Falling Into Forever

by Delancey Stewart

  I’d spent a lot of time pushing away and denying feelings I had about him that were not partnerly or appropriate to home-improvement buddies. But as the weeks went on, and our friendship grew, it became harder and harder. Especially when we sat close on the couch at night.

  I wondered sometimes what he was thinking, why he didn’t make a move, or try to at least. But I knew his life was complicated, with Shelly and Daniel. And despite the chemistry I often thought I felt when he touched me, when our eyes met—I forced myself to accept that most likely, I just wasn’t his type. If Shelly had been his type, well, she and I were very different.

  23

  Half Cat Strikes Again

  Michael

  Addie Tanner was exactly my type, and it was killing me. We spent so much time together, working and relaxing inside the old house, that every moment had become a kind of exquisite torture. She was gorgeous and funny, confident and smart—and I knew that a woman like that would want little to do with a small town guy with no prospects for anything better. I mean, yeah, if we sold the house and the car, we both stood to make a decent amount of money. But that wasn’t the kind of success I thought a woman like Addie looked for in a man. Her last relationship had been with a world-class violinist, for fuck’s sake. (One who also sounded like a world-class ass.)

  And though there were very few minutes spent in her company where I wasn’t thinking about how gorgeous she was, how smart, how completely perfect—I knew I couldn’t act on it. This was a temporary situation, and she was headed back to the big city, back to her incredible life. I knew she’d called her boss to make some kind of arrangement, and she’d mentioned using the proceeds from the house sale to set up a new apartment in New York. She wasn’t planning to stay here, and certainly not with me.

  “This movie is legitimately awful,” she said from beside me one night as we watched a romantic comedy that was so predictable, I was starting to feel like maybe I should write movie scripts.

  “Wait,” I said. “Any minute his mother is going to burst in and there’s going to be a huge misunderstanding about why she’s in his room.”

  Addie’s feet were in my lap, and my hands were rubbing up and down her shins, feeling the firm muscle and smooth skin there. This wasn’t unusual—we’d become close physically too. But I was pretty sure she didn’t realize how hard it was for me. And I mean hard in every sense of the word. Most nights we’d say goodnight and I’d tell her I needed to take a shower before turning in. I’d wait until she was done in the bathroom and then do one of two things: take a freezing cold shower and hate myself for how much I wanted her, or take my dick in my hand and hate myself for how much I wanted her.

  “This should be a drinking game,” Addie said. “You’d totally be winning. You called that exactly!”

  “You want a drink?” I asked her, thinking that maybe getting completely drunk would help cut some of the constant tension I felt around her now.

  “Um, sure,” she said, swinging her feet off my lap and pulling the blanket up over her lap.

  “We’ve got a bottle of Half Cat.”

  “Do we have club soda?”

  “Think so.” I shuffled off to the kitchen, which was in the midst of being completely renovated, to check, and returned after a few minutes with two glasses, a couple bottles of club soda, and the Half Cat.

  Addison had paused the movie and waited for me, and in the low light of the parlor, her cheeks glowed ruddy and her eyes danced in a way that pretty nearly killed me.

  Whiskey. Immediately.

  “Here you go.” I handed her the drink.

  “Okay, so when do we drink?”

  Right fucking now. “Ah, how about any time he calls her the wrong name?”

  “Yes, good. And also whenever one of the parents walks into a room where they’re about to kiss.”

  “Okay, and also any time she does that sighing hair flip thing.”

  “Then I’m going to get hammered.”

  “The movie’s half over.”

  “You hope,” she laughed as I settled back onto the couch, scooting over a bit so Addie’s feet could come back into my lap but she could still sit up enough to drink.

  An hour later, the credits were rolling and my plan had completely backfired. Addie was tipsy and adorable, and was now snuggled into my side with her hands on my chest under the blanket. And I was as hard as an iron rod and in the midst of the most difficult struggle I’d ever faced as everything in me demanded I take her into my arms, kiss her senseless, and then haul her upstairs to my newly installed bed.

  I was this close to doing it. But I couldn’t make the first move here. If Addie did, however, all bets were off.

  “That was fun,” she said, her head just beneath my chin as I switched the television off. Her hair smelled like heaven, and having my arm around her was practically killing me, but I wouldn’t have removed it for the world. “I like the part where—”

  Addie was interrupted by a screech so loud and otherworldly that we both stiffened and leapt from the couch. Addie hit the coffee table with her shin as she leapt up, and started to topple over it sideways, so I grabbed for her arm and pulled her to me again. This put us chest to chest, and resulted in her body being essentially pressed up against the length of mine.

  I knew it the exact second she registered the length of iron in my sweat pants. Her whole body stiffened against me, and I realized how inappropriate it was. She was staring up at me, her eyes widening as my erection pressed shamelessly against her belly, and just as I was opening my mouth to apologize, she pressed herself against me—against it—harder, rolling gently.

  The sensation was sheer torture. “Addie, I’m—“

  I had no idea what I was planning to say. But it didn’t matter, because she didn’t give me a chance. Addie pressed herself against me and raised herself up until we were nearly eye to eye. Then she tipped her head back, her mouth opening as a little sigh escaped her.

  I inclined my head, my body finally having had enough with my restraint and taking charge, leaving my logic and reason on the couch behind us. We were centimeters apart, but I couldn’t let myself do it, couldn’t allow myself to take her mouth with mine, no matter how many times I’d dreamed it.

  And I didn’t have to. She closed the distance, her mouth slamming into mine roughly at first, and then settling into a firm pressure of her lips over mine, and then—oh holy mother of fuck—she opened her mouth and took my bottom lip between her teeth, letting out a little moan as she did it.

  Whatever was left of my reserve snapped—there was that first move, after all—and I kissed her then, my mouth claiming hers and my tongue tasting every bit of her that I had access to. For long, delicious moments, we kissed, our mouths confirming that every desire I had for this woman was reciprocated, her hands grabbing at my ass, sliding up under my shirt, and suggesting she’d thought about me just as much as I’d thought about her.

  Until she stopped, freezing in my arms and then wrenching herself away and turning her back on me.

  “Shit,” I muttered, not understanding what had shifted, but knowing it wasn’t going to be good.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, still not facing me.

  “That wasn’t for you to be sorry about,” I told her. “From where I’m standing, that was one hundred percent mutual.”

  She shook her head, finally turning back around, and as soon as I saw her face I wished I hadn’t. Her lips were swollen and red from our kiss, her skin heated and pink, but her eyes—were so full of regret that I wished I could unsee her expression.

  “I never meant to do that,” she said, wiping at her mouth as if she could wipe the kiss away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I let myself get carried away.”

  She took two steps backward, and I felt the connection between us sever. There would be no going back, no way to salvage this night or this relationship. I should have known better. I didn’t know why, but I knew that one kiss had ruined everything.
/>
  “It’s no problem,” I said, dropping her gaze before something in me snapped in two. “My fault. I overstepped.”

  “You didn’t,” she rushed the words out. “Michael, you didn’t. You didn’t read it wrong or do anything I didn’t want. This was my fault. It’s just,” she laughed here, a light quick sound that made me feel so very small. “It’s just that this isn’t my real life,” she said. “And I have no business leading you on or fooling myself about the possibility of staying here once the house is finished. I mean, we both know that. I don’t belong here.”

  “Right.” Darkness clouded my mind. She was too good for this place, for me. I’d known that, so why did it hurt so much? I turned and headed for the stairs. “I’m gonna head up.” I couldn’t face her now, couldn’t bear to look at her. Of course this wasn’t her real life. Who the fuck was I, anyway? A deadbeat townie with unrealized dreams and a heart full of regrets. I wasn’t the guy a woman like Addie needed. And I’d known it all along. I was so angry I’d allowed myself to believe, even for a second, that it might be different.

  “Okay, I, uh . . .” Addie stuttered from where she still stood, in the spot where we’d kissed like there would be no tomorrow. “I’m really sorry, Michael.”

  “Yeah, you said that.” I threw the words over my shoulder, bitterness sweeping in to replace the desire I’d felt. Because if I couldn’t get a little bit angry about it, I was pretty sure my heart would break.

  “Good night,” she said, but I was already on my way to another before-bed shower, already thinking about the punishing pumping my dick was going to need this night if I had any chance at all of sleeping again.

  24

  How to be a Moron

  Addison

  I watched Michael retreat up the stairs, knowing I’d shattered everything good between us. How could I have been so stupid? So weak? I should never have allowed the closeness to grow between us, should never have begun touching him, taking comfort in his constant nearness, in his warm smile.

  I’d ruined everything, and the stiff posture of Michael’s shoulders as he moved away from me told me exactly how angry he was. There would be no salvaging this.

  Even though I wanted to fix everything, I knew it would be stupid to let myself become more involved with a man in Singletree. I couldn’t stay here. This was not my life. I had a job to return to, friends who would surely be missing me—though very few of them had called, actually, and I’d only gotten a couple of texts checking in over the two months I’d now been gone.

  But I’d made my life years ago—I was a city girl, not the girl who stays in the small town. I needed bigger opportunities, bigger possibilities than a small town like Singletree could offer. Lottie had reminded me of this enough times while I was away.

  Still, every time I thought about Michael’s smiling face, that divot in his stubbled chin—my heart warmed in a way it never really had when I thought about Luke. But when I thought about the anger that had stormed in those eyes after I’d pulled away from our kiss . . . none of it mattered. He probably hated me now, thought I was some kind of long-game tease. And that was for the best. We were supposed to be business partners, nothing more.

  I wished Daniel had been there this week, having him in the house would have diluted some of the awkward tension that filled the spaces between Michael and I over the next few days. We barely spoke, only found ourselves in the same room when the kitchen crew needed a decision made or had a question while he was home. But mostly, Michael stayed away, spending long hours at the store while I supervised the kitchen project and the men who were beginning to rebuild the front porch to make it safe. I began to search for affordable apartments in New York during my down time.

  The good thing was that with so much activity in the house, I had little time to be frightened. The ghosts, it seemed, had settled down. Or maybe I’d just grown accustomed to the middle of the night screams and the strange scrabbling noises I heard around me sometimes. I wasn’t afraid of them anymore, at least, but I just didn’t know what a person was to do about harmless ghosts who occasionally swiped shiny objects. We’d probably have to handle it somehow before we could sell the house.

  Four days passed with Michael essentially ignoring me. I ate before he came home from work, and waited until he’d gone in the mornings to go down and make coffee in the makeshift kitchen we’d set up in the dining room. It was awkward and horrible.

  On the fifth day after our kiss, I spent the day with Mom at the Tin as she went into mass production of her Halloween treats. Halloween was just a week away, and as Mom told me, “these goblin toes won’t frost themselves!”

  I spent the day covered in frosting and enduring Mom’s philosophies about ghost infestation.

  “I think what you really need is to get in there with Sally McHord.”

  I sighed, steeling myself for this idea. “Who is Sally McHord, Mom?” I asked as I placed a toe on the baking sheet.

  “She’s a psychic,” Mom said, nodding her bobbed head sagely. “Very good one, too.”

  “How do you know if someone is a good psychic, Mom?”

  “Yelp reviews,” Mom answered. “And she helped George Dews with his malamute.”

  “His dog?”

  “Yes. It turned out the dog really wanted George to stop playing The Beatles. He hated their music, but was having trouble communicating with George. Sally stepped in, and now that George has sworn off The Beatles, he and the dog are doing fine.”

  “So she is a skilled psychic who can communicate with dogs.” This conversation seemed completely appropriate, given what my life had become.

  “She’s a pet psychic, if you want to get specific,” Mom huffed, as if divulging this detail was super annoying.

  “Um. Okay.”

  “I’ll bring her up to the house.”

  “If the place was being haunted by Chihuahuas, that would be a great idea, Mom. But I don’t think that’s what we have.” It really almost wasn’t worth the effort of arguing. I felt emotionally and physically exhausted.

  “You don’t know.”

  That was true, I thought as I deposited my three thousandth toe on the sheet. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything.

  “So what’s wrong, Addie? Not just the ghosts.” Mom was way too observant.

  “Everything is good.”

  Mom put down her spatula and fixed me with a glare that had terrified me as a kid. “Do not lie to your mother. I can read you like a cookbook, Addison. Always could.”

  That was the truth. I sighed. I couldn’t tell her I’d kissed Michael Tucker. Then I’d get an earful of I told you so about getting involved with Tuckers. So I deflected. “I don’t know. I just . . . I guess I’m feeling like I need to be getting back to New York soon. The longer I stay here, the harder it is to remember what I really want.”

  “What do you really want?”

  “My life back! In the city!” As I said the words, I realized how empty and untrue they were.

  “The one where your boyfriend ignored you, you worked so much you could never see your family, and you hardly ever called home?”

  I sighed. “Those were the less good things about that life, yeah.”

  “Tell me the more good things, then. What did you love about your life in New York?” Mom had stopped frosting, and I laid down my spatula too, taking a sip of water as my mind spun.

  “There were a lot of good things. Like every kind of take-out you could possibly want.”

  Mom’s lips formed into a thin line, but she said nothing, so I continued. Mom didn’t seem swayed by the take-out options.

  “And the energy. There was always something going on, always something to do. The people there were very cosmopolitan—no food in buckets.”

  “So your dislike of your hometown has to do with The Shack?”

  I shook my head, scrambling for other examples. “No, it was just one example, Mom.”

  “You haven’t mentioned friends, people.”


  “I have friends there,” I said, feeling defensive. “But you know, everyone there is very busy. We all have lives. Jobs.”

  “It sounds horribly lonely, Addie.”

  For some stupid reason, my mind flashed to the house, to dinners with Daniel and Michael, to the movie nights we used to have before I screwed everything up. “Well, it wasn’t. I was too busy to be lonely.”

  “And too busy to notice that your relationship wasn’t working.”

  Pain sliced through me and I let my eyes slam shut for an instant, trying to absorb it. Mom was right. “That’s not fair. And that’s not a nice thing to say.”

  Mom sighed and turned back to the frosting. “I’m your mother, Addie, not your friend. It’s my job to say the things you don’t want to hear.”

  I had nothing to say to that because I was still reeling that my own mother would poke her finger in a wound as raw as my relationship with Luke. The worst thing was, I knew she was right.

  “The other thing I’ll say is that since you’ve been here, you have seemed increasingly happy. But since I didn’t see you for years before you came home, I don’t have a lot to compare it to.”

  Another jab.

  We frosted in silence for a little while, and then Mom stuck her spatula into the bowl and declared us done. “Is the kitchen finished yet at the house?” She asked as I gathered my bag and got ready to head back up the hill. The house had felt like a refuge at one point, and I missed feeling like I fit there. Now it was just one more place filled with awkward silences, one more place I didn’t belong.

  “Should be done tomorrow,” I told her. The appliances were being delivered, and that would be it.

  “Then we’ll do Sunday dinner at your house this week,” she announced in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “Um. Okay,” I said, wondering if that would be okay with Michael. In some ways it would be nice to show off all the work we’d been doing. And it would be more people to fill in the awkward silences between me and Michael. “I’ll just check with Michael, I guess.”