Chapter 17 – “imgonnagetyouback” - Taylor Swift #2
I chuckle as they both step away, Dom’s hands all over his wife while she laughs into his shoulder.
I finish helping Leo with the lights, briefly greeting Everett and Dahlia as they arrive.
I spend the next hour silently bidding on a number of Carter’s photographs up for auction that I think would look good in the shop.
He’s a landscape photographer who’s worked all over the world but specializes in the
West Coast and Hawaii. I learned after speaking with him briefly at Darby and Leo’s wedding last spring that while he and his girlfriend, Penelope, are primarily based here in Los Angeles, they split much of their time between their hometown in Oregon and where his mother lives on Oahu, so most of his work is shot between those three regions.
Lucky for him, considering they’re three of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Several of his pieces are of Pacific Shores in particular, though.
One shot of the boardwalk catches my eye, another of a grassy knoll overlooking the coastal cliffs, the image washing me in a sense of déjà vu because it looks suspiciously similar to the cliffside Elena and I spent so much of our youth lying on while we studied the stars… and each other.
I assumed Elena wasn’t going to attend when she didn’t leave her room once this morning before I took off. It was cemented when Dahlia and Everett arrived without her. She would’ve had to get a ride from one of her brothers, or from me, considering she doesn’t have a car of her own.
Even so, as the night goes on, I keep watching every person who walks through the door, wondering if—possibly hoping—it could be her.
I force my eyes away again as another pair of strangers enter the gallery, dragging my attention back to Darby and Leo.
Soft conversation hums all around me, but I can’t focus on any of it.
I’m standing next to a table, elbow propped with a fresh glass of whiskey in my hand.
Darby sits on a chair beside me, legs thrown onto Leo’s lap, her heels abandoned on the floor as he rubs her swollen feet.
“I told you that you didn’t need to help with setting up, Honeysuckle. Look at your poor feet, baby.”
I glance down. Her eyes are closed, head tossed back as she holds her growing belly, golden hair falling around her shoulders.
She’s wearing a black cocktail dress that hugs all of her pregnancy curves, though it looks fairly uncomfortable.
I know Leo had insisted she wear flat shoes and not spend so much time on her feet.
She didn’t listen to either recommendation.
“It’s fine.” She sighs. “That’s why I have you.”
The front door whooshes open as city noise and outside air pour in, but I refuse to look this time. I keep my eyes fixed on my friend as she takes another sip of her water, but when I hear someone gasp, “Damn” nearby, my head snaps up.
I don’t know exactly who said it, but Macie is standing closest, so it must’ve been her. Darby and Leo’s heads snap the same way mine does as my personal hurricane of nightmares blows into the building.
Just like she promised, I’m choking on my fucking tongue.
Elena saunters into the room looking like the personification of a painting you’d find hung up in this gallery.
Fuck that, actually. The Louvre. Two straps of plum-colored fabric, just wide enough to cover her ample breasts, rest on Elena’s shoulders, creating a deep V before they meet at her navel, the crescent moon and dripping stars I tattooed beneath her sternum when she was twenty-two on full display.
A thin, silver chain wraps around her waist, and the dress flows down below it like liquid satin, pooling at her feet.
A massive slit rides up one side, almost to her hip.
Each step she takes into the gallery has the fabric swishing, revealing the entirety of her left leg, and the serpent around her thigh.
My eyes get caught there, and the damn thing seems to wink at me each time the dress slides aside and reveals it, like it’s fucking taunting me.
Her skin is smooth and glowing, seeming to sparkle in the soft gallery lighting. Dark curls tumble down her shoulders, swaying over her breasts with each movement she makes, and I’m suddenly desperate to have the strands between my fingers—wrapped around my fist.
It’s almost as if she’s fucking backlit, the art on display, the creation to be admired in this room. Everything else goes blurry, outside my periphery and nonexistent. There is only her.
As if summoned, her eyes snap to mine. She gives me a once-over, stare snatching onto my gray suit, brow lifting in slow assessment. The feline smile that has my cock stirring to attention spreads across her full, cherry-painted lips.
Hungry? She mouths before tossing me a wink.
Like a sucker punch, all of the oxygen is swept from my lungs, and I begin to choke on nothing. A moment later, a crash echoes, startling me and breaking my stare. I glance down to find shattered glass around my feet and whiskey soaking my shoes.
My gaze snaps to Elena again, and she’s smirking at me before turning toward the bar and sliding into one of the stools.
“Fuck,” I mutter, squatting as I begin to pick up the broken glass.
“How did she get here?” Leo asks as Everett murmurs, “Why is she wearing a fucking loin cloth?”
Leo huffs, kissing his wife’s ankle before standing and setting her feet in his seat, Everett trails behind him as they go in search of their sister. The view of them walking away is blocked by Carter as he bends to his knees in front of me with a small trash bin, plucking shards from the ground.
“Sorry.”
“No worries, man. Happens.” His lips tilt slightly as he pauses, studying my face. “I know she’s their sister, but where do you fit into the equation?”
“I don’t, really,” I lie. “She’s my roommate.”
He cocks his head. “That it?”
“We used to be friends,” I murmur. “When we were kids.”
“Used to be?”
I grunt in confirmation, and as we finish picking up the glass, he drags a rag across the floor to soak the spill before tossing that in the bin.
“I get it.” He smirks as we stand.
Across the gallery, Leo, Everett, and Elena speak in hushed tones. My attention is pulled away when Dahlia steps up behind Darby’s chair, saying, “You know, Penelope told me that the rooftop has a gorgeous view of the city. I was going to see if I could sneak Everett up there for sex.”
Darby’s nose scrunches, lip curling as she gazes up at her sister, offering a perplexed and disturbed expression.
“Um…why don’t I give you my key, then?” Carter says awkwardly. “Door locks from the outside, and that way, we can make sure you don’t accidentally traumatize any of my other tenants.”
“That would be great.” She smiles, snatching it from his outstretched hand with zero shame. “August.” She turns her eyes to me. “We should be about a half hour or so. You know…” Dahlia shrugs. “In case you’d like to have any conversations out of the eyes of nosy, overprotective brothers.”
“Coincidentally, I was just going to ask Leo if he could come help me with a few boxes I left in my apartment,” Carter adds.
Dahlia winks before striding across the showroom floor and intercepting Everett as he and Leo walk back toward us. She whispers something in his ear, and a grin spreads across his face. He spins on his heel, and follows her like a damn dog through the backdoor and into the stairwell.
Carter stops Leo before he reaches us, nodding in the same direction Everett and Dahlia just disappeared. “I need you to help me get a few things upstairs.”
“Oh.” He pauses, glancing back and forth between Carter and his wife. “But Darby…and her feet…”
“I’m fine.” She waves him off. “I can survive fifteen minutes without you.”
“I got her.” Penelope smiles as she returns from walking a number of buyers through the gallery.
He sighs, relenting as he steps up to his wife and plants a quick kiss on her lips, hand on her belly. Carter winks at me before they both head toward the apartment units above the gallery’s main floor.
“Go say whatever it is you need to say.”
“I have nothing to say,” I mutter, glancing down at Darby.
“That’s not true. You both have left far too much unspoken, and I know for damn sure she didn’t wear that dress for anyone else tonight.”
I exhale a heavy breath as my gaze darts back to Elena.
She leans over the bar, arms propped on the counter, sparkling eyes and a beaming smile fixated on the bartender.
He studies her, open with interest, his gaze lingering on the soft skin spilling from her neckline.
Nausea rolls in my stomach as I watch the encounter.
Skin that was on my hands, in my mouth, only days ago.
Fuck her for doing this to me. Fuck me for allowing it to happen.
Darby’s right. She didn’t come here for anyone else tonight.
She came here to taunt me, to win the next round in whatever deranged game the two of us seem to be playing.
She wore that dress, perfectly curated to show off every inch of ink I’ve drawn on her flesh, for me.
To torture me, drive me mad, and make me wild.
Maybe we’re both reaching the point of insanity, a place we won’t return from, but fuck it.
If she thinks batting her eyes at another man and wearing a dress tailored to my deepest desires is going to obliterate my self-control—if that’s what she wants from me—I’m going to give her exactly what she’s asking for.