The Ex-mas Breakup (Pine Harbour Little Tree Farm #1)

Chapter 1

Rory

August

What are you going to do, send your ex a booty call?

No. Of course not.

He wouldn’t be up for that even if I did.

Every muscle in my body aches from fatigue and barely restrained frustration. So there’s no good reason why I’m staring at Garrett’s text messages at eleven o’clock at night.

Since we broke up in April, we’ve exchanged five messages. All breakup related, all very polite.

But before that…

I scroll back.

Before that was an endless stream of late night messages. Me texting him that I was on my way home from the hospital. Him sending back an encouraging emoji or a funny meme. A promise of something good on the stove for a late dinner. An offer of a foot rub or a hot shower.

He always took good care of me, and I…

I put my phone down and blow a raspberry at the ceiling of our too-quiet condo. Not our condo anymore. Just mine, now.

For ten more months, anyway. Then I’ll…

Well, I’m not sure where I’m going at the end of this year of residency training. Fuck.

I shove off the couch and force myself to go take a hot shower. The water feels good on my back, my shoulders…my tits.

I grab the wand off the hook and think about trying to use it to get off. I tease the spray over my nipples, then lower, over my belly to the juncture of my legs.

But it’s not easy for me to come like this, and the shower has too many memories of Garrett anyway.

I take my birth control pill, then brush my teeth.

The pill package glares at me from the shelf. It’s not like I have a pressing reason to keep taking them, other than I have every night since I was seventeen and Garrett and I started having sex.

And the quiet panic that if I stop a routine, I might never get back into it.

I don’t pick up habits easily. Completing twelve years of post-secondary school and taking birth control pills for that entire time is really the only consistent thing I’ve been successful at.

Ironic that my tunnel vision is the reason I don’t need the pills anymore. There are other ways I could manage my heavy periods. I blow a raspberry and adjust the packet on the shelf.

Stop thinking about Garrett.

My thumb taps against the perforation I just made in the foil. Smack in the middle of my cycle.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m ovulating.

I laugh out loud. Okay. I just need to rub one out in bed and then crash, and I’ll feel better in the morning.

As I check that my alarms are set for the morning, I consider texting Garrett. Would he chuckle?

Have we reached that stage in our breakup where we can laugh at the past?

Rory

You’re probably asleep, but I just realized something funny

Garrett

Not asleep

Oh. That was fast.

Rory

You know how you always knew when I was ovulating?

He doesn’t reply to that.

Shit.

Rory

The punchline is that I realized in the shower that the combination of a bad day at work + unexpectedly persistent thoughts about you probably has a hormonal trigger

Never mind, it was funnier in my head

Dots appear. Disappear. And then after a long, agonizing pause, a message pops onto the screen.

Garrett

You saying you’re horny, Roar?

Rory

Sorry, I know that’s not okay

I’m just lonely, I want to add, but I can’t tell him that. Him being my entire social life is part of why we broke up.

Garrett

Get yourself off and you’ll fall asleep in no time

I stare at the words, hating how well he knows me.

Rory

I know

Garrett

Did you try?

Is there any way to answer that without crossing a line?

Rory

Yeah, in the shower

Garrett

With the shower head?

That doesn’t work for you

Rory

Desperate times call for desperate measures

Garrett

Are you in bed now?

Rory

Mmhmm

Garrett

Use your fingers

Rory

We shouldn’t be doing this

Garrett

What are we doing?

Rory

I don’t know

Garrett

I’m at a bar right now, so if you’re worried about me being a perv with your texts, you’re safe

Rory

If anything, I’m the perv right now

Garrett

Why?

I can’t tell him. I press my thighs tight together, clamping down on my hand, trying to contain my aching need.

Garrett

You touching yourself right now?

Rory

Yes

Garrett

Is it enough?

Rory

No

Garrett

Have you changed the door code?

I jerk upright in bed. He’s not offering…is he?

Oh my God, he is.

Heat blazes through me. My breasts are instantly heavy, my thighs tense. This is a terrible idea, of course, but…

Rory

Still the same

Garrett

Be right there

“Noooo…” I breathe.

But my racing pulse says otherwise.

I scramble out of bed, looking at my laundry piles. The basket that needs to be washed on my day off. The basket I washed on my last day off and never put away. The chair that holds all the in between things that can be worn again, probably, before needing to be—

“He doesn’t care about laundry,” I mutter.

This is a booty call, right? I change into a lacy tank top and panties set, then feel ridiculous, so I pull my comfy sleep clothes back on over top.

I might faint.

I make the bed, ignoring the panicky weird feelings about how it’s where we used to have sex, and how it might feel to have him tumble back into this space with me.

Then I run back to the bathroom. There’s no time to shave anything, but maybe a quick trim of the pubes?

Is that desperate? He didn’t care about that while we were together, but what if he has new standards now?

He was so fast to offer the hookup. Is he the hookup king now?

My stomach flip-flops at that thought. Hate that, actually.

And I know pills won’t be enough. I dig in my backpack, hoping that I have some condoms from the last sexual health workshop I gave—yes, thank you past Rory, for being a pack rat—and then there’s no more time to think about if this is a good idea or not because I can hear his footsteps on the stairs.

The knock is quiet, a slow double tap of his knuckles on a door he once lived behind.

He looks good. As tall as ever, but he looks bigger.

Broader. He fills the doorway. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw him.

How much muscle can a lean, lanky guy pack on over a single summer?

He’s wearing a plaid flannel shirt over a faded green t-shirt from the garage he works at, the colour making his pale blue-green eyes brighter than I remember.

Every little detail gets catalogued. His black jeans are old, but he’s wearing boots I’ve never seen before.

His golden brown hair has gotten long, compared to how he used to wear it, and it’s starting to curl.

It’s all painfully familiar, but new and unfamiliar in specific ways at the same time.

“That was fast.” There’s an edge of suspicion in my voice. Not a great start to whatever this is we’re about to do.

He ignores it and rakes his gaze over my long-sleeve t-shirt and cotton sleep shorts. The way his attention sharpens when he gets to my bare legs makes my stomach take flight. “I was just down the street.”

I dig the hole a little deeper. “On a date?”

“You think I’d ditch a date to respond to your orgasm distress signal?” Does he look…amused?

“I’m not distressed.”

He just stares at me. No, not amused.

Heat crawls up my neck. “Is that what you got from my messages? This was a mistake. Nice to see you, Garrett. You look really good. I’m sorry that I texted you, but—”

He cuts me off. “You gotta be up in the morning, right? I’ll tuck you in.”

It feels like I’m in free fall. “I don’t know—”

He snaps his hand forward, catching the hem of my shirt, hooking his index finger under it and using that to tug me closer to him.

“You do, Roar. You texted me because your brain is racing and you need to sleep, and I know how to make that happen for you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to get my mouth on your sweet little stressed-out pussy, okay? So shut up and let me help.”

I shudder, months of loneliness and repressed desire surging back into painful awareness. Help. Will it still feel like helping in the morning?

But then again, in the morning, I’ll be run off my feet with rounds and consults. In the morning, it won’t matter that I’m lonely. I’ll be too busy to be lonely.

Just like I was too busy for Garrett when he was mine.

“I’d owe you one,” I joke. “That could get complicated.”

He doesn’t laugh.

He just spins me around and presses me against the door. And somehow, he manages not to touch any bare skin until he brushes his fingertips against my wrist.

“You’re wearing a lot of clothes for a girl who wants to come,” he whispers, his breath warm against the back of my neck. “I’m going to take them off you.”

I shiver and nod as he tugs my sleeve off. I help despite the alarm bells going off in my head, pulling my arms in, and then he slides it over my head.

He groans when he sees I’m wearing a lacy tank top underneath it, and I shouldn’t feel a rush of something like pride at having an effect on him, but there it is anyway. A wild, roiling sensation that leaves me feeling reckless.

I twist my head to the side, thinking I might kiss him, but his hand slides into my hair, stopping me. He gently presses my cheek back to the door.

“Hold still for me,” he urges. “Just…feel.”

His other hand trails over my shoulder and down my arm, catching my wrist, tugging it above my head and stretching me onto my tiptoes.

“Okay?”

I nod. Yeah. More than okay. The noise in my head fades to a muzzy static, and he slides his touch down my arm again, down my front this time, into my tank top.

“Fuck,” he whispers when he cups my breast.

I know. I can feel it, too. My nipple is so hard against his palm, straining against his touch.

My thighs shake as I hold myself up on my toes.

Time freezes for a charged, confusing beat. Garrett breathing against the back of my neck, curving over me. My head spinning as he just holds my tit and makes me stay in that stretched up position.

Waiting and wanting.