CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ellery
The next few days are complete chaos.
There’s a reason construction sites follow a set schedule of when specific trades perform what. Where their work falls in the scheme of things. If they’re on-site simultaneously, the site is too crowded. Accidents can happen.
But we’re not a normal site.
We have so many different phases going inside our little world. Some rooms are stripped to the studs while others are being overhauled and prepped for new paint and flooring.
All the trades are here, everywhere at once.
I welcome the chaos. The shouting that someone is in someone’s way. The questions about how the hell is this feasible. The cacophony of sound that pulls me here and there and everywhere.
And being busy is good. Not having a single second to think is wanted at this point in time because every time I have a free moment, my mind goes right back to him.
To Ford.
To a few nights ago. To the sensations he evoked and to the open-ended question he left me with. To the clarity it roused and the questions still unanswered.
Is that why I’ve been pulling a Ford? Avoiding him? Keeping my distance? Making sure we’re not alone together for more than a few supervised seconds around tradesmen?
And is that why he’s on the same page? Or at least I think he is, because every time I go to the kitchen area after everyone has left or flip the TV on for a few minutes of mindlessness, he suddenly needs to be anywhere but with me.
The irony is, he’s making himself scarce, which is only serving to make me want his company more.
And not just for sex, although I wouldn’t object to more of that once I straighten my own head out.
But more for his friendship. For our easy conversations that can be deep or shallow but that make me laugh and feel valued.
The absence only reinforces the fact that I’m often alone here. Lonely.
Isolated in a sense.
At home, I have friends. While I never let them in too much or let them get too close, at least I have someone to meet up with for drinks after work or grab a coffee with on a lazy Sunday morning. I never realized how much that companionship mattered until I didn’t have it.
But here it’s me. It’s Ford. It’s an inn that’s in complete disarray. There’s very little outside contact other than a quick drive to the supermarket across town or an absent conversation with the food delivery driver.
It’s Sunday and, for the first time since we “broke ground” so to speak, the inn is void of workers.
Because of our accelerated schedule, different crews are here around the clock.
And while that commotion is overwhelming, it also prevents any downtime.
It prevents me from realizing the solitude in the silence, something I seem to be an expert at. Especially since I lost my mom.
I glance up to the rooftop bar in the making.
To where Ford has made his pseudo flat—where he sleeps and works.
To where he’s currently occupied with his other job—Sharpe International stuff.
A conference call with people on the other side of the world—or Mars, for all I know.
Or maybe he’s doing nothing more than sitting in the same solitude I am but enjoying it.
Fordham Sharpe.
He was supposed to be off limits. Supposed to be a look-from-afar-but-don’t-touch. And now I can’t stop thinking about him, and in the odd times that I’m able to, of course, that’s when he needs to speak to me.
But I’m old enough to know how this story ends. And it’s not a happily ever after like the one I got to in my book but didn’t finish last night.
Then again, I’m not into happily ever after. I’m into the now. Into some good sex and enjoying the moment. I’m into the presumption that the couple I’m reading about will stay together.
Maybe that’s why I never read the epilogues. Maybe I know that love ends in pain, in being left behind, and I want to suspend disbelief that it won’t for my fictional friends.
And even in knowing this, in acknowledging that the physical is all I’m ever after and never the emotional connection, why is it that sleeping with Ford scares the hell out of me?
Is it because for the first time in forever, I have someone on my side who believes in me? Maybe I value that more than a fleeting orgasm.
Then again, why can’t I have both? The support and the great sex?
It is the twenty-first century, after all.
I take a sip of my wine and stare out at the ocean and its never-ending horizon. Seagulls squawk. The waves crash. My thoughts run as the notion takes hold.
I want Ford again.
“Hey, you.”
Ford takes a seat beside me, leaning back with his elbows in the sand and his feet crossed at the ankles, before I can even respond.
“Hi.”
“It’s weird for it to be so quiet inside,” he says as he reaches up and tugs on my ponytail.
“I know. That’s partly why I’m out here.”
“Does the other part have anything to do with me?” He lifts an eyebrow as our stare holds, and I shrug. “Fair enough.”
“I know the answer to the why, Ford. Maybe I just don’t want to say it out loud because it sounds ridiculous.”
“Like I said”—he shifts so that he’s propped up on one hand while his other hand tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. It’s an oddly intimate gesture that he seems to do so casually—“Fair enough.”
The sexual tension is still there. That one night did nothing to abate it. In fact, I think knowing what he feels like, how he made me feel, made it even stronger.
Why do I not want him to say fair enough? Why do I want him to demand an answer and then drag me upstairs and fuck me seven ways from Sunday?
Maybe I want to be heard.
I reach out and run my hand over the scruff on his jaw. His nostrils flare at the touch of my hand and his lips part, just in time for my thumb to graze his bottom lip.
“Ellery,” he murmurs, his eyes darkening.
Without preamble, I make the decision for us that we’ve been tiptoeing around.
I lean forward and press my lips to his.
The kiss is soft, tender, and he lets me take the lead.
It’s my tongue that seeks access first. It’s my fingers gliding up his shoulder and threading into the hair at the back of his neck.
There is no rush like the other night, no urgent hunger in the kiss. There’s pleasure. Reverence. A cautious testing of the waters we’ve already swam in but now fear we might drown in.
I fall into the moment. The possessiveness of his hand on my lower back. His groan in the back of his throat. The warmth spreading through my body from his kiss. The ache of desire burning between my thighs.
The kiss ends, his hands now on both sides of my face, as our foreheads rest on each other’s. We sit like this for a few seconds, no words exchanged, almost as if we’re still figuring out if this is right or wrong or somewhere in between.
And just as I’m about to lean away, to break the sudden softness of the moment, Ford speaks.
“Let’s go,” he says, standing without warning and grabbing my hand to help me stand. He links his fingers with mine as we make our way across the sand toward the back of the inn.
For some reason, nerves rattle. I can handle the hungry sex. The animalistic. The lust gone wild.
But if the kiss we just shared is any indication of the sex we’re about to have, it unnerves me.
I expect to go in the back door of the inn and am surprised when Ford tugs my hand to keep walking on the boardwalk.
“No. I’m taking you somewhere,” he says cryptically as he turns the corner of the building and heads toward the parking lot. When he opens the car door for me, I just stare at him. “We’ve lived, eaten, and breathed this place for two weeks. It’s time we had a break.”
“Where are we going?” I ask as I climb into the passenger seat.
He steps between my knees still angled out the door and angles his head to the side as he studies me. “We’re feeling things out.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’ve kissed.” He puts a hand on my thigh and squeezes gently. “Let’s sit with that for a bit. Escape this prison. And once it digests, we’ll figure out what we want after that.”
“Like?”
His smile is shy, but his eyes are alive. “Like maybe another kiss. Maybe, it remains to be seen.”
“What if I already know the answer to that?”
He leans forward and presses a kiss on my forehead. “Then humor me, will you?”