Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Phoebe
I wanted to cower into myself because I could feel the betrayal in the air like a fine mist. But watching him draw breath into his lungs and expand right before my eyes rattled me.
I understood the anger and disloyalty Dutch must have felt in not only having his work stolen, but the fact it was his best friend. The one person who was supposed to be in his corner. It told me so much and hurt me in a way I wasn’t sure how to handle.
“The first time I realized it, I thought I’d been mistaken.”
The directness of his gaze arrowed into me.
“I’d told him where the file was like always.”
I frowned at him.
“We often weren’t in the same city. He traveled from Los Angeles to New York all the time. He said he didn’t like Zoom or teleconferencing. He wanted to fight for his clients face-to-face to get them the best deals.”
I imagined being an agent was part salesman, so some of that made sense. But rationalizations were the first ways to manipulate people. I was looking at it through the lens of betrayal, not a life Dutch lived for years.
“Keep going,” I said quietly. I didn’t want him to stop sharing. Not now, when it took so long for him to open up to me.
“I kept a local file on my computer that was connected to our shared online folder. One of my backups. Whenever I finished a book, I shared it with him first then literally clocked out for days. He didn’t read overly fast and I was always maxed out after the end of a book.
It wasn’t unheard of for me to sleep for a full day and night. ”
The palm of my hand itched as I rubbed it over my thigh. Nerves always started there for me.
Dutch set his hand over his laptop. “When I woke up, the document was gone.”
“Had he ever done that before?”
He shook his head. “No. He knew I was obsessive about backups. When I was writing my second book, my laptop fried and I lost weeks of work. That’s how I learned to make multiple backups.
The book was ultimately better for it, but I was already stressed about being a sophomore failure on the next book. One hit wonder effect.”
“Understandable.”
“So, of course I just put a copy back there again. Sent him a note to check his settings. He sent me a voice note that he lost internet when he was reading it at an airport or some such bullshit. I didn’t think anything about it.
Part of my process is leaving my manuscript alone for a good week or so to gain some distance from it before I start my first re-read and self-edits. I’m too close to it.”
I nodded. “Like when I need to step away from a mural. Point of view.”
He nodded. “Exactly. I usually write really fast. Kind of flows out in an almost manic pace sometimes. Like a movie in my head, and then I have to dig in and figure out if it actually makes sense.” He walked over to the chalkboard.
“I usually do a full reset.” He laughed, but it was a harsh sound.
“I shovel out my place and clean it top to bottom. Factory reset almost.”
“Includes your walls and board.”
He turned back to me. “You got it. I wrote the book. Whatever was leftover didn’t deserve to be in the book. I let it go. Sometimes the ideas would come back in a different iteration, but most of the time it was a one and done for me.”
“But you have no proof of your work,” I whispered.
“No.”
“Oh, Dutch. There has to be a way to track it.” I rushed toward him, but he backed up, the heel of his shoe bumping into the chalkboard. I stopped and fisted my hands. It was so natural to go to him, but the pain crackled around him.
Maybe pain wasn’t even the right word.
“Don’t blame yourself.”
He lifted his chin.
There it was. This time I couldn’t stay back. I moved into him, even as he fully bumped into his board. I wrapped my arm around his waist and pulled him into me. “Don’t want to smudge the board do we?”
He hauled me off my feet and walked me to the window, setting me down in the late morning sun.
“He was your best friend. Why would you ever think he’d do that? Were there any signs he was in trouble?”
He frowned.
“I mean you’re his cash cow right?” My eyes widened. “Geez, that sounded bad.”
He laughed and cupped my face. “I didn’t know you had swords in your arsenal.”
“You haven’t seen me on the ice yet. I can be ruthless.”
He searched my face and I still couldn’t quite read exactly what was going on inside of him, but I was closer.
The cracks he showed me were letting me in and I had to resist the urge to blast through with my fingers and pull away chunks of the wall around him.
But when he leaned down and laid his lips on mine, I let myself fall into him for a minute. I needed that as much as he did.
The kiss was soft and renewing like the sun. Until it wasn’t.
Because it was us.
And the need was so close to the surface. And maybe me wrapping myself around him would help take some of that pain away, even if it was only a little while.
I slipped off the straps of my muslin overalls and the whole thing slid down over my breasts and hips to float around my ankles, leaving me in just a pair of cotton boy shorts.
“Phoebe,” he groaned my name against my lips.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and he lifted me right out of my Croc shoes.
I lifted my legs to wrap around his middle.
I poured all the love in my heart right into him through our lips and my firm hold.
It was different kissing him without the full beard.
The hair a little scratchier in its short form and his face was so much more angular.
I slipped my fingers into his overlong hair, the sameness of that anchoring me as I relearned him.
He started walking with me out of the room, and I held him tighter. “Here,” I said against his mouth. “I want you here where the real you is all around us. Let me in.”
“Christ, you end me.”
I smiled, drawing away from the kiss. “Happy ending, maybe, if you’re lucky.”
His fingers dug into my ass, dragging me against his jeans. “I need to get to the medicine cabinet.”
I shook my head. “Just you. All of you.”
“Phoebe.” His eyebrows knitted together.
“I’m protected.”
“It’s not just that.”
“I trust you, Atticus.”
His eyes shut. “I wasn’t sure I’d hear you use my name again.”
“We just had a fight. We’re going to fight. You can be an asshole and I can be overly sensitive. It’s going to happen.”
He shifted me higher, his lips over mine again.
The kiss wilder. The drugging kind I missed so much already.
Days away from him then the hurt feelings made it feel so much longer than just a week.
He moved to the corner of the room where some of his words were scrawled and along the bottom of the wall were my dandelions and woodland creatures I’d drawn all those weeks ago.
The first day.
He pressed me into the corner where he could prop me against the wall with his hips. “You sure you want to do this here?”
“You kept my drawings.”
He frowned. “What?”
I laughed. “Sorry, I just noticed that you didn’t erase my drawings. When I first invaded your space.”
“Just one.” He said against my throat. “And I hated that I smudged it.” He nipped my ear.
I looked over at the space where I’d drawn the little seeds of the dandelion that had reached up into the main part of his chalk wall.
He hadn’t rubbed it all away, but it was smudged.
He’d scrawled around the faint seed with the tufted pieces that made it fly through the sky.
As if it was a wish just for us. “I’ll draw another. ”
“Good.”
He dragged his teeth down my neck to the skin between my shoulder and neck.
The nip of pain drew my attention away from drawing and to what mattered most. Him.
Me. His mouth on mine. His big body pressing into me.
The safety and the thrill of him that I needed more than I’d ever needed with anyone else.
I liked my space. I liked my alone time because I was used to it.
But I didn’t realize just how much I’d been missing someone who cared that I was there.
Needed me there.
I tipped my hips a little so I could lock my ankles around his waist. “What does the wall say?”
He groaned against skin. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t understand your words. Give them to me.”
“Phoebe.”
“Please?”
“The missing kids. It’s about them. About the lake and how it shifts realities.” He did this swirly thing behind my ear that made my whole body shiver.
“What else?”
“There’s a portal beneath the car.” He bit the skin between my shoulder and neck lightly then sucked and the tiny bite of pain would definitely be a love mark. “Where he takes the kids. The monster needs their innocence.”
His brain was a wonder. Where I found beauty in flowers and the occasional snark, he looked for darkness. “How do you defeat the monster?”
“Haven’t worked that part out yet.” He hiked me up higher against the wall to lower his mouth to my breast. “Hug those knees around my chest, baby.”
The quick thrill of him calling me anything other my name was like an afterburn. The pulse of it driving me even closer to the pleasure only he seemed to find inside of me.
“This will have to be quick.” He leaned in and took me again, then my nipple popped free of his mouth as he grinned up at me. “I’m no Superman, but fuck I want inside of you.”
“Yes. All of that yes.” My nails dug into his shoulders where I was hanging on for dear life.
This had sounded like a damn fine idea until the mechanics of wall sex were an actuality.
But I wanted him to have me here in his room.
In this room that caused him such strife and grief.
Hopefully I could be a better memory in the mix.
Like my drawings.
It touched me that he kept me here with him, even as he fought against me.
Against needing me. He’d allowed me in here.
I didn’t care if it was a token moment. It was mine.
And I was keeping it. I sighed as he pinned me tighter into the wall as he fumbled with his belt and the unmistakable sound of a zipper.
“I need you too much, Phoebe.”
“Have me.” I pulled his hair to look into his eyes. “Have me. Inside me. Please.”
His eyes were like moonlight and the lake had a baby.
Silvery and dark at the same time. The gray leaning into the darkness he held near all the damn time.
I wanted to see the brightness in him. Now that I knew it was inside of him, just buried under emotional and professional rubble he made so much more sense.
“Bedroom.”
I shook my head. “Here.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
He shifted my underwear to the side enough to slip inside. He groaned against my mouth as my body accepted him. As it always did. I was made for him. He was starting to figure it out, and now that I knew him just a little better, the love I’d been protecting was so ready for him.
He needed me to accept him unconditionally.
I just had to believe he’d catch up and let me in. To love me as much as I loved him already.
The corner held me tight, my hips already bruising from the way his big body pinned me in place.
The way he filled me and stretched everything inside of me exactly what he needed.
I could practically feel him melt into me.
His eyes flaring with need for me. He might think he didn’t have anything to give, but he did over and over again.
My ankles dug into his denim-covered flanks as I took each thrust.
“God, you feel so good.” His mouth was buried in my neck. “Like actual sunshine.”
I wrapped myself around him, accepting the darkness.
I could be his light right now.
The friction wasn’t exactly right for what I needed to go over, but it was good enough right now.
Just feeling him let go here in this place where his creativity wrapped around us both was enough.
Each deep thrust stretched me beyond comprehension until I was in that other space where it was only us.
His breath and the occasional grunt of how close he was to the edge.
Both of us seemed to want to make it go forever, but gravity was its own master, no matter how strong his thighs and shoulders were.
And dear God, they were strong.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, my fingers streaking through his hair as I held him against my neck. “Let go, Atticus.”
His breath came faster and his thrusts came faster.
I wanted it. Just to give this to him.
He pressed his forehead into my shoulder as he pulled me down the barest inch until he was even deeper and then his head flung back as he came.
The growl almost choking him. The veins of his neck stood out and his muscles locked. Magnificent in that moment where he actually unfurled for me. My name a broken breath as he gasped and collapsed against the wall again, knocking the breath out of me.
But with the breath was a laugh as I stared at the sun streaked ceiling.
I love you.
The words were there—practically blooming off my tongue—and I wanted to say them. I wanted to gift them to him, but I wasn’t sure he’d see it that way.
Would I scare the crap out of him just by saying it?
But I mouthed them against his skin.
And held him.
It seemed like neither of us wanted to let go.