Chapter 9
nine
brADY
I tried to keep my focus on my phone conversation with the sheriff’s office, but I was too aware of Mac pacing nearby. And what we’d been doing before being interrupted.
“I’m sorry. What was that?” I asked the woman to repeat her question, forcing my eyes away from Mac’s disheveled hair and smeared lipstick. She looked messy and untethered and fucking perfect.
“Are you in danger? Is the trespasser still on the property?” the dispatcher asked.
Clearing my throat, I replied, “No, ma’am. They’ve fled the scene.”
I watched as Mac worked to piece herself back together, stacking her bricks and putting her walls back into place. But there was no way I could wipe away the memory of her coming on my lap. The heat of her, the spicy-sweet scent, the way her thighs had gripped my hips. Jesus .
I forced myself to look away again and finished up with the call a few minutes later. “They’re sending someone out.”
“Okay. Good.” Mac wouldn’t meet my gaze. Her cheeks were somewhere between rosy pink and violent red, and if I was a betting man, I’d say it wasn’t the cold causing her flush.
“Do I need to stay for this part?” she asked .
I frowned. “Of course. They’ll want your statement as a witness.”
“Right.” She blew out a breath.
“You might want to ...” I gestured to my mouth. “Your lipstick is ...”
“All over your face,” she finished for me and then started using her thumb to wipe away the evidence.
But there was no wishing this away or pretending nothing happened. She could fight it all she wanted, but things had definitely escalated. Stakeout make-out for the win.
When I finished rubbing my hands over my mouth and chin, I eyed Mac’s still-tense posture, the way she was avoiding me already. I didn’t think I could do this every time something happened between us. It was one step forward, three steps back. At this rate, it would take her a year to admit she had feelings for me and another decade before we got married.
So, I did what I thought might speed things along. “Thinking of making a break for it?”
Mac’s attention came to me, and I resisted a fist pump. “No,” she snapped.
I chuckled, rocking back on my heels. “You sure? Because you look like you’re ready to run.” Her eyes narrowed, and I added smugly, “Again.” I might as well have called her a coward and reminded her that running was exactly what she’d done after the first time we’d kissed.
“I’m not going anywhere. If the cops want to talk to me, then I’ll tell them what happened.”
“Well, we probably shouldn’t tell them everything that happened.”
She sucked in a breath as if she was shocked I’d bring it up.
“I’m fine to keep the stakeout make-out between you and me,” I offered.
Mac groaned. “Please don’t call it that.”
Grinning, I said, “I can’t help it. It has such a nice ring to it.”
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t be so smug about this whole thing if you’d been the one embarrassing yourself on top of a hay bale?— ”
“Technically, you were on top of me ,” I interrupted.
But she ignored me and kept right on talking. “—having an orgasm ,” she hissed, “without even taking your pants off.”
I nodded seriously. “Well, it is cold out here. If I didn’t have my pants on, I’d probably have a hard time, incidentally, rising to the occasion.”
But Mac wasn’t laughing at my joke. Hell, she wouldn’t even look at me. For the first time, I realized she was more than a little embarrassed. She was dead serious.
“Mac,” I said, making sure I had her attention. “I swear, if you are ashamed or humiliated right now, I will lose my mind. It was hot as hell. Feeling you come apart like that was ...” I struggled to find the words. “Unbelievable. A fucking revelation. For the love of sweet tea and Dolly Parton, do not be embarrassed. If that car hadn’t interrupted us, you wouldn’t have been alone in the orgasm department. I would have been right behind you, coming in my pants like a teenager.”
Mac’s expression was surprised and a little shell-shocked. But then her gray eyes narrowed, shadows of mistrust and years of animosity sneaking out around the edges. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
I laughed incredulously and waved a hand in the general direction of my zipper, where I was still half hard and hopeful.
“Oh,” she breathed, eyes trained on my pants. “Well, maybe?—”
Before I got the chance to hear the end of that sentence, an SUV from the sheriff’s department came down the drive with lights on but no sirens. It caught Mac’s attention, and she turned away, whatever she’d been about to say forgotten.
I sighed, thinking what piss-poor timing we had and wondering what she’d had in mind. Well, maybe ... we could pick up where we left off? Maybe ... now that I know how it could be with clothes on, we could try it without? Maybe ... I could suck you off behind that hay bale? Any of those would have been fantastic options.
Instead, I took the opportunity to quickly adjust myself in my jeans and followed Mac to the parking lot to meet the deputy climbing out of his vehicle. In the harsh automatic floodlights, I noticed they’d sent Jamie Matthews. He’d been a couple of years ahead of us in school and a star on the football team. He was still tall and muscular beneath his uniform, but I had a few inches on him now.
Jamie nodded stiffly in greeting when he reached us.
“The chain was down. They cut the lock on the gate with bolt cutters,” the deputy said, eyes scanning the area, straight to business.
Damn . Last time, the gate had still been latched, and they’d walked onto the property. That made me wonder what they’d been planning to do if they’d needed a getaway car.
“Yeah, we latched it around nine,” I said.
Jamie nodded. “What time would you say it was when you heard the vehicle?”
I pulled out my phone to look at my call log because I hadn’t even thought to check the time right when it happened. But Mac answered, “It was 10:04. I checked my watch right after.”
The deputy’s eyes narrowed, and he glanced between us. “What were y’all doing out here?”
“Nothing,” Mac replied at the same time I said, “Stargazing.”
She looked at me with wide eyes, like I was crazy.
“What was that?” Jamie repeated, obviously confused.
Again, we spoke at the same time. “Stakeout,” I answered truthfully while Mac said loudly over me, “Working.”
“But don’t you work across the street?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, a touch belligerent.
“She’s visiting,” I offered.
“It’s pretty late to be working,” he said, pulling out a notebook and writing something down. “Or visiting.”
“Busy season,” Mac and I replied in unison.
Jamie took our statements, asking minimal questions. He looked at the bald spots in the gravel where the vehicle’s tires had spun. I mentioned that the movement had been out of the range of the motion-sensor cameras because there’d been no evidence on video.
“And you don’t have any idea about the make and model of the vehicle?” he asked, pen poised over his notepad.
“I didn’t get a good look,” Mac admitted. “But it might have been a sedan, not an SUV or a truck.”
I stayed quiet, irritated with myself for being distracted. But it wasn’t like I could admit I hadn’t seen a thing because I’d accidentally head-butted Mac and was worried I’d hurt her. Not to mention the fact that there had been absolutely no blood in my brain at the time because it had all been in my dick.
“A sedan,” he repeated. Jamie didn’t look like he believed her, but he scribbled another note. “I’m just really surprised y’all didn’t see or hear anything.”
I wouldn’t have heard a plane landing in the field behind us with Mac riding my lap, but after a glance in her direction, I figured I shouldn’t say that part out loud. But holy shit, it had been good. So good. The sounds she’d made. The way she’d held on for?—
I blinked back into the conversation after taking a bony elbow to the ribs. “Ow.” Both Mac and the deputy were staring at me expectantly, and I figured I’d missed part of the discussion. That was fine because this joker wasn’t taking us seriously anyway. Straightening, I asked, “Sorry, what was that?”
“I said,” Jamie exaggerated just shy of an eye roll, “I’ll be sure to add this incident to the file. Please get in touch if you think of anything else.” His eyes lingered briefly on the hay bales and our makeshift stakeout station before he nodded and climbed back in his vehicle.
Mac and I watched him drive away in silence.
Finally, she turned to face me, and I wished I didn’t know her as well as I did. I was losing her. I could feel the cold of the night and the distance between us like a tangible thing. The way she’d closed herself off to me, to us—to the possibility of it.
So, I panicked. I reached her in two strides and wrapped my arms around her, bringing my lips to hers. The kiss wasn’t rough or frantic. It was soft and deliberate, a reminder that I was here—right here—if only she’d bother to notice me. She kissed me back, and I wanted to sigh out in relief.
I was tired of feeling like I had to talk her into this every time. I didn’t want to take those three steps back. I wanted to stay right here, on the same page.
With shaking hands, I rubbed my palms up and down her back. I broke the kiss and rested my forehead against hers, keeping my eyes closed and lingering in this moment for a little longer. I needed to handle this right. I couldn’t rush her and scare her off.
For one more maddening time tonight, we spoke at the same time.
“Can I take you out?” I asked right as she said, “We should have sex.”
My brain short-circuited, and I pulled back, eyes snapping open. “What?”
“Wait, what did you say?” she wondered, her dark brows creased.
“What did you say?” I fired back, heart racing. I’d heard her, but I didn’t understand. “We should have sex?”
Mac bit her lip and then nodded. “Yeah, I think we should. Clearly, we have something”—she gestured between us—“some attraction or whatever going on. We should just get it out of our systems.”
She wanted to . . . oh .
I stared at her, mind reeling, and wondered how the hell I was going to handle this. I couldn’t come right out and tell her I loved her and wanted to be with her. She wasn’t ready for that.
Part of me thought I should just take her up on her offer. It felt shallow and wrong, not nearly enough. But maybe if she just had time to see how good we could be together, maybe?—
What the hell was wrong with me? Why was I feeling disappointed by the possibility of sex?
Because , I thought, you know one time won’t ever be enough .
“It doesn’t have to be a big deal,” she was saying. “It’s just sex.”
It wouldn’t be just anything to me .
I laughed even though she’d unknowingly taken an ice pick to my heart. “Are you propositioning me, Mac Daddy?”
“No, Jesus. I just thought it would ...” Mac’s eyes scanned my face like the words she was searching for were hidden there. “I just thought it might fix whatever is happening here.”
Fix . Like we were broken.
I cleared the roughness and disappointment from my throat. “And we’d just go back to normal after?”
Mac swallowed and retreated a step. “Listen, if you don’t want to, that’s fine by me.”
I laughed again, nearly breathless with relief that she hadn’t actually answered my question. There was no going back for me. “Look at you backpedaling,” I teased. “You training for the Tour de France?”
She gritted her teeth, and I grinned.
This was the moment. I could tell her I wanted to date her and lose her for good, or I could go along with her stupid get-it-out-of-our-systems plan and have more time with her.
As if I’d ever be able to extricate her. I couldn’t separate our histories or untangle all my memories. There was no going back for either of us. She just didn’t know it yet.
I simply had to hope that when the time came, once wouldn’t be enough for her either.
“Well, I just want you to know that I require a little more than that. I need to be wooed and romanced before I put out.”
“What?” she laughed incredulously.
“I’m not that easy.”
Mac blinked. “Well, you seemed pretty easy to me on that hay bale over there.”
“Oh really? Because one of us got off on that hay bale over there, and it wasn’t me.” It almost was, though .
Mac glared at the reminder, but I pressed on, “I want a date first. Dinner or a movie. Something.”
She hesitated.
“Is that so much to ask, Mac? Really?”
She watched me for a long moment as if she was weighing the pros and cons, like maybe getting naked with me might not be worth it if she was subjected to a meal beforehand.
Finally, her gaze drifted to my lips, and she said, “Fine. But I get to pick. And it’s one night, Judd. One. Then we’ll never speak of it again.”
The following day, I got a text from an unknown number: I’ll pick you up Friday at 6:30.
I grinned and updated the contact info.
Me: Is this one of those phishing scams? Are you, a stranger, trying to gain my trust so I’ll buy your bitcoins or something?
Miggity Miggity Mac: No, you idiot. It’s Mac. I’ll pick you up Friday for our date.*
Me: What’s the asterisk for?
Miggity Miggity Mac: Because it’s not a real date. More like terms and conditions.
Me: I think you meant it’s like how fields marked with an asterisk are required, because if you want to get this hot bod into bed, it’s a real date.
Miggity Miggity Mac: Did you just say “hot bod”?
Miggity Miggity Mac: I changed my mind. No sex.
Me: Where are you taking me?
Me: Wait. Don’t tell me. I love surprises.
Miggity Miggity Mac: Be ready at 6:30. If you’re late because you’re fixing your hair, I will leave you .
Me: You can’t just honk at the curb. You have to come to the door.
Miggity Miggity Mac: You cannot be serious.
Me: Oh, but I am. Prepare to wine and dine me. See above: hot bod.
Miggity Miggity Mac: 6:30!
Two days later, I was staring out the windshield of Mac’s Jeep as she shifted into park. “You brought us to a farm?”
I hadn’t made her come to my door after all. I’d been waiting outside my building when she pulled up at 6:26 p.m. I’d spent the forty-five-minute drive north picking songs to make her laugh and teasing her over the playlists on her phone. My goal had been to put her at ease. With the way she was gripping the steering wheel and trying not to look at me when I first hopped in the vehicle, I was worried this night would be over before it even got anywhere near a bedroom.
“Well, yeah,” Mac said now, giving me a funny look. “It’s almost Halloween. I thought it would be fun.”
I guess I was surprised to see she’d brought us to a tourist attraction for our date. That was sort of our everyday reality.
Halloween was tomorrow, and this place was packed. The Haunted Forest in Weaverville opened every October for a season of scaring. People paid to get chased through the woods by masked figures wielding chainless chainsaws and other props. I’d been a few times growing up.
I waited, suspicious of her motivations.
She blew out a breath. “And I didn’t want to do this in town where people would see us, okay?”
Ah, there it was.
A humorless chuckle left my lips. “You ashamed of me, Maximus?”
“Brady,” she groaned, exasperation evident, “do you really want to sit and have dinner down at Apollo’s while everybody and their brother comes up to us wondering what the hell we’re doing together? ”
I frowned. “Well, I do like their garlic knots.”
She gave me a flat stare. “You know how nosy our town is. It seemed better to, you know, keep this between us since it’s temporary.”
“One night,” I murmured, feeling that ice pick chip off another piece of my heart. What would I do if Mac woke up tomorrow—after everything—and was content to go about her life ... without me? Would she really be able to act like nothing had happened?
“That’s right. One night,” she agreed, but her eyes skittered away and she quickly climbed out of the Jeep.
I followed as we made our way to the ticket booth, where I had to practically wrestle Mac to the ground in order to pay for our admission. I reminded her that the date was my idea, and she argued with me for a solid three minutes while the line behind us got longer and more aggravated and a bored teenage employee looked on in annoyance.
“Will you hold my hand if I get scared?” I whispered in her ear as we waited with our group for our turn to go into the haunted forest.
She turned her head to look at me, and we were so close I could see that swirling gray storm in her eyes. I wanted to lean in and brush my nose against hers, kiss those red lips slow and deep, and hold her hand, too. But I didn’t know where the lines were drawn. Did “just sex” mean to hell with everything else? Or was there freedom in our affections because we were away from Kirby Falls?
While I was busy overthinking it, Mac took the opportunity to bring her lips to my ear. She rose onto her tiptoes and steadied herself with a hand on my shoulder. My hands went to her waist, so eager to have her close.
“First one to scream has to buy the other one a hot chocolate.” She pulled back and tilted her head in the direction of the haunted concession stand.
I grinned, happy to play along. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
As Mac lowered her heels to the ground, I reluctantly released my hold.
A moment later, a man named Harold, dressed in dirty overalls and carrying a baseball bat, called for our group’s attention. The dozen or so paying customers gathered around while the Haunted Forest employee explained the rules. Basically, there were a series of paths. We could take whichever ones we wanted; they all ended up in the same place—an open field in the middle of the forest next to a small building. I knew from experience that our group would be ushered into the shed, where the workers would play out a scene meant to scare us. The man in the overalls made sure to note that we were not allowed to touch the employees. And they were prohibited from touching us in return.
Mac listened intently, and I wondered if she was taking notes for Grandpappy’s. They already did special ticketed nights in October when their corn maze turned haunted. They hired high schoolers in hockey masks to chase people while loud music played and strobe lights flashed. It was one more shock-value entertainment that Grandpappy’s provided that a smaller farm like Judd’s couldn’t compete with.
“Y’all ready to run for your lives?” Harold asked with a wicked gleam in his eye.
There was a chorus of yeahs from several folks in our group. We moved as one toward the main path, but our orderly line was quickly dispersed as a person in a Scream mask jumped out behind us, revving a chainsaw engine.
People took off, separating and darting down different paths. The jump scare startled a laugh out of Mac, but she kept up a leisurely pace. I stayed beside her as most of our group bolted through the trees, leaving us to bring up the rear.
“You know, I’m not sure this is my idea of romantic,” I said after the Scream -mask person revved their chainsaw again and went after the teenagers who’d gone down the trail to the right.
Mac shot me a look. “Who said anything about romance?”
“I did. Very specifically, when you begged for a night in my bed.”
She stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “Hold up, lover boy. Begged? That is not what happened.”
With a smirk, I replied, “Well, that’s the way I remembered it.”
Mac opened her mouth to argue, I was sure, but her eyes widened over my shoulder. “Oh shit.”
I turned and did a double take when I saw a huge guy dressed in a scary clown costume—he had to be six and a half feet tall—with a deranged expression painted on his face in bright, garish stage makeup. Fake blood splatter was all over his colorful clown suit, and he stalked toward us with an ax held in one meaty fist.
“Ugh, not clowns,” I heard Mac moan from behind me.
Grinning, I spun back and grabbed her hand. “Let’s go, scaredy Mac.”
“I’m not scared.” But she definitely squeaked that last word out as the giant clown man growled and darted forward, raising his ax.
I laughed, pulling Mac down the central path as we ran over packed dirt and pine needles. The clown stayed with us—probably sent to herd the stragglers so they could keep our group moving. I heard a chainsaw off to the right, so I kept us running straight.
We slowed as we rounded a bend in the path, and a black light lit the immediate area. I started as a coffin propped beneath the light rattled and shook, shouts coming from within. Just as we passed by, someone dressed as a vampire jumped out and lunged for us.
Mac and I shuffled out of the way, laughing as we went. Out of the range of the black light, the trail grew darker. It widened considerably, and I thought we must be getting close to the shack that was our destination.
“The clown’s back,” Mac breathed, squeezing my hand.
“I think I see lights ahead for the shed,” I told her, glancing over my shoulder to see the manic clown bearing down on us. “Let’s run for it.”
We took off, Mac’s hand in mine, and I thought maybe her idea of a date wasn’t so bad after all. But then, as we reached full speed, my foot hit the ground, and it felt all wrong. My knee buckled as the hard-packed dirt turned to something soft and unexpected. I went down, bracing for impact and then grateful when I fell flat out onto a springy surface. I had only a moment to appreciate that I hadn’t busted my face on the ground before Mac landed fully on top of me.
I wheezed out a breath and tried to roll over, but we were all panic and limbs, and Mac was laughing so hard that she couldn’t speak.
I glanced around, but the clown was nowhere to be found. We were lying on an old mattress that had been imbedded in the dirt, flush with the surrounding ground. Jesus, this place was lucky they hadn’t broken someone’s leg and gotten sued .
“Are you okay?” I asked once I finally maneuvered Mac down beside me.
She was still laughing. “Oh my God. I saw you go down, and I couldn’t stop.” Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes.
I grinned over at her and teased, “I knew you wanted to get me in bed, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Mac cackled again.
I stood on shaky legs and stepped onto the dirt trail. Holding a hand out, I pulled her up to join me. “Come on, let’s go before that demon clown comes back.”
We made it to the shed and survived the fake slaughterhouse encounter there. The path to the exit was through a graveyard, and we didn’t see our clown friend again. Mac and I jumped and shouted when we were startled, then we teased each other and laughed in between.
I had fun, and I knew I wasn’t the only one. She smiled and joked and didn’t even complain when I wrapped my hand around hers again. We warmed up around the fire pit back near the entrance.
As our time at the farm wound down, I wondered what would happen when we got back to my place. Nerves settled in the pit of my stomach as I thought about the end result of this date—the only purpose, really. Mac wanted to have sex to dispel whatever inconvenient attraction she’d been feeling. The one that made her kiss me in my truck weeks ago and climb onto my lap Tuesday night.
She thought this was all physical and problematic.
I watched her as we drove back to Kirby Falls, unsure if I could actually go through with this when our aims were so different.
She wanted tonight, and I wanted a chance.
I wasn’t sure where that left us, but I had a feeling I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Mac was stubborn and determined.
You couldn’t make someone love you if they weren’t ready. There was every chance I was setting myself up for disappointment. We could wake up tomorrow, and Mac might really be over it.
The thing about taking what you could get was that you didn’t get to pitch a fit when it blew up in your face.