Chapter 9
L andon kissed me. Why would he do a thing like that? And why the hell did I allow myself to not only kiss him back but enjoy it?
“What the hell was that?” Bridget asks, bewildered, practically reading my thoughts.
I clear my throat, straighten up away from the board, and will my heart to slow. I can still feel his lips. The powerful, hungry kiss he just planted on them is making them tingle and swell.
“My rude neighbor,” I tell her because even though I likely should have said a student’s parent, it was obvious there was something else going on between us.
“Holy shit.” She gasps as I shut off the lights. “You live next door to Landon Fritz ?”
The way she says his name with a hint of reverence has me frowning.
Sure, he’s hotter than anyone I’ve ever seen before.
Especially as he stands tall in green scrubs that match his eyes, his broad shoulders and muscular chest, abs and arms on delicious display because his scrubs do jack all to hide them. But come on.
I don’t respond, but I don’t have to. This is Bridget, and she’s already all over me as we leave the building, heading for her car in the parking lot.
“And wait,” she stops abruptly, the door to her car now ajar and the interior light on. “What do you mean he was rude? Did you already have an encounter with him before tonight? You just moved in like forty-eight hours ago.”
I say nothing, and a smile spears her lips.
“You’ve been holding out on me, Ellery Jane. I want details.”She points a stern finger at me over the roof of her car before slipping in the driver’s seat and starting it up.
As she drives, I explain everything that happened during the encounter at my front door, all the way through meeting Stella outside while I was planting bulbs.
I don’t mention anything about the hotel or the kiss in my classroom tonight.
First, my friend is tenacious and will be hungry like a bear waking up after hibernation.
Second, neither of those things should have happened.
I mean, not now that I know who he is and that he’s a total jerk of a man.
He’s not only my neighbor but my student’s father.
Yeesh. I just kissed my student’s father like his mouth was made of crack and I needed a fix. I imagine what I just did is a very fireable offense. Especially at such a prestigious school. And he’s a Fritz. Double yeesh.
Score for Ellery, putting her job in jeopardy on day one.
I do my best to keep my flush down to a minimum while I regale her with my sorry lack of clothes and the way he glared at my skimpy panties. Bridget is practically crying, she’s laughing so hard. She’s actually doubled over against the wheel as we pull into my driveway.
“It’s not that funny.” I smack her shoulder.
“Oh no,” she says through the tail end of her amusement.
“It really is.” She’s wiping at the tears streaming down her cheeks, her glasses sticking into her forehead.
“That’s fucking awesome. I cannot believe Landon Fritz has already seen you mostly naked.
Women in this town—hell, all over this city and the freaking world—would kill for that chance, and you didn’t even have to try. ”
Yep. Now I’m blushing. I turn away, hoping I can get control. Landon has already seen me in a lot less than my bra and panties. “You’re being a brat.”
“I know. It’s just so… damn, it’s perfect.
I mean, I’m not shocked he’s rough with you.
He’s rough with everyone. He barely speaks to anyone, and if he does, it’s very curt, monosyllabic words.
He keeps mostly to himself, trying to stay out of the spotlight, likely because of Stella.
And after what happened with his wife and the fact that he’s a single dad raising a kid, most people do leave him alone.
But the people in this area have a real hard-on for the Fritz family.
The Abbot-Fritzes I should say, since they’re two powerful families combined into one.
They’re the equivalent of our royal family, and we cyberstalk them as such. ”
I frown at that. I’ve had enough of being in the spotlight with David, and it’s seriously the last thing I’d want again.
I don’t blame him for keeping a low profile.
He had said that night on the porch that he used Luca’s name to protect his family.
I bet he used Luca’s name with me so that if we were photographed together it was with him as Luca and not Landon.
That way Stella wouldn’t know what he was up to.
“What happened to his wife?”
Bridget turns to me, her expression filled with sympathy.
“I don’t know much. Just that she died several years ago.
A car accident, but it was messy. I remember it was winter, and she skidded off the road and ended up in a lake.
” She licks her lips, her eyes all over me as she says, “She drowned before they could get her out.”
Bridget gets out of the car, but I take a second before following her, lost in this revelation. My chest clenches painfully tight.
Jesus. The poor man. I hate that this softens me some to him considering how heartless he’s been with me, but it does. There’s no way it can’t. And just as I think that, I glance toward his house, finding him taking out the trash.
He looks up at that exact second. Staring directly at me as if he could hear my thoughts all the way across the lawn.
Our eyes lock, and my breath catches. My stomach does a quick loopty-loop, my face already feeling the heat of a flush for getting caught staring.
He tosses the bag of trash in his bin that’s already on the curb, then folds his arms across his chest. He’s showered and changed since I saw him earlier.
His hair is damp, pushed off his face, and he’s wearing gray sweatpants, a Harvard hoodie, and his glasses.
His gaze is intense as he does a long, languid sweep of me. And with each pass, his eyes narrow further. He’s staring at me like I’m the devil of his nightmares. Hard. Cold. Almost spiteful.
I don’t understand it.
What could I have possibly done to make this man dislike me so?
Landon and I continue to stare each other down until he finally breaks the spell I’m under and storms back into his house, shutting the door behind him and turning off his porch light. My stomach swarms with relief. Fuck, that man is so intense.
“Wow,” Bridget whispers as we walk into my house. “I can’t tell if he hates you or wants to fuck you. Christ on a cracker, that look he was giving you was turning me on, and I’m a very married woman.”
“It’s hate,” I reply. He may have wanted me on Friday, and he may have planted a kiss on me tonight, but I know better. That look in his eyes doesn’t lie. “Most definitely hate.”
* * *
“This place is super adorbs,” Bridget says, staring around my kitchen as I pour both of us a glass of wine.
I give her a sideways glance. “Adorbs?”
She shrugs. “It’s what all the cool girls say.”
“When they’re thirteen.”
Another shrug as she accepts her glass and sits on one of the stools at the counter. “Who do you think I teach?”
Fair enough.
“What was your first night here like?” she continues, trying to tread carefully with that delicate question. “You were living in the house with him, right? It has to be weird not living with him anymore.”
She’s referring to the fact that I was still living in the house with David.
After I left him, I stayed in a hotel for a week.
I had no real place to go. It was the start of the golf season and David was going to be away a lot at tournaments through the spring and summer.
He told me to stay at the house while I thought about our marriage, that it was big enough for both of us.
He spent those months angry, and we did the dance of avoidance like pros.
I stayed in the guest room on the opposite side of the house.
But sleeping in this house alone is weird. Sad, lonely, kind of heartbreaking, and weird.
“It’s fine, I guess. I’m getting used to it.”
She takes a sip of her wine, then sets the glass back onto the stone counter, her gaze never wavering from mine, her expression one that reminds me of my mother and not in a good way since I can’t stand my mother.
“You don’t have to put on a brave face. It’s totally and completely normal not to feel okay. Not to be okay.”
“David’s been calling and texting me.”
Her jaw pops open as her brown eyes widen.
“It’s like once he received the final documents of our divorce, it actually sank in that it’s over. I don’t get it. I mean, he signed the damn papers, though when he did it, he was drunk and pissed off.”
“The prick’s trying to win you back?”
I take a long pull of my wine and nod. “Yeah. I think he is. He was mean the first night I was here, but since then he’s been effusively sweet and apologetic.
Claims I’m the love of his life, and he wants to reconcile.
Start again fresh. Promises he’s a changed man.
My parents are in on it, which only makes it worse. ”
Bridget leans back in her stool, her fingers drumming softly against the base of her glass. “Are you considering it?”
“No. It would be a mistake. He’s done this bullshit before.”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Telling. It would be a mistake. I know it would.”
“But?” She arches an eyebrow, and I roll my eyes.
“But nothing. Stop staring at me like that. It’s over.
We’re divorced. I just…” I stare up at the ceiling.
“I never thought we’d end like this,” I admit.
“We were David and Ellery. So goddamn happy and in love for two years. The man bought me flowers and my favorite candy every time I got my freaking period. He always went above and beyond with my birthday, finding new creative ways to surprise me. He was goddamn perfect.”
“Until he wasn’t.”
My chin drops, my throat clogging up as I stare across the room and out the back window. “Until he wasn’t.”
“Cheers.” Bridget raises her glass, and we both drink them down, finishing them off. “Now you can fuck your neighbor.”
The last drop of alcohol decides to descend my trachea instead of my esophagus, and I cough violently, choking and sputtering.
“Oh. My. God.”
I turn away from her as I continue to die.
“You did, didn’t you? You already had sex with him?!” she shrieks.
I spin back to her, my face like a forest fire. Once I’m able to breathe, I snap at her, utterly incredulous. “How can you know that? There’s no way you can possibly know that.”
“Please, bitch. I lived with you for four years in college. I know your tells like the back of my hand. If you hadn’t slept with him, you would have given me a look or laughed.
Instead, you choked. You’re crap at lying and hiding things.
Besides, the looks you two gave each other were obvious.
There was far too much heat between the two of you for it to have been a random rude neighbor thing.
Spill it. I need to know ev-er-y-thing.” She fans her face with her hand.
“I cannot believe you slept with Landon Fritz. He’s so…
hot . Like epically hot. How—” She holds up her hand, cutting herself off.
“No, wait, when did this happen?” She sighs, shaking her head.
“Just start at the beginning and spare no details.”
“This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“You didn’t. But you’re about to. Talk and while you’re at it, pour me another glass.”
“I’m not telling you what happened.”
She points at me with one hand and her glass with the other as I pour. “Pour yourself one too.”
I shake my head. “Alcohol has already gotten me into enough trouble.”
Bridget cracks up, smacking her thigh as she laughs her head off at me. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better. You have to tell me about Landon. You can’t drop a bomb like that on me and not give me the goods.”
“I didn’t drop the bomb on you. You figured it out.”
She waves me off. “Semantics. Was he good?”
I sigh, my forearms collapsing onto the counter.
The truth is, I want to talk about our night together.
And Bridget is all I’ve got. Plus, she may love her gossip, but she’d never repeat to anyone anything I tell her.
I’ve told her plenty over the years about David, and if she wanted to blather that about, she would have. She didn’t.
“He was incredible.”
She lets out an audible moan. “I knew he would be. He just has that look about him, ya know? Silently screams god in the sack. Go on. Was this the night you moved in after he saw you in your bra and panties?”
I shake my head. “It was the night I spent at the hotel before I moved in.”
Her eyes explode with surprise and interest.
“He was at the bar. Picked me up with like ten words, and before I knew what I was doing, he was in my room, and we were going at it.”
“Hot. Like super freaking hot. No wonder he was staring at you like that tonight. He was totally hate fucking you with his eyes.”
Hate fucking me. How unfortunately accurate.
“Well, we both agreed to one night, and that’s all it was. All it will ever be. He showed up tonight and was not nice. He made it clear we would not be friends or friendly and that whatever happened between us would never occur again.”
She scrunches her nose. “What a dick. Why does he have to be so dickish? Do you want a repeat?”
“No!” I exclaim, setting my glass down. “Repeats lead to things I have no room for. I can’t even handle my ex-husband.”
She takes a sip, contemplating this. “Did you tell him your story? About what happened with David? About your parents or your sister? Or… Erika?”
I shake my head, and we share a small commiserative frown. “Of course not. I didn’t even know he had a kid until I met her. I only told him I’m newly single.”
Her expression turns grim, and she reaches out, taking my hand and squeezing it. I stare down at the counter, my heart aching. “You two have a lot in common. In the worst possible way.”
“I know.”I just didn’t realize the extent of it until tonight.
“Don’t fall for him, Elle,” she pleads with a concerned tone, her eyes soft and earnest. “He’s the definition of emotionally unavailable, and you have an awful tendency to fall fast and hard, and he’s a prime target.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Good. Because I’d hate to cut a bitch if he breaks your heart.”
I roll my eyes. “Stop talking like your students. I’m fine. No hearts breaking here. He’s the last man I’d ever want to get involved with, not that I’m looking for something like that, because I’m not. Trust me. I doubt I’ll talk to Landon Fritz again beyond parent-teacher stuff.”
But right as I think it, believe that what I’m saying is the truth, that flicker of doubt—and worse, disappointment—lurks somewhere deep and dark.And that scares me most of all.