My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  After they got in the truck, he kissed her again, sweet and hot at the same time. Then he drove them into downtown McMinnville where he pulled into the parking lot of a tiny Creole restaurant. It barely had seating for twenty people. It was quiet and romantic. White tablecloths and candlelight that made her bracelet sparkle as it moved around her wrist.

  They had a little corner booth with a semicircle bench that allowed them to sit shoulder to shoulder with their knees touching in a way that filled her whole body with sensations of longing and peace at the same time. The longing wasn’t for something she didn’t have anymore. Instead, it was visceral. A longing to be connected to this man in a way she’d never been connected to any other person.

  After they ordered, his lips kept finding hers. Mid-sentence. Mid-word. She laughed and pulled away, but he just tangled his fingers up with hers and found his way to her lips again.

  Normally, this would have embarrassed her. The public display of affection in a room where she could feel people’s eyes turning toward them and then flitting away. Normally, she would have put distance between them. Between any person who was dating her and trying to kiss her like that in a restaurant.

  But tonight she didn’t care. Tonight, it was just Lonnie being Lonnie. He was smiling so big that it filled her heart to overflowing and made her smile back like she’d never smiled before.

  “Lonnie.” Kiss. “We.” Kiss. “Stop.” Laugh. Kiss.

  The waiter cleared his throat. Lonnie removed his lips to look up at the man with the first frown he’d had since the first notes of his song had played. “Your dinner. Cajun pork chops and Creole shrimp.”

  He placed the food down and then looked at them, bodies all but entwined in the booth. “Anything else I can get you?”

  They both shook their heads, and he moved away.

  Lonnie turned her chin so that her face was toward his again, kissing her again. A lighter kiss. A peck almost. But it did nothing to stop the fire that had continued to grow in her belly from the moment her lips had touched his in the caverns.

  “I’m really hungry, but I’m not sure I really want to eat food anymore,” he said with a wink, but he picked up his fork.

  She shoved her shoulder into his. “You’re awful.”

  “Nope,” he said, making eye contact. “I can promise, I’m not.”

  She felt her cheeks flame at his innuendo.

  She had to remind herself that this was their first date. Ridiculous as it seemed after months with him. After sharing a bed with him. It was still their first date. Her first date…after the divorce.

  They ate in a peaceful quiet that was interrupted only by asking about the food, trying a bite of each other’s orders, and then paying the check and leaving hand in hand.

  He held the door of his truck open for her and helped her in as he always had, but his hand lingered on hers. Touching her shoulder, and her waist, and her hip as it slid down and away from her.

  When he climbed in, he was kissing her again. Tongue that tasted like Cajun spices, tangling with her own that was tingling from the spicy food. Her heart seemed to stop momentarily as her entire body responded to his, her leg twisting with his. The steering wheel their enemy as their hands tried to explore the little skin that could be reached.

  He pulled back, smiling down into her face.

  “Let’s go home.” His voice was husky with desire but also emotions. She just nodded and rested her head on his shoulder as he headed the truck back toward their town. Her body was tucked as close to his as it could get while he drove.

  After about thirty minutes of silence, he suddenly pulled the truck into a turnout. “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up.

  “I didn’t think this out very well,” he said as he put the truck into park, looking into her eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re a hell of a lot farther from home than I want to be right now.” Then he was kissing her again, his lips moving down from the edge of her lip to her neck where she felt his warm breath and lips hit the tender spot below her earlobe just before his teeth nibbled on it. She sucked in her breath at the touch, the caress.

  It had been so long since she’d been touched. Since anyone had tried to seduce her. It wasn’t that sex with Grant hadn’t been good. It had. But after the miscarriages, it had just felt…empty. As if the emotions were no longer there.

  But this. This with Lonnie was full of emotions. She couldn’t help the little moan that escaped her as his lips, and tongue, and teeth made their way down her neck and then back up. His fingers dug into the skin at her waist as he slid them under her thin top. She found her own hands pulling at the hem of his shirt so that she could trace the rippled contours of his abs. Abs that she knew weren’t the same as when he’d first taken in Edie—he didn’t have as much time to work out as he had—but abs that still had definition and made her ache to kiss them because they were more beautiful for his sacrifice than for the sharpness that had existed before.

  They stayed that way for what felt like hours, skin, and hands, and bodies twining together in the stupid front seat of his truck, trapped by a car seat and a steering wheel. Headlights came and went. They didn’t care. They didn’t stop until a tap on Lonnie’s window made them break apart with a start.

  They looked out in time for a highway patrol officer to shine his light in the window, causing them both to blink. They both smiled goofy smiles at each other, and Lonnie rolled the window down with that smile still in place.

  “Everything okay here?” the officer asked, but he was starting to smile, too. As if he had caught on to what was happening by their flushed cheeks and the steamed-up windows.

  “Yes, sir,” Lonnie said with a smile, and Wynn put her face in her hands and giggled.

  “On your way home?” he asked, but also making a point.

  “Yes, sir. Just stopped to make a phone call. Didn’t want to talk while driving, sir.”

  The officer knew it was bullshit, but he just continued to grin and said, “Good idea. But I’d suggest heading home before it’s too late.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” Lonnie’s voice was still gruffer than normal, and he shifted, uncomfortable in his seat, as Wynn’s face flamed.

  The officer looked at them one more time, gave them a wink, and then headed back toward the cruiser that they hadn’t even registered pulling in behind them.

  “God, that was embarrassing,” Wynn said, but she couldn’t help laughing, too.

  Lonnie was smiling and chuckling with her. He put the truck into drive and pulled back onto the road. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re at least halfway there.”

  Wynn slapped his shoulder and then moved back so that her head was resting on it. She didn’t dare put her hand on his thigh again, otherwise they’d never make it home.

  When they parked at the apartment, Lonnie said, “I want to kiss you again, but I also want to get you up into the apartment, and I’m afraid if I touch you now, we won’t ever make it up the stairs.”

  “Just go,” she said as she pushed at him.

  He helped her out of the truck and pulled her hand into his as they headed up the stairs. They let themselves in, and Derek and Mia looked up from their spot cuddled on the couch together. The TV was off, but Mia had a book on her lap.

  “You’re home early,” Mia said with a grin, but she was eyeing their hands that were twined together.

  “How’s Edie?” Lonnie asked, dropping Wynn’s hand to go down the hall and peek in at the sleeping figure.

  When he came back, he grabbed Wynn’s hand again and tugged her up close to his body. Wynn couldn’t quite meet Mia’s gaze that she knew was following it all.

  “Edie was great. She kept us on our toes,” Derek said, standing and pulling Mia up with him. He was watching them, too with that huge smile on his face.

  “She’s birth control in human form,” Lonnie said with a laugh.
r />   “Nah. It was fun,” Derek said, and Wynn looked at Mia and rolled her eyes because she knew that Derek was dying to get Mia pregnant. To have one of their own running around.

  “Derek gave her too many cookies, so she did complain about her stomach a little,” Mia said as she stuffed her book in her bag and placed it on her shoulder.

  “I thought I smelled your chocolate crinkles,” Wynn said. “Let me get a container so you can take some with you.”

  The ladies headed toward the kitchen even though it wasn’t Wynn’s kitchen. “I’m gonna walk Derek out to the car,” Lonnie hollered.

  “He just wants to tell me how it went tonight,” Derek laughed, and Wynn heard a slug to what was probably Derek’s chest or shoulder.

  Wynn’s and Mia’s eyes met, and they giggled.

  The door shut. “So?” Mia asked.

  “Did you know he wrote a song?” Wynn returned her question with another one.

  Mia nodded.

  “Have you heard it?”

  Mia nodded again and smiled. “It’s lovely. Just like you.”

  “Oh my god, you’re ridiculous,” Wynn said, but she couldn’t contain her own smile. They were all a bunch of lunatic smiling machines. Even the patrol officer had been smiling.

  Mia picked up the container that Wynn had placed some cookies in, and they walked to the door. Mia bumped her shoulder and said, “I’m happy for you. You should be happy for you. Don’t screw it up by overthinking it.”

  “That’s usually your job,” Wynn retorted.

  “Yeah. But you do it, too. And you should learn from me, the younger and wiser sister. Do what I do now. Let it go, let it go—”

  “Stop! I won’t be able to get that song out of my head for days.”

  They shared a hug and “I love you’s” before Mia headed down the stairs. While Wynn waited for Lonnie to come back up, she texted her mama.

  WYNN: We’re back. Concert was amazing. You need to get tickets. I’m gonna stay at Lonnie’s tonight.

  MAMA: You’ll have to tell me about it later…and…I figured.

  Wynn blushed even though her mama couldn’t see her. Mama wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t like Wynn was a sixteen-year-old girl who hadn’t had sex. She’d been married, for Christ’s sake. But it was still embarrassing for your parents to know you were staying at a guy’s house to get lucky.

  Was she getting lucky? She knew Lonnie wanted her. She knew she wanted him. They’d been dancing around the chemistry between them for months. And she felt ready. Ready for this first-after-her-divorce. But she was also terrified because she’d never been one to easily have sex and just have it be sex. It was why she got hurt easily by the guys in her life who had only wanted that.

  No. She corrected herself. It was the ones who acted like they wanted more as a means to having sex and then dumped you. Those were the ones that hurt.

  That wasn’t Lonnie. She knew it. But sometimes it was still hard to trust what she thought she knew when she’d been proven wrong so many times.

  The door opened, and Lonnie entered, his face still one big grin. He shut and locked the door and then turned back to her. “He’s so nosey,” he said as he started to make his way toward her.

  “They both are.”

  They had the couch in between them still. “What did you tell her?” Lonnie asked.

  “That you were a jerk, the concert was awful, and your song sucked,” Wynn said, trying hard to hide her smile.

  He stuck his hand to his chest. “Ouch. Wounded.”

  “That’s what you get for fishing for compliments,” she told him as he came around the couch and pulled her to him.

  “Do you want to know what I said?”

  She shook her head, but he knew she did. She didn’t look at his face. Instead, she concentrated on his neck as he talked, watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down in a way that she’d never realized was really attractive. “I told him that as cliché as it sounded, it was the best fucking night of my life.”

  Her heart was doing excited backflips at his words. Backflips like Cam used to do off the high dive. Somersaults in the air that were landing in the pit of her stomach.

  “We haven’t done that..” Wynn teased, playing off his word choice and the desire that coursed through them.

  He grinned slightly, but the desire in his eyes was clear. They were so dark that the amber almost faded into the black that rimmed them. “It will never be fucking, Wynn. No matter how hard we go at it. No matter how fast and furious or slow and rhythmic, it will never really just be fucking. Do you understand that? It can’t be. Not with you.”

  “But others?” she whispered.

  “There will never be others.” His voice was full of emotions that were demanding and possessive in some ways and loving and tender in other ways. She didn’t respond, but she was still watching his face, his eyes, the emotions flickering over them. “I meant every word I wrote. I want to be your first and your last. There aren’t any more afters for either of us.”

  “You can’t know that.” Her heart was full, but tears were glimmering in her eyes. He couldn’t promise that. No one could. It was a promise she’d heard before, but life didn’t always allow for the promise to be kept. People changed. Things happened.

  He rubbed his thumb over the tear that fell from her eyes and caressed her cheeks and then down the side of her jaw. “You’re right. I may not be able to promise that there won’t be an accident or some god-awful disease in our future. There are too many things in life we can’t control. But I can make the promise that my heart and my body will never, ever want for anything else but you.”

  It was everything she wanted to hear. It was sealing up the wounds in her heart, but she couldn’t help the doubt that was still left there after too many times being left behind. Being set aside for something else.

  “People change, Lonnie.”

  His thumb stopped at the corner of her mouth. “No. People hide what they really want behind fake dreams and false desires and then have to deal with the shit that happens when they’re finally honest with themselves and the people they’ve made those promises to. That isn’t me. Is it you?”

  Wynn thought about what he said. She and Grant had promised themselves to each other till death do they part, but that promise had been based on what they both thought they wanted. What they thought the world wanted for them. And he was right; the shit that happened after they both admitted that was the divorce.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, and his thumb paused in his caress of her face at her words. “I think I want this with all my heart. But I don’t exactly have a good track record.”

  He moved slightly to take her lips with his own in a gentle kiss that was sweet and full of promises, but he didn’t deepen it. He didn’t pull her to him and invade her mouth and her soul with his tongue and his hands.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, his lips barely touching hers.

  She did.

  “Without thinking about it—I mean really not thinking about it—just say the first three things that pop into your head when I ask you this. Can you do that?”

  She thought about it and nodded.

  “What do you want?”

  “You. Edie. Family,” she said before she could stop herself, and when she’d said it, she opened her eyes to the most heart-stopping, gorgeous smile she could have ever thought to see in front of her.

  “It’s that simple,” he told her.

  And she believed him. She wanted to believe him. She wanted it to be the truth after all the half-truths. After all the mistakes that were hidden behind words that were meant without truly understanding them.

  “I love you,” she said because she did. He was right. It was that simple. She loved everything about him.

  He crushed her lips then with demanding ones. Ones that were no longer willing to be gentle or sweet. Lips that required that she give him everything. Every part. Every wish
. Every hope. Every fear. Every moment. And that was all she wanted.

  It was a kiss that seemed to take every ache, and hurt, and sorrow she’d ever felt and lift it out of her and blow it in the wind in a different direction.

  They were shedding clothes. Jackets and shoes were thrown aside as their lips continued to touch, hands returning to skin as each article of clothing disappeared.

  When she was in her bra and panties, and he was in his boxers with parts of him struggling to escape, he scooped her up and took her to his bedroom.

  When he set her down and returned his lips to her neck, she saw Edie asleep across the hall. She pulled her lips and body away slightly.

  “Lonnie…”

  He caught her gaze and stared for a moment at his niece. He pulled away enough that he could shut and lock his bedroom door, but he didn’t let go of her hand.

  “But what if she wakes up? What if she hears?”

  “When have you ever known her to wake up once she’s asleep? It’s getting her to sleep that’s been the problem. She won’t be awake until at least six.”

  Wynn knew that was true. But it was still strange to think about having sex with Lonnie in his bed with the little girl a few feet away.

  “How do you think people end up with more than one kid?” He smirked down at her.

  “Wh-what?”

  “They still make love, Wynn. Even though they have kids in the room across the hall.”

  “I…I know.”

  He pulled her until her chest was tight up against his, their bare skin causing ripples to move through her. Goosebumps littered her body. Desire coursed through her veins. God. She wanted him. Wanted every piece of him.

  His hand moved slowly down her arm and across her stomach, causing more bumps to appear everywhere his hand touched. He placed his hand on her belly. It wasn’t as slim as it used to be, either. Babies, and lost babies, and traveling with Lonnie and Edie. She was nowhere near fat, but it wasn’t flat, either. The warmth of his hand on her stomach filled her.

  He nibbled her ear, the breath and his teeth and his tongue stroking the fire that had already been ignited hours before in the cavern.