Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Brinton bunched the spread towel between her knuckles. As the midday sun caressed her naked body, it was no match for the intensifying heat filling her belly and between her thighs. A familiar tightening that affirmed she was so, so close.
As her back pressed into the swimming platform, waves lazily lapping its edge,
Brinton’s thighs trembled against the plush terry cloth.
Her hips shot forward with the force of a bullet.
Jamie’s broad shoulders parted her legs while his greedy lips, tongue, and fingers performed sorcery.
She didn’t consider the top of a man’s head especially beautiful, but how he moved—Jamie’s was a damn masterpiece.
Teeth bruising her bottom lip, she grunted through each thrilling wave that crashed over her. Thankfully, he was steadfast in his delicious torture. Enough to take her right to the edge, then pulling back when she violently shuddered. Why didn’t she let this man ruin her sooner?
Clank.
She couldn’t place the sound’s origin or speak coherently as her orgasm barreled toward her with Tasmanian Devil–gusto.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
“Don’t you hear—”
He glanced up with an appropriately devilish grin. “No, but this is the part where you wake up.”
As endorphins threatened to rip her in two, she screeched, “Wait—what?”
Brinton opened her eyes, then bolted upright.
She was safely in bed, inside the guest house’s quiet confines on a still-dark Saturday morning.
Five days had passed since Jamie’s birthday, and she’d barely seen him.
He’d been finalizing the album, shooting photos for his Landmark spread, and in marathon meetings with the label.
This did, however, give her some much-needed time to write and join Sammi for surprisingly humbling Dolly Parton–themed Zumba classes.
Every night though, he’d stopped by to kiss her good-night. Still, she’d missed him. So much that even her subconscious had conspired against her. She was desperate for skin-on-skin contact. Then she remembered their no-sex pact, simultaneously the smartest and stupidest thing she’d ever agreed to.
Worse yet, she was leaving Iris in two days.
The article was nearly done, meaning it was only a matter of time before they could allow themselves to explore every facet of their bodies. She wanted him, she was sure, but would he want her if he knew how fragile she really was?
Eli was the last person Brinton slept with.
While it had been over a year ago, the memory still haunted her.
That night, she had lain in bed for hours, nauseous from another spiraling migraine.
Eli had gone to a friend’s party in DUMBO.
She couldn’t stand upright without wanting to vomit, let alone have the energy to watch him and his trust fund posse debate whether Apple or Facebook was the bigger disrupter—the original chicken-or-the-egg conundrum.
At some point amid her fever dream, Eli had climbed into bed beside her, snaked an arm around her limp body, and pulled her close.
He smelled like stale cigarettes and Baccarat Rouge 540.
This wasn’t the first time he had come home smelling like another woman.
Brinton should have been furious, but did she have the right when she couldn’t show up for him, like someone with fewer sensitivities?
“How are you feeling?” His breath scorched her clammy neck.
“I’m in a lot of pain. I can’t sleep.”
“Everyone asked about you. They’re starting to think I made you up.
” Eli had dropped that line so frequently that it deserved a laugh track in the shit-com that was their relationship.
He slowly stroked her waist with his free hand, which made her teeth clench.
“I thought about you in the cab the whole way home…”
He dipped his hand into the waistband of her shorts, parting her thighs and rubbing against her. It should have felt good, but her body stiffened. She couldn’t bear another ounce of sensation.
“I know it’s been a while, but how about tomorrow?” she pleaded.
Roughly, he pulled his hand away. “Sure, fine.” He flipped onto his side, his back now facing her. It wasn’t fine. But he had known how bad things had gotten for her—she had been too ashamed to tell Shay or her mom at that point—and stayed with her anyway.
She felt like she owed him something.
“Hey,” she said, her voice cracking at its peak. “It’s okay. Come here.”
He rolled over. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
He dragged her shorts down her thighs, pushed her on her back, and pressed his weight on top.
His tongue was forceful and flooded her mouth with the aftertaste of espresso and pizza rolls.
She fought the urge to gag and focused on proving to him that his invested time had been worth it. That she was worth it.
She wasn’t nearly wet enough and didn’t call his name as loudly as he wanted.
She was too disoriented to twist into the positions he liked.
But, curiously, when he finished, and she lay awake in the bed, the pain radiating from every cell stopped firing.
It’s when she had accepted that if she distracted herself well enough, she could escape almost any pain, even if only for a little while.
Eli had ended things a week later, but not before telling her how bad it would make him look to his friends.
But that was in the past.
Rolling onto her side, she squeezed her pillow over her head, smothering her self-doubt.
She couldn’t imagine sex with Jamie being anything but spectacular.
This was all such a surprise, even thinking of him this way, but as they grew closer, his smiling face had become a solid foundation for her runaway emotions.
Damn, she needed to see him.
At least she’d see him that night at Yeehaw Fest. Unfortunately, so would a gnashing crowd of a hundred thousand strong; the thought of which made her gut seize and stretch like saltwater taffy. But she could handle it, because Jamie would be there to ground her, as he always did.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
That unmistakable noise again. Bleary-eyed and more than a little annoyed that her fantastic sex dream had been interrupted, she snatched her phone from the nightstand. It was 6:03 a.m.
The sound was coming from a large side window overlooking the vegetable garden.
She kicked the quilt off her legs and slipped out of bed.
When she pulled back the curtains, a tiny pebble bounced off the glass.
To her surprise—and absolute delight—she followed its trajectory and found Jamie standing in a patch of grass below.
He wore his typical jeans and T-shirt, which, to her dismay, he always looked good in.
But today, he added an orange baseball cap turned backward.
One of those vicious things men did that made them look so lethally sexy despite requiring the same effort it took to blink.
She opened the window. “Are you crazy?” she shout-whispered.
He smiled, gripping something in his hand. “Lordy, woman, you sleep like the dead. I was fixin’ to run out of pebbles.”
She tried to hide the smile bursting behind her lips. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Foreday in the morning.”
She cocked her head, amused. His little folk-isms had grown on her.
“It’s early.” He laughed. “And sorry about that. I was thinking you’d wanna go on a side-quest before my soundcheck? I want you to meet a very special woman in my life.”
“A woman?” Brinton’s heart disintegrated in her chest. There’d been another woman this entire time?
He flicked up his shoulders. “I think she’d like you, and I figured it would add something to your article. You know, see the real people in my life?”
“The real people in your life?”
Un-fucking-believable. Brinton had half a mind to chuck pebbles—or something heavier—down at him.
“My mamaw lives in a retirement community down the road. Loves to watch me sing, but a music festival ain’t ideal for an eighty-two-year-old with asthma. So, I’m gonna bring the show to her.”
Brinton laughed, shucking off her panic. His mamaw—of course. “Give me ten minutes.”
Jamie had parked his truck on a service entrance obscured by tall hedges.
“You look beautiful,” he said, pulling her into one of his famous hugs. She’d changed into a blue seersucker dress with ties at the shoulders and brown sandals that felt meeting grandma–appropriate.
“Thank you.” She cast him a suspicious look. “Are you sneaking us out of here?”
Jamie grinned. “Something like that.”
Before he turned the key in the ignition, he typed something on his phone. Her phone dinged—a text message with a link to a playlist.
“‘Yeehaw Summer,’” she said, reading from her screen. “You made this for me?”
“Mm-hmm. Required listening. Lots of my favorite artists and some others I figured you’d like too. If you want, we can throw it on now.”
She nodded, then connected her phone to the Bluetooth speakers. They pulled off to “Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks. Brinton smiled, grateful as the morning sun tiptoed up the horizon.
Twenty minutes later, Jamie pulled down the cinematically long driveway of Iris Grove Senior Estates.
It led them to an impressive two-story building that had a Gone with the Wind–worthy balcony on the ground floor.
Handsome English Ivy climbed up its brick facade.
Nearby, a dozen cottages were nestled among the freshly cut lawn and mature magnolia trees.
Jamie inched into a parking spot. “Not bad, huh?”
“Not at all. She lives here alone?”
“Well, hardly alone. Pop-Pop—my grandfather—passed away about five years ago, but she’s settled in nicely here. Has lots of friends, plays tennis every morning, and learned three languages since she moved in. She’s an absolute firecracker.”
His thumbs drummed on the steering wheel. “I’ve never introduced her to one of my…”
He cocked his head, clearly fishing for the right word.