by LJ Evans
“Did you spend much time with them?”
“I spent as much time as I could. Mostly summers, and one semester of my junior year. They were very cool people. They changed my life twice.”
“Twice?”
“They helped me with money for school. Then, when they passed away, they left me their ranch.”
She paused, looking at him stunned. “You own a ranch in Tennessee?”
He was amused, and his lip did that half-twitchy smile thing again. “No. I sold it and bought this house. I take it by that comment you aren’t a country girl?”
“Not really. But it’s more that I can’t see you on a ranch.”
“I liked it when I visited them, but they knew that it wasn’t my life. They knew this was. I was lucky.”
“Luck only takes you so far.”
He considered her thoughtfully. “I guess that’s true.”
“So why didn’t you stay with them? Why were you only there a semester?”
He hesitated as if he was trying to determine how much to tell her. “Heartbreak. Addiction. Art.”
He seemed to fade away into the distance, thinking of a whole series of memories.
“That’s quite a combination,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I can’t imagine you getting your heart broken. I mean. I can see you breaking a lot of hearts, but not letting them break yours.”
He caught her gaze with his, and she was stuck in a sea of blue that could easily drown her. “I think you could easily break my heart,” he said quietly.
She shivered down to her toes. She didn’t know how to respond to that honest, raw truth. And it was the truth. She could see it in his eyes even if she couldn’t see it in his face. She was both terrified and thrilled that she might have the power to do that to him. To break this rock.
Before she could respond, he looked down at her bowl and changed the subject. “More ajiaco?”
She glanced down, too, and was surprised to find the bowl empty. She must have been hungrier than she thought or so nervous that she’d swallowed it whole.
“No, thank you, but it was delicious.”
He took her bowl, stacking it with his before taking them into the kitchen and placing them in the sink. She followed him.
When he grabbed her hand on his way back, it sent a tingling through her fingertips that traveled down to her pink painted toenails. “Come on. I’ll show you your piece.”
He took her through a doorway into a room that looked as if it had been added on to the house. It was stripped down to its bones, barely cement and walls. It was full of windows that let in the sun, filling it with warmth and natural light. Heavy equipment and shelves full of random pieces of metal and glass littered the place in a way that seemed haphazard but was clearly set to a tune that was all Seth.
In the middle of the room, catching her eye, was a chair made of metal, twisted and curved much like the chairs on the deck were, and yet different. From the back of the chair, flowed a piece of purple sateen silk shimmering in the light of the sun streaming through the windows.
His work was brilliant. She hadn’t studied art history for nothing. She knew brilliant. Many of his pieces left you scarred with the memory for days.
She’d first seen his work at Locke’s gallery a month ago. She still remembered every moment. The first thing she’d seen was the waterfall because of its size. It made it hard for you to escape it. The truth was, you didn’t want to escape it. Instead, it made you long for a trip to paradise because that was clearly the only place you’d ever see something as beautiful again. But the waterfall hadn’t been the art that made her ache. That had been the metal man twisted and torn apart by fractured whiskey bottles. That piece spoke of addiction and torture and endless amounts of self-inflicted pain. And now, after knowing him just a little, she sensed that that man was him.
It was a pain that she’d felt in the kiss he’d taken from her lips at the gallery and to which she had responded with her own aching pain and need. She hadn’t felt herself respond to a kiss like that ever. Not even when she’d been kissed a lot.
Self-conscious thinking of it, she flushed again. To cover it up, she moved ahead of him to touch the silken material coming off the chair. She was stunned when, instead of pliable woven cloth, her hand touched metal. It was smooth as silk, but steely, unbendable.
“It’s breathtaking.”
“It’s you,” he said quietly. She could feel him staring her down, willing her to look at him, but she couldn’t. Instead, she did the predictable thing which was to flush an even deeper shade of red. Because the thought that he would think she was this—beautiful, silky, smooth and yet hard and determined—was more than she could take. It was as if he’d tried to read her soul the first time he’d met her. She didn’t feel hard or determined these days. She was floundering in a well of self-pity since Pratt’s rejection.
All her roommates had a path set in front of them. Law school for Claire. Acting classes for the twins. She didn’t have a path now. She’d continue with her blog and working at Justice’s gym until something else crossed her way or she applied to a different master’s program.
She shook her head to try to clear it of the uncertainties. And tried to flip the conversation from her back to him.
“So, your cooking is amazing, your art is amazing, and your look is amazing.” She tried again for sarcastic but knew it came out breathless.
She risked looking at him and saw his lips twitch. It irked her a little. This moody artist so easily playing on her emotions.
“So, what’s wrong with the package?” She put her hand on her hip, turning away from the art that was supposed to be her.
Her comment caused the cocky smile to reappear, and he turned the full intensity of his blue gaze on her. “I guarantee you, there’s nothing wrong with my package.”
She squinted her eyes in disapproval and stepped toward his workbench and the random pieces strewn there. She picked things up and then set them down, not really acknowledging them. She was focused on the man behind her and the upsurge of emotions he was eliciting from her.
“Well, there’s something off otherwise you wouldn’t be living alone chasing some nobody of a blogger.”
He eased toward her, and it was a moment before she realized she’d trapped herself against his workbench with no clear out unless she used her self-defense moves again. She turned to face him, her back up against the bench.
“Maybe,” he drawled, moving until there was barely an inch between them, “I just like living alone.”
“Well, that,” she took a breath to calm her shaking body. “That might be what’s wrong with the package.”
“Because most people can’t stand being alone?” He ran a calloused hand up her bare arm until it hit the strap of her dress. His finger slid underneath the strap. Slow. Seductive. Thrilling.
“Maybe you just have commitment issues. You don’t have to get married to have a long-term relationship,” she said, swallowing hard as his touch made her skin feel as if it was coming back to life after being asleep for a very long time.
“Maybe I just haven’t found the right woman.” He traced a path along her shoulder blade and toward the hollow at the base of her neck. Goosebumps littered her skin.
He dipped his head and took her lips in his own. And she felt the same burning need and pain and intensity in them that she had with his first kiss. It felt as if she was drowning in a wave of his emotions that somehow merged with her own desperate ones, and she couldn’t help but respond like she’d known she would. Her body reacted by moving into him instead of away. She pushed her tiny frame against his rock hard one. She shivered again with pleasure and desire. It had been too long. Liv was right. Claire was right. It had just been too long.
His hands pushed off the straps of her dress and carefully caressed her as his tongue searched the depths of her mouth. She opened her mouth fully to him and trailed her own hands dow
n his back.
His hands moved from her shoulders, returning instead to her waist, picking her up and setting her on the bench. Tools and metal and glass were pushed aside with a loud crash, all the while his tongue was seeking answers and relief with her own.
She pulled his soft t-shirt from his jeans and caressed the bare skin of his back, swirling around to his toned stomach. Somewhere inside her logical brain, she knew she’d lost control. She’d never felt this kind of unbridled desire. Certainly not with any of the teenage boys she’d run through. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer as if she could blend them into one being.
Before she even registered it, she had popped the button on his jeans and pushed at them. He growled in response. The growl of a panther. But instead of complying with her wish, he picked her up and carried her from the studio with her legs still around his waist.
In what seemed like barely five strides, he’d crossed the open area of the living room and into what she figured was his master suite. The entire time, his lips never left her skin, her mouth, her neck.
In the bedroom, he stood her on the bed and carefully, almost reverently, pulled her dress down over her hips. As the dress disappeared, his lips covered her skin with gentle caresses. She ended up standing in her underwear in front of him. She watched with an odd fascination as his rough fingers traced her body. His words, barely a rumble from the depth of him, brought her eyes back to his intense blue ones. “You're breathtaking.”
In a wink, her underwear was gone, and his clothes had disappeared as well, and all she could do was stare at his perfect body. Hard. Golden. Glowing. He had a scar that ran almost the entire length of his left side. She touched it gently, and he watched her as if waiting for her to react to it.
She didn’t. Not then. It wasn’t until later that she learned how he’d gotten the scar. Instead, she bent and kissed the entire length of it. He sucked in a deep breath and pulled her face back to his own. Then they were on the bed together, tangled in legs and arms and each other, as he reached for his bedside table and the condom that was in the drawer.
She knew she had one last moment to stop whatever this was. One last chance to walk away, but her body and her heart were overruling her brain for the first time in a long time, so she just gave in. To all of it. Her heart. Her body. His hands. His body. To desire and relief.
It was a long time later that he collapsed onto his side, pulling her up close to him where she seemed to fit into him like a nesting doll. One into the other. He kissed the top of her head.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice was gruff as if he hadn’t recovered from their intensity. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled against his chest. “Why?”
“I didn’t mean… Damn, I wanted that, but I didn’t mean for it to happen now.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” It was cliché, and she regretted it almost immediately.
“No,” he denied deeply.
It was strange, but she believed him. As if she could already tell when he was lying and telling the truth which was impossible after meeting him a whopping two times. Or maybe it was just that she sensed that Seth always spoke the truth. Whether it was a truth you wanted to hear or not.
Then the humiliation set in. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d gone back on all her promises. Four years of abstinence down the drain with one touch from this man. She suddenly felt ill, like when Justice and Locke had first confronted her all those years ago.
“Oh God,” she whispered and tried to pull away, but his arms tightened around her.
“Don’t,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t catch it.
♫ ♫ ♫
PJ’s phone alarm goes off, bringing her back from that first time tangled in his arms to her reality. “(You Want To) Make a Memory” stuck on repeat in an old walk-up in New York. It reminds her that she needs to get out of the apartment and down to the subway station. It reminds her that she can’t spend any more time thinking of Seth today. Unfortunately, she knows, he will be with her a million more times before she closes her eyes at night, and even then, he’ll be wrapped up in her dreams whether she wants him there or not.
Letter Four
BORN TO BE MY BABY
“Only God knows the reason,
But He must’ve had a plan.
‘Cause you were born to be my baby,
And I was made to be your man.”
-Bon Jovi, Sambora & Child
Dear Bella,
I made ajiaco today because I had visitors. Cam’s little sister, or I guess her almost sister-in-law, came over with Keith. They came to pick up a new piece Dylan Waters’ wife commissioned. I don’t know how Mia got to L.A., or how she got entwined with the Waters, but it seems she’s dating Dylan’s musician brother. The one we saw at Dylan’s house this summer. The one that sang that song about humanity that made me ache for you and us.
That Mia’s world could come close enough to touch mine years later, made me wonder if there was a certain set of people whose lives would always crisscross our own—like a mixed-up pattern of figure eights. A series of infinity symbols running along curves that were destined to fall near each other as they passed the midpoints.
That thought gives me hope that, even though you’ve traveled away from me on your own curling loop, eventually you’ll travel back to me. I can only hope. Hope is a foreign emotion that you keep forcing on me.
Even though you didn’t know Keith, and I hadn’t seen him in years when I first met you, he is now one of a handful of people whose figure eight pattern is traveling with mine. He was happy to bring Mia to see the studio today. I think he’s trying to prove to the world that I’m not an asshole anymore. Unfortunately, we all know that it isn’t the truth. I’m still an asshole. You’ve just softened the edges of me.
But because he was trying and because I knew you’d want me to, I played nice.
I think I did you justice. I made Mia lunch, I showed her the studio, and she saw your chair. It’s still not done. Not fixed from what happened to it, but it’s close, and her touching it reminded me of you touching it when you’d seen it that first day together. Which just made me want her to leave so that I could write you this damn letter.
I hadn’t believed my luck when you actually showed up that first Saturday. I’d fluctuated from panic to the need to hunt you down as I waited for you. I made the ajiaco to keep me busy. When you finally showed up in that crappy Bug, I couldn’t prevent myself from going out to greet you, shoeless.
You were sitting there, with your head on the steering wheel, debating with yourself. Doubting why you had come. Later, after you’d allowed me to make love to you in a way that I’d never expected, I knew you would go back there. To the doubts.
I didn’t have any doubts. I couldn’t believe that you were lying there in my arms. Couldn’t believe just how good you felt there. I’d wanted you since I first saw your eyes flashing with anger at the gallery, but to have you there, it was like magic. I’d never felt that way. Truly. Not ever. Not even with her.
I’m not just saying that. I know you think that I’d say anything to get you to come back, but I’m not doing that now. I’m being honest with you. So let me say it again. I’d never felt that way before you.
I hadn’t intended for us to experience that earth-shattering need on our first date. Hell. It wasn’t even a date. You deserved more than that. I had intended to go slow and steady to ensure that you didn’t get spooked and run away. But when you’d responded to me with such passion in that kiss, when you’d popped the button on my jeans, it had taken everything I had to move you from the open-windowed studio to the privacy of my bedroom before taking you. I’m not blaming you. Never. I can’t regret any time we made love.
When I heard your quiet, “Oh God,” after we’d just had the best damn sex of my life, I knew you weren’t just embarrassed, you were ashamed. I panicked. Again. I didn�
�t want you to regret it. To run away in mortification.
“Don’t!” I demanded, meaning to beg.
I forced you to look at me. I relished in the fact that I finally got to rub a finger along the smooth satin of your face like I’d wanted to since I’d met you.
“Please don’t. Don’t regret this. Jesus. It was perfect. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
You closed your eyes. You couldn’t meet my gaze. Your dark lashes lay heavy against your cheeks and all I could think about was how gorgeous the contrast was. How the black against the white in the weak sunlight filtering into my room was like every black-and-white photograph I’d ever fallen in love with. A dozen images of new pieces filtered through my brain in a rapid series. You inspired me from the moment I met you, and after the intensity we’d just felt, I had more ideas in my head than I could sift through. You were beautiful. You were my beautiful woman. You were my Bella.
“PJ… Bella…” It was a plea for you to look at me as I thought silently, What will I do if she freaks out and runs off?
“I… I’m not like this,” you said quietly.
“I know.”
“How could you know?” Your eyes flashed open in irritation as if I could possibly dare to know you after one brief encounter. But I did. I do.
I shrugged and bent slightly to lay a gentle kiss on your forehead, thinking how perfect it felt under my lips. I knew I was a goner. That I was simply lost.
“You don’t seem like the type to just hop into bed with a guy you barely know.”
“I’m not!” It was defensive and cute, and it tugged at my heart even when I didn’t know the true reasons behind it.
“I know,” I repeated, but it was with my smirk, so you thought I was teasing.
“You’re so full of shit,” you said, slamming a hand into my chest. I couldn’t help wincing because it was exactly where you’d hit me before, and it hurt like hell.
You noticed my wince and we both looked down to see the bruise that was starting to form on my chest from earlier.