Chapter 23 – Claire
TWENTY-THREE
CLAIRE
“Excuse me, we’re on a date, Miles,” Brad says, his voice tight, but I’m not looking at him at all.
My eyes are locked on the man before me, his hand outstretched, waiting for me to grab it. Miles finally breaks his gaze from mine, shifting it to the man sitting at the table with me, and looks at him as if that’s the first time he’s seen him before he shakes his head.
“Not anymore. Sorry, my girl’s just trying to prove a point, aren’t you, baby?” he asks.
I want to be annoyed. I really, really do because is he serious right now? But then he steps forward, his outstretched hand moving to the back of my neck and burying his fingers in the hair there, gripping and shifting so I have to look at him, and his touch makes my brain short-circuit the way it always does.
“I don’t know, I’m kind of enjoying myself,” I lie, staring into his eyes with a small smile on my lips. I sense more than see Brad’s chest puff out.
“See? Get out of here before I have to call someone.”
“Claire, I fucked up,” Miles says low, only for me to hear, looking at me, and any pretense of trying to prove a point in front of Brad falls away, and I see him.
It’s not jealousy and possessiveness in his eyes.
Well, okay, yes it is, but it’s not the first thing I see. The first thing I see on his face is a gut-clenching level of regret. Beneath that is a level of pleading I don’t think I’ve ever seen from another person, much less this man who is so self-assured and so self-sufficient, it looks out of place on him.
His hand reaches down for mine, and I give it to him without a second thought, letting him pull me up to stand next to him.
“Claire, this is crazy, we—” Brad starts, but his words turn into mumbles like the Charlie Brown teacher, as Miles pulls me in tight to him, my chest pressing against his.
I want to be annoyed—hell, I should be annoyed—but when his head dips, pressing a barely-there kiss to the now-exposed skin between my shoulder and my neck, his mustache grazing along sensitive flesh, I can’t find it in me.
A shiver runs down my spine as he whispers his next words.
“You’re right: I’ve been too scared. I fucked up, and I want to fix it.” He pulls back, looking in my eyes. “Come home with me.”
“Miles, I can’t go.” His face falls, and I’m pretty sure Brad speaks to continue to argue in my defense, but I can barely hear it as I smile up at Miles. “I’m in heels. There’s no way I can walk through that sand,” I say as if that’s the only reason I can’t just leave a date.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his gaze burning over my skin as it skims down my body, down my legs, landing on the four-inch sandals I slipped on.
He smiles wide.
“I can fix that” is the last thing I hear before he bends down and drapes my body over his shoulder.
Then he steps over the barrier in the sand back onto public property.
Brad stands, clearly irritated by the turn of events, but I just wiggle my fingers at him.
“Sorry, Brad! It was nice seeing you!” I shout over Miles’s shoulder as he walks back toward the house.
“The fuck it was,” Miles grumbles.
“Oh, hush you,” I say, slapping his back. “I’m still mad at you.”
“That’s fine, I like you mad,” he says before shifting me as he walks through the sand, never faltering in his mission to get us home, until he’s holding me bridal style. Once my arms are securely around his neck, he bends down and nips at my bare shoulder.
The brush of his teeth on my skin goes directly to my clit, I swear to god.
Still, I force myself to collect my thoughts as we make it to the boardwalk because I can’t afford to let my mind get jumbled. Not when he owes me a true apology and an explanation. I can’t fall into this without some kind of surety that this isn’t just envy taking the reins.
June suggested a fling, but that’s not something I do. Not even just because I don’t do flings, but because I couldn’t bear to have Miles as just a fling .
Once we’re off the sand, he sets me down, his hand moving to mine, but when we’re at the front door, I step back, putting my hands to my hips and glaring at him.
“What was that, Miles?”
He looks at me with a hint of confusion. “That was me saving you from the world's most boring date.”
Something in my heart deflates. Was this just another example of Miles letting his jealousy get the best of him?
“I didn’t ask you to do that. I’m a big girl, Miles.”
His jaw goes tight, and he takes in what seems to be a steadying breath before speaking. “I know, but I still wanted to get you out of there. You shouldn’t have gone out with him. He’s not good enough for you.”
“Oh, what, and you are?” I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him.
He shakes his head, surprising me.
“Not even close, but unlike him, I’ll keep working until I get there.”
My heart skips a beat at his confession, but I shut that flickering hope down.
“Miles—” I start, startled by his honesty, but the word dies on my lips when he steps closer, backing me against the door of the house. My breath catches in my chest with the serious look on his face, with the way his head dips to look at me.
“I should have told you that the reason I didn’t want you to go on this date wasn’t because I fucking hate that man, which, to be totally up-front, I do. I hate him and what he’s doing to this town, but I hate more that he got to touch you. That he took you out before I got the chance. I spent the last six years wanting you, and I should have told you that the reason I didn’t want you to go is because I’m crazy about you, because I want you for myself, but I’m chicken shit, so I didn’t. But now I don’t want to be anymore, Claire. I’m just hoping it’s not too late.”
A lump grows in my throat as that hope blooms out of control with the sincerity in his words and the ones written all over his face.
“You want me?”
“You know I want you.” He says it like it’s obvious, yet it’s anything but to me, so I shake my head, feeling my hair move against my skin.
Every inch of me is a crackling mess of on-edge nerves, my mind capturing every single moment for future inspection and dissecting it, as if I know this is a pivotal moment, for better or worse.
“No, I don’t. I know you’re attracted to me because, duh, just look at me,” I say, going for silly and aloof because that’s who I’m supposed to be, right? “I know you’re stuck with me because I live here, and I flirt with you, and it annoys you—” I would continue, but I can’t.
I can’t because Miles has pulled me into his body, his strong, sun-kissed arm wrapping around my waist and pulling me in so tight, the breath leaves my lungs. His other hand goes to the back of my head to pull my face to his before he’s kissing me.
Hard, deep, tongues and teeth clashing, and it’s like he is trying to prove something to me by showing me before he gets to tell me. Or maybe like he couldn’t help it, like the need to have me won.
But for a moment, I don’t even care.
For a moment, I bask in the moment of being held and wanted, my hands moving to his neck to hold him against me, the same need and desperation coursing through me as he kisses me.
Finally, he pauses it, pressing his forehead to mine, our panting breaths mingling in the small space between us.
“Then let me correct that horrible fucking misstep of mine,” he whispers, his lips brushing against mine with each word. “I wanted you when you were nineteen and too fucking young for me. And I wanted you when you were twenty and started flirting with me because it got a rise out of me. I wanted you when you were twenty one, and I told myself I’d go for it once you graduated so you could enjoy your carefree years without some boyfriend waiting for you in a dead-end town.”
My breath catches in my chest.
“But then Paul beat me to it, and I wasn’t going to step in because I thought you were happy, and that’s all I wanted for you. But make no mistake about it, you were always supposed to be mine. My biggest fucking regret is not running across the beach two years ago and going for what I’ve always wanted—you.”
My mind flashes to that Memorial Day party, when June and I looked across the beach to see Grant, Miles, and Paul. June laughed that maybe this would be the year Miles pulled his head out of his ass, but I told her there was no way he would ever be into me.
That was the night Paul came over and used all the right lines until I was putty in his hands, a feeling that carried over for too long.
I also remember the look of pain and regret I thought I saw flashing in Miles’s eyes the next morning.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, eyes wide.
“I never hated you flirting with me, never thought it was annoying: I was mad that I wouldn’t let myself act on it. I didn’t want you changing your life for some idiot mechanic in a small town waiting at home at night for you to call. I want you so fucking bad, I can’t think straight. I go to work and I wonder what you’re doing. When I come home and you’re not there, the house feels empty. Seeing you at my kitchen table eating your shit cereal that’s going to rot your teeth out makes my fucking morning. When I think about you leaving in the fall, I get downright depressed. You think I think you’re childish and flighty, but in truth, I envy how you never care what anyone thinks, so long as it makes you happy. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could be like you, Claire, but the truth is, I’d much rather have you.”
”Oh,” I whisper, heart pounding and overwhelmed with what he’s saying.
“So here’s what I have to know: are you able to forgive me? Can you get over my being so fucking blinded by what I thought you needed that I almost let you walk away from me? Or did I come to my senses in time to not lose you?”
I stand there, pinned between the door and his body, the warm summer air ghosting along my skin as his big towering body pins me in place, his brown eyes staring me down, and for the first time, I see there’s nothing there: no walls, no denial, no worries and concerns. Just pure fucking longing and need and something else under there that’s been simmering for years that I don’t think either of us would be ready to name.
Some sane part of my mind warns me he might change his mind in the morning. That this might just be the consequence of him seeing me with another man. It wouldn’t be the first time we took one step forward and three steps back, after all.
But like I always do, I trust my gut and decide to jump.
“It’s not too late.”