13. Nick
Chapter 13
Nick
I ’ve made quite the mess. This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done—and the best. I’ve never been so fucking happy, or so fucking scared that I’ve blown up my entire life. I want to lie in this sweaty, sticky heap forever, Melanie locked in my arms, and I want to bundle her into my truck and drive her to Aspen to meet my mom. I’m deliriously tired—and plain old delirious.
Melanie’s warm and pliant underneath me, so beautiful it makes my chest ache. I take a few moments to kiss her—her flushed cheeks, her softly closed eyelids, her not-so-proper-after-all mouth. She hangs onto me, as if she’s as reluctant to let go as I am. Her hair is damp, my cum is drying on her inner thighs, and there are goosebumps on her arms. The goosebumps are what finally motivate me to move. The faster I get us cleaned up, the sooner I can tuck her under the covers of the bed we haven’t debauched yet and warm her up.
“Hang tight, baby,” I say, punctuating the sentence with one more kiss to her forehead.
I make short work of cleaning myself up, then return to her equipped with a warm washcloth. She’s right where I left her, looking dazed and sleepy. Understandable, given recent events. I’m pretty dazed, too, because the sight of her splayed out on the bed is intoxicating. It’s almost unbelievable that she’s naked, that I’ve not only kissed her again but we’ve also said all the things we’ve said, and followed through on all those threats and promises.
I sit next to her on the bed while I clean her off. Her eyes flutter open and she watches my movements. When I smile at her she smiles back, but she’s uncharacteristically quiet. I should say something. Something sexy and cool, that won’t undo the progress we made. Something that won’t send her running the moment we get back to Denver. What I want to say, over and over, is, “Mine.”
“How’re you feeling?” I manage instead .
“Um, sticky?” she says, pushing up to sit. “I’ll be right back.”
She takes the washcloth out of my hands and slips off the bed. She wobbles to the bathroom on Bambi legs—that Disney I’ve seen—and it’s more than a little gratifying. The bathroom door shuts and I swipe a hand over my face, as if that will clear my mind. I can’t tell if she’s quiet ’cause she’s exhausted, or if something else is going on.
I fold up the absurd privacy screen and lean it against the wall, out of the way. Then I sink into Melanie’s bed with a satisfied groan. The pillows smell like her shampoo—a little sweet, a little floral, entirely perfect. She can yell at me in the morning if she likes, but tonight I’m falling asleep with my nose buried in her hair. I want to be near her, every way I can.
The bathroom door squeaks and I open my eyes. I hadn’t realized they were closed. Melanie’s standing between the beds, looking at me nervously. What’s she nervous about now? Why isn’t she lying on top of me?
“Are we switching beds?” she asks.
“Huh? No. Get in bed with me.” I pause, thinking better of the demand. “Please.”
She chews her lip. “It’s not too…intimate?”
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Baby, don’t get shy on me now. If holding you while we sleep were too intimate, I wouldn’t have put my dick inside you.”
Her cheeks go bright red, but when I fold back the comforter she crawls in next to me, where she belongs. She nestles against my side, I kiss her forehead, and the mountain of exhaustion we’ve been fleeing catches up to us and pulls us under.
Melanie’s in bed when I come back from feeding GT the next morning. She’s not asleep, though she’s doing a pretty decent job of pretending. Why she feels the need to pretend isn’t clear. I kick off my boots quietly, playing along with her. Since she’s still naked under the sheets, I slip out of my clothes before rejoining her—even playing field and whatnot. Then, acting like I haven’t noticed the difference between her slack-mouthed, drooling sleep face and the soft, relaxed expression she’s holding in place just so, I pull her into my arms and kiss her temple.
“It’s morning,” I say. “We’ve got to get moving, baby.”
I wish we could take the morning slowly. After the way I royally fucked up our first kiss—and the next one—I’m determined to do better today. In an ideal world, I’d bring her breakfast in bed, we’d talk about last night, and then I’d fuck her again, however she wants me to. Repeat as needed, until she falls in love with me. Forever and ever, until death do us part. Et cetera.
I may be a bit obsessed with her.
In the real world, we’re going to have to discuss the exact nature of our relationship over take-out coffee in the cab of my truck while we drive back home through the mountains. The only advantage is that I’ll have her undivided attention for nine hours, so if the conversation goes my way and she wants to be mine, it’ll be a pleasant drive. If last night was nothing but a pressure release for her, it’s going to be hell. My money’s on the former; I saw the look in her eyes when she said she needs me. There was more to that look than physical desire.
Melanie hums happily, then stretches her legs under the covers. Her skin glides along mine and if we’re not out of this bed in five minutes, we might never leave it. I’m already half-hard; it would take very little to persuade me to kiss Melanie the rest of the way awake to see what she begs for this time.
“GT’s all set in the stables. Once we’re packed, we can check out, get him in the trailer, and head home. You get enough sleep?” I ask.
She hums again, clearly awake, but she’s not answering my question or opening her eyes. A sliver of unease pricks at me, just under the skin.
“Melanie, is there a reason you’re pretending you can’t hear me?”
There’s a pause, then she whispers, “Yeah.”
“Care to share with the class?”
She sighs so hard that the end of the noise is more growl than exhale. “Don’t want to find out last night was a one-time deal. If I never get up, it’s never morning, and so it’s last night forever, and you can’t run away.”
That’s a fair reaction, given my track record. But it also puts a smile on my face so damn big I can actually feel the muscles in my face stretching, unused to the movement. I skate my fingertips up her spine until I can palm the back of her neck and tilt her face up to mine. She still won’t open her eyes, which is as adorable as it is frustrating.
“Do you remember what I told you last night before I gave in to your demands?” I ask .
Her eyes pop open, indignation all over her face. “Demands? I—” She stops, registering my cheerful expression, then blushes. “You’ll have to be more specific. You said, um, kind of a lot.”
Fair again. I hadn’t planned to rant and rave at her, but the second she stepped out in that tissue-thin robe, I was in trouble. It was only a matter of time before everything I’d held back over the past few days burst out. One of those myriad statements, however, is more important than the rest.
“I told you if we went down this road, I couldn’t go back,” I tell her. “I meant it. I don’t…I’m not good at people. It’s not easy for me to make connections, or…Look, the point is, I’m not running anymore. I have feelings for you. I want more than sex, and a hell of a lot more than one night, and if there wasn’t a high-maintenance animal waiting outside for us to take him home, I’d already be showing you exactly what I mean.”
Feelings is a serious understatement. I blew right past feelings and into complete goner days ago. I knew the second she got in my truck Thursday morning, red-eyed and sullen, that I loved her. One look at her misery, and I didn’t give a fuck about horses or show jumping or sticking it to my dad. All I cared about was undoing the hurt. The only reason I didn’t demand we stay in Colorado and talk things out is because she cares about show jumping. I’m not going to take it from her like her parents tried to, or stand in the way of her goals.
That’s where I worry things get complicated. She thinks she didn’t place yesterday because I stopped kissing her; I’m scared it’s because I kissed her in the first place. I’m even more terrified that if she doesn’t place again this season, she’ll blame me, and I’ll lose her before we’ve even had a chance to begin. It’s a lot of pressure on a situation that’s already high stakes. But now that I’ve given into my desire—now that I’ve dragged her down with me—we can’t undo this. We’re in it, so we have to navigate it.
“You don’t have to…that is, I’m not expecting…,” I fumble. “Is this just physical for you, or…?”
Jesus, I need her to say something.
Pink blooms over her cheeks. The only thing I want more than to kiss that blush is to hear her tell me she has feelings for me, too. I don’t expect her to love me; not when she’s still nursing her heartbreak from a certain irritatingly helpful lawyer. But I think I can be patient enough to have pieces of her heart until it’s whole enough for her to fall in love again. If I’m not the man she falls in love with—no problem. I’ll just set fire to the ranch, change my name, and move to another continent to live out the rest of my days in furious solitude.
“I have feelings, too,” she says. “For you, that is. I have feelings for you, not just feelings in general. Not just physical ones, but emotional. I guess all feelings are kind of emotional if you think—”
I kiss her, to put us both out of this sweet misery. Her lips curve against mine in an obvious smile. She’s straddling my hips a moment later, and then I stop worrying about the future for a while, because my present deserves my full attention.
The drive home is better than I imagined. The hours zip by while we sing along—badly—to a playlist Melanie’s titled, “Post-Competition Songs (Bummer Version),” that consists almost entirely of eighties power ballads. We don’t talk about our relationship or the exact nature of the feelings we’ve admitted. But every once in a while, I glance over to find her gazing at me with something close to wonder, and I can’t believe how fucking lucky I am. It feels too good to be true that everything’s working out so well for me. Nothing in my life has ever been this straightforward before. It’s a marvel—but part of me is waiting for the complicated part to show up.
As we get closer to home, Melanie starts to flag. I’m sure she’s tired, ’cause I sure as hell am. We packed a lot into the past forty-eight hours. Forty miles from Denver, she gets fidgety. I’m about to ask if we need to pull over so she can take a whiz when she finally speaks up.
“Yesterday you said something about having personal stuff going on Wednesday that contributed to the crappy way the night ended,” she says, though her tone is more like a question than a statement.
And there’s the complicated part, right on schedule.
My first instinct is to tell her not to worry about it, but that’s never gone terribly well for us. Last time I used that line, it earned me a slammed door and a suit jacket to the face. I’m reluctant to bring up Paul, though. His Holiness has taken up enough space in my life—and Melanie’s—already .
I don’t need to encourage comparisons. He’s got four years of private jokes, shared memories, and romantic nights with her. And that’s before we get into the fact of him being more wealthy and powerful than I could ever dream of being. It’s just about my least favorite topic, so I take a different, but still honest, route.
“With my mom doing what she does, and my work being what it is, I’ve spent a lot of time with people like your parents, and the folks at the art thing where we met,” I start. “Ninety percent of the time, people like that make sure to remind me early and often that I’m beneath them. I’m only in their world with their permission, and only to do their bidding.”
I don’t look at her, even though I can feel her eyes on me. It’s uncomfortable saying shit like this out loud, especially when I’m criticizing her peers. But I want to be close to her more than I want to be comfortable, so I push on.
“I hadn’t felt like that in a long time, and…I didn’t think I could ever…I wanted you so badly, and I couldn’t imagine a world where you wanted me the same way. It got to me.”
She reaches out and cards her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck a few times. If I weren’t driving, I’d shut my eyes and lean into the touch, let her sweep away the discomfort.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t be. Wasn’t your fault.”
“Not on Wednesday, maybe. But before it was,” she says. “When I came to your ranch the first time and got in your face about your tack, I talked down to you. I assumed you didn’t know what you were doing. I thought of show jumping as my world, and you existed outside of it. I was wrong.”
I shrug. “You didn’t know me yet. Had no reason to like me. I didn’t like you much at that particular point in time, either, but you’ve grown on me.”
I snag her hand off the back of my neck and bring it to my lips to brush a kiss against her knuckles, then put it back. She slips her fingers into my hair again and I nudge the gas pedal down further. I need to get her home, now, where I can give her my full attention.
She doesn’t leave her hand where I put it, though; she’s right back to fidgeting.
“What else is bugging you, baby?” I ask.
“It’s probably nothing,” she says.
“We’ll never know if you don’t tell me.”
She sighs again. “Don’t be mad at him, but Edwin may have mentioned that you’re not really big on commitment. ”
“Edwin’s full of shit,” I protest. “I may not have had many relationships, or any that lasted all that long, but not because I’m opposed to the idea. I just don’t see the point in sticking around where I’m not wanted, or where I don’t want to be. But Melanie, believe me when I say that I want to be with you. This isn’t some flight of fancy, or something I started up ’cause I was bored. I’m yours, baby. As long as you want me.”
I’m hers even if she doesn’t want me, frankly.
She’s quiet beside me, my words hanging in the air between us. The sign for the exit for her neighborhood appears on the horizon. A lead weight sinks in my stomach. I’m not ready to say goodbye, but I don’t want to make any assumptions, especially with the turn the conversation’s taken.
“Am I dropping you off at home?” I ask in the most neutral tone I can summon.
She wilts a little in her seat. Thank fuck.
“Oh, uh…I can help you with GT first,” she says.
“Miss Manners, what do you really want?”
I cut my eyes toward her and am pleased to see she’s watching me closely. Eyes back on the road, I smile. She drags her fingers across my shoulder, then along my arm to the elbow before the light, teasing contact disappears.
“I want you to invite me over,” she says. “I want to eat dinner together, and talk strategy for the rest of the season’s competitions. Then I want to go directly to your bedroom and screw like bunnies ’til we’re too tired to keep going.”
My smile turns into a full-on grin. “It’s ‘fuck like rabbits,’ baby,” I correct. “Can’t fool me anymore. I know you’re not as buttoned up as you like people to think. But otherwise, it’s a perfect plan.”
I reach out and she slips her hand into mine.
“Come home with me, Melanie. Have dinner with me. Let’s talk horses, then fuck ’til we drop.”
“Okay,” she says, then she leans over to kiss my cheek.
I blow by her exit and something in my chest settles. We’ve cleared another jump. I don’t know how many more stand between us and the finish line, but I’m not giving up this momentum. From here on out, it’s eyes forward, mind the turns, hope like hell. There’s nothing else I can do.