Chapter 21
The night air hit her like a wall as she stepped into the drizzle.
Figures. Nothing like déjà vu and bad weather to make a night complete.
Cali quickened her pace toward the lot, the damp scent of asphalt filling her lungs, the word “regret” lingering on the tip of her tongue.
Her car was parked not far from Ethan’s, but theirs were the only two remaining, the pavement glossed dark by the sprinkles.
She tried to pass by him without a word, but he reached out and closed a gentle hand around her arm.
She stopped. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“Cali, please,” he begged. “What’s the ‘it’ you don’t want to talk about? Was it me confiding in Minka? The overdue library books? Is this about Max? I just need to know where to start.”
She exhaled long and slow, her breath fogging the air between them. “All of it. And Bernadette,” she said. The rain spat against their cheeks.
“But Bernadette paid me,” he insisted. “So did Mrs. Ellery. Contrary to what you may think, I’m not flirting with every cat owner in town. The only one I’ve been flirting with is you.”
His hand glided down to her elbow, where he tried to draw her close, but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Well, I’m not a cat owner anymore, so I don’t count,” she insisted.
She kept glancing over at her car. “Look, Ethan, what you do is your business. I don’t care anymore.
It doesn’t matter. Now can we just both go home before I’m soaked through, too? ”
Thunder lit up the clouds off in the distance, a low rumble rolling toward them. Water pooled beneath their feet. A flash of lightning caught his gray eyes, bright enough to burn it into her memory. He licked his lips and shifted under the weight of his soaked clothes and frustration.
“We’re gonna get struck by lightning if we stay out here,” she warned.
But Ethan wouldn’t relent. “You keep saying it doesn’t matter, but you wouldn’t look at me like that if it didn’t.”
She closed her eyes, trying to check herself, trying to erase the image of his hair plastered to his forehead and rivulets running down the line of his jaw. Trying to extinguish the small, traitorous flex she felt low in her belly. But it wasn’t working.
Finally she said, “The gala’s in two days. Can we just act civil until it’s over?”
Behind her speckled lenses, she watched his gaze burn at her, steady and determined. “Look, Cali. Max still sleeps by the front door each night, waiting for you. He doesn’t even come to bed with me and Catsby. You’re all either of us think about.”
“You don’t have to make me feel better, Ethan. Max chose you. End of story.”
“He didn’t choose me. He chose us,” Ethan snapped back. “Why can’t you see that?”
The drizzle swelled to a deluge, and her heartbeat quickened to match.
Her chest ached from the sight of him, clothes clinging, every contour mapped beneath the wet fabric.
Maybe that was the problem. Just being around him felt too close to wanting him.
Her anger was the only way she could hide her feelings.
Now she was furious and soaked, so cold she was trembling. But she was angry at herself.
He stepped closer, close enough for her to see the drops clinging to his lashes. She shuddered, and he pulled her in with his whole body, as if trying to protect her from the storm. Drops hit the pavement in a furious hiss.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Tell me something no one else in Autumn Ridge knows. Tell me you want me to stay.”
She bowed her head, her wet curls dripping onto his chest. When she lifted her chin to meet his eyes, he looked wrecked—not from pain, but from wanting.
His gaze searched her face like it was the only clear thing left in a blurred world.
Then nothing—not the downpour, not the cat mishaps, not all the ex-fiancé drama in the world—could stop the words that escaped her lips.
“I do. I want you to stay,” she said. “I really want you to stay.”
A car swished by, forgotten in the blur of everything else.
She felt warm and safe pressed against him, the only solid thing left in a world turned liquid.
Beads slid from the edge of his collar onto her fingers where they clutched his shirt.
It swallowed them, humming, and the world slowed to the space between their mouths, silent and waiting.
Their kiss was tender, almost inaudible at first. Just the whisper of lips, touching between droplets.
The rainwater felt cool, mineral, and faintly electric.
Then her fingers slipped along his wet skin and clothes and hair, desperate for grip.
As the rain pounded against them, she couldn’t help but feel like it was washing her fears away.
He turned them around, until her back pressed against the passenger door of his truck.
The kiss deepened, heat curling low as his tongue traced the soft edge of her lower lip, just once, before finding her again.
He fumbled at the door latch until it opened.
He lifted her into the passenger seat, her fingers still clutching his shoulders.
When his palms slid along her thighs, she gasped, reminded of that night in her kitchen.
Body pulsing, his lips magnetic, every inch of her skin begging to be touched. He couldn’t pull away.
“Get in,” she said between labored breaths.
She pushed herself back along the bench seat, suddenly grateful for the extra space—and the lack of a center console—as Ethan climbed into the cabin beside her.
The door slammed shut behind him, and all was silent but for precipitation drumming on metal.
For a moment they stared at each other, wordless, hair dripping and adrenaline humming.
He scooted toward her until they were both in the middle seat, and she climbed onto his lap.
His palms found her waist and her lips found his again, their pelvises tilting into each other in a slow, seeking motion in rhythm with the steady beating against the roof.
Each time their mouths met it was a spark then a steady burn.
The kisses deepened, deliberate and hungry, until all she could taste was him.
“Tell me to stop, Ethan,” she gasped, as if swimming toward a finish line.
“I’m trying,” he said. But the way he kept holding her told the truth.
He pulled her closer. Her fingers found his belt.
Every slow grind drew a ragged sound from his throat, and she wanted to keep pulling that sound from him until she forgot her own name.
His shirt rode up, and they wrestled it off between kisses, flinging it somewhere near the floorboard.
He kissed down her neck, fumbled with her buttons, until her shirt fell from her shoulders.
The air was growing thick and hot, fogging the windows around them.
She ran her fingertips along his pecs and erect nipples, slowly tracing down to his abdomen as they kissed. His body betrayed itself to her touch for a moment, bucking softly underneath her.
“Jesus, Cali,” he whispered. “If you keep doing that, I don’t know how much longer I can …”
He looked at her as if whatever she did next could make or break him. He wanted to memorize this, not because he could have her, but because she was letting him.
“I need you inside of me,” she said, biting back the words Even if I regret it tomorrow. She guided his tongue into her mouth and unlatched his belt. “Do you have—?” she asked hesitantly.
He reached across her to grab his wallet from the glovebox and pulled out a condom.
The crinkle of the wrapper cut through the torrent outside.
One hand still gripped her firmly from behind.
The other dipped beneath her skirt, pulled down his zipper, and slipped on the condom.
She bit her lower lip and rolled her hips, slow but full of ache.
The length of his cock tented the fabric of her skirt, still draped between them, and brushed against her skin.
“You’re so beautiful, Cali,” he murmured, and it threw her off balance.
How could he still look at her like that—soaked, glasses fogged, hair a tangled mess—with that kind of hunger?
She’d wanted to rush this, to lose herself fast before her brain caught up.
But the way he held her, the way his hands framed her hips like he couldn’t help himself, made her want to slow down and feel every second.
Somewhere in the cabin, a phone rang, too loud, shattering the moment.
Cali whispered, “Please. Don’t stop.”
He dug into his back pocket to silence the phone but pressed “Accept” by accident. Unaware, they kissed again and again, Cali’s skin tingling with want. She rose, on the verge of taking him in her grasp and guiding him inside of her, when they heard a muffled voice.
“Cross?” They both froze. It was Leo. “You there, man? What’s that noise?”
Cali mouthed Shit!, her eyes growing wide.
Ethan stammered in shock. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” he said.
He mouthed I’m sorry back at her and pulled the phone from his back pocket.
“It’s probably, uh, this rain.” He cleared his throat and combed through his hair.
“The reception—or something. What do you need, man?” She could tell he was trying to hold back the frustration in his voice. He changed the phone’s mode to speaker.
“We’re at the hotel, getting ready for the weekend,” Leo explained. “Something’s sparking near the sound booth. If it blows, they’ll have to shut down the ballroom. Just thought you might be off work by now. Can you come troubleshoot?”
A muscle along Ethan’s jaw tweaked as his face flushed red.
Cali sat back, heartbeat still pounding. “You should go,” she whispered.
Ethan hesitated, touching her cheek.
“What’s that, man?” Leo asked. “Can barely hear you.”
Cali looked away, and after a long pause Ethan said, “Sure. I’ll head over.”
He hung up, and Cali tried to slip toward the window, but Ethan grabbed her gently by the hips.
“I don’t have to go right now,” he insisted.
“I can tell him I got caught up. Either they’ll figure it out or the problem will still be there when I get there.
” His eyes softened at the edges. “Please, Cali. You’re the most important thing right now.
Tell me what I need to do to make this right. ”
She wiggled out of his grasp and pulled down her skirt and settled into the passenger seat, arms crossed.
She was on the verge of tears, so she kept her eyes fixed on the stream pummeling the truck window.
“Can I just stay here a minute?” she asked softly.
“I need …” She shook her head. “I don’t know what I need. ”
“Sure,” he said. But his expression turned to confusion. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
“No. I want you to go. Help Leo. I don’t know what I was thinking. It wasn’t my intent to hate-fuck you in your car tonight, Ethan. I just—” she sighed. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“But that’s not—this wasn’t—that’s not what happened here, Cali.”
She knew he was looking at her then, waiting, expecting her to turn toward him and say something.
But she couldn’t. He stopped trying to make sense of it.
The muscles in his jaw were clenched so tight they threatened to snap.
He wrung his hands in his lap then kept brushing back the wet bands of hair that fell in his eyes.
Eventually he composed himself and zipped closed his jeans again.
“Okay,” he said, voice low, his hand hovering near the door handle. “I don’t know what I was thinking either. Seemed like, for just a second there, you forgot what you were running from. See you at the gala, Cali.”
He opened the door, rain rushing in again, and slammed it shut behind him.
In the rear view mirror, she watched him jog through the downpour to the back of the truck, grab a clean shirt, and tug it over his bare shoulders.
The fabric clung to him instantly. Water streamed down his chest. He didn’t even seem to feel it.
His expression had locked into something she couldn’t read, as he turned toward Main Street and glanced both directions.
Under the hazy lamplight, he crossed the road and headed toward the hotel.