Yes. It was good to see you yesterday.
Yes, I’m well.
Yes. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving, too. No problem. We can leave Wednesday at eight. My prof canceled my afternoon class, too. That sounds great.
It was a normal conversation and yet there had been a different tenor to it. Hunter laughed too readily. He sounded . . . nervous, asking more than once if I didn’t mind leaving so early in the morning. Not that he wasn’t always polite, but there was something different in the exchange.
I hated to admit it, but that staged kiss had maybe done some good, after all. He didn’t mention it, of course. His manners would never allow that. Nor did he even mention Reece, but Reece and that kiss were there, hanging between us, filling those moments of crackling silence. Reece had been right. Everything was falling into place. If I ever had a chance with Hunter, it was now. Another chance wouldn’t come. This was it.
The Monday before Thanksgiving, I found myself bypassing my route home after work and heading for Mulvaney’s. I told myself it was just because I wanted to let Reece know he had been right. His staged kiss had done the trick, after all. A simple thanks. That was all. Not because I wanted to see him. Not because he hadn’t texted me since our date.
At three in the afternoon, the place was dead. My tennis shoes fell silently on the plank floor. I found him inventorying behind the bar. He didn’t notice me approach.
“Hi.” I propped my elbows on the bar.
He looked up and smiled widely, immediately making me glad I came. “Hey. Where you been?” He set his clipboard down and gave me his attention. That glad feeling only increased knowing he had noted my absence over the weekend.
“I worked the last couple nights. The Campbells and another family.” I needed the money, especially after my car troubles.
“I wondered. Saw Emerson.”
“You know her. Never one to miss a good time.”
An awkward pause fell. I cleared my throat to fill it. “I owe you a thanks.”
“Yeah? What for?”
“Hunter. He called the next day. And he’s been texting me off and on.”
“Well. There you go.” He smiled again, but it seemed less than before. Or maybe that was just my imagination. My ego wanting him to feel something other than happiness for me moving forward with Hunter. “I told you he would call.”
“You did.” I nodded. “So. Thanks, again.”
He looked left and right, as if searching for something to talk about. “You hungry? Want a burger or something?”
“I could eat.”
“C’mon.” He led me into the back room and shouted over the counter. “Give me a Cyclone Monster and basket of Tijuana fries.”
Someone shouted back from the kitchen, acknowledging his order.
My eyes widened. When he turned back around, I said, “Please tell me that’s not all for me.”
He grinned and my stomach did that crazy little flip-flop. “I’ll share it with you.”
We sat at one of the tables toward the back. On the same bench, our shoulders brushing. It was uncomfortable being this close to him, not knowing what was okay. Touching, kissing, which we had done so much together before, now seemed like something we couldn’t do now. Partly because we were in public. Partly because none of that was real. Me finally—maybe—getting somewhere with Hunter only hammered that home.
“So you’re leaving Wednesday with Hunter?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a four-hour drive.”
“Well, that will give you some quality time with him.” He stared straight ahead, in the direction of the kitchen. I stared at his profile. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
I nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll be over at his house quite a bit to see Lila. I usually go there after Thanksgiving dinner and hang out. Watch movies. Hunter is usually there unless he makes plans with some of his old friends—”
“He’ll be there,” he cut in.
“Yeah? Why—”
“He’ll be there because you’re there.” Turning, he faced me, his left arm resting along the top of the table. With the wall to my right and the stretch of his bicep and forearm to my left, I felt caged, like he was closing in on me. “And if his sister wants you two to be together—”
I nodded. “She does.”
“Then she’ll be a good sister and a good friend and invent some reason to disappear.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it will happen like that.”
“It will.”
I angled my head and studied him, the dark ring of blue around his eyes a stark contrast to the pale blue of his irises. “He doesn’t see his old friends often. They might make him go out—”
“I’m telling you. He’ll blow them off to be with you.”
My chest tightened at the intense way he looked at me, and I heard myself asking, “Is that what you would do?”
He stared at me and I waited, wondering why his answer mattered so much.
“I wouldn’t have waited this long for you. I would have already showed up at your dorm the minute I decided I wanted you. I wouldn’t leave until I convinced you that you were mine.”
“Oh.” My skin shivered, imagining this scenario. Reece at my door. Determined. Sexy. Saying things, doing things, to convince me I was his. “Maybe he hasn’t decided that he wants me then.”
“He has. I saw his face at Gino’s. He’s already gone for you.”
Suddenly I realized that we had moved into each other, not touching but so close our breaths mingled.
“Fuck,” he rasped and closed that tiny distance, kissing me like it had been forever and not just a week. But this week had felt like forever. I missed this. Missed him. He buried a hand in my hair and hauled me closer, our chests mashed together. His mouth devoured mine and I kissed him back just as greedily.
“Here you go.”
I jumped and pulled away. Two baskets of heart attack dropped onto the table before us. The fry cook was already marching away, apparently unfazed by our public makeout.
My chest rose and fell like I had just run a marathon. Reece’s eyes were that bright pale blue I was coming to recognize as a sign that he was hot for me. I glanced from the food to him, part of me hoping that he would say forget the food and haul me upstairs with him.
My body didn’t even feel like it belonged to me anymore. It was one pulsing ball of nerves, throbbing and aching and yearning desperately for all this foreplay to just reach its most natural conclusion.
It was as though my body lived and breathed for this. For him. I wanted the ache satisfied. But I wouldn’t be the one to say the words. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go that far. And there was always the fear, the desperate need to choose the safe path.
All of which meant nothing would happen. Nothing more than kisses and fondling that made me want to pull my hair out in frustration.
Reece slapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s dig in.”
Oh yeah. Food.
I picked up a cheese-coated fry.
He grabbed a clump of three. Tilting his head back, he dropped them into his open mouth. I watched him in awe as his strong jaw chewed. “Mmmm.”
“How can you look the way you look and eat like this?”
He grinned crookedly and leaned close, the warmth of his body reaching out to wrap around me. “And how do I look?”
I crumpled up a napkin and threw it at him. “Oh, shut it. You know you’re hot. Your body is insane.”
Grinning in smug satisfaction, he picked up another clump of fries. “I just like to hear you say that. You’re not easy to impress.”
I frowned. “What does that mean? Am I that difficult?”
“No. It’s just that you’ve set your sights on one guy you met years ago when you were a kid. You don’t even glance at the guys who check you out. It’s like you don’t care what anyone thinks.”
He was wrong. I cared what he thought. Once I met him, Reece was the only one I even considered when I decided I needed to hone my foreplay skills. He was all that I seemed to see.
Deciding not to debate that point, I warily assessed the burger. “How do I even eat that?”
“You gotta just attack it. It’s the only way.”
Nodding with resolve, I picked up the massive burger and tackled it with my teeth.
Reece chuckled as I chewed the mouthful and grabbed for a napkin, wiping off the juices from my lips and chin.
“Nice,” he said in approval and leaned in and planted a kiss on my lips before I even saw it coming. It was quick and careless, and my heart raced.
Swallowing my bite, I shook my head. “Tell me you don’t eat like this every day. You’ll have a heart attack before you’re thirty.”
“Not every day, no. And I work out. Up until I dropped out of college, I played soccer.”
“In college?”
He nodded, avoiding my gaze as he gathered the burger up into his hands. I thought back to what he’d told me about his dad. How he’d come home after the accident. He’d given up college—soccer—to take care of him. Out of loyalty and guilt.
“I still play. Coach a boys’ team twice a week and play in a rec league on Sundays. I run every morning, too.” He looked me over in appreciation. “What about you? You look in shape.”
I snorted. “I walk around campus and chase toddlers at the daycare. Nothing more rigorous than that.”
“You should run with me sometime.”
Normally the suggestion would have made me laugh, but staring into his blue eyes I thought I might actually like to try it.
Picking up another fry, I nodded. “Maybe I’ll try.”
“You’ll get to love it. Your body will miss it when you skip a day.”
The back door slammed open right then. I looked up, startled. There was a commotion that sounded like something hitting the wall. A man in a wheelchair rolled into sight. Reece tensed beside me.
The man’s hair was long and looked decidedly unclean. He wore a black Pink Floyd T-shirt. Even in blue jeans, his legs looked thin from lack of use. His tattooed arms were muscular as they pushed at the wheels of his chair, propelling him forward.
Reece rose to his feet beside me and made his way across the room. “Dad.”
His father’s gaze snapped to him and the fierceness of his expression blossomed into outright rage. “There you are, you little f**k.”
I jerked like I felt the slap of those words, even though they had been directed at Reece.
Reece’s shoulders locked tight, revealing that he wasn’t totally unaffected, either.
“Nice to see you, too, Dad. What are you doing here?”
“Thought you could keep me cooped up in that house, huh? Didn’t think I could find a way here. Logan drove me over. He’s parking the car.”
Reece sent me an unreadable look. Part of me knew I should leave, that he was probably embarrassed for me to witness this drama, but I couldn’t budge from my spot at the table.
“If you wanted to come here, I would have brought you.”
“Yeah. Right.” His father held up a crumpled flyer, brandishing it in the air. “What’s this, you little shit?”
Was there a moment when he didn’t call his son an obscenity? Each word made me flinch and shrink inside myself. Just like when I was a little girl. I couldn’t escape it then. All I could do was clutch Purple Bear and shut my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else.
“Looks like a flyer for our Tuesday promotion. Ten-cent wings.”
“You’re giving away food. You’re going to run us out of business.”
Reece’s sigh reached my ears. “It’s good marketing, Dad. We triple our Tuesday night customers. Alcohol sales more than make up for—”
Yes, I’m well.
Yes. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving, too. No problem. We can leave Wednesday at eight. My prof canceled my afternoon class, too. That sounds great.
It was a normal conversation and yet there had been a different tenor to it. Hunter laughed too readily. He sounded . . . nervous, asking more than once if I didn’t mind leaving so early in the morning. Not that he wasn’t always polite, but there was something different in the exchange.
I hated to admit it, but that staged kiss had maybe done some good, after all. He didn’t mention it, of course. His manners would never allow that. Nor did he even mention Reece, but Reece and that kiss were there, hanging between us, filling those moments of crackling silence. Reece had been right. Everything was falling into place. If I ever had a chance with Hunter, it was now. Another chance wouldn’t come. This was it.
The Monday before Thanksgiving, I found myself bypassing my route home after work and heading for Mulvaney’s. I told myself it was just because I wanted to let Reece know he had been right. His staged kiss had done the trick, after all. A simple thanks. That was all. Not because I wanted to see him. Not because he hadn’t texted me since our date.
At three in the afternoon, the place was dead. My tennis shoes fell silently on the plank floor. I found him inventorying behind the bar. He didn’t notice me approach.
“Hi.” I propped my elbows on the bar.
He looked up and smiled widely, immediately making me glad I came. “Hey. Where you been?” He set his clipboard down and gave me his attention. That glad feeling only increased knowing he had noted my absence over the weekend.
“I worked the last couple nights. The Campbells and another family.” I needed the money, especially after my car troubles.
“I wondered. Saw Emerson.”
“You know her. Never one to miss a good time.”
An awkward pause fell. I cleared my throat to fill it. “I owe you a thanks.”
“Yeah? What for?”
“Hunter. He called the next day. And he’s been texting me off and on.”
“Well. There you go.” He smiled again, but it seemed less than before. Or maybe that was just my imagination. My ego wanting him to feel something other than happiness for me moving forward with Hunter. “I told you he would call.”
“You did.” I nodded. “So. Thanks, again.”
He looked left and right, as if searching for something to talk about. “You hungry? Want a burger or something?”
“I could eat.”
“C’mon.” He led me into the back room and shouted over the counter. “Give me a Cyclone Monster and basket of Tijuana fries.”
Someone shouted back from the kitchen, acknowledging his order.
My eyes widened. When he turned back around, I said, “Please tell me that’s not all for me.”
He grinned and my stomach did that crazy little flip-flop. “I’ll share it with you.”
We sat at one of the tables toward the back. On the same bench, our shoulders brushing. It was uncomfortable being this close to him, not knowing what was okay. Touching, kissing, which we had done so much together before, now seemed like something we couldn’t do now. Partly because we were in public. Partly because none of that was real. Me finally—maybe—getting somewhere with Hunter only hammered that home.
“So you’re leaving Wednesday with Hunter?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a four-hour drive.”
“Well, that will give you some quality time with him.” He stared straight ahead, in the direction of the kitchen. I stared at his profile. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
I nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll be over at his house quite a bit to see Lila. I usually go there after Thanksgiving dinner and hang out. Watch movies. Hunter is usually there unless he makes plans with some of his old friends—”
“He’ll be there,” he cut in.
“Yeah? Why—”
“He’ll be there because you’re there.” Turning, he faced me, his left arm resting along the top of the table. With the wall to my right and the stretch of his bicep and forearm to my left, I felt caged, like he was closing in on me. “And if his sister wants you two to be together—”
I nodded. “She does.”
“Then she’ll be a good sister and a good friend and invent some reason to disappear.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it will happen like that.”
“It will.”
I angled my head and studied him, the dark ring of blue around his eyes a stark contrast to the pale blue of his irises. “He doesn’t see his old friends often. They might make him go out—”
“I’m telling you. He’ll blow them off to be with you.”
My chest tightened at the intense way he looked at me, and I heard myself asking, “Is that what you would do?”
He stared at me and I waited, wondering why his answer mattered so much.
“I wouldn’t have waited this long for you. I would have already showed up at your dorm the minute I decided I wanted you. I wouldn’t leave until I convinced you that you were mine.”
“Oh.” My skin shivered, imagining this scenario. Reece at my door. Determined. Sexy. Saying things, doing things, to convince me I was his. “Maybe he hasn’t decided that he wants me then.”
“He has. I saw his face at Gino’s. He’s already gone for you.”
Suddenly I realized that we had moved into each other, not touching but so close our breaths mingled.
“Fuck,” he rasped and closed that tiny distance, kissing me like it had been forever and not just a week. But this week had felt like forever. I missed this. Missed him. He buried a hand in my hair and hauled me closer, our chests mashed together. His mouth devoured mine and I kissed him back just as greedily.
“Here you go.”
I jumped and pulled away. Two baskets of heart attack dropped onto the table before us. The fry cook was already marching away, apparently unfazed by our public makeout.
My chest rose and fell like I had just run a marathon. Reece’s eyes were that bright pale blue I was coming to recognize as a sign that he was hot for me. I glanced from the food to him, part of me hoping that he would say forget the food and haul me upstairs with him.
My body didn’t even feel like it belonged to me anymore. It was one pulsing ball of nerves, throbbing and aching and yearning desperately for all this foreplay to just reach its most natural conclusion.
It was as though my body lived and breathed for this. For him. I wanted the ache satisfied. But I wouldn’t be the one to say the words. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go that far. And there was always the fear, the desperate need to choose the safe path.
All of which meant nothing would happen. Nothing more than kisses and fondling that made me want to pull my hair out in frustration.
Reece slapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s dig in.”
Oh yeah. Food.
I picked up a cheese-coated fry.
He grabbed a clump of three. Tilting his head back, he dropped them into his open mouth. I watched him in awe as his strong jaw chewed. “Mmmm.”
“How can you look the way you look and eat like this?”
He grinned crookedly and leaned close, the warmth of his body reaching out to wrap around me. “And how do I look?”
I crumpled up a napkin and threw it at him. “Oh, shut it. You know you’re hot. Your body is insane.”
Grinning in smug satisfaction, he picked up another clump of fries. “I just like to hear you say that. You’re not easy to impress.”
I frowned. “What does that mean? Am I that difficult?”
“No. It’s just that you’ve set your sights on one guy you met years ago when you were a kid. You don’t even glance at the guys who check you out. It’s like you don’t care what anyone thinks.”
He was wrong. I cared what he thought. Once I met him, Reece was the only one I even considered when I decided I needed to hone my foreplay skills. He was all that I seemed to see.
Deciding not to debate that point, I warily assessed the burger. “How do I even eat that?”
“You gotta just attack it. It’s the only way.”
Nodding with resolve, I picked up the massive burger and tackled it with my teeth.
Reece chuckled as I chewed the mouthful and grabbed for a napkin, wiping off the juices from my lips and chin.
“Nice,” he said in approval and leaned in and planted a kiss on my lips before I even saw it coming. It was quick and careless, and my heart raced.
Swallowing my bite, I shook my head. “Tell me you don’t eat like this every day. You’ll have a heart attack before you’re thirty.”
“Not every day, no. And I work out. Up until I dropped out of college, I played soccer.”
“In college?”
He nodded, avoiding my gaze as he gathered the burger up into his hands. I thought back to what he’d told me about his dad. How he’d come home after the accident. He’d given up college—soccer—to take care of him. Out of loyalty and guilt.
“I still play. Coach a boys’ team twice a week and play in a rec league on Sundays. I run every morning, too.” He looked me over in appreciation. “What about you? You look in shape.”
I snorted. “I walk around campus and chase toddlers at the daycare. Nothing more rigorous than that.”
“You should run with me sometime.”
Normally the suggestion would have made me laugh, but staring into his blue eyes I thought I might actually like to try it.
Picking up another fry, I nodded. “Maybe I’ll try.”
“You’ll get to love it. Your body will miss it when you skip a day.”
The back door slammed open right then. I looked up, startled. There was a commotion that sounded like something hitting the wall. A man in a wheelchair rolled into sight. Reece tensed beside me.
The man’s hair was long and looked decidedly unclean. He wore a black Pink Floyd T-shirt. Even in blue jeans, his legs looked thin from lack of use. His tattooed arms were muscular as they pushed at the wheels of his chair, propelling him forward.
Reece rose to his feet beside me and made his way across the room. “Dad.”
His father’s gaze snapped to him and the fierceness of his expression blossomed into outright rage. “There you are, you little f**k.”
I jerked like I felt the slap of those words, even though they had been directed at Reece.
Reece’s shoulders locked tight, revealing that he wasn’t totally unaffected, either.
“Nice to see you, too, Dad. What are you doing here?”
“Thought you could keep me cooped up in that house, huh? Didn’t think I could find a way here. Logan drove me over. He’s parking the car.”
Reece sent me an unreadable look. Part of me knew I should leave, that he was probably embarrassed for me to witness this drama, but I couldn’t budge from my spot at the table.
“If you wanted to come here, I would have brought you.”
“Yeah. Right.” His father held up a crumpled flyer, brandishing it in the air. “What’s this, you little shit?”
Was there a moment when he didn’t call his son an obscenity? Each word made me flinch and shrink inside myself. Just like when I was a little girl. I couldn’t escape it then. All I could do was clutch Purple Bear and shut my eyes and pretend I was somewhere else.
“Looks like a flyer for our Tuesday promotion. Ten-cent wings.”
“You’re giving away food. You’re going to run us out of business.”
Reece’s sigh reached my ears. “It’s good marketing, Dad. We triple our Tuesday night customers. Alcohol sales more than make up for—”
