by Hughes, Maya
The next game I’d played without the sock and everything had been off. At the end of the period, Declan had run into the locker room and come back with a sock. By then we’d have gone for anything, and the second our skates had hit the ice, we were a different team. “Damn, how could I forget that?”
My arm was around Colm and his was around Liv, who was standing in front of us.
“He was so upset Mom and Dad weren’t there.” She slid more pictures from the front of her stack to the back. Colm had been glancing up at the stands the whole time. They’d promised him they’d make it to that one.
“They missed a lot, didn’t they?” That last season, our senior year, they hadn’t been to one game, and their big accident had happened on the way to the state championship. They’d tried to rush back to surprise Colm.
“They did miss a lot.” Her voice sounded far away. “Even if they did show up, we’d never know if it would last more than a few minutes. They were constantly one page away from disappearing in the middle of whatever might be going on.”
“It couldn’t have been easy.”
She shrugged. “They were doing important work. What’s a stupid hockey game or science fair when someone’s life hangs in the balance?” Her laugh caught in her throat, and moisture gathered in her eyes.
I rolled the chair closer to the edge of her bed.
“It mattered because it mattered to you. Yes, they were doing great work, but you two also deserved some of their attention.”
She wiped her face with her sleeve. “Doesn’t matter much now, does it? They’re gone. I’m sure I’ll have a better idea of what they were going through once I’m a doctor.”
Her words were flat, rote memorization with nothing else behind it, something said so many times it barely made sense anymore. She pushed herself too hard. Colm pushed her even harder.
“Do you want to be a doctor?’
Her head snapped up. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Colm talks about it constantly, but you almost never do unless you’re talking about your parents or Colm. The only thing you bring up on your own is dance.”
She scooped up the pictures and shoved them into the box. “And how would you know? We’ve had, what, ten conversations in the past two years and all of a sudden you think you know what I want?” Jumping off the bed, she plucked the picture from my hand. “I don’t sit at that desk”—she jabbed her finger toward the desk behind me—“because I’m trying to decide. I don’t bury myself in books until I can barely see straight so that I ace my exams to not become a doctor. Do you think I can’t cut it?”
I held up my hands, palms facing her in surrender. “It was a question, that’s all. Just an observation.”
“An observation based on what? Going to one dance class? I’m going to med school. It’s what they would have wanted. It’s what Colm wants, and it’s what I want.” She jabbed her finger into the center of her chest.
“I just want you to be happy.” It was all I’d ever wanted for her, even if it wasn’t with me. Even if it ripped my heart out and skated over it a thousand times, she deserved to find someone who could give her the moon and the stars.
“Are you the happiness police? How do you know what makes me happy? You made it very clear that something I thought made me happy wasn’t for me.”
“I wasn’t talking about that—”
“Maybe you weren’t, but we need to get this out.” She slammed the lid down on the box, crunching the stiff, cardboard sides. “We’ve been dancing around this since you decided you wanted to be my friend.” Her fingers lifted in air quotes around the last word. “How happy do you think it made me when you kissed that woman? When you told me to go so you could be alone with her? How many tears do you think were spilled over that?”
She jumped up from the bed and stormed out into the living room.
My heart pounded in my chest and I chased after her.
“I never wanted to hurt you. Angelica just showed up. She was drunk and causing a scene. I had to get her out of there.” My uselessness with words was failing me once again. Did I want to shove the fact that I’d slept with someone like Angelica in her face? Did I want her to think of me as that guy? Hell no. At the time it had seemed like the best way to handle things, but it had been a wrong move that haunted me like a Ghost of Christmas Past.
“And what about what you said?”
“What about what you did?” The flicker of anger and hurt I’d shut out came crackling back.
She took a step back. “What did I do?”
“You went out with Grant.” I gritted my teeth.
“I—it was two dates.”
“Two dates too many. I had hotel security put Angelica in a taxi fifteen minutes after I saw you, and then I came back to Grant floating around the hotel telling everyone about his date with you.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, not date my brother?”
She squeezed her fists together and screamed at the ceiling. “I didn’t date him. He asked me. I was distracted. I wasn’t thinking straight, staring at you with another woman in your arms, not saying a single word while she talked about what she wanted to do to you. I thought it was a group thing, and then he shows up at my doorstep with flowers. That’s when I knew there was more to it for him.”
My breath came out short and choppy, matching hers. If she hadn’t gone out with Grant, I could have talked to Colm. Maybe he’d have tried to punch my lights out, maybe not, but after what had happened with Felicity when I’d moved to Philly, there was no way in hell he’d let me near Liv.
“And it’s still more to him.” My shoulders slumped.
“I know.” The pained look in her eyes matched mine, her features distressed. She stepped closer, staring up into my eyes. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know.” I dragged my fingers through my hair and shook my head.
The front door jangled behind us and the cold air from the hallway whooshed in as it opened.
“So, lap dances are medicinal—is that what you’re telling me?” Marisa laughed and dropped her bag beside the door.
Liv’s gaze darted to Marisa’s, who stopped when she spotted us.
“Maybe we should go.” Marisa pushed against the guy behind her.
“No, it’s fine. I’m leaving.” I grabbed my jacket off the couch. “I’ll talk to you later, Liv.”
“Night,” she called after me as the door closed.
I stopped at Fish’s and grabbed a drink before going back to my place. Things couldn’t go on like they were. I’d have to talk to Grant, would have to break things down and get him to understand how much she meant to me. The longer things went on, the harder it was to imagine my life without her.
16
Liv
After Ford left, I shoved the pictures back in their boxes and joined Marisa and LJ on the couch for an ’80s movie marathon. There was no way I could have concentrated on my exams. A few days later I picked up some of the developed photos I hadn’t put in their boxes yet. Sliding them out of the card stock envelope, I lifted the pictures out.
Turning each over, I wrote out the dates, the location, and what was going on in the picture. The summer at the beach house, love had been in the air as Heath and Kara, and Declan and Mak drowned us all in their PDA. There were also copious amounts of booze and the threat of homicide when Emmett and Avery first arrived. That had all been smoothed out over the course of the summer. If only my love life had followed the same path.
I grabbed the next few pictures.
My navy cap and gown and gold tassel dangled in front of my face. Colm stood beside me, beaming with happiness. I was peering up at Ford out of the corner of my eye. Shaking my head, I turned it over and wrote on the back.
My graduation, pictured: Colm, Ford, and me.
I plucked the next photo from the pile: the ladies lounging on beach towels, soaking up the sun the summer before Mak and Declan’
s wedding.
Summer after graduation on the beach, pictured: Kara, Avery, Mak, and me.
I flipped another over, and the smile on my face dropped.
Summer after high school graduation, pictured: me and Mason. I tapped the picture against my hand. The summer after Heath and Declan graduated from college, they’d rented a beautiful house down on the shore, right on the sand.
Having a summer fling with Mason, sneaking out under the watchful eye of Colm had been my little act of rebellion, but that had backfired when the guys all came back from a fishing trip early, interrupting our make-out session. The look on Ford’s face when I’d stumbled down the steps had been a gut punch. He’d hid it well, but the expression was hard to miss. It was the same one I’d hid whenever women approached him time after time looking for an autograph and more that summer.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so afraid back then, I could have just dragged him under the boardwalk and kissed the crap out of him, proven this wasn’t some schoolyard crush back before everything had gotten even more complicated. I looked at the picture again and ripped it in half. Dumping it into the trash, I went through the rest of the pack. The bottle of wine beside my bed slowly disappeared, stolen by elves throughout the night.
Our conversations had been stilted since he’d walked out. It was awkward, but I didn’t want to lose the tiny bit of us that we’d recovered.
Me: Do you fly in tonight or tomorrow morning?
Ford: Tomorrow morning. In my room now
The warm buzz of booze flowed through me. I imagined him in the bed in his hotel in gray sweatpants with a T-shirt stretched across his chest, pretty much the dirtiest and most delicious vision I could imagine.
Me: Alone?
I hit myself in the head with a pillow. Why did I ask? I didn’t want to know. Actually I did, but one answer could kill me.
Ford: Of course
Me: You say that like it’s not a possibility that you wouldn’t be alone.
The phone buzzed in my hand.
“Why do you think I’d have someone here with me?”
“Come on, Ford. I’ve been around the guys long enough to know how you operate.”
“What’s that supposed mean? Have you been drinking?” There was a hint of teasing to his tone.
“Maybe a little bit. And it means people talk about things even when they think you aren’t listening.”
“You’re totally lit up. Things like what?”
“Like your after-game rituals.”
He chuckled. “I hardly think showering, grabbing some food, maybe a good bourbon, and collapsing in my hotel room or at home is newsworthy.”
“Not that.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat and squeezed my thighs together. There had been many nights I’d thought about all the stories I’d heard about Ford and his thorough attention to detail when it came to the opposite sex. It wasn’t like I wanted to think of him out there picking up other women, but there had been more than a few drunken nights where the guys had teased him about his late-night activities.
“What do I do?” His voice was low on the other line.
“You bring them back to your room and fuck them until they can barely walk and they’ve got a huge smile on their face.”
“Whoa, where the hell did you hear that?”
“Heath.”
He muttered a curse under his breath.
“So it’s true.”
“Liv…” There was a warning tone to his voice.
“Just tell me if it’s true.” I licked my lips and rolled over onto my back.
“You’re drunk and I hardly think it’s—”
“I want to know. When you make love to them—”
“I don’t make love. I fuck them.”
Goose bumps spread all over my body, and my breath caught. “So the rumors are true.”
“I’ve been told I go above and beyond in certain areas, yes.”
“I’m going to need more details than that.” Scooting higher in the bed, I rested my head on my pillow and squeezed my thighs together.
“You’re not going to get them.”
“Maybe I’ll just guess what it’s like, then.” My chest rose and fell as my breathing sped up. All the dreams I’d had, the way my imagination had run wild thinking about a night alone with Ford, without the barriers that were always there between us…
There was dead silence on the other end.
I pulled the phone away from my ear. The call timer was still going. “Hello?”
“I’m here.” His words came out strained.
“A play-by-play is in order, don’t you think?” There were no objections. “You have a few drinks, get nice and toasted.”
“Never more than two.”
“Good. No one likes a sloppy drunk with a case of whiskey dick.” There was a sharp exhale of breath that sounded a little like a laugh, and my drunk brain powered into overdrive. This wasn’t a nameless woman he was bringing up to his hotel room; it was me. “You bring her up to your room and close the door behind you. She’s standing in front of you and starts peeling off her clothes.”
“I do it. I always do it.”
“Okay, you slip your hands under the hem of her shirt and pull it up and over her head. The white lace cups of her bra are on full display. You run your lips along the curve of her neck, breathing her in and nipping at her skin. How am I doing so far?” My body was on high alert, a heated tingling traveling from head to toe. My nipples pebbled as his deep, rough breath filled the other end of the line.
“You’re doing great.”
“Then maybe you lead her to the bed. Take off your jeans.”
He made a disapproving sound. “I push her up against the door and run my fingers along the insides of her thighs before slipping my fingers under her skirt.”
“She feels the cool breeze from the AC across her skin and your warm hand pressed against her pussy.”
There was silence again.
“You slide your hand up under the elastic of her thong and trace the outline of her lips. How wet is she?”
“She’s hot and wet, but it’s only the beginning. When I’m done, she won’t remember her own name.”
I slid my hand down my body and followed my own instructions.
“You squeeze her clit in time to a beat that lives in your head and slide two fingers inside of her.”
“Three.”
A moan I’d been holding back escaped from my lips as I pushed three fingers into myself.
“Then what?”
“Then I listen to her moans and find the rhythm of her body. That makes her cream even more on my fingers. Switching hands, I lick her heat off my skin. The taste is better than anything I’ve tasted before.”
The unmistakable sound of his hand on his cock sent rolling tides of desire racing through my body.
“I pinch and rub her clit until her legs are shaking. Pinning her thighs open with one hand, I keep going, curling my fingers inside her until I find the spot so many men aren’t patient enough to discover. Her pussy clamps around my fingers, and I keep pumping into her, giving her that high and stretching it out as long as I can.” His words were choppy and strained.
“And then what?”
“I thought you were telling me.”
“And then you take off your jeans.”
“No, but since it’s late, I’ll give you the abbreviated version. She’s getting at least one more orgasm on my tongue before I get my dick out, not because it’s not the hardest it’s ever been, not because I’m not seriously killing myself to hold back, but so I don’t scare the crap out of her.”
“Not possible.” I licked my dry lips. “It’s not possible. She’s ready for all you have to give and more.” I ran my fingers over my clit and my legs jumped.
“I want to give her everything.” He groaned, a deep guttural sound that had me teetering on the edge.
I curled my fingers inside myself and nearly jumped off the bed. The orgasm blindsi
ded me, slamming into me so hard I dropped the phone and screamed. My back arched, and I rode the waves of my climax as spasms shot through my body.
It seemed like twenty minutes later when I finally came back to myself. Shoving the blankets around, I found my phone’s glowing screen.
“Ford?”
* * *
FORD
“I want to give her everything.” My hips shot up off the bed. I pumped my hand up and down at her shuddering breaths on the other end of the line. It wasn’t my hand wrapped around me; it was Liv, and her keening cry shot me across the finish line.
Her moans and my whispered name across her lips… I bit my lip at the wet sound of her arousal. My mouth watered, wanting to taste her until she cried out again and keep tasting and touching until she couldn’t stand it anymore.
My jaw snapped shut, and every nerve ending cried out in time to her moans. Panting like I’d skated sprints for the past hour, I slowed the stroke of my hand. My pulse pounded so loudly in my ears, I could only hope I wasn’t saying all the dirty things running through my head.
I slammed my head back against the pillows. If she was this good over the phone, how good would she be in person? When I could skim my fingers along her skin and taste her goose-bump-pebbled flesh? Wrap my fingers in her hair and inhale every ounce of her? The fight was leaving me. I didn’t want to fight what was between us anymore.
Grant didn’t matter. Colm would have to suck it up. I wanted—no, I needed Liv. I needed to feel her wrapped around me, to bury my face in the crook of her neck and bury myself in her. I needed to wrap my fingers around her wrists and pin them above her head as I thrust into her velvety pussy. She was an addiction, and I hadn’t even had a real taste yet.
“Ford?” Her shaky voice snapped me out of my drifting.
“I’m here.” I licked my lips.
“That was…”
“Yeah, it was. I’m back on Monday morning. I need to see you.”