Chapter 22 #2
“In order to make dramatic, toe-curling, orgasmic love,” she finishes with a wide grin.
Just saying the words out loud makes her blush, and I kind of wish she’d keep going just to see how far she’ll go.
“Why do you think I was grabbing the latest one back from you at the party? No need for you to read that.”
“No need to read your public-selling books that a stalker is using to send messages to you?” I ask.
She shrugs, rubbing her neck with the back of her fist.
“How did you learn to write like that, anyway?”
“Spicy scenes?” she asks, looking at me like I must already know. Her cheeks match her ears, and she shifts on her chair. “I think we already covered this earlier, didn’t we?”
“I definitely don’t remember covering your knack for sex scenes earlier.”
“Okay. Well . . .” She pauses to swallow. “I’m only a year younger than you, and you weren’t the only one figuring yourself out these last ten years.” She eyes me, opening the door to my imagination, which I immediately shut down.
Shifting my gaze back to the flames, I have no interest in confirming that her books were inspired by her real life. Her confirmation is what I was afraid of. “Right. Makes sense,” I say, my voice tight.
“Do we need to discuss this further?” she asks, her voice bending in delight.
Absolutely not. The way her lips curve up into an arrogant smirk over this particular topic does something primal to my body. I’m all for discussing sex, but not how Bailey learned to write about it.
“Uh, do we need to discuss the way you’ve learned to write love scenes?” I ask, feeling hot under the collar. “I think some things are better left unsaid, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re mistaken,” she answers quietly.
“How so?”
“Because I wasn’t the one asking,” she says.
“You were.” Then a smirk fills her face, and I wonder if she’s trying to make me jealous.
“Rhett Monroe . . .” Her voice is suddenly dripping with sass.
“You seem to have a problem with me writing about certain actions. Is there anything more you’d like to share on that? ”
I spin the bill of my hat around and kneel in the sand to turn both fish over in the pan, not sure if the heat I’m feeling in my face is from her words or the fire. Likely both.
Thud. Thud.
Two more pine cones land on the porch; however, this time Bailey hardly moves.
“You’re Axel’s little sister.” I shoot her a side glance. “Why would I want to know what you’ve learned in a bedroom? You can flag those chapters for me to skip when you hand over your latest book so I can figure out this guy’s next move.”
“No thanks.” She shrugs. “It’s best when read in its full form, so I guess you’re out of luck on that one.”
I frown. “Outside the sex, I’m a little curious about why you don’t want me to read your books while the rest of the world gets to read them whenever they want.”
“Well, you’re welcome to start at the beginning with that one you got at the bookstore. I won’t stop you. The seventeen-year-old in me is thrilled you want to read my work, but I can tell you everything that you want to know without you wasting your time reading this last one, if you’d like.”
Thud.
A second squirrel with a long, bushy tail scampers out across the deck to join Bob, and I wonder if Bob’s the jealous type, too.
“What do you mean the seventeen-year-old in you is thrilled?” I ask, watching her face for whatever she’s not saying out loud.
“Oh, like you don’t already know,” she answers, picking up the stick I’ve just been using to poke the fire. She turns a few rocks beneath the grate, deliberately avoiding my eyes.
“Like I don’t already know what?” I ask.
“Rhett, if you’re going to pretend like you really had no idea back then . . .” she trails off, grinning.
“No idea about what?” I ask, watching her closely.
“We aren’t as young anymore, so I guess it’s funnier now to admit,” she begins, keeping her eyes to the ground.
“Admit what?” I pry.
She inhales long and deep before muttering what sounds like fuck it under her breath, lifting her eyes to the sky.
Then she turns to me, her gaze melting into mine.
“We’re adults. It was a long time ago. So you don’t need to pretend like you don’t know that I had the biggest, most soul-murdering teenage crush on you back then,” she admits, unleashing a sigh at the end of her confession. “It was painful how much I wanted you to notice me.”
“Notice you?” I repeat, shifting my eyes back to the fire. This is going to be trouble if she can see what I know is already taking over my face.
“Oh my God, you already knew!” she moans, dropping her head in her hand, laughing. “Of course you knew. What boy can’t detect when a girl likes them?”
“You’d be surprised.”
She waits a beat while we continue watching the fire crackle. Then I realize how much this is making her uncomfortable when another pine cone drops, and this time, she doesn’t jump at all. She’s just waiting for me to say more.
The silence grows and extends over both of us, creating one big, awkward bubble.
She glances at me the exact second I glance at her.
Then she widens her eyes, and I quickly look back at the fire.
Fucking hell.
I don’t know the right way to handle this. It’s already the perfect storm, her and I alone at the cabins like this. Me trying not to get distracted for one millisecond of our time here. But now she’s confessing to an old crush? While we talk about sex scenes she’s written?
It’s almost too much for me to call in all my old distraction tactics. She’s right here in front of me, without another soul around. Fucking hell. I can’t even remember why I thought I should stay away from her in the first place while we’re here at the lake.
At some point, she’s had enough.
She throws her arms out.
“That’s it? I make this big, embarrassing confession of intense teenage lust after you and that’s all you give me? A side-eye?”
“Intense teenage lust?” I repeat, intrigued, as if I hadn’t heard her right.
Her groan sounds more like a growl, and I rub my jaw, letting all my reserves drain out like a sieve.
Fuck everything I’ve ever been told about keeping myself away from Bailey.
Nothing about this conversation, or the mirror on the motel ceiling, or the vibrating bed was in the plan when we came up here.
At this point, the universe is just having a good old laugh at our expense.
“I said crush,” she argues.
“You said crush first, but lust is so much more . . . eloquent.”
I grin at her murderous look, barely keeping myself in check, but beneath it, I’m shoving myself back from her.
Hard.
It feels like I’ve waited my whole life for this.
She sighs and flops back against her chair.
“God, if I’d only known this would elicit such a non-response, I would have gotten it off my chest a long time ago.” She chuckles again, dryly, hardly stirring when three more pine cones drop almost all at once to the deck behind us.
“You think I would have reacted to you having a crush on me back then? When Axel was watching my every move around you like a hawk?” I ask. “Still is, by the way.”
I look backward over my shoulder at those porch cameras. I was joking earlier about Axel hacking them, but it has crossed my mind. The guy’s smart enough to figure out how, and I wouldn’t put it past him.
“Well, Axel was busy making out with your sister, so he probably wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on,” she announces. “Hollis finally confirmed it.”
My face twists, and I turn. “She didn’t.”
“She did.”
My jaw drops.
“That fuckin’ guy . . .” I trail off. Axel and I had a very explicit rule not to go after each other’s sisters by the time we were teenagers, even though I always had an inkling that Hollis was obsessed with him.
That look in her eye whenever he was around was more like a praying mantis than your average girl.
Like she wanted to eat him when she was done with him.
I glance at the camera perched near the porch light again, wondering if there’s any way in hell that he’s watching.
“When did that happen between them?”
“The summer before you and Ax went to basic,” she confirms.
“Of course.” All this time, I thought I was the only one trying to refrain from my buddy’s sister. Be a good friend. And now, the joke’s on me.
“Can’t blame her,” she says. “You two were like sex on a stick around here. Who needs a popsicle when your best friend’s brother is training for an elite military school at the lake all summer long?”
“Sex on a stick?” I repeat, laughing. I poke the flame near our feet just to give myself something to focus on that’s not Bailey’s face right now. What’s left of my self-control is waning. And fast.
“I’m not always a perfect wordsmith. Sometimes I just call it how I see it.” She shrugs, grinning.
“You weren’t so bad yourself that year,” I tell her. “If I remember correctly, you had grown the fuck up. And real fast.”
I sneak a peek and see her grinning at the flames. If I had to guess, she’s replaying some of those choice moments from that summer at the lake. Out of all of them, we grew the closest that year. I still remember seeing her get out of the car, all long legs and curves, when she showed up that June.
“We all returned braces-free that summer,” she remembers, laughing. “You have no idea how much I wanted to make use of my freshly straightened, un-metaled mouth.”
“Ah, yes, the un-metaled mouth summer,” I repeat, admiring her smile. “That’s right. You three all had them at the same time the summer before that.”
“Not all of us were gifted perfect teeth by God himself,” she says, pointing at me. “And it sounds like I wasn’t the only one fantasizing about using an un-metaled mouth. Not while they were busy getting down with each other that year.”
“If I’d have known my sister was making out with your brother back then, I’d have made a move on you,” I tell her. “If for no other reason than payback.”
“Payback?” she scoffs. Her jaw hinges open. “I would have been payback?”
“And because you were smokin’ hot, Bay. You know that.”
She flushes again, but this time, she’s also trying to hide a smile. “You think?”
I roll my eyes to the stars, like she knows she’s being ridiculous.
“You weren’t the only one with a summer crush here,” I finally admit. “Some of us were just better at hiding it than others. But your brother would have drowned me if I’d tried anything, so the stakes were pretty high for me.”
“Oh,” she says, softly, dropping her eyes toward the flame.
It’s getting too dark to tell now but if I was a betting man, I’d put all my money on Bailey having a full-body flush of pink right now, and the thought of seeing that is . . .
Well, I shouldn’t be thinking of that at all.
“Oh?” I repeat, pulling myself out of the thought. “That’s all I get back for expressing my own teenage lust to you?”
Her laugh comes out high. “I didn’t realize, I — you — well, that’s good to know that we—”
“That we both had better control than our siblings?” I finish.
“And now they hate each other. Funny how that can happen, huh?”
“And how other relationships from this place worked out,” I add.
She’s quiet for a minute. Then her voice lowers, sounding more like a challenge than anything else. “Define worked out, Rhett. How did we work out and they didn’t?”
When I look across the flames, her eyes say more than her words.
Playfully staring at me, like she might be asking me to do more than just define it.
And with that look goes the last of my reserve.
Like a signed permission slip, telling me to give it a try.
After all these years, I recognize what’s spelled out in her eyes.
It’s the same look she had the night before I left for training, right before I showed her that tattoo I got while we were out fishing on the rock.
I can’t count how many times I’ve kicked myself for not kissing her that night before I left.
Not because it would have made anything less messy, but because I figured I’d never get another shot at it.
If Axel messed with my sister all those years ago, the pact between us is shit. It’s been shit for years.
It’s more than over.
And so is my fuse for waiting.
I stand up in front of her, then bend in half, setting both my hands on the armrests of her chair, blocking her in.
A sharp gasp escapes her lips and she presses her back into the canvas slats, which only gives me more room to lean in.
“I have a better idea,” I tell her, my voice as dark and thick as the air has grown between us. Her lips glisten in the light of the fire burning behind me, igniting the mossy green of her eyes, which are still holding that challenge in them, plain as day. “How about I show you?”
Her chin lifts at the exact moment she steals a glance at my lips, then her eyes dare to meet mine.
“This isn’t payback, is it? Getting Axel back because you just found out that he made a move on—”
“Don’t.” I press a finger against her lips. “They’re the last thing I want to think about when I’m trying to kiss you.”
Her lips curl up.
“You’re trying to kiss me?” she whispers.
“I don’t give a shit what they did a million years ago. It has nothing to do with what I’m about to do now. Because this place? You? It’s making me wish I hadn’t waited so long to do any of it.”
I lean closer, then pause, soaking up the last second of anticipation that I don’t know what Bailey’s lips will taste like.
Or what her breath will feel like inside my mouth.
What her skin will do when I press my hands against it and pull her body into mine.
It’s been too long without knowing, and all I want to do now is find out.
“You don’t care what anyone thinks?” she asks, quietly, lowering her eyelids.
I run a hand up the back of her neck and twist her hair around my fist, tugging it gently so her head falls back. It lifts her lips up and closer to mine. They part, and her now open eyes mirror flames while waiting for an answer.
I’ve only ever dreamed of her looking at me exactly like this. Her lips waiting for mine to devour them.
“Fuck everything else in this world but you,” I tell her darkly. “I’ve been hungry for you my whole life, and out here, with nothing else to stop us, or get in the way of this happening, I don’t want to be hungry anymore.”