Chapter Twenty-one
I dozed hard but my internal alarm clock woke me up on the darker side of dawn. The bedroom window was open, letting in the cold ocean air. It made me burrow down under the fluffy comforter and press up against the warmth that was at my back.
Judging by the hard length of the dude pressing between the backs of my thighs, I was not the only one awake. Ever accommodating, I lifted one thigh, giving the man better access. He moved my hair to kiss the nape of my neck, making it tricky for him to wrap his rascal before sliding into my wet heat.
We both gasped at the contact. He didn’t move, instead letting his fingers roam all over my curves as if enjoying having something to play with in the wee hours of the morning.
“Hey,” he whispered in my ear.
His voice was low and gritty, and it made me push my ass back against him. He caught my hips as if knowing that if I were given the chance, I would bang him right into unconsciousness. Here’s the great thing about a guy with early wood, they have like no control. I let him think he was steering the ship and then as soon as he relaxed against me, I started to move.
“Jules.” His voice had that delicious note of warning that I so loved to disregard.
“What?” I asked.
Somehow, I managed to sound like a complete innocent, even as I was guiding his hand over my hip and putting it right on that spot that loved his callused fingertips rubbing against it. My head fell back against his shoulder, and he took complete advantage of it, letting his lips trail across my skin until every pleasure point in me, seriously, exploded.
“Oh, god,” he grunted. “I can feel you coming.”
My vagina was clenching so hard around his cock it felt as if it was trying to choke it out. There was a tense moment where the pleasure was so close to pain that I gasped. It was terrifying how good we felt coming together and a part of me almost shoved away from him, as if I was giving away too much by being together like this. I chose to be brave and ride it out, and just like catching a perfect wave, it was worth every bit of fear to find the bliss.
I reached back and clung to him as he began to move inside me, drawing out my orgasm and following it with his own. Once the tremors subsided and our breathing slowed, he pulled me in tight. His body was pressed against mine and I was sure I had never felt this close to anyone in my life.
We were never going to be more in sync than we were right now, so I figured this was as good a time as any to get to the heart of it.
“What happened between you and Courtney?” I asked.
He stilled. I rolled in his arms so I could look up at him. He rubbed a hand over his face and I could see each whisker of stubble that I’d felt gently abrading my skin. I reached my hand up to run over his chin. I liked the way it tickled my palm. Our eyes met and he leaned down, kissing me quick.
“You found out her name, huh?”
I shrugged. Couldn’t deny that.
“I broke up with her.”
“When?” It shouldn’t have mattered but, yeah, it totally did. I needed to know if the breakup happened because of our previous night together, my not-so-subtle stalking, or because of something completely unrelated to me. Call it ego, but I really hoped the last one wasn’t the case.
He blew out a breath and eyed the space between our bodies. I pressed closer, getting his attention most definitely downstairs. He glanced up at me and his expression was rueful.
“If I tell you, do you promise not to be mad?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes...I could think of only one reason why I would be mad.
“You haven’t broken up with her yet, have you?” I braced both hands against his chest to shove him off me.
The blanket dropped down around his waist, and I was confronted by half naked Liam with his muscly arms and sculpted torso on full display. For a second, I forgot why I was supposed to be irritated. A second was all he needed to grab me and flatten me beneath him with my hands trapped in his.
“Yes, I have,” he said. “I wouldn’t have slept with you otherwise.”
“But we slept together the other night—” My voice trailed off and he looked at me, one eyebrow raised, as if he was waiting for me to do the math. “You had already broken up with her by then? Seriously? When?”
“The night I found you under the lemon tree and held you in my arms while you cried about your mom,” he admitted. “While I was holding you, I felt as if you were giving me back a piece of myself that had been missing for a very long time. I didn’t know what would happen between us, but I knew I was never going to feel about anyone the way I felt about you, and it wasn’t fair to her, so I ended it that day.”
I stared at him for a moment going over the timeline in my head. That meant that when he was so mean after our first night together, which would also be when he said he was getting married, he had lied to me.
“You lied to me,” I said. “And you were really, really mean.”
I thrashed beneath him. No idea why. It wasn’t as if I really wanted to get away or push him off, but it felt like I was supposed to take some sort of moral stand on this lying thing. Yeah, me, the one with secrets up the wazoo was being all high and mighty. He relaxed his weight on top of me, making it even harder to buck up against him.
“Aw, come on, surfer girl,” he cajoled, which was nearly impossible to resist. “Don’t be mad. Honestly, what happened that first night scared the hell out of me and I panicked. I know it was a dick move to treat you the way I did, and I have no excuse. I guess I was just trying not to fall too hard too fast, and potentially I was getting even with you for leaving me for Jessie nine years ago.” He sighed. “I am really sorry.”
And just like that the fight went out of me. This was the thing about Liam. Not counting the fibs we’d told our parents so we could be together when we were young, Liam was the most honest and self-aware man I’d ever known. Back in the day, I’d had no idea how incredibly rare that was. Now I knew. Just like I knew I had hurt him so badly when I left that I couldn’t blame him for exacting some payback.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. I had so much to make amends for,
but given that the truth wasn’t just mine to tell, I didn’t know how to start or where to begin.
“There’s so much I need to explain to you,” I said. “I want to tell you some stuff to make things right between us, but—”
“No,” he interrupted.
Something flickered in his eyes, a flash of pain or jealousy. It was gone before I could get a bead on it, but it put me on notice that he might not be ready to have that conversation just yet.
“You already said you were sorry for leaving me,” he said. “Why don’t we just leave it at that for now and start over?”
“Do you really think that’s possible, new boy?” I desperately did not want to lose this man again.
He stared into my eyes, looking for something. He must have found it because a slow smile turned up the corners of his full lips. He leaned in and whispered, “I think we’ve already started.”
After more sexy time, heaven help me, I rose from the bed and began to get dressed.
“You don’t have to go,” Liam protested.
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Babs, being Babs, put it in her will that Soph, Em and I have to live together in her house for the next three months, and by that she meant sleeping there every night, or our entire inheritance goes to our cousin Paisley.”
“What? That’s mental.”
“That’s Babs.”
He studied me while I slid back into my yoga pants and sports bra. A slow grin spread across his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Three months,” he said. “I have three months to convince you to stay.”
My heart swelled until I thought it might explode. He wanted me to stay. There was still so much I needed to tell him, but the fact that he wanted me here made me giddy. Still, I tried to play it cool.
“I suppose it’s always good to have a project, new boy,” I teased.
He tugged me back onto the bed by the waistband of my pants and kissed me stupid. Then he walked me downstairs to the door, watching as I floated my way over the short wall that separated our front yards until I got back home.
Em was in the same place that I’d left her. I didn’t wake her up but took the recliner next to her and fell into an exhausted slumber.
It was three hours later when I awoke to the sound of Soph in the kitchen, using Babs’s smoothie maker to whip up some foul concoction to cure the hangover that was looming over Em like a fog of hurt.
I stretched and glanced at her slouched body. In my loudest conversational voice, I asked, “Em-bryo, how are you this morning?”
“Not funny.” Em groaned, opening her eyes to mere slits, and then quickly closing them with a hiss. “How were things with the boy next door?”
“Amazing!” It felt like my smile might split my face wide open.
Em held up a hand as if to ward off a light. “Stop that. Sheesh, your post-coital glow is practically nuclear.”
“She’s right.” Soph joined us carrying a large glass with a very green beverage in it. Ew. “I’m surprised you don’t have sparklers shooting out your fingertips, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll try and turn it down for you all.”
They looked at me expectantly while I tried to wrestle the smile from my face. “Yeah, sorry, I think I have an advanced case of perma-grin.”
“Did the two of you at least talk?” Soph asked.
“Yes, well, a little bit.” I told them about Liam breaking up with Courtney right after he consoled me about Babs’s death. Soph made an “aw” face while Em shrugged.
“That doesn’t excuse his mantrum on the first night you two got together,” Em said. “He was straight-up mean.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “But he owned it and he apologized. Besides, you have to remember how much I hurt him when I left town with Jessie.”
“Which you still haven’t explained to him or us.” Em reached for the green beverage Soph held out to her and took a long chug. “Oh, ergh, ugh.”
While she gagged, I looked questioningly at Soph, who shrugged. “It’ll either make her feel better or wish for death, hard to say.”
“I hate you both, go away.” Em flopped back onto the divan, which was an invitation for Soph and I to snuggle into her. “Stop. Go away!”
“No can do, little sister,” Soph said. “Because we lurve you.”
“If I promise to never ever drink tequila again, will you go away?” Em asked.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll be drinking tequila again, whether we leave you right now or not,” I said. “After a night like yours, you won’t even be able to smell tequila without gagging for, like, five years.”
“Five years would be fine with me,” Em said. “Especially since I’m going to join a convent today. Clearly, I should not be allowed to run loose.”
“Our Catholic Dad would be very proud, but that’s a tad extreme. Maybe you could dial it back, just a little.” Soph’s voice was serious as she wrapped an arm around Em. “I know you’re hurting but we’ll get through it together.”
A couple of tears spilled from under Em’s closed eyes and she nodded. “It’s just so hard. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
I pulled out my phone and opened her social media page. “Really? Because the rest of the world knows who you are. I swear with this many followers, you’re trending, even with hurl shots of you and the biker chick. Oh, my god, was her name really Daisy?”
Em cracked one eye open. “Ugh.”
“Come on,” Soph said. “Your public awaits your latest post. Let’s get you showered so you don’t offend them.”
“Nope.” Em dug her own phone out of her hip pocket. “I’m trying to be one-hundred-percent authentic with everything I’m doing. So, here goes: hungover selfie with sisters.” She held up the camera, which was not kind to her ratted blue hair and smudged mascara. After my sexual gymnastics of the night before, I didn’t look much better. Only Soph managed to appear pretty and serene as Em ordered, “Say ‘tequila’ girls.”
Em snapped a pic and uploaded it to her account with the hashtags Emily, grief, and sisters. In moments, the responses were lighting up her phone. She sighed and tucked her phone away without reading the comments. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was her way of holding herself accountable while taking charge of her life for the very first time. With every decision she made, she allowed strangers to weigh in and support or shun her. Little sis was braver than me, that was for damn sure.
I knew I was channeling my grief into fixing my relationship with Liam. It occurred to me that Babs’s death had forced me to complete the unfinished business in my life, which had always been my relationship with him.
As Em conked out on the divan, Soph smoothed her wild hair back and tucked the blanket more snuggly about her. Soph seemed to be the only one of the three of us who was steady as she goes. Even though her husband was a big jerk, and her children were almost grown and gone, or maybe because of all that, she seemed centered and right on course. Then again, maybe it was just that her denial ran deeper than ours. Hard to say.
“I failed Em by not noticing what she was going through,” I said. “I don’t want to do the same with you. What’s going on in your life, Soph, because while you seem very together, I feel like something is wrong and it’s not just the twins going away. What is it?”
She looked at me in surprise as if no one ever really asked her how she was feeling about things. Two emotions slammed into me pretty hard. One was that her husband was an asshole if he wasn’t helping her through the grief of losing her mother and from what I’d seen of Stan since I’d arrived, it was a safe assumption that he was doing jack shit. Jerk. And two, was a blast of shame that I was the worst sister ever, because not only had I not clued in to Em’s struggle with her emotions, I hadn’t really been there for Soph either.
Yes, I’d been away for a long time, and I was out of practice with the day-to-day sister stuff but still, I was better than this or at least I should have been after weeks of living together.
“I’m okay,” Soph said. “I’m taking it day by day, trying not to dump too much of it on my family. Mostly, it still seems surreal, like I can’t believe that she’s actually gone.”
I glanced at Babs’s urn on the windowsill, where she’d spent the night watching over her baby with the hangover. Her snazzy urn sparkled in the morning light.
“Maybe it’s because she’s got us all living here for the next few months,” I said. “But I don’t really feel like she’s gone, every move I make feels like she’s right there with me, judging me.”
Soph followed my gaze to the windowsill. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Babs’s hold is strong, even from the grave. Honestly, I don’t really mind. It makes me feel less alone.”
She said it plainly without too much thought and no heavy emotion. It was just a fact, and it occurred to me then that despite the husband and the twins, Soph was lonely. Well, that was easily fixable and unlike Em’s frantic emotional swings, this I could manage.
“Liam and I are going to the art show this afternoon,” I said. “Wear something pretty because you’re coming with us.”
“On your date?” Soph asked in horror. “No, thank you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did it sound optional?” I asked. “It isn’t. We’re all going. You, Em, the twins, and Stan if he can manage to tear himself away from the golf course.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think—”
“Again, not optional,” I said. “We’re a family and we’re going to spend some time together and have fun, damn it.”
“Well, when you put it like that, how can a girl refuse?” Soph’s voice was grumbly, but I couldn’t help notice that a small smile played on her lips.