33
33
Juniper
April: Need help burying a body?
Juniper: Not yet but stay on standby.
April: Yes ma’am. I’m great with a shovel.
Juniper: I hope that’s under special skills on your résumé.
Three things happened at once.
I screamed.
Alistair roared like a wounded animal, shaking out his hand.
Callum’s body stiffened and hit the ground with all the force of a car hitting a tree.
It might have been comical if I weren’t the proverbial rag doll in the centre of it all.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I tried to rush toward them, but my heels sank in the gravel, slowing me down.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Mal got there first, I hadn’t even noticed him follow until his arms circled Alistair’s chest. “ Calm the fuck down ,” he was saying.
I barely heard him, dropping to my knees beside Callum as he pushed onto an elbow.
“Thought you weren’t going to hit me,” he said, blood trickling from a small cut on his lip as he turned his head to spit.
Alistair flexed his fingers.
“I changed my mind.”
“Feel better?” Callum asked, wiping the blood from his chin.
Alistair bared his teeth.
“Not even close.”
Callum nodded, like he expected as much, then looked to the hand Alistair cradled.
“You tucked your thumb; you’ve probably broken it.”
“ Bloody prick .” Alistair charged again, making it a step before Mal hauled him back, muttering rushed words to try and defuse the situation.
“How long have you been fucking her?”
“ Watch your tone .” Callum’s voice was pure venom.
Nostrils flaring like a dragon woken from a century-long sleep.
“Why? It’s true, isn’t it? I bet you’ve been planning this for years behind my back.” His eyes shot to me, wilder than I’d ever seen them.
“Or maybe it was all your idea to get back at me.”
And so what if it was?
I wanted to yell. The ridiculous display of testosterone making me want to lash out.
Act as childishly as they were.
But fury was pouring from Callum, promising more than a single punch.
“Go inside and calm the hell down,” I said to Alistair.
“The victim complex is starting to look pathetic.” My words probably made things worse, but I didn’t care.
For weeks I’d resisted Callum for this very reason, explicitly telling him I didn’t want any conflict.
Then he’d had the gall to go and cause a scene in the middle of April and Mal’s party.
Giving Callum another quick once-over to be certain he wasn’t about to drop dead, I stood.
“Sorry, Mal.” I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Will you tell April I’m sorry I ruined your night?”
“You didn’t ruin anything,” he promised.
“Let me get her, she’ll drive you home—”
“I prefer to walk, thanks.” Chin high, I slipped a bored expression firmly into place and started down the long driveway.
I made it five steps before I sensed Callum behind me.
“We need to talk about this, just the two of us.”
“Oh, so now you want privacy? Why don’t you invite him to watch us fighting like a real couple? Hell, why not fuck me while he watches too?” The words were hot and vicious, angry butterflies taking flight in my stomach.
“Don’t fucking tempt me,” he growled as he rushed ahead, stopping me in my tracks.
Beads of moisture danced in the air, doing little to cool the fervent frenzy beginning to spiral between us.
This was always where we’d existed, in the murky middle of a Venn diagram made up of lust and loathing.
If he got a step closer, the scales would tip and I’d beg him to fuck me up against the nearest tree.
“Touch me and you’ll regret it,” I warned, loathing winning out as the memory of his betrayal sank its claws into my chest.
“That so? I think you’re a liar, harpy. A pretty little liar.” But he didn’t touch me.
Just curled his fingers into fists and let me pass.
Thankful for my skill in heels, I continued down the uneven path without so much as a wobble.
“Are we walking?” he called after a moment.
I kept my focus on the streetlights ahead.
“This is stalking.”
“How’d you figure that? I’m going home. It just so happens we live a hundred yards apart. Besides … my current view is impeccable; can you blame me for following like a stray dog?”
“Don’t!” I snarled, spinning to poke him in the chest, right in the spot that my own heart was cracking.
“You don’t get to pull that bullshit back there then joke and flirt as though it hasn’t changed everything.”
His hand circled my finger, keeping me there.
“This changes nothing between us, harpy.” Back to harpy, just like that.
I tried not to let the wound show on my face.
“Aye, I shouldn’t have said it like that, I fucked up. I fucked up because I’m so out of my mind for you, I can’t think straight half the time—”
“Don’t try and blame this on me!” Screw him.
“I’m not blaming you! What I’m doing is a terrible job of explaining that I can’t hide this anymore. I thought I could play it cool and keep my cards close to my chest. I asked you to soft launch, for fuck’s sake! How the hell am I supposed to soft launch when there’s nothing remotely soft about the way I feel for you?” He raked a hand through his hair, eyes wild in the moonlight.
“I know exactly what I want from you, Juniper – what I’ve always wanted. Can you say the same?”
There’s nothing remotely soft about the way I feel for you.
What was I supposed to say to that?
My mouth went dry, any reply catching in my throat when music from the distillery sounded from further down the road.
A flash of light as the door opened and closed, then an engine roaring to life.
“We shouldn’t talk about this here.” I swallowed, starting back up the road.
“Right.” He chuckled, voice suddenly smooth, as though we hadn’t been screaming at each other thirty seconds before.
“Wouldn’t want the thistles to overhear our argument, they’re notorious gossips.”
Jesus , it was like he had multiple personality disorder.
Playful Callum had entered the chat, but there was an edge to his exuberant exterior.
He teemed with restless energy, his hands flexed at his sides, opening and closing as we walked.
He was making my head spin.
So like any well-adjusted adult, I held my fury close, stoking the flame as I ignored him the entire way home.
How had this night veered so off course?
Only this morning we’d been joking and kissing in my kitchen, daring to imagine our life with our relationship out in the open.
I’d been afraid in the best possible way.
Observing with a quiet, tentative hope that not only was my life beginning to write itself beyond the blank page I’d been toiling over for years, but it would be bursting with intensifiers and interjections, dog-eared corners and doodles in the margins.
Full, messy and quite possibly worth rereading.
And now … we were back at the starting line, a single snide remark away from a cheap hate fuck.
By the time we reached my cottage, I’d fallen back into my safe defensive bubble.
How dare he force his way into my life and mess things up with his kind eyes, dirty laugh and even dirtier words.
The old Juniper knew better than to let a man tangle her up in knots.
“You’re not coming in,” I threw over my shoulder, digging through my bag for my keys.
Callum clearly had other ideas because one hand found my waist as he stole the keys from my fingers.
“Yes I am.”
“Don’t manhandle me.”
“Keep pressing that arse against me and we’ll discover just how much you enjoy my manhandling.” He punctuated the point with a slow caress of my arse.
I couldn’t contain my moan, even as I knew how pathetic I was for almost giving in.
He’d humiliated me back there, then a few tempting words and he had me almost panting against my front door.
“I hate you.”
“ Oh yeah? ” He reached around me, unlocking the door but holding me against him on the threshold.
“Sometimes I think I hate you too.” His voice was gruffer than I’d ever heard it.
“The power you hold over me, I don’t think you even realise how dangerously you could wield it.”
Fuck him.
Fuck him and that gravelled tone.
Barging through the door, I sped down the hallway and into the living room, tossing my purse onto the sofa.
Upon seeing us, Shakespeare paused her licking, hissed, then dove into the safety of my closet.
I felt him pause on the threshold, the ticking of my clock our only companion as the tension thickened.
Refusing to be the one to speak first, I kept my back to him, staring through the large window.
Total darkness stared back.
“If you want to scream at me, now’s your chance, sweetheart.”
It was the endearment that finally broke me.
The way he chopped and changed as if I were two different people.
I whirled. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why?”
“Because it gives mixed messages. One minute, I’m Juniper or sweetheart and I feel …” I feel.
My laugh turned acrid.
“Forget it.”
“Fuck that. We are years past forgetting it!” He cut across the room until he filled my vision.
Sharp cheeks, heavy brows, that beautiful straight nose and bloodstained scruff.
Bright blue eyes filled with more fury than he’d ever directed at me.
“If for even a second you think I don’t want to know every single thought inside that head of yours, what the hell have we been doing here?”
“Exactly that! You call me sweetheart and say wildly romantic things and then the second I’m not the perfect person you’ve built up in your head, I’m right back to being harpy, the ice queen you can’t stand.”
“You think I don’t know exactly who you are? That I haven’t always seen you, even when you didn’t want me to? I know you … And despite what your name suggests, I know you’ll never hold the easy warmth of summer.” His hands swept around my face, refusing to let me turn from him.
“You … sweetheart … harpy, are the wild moors of this island. You’re like your damn demon cat, claws in my back and blood on my lips. But there isn’t a single day that I won’t welcome that sweet bite of pain.” Both of our chests rattling, he glanced between my eyes, smoothing back the hair that had tangled in his fingers.
“If any of that is true, why the hell did you pull that shit back there?”
“Because I was jealous!” he roared.
“Because you were in his arms, in this dress, when it should have been mine. Because he couldn’t take his eyes off you. If you wore this dress to torture him, I don’t think it worked on the right brother. Did he even recognise it?”
“No, he didn’t,” was my blunt answer.
And that wasn’t why I’d worn it, but I hadn’t counted on Callum recognising it.
He grunted again, as if the sound made up a complete sentence.
“If I put my hand beneath that dress, would I find you wet, harpy?” I said nothing but my traitorous fingers curled into his shirt.
“ Yes ,” he hummed for me.
“I think I so. But would you be wet for me or Alistair?”
“Fuck you.” But the curse became embarrassingly invalidated by my thighs clenching.
His big hand gripped my waist. “Later. You didn’t answer me.”
“What was the question again?”
“About Alistair.” His head tilted, dark hair falling over his brow.
“When I said he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“That’s not a question.”
His eyes burned as he continued.
“I heard the two of you fucking once, did you know that?”
What?
“You visited Edinburgh right before Christmas, a year or so after you started dating. He surprised you with dinner and a show to celebrate your anniversary, but the hotel reservation fell through, so you spent the night at my place.” I remembered, shit , I remembered.
Callum’s stylish New Town flat.
The creaky bed in his spare room.
“You tried to be quiet … but you were a little drunk, stifling your moans while he went down on you on the other side of my wall.” He sounded tortured, fingers knotting into my hair, tipping my forehead against his.
“That’s when I first learned the addictive noises you make. You sighed his name, over and over and over. I thought I’d go insane from the sound of it.”
His words …
they shouldn’t have been so bloody hot.
Every limb trembled by the time his mouth reached my ear, fingers curling around the hem of my dress.
“Are you going to sigh my name, Juniper?”
How many times had he asked me that very question?
And all this time he’d been trying to rewrite history.
My eyes flew open. No .
No .
I wanted him so badly my body tingled with it, like a loose live wire.
But not like this. Not in reaction to Alistair.
I shoved at his chest, and he released me at once, fingers uncurling one digit at a time.
“I have no interest in doing … whatever this is.”
A muscle in his neck jumped and he tugged at his tie.
“Fine. Then tell me honestly, are you still in love with him?”