Chapter 17
17
Gabe
Kayla still seems woozy with pleasure, drifting in and out of sleep, but I feel energized, like I can think clearly for the first time since I came back home. I could pass the bar. Solve a differential equation. Figure out what, exactly, a steam mill is and how it works.
I spoon her in her ridiculously tiny twin bed, tracing circles around her perfect bare shoulder.
“What do you think you’ll do,” I murmur into her hair, “if you’re able to refinance?”
“Probably leave Kentwood,” she mutters drowsily, snuggling closer to me, “and look for a better-paying job. If Mom is healthy enough to work and has a place to live, I don’t really need to be here.”
“You couldn’t find a better-paying job in Kentwood?”
“Well, maybe now,” she says, sounding more awake. “When I first came back, I needed flexibility to take her to appointments and stay close to home if she was having a bad day. So doing shift work for friends made sense.” She rolls onto her back and stares at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to her ceiling. “I worked for a small publishing house for a few years after college. I’ve been freelancing a little for them since I left, and I think they would take me back full-time. I would rather do that than work as a bank teller or receptionist here.”
“Sure, that makes sense.” I feel a twinge of disappointment that I can’t quite explain. After all, aren’t I planning to leave Kentwood as soon as possible too? I admire her as she lies on her back next to me, the way her hair splays across the pillow, the elegant curve of her collarbone, her pretty breasts with their dark pink nipples, erect in the cold room. I rest my hand lightly on her belly, sweeping my thumb along the underside of her ribs.
“What about your writing?” I ask.
“It will be easier to find time for that if I have a nine-to-five job and don’t have to take care of Mom. Did I tell you I submitted a story to a magazine?”
“No! That’s great! What magazine?”
“ Clarkesworld . They publish sci-fi and fantasy stories.”
“I don’t remember you being so into that stuff in high school.”
“I wasn’t.” She narrows her eyes at me, then wiggles around to face me. I let my hand stray down to her ass, and she doesn’t object. “If you’re thinking it’s escapist, it’s not. People on distant planets have all the same problems we do.”
“Do they get underwater on their spaceship mortgages?”
She pushes me playfully. “I just mean that they fight, they fall in love, they have babies, they die, you know?” She grins at me, then turns serious. “I just like the challenge of it. I like trying to make the implausible seem plausible.”
“I get that.”
“What about you?” she asks, nestling her hips closer to mine. I can feel myself getting hard again and wonder if she’d be up for round two.
“What about me what?”
“Well, aren’t you supposed to be a hotshot lawyer by now? What happened?”
“The ex-fiancée happened,” I sigh. “You really haven’t heard about this?” She shrugs a little, non-committal, so I continue. “I caught her cheating on me early in my last semester in law school. I graduated, but my grades tanked so bad that I couldn’t get a good recommendation. I also didn’t pass the bar. I just couldn’t focus. My dad got me the job at the courthouse.”
“So what’s the next step? Pass the bar, get a better job here or somewhere else?”
“I guess.”
“I’m sorry about Gretchen,” she says softly.
“So you did know,” I exclaim, grabbing her upper arms and rolling on top of her. She laughs and nestles her knees on either side of my hips in a move that already feels familiar.
“I sort of knew,” she confesses. “I mean, it’s a small town. I knew you had been dating Gretchen Meier, and I heard that you broke up, but I didn’t know why you split. There were all kinds of rumors floating around that café, but I didn’t want to assume any of it was true until I heard it from you.”
“Very sensible,” I murmur. Talking about Gretchen should be a mood killer, but pressing up against Kayla makes her feel like a distant memory, no more real than a spaceship mortgage.
“And I don’t mean to be catty,” she says in a lower voice, running her fingertips from my shoulders to my pecs. “But Gretchen Meier ? She totally doesn’t deserve you. You can do so much better.”
“I think you’re right,” I whisper, then bend down to kiss her throat. She gasps and tilts her head back, giving me better access. I don’t want to pass the bar. I don’t want to leave Kentwood. I don’t even want to leave this bed. I want to stay here and worship this beautiful woman forever.
I have had so many filthy, obscene fantasies about her that have shifted and morphed as I grew from a teenager into a man, but I can see now that I don’t have Kayla’s literary imagination. Her smell, her taste, the feeling of her smooth skin against mine are all more incredible than I ever expected.
“Kayla Johnson,” I whisper. “There’s nobody better than you.” I kiss and bite and suck my way down to her nipples, and when I flick one with my tongue, she moans and wraps her legs around my waist, lacing her fingers through my hair. I can feel the heat between her legs. I reach down and slip a finger inside her. She seems so ready already, warm and swollen and wet, that I wonder if she would just let me fuck her now. But…
“I don’t have another condom,” I confess. She opens her eyes, and her steely gaze is soft now, her pupils dilated. I continue to stroke her slowly, exploring her folds, sliding my finger in as deep as it will go.
“That’s okay,” she says breathily. “I’m on birth control. And I haven’t been with anyone in a long time. I mean, it’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.”
“I’m clean too. God, Kayla, I want to fuck you again.”
“Then do,” she whispers, and reaches down and guides me inside her. She voices no concerns now about me being too big. She already seems used to me, already knows how to take it from me. She squeezes her eyes shut again and I watch her, greedily, as she responds to my every thrust. Her channel throbs and pulses against my cock, pulling me deeper.
“I’m not going to last much longer,” I pant, leaning over her until my chest is pressed against her breasts.
“I’m coming,” she whimpers, pressing her palms into my chest. “It’s okay, just give it to me, Gabe?—”
My world goes dark for one brief, ecstatic second, then I collapse into her arms for the second time tonight.
“Wake up!” Kayla hisses, shaking my shoulder. I have no idea how long I’ve been asleep. An hour? A day? It’s still dark outside, but Kayla is dressed and standing next to the bed.
“What time is it?” I groan. I take the opportunity to stretch out now that I’m alone in the bed.
“It’s 5:30,” she whispers. “I have to go for a run, and you have to get out of here before my mom sees you.”
“You’re going for a run? But it’s dark .”
“I have a headlamp. C’mon, get up.”
I sit up reluctantly, wondering vaguely where my clothes are. I had fallen asleep looking forward to morning sex, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening now. Kayla snaps on her bedside lamp. I squint at her as she ties her running shoes. She is impossibly perky in her tight running gear, her ponytail twitching briskly. She isn’t looking at me. Does she regret last night? Is she literally going to run out on me? Again? Is running at this hour even safe?
“Don’t tell me you’re going out now , like that ,” I say without thinking. She glares at me.
“What are you, my dad? What are you talking about?”
“Johnson! You’re insanely hot . There could be murderers out there. Where do you even run?”
She shrugs. “The woods, mostly.”
“There could be coyotes! Mountain lions!”
“They avoid people, I’m really not too concerned?—”
“What about the murderers, then?!”
“I have pepper spray.”
“Can’t you just wait for it to get light? Come back to bed.” I attempt a charming smile. For a second she looks exasperated, like she’s going to keep arguing, but then her expression softens and she sits next to me, her shoulder brushing companionably against mine. Surely if she had any regrets, she would keep her distance.
“Ordinarily I would, on a Sunday. But if Mom sees you, or hears you leave, then she’s going to make a lot of assumptions that I’m not ready to deal with yet. If we walk out the door together, she’ll think it’s just me going out like I do every morning, without getting murdered ,” she adds as I open my mouth to scold her again, “and we’ll both be out of here before she wakes up. She’s an early riser. C’mon.” She looks into my eyes and gives me a genuine smile. I can see that I’m not going to change her mind.
I start putting my clothes on, still scowling slightly. She seems to find my concern endearing. As I follow her out the door to my car, she takes my hand lightly, her fingers slim and delicate in my big paw. Kayla Johnson. Even if she just gives me that one night, I will remember it for the rest of my life.
She pauses next to me at my car door, fitting her ear buds into her ears. I wonder if I should kiss her goodbye, ask her on a real date, convey, somehow, that last night was the single most erotic experience of my life, when she pops up on her toes and kisses me sweetly.
“I’ll text you when I get home, okay?”
I can’t help myself. I wrap my arms around her waist and kiss her deeply, hoping that it isn’t for the last time.
“I guess that’ll have to do,” I reply, and let her go.
“She’s a gold digger.” Adam confronts me the second he comes into the dining room, where I’m showing his daughter Maddie how to make a battery out of a lemon. He’s here to pick his kids up after their weekend at our parents’ and, presumably, take them to church.
I had hoped that I had left Kayla’s early enough that I could slip in undetected, but little kids get up early too, and three-year-old Hadyn had spotted me as I went into my room. He mentioned it offhand to my mom, my mom mentioned it offhand to Adam, so here we are. There are no secrets in Kentwood.
“Who’s a gold digger?” Maddie pipes up. I glare at Adam. He should know better than to say something like that in front of the kids, especially this one. “Is that really a job?” Maddie presses on. “Could I?—”
“You’ll earn your own gold, honey,” Adam says, staring at me and ignoring Maddie’s confused expression.
“Sweetie, why don’t you go see if Raul is done with the pancakes yet?” I smile at my niece, praying that she won’t repeat Adam’s comment in the kitchen. She leaves the room, bopping her head from side to side.
Once she’s gone, I sigh and lean back from the table. “First of all, no, she’s not. Second of all?—”
“That girl doesn’t give anyone in this town the time of day, then suddenly the son of the bank president comes home?—”
“It’s not like that! She hasn’t asked me for anything, and I don’t have anything to give her if she did!”
“Bullshit, you’re trying to help her refinance?—”
“She deserves to refinance!”
“She doesn’t!”
“You’re just jealous,” I spit out unthinkingly, before it occurs to me that maybe he is. Adam is plenty smart, and went to college, of course, but his education largely seems to have bounced off him. It certainly didn’t broaden his horizons, or teach him to approach the world with curiosity and empathy. Adam lives the life that was handed to him and sees no reason to do things differently. Kayla isn’t like that, and I’m beginning to think that neither am I. I wonder if there’s something about both of us that eludes him. And maybe he has to tear Kayla down so he doesn’t have to face the fact that some people might prefer his little brother to him.
Adam’s jaw is clenched and his hands are balled into fists, but I know he doesn’t dare start a fight in my parents’ house. “Mark my words, little bro. Once she gets what she wants from you, she’ll skip town and leave you hanging.”