I thought I’d lost that—the ability to get a buzz from the way a boy looks at me.
This is no boy, my mind tells me. This is a man. I’m no stranger to older men, but when I came back to New Hope, it was with a promise to myself that things would be different. That I’d be different. And yet here I am, preparing to spend my evening with a sexy stranger who breaks all the New Me rules.
“What’s making you crazy?”
“I know you from somewhere…”
I have to laugh at that. “That line? Really? If you’re trying to pick me up, can’t you at least amuse me by coming up with something unique?”
He flashes that wicked, devil-may-care grin again and my goddamn stomach does a little flip. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know. It’s been a long time since I bothered with games.”
He steps closer, looking down at me. “Because you get right to the point?”
He guides me to the dance floor, and I let him.
Etta James croons from the speakers as this beautiful bad boy pulls me into his arms, his eyes roaming over my face like this is foreplay. He’s a man who makes dancing easy, guiding me around so smoothly I could be walking on clouds.
When he dips his head, his mouth brushes my ear. “You know, don’t you, that by dancing with me, you’re going to make people whisper about you all night?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. They are whispering about me, it’s true, but the whispers have nothing to do with some mystery man.
It was a year ago, but my wedding to William Bailey is still the hottest kind of gossip. A wedding called off two days before the bride and groom were scheduled to say their vows? Young bride ran away to God-knows-where for an entire year? Hell, the people of New Hope usually have to steal the mayor’s cable to get stories that juicy.
“It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. Over Asher’s shoulder, my three older sisters watch me with unhinged jaws. What’s with them?
The song ends and the crowd on the dance floor shifts. Some couples return to their seats and others slide into each other’s arms.
Asher grins. “I thought you didn’t dance?”
“I don’t. Couldn’t you tell?” I shiver under his hot gaze. One dance and I’m contemplating bridesmaid clichés and one-night stands.
The DJ transitions to another song, and I find myself moving into his arms again. We fall into the rhythm of the music, and I’m rethinking my aversion to dancing when I feel a vibration from his hip. He’s busy tracing my shoulder with the rough pad of his thumb and doesn’t notice.
“Is that a cell phone in your pocket,” I whisper up at him, “or did I misplace my vibrator?”
He pulls away and reaches for his phone. “You’re something else.” He glances at the number on the display. “I have to take this. It was nice to meet you, Maggie. Thank you for the dance.” He winks at me as he backs away, leaving me grinning on the edge of the dance floor, dumb with lust.
My good mood vanishes when I turn and see Will and Krystal dancing.
My Will, I catch myself thinking. Which isn’t fair, and I know that, but I keep remembering his arms wrapped around me and his breath in my hair as he whispered, “If you’re broken, I’ll fix you.”
His thumb brushes her cheek, and he’s looking at her with such tenderness, I stumble over my own feet in my rush to get off the dance floor. Loneliness claws at me, digging into my flesh just deeply enough that my eyes wet with tears.
Chapter Two
William
I am an addict.
I am the cocky as**ole who thinks he’s bigger than his addiction. I am the ignorant son of a bitch who thinks he can look temptation in the face and walk away.
I have never been so wrong about anything.
Like most addicts, I can’t tell you when my addiction began. I can’t tell you the moment when my fondness for her became something more compelling. More dangerous. Was it when she was fifteen and showed up in my dorm room at Notre Dame? The girl next door suddenly a curvy vixen with sad eyes and hungry hands? Was it when I came back home for graduate school and she became a constant in my life? Or did it only begin when I tasted her lips for the first time, the sun reflecting off the water, the breeze ruffling our hair?
Maybe addictions don’t have a beginning. They certainly don’t have an end.
The bathroom door jars open and I remember myself. Who I am. Where I am.
She’s staring at me, arms wrapped around herself as if her long, hot shower left her cold. “You could feign a little disappointment, you know.”
Krystal is pissed. Hell, she should be. Today was everything to her. She’d planned every detail, as if the perfect wedding might make the guests forget I was supposed to marry her sister first. But it was ruined. And no one forgets.
“I am disappointed,” I protest. Even to my own ears I sound apathetic, but I’m not, dammit, I’m just…weak.
“You need to tell me the truth.” She settles on the bed, the hotel’s fluffy white robe enveloping her petite frame. “Are you relieved? Do you feel like you dodged a bullet?” Her voice wavers, as if she’s struggling to hold back tears, and I feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
“No.” I take her hands in mine. Squeeze her fingertips against my palms. “I want to marry you.”
Her big brown eyes search my face, reading it for signs of a relapse. “You haven’t been the same since she’s been home.”
There’s no correct way I can respond to this and we both know it. Agreement will only prime her insecurities. Disagreement would be the lie that will drive this growing wedge between us. “I want to marry you,” I repeat. “Let’s do it again. A new ceremony. A new reception. Whatever you want.”
She blinks at me and forces a smile. “Okay.”
“I love you.” I sound a little desperate. Maybe I am.
She leans her head against my shoulder, and her wet hair seeps through my shirt and chills my skin. One month ago, this bond between us was enough. One month ago, when I told Krystal I loved her, I didn’t have a devil on my shoulder weighing that love against my love for someone else. One month ago, Maggie was out of my system.
I close my eyes with every intention to focus on Krystal, on my love for her, hers for me. Our future. Instead, I see Maggie lying by the river after a heavy rain, her hair splayed in a red sunburst against the lush green grass as she listens to the rushing water. I see Maggie’s sprinkle of freckles and Maggie’s bright green eyes laughing at me.
Krystal sniffs into my chest and I draw her tightly against me, focusing on the feel of her in my arms, trying to stay in this moment, with this woman. But my memory has taken hold and I feel Maggie’s soft exhale against my lips, Maggie rolling under me in the dewy grass, Maggie’s mouth connecting with mine.
“I love you too,” Krystal says, and I can only faintly make out the words over the sound of the river rushing in my ears.
I am an addict and Maggie Thompson is my drug.
***
Maggie
Technically, I am trespassing. Technically, trespassing is not part of the New Me plan. But it hardly feels like trespassing to use the neighbor’s gorgeous, well-maintained pool when a) I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen, and b) the rich dude who owns the place is never around. I like to think I’m doing him a favor. He must spend a crap ton of money to maintain this place, but he doesn’t get any use out of it because he’s always away at his house in Vail or wherever. It would be wasteful for me not to use it just because of some technicality.
I hoist myself over the gate and feel greedy anticipation. Surrounded by lush landscaping and featuring a cascade of water that circulates from hot tub to pool, the space is more water feature than swimming hole. I don’t know Rich Dude, but he has excellent taste, and this little oasis is one of my favorite places on Earth.
I could have headed home after the reception, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep tonight. I told my mom I wanted to stay over, and I waited until everyone was in bed before grabbing a robe and trekking across a couple acres of lush grass for a moonlight swim.
I’m no stranger to insomnia, but it’s been worse since I returned home. In the silence of the night, there’s too much room for my thoughts and they expand until they fill every corner of my mind. While I was away, I could be anyone I wanted to be, but in New Hope, everywhere I turn, someone’s labeling me. When I was young, I was just one of the Thompson girls, but now the labels aren’t so innocuous. Black sheep. College dropout.
Slut.
I drop the terry cloth robe from my shoulders and dive into the water completely nude. Most pools would be intolerably cold in Indiana before June, but the water circulating from the hot tub keeps the temperature comfortable from spring to fall. Even if it was cold, I’d still be here. Exercise is the only thing that calms my mind. Tonight, I’ll swim laps to escape the demons.
Until last year, small-town life was the only life I’d ever known, so I should be used to it, but you can be cut open a hundred times, and the slice of the blade still hurts.
I just never expected Will to be the one holding the knife.
Does he love her? Would he marry my sister out of spite?
Did he tell Krystal the truth about our canceled vows?
I turn and pull my limbs through the water, asking myself the question I’ve been avoiding for weeks. Can I live here and watch Will and Krystal build a life together?
I count out twenty-five laps. The rhythm of my breathing calms me. The water rushing over my skin salves my wounds. Finally, I rest forearms on the edge of the pool and gulp in air, focusing only on my breath and the water dripping from my face.
“Training for the Olympics?”
I snap my head up in surprise. In the soft glow of the moon, I can make out the bad boy from the reception. He stands in swim trunks three yards from me, a towel draped behind his neck. I was right about the tats. He has some sort of starburst on his left pec, another circling his thick biceps.
“Sneak up on many girls?”
“Only the special ones.” He drops the towel on a chair and dives into the water.
When he surfaces, my heart kicks up a beat. He’s close. I could almost touch him if I reached out.
But even as my eyes tour his broad chest and sculpted shoulders, I back away. “What are you doing here?”
His eyebrow quirks. “I live here.”
I snort. “No you don’t.” Then, when his expression remains stoic, “Shit. Really? You’re Rich Dude?”
“Rich who?” He looks puzzled. And annoyed.
Giggles bubble up and slip past my lips. I’ve always pictured the owner of this property to be some white-haired old man with a cane and a monocle. Asher is so far off the mark, I can’t help my laughter. “Shit. I’m sorry. I just…” I laugh more, and it feels damn good. My muscles are spent from my swim, my mind is calm, and laughing feels like a long-denied decadent treat.
“You haven’t come to swim in a long time,” he says softly.
That cuts my laughter short. “You watch me?” I want to feel violated by the idea. But the thought of this man watching me swim nude in his pool zips potent arousal through my veins.
Asher shakes his head, studying me. “My groundskeeper told me a young girl used to sneak in about once a week. I assume that was you?”
“Yeah,” I say softly.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I left town for a while.”
“Looking for something?”
I shake my head. “Running away.”
He nods, as if my answer is perfectly reasonable, and I get the sense that he doesn’t just accept it, he understands it. His gaze settles on my mouth. When his eyes drop to the water and my bare breasts, his breath catches, and I feel that rush that comes from being desired, that false sense of worth I’m willing to be fooled by tonight. Suddenly, I want him to kiss me. Touch me. More.
I want to bury my loneliness under the weight of a man’s body on mine, to erase unwelcome memories with his mouth.
This man’s body. This man’s mouth.
“Sorry I had to disappear earlier.” His voice is low, husky as he watches me.
“I’d let you make it up to me,” I murmur, closing the distance between us. I hesitate, but his gaze—hot, hungry, all over me—is all the invitation I need.
“You’ve had a long day,” he says. “You want to talk?”
I drape my arms behind his neck. “Why would you think I want to talk to you at all?”
He grunts. “Because you’re looking at me like a starved woman at a prime rib buffet.”
“Yes,” I murmur. “What does that have to do with talking?”
His eyes are so damn sexy. The kind of eyes you see in magazines, where the man staring at you from the pages seems to invite you to strip bare while promising you’d enjoy it.
“Don’t you want us to get to know each other before you indulge?”
I pretend to consider it. “I’m more about the meal than the conversation.”
“You’re a kid.” If it’s supposed to be an objection it rings weak against the pressure of his hand on my hip.
I trace a rivulet of water down his neck. “I’m twenty-one.” I bring up my knees and wrap my legs around his waist, satisfied when he draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.
“Is this about him?” he asks.
I frown. “Who?”
“The groom at your sister’s wedding? He has some kind of hold on you. I saw it in your eyes. In his.”
This is no boy, my mind tells me. This is a man. I’m no stranger to older men, but when I came back to New Hope, it was with a promise to myself that things would be different. That I’d be different. And yet here I am, preparing to spend my evening with a sexy stranger who breaks all the New Me rules.
“What’s making you crazy?”
“I know you from somewhere…”
I have to laugh at that. “That line? Really? If you’re trying to pick me up, can’t you at least amuse me by coming up with something unique?”
He flashes that wicked, devil-may-care grin again and my goddamn stomach does a little flip. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know. It’s been a long time since I bothered with games.”
He steps closer, looking down at me. “Because you get right to the point?”
He guides me to the dance floor, and I let him.
Etta James croons from the speakers as this beautiful bad boy pulls me into his arms, his eyes roaming over my face like this is foreplay. He’s a man who makes dancing easy, guiding me around so smoothly I could be walking on clouds.
When he dips his head, his mouth brushes my ear. “You know, don’t you, that by dancing with me, you’re going to make people whisper about you all night?”
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. They are whispering about me, it’s true, but the whispers have nothing to do with some mystery man.
It was a year ago, but my wedding to William Bailey is still the hottest kind of gossip. A wedding called off two days before the bride and groom were scheduled to say their vows? Young bride ran away to God-knows-where for an entire year? Hell, the people of New Hope usually have to steal the mayor’s cable to get stories that juicy.
“It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. Over Asher’s shoulder, my three older sisters watch me with unhinged jaws. What’s with them?
The song ends and the crowd on the dance floor shifts. Some couples return to their seats and others slide into each other’s arms.
Asher grins. “I thought you didn’t dance?”
“I don’t. Couldn’t you tell?” I shiver under his hot gaze. One dance and I’m contemplating bridesmaid clichés and one-night stands.
The DJ transitions to another song, and I find myself moving into his arms again. We fall into the rhythm of the music, and I’m rethinking my aversion to dancing when I feel a vibration from his hip. He’s busy tracing my shoulder with the rough pad of his thumb and doesn’t notice.
“Is that a cell phone in your pocket,” I whisper up at him, “or did I misplace my vibrator?”
He pulls away and reaches for his phone. “You’re something else.” He glances at the number on the display. “I have to take this. It was nice to meet you, Maggie. Thank you for the dance.” He winks at me as he backs away, leaving me grinning on the edge of the dance floor, dumb with lust.
My good mood vanishes when I turn and see Will and Krystal dancing.
My Will, I catch myself thinking. Which isn’t fair, and I know that, but I keep remembering his arms wrapped around me and his breath in my hair as he whispered, “If you’re broken, I’ll fix you.”
His thumb brushes her cheek, and he’s looking at her with such tenderness, I stumble over my own feet in my rush to get off the dance floor. Loneliness claws at me, digging into my flesh just deeply enough that my eyes wet with tears.
Chapter Two
William
I am an addict.
I am the cocky as**ole who thinks he’s bigger than his addiction. I am the ignorant son of a bitch who thinks he can look temptation in the face and walk away.
I have never been so wrong about anything.
Like most addicts, I can’t tell you when my addiction began. I can’t tell you the moment when my fondness for her became something more compelling. More dangerous. Was it when she was fifteen and showed up in my dorm room at Notre Dame? The girl next door suddenly a curvy vixen with sad eyes and hungry hands? Was it when I came back home for graduate school and she became a constant in my life? Or did it only begin when I tasted her lips for the first time, the sun reflecting off the water, the breeze ruffling our hair?
Maybe addictions don’t have a beginning. They certainly don’t have an end.
The bathroom door jars open and I remember myself. Who I am. Where I am.
She’s staring at me, arms wrapped around herself as if her long, hot shower left her cold. “You could feign a little disappointment, you know.”
Krystal is pissed. Hell, she should be. Today was everything to her. She’d planned every detail, as if the perfect wedding might make the guests forget I was supposed to marry her sister first. But it was ruined. And no one forgets.
“I am disappointed,” I protest. Even to my own ears I sound apathetic, but I’m not, dammit, I’m just…weak.
“You need to tell me the truth.” She settles on the bed, the hotel’s fluffy white robe enveloping her petite frame. “Are you relieved? Do you feel like you dodged a bullet?” Her voice wavers, as if she’s struggling to hold back tears, and I feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
“No.” I take her hands in mine. Squeeze her fingertips against my palms. “I want to marry you.”
Her big brown eyes search my face, reading it for signs of a relapse. “You haven’t been the same since she’s been home.”
There’s no correct way I can respond to this and we both know it. Agreement will only prime her insecurities. Disagreement would be the lie that will drive this growing wedge between us. “I want to marry you,” I repeat. “Let’s do it again. A new ceremony. A new reception. Whatever you want.”
She blinks at me and forces a smile. “Okay.”
“I love you.” I sound a little desperate. Maybe I am.
She leans her head against my shoulder, and her wet hair seeps through my shirt and chills my skin. One month ago, this bond between us was enough. One month ago, when I told Krystal I loved her, I didn’t have a devil on my shoulder weighing that love against my love for someone else. One month ago, Maggie was out of my system.
I close my eyes with every intention to focus on Krystal, on my love for her, hers for me. Our future. Instead, I see Maggie lying by the river after a heavy rain, her hair splayed in a red sunburst against the lush green grass as she listens to the rushing water. I see Maggie’s sprinkle of freckles and Maggie’s bright green eyes laughing at me.
Krystal sniffs into my chest and I draw her tightly against me, focusing on the feel of her in my arms, trying to stay in this moment, with this woman. But my memory has taken hold and I feel Maggie’s soft exhale against my lips, Maggie rolling under me in the dewy grass, Maggie’s mouth connecting with mine.
“I love you too,” Krystal says, and I can only faintly make out the words over the sound of the river rushing in my ears.
I am an addict and Maggie Thompson is my drug.
***
Maggie
Technically, I am trespassing. Technically, trespassing is not part of the New Me plan. But it hardly feels like trespassing to use the neighbor’s gorgeous, well-maintained pool when a) I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen, and b) the rich dude who owns the place is never around. I like to think I’m doing him a favor. He must spend a crap ton of money to maintain this place, but he doesn’t get any use out of it because he’s always away at his house in Vail or wherever. It would be wasteful for me not to use it just because of some technicality.
I hoist myself over the gate and feel greedy anticipation. Surrounded by lush landscaping and featuring a cascade of water that circulates from hot tub to pool, the space is more water feature than swimming hole. I don’t know Rich Dude, but he has excellent taste, and this little oasis is one of my favorite places on Earth.
I could have headed home after the reception, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep tonight. I told my mom I wanted to stay over, and I waited until everyone was in bed before grabbing a robe and trekking across a couple acres of lush grass for a moonlight swim.
I’m no stranger to insomnia, but it’s been worse since I returned home. In the silence of the night, there’s too much room for my thoughts and they expand until they fill every corner of my mind. While I was away, I could be anyone I wanted to be, but in New Hope, everywhere I turn, someone’s labeling me. When I was young, I was just one of the Thompson girls, but now the labels aren’t so innocuous. Black sheep. College dropout.
Slut.
I drop the terry cloth robe from my shoulders and dive into the water completely nude. Most pools would be intolerably cold in Indiana before June, but the water circulating from the hot tub keeps the temperature comfortable from spring to fall. Even if it was cold, I’d still be here. Exercise is the only thing that calms my mind. Tonight, I’ll swim laps to escape the demons.
Until last year, small-town life was the only life I’d ever known, so I should be used to it, but you can be cut open a hundred times, and the slice of the blade still hurts.
I just never expected Will to be the one holding the knife.
Does he love her? Would he marry my sister out of spite?
Did he tell Krystal the truth about our canceled vows?
I turn and pull my limbs through the water, asking myself the question I’ve been avoiding for weeks. Can I live here and watch Will and Krystal build a life together?
I count out twenty-five laps. The rhythm of my breathing calms me. The water rushing over my skin salves my wounds. Finally, I rest forearms on the edge of the pool and gulp in air, focusing only on my breath and the water dripping from my face.
“Training for the Olympics?”
I snap my head up in surprise. In the soft glow of the moon, I can make out the bad boy from the reception. He stands in swim trunks three yards from me, a towel draped behind his neck. I was right about the tats. He has some sort of starburst on his left pec, another circling his thick biceps.
“Sneak up on many girls?”
“Only the special ones.” He drops the towel on a chair and dives into the water.
When he surfaces, my heart kicks up a beat. He’s close. I could almost touch him if I reached out.
But even as my eyes tour his broad chest and sculpted shoulders, I back away. “What are you doing here?”
His eyebrow quirks. “I live here.”
I snort. “No you don’t.” Then, when his expression remains stoic, “Shit. Really? You’re Rich Dude?”
“Rich who?” He looks puzzled. And annoyed.
Giggles bubble up and slip past my lips. I’ve always pictured the owner of this property to be some white-haired old man with a cane and a monocle. Asher is so far off the mark, I can’t help my laughter. “Shit. I’m sorry. I just…” I laugh more, and it feels damn good. My muscles are spent from my swim, my mind is calm, and laughing feels like a long-denied decadent treat.
“You haven’t come to swim in a long time,” he says softly.
That cuts my laughter short. “You watch me?” I want to feel violated by the idea. But the thought of this man watching me swim nude in his pool zips potent arousal through my veins.
Asher shakes his head, studying me. “My groundskeeper told me a young girl used to sneak in about once a week. I assume that was you?”
“Yeah,” I say softly.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I left town for a while.”
“Looking for something?”
I shake my head. “Running away.”
He nods, as if my answer is perfectly reasonable, and I get the sense that he doesn’t just accept it, he understands it. His gaze settles on my mouth. When his eyes drop to the water and my bare breasts, his breath catches, and I feel that rush that comes from being desired, that false sense of worth I’m willing to be fooled by tonight. Suddenly, I want him to kiss me. Touch me. More.
I want to bury my loneliness under the weight of a man’s body on mine, to erase unwelcome memories with his mouth.
This man’s body. This man’s mouth.
“Sorry I had to disappear earlier.” His voice is low, husky as he watches me.
“I’d let you make it up to me,” I murmur, closing the distance between us. I hesitate, but his gaze—hot, hungry, all over me—is all the invitation I need.
“You’ve had a long day,” he says. “You want to talk?”
I drape my arms behind his neck. “Why would you think I want to talk to you at all?”
He grunts. “Because you’re looking at me like a starved woman at a prime rib buffet.”
“Yes,” I murmur. “What does that have to do with talking?”
His eyes are so damn sexy. The kind of eyes you see in magazines, where the man staring at you from the pages seems to invite you to strip bare while promising you’d enjoy it.
“Don’t you want us to get to know each other before you indulge?”
I pretend to consider it. “I’m more about the meal than the conversation.”
“You’re a kid.” If it’s supposed to be an objection it rings weak against the pressure of his hand on my hip.
I trace a rivulet of water down his neck. “I’m twenty-one.” I bring up my knees and wrap my legs around his waist, satisfied when he draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.
“Is this about him?” he asks.
I frown. “Who?”
“The groom at your sister’s wedding? He has some kind of hold on you. I saw it in your eyes. In his.”
