Chapter 17
17
[Vale]
B y not answering my question, Cort was fucking dodging me again.
Other things on his mind then?
He’d had sex on the brain.
And I needed to right my own head because I’m standing here practically begging this man to kiss me.
And he didn’t. Again.
He doesn’t want me.
My irritation grows when I realize I can’t find Kentucky or Clint in the pit, a sea of people that blurs for a second.
Don’t you dare cry over him again, Valentine Sylver .
Logically, the prickle of tears is from frustration.
Perhaps pent-up sexual tension.
Definitely unrequited attraction.
Again .
The moment was a good reminder that Cort and I should never cross a line.
One recently fuzzy, but puzzling glances and playful touches do not mean he wants to fuck me .
He didn’t like to be touched, and I wanted someone who could please me.
Additional warning bells dimly ring in my head, reminding me how hurt my brother would be if he learned I’d once held a flame for Cortland Haven, or had a yearning to ignite it again.
Which is all the reason I needed to get away from Cort.
“I should probably find Kentucky,” I blurt as a song concludes.
I really like this band and I’d been excited to have a night out with an old college friend.
She’s moving to Sterling Falls soon and the concert tonight was a good way to reconnect with her.
Almost as if she heard my thoughts, my phone vibrates at my hip.
A crossbody strap holds a slim clear bag that meets the venue restrictions on bags, which can only fit a phone and some identification.
Reaching for my phone, I notice Cort tug his out of his back pocket at the same time.
Would it be possible for you to find a ride home?
What the fuck?
Kentucky picked me up because she was scoping out Milton County for a house.
She’s my ride.
Not to mention, women don’t ditch women.
Even if I’m half-happy for her—she deserves to have a little fun—the other half of me is envious that she’s found some fun to be had.
But another half, and I know that makes my equation disproportionate, is pissed.
Pulling up her location, I notice she’s still in the bar.
Maybe tucked in a corner somewhere or even pressed up against an exterior wall.
Still, she hasn’t left me.
Yet.
I should respond by telling her the truth.
No, I can’t find another way home .
We’re forty minutes from Sterling Falls.
An Uber would be ungodly expensive if I could even get one to drive me a few towns over, not to mention that’s a long stretch of highway late at night with a stranger, and I don’t like the possibility.
Narrowing my eyes, I glance up at Cort, seeing his face pinched and his lips pursed, as he reads his own phone.
Slowly, he lifts his gaze to me.
“Seems my brother left.” He slips his phone back into his pocket.
His tone is laced with disapproval.
“With your friend.”
Jostling my own phone toward him, I spout, “I got the message.” I don’t like it.
Don’t know what I’m going to do about it.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Cort offers without hesitating, but he also sounds angry.
“Not if you’re angry about it,” I snap.
“I’ll figure something out.” This is not my first rodeo being out with friends who want to scamper off and get laid.
Kentucky isn’t a shitty friend; she really isn’t.
She’ll come back for me.
Turn tail and give up getting some when I respond back to her.
Especially when this angry bear is glaring at me.
“You’re right. I’m pissed. Your wing woman shouldn’t have left you behind.”
I stare at him, befuddled a second before realizing he isn’t mad about giving me a ride.
He’s upset on my behalf.
“And I’m still not leaving you alone in this crowded bar.” His gaze is hyper-focused on my eyes, like he’s forcing them to stay linked with mine, and the intensity alone imparts his decision.
He isn’t leaving me behind.
“Let’s just watch the rest of the show.” His hand gently comes to my lower back.
The motion hesitant and tender, unlike the way he was previously clutching at my hip.
He tugged me closer to him.
Or maybe I just took the liberty to lean back, sizzling from his heat against me, shivering with the possibility of more with him.
I really thought he was going to kiss me for a minute there.
Really wanted him to, if truth be told.
But I’m not that girl anymore.
The one willing to make out with just anyone or hookup with someone random.
And Cortland Haven is the last man I should take a risk on .
. . again.
With a heavy sigh, I give him a final glance before lowering my head.
“I think I’d rather go home.”
Cort escorts me out of the venue, never removing his hand from my back, until we step outside.
Like a bubble being released from a can, we both take in a breath of fresh air, until the chill hits me.
I rub my hands up and down my arms when Cort drops his hand.
Earlier, when we headed for Huntington, the temperature was much warmer.
Now, the late-spring mountain air is giving me goosebumps and hard nipples.
As much as I’d love for Cort to wrap his arm around me to warm me up, he walks with his hands safely tucked in his pockets, keeping a good six inches between us.
When we finally arrive at his truck, he opens the passenger door for me and holds out his hand to help me in.
I reach for the grab handle instead and help myself.
I’m not mad at Cort.
I’m disappointed in me.
Where did that reckless girl go?
The one willing to make out with a guy behind a tree.
The one eager to be touched and fucked by the falls.
Oh, right . . . she grew up and she wants more.
Deserves more.
When Cort enters his truck, he starts the engine and music flares to life, filling the truck with classic rock.
He turns it down and hits the heat.
“You cold?”
“A little,” I admit, still rubbing my arms.
He reaches behind the seat, digging around before pulling forward a flannel shirt .
“I think it’s clean.” He brings it to his nose before holding the shirt open for me.
“It will be warm at least.”
He doesn’t move to hand the flannel over.
Instead, he leans toward me, flipping it around my shoulders and holding it, while I wrestle my arms into the longer sleeves.
Once my arms are inside the warmth of the fabric, I stretch them above my head to force the loose sleeves to my wrists.
As I do this, Cort brings the two halves of the shirt together and buttons one button near my chest. Then a second button over my breasts.
One more is just below them.
My chest heaves, my breath drawing deeper with each button he loops while I watch his nimble fingers dress me.
I could complain that I’m not a child and I don’t need his help, but something inside me stops my protest. Something reminds me I want him to take care of me.
When I look at his face, his concentration intent, he seems to realize what he’s doing and quickly withdraws his hands.
Still, he remains close.
His face only inches from mine.
When he meets my gaze, he holds my eyes a second.
“I . . . uh . . . hope that’s better.”
I clench my fingers around the insides of the too-long material, making makeshift mittens.
My throat is dry, just like it was earlier, when I thought he’d kiss me.
When he didn’t, and I stalked off to get each of us a new beer.
Now I have nothing to quench my thirst, other than the heat of his gaze and the comfort of his shirt and a swirl of emotions buzzing in my belly.
Frustration.
Confusion.
Tension.
Cort clears his throat and leans away from me.
He turns down the volume on the radio and flings his arm over the seat, skillfully backing out of the parking spot, completely unaffected by his action toward me .
Meanwhile, I lift my hand covered by his flannel, close my eyes a second, and take a whiff, breathing in his scent embedded in the fabric.
Cort shifts behind the wheel.
The movement pulls me from my scent-high, and I straighten in my seat.
My anxiety manifests a little voice in my head suggesting I make small talk.
Fill the silence with questions about the concert or his work, but I don’t have the energy.
I’m still stung by disappointment.
“We should probably talk,” he interjects into the low hum of classic rock playing from the radio.
“About that day.”
“Cortland,” I exhale.
“You’ve had the last twelve years to talk to me.”
“You know why I couldn’t,” he says, keeping his focus forward as his hand slips down the steering wheel to clutch it at the base.
“If your reason has to do with Stone, that had nothing to do with me. With us.”
His head swivels in my direction only momentarily before turning back to the road.
“Then we should talk. About us.”
I snort, dismissively.
There is no us. There never can be.
“We’ve been quiet about it for a dozen years; we can stay silent for another twelve.”
Cort is silent at first, but then, as if the stillness and quiet makes him edgy, he continues, “I wasn’t myself back then. I had a lot going on.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
I had a lot going on.
My friends had graduated.
I had one more year of college.
I was a year out from getting away from Sterling Falls.
Still, I hold back my retort.
“So, you were just using me?” I don’t know why I question him.
Of course he was. I was using him as well.
Using him to fulfill some self-imposed ideal that he’d be the one to save me from myself.
He’d be the key to turn me on .
His head whips toward me again.
“Is that what you think?” He shouldn’t sound so aghast. He even sounds .
. . a little hurt. “Fuck, Vale. I’ve known you all your life. I’d never do that to you.”
I don’t doubt he’d intentionally hurt my feelings.
What I question is everything else about that moment.
I huff. “You can’t tell me you honestly remember it, right? That you enjoyed it.” Like it wasn’t casual and random and over within seconds.
“I fucking came like a racehorse. Of course I enjoyed it.” Another glance in my direction is quick.
Then why did he fucking cry afterward?
Victory tears? I doubt it.
And I don’t ask.
His voice softens.
“You didn’t like it?” He hesitates, hurt filling every word once again.
“I didn’t say that.” I can’t say with full assurance that I did like it, though.
I don’t remember every detail, other than some of the finer points.
Ones I considered intimate, important.
His breath against my neck.
His hands on my hips.
The sharp rush of him entering me.
“You didn’t?—”
“Come like a racehorse?” I cut him off, tossing his crass comparison back at him as I roll my head in his direction.
“Well, maybe not like that, but?—”
“I didn’t,” I respond, although I’d hoped to keep that little nugget to myself.
And I quickly glance back toward the windshield.
“What?” His knuckles clutch the steering wheel so tightly I’m surprised they don’t pop and crack.
Sensing him looking at me again, I stare at the windshield.
“I didn’t . . . then.” This is the most surreal conversation, ever, and I close my eyes.
Twelve years of silence and this is what we discuss?
Orgasms. Who came when and how.
Or not.
For the longest time after that morning in the woods, I blamed Cort.
We shouldn’t have had sex.
He wasn’t in the right head space, like he just said.
But my mind was off as well, because I’d built Cort up, made him the man of my dreams, and the reality paled in comparison, through no fault of his own.
The hard truth was he didn’t reciprocate my feelings.
Our actions were not about emotion or connection.
At least, not deeply lasting ones.
Just lust and false hope and displaced trust.
Cort didn’t hurt me.
He hurt my feelings.
Feelings I’d created about him.
I didn’t come because I can’t.
Anxiously licking my lips, I decide to give him more than I probably should.
“For the longest time, Cort, I had the biggest crush on you.” I literally squirm on the heated leather seat with the admission.
Like I’m still in my early teens and I’m revealing a secret.
Holding my breath like he might return the sentiment.
So juvenile. So embarrassing, because I know the truth.
He doesn’t.
“You what?” he whispers.
“Honestly, it felt like forever. And forever ago. But when I saw you in Milton Roadhouse that night, making eyes at me—” My flannel covered hands curl around the edge of the seat, like I need something to hold on to, something to hold me back, from pouncing like I wanted to back then.
“I knew you’d never act on anything. You’d be respectful and distant like you’d been since I was ten. But for just a blip, a hungry blink, I thought you might have noticed me. Like really saw me.” My voice squeaks.
“As more than Stone’s forbidden sister, and more than the little kid who buzzed around the two of you.”
I swallow the emotion clogging my throat and barrel on with my confession.
“And then suddenly you were there by the falls, in my sacred spot. Like what kind of weird divine intervention was that?” I chuckle bitterly.
“I got wrapped up in my head, thinking the Universe sent you to me. I knew you were hurting then.” His divorce.
His injury. “And yet I hoped I could heal you somehow.”
Like poof!
My magical vagina would save him.
One touch and I’d make him forget he ever ached over his ex-wife or lost his football career.
And one touch from him, and I’d be cured as well.
I wouldn’t be pent-up and repressed and fighting against what everyone told me happened naturally when a man touches you in intimate places.
“I was young.” My voice falters.
“Foolish.” Surely, he remembers being twenty-two himself, and the stupid things he did.
The mistakes he made.
But for whatever reason, I continue about me.
“And I’ve learned that I can’t get there”—I wave around my lap before quickly returning my hand to clutch the edge of the seat—“without more.”
“More?” He risks a sharp glance at me.
His tone is a bit firmer.
Not angry. Just curious.
“Like what?”
Love.
Affection. Companionship .
Things that can’t be asked for but need to be given.
Freely. Liberally. Unconditionally.
I shake my head, drained from the open confession and refusing to spell out anything deeper.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Sneaking a peek at him, I see his jaw tick, his hand white-knuckling the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, although I’m not certain what I’m apologizing for.
My failure during sexy times?
My desire for extra from a partner?
Like I’m ashamed I want more for myself.
More from someone else.
Suddenly, I feel sick and it’s not the beers sloshing around my stomach after only having a hot pretzel at the concert.
“ I’m fucking sorry,” he blurts, glancing at me one more time before drawing his eyes back to the road.
“It’s bad enough that I fucking?— ”
Wept , I finish.
My shoulders slump forward before I release the edge of the seat and slouch back, crossing my arms over my midsection, then moving my hands to the hem of my skirt, tugging at the short material that reveals too much leg while remembering more details.
Cort cried into my neck after we had sex.
He apologized then, like a hundred times, but he also ran away from me without an explanation.
For the tears. For the spur-of-the-moment action.
All these years, I’ve still wondered why we did what we did.
And why he cried afterward.
My issue seems inconsequential compared to those bigger questions, but I’m talked out, wrung out, like I’ve confessed my soul.
For once, I’m at a loss for words and stare out the side window the remainder of our drive.