“You wanna come inside?” Liam asks just as I was imagining Adrienne whipping up pancakes in one of my T-shirts—in only one of my t-shirts.
Do you wanna come inside?
Oh, I plan on it. Adrienne Maddox can bet her sweet little ass I plan on it.
Liam walks in with Blaze right behind him, making me thoroughly distracted, so I pull the pan of Sister Schubert dinner rolls out of the oven without an oven mitt. As soon as my fingers touch the scorching hot metal, I drop the pan back down on the rack and let out a yelp. Blaze darts across the living room into the kitchen and immediately grabs my wrist, bringing my hand to his face.
“We need to get this under cold water,” he says as he guides me to the sink and turns on the faucet.
The cool water numbs the pain, even though I’ve been burned enough in my lifetime to know the numbness is only temporary. The minute I pull my hand from the stream, the pain will return.
Blaze holds my wrist as the water cascades over my skin. His thumb lazily runs along the pulsing vein there.
Every little girl dreams of being Cinderella, of the day their Prince Charming will come in and save the day. My childhood didn’t give me time for dreams. My teenage years weren’t much better. And my introduction into adulthood was more like a nightmare thanks to an overly zealous photographer who promised me a career in modeling.
I’m a normal girl with a normal height, normal curves, and normal boobs. I should’ve known better. Fifteen minutes into the “interview” I was ready to go back to waiting tables at Applebee’s. That’s when a guy named Travis showed up with a UPS delivery—my knight in dark brown, polyester-coated armor. I met Rylee at a coffee shop the next day, and she introduced me to Corporate Cares. Travis and I moved in together six months later, and for the next two years, he was amazing. My job was amazing. Life was good. Right up until it wasn’t.
In my world, Travis was everything. In his, I was a placeholder, a body to keep his bed warm until someone better came along. I showed up one day and the locks had been changed. I wasn’t even worth a phone call. He was decent enough to put my things in storage and leave the key at my office. At least there was that. I should’ve just saved myself from that shady ass photographer. Then maybe my heart would still be intact. Maybe I’d be willing to trust someone again.
People leave. That’s what they do. And girls like me don’t get a happily ever after. We’re lucky to get a happily for now.
That’s what I’d call Blaze—a “for now.”
His thumb traces my veins. Heat radiates from his body to mine. I can feel his breath on my cheek, smell the masculine scent seeping from his pores. He’s standing so close to me.
Too close.
Still not close enough.
My breath turns ragged as he captivates me in his stare. It would be so easy for me to lose myself in this man. “Save yourself,” twenty-year-old me reminds present-day me. I reach to turn off the tap, and slowly pull my wrist from his grip.
“You okay, Miss M?”
I didn’t even realize Liam was standing right beside us.
“I’m great, sweetie. Just a little burn,” I say as I wring the water from my hand then grab a towel. “I’ll be fine. Go wash up. Dinner is almost ready.” He passes a glance from me to Blaze before running toward the stairs. I catch him just as he reaches the bottom step. “And tell the rest of the boys to wash up and come down.”
Blaze has taken over, pulling the bread from the oven along with the glass dish with bacon-wrapped chicken breasts in it.
He sets them both on top of the stove then turns to face me. “If you’re good, I guess I’ll get going.” He says the words but doesn’t move to leave.
Shit.
I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. One more step and I’ll fall. I know it. Fall into what, I have no idea. There could be a crystal blue pool of water waiting for me at the bottom, refreshing and clear. Or there could be a pile of rocks waiting to tear me apart.
I’ll never know until I take that step.
I let out a shaky breath then realize how ridiculous it is that I’m nervous. He’s just a guy.
A guy who could make me forget I’d ever had a broken heart if I let him.
I shouldn’t let him.
There are so many other things I need to be worrying about right now. Such as the green-eyed, curly-haired fifteen-year-old kid that started a fire even though a fire is exactly the reason he’s here.
Oh, screw it.
It’s just dinner. It’s not like I’m asking him to spend the night.
“You should stay. For dinner, I mean.” I reach for a pitcher inside the refrigerator and steady my voice as though my heart isn’t about to explode out of my chest.
He smiles so big it steals my breath. “I’d like that.”
I fill seven glasses with fresh lemonade and take seven plates from the cabinet. I watch the boys bound down the stairs then file through the kitchen, fixing their plates, laughing and snarling their nose up when they spot the pan full of grilled zucchini, and I smile. This is what it’s about, giving them a chance to have what I never did.
Siblings. Real siblings.
Dinners.
Love.
Or at least my version of it.
Everyone takes a seat at the dinner table. Blaze takes the one right next to mine. I feel him watching me the entire time I say grace. Every sweep of his eyes heats my skin. When I finish speaking and open my eyes, my gaze locks on his. His eyes change color with the intensity of his stare. The golden flecks grow darker as if a storm is swirling in the brown depths.
Outside of the eight months I spent with a Baptist preacher and his wife, I wasn’t raised in church, but I’m fairly certain God and lust don’t belong in the same room. Prayer was never intended to be sexy. We’ll probably both end in up in hell for this.
“Remember when I said Miss M cooks the best food?” Liam’s voice slices through the growing tension, dousing water on a fire that’s bound to burn out of control. He’s looking at Blaze and cutting off a piece of his chicken breast, which he then dips in barbecue sauce. I learned quickly that Liam eats barbecue sauce with everything. Ham sandwiches, hamburgers, and pizza—which completely grosses out the rest of us—except for Brody who actually tried it and liked it. “I wasn’t talking about this.” Liam points his fork toward the zucchini on his plate.
Blaze chuckles then stabs a zucchini square with his fork. “Don’t knock it ’til you try it, kid.”
“I don’t think we should have to eat things we can’t even spell,” Zeke pipes up from across the table, talking over a mouthful of mac ’n’ cheese.
I pause, fork halfway to my mouth. “Z-U-C-C-H-I-N-I. And no talking with your mouth full.”
Ryder, who is sitting next to Zeke, nudges the six-year-old with his elbow. Zeke narrows his eyes then huffs a sigh.
“Yes ma’am,” he says, looking across the table at me and earning himself a smile.
Jacob, one of the boys not much younger than Liam, keeps moving the vegetable from one side of his plate to the other as if it will somehow find a magic portal and disappear. I point at his plate with my fork. “You have to at least try it. You know the rules.”
Blaze laughs beside me. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those moms.” His face falls as soon as he says it, so I smile at him to let him know it’s okay. I may not have given birth to these boys, but they are every bit as much mine as they are anyone else’s.
He sets his fork down on his plate and looks between all the boys. “My dad had this rule when we were growing up. If you put it on your plate, you have to eat it. One time… I think I was about six years old, we went to this fancy seafood buffet, and I was so curious about snow crab. All the adults were eating it, and I wanted to show my dad I could be just like him. I piled my plate with crab as high as it would go. To this day, the sight of crab makes me want to puke.” He finishes his story by grabbing his fork and shoveling in a bite of chicken.
I tr
y to picture Blaze as a little boy, plate piled high with snow crab, trying to act grown up. I wonder what his childhood was like. Did he have siblings? Was he happy? He was probably homecoming king or captain of the football team. His parents probably have the perfect marriage, and he probably took his senior trip to Greece.
We are not the same.
Liam drizzles barbecue sauce over his mac ’n’ cheese then peels the bacon off his chicken and crumbles it on top. I tilt my head and watch with all the other boys. The bacon pieces sink into the melted cheese, and it actually doesn’t look too bad. I glance down at my macaroni that somehow looks boring now. Liam wipes his hand on the napkin in his lap when he’s finished then grabs his fork. “Miss M’s rule is whoever has the most food left on their plate has to help with dishes.”
“Is that so?” Blaze asks.
“That is so,” I answer him.
He nods once with a quiet hmm but continues eating. Dinner continues on without incident. And by without incident I mean no belching or jokes about someone else’s butt crack. It took me a solid two months to teach them a proper dinner table routine. Every time one of the boys asks to be excused, Blaze grabs their plate and scrapes the remaining food onto his own until it looks like a Picasso painting. No one says a word. No one argues with him when he takes their plate. Even though we all know exactly what he’s doing.
“I guess I’m helping with dishes,” he says with a smirk after the last of the five boys gets up from the table.
“You cheated.”
Blaze stands with a wink. “The rule says the plate with the most food.” He holds his plate out for me to see. “My plate. No one said it had to be my food.” Then he stacks it on top of the empty plates he gathered and walks to the kitchen.
I slide my chair away from the table and sigh, noticing the way his charcoal gray T-shirt stretches across his broad shoulders and the way his jeans fit him just right, loose hanging at the hips but snug over the curve of his ass. His long legs close the distance between the dining room and kitchen in a few swift strides, and I have to remind myself I have no business thinking about hips or asses or broad shoulders.
That familiar stirring swims in the pit of my stomach when he stands next to me in front of the sink, all lean muscle, trim waist and the perfect amount of scruff along his jaw. I wash. He rinses and dries. Every time his hand brushes mine when he grabs a plate or pot, my breath catches in my throat. We don’t say much, but there’s no need for words when the silence is buzzing with so much energy. The water sprays over his forearms, making me want to lick it off the veins running up his hands and arms.
“So, the guy at Shooters…” His words drag as though he’s not sure he wants to say them.
“He’s a friend.” I hand him a sud-covered plate.
He dips it under the running water and cuts a glance at me from the corner of his eye. “How close of a friend?”
Is he seriously asking what I think he’s asking?
“Just a friend. And more Brody’s friend than mine. It’s not like that.”
There are zero benefits with Jake’s friendship.
He finishes rinsing the final plate then pushes the handle on the faucet down to turn the water off. When he looks at me, his gaze studies my face as if he’s committing every feature to memory. It’s intense. Then again, everything about him is intense. “Well, that’s good to know because—"
“Hi, honey. I’m home.” Haley’s voice interrupts him.
I grab a towel to dry my hands and wait for Blaze to finish his sentence.
He doesn’t. Instead, he schools his features as though he hadn’t just asked me if I was fucking Jake then seemed relieved when the answer was no.
“There’s a plate in the microwave,” I say then pass the towel to Blaze, knowing the food in the microwave will end up in the trash. I don’t know why I always bother saving her a plate. Haley doesn’t cook, and she rarely eats when someone else cooks. The boys love it when it’s her shift because she always orders take out. The fact that her parents own one of those food delivery services might have something to do with that.
She holds up a plastic bag and smiles. “I’m good.” Her gaze shifts to Blaze who is currently drying his hands. She looks back at me and raises a brow in question.
“Haley, you remember Blaze?” I know she’s dropped Liam off at the brewery at least once, and this man is hardly forgettable. She replies with a slow, subtle nod but continues staring at us in silence. “He brought Liam home.” Then stayed for dinner and volunteered himself to help with dishes.
“Good to see you again, Haley.” Blaze greets her with a wide grin then glances back at me. He drops the towel on the countertop. “I guess I should get going.” His eyes twinkle. “For real this time.”
Haley enters the kitchen and sets the plastic bag on the island. “He came all this way, Addy. You should at least walk him out,” she says, doing that thing where she focuses on pulling Styrofoam containers out of the bag instead of having to look me in the eye as she tosses me under the bus.
One of the boys yells loud enough for it to echo all the way down the stairs. “Come onnnnn! I had three seconds left.” If I had to guess, it’s Jacob and there’s a video game involved.
“Well, it looks like my shift has officially begun.” Haley grabs a mozzarella stick from one of the containers and shoves a bite into her mouth. “Great seeing you, Blaze. See ya later, Addy.” Then she hurries up the stairs as the yelling continues.
Blaze laughs as he walks toward the door. The sound is so deep and warm that I can’t help but smile. “You guys sure have your hands full. I remember all the shit me and my brother put our nanny through…” He trails off as though he’s remembering something then clears his throat. There’s a sadness in his eyes that makes my heart hurt for him.
His nanny… The conversation at the police station makes so much more sense now.
You aren’t doing him any favors by being here instead of them. Trust me on that.
He was talking about himself, speaking from experience. He has a brother. I want to ask for more, a sneak peek into the life of this mysterious man, more like the story he shared during dinner, but I don’t. I know what it means to hold your past close to your chest with both hands, careful not to let anyone pry your fingers open.
We step outside and stop walking when we reach his car. His gaze locks on mine, but I feel it everywhere, all over from my head to my toes.
Heat crawls up my neck to my cheeks. I can’t remember the last time a man made me feel this way. Yes, I can. It ended in a flood of tears and shattered pieces of a broken heart. I want to ignore the fluttering in the pit of my stomach. I need to go back to my bubble, back where it’s safe.
“Have a good night, Blaze.”
I start to walk away but stop when his long fingers wrap around my wrist. He spins me around to face him. His eyes roam my face for a quiet moment before he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, then twirls the end around his finger. I should stop this. I should stop myself.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
Instead, I lift my hand to his and trace my fingertip along one of the thick veins all the way to his elbow. His gaze never leaves my face. I wonder what he’s thinking when he looks at me this way—like there’s something inside him, something wild, something fierce clawing its way out, begging to be set free. Like it’s taking every ounce of his strength to keep it locked away.
I know what I’m thinking. I know it because when he speaks, I get drunk on his words. I know because when he smiles, the warmth of it wraps around me like fleece on a cold night.
This guy is going to break my heart. He’s going to break the ever-loving shit right out of it.
The air between us crackles with the kind of tension that has me tingling in places that haven’t tingled in a long time. Blaze takes another step closer, dark fire burning in his honey-colored eyes. He brushes the fingertips of his free hand along the curve of my
neck.
“Adrienne.” My name is a strangled breath on his lips, as though he’s in pain when he says it, but it’s still absolutely perfect.
“Yeah?” I sound just as breathless as he does.
“Back there… just now… There’s something I wanted to say.” His normally calm, deep voice sounds rugged and unsure.
My stomach falls because I know one way or another, the next words that come out of his mouth could be my undoing.
His body visibly tenses, and his jaw clenches as he squeezes his eyes shut. For several seconds, I wonder if he’s going to open them again. When he finally does, he’s completely focused on me. Nothing else exists around us. My chest rises and falls as I fight to get back the breath he’s stolen. His gaze studies my face. His teeth bite down on his bottom lip when he looks from my eyes to my mouth then back to my eyes again. The scent of him wraps around me, sinks into me, spicy and warm.
I’ve been pretending for days, weeks even, that this man doesn’t affect me. I try to ignore the way my body reacts every time he’s around. It’s hard to ignore his presence when his presence is everywhere, all around, consuming the very oxygen I breathe.
Blaze leans in, and his lips graze the shell of my ear. “You are making it really hard for me to behave when I’m around you.” His hand reaches around and cups the back of my neck. “And I’m done pretending there’s nothing happening here.”
His voice seeps into my pores and makes its way through my bloodstream, warming me from the inside out in ways that should send me running for the hills but instead have me rooted to the ground. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
I need to move, though.
Because he’s right. Even though this thing between us may be undefinable, it is undeniable.
Deep down, I know that. I also know Blaze Abbott is the kind of guy who makes you feel reckless. He’s the kind of guy who makes you want more. The kind of guy who knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to take it. The kind of guy who could take every pathetic piece of your past and make it disappear.
Blaze: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 6