Meant to Be Mine

by Lisa Marie Perry

  “What’s different now?”

  “The man. It’s different because it’s you. At the farmhouse you put your name on me. Why’d you do that?”

  “Necessity. You’re a need to me, Sofia. Sex? I can give you that.” He bent his knees, putting himself at eye level with her. “But if it’s tied to promises or commitment or…”

  So it was out there. She hadn’t imagined it. He’d spoken with a soft graveness, but she and the fireflies heard every syllable. “Promises and commitment aren’t on my bucket list.” But they sounded nice…felt like a dream. “It’s on you now, Burke.”

  “On me,” he repeated, sounding skeptical, his frown unmistakable. He mounted his bike and she followed, down the trail to the wild grass on the sandy shore. Then he hopped off and beckoned her into his arms. “Get in the water. Naked.”

  Sofia stepped back. Naked? “No.”

  “What’s your excuse to withdraw this time?”

  “The lighthouse—”

  “Is closed.” Tugging down her jacket, he kissed her ear, and there was the brush of his scruff and the touch of his tongue on her skin. “Next excuse?”

  “A storm’s on the way.”

  “Forecast is for clear skies.” He unfastened her jeans, pushed them past her hips. “Try again.”

  The forecast was wrong, but if she told him her scar said so, he might stop touching her, and she didn’t want that. His hard hands, the calluses on the pads of his fingers, thrilled her on contact. “The…” The fireflies are watching. My undies aren’t sexy. You’re too good at this. “The water’s cold,” she finally said.

  Yes, the cold water. What would the shock of sudden submersion into the frigid Atlantic do to her system?

  Burke gripped the crotch of her panties, pulling until the fabric put tight pressure directly onto her hypersensitive flesh.

  Oh, God. Keep doing that…

  He slid the panties down to tangle with her jeans and then his hand was back, stroking her thighs, gliding between them. “I’ll be in the water with you, Sofia. Wrap yourself around me if you wanna keep warm. When you get out, I’ll take one of those blankets you brought and put it around you.”

  “An answer for everything,” she whispered as his other hand worked beneath her shirt and flicked open her bra. “Let me get it from here.”

  Granting her privacy, he released her and peeled off his own clothes. Completely, gloriously nude, he began his trek through the damp sand to the dark water beyond.

  “This wasn’t on the list.” A deep breath, then Sofia stripped and sprinted past him like a streaker, throwing herself into the water with a dramatic splash.

  It covered her like ice chips, but it invigorated as she dipped beneath the surface and burst up, laughing. This was crazy, so crazy—

  Burke dove, and the ripples carried to her, touching her skin, tickling her someplace deep, and God, she was happy.

  Naked at the lighthouse, skinny-dipping in the Atlantic. Overhead the stars and clouds observed, withholding judgment. In front of her was a man who’d been her friend before but was someone entirely new now.

  “C’mere,” he said, though it was he who swam closer. His gaze didn’t stray south to her scar. “If you say it’s okay for me to look, I will.”

  She thought she could rise out of the water and reveal it, but would it be ungrateful to introduce ugliness on such a beautiful night? Swimming in the ocean naked was enough. So she kept it under the surface, pressing to him, giving him herself but denying him, too.

  “Sofia, the question’s looping in my head, and I’ve got to…You said there’re added risks. What risks?”

  He was her friend, and if he couldn’t handle this they both ought to know now. “Pregnancy. My doctors say I’m healthy enough to have sex, but pregnancy may put too much strain on my heart. Also, miscarriages. Preeclampsia.” When he frowned, silently asking for clarification, she gave the barest-bones explanation possible. “It spikes blood pressure, can do some nasty things to the kidneys. After my transplant there was a kidney issue, so renal dysfunction’s something my doctors don’t want to see.”

  “God.”

  “Burke, it’s not an absolute.”

  “You’ll need to be protected, every time.”

  “Birth control’s not completely effective. Slim odds, but I could get pregnant someday. Slimmer odds, I could carry the baby to full term and survive.”

  He pushed a hand through his damp, dark hair. “You’re not considering that.”

  “I wouldn’t intentionally conceive, no, but if it happened I’d fight for that baby.”

  “And risk your own life?”

  “I beat the odds, Burke. I’m doing it now.” She tried to stop here, but the words tumbled out of her. “The average life expectancy of heart transplant recipients past ten years is barely above fifty percent. I’m on year twelve.”

  The magnitude of it fell on them, pried them apart. He waded a few feet, turned his back to her. A strong, sturdy back, so fit to carry her if only he’d try. She almost asked him to, and started to go after him, but then he spoke.

  “Average life expectancy. What’s that, an expiration date?” His voice was chipped in places, but it wasn’t the interference of wind.

  It was fear.

  “Every patient’s different. Worrying about this won’t benefit either of us.” How many lovers had seized opportunity in this very spot, beneath a lighthouse that had served as guardian to over a century’s worth of souls? Why couldn’t she and Burke join that number? “I’m not meant to live forever. No one is. I’m here now, though, and I want to enjoy the life I’ve got. Okay?”

  “You tell me I could lose you at any time and then ask me if I’m okay with that? Really, Sofia?” The fear was prominent now, and her name sounded broken on his lips.

  “Yeah. Just as your dangerous career can take you away from me at any time.” Still he didn’t turn back to her, and she cut through the water to the gritty sand. “It’s a risk and I want to try. Because it’s you, Burke. Because, damn it, you’ve always meant something to me.”

  He caught up to her as she was pulling on her clothes. He snatched a blanket, ran it over his wet skin, and dressed quickly. “I always meant something? How’s that, when you went to New York and never picked up a phone to tell me you were all right?”

  “You left Eaves, too.”

  “Not right away. First I almost destroyed myself trying to detox. Then I got on the right track and was finally able to get my GED and get out. Stupid as it sounds, I waited years for just one goddamn call from you.”

  “I called.” The admission took too much energy, and she dropped her shoulders. “Once. Right after the surgery. I called your dad’s house. I wanted to tell you…Nobody answered.”

  “You gave me one chance to fix this. How’s that fair?”

  “It wasn’t,” she allowed. “Maybe we needed that time and that space, Burke, to fix ourselves.”

  “I’m clean and you’ve got a second heart, but we’re not fixed. We’re only coping.”

  “Coping’s easier with someone to hold you up,” she said, pulling on her jacket and stepping into her shoes. “Sponsors and support groups are great. So is a friend who’s got no obligation but just cares and wants to help.”

  “Don’t volunteer, Sofia. You can’t handle this.”

  “Up to me to decide. I’ll try, for you. So what can you handle?” Gulping in the salt-tinged breeze, she climbed onto her bike.

  Burke grabbed the bicycle to hold it still, but her feet were already on the pedals and she crashed into him. He bellowed a swearword.

  “Are you okay?” She scrambled off and the bike fell to its side like a tipped cow. “Oh, no, you’re bleeding.”

  Maybe they were hazardous to each other’s health.

  Sofia dug a disinfectant square, a sample-size tube of antibacterial ointment, and a bandage from her tote bag. Carrying first aid supplies was an unbroken habit. Over the years she’d stopping packing ma
sks and hydrogen peroxide, but some items remained handy. “I have painkillers.”

  “No aspirin.” He took over, securing the bandage himself, then he helped her right the bicycle.

  “It’s an over-the-counter. Nonnarcotic. It won’t trigger a relapse.”

  “Sofia, I once swallowed a bottle’s worth of aspirin and chased it with gin.”

  “That could’ve killed you.”

  “I know. I knew it then, too.” He paused, and she heard what he didn’t say. I wanted it to kill me. “But I changed my mind about it, threw up, and whatever was left in my system made me sick as hell for days. So no aspirin for me. Appreciate the gesture, though.”

  “I’m not an expert on marine careers,” she said, “but being a dockworker’s strenuous labor. What do you do about aches and sore everything?”

  “Grin and bear it. Massage it out. I spent too many years numbing myself with drugs to go back to that.”

  The fireflies had retreated and now clouds began to gather in the sky.

  They should leave Bellini, but she wondered what had drawn him to marijuana and cocaine and whatever else he’d indulged in. “Why’d you start using? It had to hurt your dad to watch you deteriorate like that.”

  “Don’t confuse Deacon with Finnegan. Deacon didn’t ‘watch’ me deteriorate. He prophesied it. I was exactly what my father said I’d be—a mistake.”

  “Deacon said you were a mistake?”

  “Sofia, the word he used is murderer, and he started telling me that right after my mom died.”

  Melody Wolf had died when Burke was five or six years old. Complications from a virus had taken her down. “It was chicken pox.”

  “I brought the virus home from school, infected her. Deacon snapped when he lost her.”

  “You lost her, too.”

  “You wouldn’t know that if you read her gravestone. ‘Loving wife,’” he quoted. “Not wife and mother.”

  She hadn’t realized…“He blamed you?”

  “I spread the virus. He told me to stay away from her while I was sick with it, since she’d never had it. I hated being quarantined away from Mom, bawled every time I couldn’t be with her. So she kept being my mom. She took care of me. Then…then, fuck, she was dead.” He turned on his heel, put his focus on the lighthouse. “After her memorial, Deacon didn’t let a day pass without reminding me what I’d done. I killed her.”

  You didn’t kill her, she wanted to say, but now wasn’t the time to interrupt. This talk should’ve happened ages ago. That’s what finding each other in the basement was about—confessions and friendship and understanding.

  “When I went to P-town for that first tattoo, it wasn’t because I was a bored idiot. Deacon said inking in Mom’s favorite Bible verse mocked her. That’s not why I did it. I did it to honor her.” He gripped his bicep. Under the leather and cotton were the words. “I wanted drugs to take me away.”

  “Deacon didn’t want you to hurt yourself like that. After I told him about the tattoo, he thanked me. He asked me to continue looking after you because he worried.”

  Whatever my boy does that’s not right, you let me know, honey.

  Sofia had done her duty for Burke’s safety. “Imagine being a father and seeing your kid blitzed—or having him come home bruised up. You’d worry yourself sick and you’d do anything to protect him.”

  “If my kid came home that way, I’d worry.” He turned again, facing her. “Why’d you want to meet me here tonight? Does it have something to do with the pastries that bounced out of that picnic basket of yours?”

  Once again her plan had derailed. “It’s about the Cape Foods building. I asked Joss to make some samples to show you we’re serious about the bakery.”

  He mounted his bike. “The building’s not for sale.”

  “What about renting us the space?”

  “No. Sofia, I can’t.” Cold raindrops pelted them, hesitantly at first, then the sky cracked like a coconut against a rock. “How the hell did you know about the rain?”

  Her scar seemed to throb with pride. “Just a hunch.” Putting her bike in motion, she pedaled alongside him up the trail, through the dunes, and toward the pines. “There’s clothesline inside Blush and a hair dryer to hurry things up. Or we can go to the marina.”

  Burke sped forward, then took a sharp half turn and was right in her path. She squeaked and managed to stop the momentum in time to avoid Tboning his bike.

  “Dangerous much? I could’ve run into you.”

  “This is what I can handle.” He threw his leg over the bike, strode to her through the rain and the canopy of pine trees, and kissed her. “Compromise. I’ll trust you to know your health, and you’ll stop asking me about Cape Foods.”

  She had met him here for the very conversation he wanted her to table. Give up the fight…give up a dream…and gain what?

  Will you stay? “Will you take Colossians 1:14 out of its slip and disappear?”

  “No, Sofia. I won’t do that to you.”

  When he settled his mouth on hers again, she nodded and clung a little too long, but he didn’t pull away until she was ready to let him go.

  CHAPTER 16

  Caro brought pink champagne. “Gold balloons and black theater ropes—brilliant! Now instead of wanking on the sidewalk to your mannequins, people can come in and shop. Whoever said sex doesn’t sell is a liar.”

  It was early, two hours before the grand reopening, but Sofia thanked her with a swaying hug, popped the cork, and filled a glass without ceremony.

  “Drink.” She proffered it to Joss. “You need this.”

  Joss had been dangling on the edge for weeks, her mood gliding back and forth as if it were a pendulum. “Water a plant with it. I don’t want it,” she said, striding into Vices, where Paget was neatening their selection of floggers.

  “One of our medium-intensities is missing,” Paget told them. “Red handle. Has anyone seen it?”

  “Sorry, no,” Caro replied. “Medium intensity? Aren’t they all tails attached to a handle?”

  “Intensity deals with the hide used and the length of the tails,” Joss said. When the others’ gazes darted to her in silent surprise, she smoothed her kohl-colored minidress. They’d agreed on a black-attire dress code but had stepped it up for what they hoped would be a successful first day. “I’ll check our shipment boxes out back. I’m sure I can find it.”

  “Is she all right?” Caro asked when Joss fled through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. “Seems something’s irking her.”

  “The molds she ordered for her chocolate penises were lost in transit, but a replacement shipment’s being couriered out this week.” Paget shrugged and moved on to arranging the restraints just so. “I know she was hoping for a full treat display.”

  “Nipple tarts. A vulva cake.” Caro listed the items she found in the classic-Hollywood style pastry display. “Are those miniature penises…with cock rings?”

  “Yes.” Paget smiled. The shiny black pants and sheer-in-the-back top made her skin and hair appear even paler. “The rings were my idea. I think they add something extra, plus they ought to plant little seeds of curiosity about the full-size ones we carry.”

  “I’m curious.”

  “C’mon over here and I’ll show you. What size is your man?”

  Sofia had to know Caro’s response to this. The photographer and McGuinty Slattery continued to slink around each other, and it seemed whenever he retreated to lick wounds left by her rejection she reeled him back in.

  “I don’t currently have one. I was only wondering what they do. Sort of intimidating.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” said Sofia. Props and possibilities beckoned her imagination to dance. Lust, a need to be closer still to Burke, was music that pounded so loud she could hardly hear anything else. “Rings do nothing if no one’s wearing them. Whips lie still without someone to hold them.”

  “Fair enough,” Caro agreed. “Let’s have a look, Paget.”

  A
s Caro went with Paget, Sofia drank the champagne, and saw Joss return with the missing red-handled flogger. “Found it. All’s peachy.”

  Sofia set down her glass, took the flogger, hefted it in her hands, and dragged her fingers along the tails. It didn’t sting her skin—nor would it, without someone’s fist wrapped around the handle. She put it away and faced her friend. “Caro’s concerned. Paget thinks you’re miffed about the molds.”

  “I am miffed about the molds. I planned for white, milk, and dark chocolate. Different lengths and circumferences, too. One was going to be curved.”

  “Nice diversity,” Sofia commented, and it felt surreal that this was a legitimate business-oriented conversation. At Manhattan Greetings, a lively meeting would concern weighing in on the design team’s font choices or card stock options. “Edible penises for every preference.”

  “Strong tag line. I’m going to use that.”

  “You have my blessing.” Sofia tried to return her light smile, but concern hovered. “It’s not really the molds, is it? Is this about Peter?”

  “What about him?”

  “When we were at Grandpa Slattery’s, you got that text. Peter hurt you, Joss, so if you’re thinking about going back to him—”

  “I’m not,” her friend assured her, pain and conviction in her voice. “It’ll never happen. I don’t want to see him again.”

  “Then why have you been a wreck since that night? I’ve been trying to allow you space, but it’s as if you’re barely holding it together.”

  “It’s nothing serious. It’s change, that’s all. New town, new faces, new job.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Joss raised a hand to nibble her thumbnail. Considering that her slate-colored nail varnish was fresh, Sofia’s concern deepened. “Sof, when I mess up, I mess up big time.”

  “Everyone messes up, Joss.”

  She shook her head the way people do when they’re staring at their greatest regret. “Not the way I do.”