The Darkest Joy (27 page)

She saunters off, subtly shaking her ass . . . balanced on heels as fragile as Brooke’s.

“Interesting girl,” I say. My mind’s not made up. But she gets a tally mark on the good side for distracting Evan, though she comes across as brittle somehow. Not fragile, but somehow breakable. Unsteady.

Brooke turns into my arms, and I switch hands with my guitar. “We’re totally different, but she’s . . .” Brooke bites her lip. “She’s the only thing that kept me alive . . . after.”

I nod. Tonight isn’t about solving the problems of the world, psychoanalyzing Brooke’s friends . . . or any of that happy horseshit. It’s about being near Brooke, jamming a set, and later . . . being with Brooke.

I smile so wide my cheeks make that creaking sound when you can’t grin any harder.

“What’s that for, Chance Taylor?” Brooke asks, the smoky coal liner on the tops of her eyelids making that purple gaze look even more arresting. I give a hard swallow, very aware of every part of her body pressing against every part of me.

“Happiness.”

Brooke puts the side of her face against my chest. I strain to catch her next words. “Me too.”

I tow her behind me, pulling out a chair right in front of where I’ll play my guitar. For her.

For us.

I systematically tune my guitar as I do each time I play at the Dawg. When I look up, Brooke’s eyes have found my fingers. Her gaze tells me that she’s thinking about something other than my playing.

I smile, strumming a chord, and it’s her turn to swallow with a dry click I can’t hear but see as her delicate throat convulses.

Lacey breaks the sensual tension of the moment, sliding in next to Brooke as Evan sits by her side.

He smirks, giving me a down-low middle finger. I lift my chin. It’s okay. I have the faintest glimmer of hope we can move past our butting heads over Brooke.

I play the song that’s been on a constant loop in my mind since the moment I knew Brooke had captured me like a fish in my own net: “
Spin
.”

I slowly pick notes on my guitar and the buzz of the saloon grows quiet. I pick up more notes until the chords run into one another and narrow, the melody becoming singular, focused. Brooke’s eyes lock with mine and I begin to sing, softly at first, then in a ringing baritone that’s meant for her, only her, and I watch her reaction, her cheeks flushing.

“On the waves of an ocean . . . I can see your inner motive . . .”
I keep my focus on her with steely resolve, every plucked note and strummed chord aimed at her like an arrow, every note I sing wringing out my emotion for the whole place to see. Raw, open.

“When you wear it on your face . . . indisposed to the world . . .”

I change the last line, tailoring it for us, my voice going low with the resonating emotion.
“Let yourself be saved . . . by me . . .”

I hit the last note like a broken heart now healed by love—whole and perfect.

The final note dies and Brooke stands up suddenly, her purse falling to the ground, and I lean my guitar against the log pole that runs floor to ceiling beside where I played.

Brooke runs to me and clasps my face between her hands, and the moment heats—real and alive. Then she wraps her arms around my neck and I lift her off the floor.

I tighten my arms around her as I smile into her shoulder.

The bar erupts in applause and Brooke leans her face away from me, her eyes wet with tears.

And I know we’ve found it. Both of us.

The joy in the darkness.

I’m laying uncomfortably, my head leaning against Chance’s shoulder on the drive home as the center console’s various parts dig into my side.

I want to touch him so much I don’t feel the discomfort, only a thrill of happiness that starts from deep inside and spreads like fire through my body.

He wraps his arm awkwardly around my body, pressing his wrist against my head, pushing me tighter against him, and I feel so lucky for this moment I could die.

I almost did. But for Chance, I would have.

Between Lacey arriving and Chance’s guitar nod in front of the crowd, I didn’t have a single thought about my family for an entire day. A first.

Chance pulls into his garage and parks the car, turning off
the engine. He slips away from me, charging around the car and ripping the passenger door open. I get up on my knees, eager, wanting. I salivate with anticipation, like before biting into a piece of ripe fruit.

He scoops me up easily and I wrap my legs around his waist, eating at his mouth. If he had words, I took them. My legs squeeze around Chance and he stumbles for the door.

He pushes it open and it swings back behind us, slamming into place. Chance strides with me around his body like a monkey and dumps me on the couch. The ottoman sits beneath me, slid into the center of the sectional like a full-size bed. Perfect.

I gulp air and he strips his shirt off, flinging it to the ground as I count the shadows his abs cast, licking my lips, taking in all of him like the first dessert I’ve ever seen.

“I love that look,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine.

“What look?” I ask, unzipping my jeans. Chance bends down over my feet, his large hand circling my ankle, and he slowly takes my high heel off. His finger strokes my anklebone in a seductive circle that causes warmth to spread and pool just where I want it.

I gasp in a laugh.

“Am I wrong?” he asks.

“No,” I shake my head, my hair partly covering my face. Chance moves it out of my eyes and tucks it behind my ear.

We look at each other as I sit up, grabbing the waistband of his jeans while he grips my upper arms. I tear the buttons open on his Levi’s and suddenly his penis springs free and my eyes rise to meet his as he wraps his hands in my hair and I can feel myself go wet . . . The pleasure of his hiss of breath when I touch the tip of him makes the heat inside me grow, moisten.

He pushes me back on the widest part of the couch and I watch him crawl toward me, moving until he’s suspended above me. “Spread your legs, Brooke.”

I do, my legs trembling. But instead of coming inside, he splits my lips with his penis. Spreading me gently, he uses my own wetness as a lubricant, and rocking against my clit, he moves back and forth softly. Chance has his palms planted on either side of my body, driving against me . . . back and forth, faster and faster until the delicious friction swells and I hang on that chasm that comes right before a shattering orgasm.

Chance withdraws and I feel him at the center of me. I pull my legs back, my knees by his ears. “Brooke . . . god,” he says, beginning to press wonderfully inside me. Slowly surging forward and drawing back, he puts his palms on the back of my thighs . . . my feet like earrings for him.

Then he’s fully inside me with a single thrust and I scream my pleasure into his quiet house, absorbed by all that wood and I come until I can’t breathe. The pulses of my orgasm radiate through my tingling body and wash over Chance, grabbing at him as he grows impossibly harder, his own release crashes into him as he pours himself into me. We both gasp, my fingertips digging into his broad shoulders, his arms pulling me closer as he moves inside the deepest part of me, our pulsing orgasms dragging us together tighter.

Chance holds me as the heat subsides, our spent bodies clasped together as he folds his body over mine. My noodle legs dangle over his thighs as he sits up and gently slides out of me. I stay like that, our chests pressed together, slick with sweat, our damp foreheads touching as our breathing slows.

“Brooke.”

“Yeah,” I choke out. Because my voice won’t work. Or my legs. Or anything else. I’m like a pool of languid bones covered by skin that’s strung together by a thread of love.

I shut my eyes. My feelings are so overwhelming, I don’t even know if I can compartmentalize them all . . . I don’t even try.

“I love you,” Chance says.

Three words.

The worst words ever. So scary. So necessary.

So everything.

“I love you too,” I reply and that broken piece of my heart that began to mend the first night he kissed me, that hole that was there—it’s finally closing.

Chance has the biggest tub I’ve ever seen and he tucks me into it, hot and steaming, and I look up at him, my face wet and flushed from the heat of the water and other things.

I hold my hand up, beckoning him. “Come on, fisherman . . . join me.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve never even used a tub . . .”

I pop up out of the water. “Then you have to!”

He sits down on his haunches. Reaching out with his fingertip, he rolls my wet nipple and I feel a tingle in my core and give a slow smile. I could go again. No, I’d be sore. No, I could go again. I laugh and he dips his head to lick the hard pebbled flesh, slowly sucking my nipple. He lifts his head just enough to say, “Naw, I can cook for you . . .”

Well
damn
. I groan but let him off the hook as my stomach does a low growl. Hard to argue with that. I nod my head. He’s too good to be true. “Okay,” I say.

He laughs at my noisy belly. “Besides, a girl can’t live on bananas alone,” he says, winking.

“Ha!” I laugh, thinking I’d blow bubbles at him if he had any. Instead I lather up then sit back, relaxing.

Chance looks at me a heartbeat longer, then he walks away, whistling.

I grin like a fool, lying in the water as it gradually cools. The wonderful aroma of whatever Chance is cooking begins to infiltrate my senses when my cell buzzes.

I look across the bathroom and there it sits, half out of my jeans pocket. I get out of the tub, wrapping a towel around me, and make my dripping way to where the cell is. I pluck it out of my jeans and look at the text.

Get lucky?
Lacey asks.

Always
. I hit
reply
.

She sends a smiley face.
That makes two of us
.

I gasp, covering my mouth.
OMG . . . you did Evan?!

Yeeeeaaahhhh
comes her reply.

Catch ya at the cabin
she says.

I send a winking smiley with a heart.

Why not? Love’s in the air.

“S
o, Lacey . . .” I say as a question and meet Brooke’s eyes.

She twirls the red wine in the glass and I chuckle. “Contributing to a minor.”

Brooke meets my eyes. “Not for long.”

“When’s your birthday?”

Brooke rolls her eyes. Now I gotta know. “When?” I ask. Then, “Unless you want another tickling session?” I ask, cocking my brows, ready and able.

More than ready.

Her voice drops low, those purple eyes darkening, and I lean across the kitchen table, the better to catch her words. “Will it end like last time?”

“It can,” I say.

We stare at each other, then her face breaks out into a big grin. “Independence Day.”

I put my palms on the table. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she says softly.

“Well that’s cool.”

There’s a cavernous silence and I reach for her hands across the table, knotting them up with mine. I bring one of her hands to my mouth, kissing it softly.

“You need to talk about it, Brooke.”

She doesn’t lift her eyes, move . . . breathe.

Then, “I was late.”

I wait.

Brooke seems to gather herself together, piece by laborious piece, shoring herself up. She takes a deep breath. “It was Christmas break and I was going over the pass, shitty conditions.”

I raise my brows.

“Oh.” She flicks her eyes away for a moment, remembering. “Interstate 90—Snoqualmie Pass. It crosses the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.”

I nod and she goes on. “Anyway, I was on my cell with my mom. She was giving me shit about staying safe and I was missing . . . y’know . . . home—but still kinda irritated about all the ‘Brookie be safe’ stuff.”

Her eyes rise to meet mine. Steady and solemn. I look back levelly. If she can tell it, I can listen. She continues. “And then I heard the doorbell in the background.” I watch her take three deep breaths, letting them out slowly, each one seeming more painful than the last, and I squeeze her hands. She looks over my shoulder at some distant spot in the past only she can see.