Chapter 17 Quiet Moments
Chapter 17
quiet moments
Fact. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
All she had on beneath the [ BOOK-TRO-VERT ] * NOUN: A PERSON WHO PREFERS FICTIONAL CHARACTERS TO REAL PEOPLE T-shirt, which hung down to her thighs, was possibly a thong. Possibly.
Since he couldn’t prove it one way or the other, he’d go with completely naked beneath the soft cotton.
Her hair was in a towel, her face was fresh from makeup, and those silky legs were on delicious display. Then there was the way her breasts moved slightly back and forth seductively, attracting his gaze, as she made her way into the bedroom.
She hadn’t spotted him yet. So he allowed himself to really look at her in this unguarded moment, and what he saw took his breath away. How could he be so damn drawn to the woman who picked a fight with him every step of the way?
She didn’t pick a fight this morning , he reminded himself. When Randy had so easily identified himself as part of the Russo family, it had been an unexpected hit to the gut. The emotion caused by the sucker punch had been part a sense of loss and part jealousy. He understood the loss. Here he was trying to solidify a relationship with his brother and Randy was already jumping ship. But the jealousy?
Once upon a time, Wes had craved a family. He’d squashed that desire years ago. Then why was he envious of the idea of Randy spending holidays, birthdays, and summer vacations at the beach house with the Russos? Sure, Wes might get an invite here or there, but it would always be as Randy’s plus-one. And that gave him heartburn.
Jesus. He ran a hand down his face. One kiss. One talk with her dad. A few days of summer fun. And here he was wishing for things he couldn’t have. When this week came to an end, and they went back to their regularly scheduled lives, he wouldn’t even be a blip on their family radar. Unless he could change Summer’s mind, he’d also go back to being her enemy.
But there had been a shift between them this morning. A gentle coming-together when they were both hurting that had felt surprisingly good. As a rule, Wes didn’t rely on the comfort of others because he never knew when it was going to be yanked out from under him. But Summer somehow had this effect on him that he couldn’t explain. It wasn’t weakness so much as a rightness. He knew she felt it too.
Hell, she’d initiated it. He’d nearly sighed aloud when her toe had nudged his. Then she’d rested her foot side by side with his, showing him support. Validating his feelings without him even understanding what he was feeling.
Like right now, he didn’t know what he was feeling. Lust? Like? Both? Certainly not indifferent. Which was why when she took her towel off her head and went to bend over to retie it, he made his presence known.
“Once again I am overdressed,” he said amusedly, and she squeaked. “Or is it that you can’t keep your clothes on around me?”
Her hands went straight to her bum, and she tugged the hem of her shirt down to her knees. Which only made her tits stand out more.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s bedtime.” He patted the mattress next to him and she rolled her eyes. “Just waiting for you to finish up in the loo.”
“You could have announced yourself. What kind of knight in shining armor are you?”
“Of course you believe in knights in shining armor. Why am I even surprised. What is it called in that love guide of yours?” He grinned at the idea that she’d call it a guide. As if finding love were as easy as following a few simple steps. “An imperfectly perfect meet-cute?”
“It’s not enough for you that I’m physically vulnerable, you have to make me emotionally vulnerable? And this is not a meet-cute. This is the opposite. This is a meet-ugly.”
He looked around the room and then back to her. “I don’t know. The moon is full, the night alive with the sound of water gently rushing over river rock, and we’ve just had a chance encounter where the hero finds the heroine fresh from the shower, in nothing but an old shirt. Sounds like a meet-cute to me.”
“What do you even know about meet-cutes?”
“According to the Cupid’s Guide to Love , we’ve shared several meet-cutes.”
“You’ve read my guide? That’s personal!”
“Then you might not want to leave it open on the bedside table.”
“I would say a gentleman wouldn’t snoop, but then again a gentleman also wouldn’t steal a woman’s bed.”
“I’m not stealing. You have a whole half to yourself.” He gave it another pat.
“Nope, tonight I’m sleeping on the top bunk.”
She angrily flicked off the light, which only made it more intimate. The moonlight shining through the slit in the blinds illuminated her form—every curve and athletic inch. The way the light caught her eyes, it made them look like tumblers of whisky.
He watched as she strode across the room. She paused at the bed as if deciding what to do, and his heart stopped dead in his chest. He was thrown by how much he wanted her in his arms again. Because she didn’t know it, but he’d held her all night and it had been amazing. Her body had nuzzled against his, relaxed and missing the usual tension she carried from all the stress she took on for herself and her family. He no longer liked being a part of that stress.
“I’ll sleep up top,” he offered, standing.
“No, you’re right. You’re too big for the top bunk.”
“I don’t mind sharing. Unless you’re afraid you’ll move from spooning to forking?”
He expected her to snort and blow it off; instead she looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “Yes. And can we leave it at that?”
His voice was rough when he said, “Yes.” Although the last thing he wanted was to stop talking now that she was opening up. She’d done her best to avoid him today by going on walks with Buttercup and reading down at the beach, but he’d been hyper-aware of her since their game of footsie.
He watched her shadow gracefully walk up the ladder and heard the mattress sink as she lay down. Breathed deeply as the scent of her shampoo drifted between the mattresses, and strained his ears, waiting for her to speak. But she didn’t.
An intense silence blanketed the room, where all they could hear was each other’s breathing. The longer it went on the harder his breathing became, until his lungs just gave up. Right when he was about to crack, to ask her about her day, she whispered, “Name one.”
He rolled onto his back and stared at the piece of wood that separated them. “One what?”
“A meet-cute.”
“Well, when you had my guys’ cars ticketed and then I tried to have your car towed. That would be an enemies-to-lovers meet-cute. There was the coincidence of the dating app. And we can’t forget the time we both showed up to find the other on their vacation—that would be a serendipitous meet-cute. Then there’s the one bed.”
“There’s two beds, you’re just stubborn.”
“Fine. The sharing the bed—forced proximity.”
“We’re not sharing a bed,” she said, so quietly he nearly missed it.
“Love, you might be on a different mattress but you know damn well we’re sharing a bed.”
To his surprise she didn’t argue. “Name another one.”
“We’ve got the opposites-attract thing going, and now, this.”
Even though he wasn’t sure what this was, he was enjoying it. When they bantered her eyes lit up, and her smile was damn beautiful. It didn’t hurt that she was in nothing but a T-shirt, but his attraction to her in that moment went way behind the physical.
“You mean the hate-to-love trope?”
He chuckled. “Love, you don’t hate me. In fact, I think you might even like me.”
“You’re dreaming again.”
He closed his eyes and smiled. “Maybe I am.”
Her answer was silence. Which he gave her. He let her have the space she needed to digest what was happening between them. Another foundation in a romance novel—sharing secrets. He had a secret to share and didn’t want to miss the opportunity.
“I want to apologize.”
“For what?” she asked.
“I promised to make things easier on you and I’ve been pushing your buttons.”
“You like to push them.” The sound of her voice said she wasn’t as opposed to his pushing as she was letting on.
“Not when it hurts. When I’m uncomfortable I like to banter but I think you see it as me picking on you. But it’s the exact opposite, and I’d never want to hurt you.”
“I make you uncomfortable?”
If he was wrong about that then what else was he wrong about. “Love, you scramble my brain.”
He could hear her shift onto her side, and scooch to the edge of the mattress so that she was as close to him as she could get without falling off the bed.
“I apologized to Autumn today,” she admitted.
“I wanted to ask you how it went but I didn’t want to pry.”
“She accepted my apology but didn’t really apologize back.”
“That must have hurt.” He knew that kind of hurt. Never once, after all the rejection and neglect, had his father ever apologized. Wes had overcome it, but Summer was so emotionally in tune with the world around her, such a people-pleaser—even at the risk of her own heart—he imagined it must have stung. “Is that normal?”
“Yes, but it never really bothered me until today,” she said. “I realized it’s a pattern between us that I don’t like. But I don’t know how to fix it. I mean, was I wrong last night? Shouldn’t a couple include the other when doing something as important as buying a house together? Or at least give their partner a heads-up before announcing the news at family breakfast.”
I would want my partner with me, but Randy and I are very different. He’s the grand gesture, I’m the steady day-to-day kind of guy.”
“There’s nothing wrong with steady.”
He took in her words and let them settle. His past girlfriends had complained that he was so stable and steady that there was no room for impulsiveness. He imagined that after a while Summer would come to the same conclusion.
“You and Autumn seem to be different in a lot of ways too.”
“That’s becoming more and more apparent every day. I just don’t want to get lost in the shuffle.”
Feeling as if she needed human contact at that moment, he held his arm up and was surprised when she took his hand. “I know what that feels like. When Randy was born my dad lost interest in me. Why dote on a bastard kid when you have the real thing?”
“I’m not sure how to even respond to that,” she admitted, giving his hand a squeeze. “My dad gave me all the love and support I needed, and I can’t imagine how it would feel to be robbed of that. It makes me mad that you didn’t have the same opportunity to experience love.”
He held onto her like she was his lifeline, a deep sense of understanding arching between them through the simple contact of holding hands.
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Did we just go from frenemies to confidants?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Isn’t that another foundation of a meet-cute: sharing secrets? Who knows? Next you might find yourself kissing me in the river.”
“You kissed me,” she argued, but her grip on his hand seemed to tighten. “But it doesn’t matter who kissed who and who kissed who back, it isn’t going to happen again, Wes. We have four days left of this trip, and then we go back to being enemies.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Doesn’t it?” she whispered. “Right now, it’s easy to forget what’s waiting for us back home. It’s easy to pretend that the kiss wasn’t a mistake. But when we get back, I’ll still be in the shadows of your behemoth bookstore, and one bad month from closing my doors forever.”
“The kiss might not have been planned, but it wasn’t a mistake,” he said, hoping to god she recanted her statement. That kiss had been one of the best moments of his year. He’d felt more alive, more passionate, more adamant that he was headed in the right direction than at any time since he’d received the call that his father had passed—when he’d been, for the first time, the chosen one, only he hadn’t wanted to be chosen. Now, when it came to Summer, deep down in the depths of his soul that he didn’t like to acknowledge much, he wanted to be chosen by her.
“Summer, you can’t avoid this topic forever. At some point you’re going to have to be honest with me. And if I truly was a regret on your part, then I’m sorry. But I don’t think that’s the truth. And I don’t want to talk about it until you can give me the truth.”
“Good night, Wes,” she said, avoiding the question, but he noticed she didn’t let go of his hand straight away.