23. Briggs
brIGGS
The last time I did this, I was waiting for Ophelia. That was three Novembers ago. She’d come out for a week at a time, complaining about the Carolina humidity before we even cleared the parking deck, and I’d stand right here with my hazards blinking.
I haven’t let myself think about that in a long time.
When a pair of traffic cops give me the “move it or lose it” look, I give up on the curb and circle the terminal loop instead of just parking in the deck like a rational person.
On the third pass, Evie finally emerges from the terminal. She’s wearing all black—a long heavy coat over a silk slip dress, boots, and a black canvas duffel slung over one shoulder. Sunglasses on, at dusk, in February.
Her hair is loose, and as she gets closer, I notice a few more white streaks threaded through the copper than the last time I saw her. When she spots the SUV, she pushes the shades up into her hair, her whole face breaking into a grin.
I’m out of the car before she can reach the curb, taking the bag off her shoulder.
“You look like you’re here to collect a debt.”
“I spent four hours next to a man who narrated a nature documentary out loud, Briggs. Spare me.” She looks me over once, thumb reaching up to graze the edge of my mustache.
I briefly lose the ability to produce coherent thought.
“It’s getting longer,” she says.
“Hair tends to do that.”
She smiles, that sharp, knowing thing. “You don’t say.”
Then she gets up on her toes and kisses me. Right there in the loading zone, with one hand flat against my chest and the cold air biting at my neck. A shuttle bus lays on the horn behind us, the sound massive and intrusive, but neither of us moves an inch.
“Hi,” she murmurs against my mouth.
“Hi.” My heart is currently trampling over itself. “I didn’t know we were doing this.”
“I thought we might try an experiment for the weekend.”
I swipe a thumb across my bottom lip, trying to find my bearings. “Kissing me is an experiment.”
“Sort of.” She shrugs. “I just mean that if we want to do something, we do it. If we want to skip something, we skip it. No overthinking or long lists of reasons. What do you think?”
“I think I’d have agreed to anything you said just now.”
I look at her, letting the reality of her being here settle in. She’s in my city, breathing the same air as me. And she’s even more vibrant than I remembered, her presence cutting through the gray February light like a neon sign.
“Are you just going to stand there and appreciate the scenery, or are you going to put my bag in the car?”
I put her bag in the car.
She sheds the coat the second the heater kicks on, and I have to make a conscious decision about where my eyes live for the next twenty-five minutes.
The dress she’s wearing is short and dangerous. She has silver jewelry stacked on her fingers, the cross at her throat, and a smudge of eyeliner she must’ve applied in the dark during a 5:00 a.m. Vegas morning.
“You’re staring,” she says drily, not looking away from the side mirror.
“Nah. I’m driving.”
“You can do both, apparently.” She twists in the seat to look out the window as we pull off the airport spur. “Okay. Talk me through the local color. What am I looking at?”
I glance to my right, staring out at the rolling pine-covered hills that define the landscape here. I point out the different neighborhoods, telling her how the city is organized in rings, how the skyline changes depending on which way you’re approaching.
I find myself wanting her to like it, which is a new and uncomfortable kind of pressure.
By the time we hit the interstate, the sun has fully given up. What she gets is mostly light and shadow, but I narrate the route anyway. Uptown rises on the left, all four major bank towers lit up at the top.
I point out the arena, and she leans forward to look at it properly, her face reflected in the dark glass. I feel a ridiculous surge of pride at the sight of her taking it in.
“That’s where you work.”
“Occasionally.”
“Huh.” She sits back, satisfied. “It’s smaller than it looks on TV.”
“It seats nineteen thousand, Evie.”
“Sure. Very cute little building.”
I take the long way around Uptown so I can show her the coffee place in my neighborhood. It’s closed, but I point at the dark windows anyway.
“They have the best cortado in the city,” I say.
“We should go there in the morning.”
I beam. “Yeah, we should.”
I take her past the practice rink, where I log most of my hours. I drive her through the tunnel of ancient oaks that meet overhead in July, though tonight, they’re just a gray cathedral of bare limbs reaching for the streetlights.
I try to explain how the dogwoods look in May—explosions of pink and white on every corner—because I need her to see the version of this place that isn’t just bank towers and pine needles. The version that stays soft.
“Everything’s so green,” she murmurs, her gaze fixed on the dark passing lawns.
I huff a laugh. “Hard to believe, right?”
My phone buzzes in the console—Ted again, his fourth attempt since we left my place. I don’t even check the screen before I flip it over to let the dark take it. Monday can have him.
“You should probably get that.”
“It’s just my agent,” I tell her. “The numbers will still be there in forty-eight hours.”
“Okay.” She leans her forehead against the glass. “Look at that. There’s actual moss growing in the concrete. In the valley, if you don’t drown it in a hose once a day, it’s just more dirt by noon.”
“You know how I feel about Vegas, but we have our own issues here. In August, the air is so heavy it’s like trying to inhale through a warm, wet dishcloth. You’d hate it.”
“Probably,” she agrees, touching a loose curl at her temple. “My hair would be a full-blown natural disaster.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can tell the moisture is already working on her hair. But it still looks soft and real. And I catch myself wondering what a full week of this humidity would do to it, all that copper unspooling in the Carolina heat.
I make myself watch the road for the rest of the drive.
My building is a converted industrial space on the city’s edge. We make our way through the secure garage, and I open the heavy steel door for her. The second we step into my unit, I’m suddenly aware of every poor choice I’ve ever made regarding furniture. Or the total lack thereof.
She walks into the center of the room and takes inventory.
It’s a large, open space with high ceilings and big windows.
There’s a gray couch that cost too much, a TV mounted on the wall, and a dining table I eat at maybe once a week.
A framed photo of Ziggy and me as kids sits on the bookshelf, and one of my dad standing in the driveway with his old truck is tucked next to it.
There’s no other art on the walls. Nothing at all, which I notice for the first time in three years because she’s standing in the middle of it. She’s the most vibrant, living thing this apartment has ever seen.
“Well,” Evie says.
I snort. “Go ahead. Say it.”
“It’s very clean.”
“I guess that’s a compliment.”
“It’s a beautiful apartment that tells me absolutely nothing about you as a human being.” She sets her bag down and turns a slow circle. “Do you own a single object that doesn’t have a strictly functional purpose?”
“I have a plant.”
“Where?”
“Kitchen windowsill.”
She goes to look, her boots clicking on the polished concrete. I hear her from the other room. “This is plastic!”
“It’s low-maintenance.”
“It’s a lie, is what it is.” She comes back into the living room holding the fake succulent out in front of her like it’s evidence in a trial. “We’re getting you a real one before I leave. A hard one to kill. I’ll write you some instructions.”
“You have a whole sill of dead ones back in Vegas.”
“Which is exactly how I know what not to do.”
She keeps it with her for the next ten minutes, eventually setting it on the counter while she looks out at the skyline.
I lean against the doorway and watch her occupy my apartment. It feels like a gear finally catching. I’m restless and settled all at once, forty feet from the bed I’ve spent the last six weeks imagining her in.
“Hartwell’s at seven,” I say, because otherwise we’re not making it out of this condo tonight.
I’d already asked her if she was up for dinner with the team, and she’d said yes. As much as I want to keep her to myself for the next forty-eight hours, I want her to see this part of it, too.
I want her to know my life here, to meet the guys who have been keeping me upright while I was heads down. I want her to know who I am when I’m not just a voice on a phone.
“I have exactly twenty minutes to stop being a plane person. Point me to the bathroom.”
I walk her down the hall. She takes out a brush and smooths her hair in the mirror while I come up behind her and get an arm around her waist. She smells like honey and jasmine.
“I’m really glad you’re here, Evie,” I say, smiling against her neck.
“Mm, I guess second chances aren’t complete bullshit.”
I nudge her ear with my nose, breathing in the sweet scent. “I think I might have heard that somewhere before.”
“Just so we’re clear,” she murmurs, still facing the mirror, “you definitely won’t be getting a third.”
I don’t plan on needing one. I watch her in the glass, my hands finding the hem of that black silk dress and sliding upward. She gasps, her back arching against my chest as I find her bare skin.
“You want me to touch you?” I ask, my mouth finding the sensitive cord of her neck. “Is that what you need, pretty girl?”
Her response is a wrecked “uh-huh.”
My fingers don’t wait for a second invitation. I slide them home, finding her drenched and ready. Evie makes a sound that nearly ends me right there against the counter. I work her slowly, thumb finding that stubborn bundle of nerves while my fingers disappear inside her.
She braces her palms against the granite, head falling back against my shoulder, and I watch the whole show in the mirror—the way her eyes flutter shut, the flush climbing from her chest to her throat.
“Does that feel good?” I growl, increasing the pace until she’s whimpering my name.
I drop to my knees behind her, dragging the silk hem of that dress up to her waist, and bury my face in her cunt.
She tastes like every dream I’ve had since Christmas—sweet, salty, and warm. I lap at her until she trembles, her white-knuckled fingers clinging tightly to the edge of the sink, before I stand back up behind her.
Unbuckling my belt, I strip off my pants and boxers, kicking them aside as my cock pulses with anticipation. I recall our conversation and the reassurance that we were safe, yet I pause with the tip resting right at her entrance.
“Birth control?” I manage to rasp.
She bends further, pushing her cunt onto the hard length of me.
“Copper IUD,” she pants. “Now, fuck me, Briggs.”
I seat myself fully, the friction so punishingly perfect I actually forget how to breathe. I yank my shirt over my head, desperate to feel her bare flesh against my own. I fuck into her slowly, the heat electric, our shared wetness coating her thighs.
From this angle, her pussy is a gorgeous, swollen ruin as it stretches to accommodate every inch I have. On the next thrust, I wind a hand into her copper hair, fisting the strands, while my other palm bruises her hip.
In the mirror, her eyes come open and find mine, and she holds them there while I drive into her. It’s a beautiful, desperate collision of skin.
I haven’t been inside a woman in two years, but I don’t think it’s ever felt this fucking euphoric. Evie is the only version of right I’ve found in a decade—sharp and soft at once, and entirely mine, at least for now.
We’re going to be embarrassingly late for Hartwell’s, though I can’t bring myself to care. In fact, I have half a mind to bail on the dinner—bail on tomorrow’s game, too—and just stay right here, burying myself in this sweet, demanding pussy until the weekend ends.
“When this season is over,” I whisper, my thumb finding her clit, “I’m going to spend weeks just like this. Inside you. Fucking you until we both forget what month it is.”
“I look forward to the amnesia,” she whispers back.
I nip at the sensitive skin of her neck until she stops talking, and then I lose myself in her all over again.