EMBER #2
This is exactly the thing I said I wouldn’t do.
This is exactly why this is dangerous. You said no feelings.
You said it was just a bit of harmless fun with a man you trust, and now you’re standing in a freezing garden, wanting to claw a stranger’s eyes out because she’s got her hand on his arm.
That is not harmless, that is not nothing.
I’m in so much trouble. I can’t want him like this.
I can’t. I just clawed my way out of one marriage.
I don’t even know who I am on my own yet, and Sully is Cassidy’s brother, Emmett’s best friend, my roommate, and the one solid safe thing in my whole life.
If I let this be real, if I let myself actually want him, and it goes wrong …
“There you are.”
I turn, and he’s there, filling the doorway, loosening his collar, and the sight of him makes my heart thud in my chest.
“Done with your dance?” It comes out sharper than I mean it to.
He stops, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “Ember Black.” He steps out, letting the door fall shut behind him. “Are you jealous?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.” He prowls toward me, delighted, and I back up until the stone is against my back. “You’re so jealous. You left and came outside. You couldn’t stand watching me dance with her for thirty seconds.”
“I needed air, it’s hot and stuffy in there.”
“You needed air?” He plants a hand on the balustrade either side of me, caging me in, warm and close and smelling like champagne and him.
“She bid on a charity dance, Em. I didn’t even catch her name.
I spent the whole three minutes looking over her shoulder trying to find you. ” His voice drops. “And you were gone.”
“Sully …”
“I didn’t want to dance with her.” His mouth is at my ear now. “I’ve never once wanted to dance with anyone who wasn’t you. You want to know where I want my hands?”
“We shouldn’t,” I breathe, already tilting my head to give him my throat.
“Nope,” he agrees, and kisses me anyway.
And it’s like something snaps. All that ugly hot jealousy converts straight into want, and I fist my hands in his lapels and drag him into me. He groans against my mouth and presses me back into the cold stone.
“Someone could come out,” he murmurs, even as his hand slides under the gold hem, up my thigh.
“Then be quick.”
He laughs, low and dark, against my collarbone. “Bossy.”
It’s fast, it’s greedy, and it’s freezing, and neither of us cares.
My hands fumble his belt open, and he groans when I wrap my hand around him.
He lifts me clean off the ground, and I wrap my legs around him.
He pushes into me right there against the wall with the party glittering just out of sight and the fairy lights swimming above his shoulder.
“This,” he breathes into my neck, moving, “is mine. You get that? There’s no one else. There’s never been anyone else.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. I just hold on and let him take me apart, my back against the stone, his mouth swallowing every sound. I come undone with my face buried in his shoulder, so the whole gala doesn’t hear me, and he follows a few strokes later with my name against my skin like a secret.
Afterward, he sets me down and rights my dress with hands that aren’t quite steady, then smooths my hair, and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“There,” he says softly. “Go back in and be seen. I’ll follow in a bit so no one does the math.”
“You’re terrible.” I smirk.
“I’m yours,” he says easily, like it’s the simplest fact in the world, and then he seems to hear himself and clears his throat.
I go back inside with my cheeks pink, my dress smoothed, my whole body humming, and the woman in red is somewhere with her VIP tickets, and I feel obscenely, guiltily pleased about all of it.
Which is its own kind of problem.
But I’ll worry about that tomorrow.
Cassidy and I head up to Maine for the weekend.
We hire a car and make a road trip of it, it’s about four and a half hours.
We’re going to catalog Collette and Fish’s home so we can work on the project back in New York.
We also want to get a feel for the area.
After a million cups of coffee and just as many pee breaks, thankfully the snow isn’t too bad for us to travel.
We arrive in darkness thanks to winter, but the house is even better than I remember.
It sits high on a rocky outcrop overlooking the water, with ocean views from nearly every room.
The last time I was here it was summer and the whole place was draped in white and baby-blue linen, and hydrangeas for Fish and Collette’s wedding.
Now it’s all snow, twinkling stars, and the sound of crashing waves.
The pool out back is sitting under its winter cover.
The yard and that private walkway winding down over the rocks to their own beach are buried under snow, you’d probably slip to your death on them.
I try not to look too long at that beach.
We spend the days measuring and planning and arguing happily about finishes, and the nights in front of the fire with wine, wrapped in blankets, the snow coming down over the water outside the windows. It’s like we have landed in a Christmas movie, which is what we are currently watching.
We’re deep into a bottle of red when suddenly Cassidy says, “I need to tell you something.”
She has my attention.
She bites her lip. “Please don’t hate me.”
“I could never,” I tell her.
She takes a breath. “I hooked up with Nelly at the gala.”
I sit up so fast I nearly spill my wine. “You what?”
“It’s just, he looked really good in the tux, and there was champagne, and you were right, I was jealous. Then I remembered the girls mentioned hanky panky in a hotel room, so I kind of booked a room and …”
I burst out laughing.
“Shut up.” But she’s smiling, too, into her glass. “It was supposed to be over. That was the deal.”
“And?”
“And apparently the deal is very flexible when he’s in a tux.” She groans and covers her face. “It was so good, Em. That’s the problem. It’s never not good with him. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She’s quiet for a second, watching the fire. “I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Maybe. We said no strings, we said just fun, and it’s starting to not feel like just fun, and that scares me.” She glances at me. “Feelings ruin everything.”
I laugh, because she has no idea. I’m the last person on earth who should be giving anyone advice about tangled-up feelings with a man you’re not supposed to have them for.
“Don’t overthink it. You just got out of a long marriage. Do you really want to jump back into another relationship?”
“No, but I like having sex with him.”
“Then I guess you have to weigh that up, sex or feelings?”
“Dammit, when did you get so wise?” She smirks.
“No idea.” I laugh.
We sit there in the firelight with the snow coming down, two women in way over our heads with two men we keep telling ourselves don’t mean anything, and neither of us says the obvious thing.
That we’re both lying to ourselves.