by Vivian Lux
I pressed the button and the car purred smoothly to life.
“That almost felt like cheating,” I whispered. “It can’t be that easy.”
He chuckled and gently shut the door, then came around and slid into the seat next to me. “How about you test it out a little?”
“Are you trying to make me jealous here or something? What are you up to, King?”
He shook his head with a smile that made me want to kiss him for no damn reason, but the siren song of a sexy car lured me away from his grin. I threw it into reverse. “Oh my god!” I cried as the engine hummed. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I’m leaving you for your car.”
He looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “Keep driving,” he urged.
“Why? So I can know for sure that I want to marry a vehicle? Oh my god, you just press the accelerator and it goes! I feel lazy!”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“You shouldn’t be glad. I’m breaking up with you right now so I can have some alone time with this car.”
He grinned. “What if I told you that you could have us both?”
I froze and looked at him, then remembered I was piloting a gorgeous piece of automotive engineering. I wrenched my eyes back to the road. “Have you…both?”
“This car is for you, Everly.”
I swerved to the side of the road and threw it in park before I drove us both into a building. “What on earth are you saying? You didn’t really buy me a car, did you, Gabe? No,” I shook my head. “It’s too much. I can’t accept it.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the door.
He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not giving it to you,” he said. When I turned back to him, he smiled. “Come on now. I know you better than that. I knew you wouldn’t accept a gift like this, so that’s not what it is.”
“What is it, then?”
“You need a reliable car,” he said with a note of urgency in his voice. “It’s not right that you had to deal with that deathtrap for so long, and I don’t ever want to see you having a panic attack about it—” I ducked my head away in embarrassment. He squeezed my hand. “I don’t want that to happen to you again, baby. So I figured if I could help you, I would. And I can.” He reached out and patted the dash. “This car is the loaner from my Dad’s friend’s garage. Since it’s a loaner, he’s totally cool with it being loaned out indefinitely. You take it. You take care of it, fill it with gas, and make all the recommended maintenance visits.” He grinned at this and wagged his finger. “Believe me, my Dad and his buddies insist on all of the recommended maintenance and then some.” I grinned in spite of myself. “If you can take care of it, it’s yours. If they need it back, which Chuck at the garage insisted they probably wouldn’t, then you bring it in and they’ll hook you up with another loaner.” He patted the dash again. “Though I doubt it’ll be as nice as this one. I made sure to snag you the good one.”
“Gabe.” I didn’t know what to say, so I kissed him. He seemed to like that response just fine.
Chapter Thirty
Gabe
The only fancy restaurant in town was also the only sit-down restaurant in town, so that’s where I’d made our reservation. Jimmy’s Pasta House did carbs admirably and had candles on the table. It was a far cry from the Michelin-starred places I’d eaten with the last girl in my life, but it felt right for this girl.
My girl.
The soft candlelight made her eyes sparkle as she looked over the menu. “I’m going to have to be careful,” she sighed as she ran her finger down the list. “I borrowed this top from Rachel and I don’t want to get sauce on it.”
“Why would you get sauce on it?” I wondered, eyeing the top appreciatively. I’d have to thank Rachel when I saw her next. It matched the blue of Everly’s eyes exactly.
She glanced up at me with a wry smile. “I’m a total slob when I eat. I should have brought a bib.”
I gave her a quizzical look. “I find it hard to believe you’re a slob.”
“Just when I’m eating,” she corrected, quickly catching my meaning. “I’m definitely way neater as a nurse.”
I leaned back in my chair and set my menu down. “What made you want to be a nurse?” I wondered. “I know your parents have the bakery in town. You never wanted to bake?” Everly ran her tongue across her bottom teeth. “Uh oh. Sore subject?”
She shook her head. “Only to them,” she said with more than a little steel in her voice. “I’ve known I wanted to be a nurse since I was nine years old.”
I whistled softly. “That’s a long time. What made you want to do it?”
She took a deep breath, like she needed to collect her thoughts, and just as she did, the smiling waitress appeared to take our order. I was happy that, in spite of her fear of being a slob, Everly still ordered a big plate of chicken parm. “That’s my girl,” I murmured.
When our orders had been taken, I turned back to her. “Why I wanted to be a nurse,” she said softly, toying with her fork. “I know. I remembered the question.”
“This sounds like a story,” I prompted.
She kept twisting her fork in her fingers, her eyes a million miles away. “I was nine and my stomach really hurt.” She tapped the fork against the table and looked at me, then back down to the fork. I held my breath. “I told my parents. I’m sure I did, although to this day they insist I never said a word. But it hurt so much I was doubled over in school.” The corner of her mouth lifted in a wry, rueful smile. “I got in trouble for walking funny, actually.”
“Jesus,” I growled.
She glanced up and her smile widened until it was genuine. “It was the school nurse who finally helped me. She noticed and pulled me out of the line in the cafeteria.”
“What was wrong?”
“My appendix,” she said, some of that steel back in her voice. “Apparently it was hours from bursting. She noticed me and made sure I was taken care of. She even came to visit me in the hospital.” Everly took a sip of her water as I tried to wrap my mind around what it must have been like for that poor, invisible girl. Clenching my fist under the table, I swore to myself that I’d notice everything about her. “I guess I developed this sort of hero worship of nurses after that,” she said, sounding brighter now, her eyes shining with the opportunity to talk about the work she loved. “I built them up into superheroes with powers like X-ray vision and things like that, so of course I wanted to be just like them.” Her chin jutted out a little. “My mom still insists it’s my own fault for not telling her.”
“It’s not,” I told her flatly.
She cocked her head to the side. “I know that.”
I leaned forward and took her hand. “I know you know it. But I also wanted to make sure you heard it from someone else.”
She lowered her eyes, her lashes casting shadows over her cheekbones. I held my breath and squeezed her hand.
Everly stood up. I was already sliding my chair back to meet her when she took my face in her hands. I met her kiss with everything I had, forgetting the restaurant and the people in the tables around us. It was so easy to lose myself in this girl. I was addicted to her fire and the hell-bent way she kissed me.
When she pulled back, breathing hard, the whole restaurant was silent. Our waitress stood there, stock still, with our meals on her tray. From over in the corner came a slow, sarcastic round of applause.
Everly ducked back down to her seat, but I stood up straight and proud and waved, like I had to countless audiences before.
Then I heard Everly swear. “You okay?” I whispered and sat back down again. I expected her to complain about being the center of attention and I wanted to remind her that that was one of the perks of being my girl.
“Yeah,” she complained, dipping her napkin in her water glass. “But I just got fucking tomato sauce on Rachel’s shirt.”
I clapped my hands and pressed my fingertips to my lips. “You’re fucking spectacular,” I told her. “Where’d I find you?”
She lifted her chin, proud in spite of the wet mark above her left breast. “Right under here,” she teased, touching the tip of my nose.
Chapter Thirty-One
Everly
The next week, it was finally warm enough at night to sleep with the windows open. I’d been looking forward to this since Rachel and I moved in to the little gray house. It seemed so nice in theory to lie in bed listening to the burble of the creek.
But the creek wasn’t burbling. It was roaring.
Weeks of rain had left it swollen and fast moving. There was flooding in the low-lying areas north of town, where Rachel and I lived, and the rain was still falling. Lying here listening to the rushing waters wasn’t soothing, it was nerve-wracking.
The din had my nerves jangling. I took a deep breath and counted backwards by sevens from three hundred—a trick that had always worked in the past—but was still awake when I got to negative one. I contemplated going further into the negatives, but realized that the debate itself was keeping me awake. Worse, my hands were shaking.
Just a little. The slightest tremor. But it had been weeks since my last attack, and I didn’t want to let them get any worse. I needed a distraction. The noise of the creek and the dark of the house had the strange effect of making me feel like the only person in the world.
I thought about getting up and seeing if Rachel was having the same trouble sleeping, but my roommate’s shy conversation wasn’t what I needed.
I grabbed my phone.
Me: I can’t sleep.
The reply came almost immediately.
Gabe: What do you need, baby?
Me: I think…
Me: You, maybe.
He sent back a smiley face.
Gabe: Wait. Maybe?
Me: Sorry. Definitely is a better word.
Gabe: Yes it is. I can come over.
I licked my lips. The thought was appealing enough to make my hands still, but…
Me: You wouldn’t fit in my bed.
Gabe: We made it work before.
Me: You’re dirty.
Gabe: I know. But you’re right. Your bed is too tiny and mine is huge.
Me: ?
Me: No it isn’t, that hospital bed is even worse than mine.
Gabe: See now, this is why it sucks you’re not my nurse anymore…
Me: You want to go back to acting professionally?
Gabe: Slow down. I never said that.
I sent him a laughing face emoji. Even texting with him made me feel better, and I usually hated texting.
Gabe: What I was trying to say was that the hospital bed got picked up today.
Me: Really????
Gabe: I’m lying in a real bed right now.
Gabe: After all that time in a tiny hospital bed, it almost feels TOO big, you know?
Gabe: Plenty of room to share.
I stood up and grabbed the keys to the Acura off my bedside table. Then I thought for a second.
Me: You never took back your key, you know.
Gabe: Oh, I know.
I grinned at my screen.
Gabe: But I’ll meet you at the back door anyway.
Driving through the dark country roads around Crown Creek had always given me the heebie-jeebies before. All those dark trees and dark houses looming made me feel like I was floating in space. But since I was going to Gabe, the night seemed soft and friendly. Even the misting rain was warm on my face as I walked around to the back of the Kings’ house and climbed up onto the deck.
He was waiting, like he’d said, and seeing him standing there straight and tall, healed and whole, made my heart lurch.
I went to him and when he kissed me the tremor in my hands had nothing to do with panic and everything to do with all the feelings I had for him. He made love to me slowly, luxuriating in the huge expanse of the bed, bringing me to the brink again and again until I was completely spent and sated.
Afterward, after he’d brought me a warm cloth to clean myself, and laughed about how it was his turn to give me a sponge bath, he folded his huge body around mine.
“Are you okay?” I whispered in the dark. His body was so warm and his expert fucking had worn me out so thoroughly that I was almost asleep before he answered. “I’m fucking perfect.”
I laid there, listening to his breathing, and tried to piece together the past couple weeks. How we’d found each other again after that lost night. How one filthy kiss had seared me into his heart so completely that he’d recognized me from its power. I giggled a little at how absurd it was and he snuffled awake. “What’s funny, baby?”
“I feel like Cinderella. Only instead of putting a slipper on my foot to find me, you put your tongue in my mouth.”
He rolled onto his back and laughed a silent, bed-shaking laugh. Grinning, I rolled over and brushed my hand up his chest, cupping it as I always did, right over his heart. “It’s true,” I murmured sleepily.
“I love that you thought that.” He brushed my hair back from my forehead. “In fact, I think I love you.”
My chest hitched for only a second before I smiled and turned to kiss his chest. “Good,” I murmured. “Because I love you.”
He brushed his hand over my forehead again, and then again, stroking me gently with his fingertips. I fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Gabe
I loved her. I knew that much for certain.
I was uncertain about everything else.
Kit Lomber called that very morning, right as Everly was slipping out the back door to go home to her new house. I held my phone in my hand, praying he’d call right back as soon as I kissed her goodbye.
He did. “Gabriel!” he shouted into my ear after I’d said hello.
“Mr. Lomber—”
“Told you ages ago, call me Kit. Mr. Lomber is my dad!” Kit was old enough to actually be my dad, but he didn’t like it when I reminded him of that fact.
“Right, Kit. How’s it going?”
“That’s the question I should be asking you, isn’t it?” he boomed. “We’ve got almost the whole crew ready and on stand-by. Location scouts are out doing their thing. The only thing that’s up in the air right now is when the star of the show is gonna be ready to start filming.”
I swallowed and hurried up the stairs to my room, shutting the door behind me. This felt like a call I needed to have in private, but I realized I’d made a mistake in coming back up here the second I glanced at the bed.
The bed, rumpled from a night spent loving Everly.
Even when I closed my eyes, I could see it. It was burned into my retinas like an afterimage of the sun. “Um,” was all I could say to Kit.
“You’re on the mend for sure,” he said. “I can hear it in your voice. You sound much stronger.”
“Yeah,” I wavered. “I’m doing better.” That rumpled bed was like an accusing finger pointed in my face.
“Gabe, level with me.” When Kit called me by my nickname, that was when things got serious. His buddy-buddy-heart-to-heart chats set my teeth on edge on a good day, and today, in spite of how it had started, was turning out to not be a very good day. “I’m hearing a lot of hesitation here,” he went on. “I understand if you want to take a step back. You’ve earned it. But—and correct me if I’m not remembering this right—I distinctly recall you telling me you were excited to come back to the show. You told me that you—hang on, I wrote this down because I thought it’d make a great tagline for the season. You told me, ‘I almost died. Now I’m ready to really start living.’”
I sucked in my breath to hear my own arrogant words read back to me. I’d said them when I was stuck in the sunroom, confined to the hospital bed. I’d called Kit, practically begging him to set a date for me to return, and I even started marking the days off on a pad of paper like a convict marks the prison wall. Those were dark days.
My days were full of light now.
“I said that,” I exhaled. “I remember.
”
“So level with me, buddy. Why the hesitation? Are you still hurting? I don’t want you pushing yourself to heal too fast. You know we expect you to be back in top physical condition once we start filming.”
Right then and there, he gave me an out. I could buy myself some time to figure out what the hell came next.
And to figure out if Everly loving me meant I could convince her to come along for the ride.
I let myself think that nice thought for only a moment before I pushed it from my brain. Like hell Everly would leave with me. She had school and her work, and she’d rented that house with Rachel. I loved that she was building a life on her terms. What right did I have to make her live it on mine?
I sucked in another deep breath and tried to pitch my voice as melancholy. “It’s pretty much exactly that, Kit,” I sighed. “I overdid it in physical therapy—trying so hard to get back into top physical condition, you know—and I fucked up my ankle.” This was all true. He didn’t need to know that I was describing something that happened weeks ago. “I’m limping pretty bad, buddy, and I need—”
“More time. I hear you.” I could imagine him nodding gravely. “Well, Gabe, I’m disappointed, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Luckily you’ve got a magician like me on your side.” His casual boasting made me grin in exasperation. “I’ll take care of smoothing out schedules, but you gotta do something for me.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said automatically.
“You gotta give me a date.”
“A date?” I stalled.
“Right. A concrete date I can give them so we don’t mess with the crew’s schedules like this again. Give me the date you’re gonna be all healed up and ready to go.”
I paced in a tight circle, feeling trapped. A concrete date? “Um…give me a month.”
Kit tsked. “Damn, buddy. You’re really putting me in a bind here. I can do two weeks?”