Chapter Twenty-Nine Lily #2
Ugh. Pouting. I’d sounded like such a little baby bitch all day, and I couldn’t stop, because now I was an addict.
A Barrett King addict. Between me missing his brother’s wedding due to the virus from hell and the draft, it had been six weeks since I’d seen him in person, our only visit happening after he and the kids had taken a whirlwind trip over a long weekend off from school.
Not hearing his voice for a certain amount of time gave me withdrawal symptoms, for fuck’s sake.
Boyfriends like him should come with a warning label.
Caution: Prolonged exposure will result in a host of dangerous symptoms: inability to fall asleep without hearing him say good night; increased phone sex that makes you question your own sanity because of how good it is; tendency to engage in deep, meaningful conversations where he gently delves into your past and makes you feel okay talking about it; and an overwhelming, horrific urge to cry whenever you look at his pictures on your phone.
“Men are the worst.” Miriam always thought men were the worst. But she had three ex-husbands who were pretty awful. “Why couldn’t I be attracted to women? Marrying a woman would’ve been so much easier.”
I smiled. “He’s not the worst,” I argued. “He’s just . . . getting busier. They had the draft recently. We went three days without a phone call last week; he felt awful.”
“This is what happens when you bang the coach,” Agatha said, patting me on the head as she shuffled past. “They’re important, and important people are always busy.”
I wiggled my toes in the water and looked over my shoulder.
The girls were in their usual spots by the pool.
Agatha couldn’t see anything today because she’d forgotten her glasses at home, but Miriam was always willing to share, even though her prescription wasn’t as strong.
Agatha slid them onto her nose and squinted in my direction.
“I like that swimsuit, honey. You look real hot.”
“You don’t think it’s too much? I didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack when I came down here.
” I adjusted the keyhole cutout between my breasts, which showed a generous amount of underboob.
It was white, with thin straps that tied high on my hips and around the back of my neck.
It had arrived yesterday in an expensive-looking box, along with a note from Barrett saying he wanted to picture me wearing it.
If I hadn’t been late for the daily pool date with the neighborhood hellions, I would’ve sent him a new pic. I was getting very good at them.
“You kidding? I’d wear that in a heartbeat if I wouldn’t fall and break a hip trying to put it on.”
I patted her knee. “We don’t need that.”
The screen on my phone was still blank, and I let out a pouty bitch sigh.
“You tell him you love him yet?” Miriam asked carefully.
I knew I’d rue the day I’d been feeling all emo about that and found myself blabbing during pool time. Ruing had officially commenced, because now they asked. They checked in. They worried. And even stranger was that I didn’t hate it.
Florida Lily was like a whole different person, and I was still coming to terms with that.
I was in my first new job since Larry had passed on to doggie heaven, and even though I had Barrett—and God, did I have Barrett—and the kids, who also called me a few times a week, I found myself talking more.
Chatting more. Turned out, opening your heart for someone made it easier for other people to sneak in.
Hell, even Patty and I texted. She was thrilled about this whole me-and-Barrett thing, and made me promise we’d do lunch sometimes when I moved back to Buffalo. Toss in Barrett’s mom, Robin, who’d scheduled a phone date with me every Friday morning, and I was surrounded.
I had people now. A whole bunch of them. But more than that, more than friendly check-ins with people like Patty and the occasional text from Griffin’s wife, Ruby, I had something else that I never saw coming.
I felt mothered.
After so many years without that role in my life, that sensation of being enveloped by someone’s care and worry was one of the most incredible things I’d gained, outside of my relationship with Barrett and the kids.
But apparently, having a group of nosy surrogate moms meant they were all up in my relationship when I sort of admitted that I was scared to tell Barrett that I loved him.
“Not really,” I hedged.
“You’re nuts,” Agatha said.
“Thanks.”
Miriam always had a bit of a gentler touch. “You’ve never said it to anyone since your family died?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“And he doesn’t seem upset about it?”
“No. He’s so patient. Probably more than I deserve, to be honest.”
“Nonsense,” Agatha insisted. “It’s horseshit to act like you deserve less than anyone else simply because you went through something hard and ugly.
We don’t all pop up out of the dirt of our past smelling like roses, do we?
Sometimes we smell like the dirt for a while, and there’s nothing wrong with that because that’s what makes us grow, honey.
Not the other way around.” She leaned forward.
“Do you think Barrett deserves less from you because of what he went through?”
“Of course not.” I ran my hand through the water, the distorted image of my fingers holding my attention while I sifted through my thoughts. “But hasn’t he earned the right to know what’s in my head?”
“Do you love him?” Miriam asked.
See? This was the problem. Even thinking it made my stomach all queasy, my chest heavy with a swirling mix of anticipation and anxiety and desperation.
If I lost him, I’d be absolutely devastated.
He and the kids were the axis of my world, and orbiting around them was as easy as breathing, even from all this distance.
I couldn’t wait to do it from close up. To have boring days and stressful days and everything in between.
When I was still in Buffalo, I’d thought of my burgeoning feelings for Barrett as a general sense of nausea. Love felt like that sometimes, didn’t it?
He was so handsome and kind and thoughtful and sweet. And sexy. God, he was so sexy. Yeah, sometimes if I thought about the big-picture list of what kind of man he was, I did want to puke, but not in a bad way.
More like a I cannot believe he’s mine way.
He was mine. And I was his. My new life goal was to make sure that never changed.
“Yeah,” I whispered, so quietly I wasn’t sure they could hear me. “I do.”
“Oh, thank the Lord. Go tell him.”
I let out a snort of amusement. “Eventually, I will. I don’t want to do it over the phone.”
“That’s a relief.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why?”
“Because he’s here.”
As my heart thrashed in my chest, my head snapped up, and at the sight of his tall, broad frame approaching the pool, a duffel bag in his hand and aviator frames sitting on his handsome face, I scrambled to my feet so fast that I almost fell over.
When my feet were finally under me, I blinked, hard, just to make sure he was real.
His lips curved in a smile.
Then I was running.
“No running by the pool!” the pimply lifeguard yelled.
“Fuck off, Robbie!” I yelled right back.
Barrett laughed, dropping his duffel bag just in time to catch me in his arms as I leaped.
He was here.
He was here.
My mouth covered his with a desperate groan as his hands held me up underneath my ass. I tightened my grip around his neck, my hands digging into the thick strands of his hair. Barrett moaned as our tongues slid against each other, his fingers tightening where he held me.
And my heart. Oh, my heart.
It sang.
I loved him. I loved him so much.
I pulled away on a short sobbing noise. “You’re here.”
His cheeks were flushed, the sunglasses askew on his nose. I ripped them off and cupped his face in both hands, tracing the grooves in his skin around his smile.
“I told you I wanted to see that bikini.”
I laughed, happiness bubbling up like a popped champagne bottle, my heart racing at the mere sight of him. “Take me home,” I whispered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He set me down and gave a sheepish wave at the whooping and hollering women I’d left at the pool, winding one arm around my shoulders so he could kiss the top of my head, then picked up his discarded duffel bag with the other.
The house where I was staying was a short walk from the community pool, and he was sucking at the skin on the back of my neck as I tried to unlock the door with shaking fingers.
“This should be illegal,” he growled, hands already coasting up and down my sides, his fingers dragging over the exposed flesh of my chest. “I missed you so much, and I wanted to keep my head—but look at you, Lily. Look at you.”
Once we were inside, he kicked the door shut and swept me up in his arms. We tumbled back onto the couch, Barrett underneath me as I straddled his lap and sighed into the deep, drugging kisses.
I wanted to snort this man into my bloodstream.
His palms dragged up and down my back while I rolled my hips over the intimidating length of his hard-on.
It would be so easy. A quick tug at his shorts, a snap of the meager little strings holding up my suit, and he’d be inside me. I loved when he was inside me.
Pretty sure I’d fight the entire world for the feeling this man gave me every time he took me to bed. And I’d survived without it for weeks. The impossibility of going longer set off a slight trembling in my hands, which held his face as we kissed and kissed and kissed.
It moved along my limbs as I wound them around his shoulders, trying to hold him as tightly as possible.
Barrett did the same, wrapping his strong arms around my waist as our kisses gentled and slowed. He tasted like mint. Smelled like heaven.
I’d climb a fucking mountain just for five minutes in his arms, just like this, even if there was nothing else.