Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Lily was still catching her breath, her body a delicious pile of wreckage, when Rush eased her onto her side, giving her thigh a lazy, possessive stroke before straightening.
“Stay put,” he ordered, and Lily’s stomach did that somersault it always did when he ordered her in that gravelly, no-arguments tone.
He crossed the cabin to the bathroom, and she watched his broad shoulders and tight ass in the firelight. When he came back, he had a damp washcloth.
He didn’t speak, just eased her thighs open with that same bossy authority that made her feel breathless. Heat rushed to her cheeks, but she watched quietly as Rush settled between her knees like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He held her legs open and looked at her with the purely male, wholly satisfied smile of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.
“Pretty,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over the red curls before cleaning her with a surprising tenderness. Lily shivered, insanely shy under the weight of his stare but also more cared for than she had ever felt in her life.
Damn. It was a shame he wasn’t sticking around.
When he was finished, he set the cloth aside and pulled her back onto his chest, tucking her under his arm and into the warm, solid wall of him.
“No more crying, angel. I’ve got you,” he said quietly. His lips brushed her hair, and Lily settled bonelessly over him.
Rush’s breathing had already started to even out, but Lily was getting a second wind.
She stared at the ceiling for a while, trying to relax enough to fall asleep.
She wiggled around to find a comfortable spot, poking surreptitiously at the steely chest under her, hoping it might prod him into a little postcoital chat.
She was determined to be the kind of woman who could have outrageously good sex and not overthink it.
This was her life now. She was a woman of the world, a sexually liberated, independent goddess.
She could have sex with men, lots of sex.
So nonchalant! Maybe she’d lose their numbers or be too busy to pick up their calls the next day too.
Somewhere in the last few minutes, she’d decided that would be her new plan when she got back home. It was time to date and reclaim every experience she’d missed out on while wasting precious moments on Tucker.
She was mentally working through various dating scenarios when Rush shifted, skimming a hand up and down her back.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
Lily lifted her head to look at him. “I didn’t know thinking made noise.”
“It does.” He looked satisfied and amused and way too sexy. “Yours is deafening.”
“I’m just planning my revenge tour.” She shrugged. See? She could do casual.
His fingers stilled over her ribs. “You ready to tell me what happened?” he asked more seriously.
She hesitated. Not because she didn’t want Rush to know but more because she wasn’t sure if she was ready to bare her secret. Maybe she should practice being coy.
“Tucker is cheating on me,” she blurted.
Dammit. She’d never been very good at subterfuge. It was Rush with his soothing hands and his solid-as-a-rock energy. There was something powerful about him that she couldn’t explain, but she was more comfortable with him than she’d ever been with anyone else.
He was silent for a beat. His hands didn’t stop soothing, but she could feel the tension coil in his body. “Son of a bitch.”
“Wait. It gets worse,” she said, trying for some levity before getting serious again.
“Someone sent me a photo of him with his assistant in a hotel room right before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, and then it was air-dropped to everyone in the church after I left. My mom and my sisters, my aunts, Tucker’s family. Everyone.”
She was quiet for a while, letting the emotions roll over her like waves. Still lake…
“I should have been furious with him. I wanted a family so badly. I wanted what I thought we should have. And for a split second, I thought I could just—” she swallowed hard—“pretend I didn’t see it. That I could go through with the wedding and that it wouldn’t matter in the end.”
He didn’t say anything, but she knew. She poked him in the ribs. “I know it was dumb.”
“Ow.” He rubbed the spot. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking too loud.” She smiled at him.
“I knew I couldn’t stay. It just took me a minute, and that scared me because if I stayed, I’d be someone I didn’t want to be.
” Ouch. That one was painful to say out loud, but Lily forced herself.
New Lily didn’t shy away from the truth, even when it was uncomfortable.
“I’ve pretended things were good for so long, I wasn’t even sure what that person looked like. .. or wanted.”
“Takes strength to see that,” Rush said, and she smiled. He might be the only one to see it that way.
“It didn’t feel like that at the time,” she said wryly. “I felt like a coward.”
Rush shook his head. “Running toward something better isn’t cowardly. That’s strength.”
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she admitted, feeling shy again.
Rush’s fingers found her chin and curved around it, lifting her face to meet his eyes. “No one does. But you should start with figuring out what it is you want.”
Lily stared at him. The thought was too big for the tiny cabin. It stretched across years of pushing down her own wants in favor of Tucker’s, years of going with the flow, making herself smaller to fit into the life she thought she was supposed to have.
Rush’s eyes held too much knowing, and she felt exposed for the first time all night. She jerked her head away to escape the weight of his gaze. She knew she had work to do, but not here. That would come later. After she was done being a liberated woman.
“What about you?” she asked instead. “I was running, but isn’t that what you’re doing by leaving?”
Rush’s brows drew down, and his expression slowly shuttered while she watched. “Maybe,” he said easily enough, but Lily sensed the energy shift in him.
No excuses from Rush Callahan. She respected that, even if it made her chest squeeze uncomfortably tight. She chewed on her lip, wondering how much she could say before those beautiful storm-gray eyes went cool and distant.
“Northfield will miss you.” I will too. She knew enough to keep that to herself. No casual hookup would ever admit she’d developed the tiniest crush in only a weekend. That would be too dumb.
But she did want to know him. Rush Callahan was a man with layers that she wanted to uncover. What they’d shared in bed was sexy—mind-blowingly sexy. She’d spend time replaying it later, but for now, she let herself have a moment of sadness that was all she’d know of this man.
Rush shrugged one well-rounded muscular shoulder, rolling onto his side and taking her with him. “You’ll get a new sheriff soon enough. It’s a good job.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Rush’s gaze flickered for a moment. “I can’t stay here,” he finally said. “Can’t keep listening to people talk about how I’m some kind of hero when I fucked up.”
She inhaled sharply. “Rush, you must know it’s not your fault,” she said. “You did all you could do—”
“Lily,” he said flatly, “I sat in a therapist’s office for months, going over it over and over again. You know what I learned? Doesn’t matter how many people tell you it wasn’t your fault—you’re the one who has to live with the truth. And I do. Every day.”
Lily exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of his words settle between them.
She could argue. She could tell him Northfield needed him, that he wasn’t the failure he clearly believed himself to be.
Her natural instinct was to comfort him, but she sensed what little intimacy they had just shared would shatter.
When it came down to it, she didn’t know what made Rush Callahan tick, and he didn’t want her to.
His mind was made up, and she wasn’t here to fix him. Just like he had respected her decisions, she would respect his. He had to walk his own path to forgiveness. She just hoped it was an easy one because if anyone deserved that, it was him. Rush Callahan was a good man, whether he saw it or not.
She settled under his arm, reached out, and let her fingers trace a slow path across the ridges of his abdomen, up across the broad expanse of his chest. She exhaled, releasing her disappointment, and let herself sink into the moment fully.
“The snow stopped, angel,” Rush murmured. “Won’t be long before the plows come through.”
Lily swallowed down the sting of disappointment. Their time together was slipping away then. “Why do you call me that?”
“Call you what?”
“Angel.”
Rush was quiet for a beat, his fingers tracing slow, absent strokes over her back. “Because you looked like one when you came flying out of the church with your big white dress and that veil streaming behind you.”
Lily looked up in surprise and saw his lips curve up.
“You hopped into my truck and looked at me with those big green eyes, and I knew I was taking you with me.”
Lily’s stomach dipped. She hadn’t expected something sweet to come out of his mouth, or to feel the warmth that spread through her, making her all soft inside.
“I didn’t think you’d say yes,” she said shyly.
Rush laughed, his hand smoothing up her spine, over her back to wrap around her neck.
“Not a chance. You were all soft and glowy and sweet.” He paused, his voice dipping lower.
He brought his other hand up to cup her chin, slipping his thumb across her mouth before slipping it inside. “Except for this mouth.”
Lily’s breath hitched, and she instinctively closed her lips around it, tasting the salty heat of his skin. “What’s wrong with my mouth?” she murmured around him.
“This?” he murmured, touching her lips, dragging his thumb back and forth slowly over them. “This mouth is too fucking sexy to belong to an angel.”
Lily smiled, her eyes drifting closed as a yawn overtook her.
She nestled into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, nosing in closer.
His scent was addictive, all warm and manly, making her eyes feel heavy.
She thought she felt the faintest brush of lips over her hair, but she couldn’t be sure.
His warmth seeped into her bones, lulling her into sleepy contentment.
She didn’t want to think about tomorrow or about what came next.
For now, there was only the calm energy of the cabin, the steady thrum of Rush’s heartbeat, the slow stroke of his hands keeping her anchored to him just a little while longer.
Her breath evened out, her body sinking into his.
Just before sleep took her, she heard the quiet rumble of his voice.
“Sleep, angel.”
And she did.