Chapter 17
17
Cate
My stresses disappeared when Shane arrived, but the hot water of the bubble bath helps relieve my muscles. I take a sip of wine, then set the glass back on the edge of the tub. Splashing the water, I rest back, making eye contact. “I’m happy to make room for you.”
He laughs, sizing it up by giving it a once-over from his seat on the floor. “It’s miniature.”
“It fits me,” I reply as if I’ve proven my point just by saying it. “Well, not entirely since only half my body can be underwater at a time.”
“Next time I’m in town, come bathe in mine. You’ll never leave after being so spoiled. It’s deep, and your feet wouldn’t be hanging out.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I’m tempting you.” He takes my hand, holding it between both of his. “Come stay with me.”
“It won’t take a lot of convincing, but it will take planning for me to get to work the next day since we live so far apart.”
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses the top. “I don’t have weekends off until the tour is over. We can stay here until then.”
“I’ve never been so sad about missing out on a tub.”
“It will still be there. Or,” he says, sitting back against the tiled wall, “I’ll give you a key to enjoy it while I’m away.”
Just when I think I’m safe from swooning over this man, he goes and offers me not just what I imagine to be an incredible tub, but his whole house. For Shane, that’s the same as him giving me his heart. “You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I know we’re moving fast, probably too fast for?—”
“I want you at my house, Cat. I want you with me. I just . . . I want you. All the time.”
I wasn’t prepared earlier. I’m definitely not now.
How could I be?
I barely know this man in the greater sense but have been slowly falling in love with him since we reunited. We’d pushed the marriage and the divorce aside and started to get to know each other without the weight of those impending issues.
He doesn’t do relationships but is breaking his rules for me. How can I not fall madly in love with him for that reason alone? Add in the other thousands of reasons and all eight of those rock-hard abs of his, and I’m sunk. I never stood a chance with him. Deep down, though, I’ve always known it.
“What are you saying?” I ask without remembering until now that we’d left this discussion for later. It’s later, but I still didn’t expect it to come so naturally.
“I want you with me, Cat. I want you in my life.”
I sit forward through the water, where most of the bubbles have dissipated. “You do?”
He chuckles, moving closer to run his hand up my soapy arm and over my neck. “I do. Fuck.” He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. “Those are two words I never thought I’d say.”
“According to the state of California, you’ve already said them to me.” I laugh, and his cheeks tint the slightest shade of pink. But it’s his glittering eyes, a pride for the young man he would have been, that make me say, “My, how the mighty have fallen.”
Leaning forward, he kisses my arm, then higher. “For you.” He slips a hand into the water, runs it between my breasts and then cups one, teasing the nipple and kneading. “I want to make love to you.”
He hasn’t even seen me fully naked, nor have I seen him without boxer briefs. I know he doesn’t care about lace or sheer material when it all comes off anyway, but I’d still like to put something nice on for him.
“I want that, too.” I do. The breathiness of my voice is a dead giveaway on its own. This is it. My thrill of nerves and excitement runs through me. Who cares if I ate my feels and a full lunch today, if my stomach isn’t perfectly flat, or I’m not as toned from skipping my workout? He wants me, and that’s all that matters.
Shane reaches for the towel and holds it open for me. I push up from the tub, careful when I stand, but I don’t rush to cover myself. I feel good about my body, so I push through any fears of judgment and stand before him.
He looks me up and down twice before saying, “You’re so fucking gorgeous.” Kissing me, he urges me back against the wall where he was initially leaning. He drops the towel and dives in for my neck, his mouth taking claim as kisses are staked like he’s marking his territory.
With my eyes closed, I feel every urgent grappling of hands to the kisses that extend from my mouth to my fingertips. Never one to get lost in foreplay, he slips his hand between my legs and slides higher. The bath was the warm-up, the lead-in, as two fingers slide through my desire for him. I moan, unable to stay quiet when feeling this good, this much of everything.
I plant my hands on his shoulders when my body becomes a live wire of nerve endings. Our chemistry is too much to keep my eyes open, the heat between us too hot to deny. I kiss him, wanting him as much as he wants me.
When he swipes through my lower lips, my breath catches, but he’s quick to swallow when his mouth collides with mine. We’re tongues and hands, moans, slippery soaped skin, legs with a pressure that feels so good, and water from my wet body soaking through his shirt.
The back of my head hits the tile, and his lips immediately find my neck, kissing, sucking, drowning me in his affection. Dragging his tongue under my jaw, he slides the bridge of his nose the rest of the way to my ear. My heart beats so loud in my ears that I wonder if he can hear it as well.
His fingers find purchase inside me, eliciting another moan I can’t restrain. I start to lose my balance when my grip loosens under the intensity of sensations. “You feel that?” he asks through harsh breaths. “You feel so good, but I’m going to make you feel so much better when I’m inside you.”
I want to speak, but words escape me. Every thrust of his fingers has me pushing back for more. Begging . When his thumb toys with my clitoris, I sink down, desperate for more pressure. “God yes, I want that. I need you. Right there.”
“That’s right, baby. Tell me everything you need, everything you want me to do to you.” Pressing his large erection against my leg, he seeks to satisfy his own cravings by rocking against me.
I barely manage to crack my eyes open to find his already fixed on me. I run the tips of my fingers over his temple. “You, Shane. That’s all I want.”
He thrusts, his other hand gripping my hip to keep me steady. “You got me.” The scrape of his teeth over my shoulder teases until I’m pleading for more. Faster. Harder. “Yes, Shane. Yes.” Lightning strikes, sending little earthquakes to shock every part of my body. I go with the pleasure, flowing into the darkness of this ecstasy.
It takes years, seconds, moments stolen in time for my body to calm and the tremors to subside. My eyes are closed, and I need longer just to breathe my way back home. Quick and shallow, then deeper and peaceful. I open my eyes, too tired to hold myself up any longer. I sag, but he catches me, holding me so I won’t fall.
Too late. I’m already long gone for this man.
His lips appreciate every millimeter of my mouth as he slides to the side and kisses each corner as well. Tipping his healed head against mine, he whispers, “Come to Seattle with me.”
I smile, but it takes too much effort to hold on to after recovering from what we just did. “What do you mean, come to Seattle?”
His hands return to my face, the scent of our desire still mingling in the air. “We leave on Wednesday for Seattle. The show’s on Thursday. I want you there. I want to see you watching me perform. I want to fuck you backstage. I want nights with you in my bed. Making love, watching movies, ordering food to be delivered. I want that with you, Cat.”
The image is so clear that I can see it as well. I feel that same need to be with him. “Sounds like a dream.” But it’s not rational.
The blue of his eyes is electric, like we are together. His smile so big that I can’t stop smiling for him. “It will be. I promise. I’ll get the biggest suite they have and treat you to?—”
“It sounds like a dream because it is.” I steady myself after readjusting to stand on my own two feet. I cup his face, running the tips of my fingers over the sharper scruff of a few days’ worth of growth. “I work next week and only have a few vacation days left because of the house issue.”
Handing me the towel, he leaves too much space to dry off when he moves toward the door. I already miss his warmth. He stops across the small bathroom. “You won’t come to Seattle, not even for me?”
“I can’t. I’m sorry. Not next week.”
“I need you with me.” The admission makes me pause. What does he want me to do? Quit? Not possible.
“I need to work.”
Looking past me, he stares at something over my head as if in disbelief. When his gaze meets mine again, he asks, “So you won’t go? Not even for me?”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t . There’s a difference.”
“You’re twisting my words to fit a narrative you seem set on creating. I would go if I could, Shane. I can’t because I don’t have the time off earned this year. Those days were spent trying to buy a house and finding out I’m married.”
“ We are married. To each other.”
“You say that like I don’t know.” Dumbfounded by a fight that sprouted from nowhere, I say, “A piece of paper doesn’t change anything. We didn’t get married because we wanted to. It’s only a mis?—”
“Don’t say it.”
I secure the towel on my chest and cautiously walk closer to him. “You’re not being fair. You can’t toss our marriage around like we ever exchanged vows. We didn’t. We didn’t choose each other. The state did.” We stand at an impasse, righteous in our own minds.
He steps away, letting cold air breeze between us, covering me in goose bumps. I say, “I added a new retirement home this week to my already busy portfolio. I’m sorry, babe. It’s just not a good time.”
“Fuck the job and just be with me.” The sincerity in his voice and the plea to his tone have me wanting to comfort him in ways I don’t think he’ll let me. He only wants a yes because that’s all he ever hears.
But I can’t give it to him. Not this time. “I love what I do. I love the routine, the patients, and even the bad food they serve in the homes.”
“You love beige. You love boring?—”
“I love my life and did before you re-entered it like a storm on a mission to destroy it.”
A visible change starts with his expression, hardening until it’s not the same as Shane’s usual handsome face. “You love your career, but you don’t love me.” Pain and anger merge in his eyes, his breathing coming hard. “Or not enough to sacrifice it.”
“How can you say that when we haven’t even said the words to each other?”
The fight leaves his body, his shoulders lowering with his tone when he says, “Because we felt it. I know you did, too.”
He’s right. I did feel it. I do feel it . . . I love him, and he’s destroying everything in his path. He warned me he would. I can’t let him. I can’t let him destroy me. “Please,” I whisper, another wave of the tears I thought I had cried returning to drown me this time. “Shane, please. We can talk instead of shout?—”
“This was a mistake.”
“You coming to see me wasn’t a mistake.”
His walls rise as if triggered by a thief who broke in to steal his heart. He stares at me with blue eyes iced over. “That’s not what I was referring to.”
I thought as much, but I don’t want to confirm it.
This is not the man I know, the one whose world seemed to brighten just because I walked back into it. I don’t recognize him in this form, but I need to acknowledge this is who he is—a rock star with an ego bigger than our flourishing love could ever be.
He sighs, and I can see the love leaving his eyes, the exhaustion returning to snuff out the ember I had lit. I know he wants to fight his rage to soften the blow, but I don’t think he’ll be able to save himself, much less the bystander he claims to love.
At a loss for words or words he doesn’t want to voice, he leaves the bathroom and me still standing in a towel. I put on my armor the best I can and follow him, knowing I would have followed him anywhere a few hours before unless it keeps me from paying my bills. That’s something that he doesn’t have to think twice about. One of many troubles he’ll never experience, if he ever did.
There’s no point in fighting because the battle has already been lost. I swallow my pride and walk around him to the door. Opening it wide, I lean against the edge holding the knob behind me. “How did it all go wrong so quickly?”
I’m not really asking. The signs have been there all along. But he still feels the need to respond. “It was never supposed to. It was supposed to be one night.”
“Another fuck to add to your scorecard, and then you’d be gone.” I nod, looking down. I can’t bear to hold my head higher with a knife stabbing my heart. “Got it.”
His feet don’t move, and he doesn’t fill the gap of silence with more hurtful words. All that exists between us now is the pain we’ve caused each other. It’s torture, but I won’t throw him out. When he leaves, I’ll know there’s no coming back from this. Though I’m pretty sure we’re already there.
I watch his feet step closer to me, stopping before he reaches the threshold of our ending. “Cat?” It’s only a breath of a whisper filled with the same turmoil I feel inside.
And then his phone buzzes in his pocket.
I release a long-held breath, disappointment wrapping itself around my aching heart. I don’t bother looking into his eyes. I don’t need to carry his pain with mine. “You should get that . . . outside my apartment.”
I start counting in my head, silently begging him to go so he doesn’t have to witness more tears of mine, especially the ones I cry over him. He leaves just before I reach nine, standing on the doormat for a few seconds longer, and then he’s gone.
I’m not sure how long I remain with the slight breeze slipping in, the air turning cooler with the later hour, or even when there are no more headlights to reinforce the hope that we could have a second chance.
He’s gone.
Shane Faris never looked back.
I won’t either.