Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AUbrEY
Rye thought I wanted to use him? Now that I knew he had the skills to light my body on fire, I what? Just wanted to get my rocks off and then send him on his way?
“Come in,” I said when I unlocked my front door and pushed it open, and Rye followed silently.
“I haven’t, you know.”
“Hm?” I’d left the hall light on, but as I led him to my kitchen, I flipped on more. After setting my purse on the table, I turned back to him. “You haven’t what?”
“I haven’t fucked any twenty-five-year-olds lately, at Coachella or anywhere else.”
I laughed, feeling relieved that he was being playful again.
His hands stayed in his front pockets as he looked around my kitchen and then wandered out to the living room.
I knew what he was seeing: proof that I was a mom. An old mom who’d raised two rambunctious boys in this house. Boys who’d left marks on the walls from their shoes I hadn’t yet painted over, and the missing brick from the fireplace they’d removed when they learned how to use an electric chisel. Big mistake having my cousin Maxie teach them anything about tools that had more power if you plugged them in.
Rye looked at photos of my little family on the mantel above the fireplace, back when we were still a whole family, with a mom and dad and two boys who hadn’t yet lost everything. Their toothless smiles could be so misleading. Our lives now were nothing like they’d been back then.
But then again, neither was I.
Rye moved through the room silently until he stood in front of one of my bookcases by the window. His hand whispered over a wooden shelf and he touched a few books’ spines.
“You read all these?”
“Yeah. There’s another bookcase on the wall behind you.”
He turned and walked toward it without looking at me.
“There’s one in my bedroom, too, and another in the office. I don’t really use it as an office though.”
“Why not?” he asked as he looked at more pictures on the walls.
“Dunno. Guess I’m just more comfortable with my laptop on the couch.”
I’d long ago taken down the photos of Tommy and me. Our wedding photos didn’t bring me pain anymore, but me not wanting to see them had more to do with knowing who I used to be before we were married, and how much of myself I’d given up for a relationship based more on ownership than love.
Not that I’d be any good at it, but throughout the thirteen years of my marriage, one thought had run through my mind more times than I could count:
I could’ve been a dancer.
Or a pilot. A senator or the owner of a huge chain of wildly successful bookstores. The profession didn’t matter. It was the years I’d spent with a man who didn’t care what I did, so long as I never looked at another man, didn’t make him look bad in front of his buddies or his parents, and it didn’t interfere with Monday night football. As long as the food was cooked, the house was clean, and the boys were attended to.
But maybe Rye was right that we got to where we needed to be in life when we needed to be there.
In which case, Rye needed to be with me tonight.
The pictures still displayed in my living room were of me and the boys, my parents, customers at special events I’d hosted at the bookshop, and some were completely impersonal. Mostly florals. I had a weird thing for vintage drawings of flowers. Roxi said my house was “a whole girly mood,” but I really liked what I’d created since I’d been on my own.
There wasn’t a man to disapprove and tell me he didn’t like the things that made me happy, and there were no boys to break them or leave sticky fingerprints on them. I missed having Benji and Micah home most of the time, missed cooking for them and laughing at their antics, but sometimes, I reveled in being by myself.
Rye smiled at my favorite drawing made with India ink. “I like this one,” he said, reaching out to touch the frame’s glass. “It reminds me of you.”
He was uncharacteristically quiet, and he seemed so big in my little one-story house. His six-two or -three frame, his wide shoulders, and the confident cowboy air he always exuded were almost another personality in the room with us. When we’d sat in his truck talking, he’d felt so human to me. Normal.
Now, as I watched him move, he seemed extraordinary. Bigger. More powerful.
Maybe it was because now I knew what he was capable of.
Tonight had been a revelation to me. My body wasn’t out of commission, like I’d been convinced it was. It wasn’t withered and unsatisfactory like I’d thought. Rye had made me feel more alive at forty-seven than I’d felt when I was the twenty-five-year- old Coachella girl, if I’d even known what Coachella was back then.
I watched him still moving through my house slowly, touching memories and knick-knacks carefully. He’d left his hat in his truck, and his curls lay wild and disheveled from running his fingers through.
It surprised me that I was the one being so calm. I knew he had been expecting me to flip a lid earlier, after he ravaged me in the bed of his truck and I’d done things to him you’d probably only see on Skinemax. Wait. Is Skinemax still a thing?
Maybe it was the multiple orgasms he’d given me, probably was, but I felt cool as a cucumber. I felt lighter too. Less stressed. Less burdened.
But Rye looked stiff, like he’d taken all that stress into himself when he’d cured me of it.
“Ryder?”
“Hm?” he hummed as he turned to face me, and again, we just stared at each other. What was he seeing when he looked at me?
Normally, I’d worry he was seeing the gray roots growing out of the highlights Ronnie Evans at Cut It Up had given me, or the bags under my eyes or the way my skin was beginning to loosen and change. Or maybe being in my home, now he saw what he’d never wanted to before: that we really were two very different people from two different generations, and that we didn’t belong together.
We could help each other, sure. There wasn’t anything wrong with having a little fun in the sack, cracking some jokes, and providing each other something we really needed. Those were the only things I should’ve been looking to get from this man, but there was a little tug inside my chest telling me I knew better.
Rye Graves was more than just a good lay or a bank account.
He’d been trying to tell me all along. But now he wanted to leave. He’d go back to his ranch tomorrow, and I’d never get to feel his hands and his mouth on me again or hear the hum of his voice when he said such profound things to me like they were nothing at all, when in reality, they were everything I didn’t know I’d needed to hear.
“Please don’t go.”
“Gotta, Spitfire. It’s gettin’ late.” He walked toward me, dragging a hand through his hair again, and one curl stood straight up from his forehead. Stopping in front of me, he reached out and pulled me into his arms.
“But we didn’t finish hashin’ out our plan.”
“That’s what phones are for, yeah?”
“Rye, please talk to me. Why are you really leavin’? I thought this was what you wanted. That I was.”
“Oh,” he breathed, caging me between his strong arms, hugging me tighter. He pulled his fingers through my hair softly. “You are what I want. More than you know. But I have to go because I feel this… I dunno. I feel this weight now inside my chest, and I know if I stay, things between you and me will go somewhere neither of us needs. I don’t wanna just be sex to you.”
“That’s not why I want you to stay.”
“Still, it’s better if I don’t. Trust me. I go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat, and then when work gets busy, I disappear. Broken a few hearts that way. I don’t wanna break yours.” He squeezed me against his chest, but then stepped back. “I’m gonna call you tomorrow when I get a break, okay? Answer your phone.”
Clicking his tongue, he nodded once, leaned down to kiss me quickly on the lips, and then he left me breathless.
The good kind.
My phone pinged with a text from Rye at midnight:
Night, Spitfire. Dream about me tonight like I dream of you every night.
I had no clue how to respond, and to be honest, I was a little afraid late-night texting might turn into sexting, and what if I loaned my phone to Benji the next time he came home or to Roxi and they saw it? The mortification I would feel if that minuscule possibility happened stopped me from texting Rye back, so I hugged my phone to my chest like a teenager and dreamed of things I had no business dreaming about.
“Where were you last night?” Roxi demanded when she rushed into Your Local Bookie right after I flipped the “We’re open if you dare to dream” sign the next morning, clutching her phone in one hand. “And why didn’t you answer my texts this mornin’? I thought you’d been abducted by aliens!”
I had a whole collection of unconventional open and closed signs. I’d thought they’d give the shop an edge over some of the other stores in town.
Yeah, they didn’t. Lately, unless you sold food, guns, or cowboy hats, you had to sit back and watch all the customers go into other people’s businesses.
But maybe that wasn’t the whole truth.
Maybe, just like with Rye, my eyes had been closed. I’d let my business fall to the wayside, let the status quo become acceptable.
Maybe it wasn’t anymore. Maybe my eyes had been opened, and maybe it was time to do something about it.
“Breathe. Jeez. You look like you’re about to bust that vein in the middle of your forehead.”
“Ugh.” Roxi pushed past me at the cash register so she could check her face in my mirror in the back room. “What vein? I put on foundation this mornin’. Although, I was so worried about you, I rushed it and now I probably look like horse shit.” When she was convinced the veins in her face weren’t purple and pulsating wildly, she stood across the counter from me again and stared me down. “So? Where were you?”
“Did I forget we had plans?”
“No, we didn’t have plans, but remember I told you I might stop by if my date with that llama farmer was a bust? Spoiler alert: it was. Guy was a total weirdo. He told me he wanted to cut a lock of my hair so he could weave it into a blanket with his llamas’ fleece to keep him warm at night. Ew.”
Barking laughter erupted from my mouth. I couldn’t help it. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah. So I stopped by your house after I told him I’d haul his ass to jail if he did it, once I figured out what I could arrest him for, but you weren’t there so I had no one to commiserate with.”
“Sorry.”
Her head cocked to the side. “You still haven’t said where you were.”
“Out.”
She scoffed. “Right. Without me? You don’t go ‘out.’”
“Well, I did last night. Had a great time.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was either mad that I hadn’t dished the dirt yet, or she was miffed I’d spent time with another friend. Or both. “With who?”
I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t be tempted to tattle on myself.
“Aubrey?”
“Um…”
She gasped, and her eyes grew to the size of golf balls. “Rye? You went out with Rye, didn’t you? I flippin’ knew it! Tell me everything .”
Peeking out the front window, I made sure there were no customers coming in, and then I pulled Roxi by her hand to the safety of the back room and spilled all the tea on planet Earth.
“You won’t believe it, Roxi. Juneau was right! He showed up here yesterday after book club. I was on the phone with my mom. That’s not important, although, did I tell you my parents are goin’ on a cruise? Lucky bastards. Anyway, there he was right in front of me, and he told me he could help me with my little problem. You know how I was stressin’ big time about my taxes?”
She nodded silently, but there was a little sparkle in her eye.
“Oh wait. Of course you do. You’re the unloyal friend who told him!”
She winced.
“I should probably be thankin’ you, but I still wanna clobber you.”
She batted her coated eyelashes at me, smirking and shrugging. Her face was so expressive, there really was no need for her to speak.
“Anyway, so he says, ‘I got money. I can help you and you can help me. I’ll take you to Paris,’ like it’s nothin’ to him, and then he pulled up his bank account on his phone.
“The man is rich. Like, not, ‘hey, I just got paid, let’s go tuck back a couple ribeyes’ kind of rich, but, like, loaded rich. And then he paid my back taxes. All he says he wants in return is me to fake date him so his parents will get off his back about his love life. So I said yes.
“And then he— Oh, Roxi. The things he did to me. We didn’t even have sex, and I orgasmed four times!”
Trying to recover from my nearly hysterical monologue, Roxi shook her head quickly and pieces of her hair fell loose from the bun she’d put it into this morning. “I’m sorry. I think I hallucinated the last part. Please repeat.”
“Yeah. In the bed of his truck on the side of Highway 10, up past Cade Ranch at the Stillwater Pass lookout, you know the little spot in the parkin’ area that’s kinda hidden at the edge?”
She nodded. “Holy. Shit. But I mean, what did you do if you didn’t have sex? I had no clue my intervention would lead to that !”
My cheeks must’ve lit up like glowing brake lights because Roxi’s eyes got even bigger.
“Tell me right now.”
“He— I— We… did things.” I bit my lip. “Really dirty, naughty things.”
She squealed so loud, I thought my eardrums might pop. “And which of that delicious man’s body parts did he do things to you with?”
I whispered because I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t say any of it out loud. “His fingers. And his mouth. Specifically, his tongue. God , that man’s tongue.”
My eyes fluttered closed as I remembered him rubbing it over my clit while endlessly pumping his fingers inside me, and the sucking noises his mouth had made while I writhed on my back like a flipped cockroach.
“ Oh my .” Roxi’s hand covered her mouth, her fingers pulling at her bottom lip a little. “You’re gettin’ turned on just rememberin’, aren’t you? I’m so jealous! Maybe it’s not so weird if the llama guy wants my hair. If I can have orgasms brought on by somethin’ other than my little rose vibrator, I might be able to look past it.”
I laughed but dropped my face into my hands, trying to rub the embarrassment away until I realized I’d probably smudged my mascara.
“I’m too old for this. People my age don’t have four orgasms in the span of an hour.”
“Oh man,” she said. “I think I might need to sit down. This is too good. Wait. Halt. Rewind. Did he stay the night?”
“No. But that’s not what I’m worried about. What are people gonna think? I mean, he paid my damn taxes. Five thousand dollars, Roxi. That’s… I don’t even know. But is it wrong? I mean, is it wrong that I accepted the money, and now he’s givin’ me orgasms? I feel like?—”
She shook her head. “Unless you demand money before the orgasms, it’s not wrong. He offered the money freely, right? You didn’t ask for it?”
“I didn’t. He offered because you told him I was up shit creek.”
“So then it’s not wrong. And I know you’ll pay him back.”
“Yeah, I will. I’ve already started a spreadsheet to see where I can whittle down my expenses?—”
My phone rang, and Roxi jumped in place while I pulled it from my pocket. All her keys and her handcuffs and mini flashlight attached to her uniform vest tinkled and thunked. “Ooo! Is it him?”
I’d labeled his contact in my phone as only R. I didn’t have a picture of him to assign to his profile, but the R told me enough when I saw it on my screen.
I nodded vigorously.
Roxi groaned, clenching her fists in the air, and she shook them. “Goddammit, I have to go to work! Okay, answer it and then call me after. And don’t think you’re gonna get away with skimpy details.”
“Yes, Officer Fitts.”
“Good. See ya. Oh, and by the way, you’re welcome!”