Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
brIELLE
“ O h my gosh, I haven’t been here in too long,” Olivia says between bites of the ravioli she ordered.
The girls chose a quaint Italian restaurant along Jackson’s Main Street for our late lunch. I pick at my salad without comment. My appetite isn’t quite back from the tattoo session.
Getting the skin behind my ear tattooed wasn’t any more comfortable the second time around. Arguably it was worse, since she had to use more color and the piece is larger overall.
Melissa mumbles a wordless agreement with Olivia, not pausing in devouring the sandwich she picked.
“You’re feeling better?” I ask Olivia.
She nods with a small smile. “Finally. My doctor said that it should be much better now until the very end.” She purses her lips and takes another bite. “Though some days I still need the medication. She said that some people are just unlucky like that.”
I grimace, and she laughs.
“It’s all right,” she says. “It’s much better than it was, and it’ll be worth it in the end.”
“Do you want to swing by the Artisan booths before we head back?” Melissa asks. “I saw a vendor post a sneak peek on Instagram for their new bags, and they look really pretty. And I think there’s a vendor or two that’s selling nursery decorations.”
Oliva grins. “Oh! I remember seeing them featured on the website! Bronte’s Boutique, right? It stuck out to me because I couldn’t figure out why someone would name their baby item shop after authors that certainly didn’t write happy endings.”
“Better than Stoker’s Swaddles,” I joke.
Melissa cackles, tossing her head back. “Oh my gosh, no way would that ever clear the test stages. Could you imagine?”
“I bet someone would make a bat themed one just to drive the point home,” I offer, finally taking a bite of my salad. Laughter and good company are perfect for feeling like yourself again.
Emily rejoins the group, holding out a plastic bag filled with ice wrapped in a dish towel. “Here, sorry it took them a bit to hunt down a small enough bag.”
I press the impromptu ice pack against the new tattoo and groan as some of the throbbing fades.
“You feeling up to it?” Melissa asks.
“Up to what?” Emily asks.
Olivia says, “Melissa was wanting to swing by the Artisan booths over on Third.”
Emily raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything.
“Sure, that sounds fun,” I say.
We drop into a comfortable silence and finish the rest of the meal. Before the other girls can offer, I hand my card to the waiter.
Emily narrows her eyes but doesn’t protest.
We’re about a block away from the large market when Emily sighs.
“What the hell is happening between you and my brother?” she asks. Olivia and Melissa both look at her with wide eyes. “And why am I the last one that seems to know?”
“Nothing is happening,” I grouse.
Nothing besides two hotter-than-sin kisses that have left me more desperate than I can remember ever being before—even with being touch starved only a month ago.
Emily crosses her arms as Olivia holds the door to the market open. It’s in a large, uninspiring warehouse, the outside painted a bland gray-brown that blends with the rustic buildings that surround it. The inside, though, is anything but ordinary. Large swaths of vendors’ spaces line the outer walls, each decorated and furnished independently. In the center is a large desk with several checkout lines with groups of seating clustered around it. The layout manages to not impede the large walkways that allow for getting to the stalls tucked along the back corners.
“Wow,” I murmur.
Olivia laughs. “Come on, that Boutique is stall fifteen.”
As she leads us around the large space that manages to feel both warm and cozy, Emily says, “Let’s start with why he’s always so on edge around you. I’ve never seen him like that. Not even with Kayla.”
Olivia and Melissa split away from us, walking deeper into the small pop-up shop full of baby clothes and linens and wooden toys. I press my hand against the new tattoo to keep from picking at it.
“Ethan and I…”
Crap, did we date? Or would most people classify it as a summer fling?
We didn’t really go on dates—not the fancy ones that end up all over social media but really aren’t any more impressive or intimate than a night in with a movie. We mostly spent hours together on the ranch while he tended the cattle and worked on his farrier training.
“We were a thing when I lived here that summer between freshman and sophomore year. When I went back to school, he broke it off.”
I say the words as fast as I can, in one quick rush, and then cross my arms in preparation for her anger at being left out of the information.
She doesn’t immediately say anything. When I risk a glance, her gaze is contemplative. She runs a hand through her hair.
“All right. That’s honestly what I expected.” Her voice is lighter than I expect. “I get the feeling that you didn’t really want it to end?”
When I shrug, she sighs.
“I was nineteen,” I say. My voice wobbles more than I’d like. It’s been a damn decade. “My mom was in rehab for what would be her final time, and I had no place that felt like mine. For that summer? It felt like I belonged here. Belonged with him.”
Emily rests her head against mine in silent support.
“I’m assuming Mel and Liv knew?”
I offer a single nod. She purses her lips.
“That must be awkward as hell with you and Caleb being scent matches.”
I can’t help but grimace. She laughs and grabs my elbow.
“Let’s go help Liv pick some outfits.”
CALEB
Brielle’s sprawled across my bed when I get out of the bathroom, running a towel across my hair to get it dry enough to not drip. She turns onto her side as I come back into the room, resting her head on her hand. She’s slipped into one of my shirts. It drowns out her curves and barely covers her ass.
Over a week since I saw her. Sure, we’ve been texting and calling, but it’s not the same as having her with me, against me. Heat pours through my body again as if we didn’t just knot.
“Can I see it?” I ask.
“Only if you’re willing to take off the bandage.” She scrunches her nose. “I tried this morning, but I couldn’t get a good angle since I can’t really see it.”
I duck into the bathroom and grab the scent free lotion stashed in the bottom drawer.
“How did you get the first one off?”
I round the bed and kneel behind her, palming her hip to keep her on her side. Her hair is soft and still a bit damp as I ease it off her shoulder to bare the delicate tattoo. The waterproof bandage is cloudy, obscuring the details of the new artwork. I can see a couple feathers, though.
“Emily helped me,” Brielle whispers.
Lavender bleeds out from her, and I force a deep breath to keep my body in check. We literally fucked less than an hour ago. And I ate her out in the shower, too. This need for her is so intense, though, it’s nearly like those didn’t happen.
I try to keep my actions gentle, easing away the bandage as carefully as possible. It gets caught on a strand of her hair, and she hisses.
“Shit, sorry,” I mutter.
“It’s fine,” she says.
I drop the bandage to the nightstand to deal with later, my attention rapt on the small bird now emblazoned behind her ear. Not a single bit of blue from the flowers remains. Instead, black and orange and red feathers flow together, swirling around her ear and down the first inch or so of her neck.
The tail feathers are delicate enough that a bonding mark could nestle right around one of them. Cinnamon explodes around us between one breath and the next. She whines and tilts her head, showing more of her neck. I press a kiss to her shoulder even as I shove the idea of claiming her away.
“A phoenix?” My voice is raspy with heat.
“Born from the ashes,” she says, closing her eyes even as another pulse of her scent surrounds us. “The artist said I’d need something darker in order to cover the blue. And I thought the symbolism was…” She trails off. “It felt like a good symbol.”
She relaxes under me as I cover it with the lotion.
“They wrote about us in the paper,” she whispers as I lay beside her, our noses nearly touching. “And about Ethan.”
“I saw.” I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her closer, twisting her legs with mine.
It wasn’t a nice article. But then, it was Jessica Bailey that wrote it—and God knows the Baileys can’t fucking stand Ethan’s family. Getting to write a scathing paragraph or two of how Ethan and Brielle apparently kissed after the fireworks on the Fourth of July was probably her version of winning the lottery. Her comments about Brielle weren’t quite as ruthless. Good thing, too, because there’s no way I’d let her get away with it if she’d called Brielle a whore in public.
“At least they didn’t include pictures of us,” she admits, letting her eyes close. She sucks in a hard breath before sighing. “I’m going to corner Ethan this weekend and make him talk.”
“All right.” I trace the shell of her ear and the line of her jaw. Goosebumps rise along her skin, and I smile. “Can I take you to the Outpost?”
She opens her eyes. “You want to hard launch?”
“If they’re going to talk about us, we might as well,” I suggest. “I have no intention of hiding you.”
Her gaze grows thoughtful. She traces my happy trail, the movement almost absent. “All right. Tomorrow?”
“Perfect.”
I grin and then roll over, pinning her under me.
“Caleb!” she gasps.
And then she moans as I slide down her body.