by K. Bromberg
“I’m not chickening out. And I don’t need all this makeup. It isn’t as if he hasn’t seen me before without it.”
“Shush. Every woman needs to act like she cares on a first date.” She takes a step back to admire her handy work. “If you don’t act like you care, then you’re not setting the standard of how you expect to be treated.”
“But this isn’t a first date, and I think you’re off your rocker.”
“You are hoping to be frisked and handcuffed at some point, aren’t you?” I just raise my eyebrows at her when she gives me that motherly look. “Then shush and let me finish my masterpiece.”
She busies herself with curling my hair when throwing it into a ponytail would be fancy enough for me. There’s no use arguing with a determined Desi so I let her have her way.
“I may have done something in a knee-jerk reaction.”
“What did you do?” She sets the curling iron down, plants her hands on her hips, and looks at me with warning in her eyes.
“You remember Paulo, don’t you?”
“Hmm, that Latin lover you had fun with for a while.”
“That’s him.” I begin to bite my lip, and she squeezes my cheeks to stop me from messing up my perfectly lined lips.
“Why are we talking about him, and why are you nervous to tell me?”
“Well, I kind of agreed to meet up with him tonight.”
The reaction I expected is immediate: Brow narrowing, lips parting, eyes blinking, nostrils flaring. “Why in the ever-loving hell would you do that?”
I shrug, because now that I’ve admitted it out loud, it does sound ridiculously stupid. If I’m not afraid of meeting up with Grant, then why did I go and give myself an out for this evening should things get too serious? I don’t shrink from her stare even though I want to.
Her eyes narrow as she pins me immobile. “You just showed your cards, Em.” A broad grin slides across those heart-shaped lips of hers.
“My cards?”
“Yep. You wanted an out because you know tonight is going to be epic, and you’re not used to epic. You’re used to good sex with a pretty face but nothing behind it.”
“I beg to—”
“Shush.” She picks up my phone from the table beside me and tosses it onto my lap. “Tell Paolo thanks but no thanks. You’re all Latin-lovered out for the time being and you’re handcuffed to other obligations tonight.”
“Fine.” I huff out a breath as I pick up the phone.
She’s right, but hell if I’ll admit it aloud.
“Is this seat taken?” I ask as I slide into the booth across from Grant. Nerves idle within me, only serving to reinforce Desi’s assumption that I’m already treating Grant differently from how I treat other men.
I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that.
“Hey there.” Grant’s face transforms with the warmest of smiles that makes parts inside me that I wasn’t aware could tingle come alive. We stare at each other for a moment, almost as if there’s a silent acknowledgement that the defensive banter we’re used to has no place here tonight. “You look beautiful.”
Uncomfortable with compliments, I blush. “You clean up pretty nice, too. Although, you can never go wrong with your uniform.”
Did I really just say that?
“So I’ve heard.” A smile plays at the corner of his mouth, referencing back to the first time we ran into each other, but his eyes hold so much more amusement in them.
A waitress comes and takes our drink order. There is ample chatter in the bar but an awkward silence between us. I play with the cardboard coaster, uncertain what step to take in the uncoordinated dance.
“Emerson.”
“Hmm?” I meet his eyes.
“There’s no pressure here. I just wanted to spend some time with you, have a few drinks, and catch up on what you’ve been up to. That’s it.”
Our eyes hold as I struggle with laying down my defensive shield and not running away at the mere mention of catching up. Catching up means talking about the past, and my past is dark as hell. And while he may already know the gist of my dark, it’s hard not to be defensive over something I’ve always protected.
“I’d like that.” I don’t remember telling myself to say the words, but there they are, out in the open, making his grin widen and his shoulders relax some.
“Good. That’s good. Because as stupid as it sounds, I’ve really missed you.”
Because as stupid as it sounds, I’ve really missed you.
Every time Grant laughs, I hear him saying those words. Every time he smiles, I hear him saying those words. Every time I want to clam up at a seemingly benign question, I remind myself that I only have to tell him as much as I want to and think of him telling me he missed me.
Those are words I don’t think anyone has ever said to me.
“So tell me something . . .” Grant laughs as he slides next to me in the booth and then pushes a fresh drink in my direction. His eyes are a little glassy, but his smile is still kind and his humor is becoming of him. “What’s a girl who’s scared of heights doing jumping out of airplanes?”
“Who said I was scared of heights?”
“Oh come on,” he says, patting my thigh with a tipsy flourish and then absently leaving it there. “This is coming from the girl who refused to climb Old Man Conner’s tree because it was too high off the ground. You threw up all over his daisies just thinking about it.”
I stare at him, flustered by his hand. Warm. On my thigh. Contact. When I should really be freaking out that Grant is talking about a memory I have no recollection of, but I can’t. All I can focus on is the ache currently simmering a few inches from where his fingers reside.
“I don’t remember that,” I say and shift to face him in the booth. He moves his hand back to his drink and shakes his head.
“You don’t? I made fun of you for weeks, calling you Daisy until you got so mad you told me you weren’t going to come over to play anymore unless I stopped.”
Daisy. The taunt ghosts through my mind, but I don’t recall it. What I do know is that, even back then, we played games with each other. Sure, they were different games, innocent fun, which is a far cry from the one we are playing now. But just like then, I still feel the same sense of ease with him. The same level of comfort. I can’t remember a single time I didn’t want to go over to the Malone house to play. It was safe there.
I felt safe there.
“No. It’s been a long time.” I take a sip of my drink and hate how my fingers tremble ever so slightly.
“But skydiving, Em?”
I shrug. “It’s my peace. For a few seconds, everything is there, laid out before me. It’s calm. There’s no noise in my head, just the wind in my ears, and I’m forced to only think of the present.”
“The present is good.”
“Mm-hmm.” There’s a look in his eyes that says a million things at once, and I can’t pinpoint any of them, so I don’t try. “So, a cop, huh?”
“Yep.” He places his arm across the back of the booth, and his fingers automatically toy with a strand of my hair, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
“I could have figured. All those hours playing cops and robbers on our bikes. You always had a hero complex, wanting to save anyone and everyone . . .” I’m stepping too close to no-go territory for me. Panic tries to find a foothold, but I ignore it and smile at Grant. “Remember that time we found—”
“The bullet shell smashed in the street, and we swore someone had broken into the Parker’s house and robbed them?” His eyes light up.
“Yes! And we called 9-1-1 because we thought we were real detectives.” I smile wider, thrilled to remember this memory and not draw a blank and feel stupid.
“Yeah good ol’ Chief Malone read me the riot act for distracting officers from legitimate calls.” He shakes his head and laughs.
“How is your dad?”
“He’s good. Real good. He retired about eight
years ago, and I think it’s driving my mom crazy that he has nothing to do. Occasionally, the force asks him to consult on an old cold case, which keeps him occupied, but other than that, he’s just busy being a grandfather to Luke. That’s Grayson’s son.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize any of the infamous Malone boys were hitched,” I say with a wink.
“We’re not. Gray’s is a long story. Too long for right now.”
“So no aspirations to be chief and follow in your dad’s footsteps?” I suddenly want to know everything about him.
“In time.” He shrugs and takes a sip of his beer.
“Give up the routine of sitting in The Donut Shoppe’s lot and doing paperwork?”
“I actually despise donuts, and I’m more of a sit-in-the-parking-lot-of-Starbucks-on-Main-Street-and-do-my-paperwork routine kind of cop.”
“A cop who hates donuts?” I hold my hand to my chest in mock horror. “Isn’t that sacrilege? No wonder you haven’t been promoted yet.”
“It is. Actually, I’m up for detective right now. I debated for the longest time whether I wanted it—more responsibility, more politics, and less being on the streets, which is what I love doing the most. But, we’ll see. It’s a long process, and I’m not sure who else has applied for the position. Time will tell . . .”
“You’re a Malone. In this town, that’s gold, isn’t it?”
“Depends who you ask.” He angles his head and stares at me for a beat, curiosity owning his eyes. “So tell me, you’re buying Blue Skies? Why that? Why now?”
I take a long sip of my wine and marvel at how easy it is for the words to want to spew off my tongue. It’s unsettling; yet, I find myself wanting to tell him. I find myself wanting him to know I’ve been okay.
“My mom was a gypsy at heart. We wandered around a lot, moved from one town to the next the minute she started to feel too settled.” I smile softly as I think of her. Her crazy, colorful clothes. Her unconventional ways. Her fierce protection of me from everyone.
“That must have been hard with school and—”
“She homeschooled me for the longest time. Trust was hard for her.” As it is for me. “If I was learning about American history, we’d take a road trip and live in Washington, DC for a while. We were fluid.”
“That must have been hard, always moving around.”
“It was isolating in a sense because I didn’t have many friends, but it was rich in so many other ways.” I shrug. “One year, we went through Missoula where the fire jumpers are based. It was hot and humid, but I sat and watched them practice their jumps for hours. I knew right then I wanted to try it.”
“Did you?”
“Not then. I was too young, and if my mom wasn’t willing to trust a babysitter watching me for an hour, she sure as hell wasn’t going to trust an instructor to get me safely back to earth.”
“True.” He traces the line of condensation on his beer bottle with his fingers.
“I had to wait until I was eighteen for my first jump.”
“That’s a long time to wait.”
“It was.”
“As non-traditional as it was, it sounds like she taught you a lot.”
“It was all I knew.” I smile softly at him, the memories of my mom and the life she created for us so clear despite all the time that has passed. “We stopped moving around when I was a senior in high school. I could have easily taken my GED and opted out, but my mom refused to let me. She wanted me to experience high school for at least one year.”
“That had to have been brutal.”
“Yeah, well, when you live in a bubble, sometimes you don’t have the cognizance to notice or even want to care. It was definitely an experience. Gone were the lazy days where we’d finish our lesson and then take a tube and float down river wherever we were to celebrate another day lived to the fullest. I fought her on it, but she wanted to settle for the first time in almost ten years. Little did I know it was because she was sick.”
“I’m so sorry, Em, I didn’t know.” His hand covers mine and gives it a squeeze.
“How could you have?” I squeeze his back, loving that he keeps his hand there even when the moment is over. “She was fine for a while, but after I graduated, I spent most of my time taking care of her. She fought hard, but the years of being ill finally took their toll. During it all, the one friend I had made in high school was my moral support. That was Desi.” I lean back in my seat and lift my eyebrows. “This is all a little too depressing, isn’t it? Let’s change the—”
“It’s okay. I want to know.”
I stare at him for a moment, hesitant to talk about one of my deepest sadnesses, but realize he loves his mom just as fiercely as I loved mine. He’ll understand why the grief robbed me of so much for so long. And some days still does.
“When my mom died, I took to her ways to cope. The day she passed away, I headed to a local skydiving school and jumped. It was the only way I thought I could be free of all the grief I felt. At first, I couldn’t concentrate, but then I hit this moment in my jump where there was silence in my head. It was almost soothing, and it forced me to think of what was next and where to go from there. It was liberating and sounds ridiculous . . . ” I look down to where my fingers are fidgeting with the coaster. It’s weird how easy it is to tell him about it when it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever given a voice to before.
“It isn’t ridiculous at all.”
I clear my throat and drop the coaster before continuing. “So, I said goodbye to Desi, packed my belongings, and traveled all over the country, going from jump site to jump site until the grief stopped drowning me.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight months.”
Grant lifts his eyebrows, obviously surprised that it happened so recently, and I laugh. “By some weird twist of fate, while I was on my adventures, Desi ended up moving to Sunnyville. It shocked the hell out of me when she told me. And then I found out Blue Skies was up for sale. I felt like all roads were leading me back here when it was the last place I ever thought I’d return to.”
“Plus there was me,” he says, adding a flash of a smile and tip of his beer against my wine glass.
“Plus there was you.”
His finger twirls absently in my hair again, and I hate that it sounds so cliché, but my heart really does beat faster.
“I’m glad you came back, Emerson. I know it was probably hard, but I’m—”
I press my lips to his to shut him up. I don’t want to think about how hard it was stepping foot in this town or how I expected everyone to point fingers as I walked by and remember me as “that girl.”
I just want to feel now.
And I know I take him by surprise. It’s in the hesitancy of his lips at first. It’s in the tightening of his finger wrapped in my hair. But it only takes a split second for him to react, to part his lips and give me the taste of beer on his tongue. For him to consume my mind and shift it away from the hundreds of thoughts I don’t want to be thinking.
He’s heat and warmth and soft fingers on the underside of my jaw. A hand demanding more on the small of my back.
His kiss is thunder and lightning, a tornado and a tsunami, all in one fiery package that makes me forget about the here and the now, makes me want more when more with Grant scares the shit out of me.
The noise of the bar slowly seeps into my conscience as the kiss ends and we move apart. Grant’s eyes are hazy, but his lips are turned up in a cocky but adorable grin that makes that sweet ache our kiss ignited burn bright. He shakes his head, and it mimics how I feel: Holy shit, I just kissed Grant Malone.
Our eyes hold for a beat as the bar carries on around us before I suddenly feel shy under his unwavering gaze. I look down to my empty drink and stare at the scars on the wood tabletop as I try to process the sensations running through me. Desire, surprise, and euphoria mix and meld as heat creeps into my cheeks as he studies me.
The realization hits that I hav
e no idea what to do now.
Cue the nerves and unexpected panic.
Typically, I’d make the next move. We’d decide whose place to go back to and have some unapologetic fun.
But this is Grant.
Didn’t I already know this—the emotion, the sensation, the fallout—would be different before I kissed him?
“Hey, Em?” Grant’s voice calls through the haze of my overthinking. “I’m going to save you from the panic that’s written all over your face.” He scoots closer and lowers his voice. “I had a great time tonight. I’d love to do it again sometime—soon, but I think it’s best if I go home now. I’ve had a long and crappy shift, but you were the highlight of the day.”
He leans in, and I suck in my breath, thinking he’s going to kiss me again. The ache in the delta of my thighs only deepens with the scent of him near, but he bypasses my lips and goes straight for my ear. “While I appreciate a forward girl as much as the next guy, you need to understand that you’re not in charge here. I know you want to be so you can control the pace and set the standard—make sure you maneuver me into the next move so you can stay one step ahead and on the run—but that’s not how I operate. I’m flattered you wanted to kiss me because, hell, if I haven’t been staring at your lips all night long wanting to do the same, but next time, I make the first move. A man only has so many firsts in life, and I’m sure kissing you is going to be a damn good one that I plan on taking.”
Without another word, he scoots out of the booth and stands to full height. I stare at him, fully expecting those flecks of gold in his eyes to be amused, but they are anything but. They are dead serious with a mix of temper and concern that I don’t quite get. He smirks before looking over to the waitress and holding a finger up with a nod.
“Question is, Emmy, are you still stubborn? How bad do you want that next kiss? How long are you going to hold out just to make a statement while denying your body what we both know it wants?”
“You bast—”
“Next round’s on its way. Have a drink on me, will ya? At least when you put your lips on it, you’ll know it’s from me.”