Chapter 30
Devon
*Call your mother. You can do it.
- From Devon’s to-do list, September 7th
The rear hatch of my SUV snicks softly shut. Fortunately, I keep a workout bag in my trunk, so I get to run on my new favorite path before I head back into town. There isn’t a quiet way to close the trailer door, no matter how hard I try, so it wakes Rhett when I come inside to change.
“You leaving?” his groggy voice asks.
I start to peel off the pajamas he so tenderly dressed me in last night. “Not yet; just going for a run before work.”
“Hmm,” he leans forward to the end of the bed when I pull off the boxers lent me, leaving me in the middle of the trailer’s walkway wearing nothing but my panties.
“You got something to say, McCoy?” I tease.
“No, ma’am. Just enjoying the show.” He says, his southern drawl even thicker right after he’s woken up.
“I bet you are.” I smirk at him.
“Do I get to make you breakfast this morning?” he asks, running his hands through his sleep-mussed hair.
“Well, about that,” I drag out my answer long enough to let myself finish getting dressed. “I do love breakfast. And you’re very good at breakfast. The tacos are really something.” His lips draw together and his brow furrows. I sit down to put on my shoes. “But you see, I don’t have a lot of time this morning. Need to get into the office pretty early. I’m feeling better after you listened to me last night.” I switch to my other foot, and he smiles at me. “But I still have a lot of work to do to save Friday West. Which, I’m confident about again.”
I walk over to him, cupping my hands under his jaw and drawing him up for a slow, sensual kiss. His hands fly to my waist, drawing me back into bed with him. I pull back. “I was hoping you’d meet me in the shower after my run, but if we do that, there won’t be any time for breakfast.”
His brows fly up and he rocks forward, picking me up and dropping me back on my feet. He spins me around and pats my ass, leaning down to speak into my ear. “Get to it, then. I can make breakfast to-go. How long till you’re back?”
My original intention was to run at least five or six miles, but I don’t want to make either of us last that long. “Be back in thirty,” I say, hurrying out the door.
Thick, gravelly, sand crunches under my feet, the brisk morning air that wraps my arms and legs becoming more of a relief with every step I take. I should be mentally running through what I need to do at work today, rehearsing what I’ll say in my next client pitch, brainstorming networking opportunities, but all I can focus on is Rhett. His hands on me, his tongue licking the salt from my skin, what position he’ll take me in. Why did I decide to run this morning? I outpace my usual run and make it back in twenty-seven and a half minutes.
Rhett’s leaning against the outside of the teak shower stall, waiting for me in sweatpants slung even lower than usual, looking hot as sin. He draws me in for a kiss as wild with need as I feel. He spins me around, so my back is against the wall, and runs his tongue in a slow glide down my neck.
“Rhett,” his name comes out between a giggle and moan. “We’re supposed to get in the shower.”
He licks and nibbles along my collar bones as his hands start to tear away at my clothes. “No. I’m going to taste you before you rinse everything away.”
Somehow, I was not expecting that, and the brief insecurity I feel is replaced with arousal once he’s discarded all my clothes and drops to his knees in the sand in front of me. He dives between my legs, licking and sucking with even more urgency than he has before, his hands roaming up and down my legs. When I gasp his name, his responding groan vibrates in my core. He is relentless, and it feels like a mere moment before my legs go weak, collapsing against the wall and bracing myself on his shoulders as I ride my pleasure out to completion.
He presses a hand firmly against my stomach, holding me steady as he comes to standing and drops his pants, revealing tan muscles and his fully erect cock. I’m unabashedly staring when he takes my hand in his, pulling me around the wall into the shower. “Now we can wash off.”
Still reeling, I stumble along behind him.
He points to a water bottle, dripping with condensation on the bench that’s built into one of the shower walls. “You need to hydrate.”
When I don’t immediately comply, his voice drops to the commanding tone I can’t refuse, face going stern. “I said, drink.”
“Yes, daddy.” I flash him a playful smile and pick up the water bottle, grateful for the cold refreshment after my workout. Some of the cold water spills around my mouth as I down half of it and look to him for approval.
He nods, and a turn of his hand sends warm water spraying down around us. Rhett, who I’m pretty sure is my boyfriend at this point, wastes no time picking me up and wrapping my legs around his waist. “Close your eyes,” he whispers and walks over to soak us both in the water stream before backing me against the wall.
His lashes are clumped with water, body soaked, and I’m transported to the first night we met, when my legs were wrapped around him in a pool. “Been a minute since you had me like this,” I breathe.
“Actually, I’ve never had you like this,” he says, propping one hand on the wall behind me and pressing into me hard with his chest. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since I lost the chance that first night.” He pulls back just enough to line us up, and I reach down and guide him inside me.
My muscles still sing from the combination of exercise and an earth-shattering climax, and I cry out as he sinks fully to the hilt in one powerful stroke. Water sprays around us, his hands supporting me underneath my legs, my hands exploring the dripping planes of his back. I’m pressed tightly between his glistening, muscled chest and the rough material of the wooden wall behind me.
Water rinses away the dust and sweat from my run, leaving me covered in nothing but his protective hold. Every thrust brings me closer to climax, until I’m gasping for air and pulsing around his cock with another riotous finish. His face presses into my shoulder as his thrusting grows deeper still and he finds his release in time with mine.
After we’ve caught our breath, and I’ve found my feet we even manage to clean our bodies between kisses and tender touches. By the time I make it into my car, I am a little late for work, and I can’t bring myself to care. Rhett’s left a breakfast burrito wrapped in foil and cup of coffee in the car for me, taking care of me in every way before I face another day of trying to rescue my business.
A text from a name I never see buzzes my phone when I’m closing the gate.
Caleb Blake: Please call your mother. She’s really worried about you.
Mom deserves a phone call, and if she has my dad texting me, she must be unusually concerned. But things have only gotten worse since the blog came out, and I don’t have any good news to share yet. Maybe you should give her a chance to love you through this. I roll Rhett’s words over. Mom and I don’t have a scheduled time, but I have a thirty-minute drive ahead of me and I cannot put off talking to her forever.
She picks up before the first ring is even finished, her voice coming through the speakers in my car, “Sweetie, so relieved to hear from you. I was about ready to buy a plane ticket and come down there to make sure you’re okay. Are you okay? Alice said you are, but that cannot be true.”
The sound of her voice, even as frantic as it is right now, is a warm comfort. “Not sure how we’re defining okay, but I am working hard to fix this.”
Mom tsks, “I have no doubt how hard you’re working. But are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating? Exercising?”
Picking up the breakfast burrito, I peel back the foil and take my first bite. “I am eating breakfast right now, and I already went for a run this morning.” Fortunately, she can’t see my blush through the phone when I remember the aftermath of my run.
“Are you getting any rest?”
I was, before this all happened.“Not so much. It’s hard to stop stressing and planning and shut up the cycle of words in my brain long enough to sleep. This is so overwhelming.” My voice threatens to crack on the last word, and I take a centering breath. “Wait, mom. How do you know what happened in the first place?”
A laugh bubbles out of her. “What kind of mother doesn’t have google alerts set up on their children?”
So, she got an email with a link to this blog. How mortifying.“I bet Zach and Noah love that.”
“They haven’t figured it out yet,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. I make a mental note to text them a warning when we get off the phone. “Anyway,” she continues, “I saw the article, absolute garbage by the way. Your dad thought so too.” Dad is a sports journalist, so not at all the same thing as a lifestyle blogger. My heart warms the tiniest bit to hear that he read it too. “It will be a wonder if anyone believes it. But I know how much your reputation means to you sweetie. It must have broken your heart to see that.”
I hum in the affirmative.
“Has anything negative come from it?” she hedges.
This is the part where I could sugar-coat the truth, or even flat out lie. I so desperately do not want to disappoint her, do not want her to know how close I am to losing everything she taught me how to build.
“Sweetie, are you there?”
Give her a chance to love you through this. “Yeah, there have been quite a few negatives,” I start, and then the words flow. I tell her that I have suspected Trina of trying to sabotage me for a long time, what happened with Lemon + Sway, how my interview went with Nathalie. All of it. She listens quietly, offering occasional encouraging words to let me know she is still there. When it comes time to tell her Friday West might go under completely, I almost lose my nerve, but I manage to push through and tell her all of it.
Forgetting all about the never date your coworkers rule, I tell the story of how my friends talked me into taking a vacation and how helpful Rhett was in giving me space to rest.
“And who is Rhett?” she asks.
Shit. Evidently, I’m laying everything out. “We’re kind of dating,” I answer.
“Kind of?” she scoffs. “Devon, what are you doing with a man who won’t commit to you?”
“It’s not that,” I reassure her. “It’s new, and about the time we probably would have talked about all that, I found out about the blog, so it had to take the back burner.”
“Interesting.” I can picture the way her eyes narrow and her short bob shifts when she tilts her head. “So, how do you know him?”
She is going to tell me this is a terrible idea. She will never support this“First, understand that I’m not interested in your objections.”
“Okay,” she drags the word out.
“He is a carpenter, and we work together. But it’s not a problem—”
“Yet,” she snipes.
A surge of protectiveness for Rhett, for what we are building together, rises in my chest. Sometimes, her rules are wrong. “I said I wasn’t interested in your objections.”
“It was an observation.”
“Mom.”
She puts on her best placating tone. “Okay, I am sorry. Tell me more about this man. What is his last name?”
“So you can google him too? No thanks.” Taking a deep breath, I continue. “There is so much about him that I admire. He is strong—”
“So are you,” Mom adds.
“So, isn’t it lovely that we both are?” I insist. I have not tried to articulate what it is about him that makes me want him in my life, but the words come without effort. “He listens, has this deep love for his family, makes me laugh and smile, and he shows up whenever anyone needs him. Not just me. And he has somehow figured out a way to get me to let him take care of me. The only times I have slept well lately are when he’s there. You know how I can be—” I can’t decide on a descriptor, so I say, “Just how I can be.”
Mom huffs a laugh. “Yes, I do, sweetie.”
“He is good for me. He doesn’t put up with my nonsense, and I need that. I hadn’t realized I needed that, but I do.” By the time I’m done describing him, I’m smiling ear to ear.
Mom doesn’t come back with the expected list of reasons why none of that matters. Instead, she asks, “Did I ever tell you why I’m so passionate about keeping professional distance with coworkers?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
There’s a long pause before she says, “I am not telling you what to do, but I want you to know my story.”
Her voice takes on a far more serious tone than I’m used to hearing from her. I encourage her to go on.
“My first job out of college, I dated someone who worked at the same architecture firm as me. I thought he was the sexiest man alive, and he made me feel so special. I loved the shared looks we would sneak in the break room, being with the man I knew everyone else in the office wanted.” She takes an audible breath. “And then I got pregnant, and he did not want to be a dad.” She drops this major revelation in the middle of her story, like it isn’t the most detail she has ever given me about my birth father. All she has ever said about him was that he left us both. “He didn’t want anything to do with me. I had to see him at work every day, watch him date other women and pretend nothing had ever happened between us. It was impossible to find a new job while I was visibly pregnant, so I had to wait until I was on maternity leave to leave that firm.”
“Mom, I am so sorry that happened to you.” Past conversations with her snap into clearer focus. She has always tried to protect me from getting hurt the way she was. My birth dad was the first man in my life and the first one to reject me. I never cared to find him and I still don’t, but I am grateful to learn more about her story.
“I don’t regret it. I would never regret you,” she insists. “But I don’t want you to have the same experience. Rhett sounds better than that,” she says, if a bit skeptically, “and I trust you if you believe in him. You know your heart.”
“Apparently, Allie has been trying to convince him to give up his career to be with me.”
“She is a very good friend to you, isn’t she?” My mom laughs, some of her usual brightness returning to her tone.
“Allie is the best. I think she almost had his mind made up to do it.”
“Truly?” she asks.
“He actually quit all of Trina’s projects, right in the middle of construction, the morning after everything happened.”
“Normally, I would advise against ever burning bridges.” She references another one of her business rules. “You never know what connections you will need in the future. But in this case, I like that he did that.”
“I like it too,” I say, a revelation hitting me like a wall of bricks. “He is worth it mom. Even if I end up on jobsites in the future with him as my ex.” The words taste sour in my mouth. The idea of him as an ex is abhorrent. “It would be worth the experience of being with him.”
“Well, there you have it,” Mom says. “Now give me his last name.”
“It’s McCoy.”
“Oh, Devon McCoy, I like that,” Mom says.
“Mother!” I exclaim as we both devolve into giggles. “We aren’t even officially together yet. Calm down.”
“And he is handsome. Although he could use a haircut.”
“You already found a picture?” I haven’t even looked him up yet, but I intend to as soon as I park my car.
“McCoy Chairs? That is the stupidest name I have ever heard for a business. You will have to help him with that.”
A muffled voice talks to my mom in the background of our call. When she comes back to the phone, she says, “I should probably get back to my meeting, Sweetie. Are you okay if I go?”
“You walked out of a meeting?”
“Of course.”
And this time when we sign off our call, she doesn’t tell me to work hard. Instead, she says she’s proud and she loves me.
By the time I make it to the office, I am a solid thirty minutes late. First time for everything, I guess. When I walk in, Bea is sitting at her desk, legs crossed in her wide chair. Dandy gets up from her bed, looking like a rolling cotton ball as she comes to greet me.
“This bitch,” Bea mutters, looking up from her computer. “Oh, good! You’re here.”
“What bitch?” I ask, sitting down at a chair next to her desk and pulling Dandy into my lap.
Bea’s brows go up in a knowing gesture. “I’ve already told her once that I’m not leaving Friday West. Now she’s sending some ‘given recent developments’ bullshittery trying to make it sound like I have no other choice. Ugh,” she fakes a gag, “I’d rather never work in design again than work for her.”
“Bea, I am sorry all of this has happened and it’s affecting your career too. I hate that I haven’t been a better boss,” I say, petting Dandy through her fluffy white fur.
Bea tosses her hair over her shoulder, leaning forward. “That is the fourth time you’ve apologized to me lately, and I’m not into it. Knock it off. You are doing your damn best. We’re in this together. I’m not giving up, so you better not be either.”
“Okay, friend. No more apologizing.”
“It doesn’t suit you,” she reiterates. “Devon Blake should apologize to no one.” Bea rolls her chair back to grab a stack of papers from the counter behind her, then rolls over to pass them across the desk. “These are all leads for new projects. People who’ve found us through socials, our website, and word of mouth. We need to review and see which ones might be a good fit for us. There are fourteen of them.”
“Did they all come in before the blog?” I ask, ruefully.
“Some.” Bea leans on her desk. “Most came in while you were on your lovers’ retreat. But we’re going to move forward as if we have nothing to hide and we’ve done nothing wrong. Because we haven’t. Not everyone makes decisions on one tasteless blogger’s wrong opinion.”
Dandy sits up at attention in my lap, her little fluffy head swiveling to the office door. The bell chimes, and someone I never expected to see walk through my door comes inside. Trina’s office manager for the last fifteen years. We always had a friendly relationship when I worked there but didn’t stay in touch after I left.
Setting Dandy on the ground, I stand up to greet her. “Claudia, it’s been a while.”
She wrings her hands. “Do you have some time right now? There are some things I think you should know.”