8. Nova
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I grit, storming up the sidewalk toward the cottage.
I mean, who does he think he is? He can’t just waltz onto my island, steal my friends and then make me look like a fool in front of everyone.
Wait, that was Crusty with his rendition of Greatest Love Songs of All Time.
“Who said I was following you?” I can’t think with Reid near. Especially not in those damned jeans that make his butt look like the Michelin of butts.
“Go home.”
He chuckles, a dark sound that both irritates me and fills me with warmth . . . which irritates me even more. “In case you forgot, my home is right in front of your home.”
I’m going to throw my shoe at his head.
“That can be rearranged.”
He doesn’t stop at the inn—somehow, I knew he wouldn’t. He’s just got to be annoying and follow me up the hill toward the cottage.
“Not following me, huh?”
“You aren’t walking home by yourself in the dark?”
“I’m a big girl,” I growl. “I’ve been walking this path for over twenty years by myself.”
“And if I let you do it alone, tonight, and something happens, you know who’s getting castrated and hung in the town square.”
“Right now, castration seems to be like a fine option.”
Some deep, recessed part of myself knows, without a doubt, I can trust Reid with my life. Maybe that’s why his presence is so overwhelming. Like he’s swallowing all the air out of my lungs with a single glance. Maybe that’s why I can’t get him out of my head.
“Who’s to say you aren’t following me up here to murder me yourself?”
“Could be,” he murmurs darkly as I reach the stairs of the cottage.
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re a pain in the fucking ass,” he grits, reaching out and grabbing my hand, just as I step up onto the porch. “Want to tell me why you’re so pissed off? Was Crusty’s love ballad a little too much or was it the man at the bar?”
Both, but I’ll be damned if he knows that.
God, what I wouldn’t give to still be tipsy.
“What did he want?”
The audacity of this man.
“You and I barely know each other, Reid. Why do you care?”
“I don’t.”
“So, why are you harassing me about it?”
Something flashes across his normally indifferent gaze. I force myself to take a step back, out of his grasp because it’s just too much. “Because you do.”
“Oh, because you’re the only person allowed to piss me off?” His jaw ticks, but he doesn’t answer me.
“What did he want, Nova?”
I swallow down the shakiness in my voice before I make a fool out of myself. Reid doesn’t care about my problems any more than he cares about helping me fix the inn. This island, the inn . . . me . . . it’s a distraction. Something to occupy his time before he leaves.
“He wanted to buy the inn.”
“And?”
“They’ve been hounding me for months.”
“Who has?”
“I don’t know,” I snap, wrapping my arms around myself. Goosebumps rise on my skin from the chilly air blowing in off the Atlantic. A storm will be coming soon and in Port Nova, they can be deadly if you’re caught out in one. “Some company from Portland.”
“And you’ve told them no?”
“I tell them no every time, they just always manage to find me.”
His eyes flare with a darkness I’ve never seen before. A sinister possessiveness that he tries to hide, but I can see it.
And it’s fucking terrifying.
“My mom and dad want me to do it and get rid of the place.”
“And you don’t want to.” It’s not a question.
I shrug, fighting against the tear threatening to slip down my cheek and failing miserably.
“It’s home.”
“Home is wherever you make it, Nova.”
I shake my head. That’s where he’s wrong. “For you. Home for me is right here when I spent all my best days growing up. Giving up on the inn is giving up on myself. My grandparents and everything they started.”
“So don’t.”
I can’t help but laugh, shaking my head. Of course, he doesn’t get it. “Thanks for the advice.”
“I’m serious. If you don’t want to sell, don’t. No one can force you. Your grandparents are signing it over to you, anyway. It’s all in what you’re willing to do for yourself, Nova. Not worrying about what anyone else thinks is the first step of that.”
I’ve never outright gone against Mom and Dad’s wishes. They’ve always been there for me. With the accident. With the aftermath.
“I can’t just go against what my parents want, Reid.”
He steps up onto the porch and I step back, mostly to get out of the range of the scent of his skin. Warm, like the sun. Foresty, like the thick trees behind the cottage. Salty, like the ocean.
“When do you do something you want to do, Nova?” He says it so quietly, almost like a whisper.
When do I do the things I like to do?
Shit. “I do do the things I like.”
“Okay, and what are they?”
Double shit. “Well, I paint. I read. I . . .” I stammer a lot. God, Nova. Get it together. He’s not that hot.
Okay, maybe he is, but he’s still so a raging asshole.
Slowly, carefully . . . as if he’s stalking me, he steps closer. I step back, my ass grazing the wood siding of the cottage behind me, but I can’t take my eyes off him. Not when he steals my breath away. Not when that gaze makes me feel like my heart will beat out of my chest.
He stops, a mere inch separating us, and his hand comes to rest on the wall beside my head. His arms—they’re as thick as my thigh. I’m sure he could break me if he wanted.
“Reid.” My voice comes out as a whisper, almost completely drowned out from the waves crashing against the rocks below the cliff the cottage sits on. I swallow past the lump in my throat, willing the heat in my body to calm down.
I’ve never been like . . . this. I’ve never been the type of woman to crave a man’s hands on me. To feel the callouses on his palms rubbing my bare skin.
At least not until now.
He’s so close I can feel the heat of him radiating through my clothes. Part of me wants to step closer, the other, more rational part, wanting to back away and go to bed.
Gently, he leans down, not really kissing me. More like stealing my air. Sucking the life from me through a single breath at a time until I’m dizzy with the taste of him.
It’s never been this intense before,my brain whispers, but I refuse to focus on it. If I do . . . it’ll destroy me.
“What are you hiding from, little bird?”
His voice is deep, husky, and so quiet, I almost don’t hear him say it. My stomach dips at the way the pet name rolls off his tongue. I don’t know why. It’s not special, but something about the dark look in his eyes makes my heart falter in my chest.
I want his kiss. I want to taste him . . .
In that instant, I throw caution to the wind and close the inches between us, pressing my lips to his and giving in to the temptation I’ve felt since I met him.
Only, he doesn’t kiss me back.
He stills, not even breathing and my head starts to break through the lavender haze over my brain.
“Nova,” he murmurs against my lips, his voice dark. I pause, pulling back just enough to look at him, even though I should be running the other direction. In his eyes . . . it’s a warning. Keep pushing and something bad will happen.
Unfortunately, I seemed to have taken a liking to danger.
I kiss him again and this time . . . this time he doesn’t hold back.
He groans, his hand slipping to my hair and fisting it at the roots to tug me closer to him. His kiss is devouring, dominating. Fierce and demanding. It’s like being consumed by fire. You know it’s burning you, but you’re powerless to fight it.
My stomach explodes with butterflies the moment his tongue slips between my lips and meets mine, my arms tangling around his neck and his roaming my body. He presses me between his front and the wood paneling and I can feel his hardness resting against my stomach.
I whimper and he swallows the sound, his hand slipping down to my side and back up, ghosting over the sides of my breasts before slipping lower to grip my hip in bruising strength.
I break the kiss to breathe, but he doesn’t stop, his fingers tightening in my hair and tugging my head to the side so he can nip my neck where it meets my jaw with a rough growl.
I’ve never been consumed by a man. I’ve never been able to stay out of my own head during sex, but right now, it feels like I’m walking that thin line between reality and fantasy and my head is swimming.
There’s a fire burning in my core and the need to quench it overpowers anything my head could say right now. I inch closer, practically begging this stranger to put it out, as if my morals took a leap off the cliff.
He sucks at the flesh on my neck, marring the skin, and I gasp as a new wave of warmth floods through me. I have no idea if it’s possible to come from just a kiss, but I am more than willing to find out right now.
When I roll my hips, Reid positions himself so his knee is resting between my thighs, pressing against my sex, and though we’re separated by two layers of denim, the friction makes me moan out loud, like a feral animal.
I’ve never made a noise like that in my life.
I should be embarrassed. I have no idea if I could be heard by anyone in town, but I don’t care. Especially not when Reid’s fingers at my hip tighten even more and he rolls me over his thigh. My eyes shutter closed and a gasp leaves my lips when he repeats the motion over and over until I’m rolling my hips with him.
“Fuck,” he rasps, his hand in my hair tightening until I’m sure he’s going to rip a few strands out. I grit my teeth at the pain from my scalp, but still, I roll my hips against him, seeking the fire he’s stirring inside me like salvation.
My fingers slip down the back of his shirt, over the hard muscles to rake across the bare flesh there. Mark him as he’s marking me and he hisses through his teeth, pushing me back completely against the house and rolling his hips with me.
It’s erotic. Sexual. Too charged to be normal.
“Keep riding me,” he orders, voice gruff. Demanding. “Make yourself come.”
The heat in my body reaches a fever pitch where I’m sure I’ll either die or come. Whichever comes first. He continues to roll me against him, stroking a fire in the deepest recesses of myself until a sudden, blinding light takes over and I have to chase it.
The moan that leaves my lips when I come is something I’m not sure I’ll ever match again. Blinding, white hot light shoots behind my eyes and fills my entire body with a thousand tiny zaps, rendering me a shaking mess and clinging to Reid like he’s a life preserver in the vast Atlantic.
I’m panting and shivering when the high slowly starts to wear off and Reid is kissing my neck, everywhere and everywhere in a hurry, as if he can’t wait to devour me whole.
“Fuck, you looked so pretty riding me.”
A tremor rolls through me, and I pull back to look at him. I want to take him to my bed. In the living room. I would settle for right here, so long as he doesn’t stop touching me.
Then, Toast barks from inside the house and the thoughts start to trickle in. Like sick, poisonous toxic waste leaking into the ocean.
A weight falls on my shoulders and alarm bells ring, blaring sirens and bright flashing arrows, pointing at me as if to say look at this adulterous whore.
My chest grows tight, nearly suffocating me, and Reid must notice something is wrong because he stills save for his heavy breathing, pulling back and meeting my gaze with a dark look.
“Nova.”
The ring upstairs hidden in my underwear drawer calls to me like a ghost or a possessed toy. A siren.
When it calls, I go because it’s better than feeling the crushing weight of it’s reappearance later.
My eyes burn, slick with tears and anxiety swells in my stomach.
I’m crumbling.
I want to kiss Reid. I want to live. I want to outrun these demons chasing me.
I just can’t.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I turn in Reid’s arms and unlock my door. “I’m sorry. Goodnight, Reid.”
Closing the door, I leave him standing outside it, watching me with a look that’s both confused and riddled with dark understanding even I can’t quite make sense of.
I sink to the floor, just inside the door, my body still trembling with the aftershocks of the first orgasm a man has given me in nearly four years and listen to the sounds of Reid’s footsteps as they fade away.
I want to chase him, but doing so is betraying everything I already promised.
God, Jack’s mom was right.
I really am a horrible girl.
I started painting sunken ships after the accident as some kind of my own morbid therapy. Don’t ask me why it works, but whenever I have a nightmare, I usually find myself up here in my little corner of the world, mixing blues and greens, covering a once-huge, ocean-worthy vessel in my own version of turmoil.
There’s something beautiful about a ship at the bottom of the sea. Haunting, but beautiful.
I like to paint in the alcove of my bedroom on the second story of the cottage.
The small window overlooks the town and everything looks peaceful from up here. I’ve found in the summer, I can open the window and listen to the early morning birds chirp outside while I let myself get lost for a little while.
Before the crash, I was an art teacher at a public school in Portland.
I know, the dreaded public school.
Honestly, though, I loved those kids like they were my own nieces and nephews. I loved teaching them about art, watching them get better. Seeing them smile.
Only, when the accident happened, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as my family, let alone thirty kids.
When I lost my job because I couldn’t show up on time, it was just another blow to the back of the head. I had already moved back in with my parents at that point. I had already driven away every friend I had, except for Katelyn. I was numb.
Until the early hours of the morning.
Often times I look back at how far my mental health has come and I can say I’m proud. Other times, like this morning, I wake up from a nightmare about that night and realize I still have a very, very long way to go.
That’s the thing about grief. One moment, you’re angry. The next you break down against your living room door because you finally let someone get close to you after a long, long time of staying as far away from other people as possible.
I didn’t ask Reid to show up. He just did.
Now, I can’t get him out of my head.
I can’t hate him like I want to and that makes me angry.
Despite how grumpy he can be, he can also be kind, fixing things he sees need to be repaired and not expecting any payment for it. He’s a hard worker. Hotter than sin.
I tried to hate him, but I mean, really? Who could?
Last night was a mistake. I’ll admit it, but in the moment it felt so damned good to give myself to someone who wants me. Who makes me feel like if he doesn’t touch me, he’s going to lose his mind.
It’s dangerous, I know. This affection only goes skin deep. He doesn’t know what really goes on in my head. If he did, he would run the other way. I have too much baggage for a man like Reid to stick around and navigate through. I’m . . . damaged in the most irreparable way and that ring in my underwear drawer proves it.
I made a promise. I intend to keep it because that’s what good people do. You don’t walk out on your responsibilities because someone else makes you feel good.
At least, that’s what I tell myself to get through the days.