20. Chapter 20
My mouth slid against Beck’s, and he pressed his body against mine. Nothing but skin beneath the sheets—no barrier of clothes. I’m not sure if he’d initiated the kissing or if I had done it in my sleep. It didn’t matter. I just knew I had to have him again. His hand gripped my ass and then trailed to my thigh. He hitched it up over his hip. I ground against him and found him rock hard.
“Please tell me this isn’t a dream,” he mumbled against my lips. A laugh tumbled out of me. “Actually,” he said, kissing me some more, “it doesn’t matter. Just don’t wake me.”
I would have laughed again, but he rolled on top, and the weight of him took all my attention. My mouth salivated at the idea of him being inside me again, of feeling his rhythm, of letting him wind me so tightly until I came apart in ribbons.
He positioned himself at my entrance but then pulled back, groaning. “I only had the one condom.” He dropped his head to my shoulder. “The one I keep in my wallet.” His voice was gravelly from sleep. “I really expected myself to behave as a gentleman,” he said with a sigh.
“You’ve been a perfect gentleman,” I replied, angling my face to kiss him again.
Beck’s lips left mine, trailing down my throat. He veered off to cup and kiss my breasts. My nipples budded at the attention, but then Beck was off again, following an invisible path down my stomach.
“What are you doing?” I gasped as he sucked a spot just below my navel.
“I’m hungry,” he said into my skin, and my insides turned molten under his lips.
“Beck,” I breathed, toes curling as he moved farther south. His lips stopped their descent, and he ran a hand up my leg.
“God, Emily. You have no idea what your body does to me.”
Heat spread across my chest as his fingers inched closer and closer to my center. “I think I have some idea,” I groaned, completely at the mercy of his fingertips.
He smiled the most heartbreakingly beautiful smile at that but then turned all business as he traced the crease of my lips. I moaned, feeling myself swell for him.
“I know I said I was above groveling.” He splayed his large hands on my thighs and spread me open. “But here I am. Begging,” he said, voice strained. “May I please taste you, Emily?”
The question sucked all the air out of the room. My tongue felt like a dead weight in my mouth, so I nodded.
“Emily Lane, use your words.” He massaged my thigh, and the pressure of his fingers made me lightheaded. “Is this okay?”
“Yes,” I croaked.
He hooked my legs over his shoulders, and I reached up, fisting the sheets above my head, bracing for him. But nothing could prepare me for the luxurious sweep of his tongue across my clit, the way he sucked languidly as if savoring his favorite piece of candy.
I cried out, and Beck placed the gentlest of kisses on the most sensitive of places.
“There’s no storm this morning, Lane.” His low voice rumbled across my sex.
Oh God. I knew what he was saying. We only had the thin canvas walls as a barrier for sound, and we already knew how well they insulated noise thanks to Kat and Jake’s demonstration.
He nuzzled my thigh. “Do you think you can be quiet until I’m finished with breakfast?”
I whimpered in response, but he showed no mercy. His tongue entered me, stroking upward. I gasped, and my grip on the bedding tightened with my effort to keep silent.
I’d had sex before, plenty of it. And most of my boyfriends could make me come most of the time. But this. This was different. This was art.
Beck slipped his tongue out, repositioning it on my center, only to push two fingers in, curling and uncurling them, bringing another current of sensation. My back arched off the bed. He was going to make being quiet as difficult as possible.
Typical, competitive Beckett.
At least, with his tongue and fingers working in tandem, I wasn’t going to have to stay quiet for long. I teetered toward the edge at an alarming rate. “Beck,” I groaned, clamping my hands on his head, tangling my fingers in his curls.
He paused to moan. It vibrated through me. “You taste even better than I imagined.” He scraped his teeth down my clit and started suckling.
“Beck, please,” I cried, unable to keep quiet. My heels dug into his back.
What I wanted him to do, I didn’t know. Slow down so I could enjoy it longer? Speed up because the tension was too much? I had no idea. All I knew was I ended up being the one to beg.
This was bliss.
This was torture.
“Fuck keeping quiet,” he said across my opening. “I love the way you say my name.” Then he went back to feasting on me.
I bit my hand to muffle the sound, but I couldn’t stay silent when the orgasm ripped through me. As I throbbed, Beck continued licking, relishing every bit of my pleasure. ”Absolutely exquisite,” he mumbled, then kissed his way up my stomach, my chest, and finally to my lips. It took a long time for the hammering of my heart to calm down.
Beck had begun tracing constellations of freckles on my shoulders, but as soon as my breathing was under control, I pushed him flat on his back, wrapped my hand around him, and stroked.
He exposed his throat as he pressed the back of his head into the pillow. “Emily,” he gasped, “you don’t have to—oh God!” I’d put my mouth around him. The competitive nature in me took charge. It was his turn to stay quiet while I pleasured him. I licked him as slowly as I could from base to tip. “Fuck!”
We were getting dressed when my phone rang—loud in the quiet morning air. I scrambled to answer, hoping to reach it before it woke up the rest of the wedding party in the surrounding tents—hoping we hadn’t done that already with our intimate experience.
“It’s Wesley,” I said, wondering what had come up at work that warranted the early call.
Especially when I was supposed to be helping my dad with his busted knee.
“Don’t answer it. You’re on PTO,” Beck said, pulling on his boxers.
“Don’t you think it’s weird he’s calling me?” I asked, quickly climbing into my romper—a perfect, comfy outfit for the trip back to Manuel Antonio.
Beck found a pair of shorts in his suitcase, which lay on the coffee table thanks to the creepy crawly visitor he’d had the day before. He examined the shorts for good measure before putting them on.
My phone quieted in my hand. “See? If it was important, he’d send an email. Or he’ll call again.”
Beck’s phone started vibrating next.
“I think it’s important,” I said flatly.
Beck rolled his eyes. “Of course, his phone calls would have no problem coming through,” he said, tugging on a shirt before answering. “Hey, Wes.”
“Beck, we need to talk.” Beck had put the call on speaker, and I could hear the tightness in Wesley’s voice. Driving noises blanketed the background, so something was serious enough that it couldn’t wait until he got to the office. Worse, I’d never heard him get so serious with Beck. Wesley had always spoken to him as though they’d been on the same basketball team, whipped each other with towels in the locker room—the sort of tone that was saved for the boys. Not now.
“Sure,” Beck said, reading the situation and ditching the light tone he’d answered with.
“And by ‘we,’ I mean you, me.” He huffed out a breath. “And Emily.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
Beck’s eyes flashed to mine, but he stayed cool. “Emily? Isn’t she in Kansas with her dad?”
“Look, I like you. So, before you go any further, I want you to know that I’ve already seen the picture on Facebook. Hold on.” Wesley then proceeded to place his Starbucks order.
Beck mouthed, What the fuck? and tapped on a Facebook notification. There were two hundred thirty-four likes on a new picture Beck had been tagged in by Madison.
And there it was. Beck and I were in our swimsuits, asleep on the day-bed by the pool. Spooning.
I turned away from it, rejecting the picture and what it meant that my boss had seen it. Having a complete breakdown, I shoved my face into the nearest pillow and screamed.
Then I pulled back, seething. Madison hadn’t posted that to be sweet. She knew I didn’t want my picture taken. At dinner the other night, I’d told the whole group that I couldn’t let my brother find out where I was.
Only there wasn’t a brother to worry about but my fucking job.
After placing the order for his chai latte, Wesley said, “So is she with you now?”
Beck looked at me, misery plain on his face.
I felt like a kid sitting outside the principal’s office. No point in delaying the inevitable.
“Yes. I’m here.”
“Good. I’ll only have to say this once. What you two did was reckless. Irresponsible. Our relationship policy is spelled out clearly. You must be upfront with things of this nature. There are contracts that have to be signed covering consent as well as expectations should the relationship have an unsavory end. Not to mention, the two of you lied, leaving the team scrambling right before a convergence.”
I bit my cheek to hold back the reply I wanted to say—that the two of us had carried the team for the past month. The team certainly had all but spent the past two workdays twiddling their thumbs because we’d already frontloaded all the work for this project.
“I’m going to do what I can, but I have a meeting first thing with HR this morning. And later with Chester.” The VP of the company. I winced. “I can’t guarantee you’ll both be able to keep your jobs.” The sentence pierced me like an arrow. Fired. We could be fired over this.
We were idiots to think we could pull this off. No, I was an idiot to think I could pull this off. People like Hailey and Beck always got away with stuff like this. But not me.
My head drooped to my hands. I was minutes, maybe seconds, from curling into the fetal position.
“I’ll let you know what is decided. But you’ll need to be available should we have contracts to send.”
Great. So, the rest of the vacation would be spent checking emails to see when the axe would fall. A ringing in my ears muffled the rest of the conversation, which was fine. I’d heard enough.
If I got fired over this, would anyone hire me again? How would I buy food? Pay for rent? I pictured my belongings in trash bags stuffed in my Prius, just like how we’d bagged our things when we lived in the van.
After hanging up, Beck knelt in front of me. “Everything is going to be alright. We are going to figure this out. Okay?”
I nodded, too numb to do anything else.
A loud voice outside our yurt made me jump. “If you want breakfast, you better get it now! We leave for Manuel Antonio in half an hour!” I recognized it as Doug’s voice.
“Come on,” Beck said, taking my hands. “Let’s get some food in us. We’ll feel better.” I let him pull me to my feet even though the idea of food made my stomach turn.
Outside, others from the wedding party were mumbling and cursing over Doug’s rooster call wakeup. We lingered at the back of the pack with Gabe. He looked like he belonged with the cast of The Hangover with his mussed hair and bloodshot eyes, which was funny considering I hadn’t seen him touch an alcoholic drink the entire trip.
“Are you seriously going to let that idiot marry your sister?” he groaned, rubbing his eyes.
“Well, we still have three days to stop the wedding,” Beck said. “What did you have in mind?”
Gabe hooked an arm around Beck’s neck, pulling him away from me. “All we do is get him drunk enough to get that tattoo he wanted. When Victoria sees the two-foot geometric wolf across his chest, she’ll kill him herself.”
Beck’s head fell back in laughter. The sight would have made me smile had it been under any other circumstance. I couldn’t help but wonder how he could laugh at a time like this.
But then I knew. He was Beckett freaking Atteridge. What did he have to worry about? If he lost this job, he’d have another one lined up within the hour. Hell, his dad had already offered him one. He had nothing to worry about.
Me, on the other hand . . .
I pictured those trash bags in my mom’s van so many years ago. The Whopper someone had given us after hours of panhandling in the sun. The three of us splitting it. And how hollow my stomach felt after.
Honed in on that picture, I didn’t see the stone jutting out of the pathway. My flip-flop caught on it, and the strap sprang free from the bottom, sending me sprawling forward. I reached out, trying to catch myself on the Welcome to Tranquility sign, but I missed, my arm scraping down its metal edge.
My palms and knees hit the pathway with a jarring thud.
“Are you okay?” Beck asked, rushing over.
“Yes, I’m—”
I sat back, pulling at my broken flip-flop to examine my failed hair-tie hack. But a burning sensation lit from elbow to wrist. I turned my arm over to reveal not a cut but a gash. Blood welled and then dripped onto the rocky path.
Beck’s eyes widened. He grabbed my wrist, gingerly turning my arm over to get a better look, then sucked air through his teeth.
“Shit!” Gabe said. “That’s going to need stitches.”
Beck’s eyes cut to mine. “He’s right. This looks bad.”
“Is everything okay?” Sebastian was coming down the pathway toward us.
“She needs a doctor,” Beck said. “Where’s Nick?”
“Still in bed. I’ll go wake him,” he called with a sidestep toward their yurt.
“I’ll go to the lobby. See if they have a first-aid kit and find out where the closest hospital is,” Gabe said, pointing a thumb back towards the hut where the rest of the group had gone for breakfast.
I watched the blood roll down my arm and coat the rocks below. My stomach lurched.
“Can you stand?” Beck asked.
I tried to say something, but my jaw felt clumsy, my lips numb.
When I didn’t answer, he wrapped one hand around my uninjured forearm and put the other on my back, guiding me to my feet. As carefully and slowly as he did, I still felt the color drain from my face.
Someone joined us on the pathway, but registering the form as Nick took me a while. My vision had narrowed, and I felt like I was looking at everything through a straw.
“Hey,” Nick said, “what happened?”
Beck turned to meet him, filling Nick in about my spill, but I hardly heard a thing over the ringing in my ears. The humid morning air turned unbearably hot. Thirst blazed down my throat and across my chest, making me feel nauseous. Bloodless.
I knew this feeling. And if I’d been thinking clearly, I would have sat back down on the rocks or clued Beck in.
But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Oxygen wasn’t venting properly anywhere in my body, the least of which to my brain. Because I just knew I needed to get inside to A/C and water and a chair. And I needed to get there now. I took a step backward toward the hut.
Beck’s explanation to Nick halted. He looked at me, his brows furrowed. I could barely see him—my vision had narrowed so much.
“Emily?”
My heel edged another step back, and I plunged into darkness.
I could hear the voices long before I could see anything. At first, it was muffled and incoherent, and there were noises of scrambling before my hearing sharpened.
“Help!” Beck’s voice, I thought. It sounded so far away. What’s wrong with him?I should help him. Everything felt numb, fuzzy, disconnected.
“Lay her down flat.” Nick’s voice.
Then some movement from a soft surface to a hard one. “She didn’t hit her head, did she?”
Someone grabbed my arm. Checking my pulse, I realized, the thought floating by like a distant cloud.
“No.”
“Is she diabetic? On any new medications?”
“No, and I don’t think so.” Beck’s voice. Then a pause. “She has a history of fainting, though.”
He said it like a final clue had clicked into place—as though he’d been staring at a small picture but had finally backed up enough to see the complete photo montage. And he wasn’t enjoying the view.
“It’s always the redheads,” Nick muttered.
“Nick, her lips are gray.” Beck sounded unhinged.
“Jake!” Nick ordered. “Go tell the staff to call 9-1-1. Or whatever the hell it is in this country.”
That did it.
“No! I’m fine!” My voice surprised me. It was detached like everyone else’s. “I’m a fainter,” I slurred, wading through the confusion. “It’s what I do.”
Someone close let out a breath. I tried to sit up, but hands on my shoulders kept me pinned.
“Don’t try to move,” Beck said softly.
My vision returned. Everything was too bright at first. I blinked until my eyes adjusted, and I found Beck overhead, eyes red-rimmed and jaw clenched. He looked over his shoulder.
“Jake, why the hell are you still standing there? She needs an ambulance!” I’d never seen Beck so rattled.
“Can you tell me your name?” Nick asked.
I sighed. This was going to be a whole thing. Again. “Hailey Emily Lane.”
I leveled a look at Beck because only he could appreciate how well I was actually doing if I remembered to give my full fake name after passing out.
Beck sat back on his haunches with a sigh of relief, but he still looked on edge—like I had right after Wesley’s call—he was a whisper from tipping over into a pit of despair.
That’s when I noticed his knees—scraped and bloodied.
I lolled my head to get a better look. “What happened to you?”
Beck’s eyes flicked to his knees. Then he gave me an incredulous look. “You fainted, you’re dripping blood all over the pathway, and you are asking me about some scrapes?”
I waited.
“I saw you falling, so I slid. To catch you.”
My heart throbbed.
“I shouldn’t have even stepped away from you though.” He raked a hand down his face. “I knew you had issues with fainting in the past, and I had you stand right after you lost blood.”
“Beck.” I reached for his hand. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“What’s going on?” Victoria demanded. The others hovered at the hut’s entrance.
I groaned. If only the growing audience would go back to their eggs and leave me to die of embarrassment in peace.
Gabe maneuvered around the group, a first-aid kit in hand. “What did I miss?”
“She passed out,” Beck said miserably.
Kat gasped. “Oh my God!”
“I’m fine,” I tried to sit up again, but Beck held me firm. “Really. Fainting is like a factory reset. Or a good vomit. You feel better after.” No one found that funny.
“Well, unfortunately,” Nick said, cracking open the first-aid kit, “excessive bleeding is not like a good vomit. We need to get you to the hospital to patch up this arm.”
“Do we really trust the hospitals here?” I had this strange slap-happy, almost loopy feeling. “What if they use a fishing hook to sew me up, and for the pain, they give me a leather strap to bite down on.”
Beck’s eyes widened at the horror my imagination had jumped to, but then he shook his head—trying hard not to laugh. “We are in Costa Rica. Not an episode of Lost.”
“You are going to the hospital,” Nick said in a no-nonsense tone. “End of discussion.”
As the paramedics wheeled my stretcher to the waiting ambulance, the group huddled nearby to wave us off.
“We’ll see you back at the hotel,” Victoria said with a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about your luggage. We’ll bring it in the van.”
I was glad someone thought of all the details because I’d been so whiplashed from the morning’s golf cart ride through hell that I hadn’t given our things a single thought.
“Wait,” Nick said. “Do you at least have your passport?”
Right, I’d probably need identification at the hospital. “Shit. No.” Because all but three of my brain cells had died in the wildfire that blazed through my life after Wesley’s call. The last few cells were still putting out flames.
I looked at Beck. “It’s in the small zipper of my carry-on.”
He nodded, but Madison stopped him. “No. You stay with her. I’ll get it.”
Awfully sweet of you, considering your post was the catalyst for this whole mess. But then I chided myself. That wasn’t fair. We’d started this mess.
I couldn’t even regret the choice to come to Costa Rica, not after all the memories I’d made with Beck. Memories that seemed to be hardening into pillars in my mind—holding up what I hoped to be a future with him.
Madison came jogging back as the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance. “Here is her passport,” she said, handing it over to Beck. Then she trained her eyes right on me. “Rae is such a beautiful middle name. Emily Rae,” she said, testing it. “It has a much better ring to it than Hailey Emily. Doesn’t it?”
She backed away, and the last thing I saw before the EMT closed the door was Madison’s predatory smirk.
She’d opened my passport. She’d seen my name.
She knew I wasn’t Hailey.
And for the second time in the span of thirty minutes, it felt like my world had bottomed out.