Chapter 23 – Emerson
TWENTY-THREE
EMERSON
“Chill out. I’m a big girl.”
A look comes over Grant’s face that makes every part of me come alive. It was an innocent comment on my part, and yet, the look in his eyes is suggestive as hell and perfectly fitting for this darkened, back corner of the bar.
“I’m well aware that you’re a big girl, Emerson. You’ve gone out of your way to make me acknowledge it.”
I’m not sure if it’s a dig, but it’s true, so I don’t take it as anything other than that.
“I heard you dropped the donuts by the homeless shelter.” His eyes flash up, and I’m immediately reminded of how I felt when I found out through the grapevine about what he did. “I have my own stalking capabilities.”
“So I see.”
“I think it was a super cool thing for you to do.”
“Besides meeting you here, it was the easiest decision of my day.”
I can see sadness in his eyes as he goes away from me momentarily. Back to his call? Back to the reason he is here, drinking in a bar by himself, perhaps?
“Tell me about your call,” I prompt and reach out and put my hand on his. “I’d like to know about it.”
His hand stiffens momentarily, and I know he’s battling with whether he should talk or not—a blue blood through and through. He picks up his drink with his free hand, takes a sip before setting it down, and then laces his fingers with mine. But he still doesn’t look at me.
And as the silent seconds tick by, my mind begins to wander. To how we just officially held hands and I’m not freaking out over it. To how it feels natural and pretty damn good. I think I’m more freaked out over that than the notion that we are sitting in a bar and looking like a couple.
“I used our rock thing today,” he finally says as he meets my eyes, but I’m completely clueless as to what he’s referring to.
“Our rock thing?” I ask, head angled as if it would help me understand.
“Yeah. It came to me today when I was on my call. I thought it might be a way to connect to a little girl, and I told her about it.”
I’m so lost. Rock thing? What am I missing here?
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah. Our rock thing. You know what, fuck it. Forget I said anything.”
“No. Please. I want to know.”
“My call today. It was a 10-16 . . . sorry, a domestic disturbance, and it wasn’t the first time we’d been called out there.
I think the dad is abusing the mom, but the mom is making excuses to protect him.
It’s a classic case of him beating her down enough, grooming her, so that she thinks he can’t live without her and vice versa.
I don’t know. I don’t get it, but I know it’s real because I’ve seen it more times than I care to count. ”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I say, but I squeeze his hand to lend him silent support as he thinks about something I can’t even fathom.
“So am I.” He sighs, the sag of his shoulders a visible manifestation of the toll the call has taken on him.
“I want to help the mom, but I can’t help her until she wants it, and I hope that it isn’t too late.
But what’s even worse is that they have a daughter.
She’s five, and the sweetest little girl who is caught in the middle of a shit sandwich.
She’s defending a dad, who isn’t nice, and loving a mom, who doesn’t defend her.
All this little girl wants is just to be a kid. ”
“That’s rough. I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry.
I can’t imagine the things you see every day.
The things you deal with,” I say, really wanting to go back and find out what he meant about the rocks.
Something is niggling at the back of my mind.
I’m not sure what it is, but I’m too scared to ask.
“You know what? I think we should stop talking about our shitty days and go get ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” I laugh. “We’ve gone from drinking away our sorrows to ice cream?”
“Yep. Do you have something against ice cream?”
“Umm . . . no. Who could hate ice cream?” My stomach growls at the thought of food, reminding me just how long it’s been since I’ve eaten. “But then again, after my crappy day, this alcohol isn’t so bad, either.”
“There’s my Emmy.” He flashes me an irresistible grin that freezes when we both realize what he said.
I’m not going to lie and say those words don’t make me want to give in on this silly game we’ve been playing—control be damned—and kiss him. Right here. Right now.
Our eyes hold and try to read what the other is saying. It’s then that I feel his hand tighten around mine and realize our fingers are still interlocked.
“I know a way we can mix both ice cream and alcohol,” he says, eyes never leaving mine.
“How?”
“Mudslides. They have them here.” My stomach rumbles. “You want one?”
“Like you have to ask.” I laugh when he raises his finger to the bartender before I even finish the sentence.
“I’m a big girl, Grant. I don’t need you walking me home,” I say and then giggle when I realize that I’m nowhere near the airstrip. But still. Saying it is like meaning it, right?
He swings our joined hands as he walks beside me. “I’m not walking you home. I’m walking you to my home since we aren’t sober enough to drive.” He veers off the sidewalk and up a short little path.
“Grant?” I ask as I take in the wood porch of the house in front of us.
“I know you’re a big girl, Em. I’m well aware of it.”
His words hang in the air, hitting my slightly fuzzy mind as I follow him up the steps to stand under the porch light. “Is that flirting, Malone? Are you flirting with me?”
He yanks on my hand, and I land solidly against him. It takes a minute for our minds to register what’s going on—that our bodies are pressed together—because we’re too busy making sure our wobbly feet don’t give out.
But when we’re steady, everything registers for me. The heat of his body against mine. The hardness of it, too. The hitch of his breath, answering the gasp of mine. The darkening of his eyes. The tensing of his hand on mine. The flick of his tongue across his bottom lip.
And, oh, how I want him to be flirting with me.
Better yet, I want him to be kissing me. All of me.
The thought makes me giggle as we continue to stand body to body, a lot a bit tipsy, beneath a dim porch light on an empty and darkened street.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he murmurs more to himself than to me. It cues the panic inside me, screaming that this insane display of foreplay between us needs to have the match lit before I combust from sexual frustration.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re Emmy.” He brings his free hand up and runs a finger down the side of my cheek.
That touch, skin to skin, is like a mainline of electric current to charge that slow, sweet ache burning inside me. It only serves to make me want more.
“And you’re Phony Maloney.”
“Exactly.”
He steps back, and I tighten my hold on his hand and step forward with him. “Are you telling me there is nothing here? No lust? No attraction? No anything?”
He gives me that sly smile of his again, the one that lights up his eyes and does funny things to my insides. “I never said that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . . Christ, Em, I don’t know what I’m saying.” He runs a hand absently up and down the plane of my back.
“Maybe you’re saying we need to get each other out of our systems.” I utter the words before I think them and then feel ridiculous.
“What?” He laughs. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
His body is against mine. His cologne is in my nose. His laugh is in my ears. He’s everywhere all the time.
Too much talk right now. Too much saying. Not enough action.
“Yes.”
A few seconds pass as he gauges whether I’m serious, and I wonder if he’s going to take the bait. “And then what?” He angles his head to the side, silently asking a million questions my body wants to ignore.
“And then curiosity will be satisfied, and we’ll be out of each other’s systems.”
“You think that’s going to work? You think we’ve just met again after twenty years and it’ll be that easy?”
He has a point, and I don’t want to think about that or semantics or reality. I want to think about him. And me. And his mouth. And his hands.
So, I lean forward on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. “Enough talking, Malone.”
He laughs, his lips vibrating against mine, but I don’t relent. I want him. I want this. I know we’re both buzzed, but maybe that’s the best way for this to happen so I’m not nervous and overthinking and neither is he.
For a minute, I think he’s going to reject me.
It’s in the way he stills for a brief moment, the way his lashes lower for just a second too long.
Then he frames my face and leans back to look at me.
Our breaths feather over each other’s lips as an unspoken conversation passes between us.
I can’t put words to it, but somehow understand each and every syllable of it.
And then his mouth is on mine in a savage greeting of lips and tongues and hands on skin and history reconnected.
“Grant.”
“Shh.”
“Wait. I have rules.”
He laughs with exasperation, a man being denied what’s sitting at his fingertips. “Of course you do.”
“No sleeping over. I don’t do the sleeping together thing.”
“No one said anything about sleeping, Em.”
His smile sidelines me. The kiss he leans forward and brushes ever so tenderly against my lips makes me want to sag into him, even more so.
“No promises.”
“I thought this was a one-night thing, right?”
“Yes, but no promises.”
“I’m going to make you come. Can I promise you that?”
Another kiss. This time I take the lead and lick my tongue against his until I pull back and nip his lip. “I’ll accept that promise.”
“Good. Can we stop talking now because there are much more important things I want to be doing with my mouth, and every single one of them involves you and no words.”
My teeth sink into my lower lip as our eyes meet. The door unlocks behind us. Our feet move in reflex. Our fingers link together.
Once over the threshold, we kiss again—his lips beginning their masterful assault of everything that is good and sexy and arousing and needed.
“God, yes.”