by Toni Blake
Shane squinted at her, thinking it through. He’d never seen his dad express much regret about anything in his life. “If he wanted me to know, would have made a lot more sense to tell me sooner. Like when he could at least think straight and make himself clear.”
In reply, though, Candice just offered a slight shrug. “That’s why it’s called a deathbed confession—it’s a thing a person realizes in the last few minutes of life that they can’t die without telling you. Maybe he suddenly realized he wanted you to have a parent when he was gone. And . . . maybe he knew he’d done wrong by you all those years ago and didn’t have the guts to fix it while he was alive, but then realized he didn’t want you to be alone, that he wanted you to find out the truth in the end.”
Something about that part hit him in the gut. Because he still didn’t know the truth, and maybe he never really would, but . . . something in finding out his father had wanted him to reconnect with her made him feel . . . vulnerable. To think his dad had worried about him.
But also mad as hell if that was the truth. If his father had lied to him, stolen him, was that really love? How the hell could someone do that? Who thought that made any sense in the world?
And so he didn’t know who to be angry with anymore, didn’t know who’d been the one to handle a little kid’s heart so recklessly. The fruitless anger began welling back up inside him anyway, though, like a monster that wanted to get out, rip things apart, go on some kind of rampage.
Candice must have seen it in his eyes because she whispered, “It’s okay, Shane.”
But as it stretched through his chest, his torso, his soul, he instantly said, “It’s not. I shouldn’t be around you right now.” And then he pushed up off the couch and stormed out onto the front porch where he’d first met her, on a snowy night just like this. And he pulled back his fist and punched one of the thick, wooden columns that held up the roof overhead. “God damn it!” he yelled at the top of his lungs out into the otherwise silent, dark, snowy night.
He knew she stood somewhere behind him, watching. But it was okay—or as okay as it could be. He trusted her enough to let her see him at his worst, to let her see him drop all the walls and spew that anger out in some way that wouldn’t hurt anybody. He trusted her enough to let her see him crumble a little then—his knees gave out and he sank to them on the wet, snowy porch. And then he leaned back his head and released some kind of primal yell that had pushed up and burst loose from somewhere deep inside.
He trusted her—but he didn’t like letting her see him this way. So he crushed his eyes shut when tears gathered behind them—he kept them closed until it passed, until they were gone.
And then she was out on the porch with him, stooping down behind him, kneeling there, wrapping her arms around him from the back.
And he felt so damn . . . foolish. Talk about vulnerable. “I’m sorry, honey. Sorry you have to be involved in my drama, sorry you have to put up with me right now. Shit, you can’t even drive me home, because look at the damn roads.”
They were covered in deepening snow that continued to fall at a heavy rate, blotting out the moonlight and illuminated only by the house’s exterior lights and a streetlamp.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she promised him softly. “It’s okay.”
But he just shook his head. Covered one of her hands with his. “Why on earth are you so damn nice to me? Especially—” he stopped, actually laughed a little “—considering how mean you used to be.”
He turned his head to see her sweet smile near his face. “Because I love you, Shane.”
He blinked softly, taken aback. He sure as hell didn’t feel very lovable. Shit, maybe he never had. And now he wasn’t sure which of his parents had started that inside him, but he said to her, “You shouldn’t love me, honey. I’m not worth it.”
“Yes, you are.” She sounded so sure. So sure that he almost believed it.
Only now he had to remind her. “You shouldn’t love me because . . . in a couple days I’m gonna leave, gonna walk right out of your life and never look back. Because . . . thing is, there’s a part of me that does think about staying. A part of me that wants to. But now . . . I can’t. I just fucking can’t. So you shouldn’t love me, Candy. It’s a losing proposition.”
Behind him, with her chest pressed into his back and her face still beautifully close, she whispered, “I do anyway. And I know you’re leaving. And I wish you wouldn’t. There’s so much to stay for—even more now. But no matter what happens, I forgive you for it.”
Her words took his breath away. “You forgive me even before I’ve done it?”
She nodded. “It seems to me that . . . sometimes love is about . . . forgiving.”
He said nothing more. She was too good for him. It broke his heart in a way. And made him love her back.
Though it seemed useless to say it. Useless if he wasn’t staying. So he kept it to himself—and realized how damn cold he’d gotten again, out there on the porch, snow blowing all around them. And he squeezed both of her hands in his.
Then he looked down at them, their hands, his fingers overtop hers, and said, “I finally get to keep your hands warm.”
And she let out a sweet sigh near his ear, then kissed him on the cheek and said, “We should go inside.”
“You’re right.”
And together they stood in their now wet-socked feet and wet clothes and stepped back through the door into the warmth and dryness. “Ready for that beef stew?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said. And then, “Nope.”
She looked up at him. “Nope?”
Because he needed to kiss her. And so that was what he did. He grabbed her and kissed her with every ounce of passion and fire and fear and anger and love inside him. “Food isn’t what I need right now, Candy,” he rasped in her ear.
And she murmured back, breathless, “What do you need?”
“To be inside you, making you melt, making you come, making you scream.”
Twenty-one
“I’ll love you ’til the day I die.”
Mary Hatch, It’s a Wonderful Life
Well, Candice couldn’t argue with that. In fact, the very suggestion, along with the hot rasp in his voice, made her heart beat faster and set the crux of her thighs tingling wildly. She bit her lower lip as she peered up at his darkly handsome face. “I want that, too.”
His eyes fell half-shut in response, and his gaze dropped to her mouth as he lifted one hand to cup her jaw, rake his thumb over her lower lip. And Candice felt all the pain and passion inside him.
He’d spilled some of that pain just now on her front porch, and she’d been happy to be here for him, happy to try to comfort him or at least support him however she could. It was still hard to believe Anita Garey was Shane’s mother, hard to wrap her head around it—and if it was this hard for her, she could only imagine how difficult it was for him.
Now he was ready to spill some of that passion, slake some of it away inside her body. And she was happy to be here for him in that way, too.
And as for the knowledge that this was temporary—well, she’d already surrendered to that fact. It didn’t change anything here. She didn’t expect anything, wasn’t holding him to anything—as from the moment she’d first allowed herself to go to bed with him, it was freely given, and maybe the closest thing she’d experienced to unconditional love.
“I want to make you forget everything bad, Shane,” she said, a slight rasp in her own voice she’d never heard before. He brings it out of me. He brings out pieces of me I never knew were there. He makes me . . . the woman I want to be.
It hit her fully then. With Shane, she wasn’t the stay-at-home technical writer keeping her head—and her heart—buried in the sand. With Shane, she wasn’t frightened or even timid any longer. She’d come out of her shell—and not only with him but somehow in other parts of her life, too. With Shane, she was brave and vulnerable and . . . real.
It surprised her when the lo
ok in his eyes changed then—when the feral need softened just a little, and he murmured gently, “You do. You do that for me.”
And it surprised her further when hearing that made her desire flare even more, connecting her to him so deeply that mere words could never express it; only her body could. “Take me,” she said.
A low groan echoed from his throat. And Shane didn’t want to go slow; in fact, he didn’t think he could if he tried. He needed to fuse his flesh with hers, sink inside her, fill her up; let her fill him up in a whole different way.
When he crushed his mouth down onto her soft lips, it was with a stark hunger, a need to do as she’d just said—take her, take from her, take what she was offering. His hands instinctively clutched at her ass through her blue jeans, hauling her body up against his pelvis, needing to feel her there, needing to press his erection into her, make her feel it too.
Her gasp against his mouth told her she did, and it hardened him all the more.
And then he let her do the other thing she’d offered—take away the bad stuff. He focused wholly on her. Her curves, beneath his hands. Her lips, beneath his hungry mouth. The sweet, hot, sexy way she clung to him, her arms around his neck, letting him know her want burned just as strong as his.
His hands roamed her slender waist, then rose to her breasts, molding them, stroking his thumbs across their tips. He needed her naked, so he reached for the bottom of the red sweater she wore, soon yanking it off over her head. After unzipping his hoodie, she worked feverishly at the buttons on his shirt as he tugged at her zipper, yanking her jeans from her hips.
And then his mouth went dry. “Oh my God,” he murmured, breath labored.
She’d paired a red bra with white panties decorated with . . . candy canes. He couldn’t pull his eyes away.
“I . . . heard once that you have a thing for candy canes,” she whispered, soft and sexy.
“I do,” he assured her, his erection almost painful now. Then he reached down between them and stroked his middle finger up her center, over top a naughty-as-hell little candy cane that happened to be printed right there. “And I want to lick this one.”
Another pretty gasp set him all the more on fire for her—and even as eager as he was to relieve his aching cock, he instead jerked her panties down with both hands and dropped to his knees.
“Lean back against the couch,” he instructed her deeply. They stood behind it, and so she did as he’d instructed as he freed her from the panties completely, then used both hands to spread her legs.
It made her all the more beautiful and hot when he recalled how she’d been with him in the beginning—so worried and wary and fearful. And as he pressed his tongue to the cleft between her thighs, he loved who she’d become with him.
Her high whimpers of pleasure fueled him as he licked her, again, again. And part of him wanted to stretch this out, make it last for her, and for him too—but on the other hand, they had all night. So he followed the urge to just take her there, all the way, working his mouth at the crux of her pleasure until he could sense it rising, rising, reaching that hot, critical peak—and then she was coming against his mouth, crying out, eyes shut above him, letting him see her most private, intimate self.
When she came down from it, he sensed her knees beginning to give way, and he rose to catch her in his arms, whispering, “Lean on me, baby—lean on me.”
She did, and he held her, kissing her head, her hair, for just a few seconds before he couldn’t hold back anymore—so he turned her body around to face away from him, bent her over the back of the couch. She let him guide her, and he sensed her urgency rising again, too, as he rushed to get his pants open.
His erection sprung free, impatiently seeking heat, and he wasted no time planting his hands on her hips, positioning himself, then thrusting his way inside her.
They both moaned deeply at the rough entry and—damn, it felt like coming home. Sweet, hot relief. The place he was supposed to be. So tight, so wet, so warm.
He drove into her, finding a rhythm, her body joining in, meeting his every plunge into her moisture. She cried out with each hot stroke, and low growls left his own throat as he got lost in the consuming bliss of it.
He took in her bare, pale, slender back, the red bra strap still stretching across it, and decided he needed to free her of that, so he flicked the hooks open and watched it fall over her outstretched arms in front of her. He moved his hands up, letting them glide over the two soft mounds of flesh, then gripped them tighter as he moved in her harder, harder.
It didn’t take long to reach the point of no return. And just like when he’d been licking her sweet flesh, he could have held back, stretched it out, but instead, he just followed the powerful urge to come in her. He thrust, thrust, thrust, loving the way she called out as he spilled himself inside her.
And then he was the one collapsing a little, letting his body slump onto hers over the back of the couch.
“Damn, hon,” he breathed. “That was . . . amazing.”
And as he pulled out of her, he realized he’d forgotten something—shit—and reached for some tissues on an end table to keep her tidy.
He tossed them in a wastebasket, then took her smoothly back into his arms and tumbled purposely over the back of the couch to land on the front side, drawing her there with him. He lay on his back, Candy nuzzled against his chest, her palms pressed there.
“About those tissues . . .” she began.
And he was quick to assure her. “I’m sorry, baby. But I promise you’re fine, because I never forget.”
“Until now,” she added.
He nodded. “Until now.”
“So I’m fine, but what about you?” she said playfully. “Could be I’ve been out carelessly having all kinds of wild sex with tons of different guys, so you could be in big trouble, mister.”
A small chuckle left him as he met her pretty gaze. “Could be—but I don’t think so.”
She lowered her eyes, admitting, “Yeah, you never forget . . . and I never need to remember.”
“Until now,” he said.
“Until now.”
“This is selfish, but I’m glad.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Glad?”
“To be the only one for a while.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
He supposed the answer was . . . well, something he’d normally never admit. But with Candy, it was easier. “Guess it makes me feel special.”
“You are special,” she promised him.
And he realized that he already knew she felt that way. And not just because she’d told him she loved him. He’d known it before that, could feel it. Not too many people had ever made him feel that way before.
But he sure as hell wasn’t one for getting all mushy and deep—and God knew there’d been enough of that today already, whether he’d meant for it to happen or not—so it seemed like a good time to change the subject. “I’ve worked up an appetite,” he said. “Let’s have some stew.”
And that was when it hit him that for a blissful while she truly had taken away everything bad. He hadn’t thought about what he’d found out earlier since they’d come inside. Only now it was coming back, bit by bit. Damn it.
Hadn’t he had enough shit to deal with lately? His father’s death. Wrecking his truck and getting stranded, while broke. And now this—his mother popping up at the Christmas party where he was playing Santa, when he hadn’t seen her in twenty-five years.
But being here, with Candy, helped.
Hell, those adorable panties had helped.
Everything about her helped.
“Do you want to talk? About Anita?”
They lay in Candice’s bed naked, the covers pulled to their waists. And she wasn’t sure she should ask, but they’d eaten beef stew without discussing it, and they’d talked about the party without discussing it, and they’d watched Jingle All the Way—which Shane had been pleased to find on a cable channel—without discussing i
t. So maybe he’d be ready to talk about it now.
“Be nicer not to. Nicer to just lie here with you naked.” Then he glanced toward the foot of the bed where a certain white feline sat. “And your cat. Though I’m not sure I like the way he’s looking at me.”
“The bromance getting a little heavy for you?” she teased him.
He laughed. Then his grin faded as he asked, “What’s she like? Anita.”
Candice thought back over Anita’s history in their small town. “When she first came to Destiny and bought the Dew Drop Inn, people thought she was sort of . . . rough around the edges. Or maybe tough is a better word. She wasn’t a typical Destiny resident.
“But then Chief Tolliver started dating her, and people got to know her, and . . . she’s nice. I mean, I don’t know her well, but I can tell you that she’s a nice woman. People like her and are glad to see him find happiness again—his wife died a long time ago and Anita sort of . . . brought him back to life. And she dotes on Jenny and Mick’s little boy. Maybe . . . maybe because she misses doting on you.”
She was almost sorry to have added that last thought when his countenance darkened. And she wished she hadn’t made him think about that—about all the years he’d lost with his mother.
“I still don’t know what to believe,” he said. “About the past. About what happened.”
She understood that. No matter where the truth lay, one of his parents had failed him in the most awful way she could imagine. What if her own father came back right now? What if he somehow placed the blame on her mother, whom she loved dearly, who had been the one to take care of her and be there for her? It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be easy to see her whole life, her whole relationship with the parent who’d raised her, suddenly become one of deceit and lies. And Shane’s dad wasn’t even here to defend himself, meaning the answers would always remain a mystery.