Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Brax
I was actually excited about going to the barn with the big boys because I was interested in learning more about Mia—things she didn’t tell me herself and that I couldn’t glean from Gabe’s hesitant confessions. I got it—why would she trust me with the important little details of her life after what I’d done to her?
Like who, exactly, was Grace? “ Our Gracie ,” the D’Angelos had called her. They’d toasted to her. She certainly wasn’t a pet. And maybe some people called their grandmas by their first names, instead of MeeMaw or Nana or Grams, but this family didn’t strike me as having a grandma named Gracie. Which made me wonder the worst. But if they’d lost a sister/child, wouldn’t Mia have mentioned that ?
I knew that any info I would glean would come with a price. I had a feeling they’d be testing me, especially the suspicious one, Caleb.
The barn was clean and warm and smelled like hay and, well, animals. I passed a few cows that were chomping on straw and a horse that whinnied. I’m not sure I’d ever been so close to actual animals. As a kid, I’d never even gone to a county fair.
Liam found me staring at a giant black horse who snorted and stuck his snout threateningly over his stall. He rubbed the horse’s head and ears, and in response, the horse whinnied and stomped in his enclosure. “Hey, Diablo,” he said. “How you doing?”
Diablo? As if the horse wanted to prove it was worthy of its namesake, he snorted and bent down to…either nuzzle me or take a bite out of me, I’m not sure which. I hedged my bets by ducking and trying not to look startled.
Liam laughed. “You haven’t been around horses?”
I shook my head. Not many of those near our apartment in Philly.
“I’m just messing with you. His name is Fred.” He ran his hand along the animal’s back and fluttered its mane. “Hey, Freddie boy, you wouldn’t hurt a flea, would you?” Fred responded with some kind of noise that seemed collegial, as well as nudging his snout into the palm of Liam’s hand.
Looked like I was going to need my secret weapon—a bottle of Crown Royal I’d tucked into my duffel bag for emergencies precisely like this. I’d placed it on the top of a low barrel, and Caleb was now pouring a round of shots. A large electric heater and a battery-powered lantern sat nearby, casting a warm yellow light. They’d opted not to light the fire pit because it felt like it was below buckass zero out, but it wasn’t half bad inside, once it warmed up a little and you got used to the potent scent of hay and horses.
As we took our seats on hay bales, Caleb started right in. “Mia’s worried about that party tomorrow night.”
“Party?” As soon as the word flew out of my mouth, Caleb glanced up at me and frowned. “I mean, yeah, the party,” I said, trying to correct course. Given by her ex? I wished she’d given me a little more to go on here.
“It’s not our place to tell Mia what to do,” Liam said, tossing down his shot.
Not even five minutes in, and I was already lost. And here I’d thought I’d just have to hold my liquor to earn their trust.
Caleb turned to me. His posture, his expression—everything read as a challenge. He smelled a rat, and he wasn’t going to stop until he ferreted me out. “What do you think, Braxton?”
Come clean or play along? “I, um—Mia’s very strong-willed. I think she’s going to do what she wants.” All very true.
“See, here’s the thing,” Liam said. “Going to the party is a show of strength. She’s been avoiding people.”
Caleb tossed back a shot. “Charlie should be seeking her forgiveness after what he did. She has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Charlie sucks,” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say. This was like putting together the pieces of a puzzle…blind.
Caleb poured me another shot. “I never liked Charlie anyway. Never could hold his liquor.”
I downed the shot, just to show them I wasn’t Charlie.
Gabe had never mentioned what had happened with her ex, but I was getting the vibe that it wasn’t good.
Caleb filled our glasses and pointed at his brother. “It’s hard on Mia because we all hung out together. Aaron was Liam’s best friend all through school.” Caleb turned to me. “That’s Charlie’s brother.”
Liam shook his head. “I should’ve known better than to let that effer date my sister.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Caleb said with a dismissive gesture. “She’s over him. But if she went, everyone would stop talking about it—about her, you know?”
“We’d all be there to support her,” Liam said.
I lifted my glass. “I will be too.”
Caleb frowned. “Yeah, but what about…what about Erin?”
Erin? I’d better stop with the shots, or I wouldn’t be able to untangle any of this.
Liam poured me another shot and jostled me in the ribs with his elbow. “Keep up, Braxton.” Liam shook his head. “He met her one weekend when he was visiting Mia right after she’d moved to Milwaukee. Then Erin moved out here and went after Charlie.”
“Hey, don’t blame it all on her,” Caleb said. “It was him too.”
My heart skipped a beat. Charlie had cheated on Mia while she was in the middle of her internship? That sucked.
“Why didn’t Charlie move to be with Mia?” I asked. Because…why would you want to be apart from someone you loved?
Liam gave a little shrug. “Farmers don’t leave their land.”
Charlie stayed; Mia left. And then Charlie got busy with someone else. Got it.
Caleb set down his shot glass with enough force to make the wood plank over the barrel vibrate. “We’ll help her through this.”
I nodded. We clinked shot glasses and downed more whiskey, which sank down as a warm fireball in my belly. Silence descended. Liam and Caleb moved on to talk about old friends home for the holidays whom they hoped to catch in town. As I sat there next to the heater, I listened with one ear, my mind wandering to a night around six months ago.
From the first time we met I’d somehow sensed that Mia was vulnerable, even though she was as pro as I was about hiding her past. But it was that sense of vulnerability that made me warn her about me as we sat on her couch during our third date watching a movie.
Well, we were doing more kissing than watching, and I knew where things were heading. I couldn’t get it out of my head that everything about her signaled that she was looking for connection and relationship, not a quick fling. Don’t get me wrong; I wanted her badly. But I wanted more not to hurt her. And if she stuck with me, that was bound to happen. So I sat back and told her I wasn’t the guy she was looking for. I firmly repeated my usual mantra that I didn’t do long-term anything.
I scrambled up from the couch, took a big breath, and grabbed my keys, pressing them hard into the palm of my hand so the pain would somehow stop me thinking about how turned on I was. Slow my motor down. Give me some sense.
As I walked over to grab my jacket from the back of a chair, she touched my arm. Tugged on it until I turned around, coat in hand.
Just put your arm in the sleeve and button up , my inner voice said. Do it now.
But then I made the mistake of looking into her eyes. Those big, green, mesmerizing eyes that I just fell into. I fell into the honesty, the feeling, the pure transparency that made me understand one thing alone—that she wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
But I saw something else—that she’d been hurt. I sensed it and saw it, and I still didn’t leave.
Mia was a time bomb—my personal time bomb. She made me feel too much, and if I continued, I knew this would lead to disaster. I was certain of it. And yet I remained there frozen, unable to move, unable to look away.
“Don’t go,” she said. Those two short words were all I needed to step forward and erase the distance between us, take her into my arms, and press my body and my lips to hers. She was soft, and she smelled fresh, like lavender, and tasted wonderful, and I couldn’t let go, couldn’t stop. I was addicted to every single thing about her, every enthusiastic caress, every deep but quiet sigh. We kissed, kiss after endless kiss, until all my good intentions dropped from me along with my coat and my keys, and I was lost.
For the next two weeks, we had a great time together, and not just in bed. She was intelligent and funny, and we shared the same views about a lot of things. We never ran out of topics to talk about. And the sex…well, that was over the top. I found myself riding on a high that I’d never felt with anyone before.
When I reported for duty two weeks later, the head of the Peds department handed me a list of all the residents in the program. As I perused it, my blood turned to ice. One name stood out as if it were set in flashing lights. Dr. Mia D’Angelo, third year , right smack in the middle of the page. Please, God, I prayed. Let there be two Mia D’Angelos who were pediatric doctors in the city. Not the green-eyed, curly-haired beauty I couldn’t get out of my head.
I knew in my heart there wasn’t. And I also knew I had to cut things off immediately.
I didn’t want to watch our relationship fade away and dissolve in the middle of our workplace, in front of all our colleagues. How would I keep the residents’ respect if I was involved with her, even if I wasn’t directly in charge of her? I didn’t want angry emotions and hurt feelings when we had to perform jobs that needed us unquestionably to be at one hundred percent.
The truth was, I wasn’t being honorable. I was running away, as I’d always done, from every relationship I’d ever had. Things were getting to be too much—too intimate. Too…everything.
So I deserved not knowing about the important events and people in Mia’s life.
Bitterly, I realized that good ol’ Charlie and I had something in common. We’d both been assholes to Mia.
Mia
Dina and I burst into the barn, sleds trailing behind us. The three guys were sitting around a barrel-and-bale setup, and they’d done some serious damage to a bottle of Crown Royal.
Whoa. My brothers were beer people, so where did that come from? I couldn’t say, but from the chilled-out smiles on their faces, it appeared that Brax had passed the initiation phase.
I bit my lower lip and raised a silent prayer that they’d spent the time discussing books, good booze, fly fishing, politics, or literally anything else besides me.
Dina handed Liam a toboggan rope. “Come on, you guys. The snow is perfect.”
The three men looked at each other. “I’m in,” Caleb said without hesitation, standing right up.
“Ready?” I asked Brax, giving a nod toward the sturdy red toboggan I’d left near the door. I knew he’d grown up in the city, but even city kids went sledding, right? But I was coming to sense there were a lot of normal kid things he never got to do. “You’ve been, right?”
One corner of his mouth tugged up enough that I could glimpse his dimple. Drat, those dimples. Every time they appeared, they made me a total goner. “Does sneaking trays out of the cafeteria at college and using them to hurl ourselves down a hill behind the dorms count?”
I grinned. “Counts. Want to give it a try?”
“Yes?”
“Yes, with a question mark?”
“Well, I usually never drink and sled.”
“I got you.” I grabbed his arm and led him out of the barn. As soon as we were out of earshot of the others, I asked, “Did my brothers behave?” What I really meant was What did they say about me?
“The convo went down as smoothly as the Crown Royal.”
Nothing like confidence, I guess. “So, did they spill any secrets?”
The snow crunched below our feet as we headed out. “If they did, I won’t remember them in the morning.”
I couldn’t help laughing. They’d probably just been discussing guy stuff anyway, and Dina and I had likely gotten here before the conversation turned serious. We trudged the short distance to the hill, our breath making puffs of white in the moonlit night. Everyone was laughing and talking, making me miss all the times we came out on nights exactly like this.
The stars above were like Christmas lights in the sky, lit just for us. And our house glowed in the quiet darkness with colored lights that outlined the rooflines and dotted the pines in the yard. Brax’s sudden “ Holy shit ” made me smile.
“It’s a fricking mountain,” he said under his breath. Below our feet, the hill sloped down, down, down to a long, flat pasture.
“It’s perfect,” I said. I chuckled at his obvious discomfort as I pulled the sled to the brim and scuttled onto it, digging my boots into the snow, breaking into the crunchy top layer that I knew would be perfect for speed.
Caleb, always the daredevil, took a running head start and belly flopped onto his sled. With a large whoop, he slid easily down the slope and then coasted far out into the open field. A smooth, graceful run.
“Survival rate one hundred percent,” I noted. Brax looked hesitant, his lips drawn into a thin line as he rummaged in his coat pockets for his gloves.
I scooched to the front of our sled. “Come on.” I patted the back with my mitten. “Unless you’re chicken.”
“Not chicken,” he mumbled as he dropped into place behind me.
Of all the emergencies we’d handled, all the sleepless nights that were so busy we’d barely had time to pee, I’d never seen him apprehensive of anything, except maybe of the bad fried food in the cafeteria at midnight.
And then suddenly, it hit me—we were sitting together. More than that—he was essentially wrapped around me, his long legs stretched out alongside mine.
Despite the fact that he wore old, faded jeans and I wore insulated snow pants, I swore I could feel his body heat searing through the layers.
Forget him. I was the one who needed reassurance.
It brought me straight back to last summer. His familiar nearness. His big, solid arms grazing my arms. His body encompassing mine.
I thought I’d banished those memories, but they came slamming back with a vengeance. Not unlike the chicken pox virus, which lives on in your nerves long after you’re through being sick, only to create havoc years later.
He was too stiff and silent. Steeling himself, I thought. “Are you by any chance…afraid of heights?”
“Of course not,” he said, sounding offended. He scooched up even closer, resting his hands at my sides. This put his chest inches from my back. He seemed to be taking great pains not to allow any part of his body to touch me. Like that was going to help my nerves. Underneath my jacket, I was in a full-body sweat.
I looked back. His face was so close that I could see the late-day stubble on his cheeks. He was so handsome. A wave of longing passed through me so intense, I sucked in a breath.
Liam pushed Dina off, the toboggan scraping over the clean snowpack. Calm, practical, wise Dina screamed the whole way down.
“Holy shit,” Brax said again.
“You might be too inebriated,” I said.
“I’m not inebriated enough,” he corrected.
“After this, you’re going to wish you were.” I was thinking of another comeback when Liam pushed us off.
“Okay, kids, see you at the bottom!” I had just enough time to gather the rope and what I could of my senses as the sled suddenly plummeted down the giant hill.
Brax let out a curse as he grabbed my waist, more from survival instinct than anything else. I leaned against him because, well, I had to, didn’t I? It was either that or risk being tossed off into the cold unknown, also known as a giant hilly meadow that was known for its rainbow bursts of wildflowers in the spring, but was now a sleek, silver-coated racetrack with multiple dips.
I couldn’t think. But I could feel his lean torso against my back, solid and comforting, his arms now encased tightly around me. I leaned back even more to brace myself as we flew down, down the hill, the snow flying up in our faces, the cold air nipping at our cheeks and making tears stream from our eyes as we barreled down.
Then, as we careened and dipped along the curves and flew down the incline, Brax laughed.
Not a tentative, nervous laugh, but a full, real one. Carefree and fun.
I’d been down this hill dozens—if not hundreds—of times, and I always felt the rush of absolute freedom, the fresh sting of the winter air, and the intense, quiet beauty of a moonlit hillside in the dead of winter.
But this time, I experienced it with fresh eyes. And ears, as we both yelled and screamed as we navigated the roller coaster of dips, the snow spraying up onto our faces.
The terror turned quickly to relief as we glided smoothly into the pasture, the wild ride coming to a much calmer end. “That was amazing,” he said, untangling his legs and lifting himself up. Holding out a hand for me, he grinned. “Let’s do it again.”
So we did. Again, and then again. In fact, we outlasted the others, who brushed off their backsides a final time and went inside to get warm.
“One more time,” he said. He looked boyish. Sweetly excited. And purely happy in a way I’d never seen him before.
I shook my head, smiling. My butt was wet, and I was a little freezing, but I loved seeing how much fun he was having, like a little kid sledding for the first time.
Then it suddenly occurred to me—maybe it was. The first time, I mean.
The very last trip down, we nearly wiped out at the bottom of the hill. When we’d almost slid to a stop, he purposely tumbled over to one side, taking me with him.
“You’re a terrible driver,” he teased, looking down at me. Our legs were tangled together, both of us sunken into the snow, where I could feel the shock as an icy chunk hit my bare back and sank under the waistband of my pants.
“You’re a bad passenger,” I shot right back. The moon was full, lighting up the hill and making the snow sparkle in spectacular shades of blue and gray. It was breathtaking, but not as breathtaking as Brax’s face above me, full of mischief and teasing.
“I shouldn’t have let you steer,” I complained weakly.
“You’re right,” he admitted. One second, we were laughing and joking. But then something happened. Maybe it was staring into his eyes for too long, watching them turn darker, more somber, and very focused—on me. The only sound was my quick intake of air as we both got caught up in a moment where everything stood still. The earth became totally silent, the moon softly shining down on the snow, the lights from the house at the top of the hill glowing warmly.
“You’re a sledding virgin, aren’t you?” I was trying to be funny, but somehow, the mood had shifted. The intense look in his eyes told me so.
“Yes,” he admitted. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
For a moment, we stared at each other. His face was so perfect, so masculine, his eyes unreadable as they searched mine. His breath released in a puff of white. Before I could stop myself, I brushed his snowy hair back with one wet mitten.
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
I sucked in a breath. My body froze in place, my heart pounding so loudly in my chest that I was certain he could hear it.
“Mia,” he whispered, full of longing. I tilted my face upward in response. Snow had crept between my boot and my sock and the icy wetness was sinking in, but I forgot all about it as a slow, building heat pumped through me, and Brax lowered his head to mine.
At first, he kissed me tentatively, his lips softly brushing mine. But I sought his mouth, unable to disguise how badly I wanted this, how badly I wanted him. The next time, we met in a clash of need, our lips parting, our tongues meeting. He gave a little groan as he kissed me deeply and tenderly, making me dizzy and hot.
I got lost in his taste, the feel of him, in the solid, encompassing way he held me. I felt like the focus of his every thought, his every feeling, his every need. And I savored every precious moment of it.
I don’t know how long we lay there, but finally he lifted himself up, giving a little smile, and rolled to his side. I missed his warmth immediately. For a moment, we lay there together in the snow-covered field. The world was hushed, the moonlight casting a silver-blue light as it slanted across the snow.
He reached across and grasped my hand. There were so many stars shining, they looked like tiny Christmas lights, twinkling from far away. “Mia,” he said softly, turning his head toward me. “When were you going to tell me about Charlie?”