2. Blair
— ? —
Blair
Trip Vanderford arrived at Seacliff the way he arrived everywhere: an event, not a guest.
I heard his car before I saw it, the crunch of gravel on the drive, and I was out the front door before Will could say anything.
Trip unfolded himself from the back of a town car, all long limbs and expensive tailoring and that smile I’d missed for seven years, and then I was running across the lawn, nineteen again, and he was catching me and lifting me off my feet and spinning me around while I laughed and cried at the same time.
“You’re taller,” I said, which was absurd. He was thirty-four.
“You’re lying.” He set me down but didn’t let go, holding me at arm’s length to examine me like I was a painting he’d just rediscovered. “Marriage agrees with you. Infuriatingly. I was hoping you’d gone to seed so I could feel superior.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“You always do, darling. It’s your finest quality.”
He looked good. Tanned and rested in a way he never had in Newport, with laugh lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Europe had agreed with him. Or someone had.
“Seven years,” I said, punching his shoulder. “Seven years, you absolute monster.”
“Time flies when you’re avoiding your family.”
“You could have avoided them here. I’d have helped.”
“You did help. Every phone call. Every text at three in the morning when the time difference meant you were basically unconscious.” He pulled me into another hug, tighter this time. “I missed you, B. More than I let myself admit.”
“I missed you too.”
Behind me, I heard the front door open. Will’s footsteps on the stone porch.
Trip released me and turned, his face shifting into a guarded mask.
The two of them had never been easy together.
Will resented the years of friendship he couldn’t access, the inside jokes that predated him, the way Trip had opposed our relationship from the start.
And Trip, well. Trip had never quite forgiven Will for being worthy of me.
“William.” Trip extended a hand. “You look well.”
“Trip.” Will shook it. “Good to have you back.”
The politeness was so sharp it could cut glass.
“Come inside,” I said, too brightly, threading my arm through Trip’s and dragging him toward the door. “Dinner’s almost ready. Henry’s been asking about you all week.”
“The small human has been told of my magnificence?”
“The small human has been told you once got your head stuck in a fence and the fire department had to come.”
“You swore you’d never tell that story.”
“I tell everyone that story. It’s the only leverage I have.”
Behind us, Will followed in silence.
Dinner was a minefield disguised as a meal.
The dining room looked beautiful. Candles, flowers, the good china that only came out for guests.
Will had opened a bottle from his best collection, a peace offering or a power play, I couldn’t tell which.
Henry was on his best behavior, which meant he’d only interrupted three times to ask if Trip had met any dragons in Europe.
“No dragons,” Trip said gravely. “But I did encounter a very suspicious goat in the Swiss Alps.”
“Was it evil?”
“Undetermined. We’re still corresponding.”
Henry giggled. I watched Will watch Trip, watched him clocking every easy interaction, every time his son laughed at someone else’s joke.
“The summer we got banned from the yacht club,” Trip was saying, on his third glass of wine and his eighth story from our past. “What were we, fifteen? You convinced me to steal the commodore’s golf cart and drive it into the harbor.”
“I did not convince you. You convinced yourself. I just didn’t stop you.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘I bet you won’t.’”
“That’s not convincing. That’s observing.”
“Your observations have always been dangerously persuasive.” Trip gestured with his glass, sloshing wine onto the tablecloth. “Remember the time you observed that the club’s ice sculpture would look better in the pool?”
“That was your idea.”
“It was your observation that no one was watching the service entrance.”
I was laughing. I couldn’t help it. These stories were so old I’d forgotten them, and hearing them again felt like finding a box of photographs in the attic.
Will’s knuckles were white on his wine glass.
“Trip.” I caught myself, too late. “Will’s heard this one.”
“Has he?” Trip’s smile didn’t falter, but it sharpened at the edges. “Well. Can’t have you bored at your own table, Beaumont.”
“I’m never bored.” Will’s voice was pleasant. His eyes were not. “Just patient.”
The temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees.
“More wine?” I grabbed the bottle, filling glasses that didn’t need filling. “Trip, tell Will about the villa in Tuscany. The one with the olive grove.”
“Ah, yes. The olive grove.” Trip leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied with whatever point he’d scored. “Gorgeous property. Falling apart, of course. The plumbing was medieval. But the sunsets, William. The sunsets were worth every cold shower.”
“Sounds rustic.”
“It was romantic.”
“Were you there with someone?”
The question hung in the air. Trip’s smile flickered, just for a moment.
“Just myself,” he said. “And the suspicious goat.”
“Is it a pet goat?” Henry asked. “Can I meet it?”
“The goat lives in Switzerland, darling. Very inconvenient for visiting.”
“Can we go to Switzerland?”
“That’s a question for your parents.”
Henry turned to me with the laser focus of a child who has identified a weakness. “Mom. Can we go to Switzerland?”
“Ask your father.”
“Dad. Can we go to Switzerland?”
Will finally smiled, and the tension in the room eased slightly. “Maybe for your birthday.”
“My birthday’s in November. That’s forever away.”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“That’s what Mom says about dessert. Is dessert ready?”
The conversation shifted to chocolate cake, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Trip caught my eye across the table and winked.
I didn’t wink back.
By eleven, the house was quiet. Henry was asleep, Trip had been poured into a taxi back to the Hotel Viking, and Will and I were alone for the first time all evening.
I found him in the master bedroom, undressing with his back to me. The line of his shoulders was tense. His movements were too controlled, too careful, the way he got when he was holding words back.
He had his shirt off, and I caught myself staring at the muscle shifting under the skin of his back, at the deep groove of his spine, at his forearms working the cufflinks loose.
Ten years and my mouth still went dry at the sight of him half undressed.
My thighs pressed together before I told them to.
I hated how easy it was, how fast my body answered him, how one unguarded look at the cut of his hips above his waistband left me clenching around nothing.
“Will.”
“Hmm?”
“Are you okay?”
He turned, and his eyes were dark in a way I hadn’t seen in years. Not angry. Hungrier. The weight of his eyes on me made my breath catch and heat drop low in my belly.
“Come here.”
It wasn’t a request.
I crossed the room, my pulse already pounding between my legs before I reached him.
He grabbed me before I got there, his hands fisting in the fabric of my dress, hauling me against him hard enough that I felt exactly what he wanted through his trousers.
His mouth found mine and there was nothing gentle about it.
This kiss was staking a claim. Proving a point.
“Will,” I gasped when he let me breathe. “What…”
“I need you.” His voice was rough, scraped raw. “I need… Blair, I need…”
“You have me.”
He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the door, his thigh shoving between my legs, and I ground down on it without thinking, shameless, already soaked through my underwear.
His hands worked the zipper of my dress.
I felt it give, felt the fabric slide off my shoulders, felt his mouth follow the path it left down my throat.
“You’ve always had me,” I said.
He pulled back just enough to look at my face.
There was a desperation in his expression, a searching quality, and I didn’t understand it and I didn’t have time to understand it because he was kissing me again, deeper, his tongue in my mouth while his hands found the clasp of my bra and dragged it off me.
We had done this a thousand times. Ten years of learning each other’s bodies, of knowing exactly where to touch and how hard and when to tease. But tonight was different. Tonight he mapped me the way a man memorizes what he’s about to lose.
“Bed,” I managed.
He walked me there, never breaking contact, his mouth on my neck, my collarbone, the swell of my breasts.
He caught a nipple between his teeth and I felt it everywhere, a hot line straight down between my legs.
I fell back onto the mattress and he followed me down, his weight pressing me into the sheets, and I spread my thighs for him before he even asked.
“I love you.” His mouth traced down between my breasts. “I love you, I love you.”
“Show me.”
He did.
His mouth moved lower, kissing a path down my stomach while his fingers hooked into my underwear and dragged them off.
They were ruined, wet through, and he made a low sound when he felt it, filthy and pleased.
Then his tongue found me and I heard myself make a sound I couldn’t take back, my hips lifting off the bed to chase his mouth.
“Fuck,” he breathed against me. “You’re already dripping for me.”
“Will.” My hands fisted in his hair. “Will, please.”
“Please what?”
“I need. I need you inside me.”
He lifted his head, and his smile was wicked and wonderful and a little bit ruined around the edges. “Not yet.”
He worked me with his tongue, two fingers pushing into me and curling, until I was shaking, until I was begging, until I came apart on his mouth with his name breaking out of me.
He didn’t stop until I was wrung out and twitching.
Then he crawled up my body, shedding the rest of his clothes, and I got my hand around his cock and guided him to me, both of us past patience.
“Look at me,” he said.
I looked.
He pushed inside.
My back arched off the bed. He stretched me open slow, inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt, and a broken sound tore out of my throat. His groan vibrated against my collarbone as he bottomed out, as he held there, both of us shaking.
“God.” His voice was wrecked. “Blair. You feel.”
“Move.”
He moved.
The rhythm built slow and then didn’t stay that way.
He knew my body too well to draw it out, knew exactly how to angle his hips to hit the place that made me sob.
I hooked my legs around him and pulled him deeper, and he cursed into my mouth, wrecked and worshipful. “Fuck, that’s it. Take all of me.”
“Harder.”
He gave me harder. Gave me everything, his hips snapping into mine hard enough to knock the headboard against the wall, his thumb finding my clit and circling. I felt myself climbing again, felt the coil pull tighter, felt him watching my face, starved for it.
“Come on my cock,” he said against my ear. “Right now. With me.”
“I’m. Will, I’m.”
“I know. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
I came so hard my vision whited out, clenching around him, and he followed me over with my name falling out of him, a prayer. I felt him pulse deep inside me, felt his whole body shudder, felt him collapse against me with his face buried in my neck and his breath hot on my skin.
Neither of us moved. The room ticked slowly back into focus.
Then his hand slid down to spread across my stomach, his palm flat against my skin, his fingers spanning hip to hip. He held me like that, possessive and tender, his heartbeat gradually slowing against my chest.
“There you are,” he whispered.
“I never left.”
He lifted his head.
And there it was again. That look. That searching, careful, desperate look, like he was trying to find an answer in my face and wasn’t sure he’d recognize it when he did.
“Will.” I touched his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
“I just love you.” He turned his head to kiss my palm. “That’s all. I just… I love you so much it scares me sometimes.”
“Why would it scare you?”
He didn’t answer. He just kissed me again, softer this time, and pulled out carefully, and went to get a cloth to clean us up. By the time he came back, whatever had been in his eyes was gone, replaced by the warm, easy expression I knew.
I told myself I’d imagined it.
I was getting good at telling myself that.
We fell asleep tangled together, his arm heavy across my waist, my head on his chest. I listened to his heartbeat slow into sleep and tried to quiet the whisper of unease in my own chest.
Everything was fine. Everything was exactly as it should be.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
I reached for it without thinking, squinting at the screen in the darkness. Will’s breathing was deep and even. He didn’t stir.
Trip: I need your help. Tell no one. Not even Will.
I stared at the message until the screen went dark. Then I turned it back on and stared some more.
Trip asked me for things all the time. Advice. Opinions. The occasional 3:00 a.m. phone call when he couldn’t sleep and needed to hear a friendly voice. But this was different. The urgency in those words. The specific instruction not to tell Will.
Trouble was coming. Or already here. Maybe both.
My husband slept beside me, warm and trusting, his hand still resting on my hip. I thought about waking him. Thought about showing him the message and asking what he thought it meant.
I thought about the way he’d looked at me tonight. The desperation. The searching. The unease he wouldn’t name.
I typed back.
Me: When?