Mai Tai'd Up (26 page)

I turned in his arms, snuggling into his warm chest, and let my eyes linger on the face I knew so well: the dip above his lip, the long, dark lashes that no boy should ever get to have, the sprinkling of freckles across his nose, that thoroughly messed-up hair. He rocked the bed head, that’s for sure. I blushed slightly as I remembered how those silky strands felt between my fingertips as he pushed into me that first time.

“Oh, it’ll fit,” he murmured.

I bit my lip, a pumpkin grin spreading across my face. Cautiously, I reached out to touch his face. His sleeping gave me the courage to drink him in, explore every contour and nuance of his face without getting caught doing so. I feathered my fingertips across his cheekbone, down to his strong jaw, showing the beginning of a light beard. I ghosted across his eyebrows, his closed eyelids, taking in the palest of lavender veins. His eyes moved under my fingers; was he dreaming? What was he dreaming about? I’d love to know.

I ran my fingers across his sweet lips, lips that I now knew were capable of kissing me like no one else ever had. No one had even come close. Also very capable at the dirty talk, something I’d had no idea I’d respond to. Oh, my, I responded.

“There’s my dirty girl,” he whispered.

I blushed once more thinking about those lips all over my skin, his soft sighs and quiet groans as he urged me on, telling me what he liked and what he loved about my body.

I listened to his heartbeat again.

Tha-wump. Tha-wump. Tha-wump.

As I listened, my brain got involved and changed it to:

Re-bound. Re-bound. Re-bound.

Ugh. I thought about what we’d said last night about the sex changing things, meaning the friendship. Which was more important? Neither us could afford to get hurt again. But this now
meant too much to be just a rebound thing. There was no way he could ever be just some transitional guy.

And there was another factor here. I needed to come clean with him.

I’d been less than honest about the canceling of my wedding. I’d let him think, for too long maybe, that Charles and I had to come to that decision mutually. Lucas went through hell because of what Julie did to him. I didn’t want him finding out somewhere, way down the line, that I’d essentially done the same thing to Charles. Different circumstances, yes. Different outcomes, for sure yes. Charles was more about the wedding and the formality of it all than the actual marriage. But Lucas was an all-in kind of guy, and his breakup had wrecked him. So he needed to know from me how I’d really arrived in Monterey. It was time to own this.

I was still musing and muddling this over when his heartbeat sped up, and his breathing lightened. He was waking up. Just as I pasted a smile on, he opened his eyes.

“Hi,” I whispered.

He grinned. “Hey there, chickie baby,” he whispered back, wrapping his arms around me and cuddling me close. Warm. Sleep rumpled. Divine. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like a rock. You?”

“Pretty good, even through the snoring.” He smirked, and I dug into his calves with my toes.

“I don’t snore,” I protested.

“Says everyone who snores.” He laughed, flipping me over and kissing the exact center of my tummy before kissing a path on up to my neck. “You snore, Chlo.”

I pushed on his shoulders, weakly. Because why would anyone stop this? “Shush.”

“Funny, that’s what I was saying about four thirty this morning.”

“Really, shush.” I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck as he continued to kiss on me. Goose bumps broke out across my skin and my heart fluttered, so full this morning. Then he nudged his way between my legs and nudged against me, making not just my heart flutter.

I bit down on my lip, my body wanting to stop the words I needed to say. But before this went further, it was going to go from playful to primal in no time. I needed to say some things.

“Lucas,” I said, trying to pull him up toward me.

“Mmm?” he replied, his lips tickling and sweet.

“We need to talk about a few things, before you leave tomorrow.”

“You want to talk”—he pressed against me with a very specific part of his anatomy—“now?”

“Oh, boy . . . ohhh, yes . . . Wait—yes, we need to talk,” I said, leaning up on my elbows so I could see him. I traced a hand across his face, running my thumb over his lips. “And then hopefully we can go right back to this right here,” I said, lifting my hips slightly and bumping him right back.

“Talk fast, woman,” he said, rolling off of me and resting his head on his elbow. His other hand, however, continued to roam.

Now I had the floor, and I didn’t know where to start. Was I making too big of a deal of this? Should I just rip off the Band-Aid?

“Last night was . . . wow. I don’t even have words for last night.”

“You said some words last night,” he murmured, his hand dipping just below the sheet and cupping my breast. My toes
pointed. Literally. Reflex. He did it again, and the same thing happened. So much so that the sheets rustled. Lucas looked down toward the bottom of the bed, and touched me once more. Toe point. The scientist in him was delighted. Boob. Toe. Boob. Toe.

“This is an interesting phenomenon,” he mused.

Meanwhile, I was coming out of my skin. “Could you—and I promise I will never say these words again—
please
stop touching me? It’s hard to think straight when you do that.”

He was a scientist, yes, but a boy first, so he touched me once more, then moved his hand safely above the sheets. “Best behavior, I promise.”

“Anyway, so, yeah. Last night, amazing. And I’m hoping, I mean, when you get back from Belize, that there’ll be more nights like that?”

“Um. Yeah,” he said, grinning so big I thought his head was going to split.

Band-Aid. Pull off the Band-Aid so you can get back to the boobs and toes.

“I left Charles the morning of our wedding,” I said in a rush, instantly feeling better for saying it. Looking down at my hands, I continued. “I had this sudden moment of clarity, and I panicked at the thought of getting married to someone I wasn’t in love with, not truly crazy-in-love with, and I panicked and I ran. He never made it to the church, he was still on the golf course with his groomsmen when I ran, but I did in fact run.”

I chanced a look up, saw that his smile had dimmed, and pressed on. “And then when I met you, I realized, holy fudge, we have so much in common, but holy fudge, Julie just did almost the same thing to you that I did to Charles, and there was no way I could tell you what I’d done. And it was all so new and
fresh and raw, and I was just figuring out what I wanted to do up here, and if I could truly stay and live here, and then you and I started spending so much time together, and holy fudge, Lucas, you’re the best, and we were spending so much time together and then my mom and dad were here, and I was so afraid something was going to come up about the wedding and you’d find out that way, and I knew it would be better coming from me and—”

“Better coming from you?” he asked, his voice quiet. The smile had twisted into a grimace.

“Yes. That I should be the one to tell you that I—”

“Left a guy at the altar,” he finished, his voice rough.

“Not technically, but . . . yeah. Yeah, I did.” I sighed, ashamed that I’d kept this from him for so long.

“So rather than tell me this, something that probably had a fairly logical explanation—I mean, people do break up all the time. I should know, right? But rather than tell me the truth, you let me go on about Julie and what she’d done to me?”

He kicked the covers off and rolled to his side of the bed, climbing out. Stabbing his legs into his jeans, he turned back to face me, anger blazing in his eyes. “I must look like such a fool to you.”

“What? No—God no, Lucas,” I said, shocked. I moved across the bed, kneeling up and reaching out to him. But he stood just out of arm’s reach. “It’s nothing like that. I—I—You’re—”

He stared at me, hard. He seemed to be weighing something. “I gotta go,” he said, eyes cold.

“What? No way! You have to stay; we have to talk about this,” I cried, jumping off the bed and grabbing his arm before he could walk away.

“There’s really nothing to talk about. You lied to me. I can’t
go through that again. I can’t get involved with a girl who’s lied to me since the beginning. I’ve gone down that road before.”

“You think I’m the same as Julie?” I asked, horrified.

“Right now? I think you might be
exactly
the same as Julie—and I can’t get suckered into that again.”

He turned and left.

The worst day ever was also the longest day ever, creeping by like frozen molasses. I spent the morning shoveling dog shit. I spent the better part of the afternoon on the phone with the local ASPCA, making sure that the dogs that were rescued from the ring yesterday were transferred to me once they were given the immediate medical care they needed and fully checked out. I’d need to call Lou in on this one too. I’d never handled this many dogs at once, and especially dogs that’d been bred for only one reason. Would they be able to be socialized? Would they be able to trust?

It didn’t matter. Whether or not they were ultimately adoptable, they’d come here and not be on chains, not be in the cold, not be expected to fight and snarl and shred . . . They would only be expected to chase balls and gobble treats. That, I could promise every one of them.

By lunchtime, there was no call from Lucas. I gave him the space he clearly wanted. Whether it would be a forever kind of space . . . well . . . I wasn’t thinking about that yet. I
couldn’t
think about that. I went back over our conversation this morning,
remembering the pain in his eyes when he realized that I’d lied to him.

And when I thought back, there were plenty of times when I could have told him the truth. I could have told him why I walked away from my wedding, and how it was a different situation from the one with Julie. He would have understood—of course he could have understood that. Oh, I had played this one very very wrong.

So for now, I waited. He’d said he
might
call, but I was choosing not to remember the
might
. Because if I thought about him leaving tomorrow without seeing me again and talking to me again, I’d lose my mind.

The early afternoon became late afternoon. I’d eaten a quick lunch, perhaps lingering in the doorway to my bedroom for two or twenty minutes. The bed was still messed up, pillows on the floor, comforter twisted into a ball at the bottom, and a very large dent in the middle where two entwined bodies had left their impression. The room smelled like sex. Weird and gross? No, naughty and naughty . . .

Fudge.

Dusk fell, and I still hadn’t heard from Lucas. Should I call him? Should I bother him while he’s probably packing and saying good-bye to his family?

I sat at the counter, chain-eating pudding for dinner. After the pudding, I paced. Sammy Davis Jr. paced with me for a while, but eventually he realized Mommy was nutso and went back to his bed by the fireplace.

By ten o’clock I’d finally had enough of the silence, and I grabbed my phone. Before I could dial, it rang in my hand. It was Lucas.

“Hey!” I said, a bit too enthusiastically.

“Hey,” he answered back. His voice was curt. Chilly. My skin broke out into goose bumps.

“How was your day?” I asked.
This man was inside you less than twenty-four hours ago, and you’re asking him how his day was?

“Productive. Got everything packed up, signed off on things at the clinic—which is the reason I called.”

“Oh?” I asked. Now he needed a reason for calling?

“I wanted to give you a heads-up about the fighting ring you discovered. It looks like charges of animal cruelty are being filed against the property owners. Since I’m leaving in the morning, the police came down today to ask me some questions, take some pictures, stuff like that. I didn’t want you to be surprised when they call you too.”

“Sure, okay,” I said. Then a thought occurred to me. “I’m not in trouble for trespassing or something, am I?”

“No, you totally did the right thing in calling them. But promise me next time you wait for the authorities to get there before you go barging into some barn filled with fighting dogs. You were very lucky last night.”

“I’ll say,” I replied softly. “I knew I should have waited, but—”

“I’d probably have done the same thing, but wait for the cavalry next time, okay?”

“I will,” I agreed. “So . . . I know you said your dad was driving you to the airport in the morning, but . . .” My voice trailed off, hopeful.
Interrupt me! Ask me to take you to the airport!

“But what?” he asked. He knew what I was
but whating
, but he wasn’t going to let me off the hook.

My heart settled somewhere very low. Dark side of the duodenum low. “So, I guess I won’t see you before you leave,” I managed.

“The day just got away from me.” His voice sounded careful, cautious.

“Twelve weeks. That’s a long time.”

“Chloe,” he said. But then he said no more.

Usually, any silence between us was comfortable. This silence was heavy and dark, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“Can I call you?” I finally asked. “While you’re down there?”

“Not sure how great the cell reception is down there.”

“Didn’t you get an international plan?” I asked.

“Yeah, I did.” Translation: he didn’t want me to call him. “Listen, I’ve still got some stuff to do before bed, so I just wanted to make sure you knew they’d be contacting you about the dogs, okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, gripping the phone hard. “Lucas, I’m so sorry that—”

“Chloe, just don’t—okay? I can’t get into all this. Not before I go,” he said, sounding so tired. “I’m sure I’ll see you when I get back.”

Oh my God. This was so very bad. “Yeah, okay, Lucas. Be careful down there, okay?”

“Will do. You too. I mean it about waiting for the cavalry next time, Chloe.”

“Sure,” I said, my throat all lumpy.