42. Thirty-eight
Thirty-eight
Fallon
“ I ’m taking you out, baby!” I imitated my favorite whoop, a touch higher than the deep rumble of the man standing baffled on his parents’ porch.
I was the cavalry, called to battle the insecurities commandeering Beau’s good sense.
His fingers wrapped tighter over the edge of the door. “Take me out? Like to a field to shoot me?”
I brushed past him, ducking beneath his arm to let myself inside. “If that’s what you want to do on our date.”
Jake had already warned me about the morning revelations. Kate wished me luck when she popped by to say goodbye on her way out of town.
“He’s a baby, but my favorite one. He’s worth the fight.”
We would figure it out. Beau had to trust us and himself to believe he deserved us just as much as we deserved him.
When Jake called me to kick some ass and hold Beau hostage if it came to it, I saluted and declared martial law. Beau may have been thrown into our lives like a grenade, but I refused to let him detonate.
I didn’t take him to a field or anywhere empty and private. We strolled along the sidewalks of the town corridor, window shopping with our hands entwined. Lunch at The Diner and a coffee afterward from the barista stand at the end of the south drag. Conversation at a bistro table with our knees pressed tight while we people-watched.
Few passersby paid us any attention, and only a couple gave us impolite stares or rude looks. Beau shifted in his seat and thumbed the lid of his drink.
“They roam the earth in all corners, Beau. You can’t avoid them. Don’t cater to them.” I gestured to the Talbots across the road, coming out of Mrs. Mather’s candy shop with their brood of children. “Not looking, not caring.”
“Because Jake’s not here, Fal. What am I supposed to do? Not touch you in public? Not touch him? I’m afraid of what will happen to you guys if I do. Like I’m a plague. It’s a shit way to live.”
“We fight for what’s important. It might be more difficult in this town, but there are more decent people than not, Beau. You’re not a burden.” I placed my fingers beneath his chin and forced him to look at me. “You’re wanted and loved. How we choose to live our lives belongs to us.”
I kissed him softly, pulling back with a smile. “Now. Let’s figure out what we need to do to help your dad. Jake is already working through some options. If anyone can take care of this, it’s him.”
“You think?” he asked quietly. “If I had a way to fix it all? You think I’d sacrifice for the people I love to make it work for them?” He relaxed in his chair, staring into the distance with unfocused eyes. His knees swung open and closed, knocking mine in between them. “Or do you think I’d be the selfish fucker who put himself first, knowing what it’d do to the people he loved?”
“Beau,” I whispered, reaching to calm his fidgeting. “You’re not selfish. You’re just as solid of a man as Jake. You’re different in ways I love and very much the same in ways I need.”
He swallowed, blinking and locking eyes with me. “You’re right. I’m getting in my head.” Clearing his throat, he took a sip of his coffee and smiled.
“Right,” I said, something not settling well with me.
His mood gave me whiplash, but Jake and I agreed to be the steady sails to guide Beau through this storm. We told Beau we’d weather the hard stuff. It looked like we had an early start to it.
I knew what it was like to feel inadequate for someone I loved. To hold responsibility for taking something away from the person you wanted to give it to the most. A failure with the deepest cut of agony.
But from that, I experienced being loved at my worst and emerging on the other side of that pain, witnessing unconditional love. Beau deserved the same.
“Let me grab my bag,” Beau said as I parked in his parents’ driveway.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, slid out of the car, and ducked back in the open window. “I won’t be long.”
“I want to say hi to your mom.”
“She’ll never allow you to leave,” he said with a sigh, “but if you’d rather sit through an interrogation instead of let me eat your pussy, so be it. There’s rosemary lemonade inside.”
Squinting into the fading afternoon light, I considered my options. “Why are you standing and wasting time? Go!”
He shut the door on my laughter, jogging up the stairs slower than I liked, but I couldn’t even text him to encourage haste when he left his phone charging in my car. It vibrated in the drink holder with an incoming call.
Silencing it, I yawned and dropped my head against the seatback. It’d been a long day.
It rang again a moment later, and I peeked open an eye. The phone quieted.
When it rang again, I worried it might be important. The name Richy Purdue flashed over the screen. I grabbed the phone and headed inside to give it to Beau. Nosy bitch that I was, it seemed a happy compromise to answering it.
I hurried up the stairs when it rang for the fourth time, hoping there was no emergency. It stopped just as I let myself into the Dalton’s house.
“We’ve decided to sell. Not everything is meant to last, and my business is no different,” Mr. Dalton said, standing off the entryway with his arms crossed.
Beau’s back was to me, his hand rubbing his head hard enough to pull out his hair.
“Are you shitting me? I told you, there are options. You have to let me fix this. It’s my fault, anyway. A summer fling that flung your entire business down the toilet. Fun that—”
“Let me finish,” Mr. Dalton interrupted, but Mrs. Dalton cleared her throat, smiling at me as she noticed my hovering.
“Fallon, honey. So lovely to see you.”
Beau turned around, his eyes going wide and his cheeks flushing. A summer fling.
“We’re thrilled that you, Jake, and Beau—” She frowned, taking in my disarray. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Do you love her?”
“I do.”
A summer fling.
“We were just having fun, right, Fal? ”
I swallowed thickly, holding up his phone. “Your phone is blowing up.” It came out wrong, almost robotic. “You have a girlfriend I don’t know about?” I forced a smile when I felt it radiating from the moment Beau’s eyes met mine.
Guilt.
A summer fling. He hadn’t intended his words for my ears, but he’d said them all the same.
He took a tentative step closer, accepting the phone and tucking it into his pocket.
“Only a boyfriend,” he said, “but I believe you’re well acquainted.”
“Cheeky monkey.” Mrs. Dalton chuckled, smoothing a hand over her hair as she continued watching me with a slight frown. “Do you want something to drink, honey? You look—”
“Beautiful as ever,” Beau interrupted, taking my elbow. “We gotta go.”
“Beau,” Mr. Dalton called, but Mrs. Dalton tugged on his sleeve.
“It can wait until later. Let them go.” She whispered something too low to hear as she dragged Mr. Dalton away. The pitied expression told me all I needed to know.
This wasn’t enough.
“Sweet girl,” Beau said gently, guiding me outside with his hand on my lower back. “You came in at the wrong moment.”
Guarding my personal space with crossed arms, I stepped away from his touch.
“It was more than a summer fling for me, Beau,” I said softly. “For Jake.”
Voice wavering, he dropped his gaze to the ground and nodded. “For me too, Fal. But my dad is going to sell. Kranz is going to lowball the hell out of him. He thinks he has no choice. If things get worse for him…”
Beau sniffled, wiping his nose and squinting toward the light sinking behind the mountains.“This was supposed to be fun, and I’ve messed it all up. I think I’m broken. Something’s not right with me. I’m defective.”
He’s going to leave us.
The sad smile he shared when he finally looked at me didn’t change the certainty once it sank into my bones.
I wanted more than he could give. Not because he didn’t love me or Jake, but because he wouldn’t allow himself to take the risk.
“You didn’t mess up anything,” I said tenderly, despite my heart breaking. “You’re perfect just the way you are, Beau. You’re not defective. You’re just as glorious as you were yesterday. Just as glorious as you’ll be tomorrow and all the tomorrows after.”
The tomorrows he wouldn’t allow us.The tomorrows I wouldn’t get because I couldn’t give him what he wanted. My heart ached with the familiar agony, the silent apologies for not being enough somehow .
We made love that night. Slow and intentional, hands digging into flesh and bodies pressed tight enough to sink into one another. Touching—we couldn’t stop touching, and I couldn’t tell if we were trying to push away from one another or pull each other closer.
I rode him, hands laced and eyes locked, sweat pebbling our skin with the efforts of our pleasure before collapsing against his neck. My chest tightened, my fast breath fanning over his damp nape as I held my tears and willed myself not to cry.
Beau held me possessively against him, our lips brushing as we panted and moaned, mouths open but not kissing. Not kissing—a call of agony echoing in our heavy gasps.
He reversed our positions, settling between my legs to thrust deep and slow, foreheads pressed together as we tried desperately to provide whatever comfort we could in a moment that felt fleeting.
“I love you, sweet girl. You let me, and I fell in love with you,” he whispered against my mouth.
I whimpered, my hands gripping the back of his head to pull him closer. Closer, I wanted him closer.
“I love you,” I breathed, swallowing down the plea for him to stay when I asked too much.
My body writhed beneath him. Held him. Loved him. Clung to him.
When we collapsed in bed, sleep elusive for both of us, he took me again. All night, we found our way to each other.
The sun rose on a new morning, and Beau was up early for work.
“Say goodbye before you go. Please,” I whispered. “You left without saying goodbye last time. If you’re going to leave, say goodbye first.”
The belt buckle jingled in the quiet room, his hands fastening it before pulling on a hoodie from the dresser—Jake’s hoodie. And I hated him at that moment. Hated him for what this would do to Jake.
“I’ll pop by the center later,” he murmured. “Do you want me to bring you dinner?”
“No.” I rolled onto my side, eyes fixed on the light breaking through the curtains. “Have a good day, Beau.”
His feet shuffled over the carpet as he stepped closer. He stopped short of the bed, clearing his throat. “I love you, Fallon.”
I was supposed to be the calvary, a unified front with Jake. I wondered who would disappoint him more. Beau for his willingness to leave, or me for letting him.
“You, too,” I whispered.
Beau didn’t come to the center, but Jake did.
“Hey, baby.” He hugged me despite my protests and swatting hands when I pointed out the teenagers in the audience.
Curious eyes drifted from the tables, a few kids whispering and capitalizing on the distraction.
“They’re supposed to be working on their resumes,” I said quietly, carting him off. “Took me forever to get them in here. Teenagers think every moment is for socializing.”
Jake followed me out of the room and around the corner to an empty hallway. “Every moment is for socializing when you’re a teenager,” he murmured, scratching his arm and shuffling.
Noting his agitation, I tried to ease the energy. “Says the grumpiest of the grumpy goats?”
He huffed a soft laugh, jamming his hands into his pockets. His heavy work boot kicked against the floor, the squeak of leather echoing over the tile. “Have you seen Beau?”
Muddled answers and explanations held tight in my throat.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get him to stay.
We can’t make him, no matter how much we want him to. This scares him.
I failed you, and this will hurt.
Will I be enough for you?
Where should we bury the body when you catch up with him?
But the words remained on the tip of my tongue, and I closed my mouth and shook my head instead of answering him.
Scratching the stubble on his neck, he nodded once and kissed my temple. “All right. I’ll see you at home, baby.”
Jake was gone before the fleeting thought occurred to me. Wouldn’t he have seen Beau if he’d just finished work?
Maybe something had come up since clocking out. That had to be it. I needed that to be it.
Another hour later, after an anxious drive home, I pulled into the driveway. Two cars took up the space, with Beau’s Honda parked beside Jake’s truck.
My heart beat wildly, and my clammy palms clutched the steering wheel. I parallel parked behind, blocking them both in.