s hard and sloppy and quickly gets out of hand. His fingers dig into my hips and release––as if he’s afraid of hurting me. And were I a smaller woman I would be hurting. But I’m not small, and I’m not fragile, and I want him as much as he wants me.

  Gripping my ass, he picks me up. I wrap my legs around his waist and we stumble around the living room, his erection, impossibly hard and thick lying against my thigh.

  “I need you. Make love to me, please,” I murmur between indelicate kisses.

  I don’t care what I sound like. I don’t care that he knows I’m at his mercy. I don’t care that I’m that lovesick girl again. All I care about is him, being part of him again. That sense of completion I’ve only ever felt with him. I want him. Even if it’s only for a little while.

  He stumbles while I continue to kiss his neck, pulling his earlobe between my teeth, his chest heaving with each ragged intake of breath. He falls back onto the couch, while I fall onto his lap, straddling him.

  I look down between us––my underwear rendered transparent by the rain, his erection pushing against the nylon shorts––and a fresh shot of lust races through me. I’m so turned on I’m aching for him.

  “Maren, I––”

  “Don’t.” I place my fingers over his mouth, stopping him. “Let’s not complicate anything right now…I need you. Can that be enough for now?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Never been more.” An irrepressible smile pries my lips apart. “And if you stop this time, I will dismember you and drop you into the tornado shelter. It’ll be years before they find you.”

  His laughter is rusty. And still so freaking sexy. My favorite sound in the world. I used to claim he could make me come from his laugh alone.

  It slowly fades. His eyes get heavy-lidded and he springs into action, pulling me up on my knees. His hips jackknife and he pushes down his shorts, kicking them clear across the room. They snag on the corner of a black and white artsy picture on the wall.

  “Oh shit,” he whispers, both of us laughing as it almost crashes to the floor.

  His erection pushes against my belly, and our mutual laughter dies down all at once. My gaze lowers to find his dick at attention, eager to please and more than ready to get the job done.

  Thank you, dick fairy.

  He cups my cheek, brushing his thumb across my jaw. His touch tender. The look on his face worshipful. There’s no question he wants this as much as I do. Whatever stopped him back at the lake is in the rearview mirror, no longer and issue.

  He hooks his fingers into my underwear and pulls them down, slowly sliding them past one knee, then the other. Anticipation has never been both sweeter, and more excruciating.

  “Christ,” he grunts at the discovery of the bare skin between my legs.

  “You’re welcome, now stop dawdling.”

  I hear a snort. With a wicked gleam in his brandy-colored eyes, he licks his lips and drags the pad of his thumb over my clit. I nearly jump out of my skin despite his unbreakable hold on me. Back and forth. Back and forth. In seconds I’m panting and squirming.

  “Noah, hurry up!”

  Smack. Four long and capable male fingers land on my swollen bits and I scream.

  “Another word and I’ll make you wait forever.” A string of unladylike terms come to mind. “Did you say something?” he adds.

  Torn between laughing and killing him, I squeak, “No,” for the sake of my aching privates.

  My fingers thread through his black hair. I tug in encouragement and like a good boy he dives between my legs, pulling my clit between his lips. He hums against my ladybird and his short beard scrapes against the smooth, sensitive skin between my legs and I’m fairly certain I’m on the cusp of going into cardiac arrest from how good it feels.

  A whole slew of gratitude tumbles out of me in one unintelligible sentence. Hot licks tur
n into soft sucks and I’m officially done, a goner, on the brink of exploding. Seconds from an O that could equal an Oklahoma earthquake, my slack body close to toppling over, he pulls his mouth away before I can celebrate.

  “Noah!”

  He chuckles. The burst of hot air against my poor clit is heavenly torture and legit grounds for homicide.

  “I could feast on you all night––” he murmurs quietly. “But I have to feel you around my dick or I’m gonna lose what’s left of my fucking mind.”

  My tank top gets yanked off. It hits the floor with a wet slap and his amusement fades, transforms into reverence and longing and something else, something I haven’t seen on his face in a long, long time––ownership.

  He pushes me down on the couch and pauses to take in the sight of my bare breasts, and even though I’m still wet from the rain and naked under the AC my body is burning from the heat of his gaze.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t believe you’re really here.” He blinks out of his fixation. “I never thought you’d let me touch you again.”

  “Well, I’m here. And you better touch me soon.”

  He smiles crookedly and reaches down, brushing his hand back and forth over one nipple then the other, tracing circles around the peaks and tugging on them, marking a winding path that moves lower and lower.

  “I’m on the pill. How ’bout you?”

  “No,” the moron answers. I punch his shoulder and his face breaks into a big white grin, beaming unadulterated joy.

  “Are you clean?”

  His smile drops. I watch his throat work. There goes the joy, all of it sucked right out of the room. The air between us chills, suddenly making me feel self-conscious.

  “Yes.”

  The strange look on his face has me second-guessing him. “You’re sure? You’ve been tested?”

  “I haven’t been with anyone.” Gaze unblinking, he looks me dead in the eyes and any doubt I may have had vanishes.

  “Since when?”

  “Since I stopped getting wasted.”

  As evasive an answer as I’ve ever heard so I press on. “How long, Noah?”