The One That Got Away (25 page)

I've always been convinced that time actually slows down in the middle hours of the night; that the minute hand creeps around the hours of three and four and five just a little more slowly, before speeding up again to blaze recklessly through the period between six and nine. As Eamon and I sit there, talking late into the night, with the homey glow of the Christmas tree the only light in the house, the wine sends tendrils of dreamy warmth curling through my body. I'm flushed from the pleasure of spending so much time with him after my self-imposed moratorium.

Which appears, against the odds, to have worked; despite what Hannah said about him being jealous of Noah, he's been perfectly happy just to sit with me and talk. Who knows, maybe he's gotten serious with Red Miata? I ought to be glad. This late at night, though, when every object around me somehow seems a little softer and more transparent, I'm not capable of pretending that I am.

After a long time, a lull falls in our conversation. The kind of peaceful, natural lull that comes in any good talk. The kind of lull where, if it's late at night, you get to your feet, and stretch, and announce that you are bound for bed.

Neither of us moves. He looks rumpled and half-asleep over
on the banquette; the only sign he's still awake is his right hand, which is idly twisting his wineglass on the table, making the brilliant liquid swirl in the goblet. Heat blooms through me as I watch the flex of his fingers and wrist. I imagine pulling the glass from his hand, leaning forward, tracing the pattern of his tattoo with my tongue.

I'd stopped noticing my Christmas mix playing softly in the background, but when I hear Nat King Cole croon “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” for the third time, I get to my feet. “Enough holiday cheer for one night,” I announce, scrolling through my music library for something to suit my soft and sleepy mood.

“How about some Otis Redding?” suggests Eamon, and, as the slow, bluesy strains fill the room, he joins me by the counter. “Dance with me?”

With a smile, I cross my wrists at the back of his neck, still holding my half-empty wineglass in one hand. Since I abandoned Nicole's stilettos hours ago, he seems even taller than usual, but we fit together just fine, drifting drowsily in time to the smoky music. Gradually, though, my languor dissipates, replaced with pulsing awareness of his body against mine, the warmth of his hands on my back, the masculine scent of his skin. I look up to find that his eyes have gone black, and, I think, his breath is coming a little fast. Maybe I was wrong that he's not interested in me anymore. God, I hope I was wrong.

I swallow jerkily and drag my eyes away from his. Suddenly desperate for a distraction, I go to take a sip of my wine, but at the exact second that I raise the glass to my lips, I step awkwardly forward and slide my foot into the side of his, nearly tripping. Most of the contents of my glass slosh over the front of my dress.

“Shit,” I mutter, embarrassment searing my cheeks. Avoiding his eyes, I set the glass down and turn to reach for a paper towel, but suddenly his hand is on my wrist, stopping me.

The bottom drops out of my stomach at the look in his dark eyes. “Let me,” he whispers, and, as I stand transfixed, he reaches out to wipe away a trailing droplet of wine from my skin with the side of his finger. He brings his finger to his mouth and sucks the wine away, never taking his eyes off mine. At that point I stop breathing.

He pulls my hips against him, and then slowly, slowly, he leans toward me. My eyes drift shut and my lips part in anticipation, but suddenly I feel his hot mouth on the wine-slick skin exposed at the neckline of my dress. I gasp with shock, my hands tightening on his arms, but he doesn't release me, just continues relentlessly stroking the upper curves of my breasts with his lips and tongue.

And if I thought I wanted him before, then, my god, I am burning now. Hungrily I pull him even tighter against me, fingers biting into his hips, and arch backward to encourage him. He growls at my response and begins undoing the buttons at the top of my dress.

“Eamon,” I gasp, and at this he finally raises his head.

“God, I want you so much,” he whispers harshly, and kisses me at last.

My arms wind around his neck and I'm on my tiptoes, craning upward to absorb him and his wine-flavored mouth.

With my weight supported by the counter behind me, I lift one leg and wind it around the back of his; in another heartbeat one of his hands is scalding a path up the outside of my raised thigh, skimming my skirt along with it. Blindly I reach out to undo the buttons of his shirt, sighing with deep satisfaction as I slide my hands inside. His skin is warm and sleek over the honed contours of his chest and belly, and as I smooth my palms up across his powerful shoulders, he impatiently shrugs out of the shirt.

His hand settles on my thigh again, only now he rotates it until his thumb strokes slowly, deliberately, against the aching core of me. Helplessly, I groan out his name.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Come here.”

He sets his hands underneath me and carries me, legs around his waist, to the dining table. “Is everything okay with you?” I whisper.

“Yeah, yeah, you?”

“Yeah, just please, hurry.” I bite mindlessly at his neck as I feel him skimming off my underwear. The taste of his skin goes straight to my head.

And then, from halfway across the house, the toilet flushes. Incredibly, laughably, the sound of Danny getting up from bed to piss is what jerks me back to myself, to an awareness of what exactly I'm doing and who I am doing it with, and at what cost. He already crushed me once. If I make love to him now I'll never stop wanting him again; my pride won't mean anything compared to what I feel for him. Fear breaks over me like a thunderclap.

“Shit, Eamon, stop, please stop,” I plead.

He pauses, hands on his belt buckle. “What?” His face is confused, disoriented.

“We have to stop, I can't do this.”

“Sarina.” He snaps splayed palms at the air.
“Why?”

I open my mouth, take a breath, only to blow it out again on a sigh. How in the hell am I possibly supposed to explain to him? I don't even know where to begin.

He plants his fists on either side of me and leans in close. I close my eyes to hide from his nearness, like a coward, and he capitalizes on this by kissing me again. I put my hands out reflexively to push him away, but the minute I touch his smooth skin, my fingers curl into him instead. He presses his advantage, torturing me with a light, teasing kiss, rubbing and brushing my lips
with his until I am desperate for the full weight of his mouth.
It's just dopamine
, I tell myself frantically, but my body is suffused with the feel of him, and my hands just drag him closer.

God help me, I have never in my life wanted anything more than I want him right now, but I have to put an end to this. I pull away again.

“Please let me go,” I say quietly. “I can't.”

He rests his forehead against mine, chest heaving. “
Why
are you still hanging on to him?” he demands, thinking, of course, that my hesitation is because of Noah. “You're not in love with him. You belong with me. I don't know how you can't see that.”

I stare at my lap, unable to answer him.

“What is it about him, Sarina? You have to explain to me, because I honestly don't understand.” His voice is urgent, relentless. “You didn't even seem like yourself around him, that time he was here. You were so tense. How is that the way you're supposed to feel around someone you've been with for four years? I don't think he makes you laugh. I don't think he makes you happy, period. And I
know
he doesn't turn you on the way I do,” he whispers, lips a half inch from mine. “God, baby, you're melting in my hands.”

Suddenly, anger scatters the haze from my brain. “This is not a fucking contest, Eamon,” I snap. “Is that all this is about? You wanted me because I was already with somebody, and you liked the challenge of making me admit I want you more? It's really not about me at all, is it? It's just about beating him.”

“No! No, not at
all
.” He shakes his head in emphatic denial, but I'm certain that I'm right. That may not be the only reason he wants me, but it's definitely in there. It's who he is. Does everything he values in his life only come as a result of besting somebody else? Feeling nauseous, I slide off the table, button my dress, and gather my discarded underwear without looking at him. “Please just go,” I whisper.

He catches my arm as I pass him. His face is stricken. “Baby, it's not like that, I swear to you. I know what that feels like, and that's not where I'm coming from. I hate that you would think that of me.”

“Save it,” I mutter, jerking my arm free. “I'm going to bed; you can let yourself out.” And without a backward glance, I hurry upstairs, into my room, and close the door. I picture him putting his wine-stained shirt back on, and his shoes, then straightening, standing indecisively for a moment in the darkened hallway. One by one, I count the seconds that he's still there. I could still open my door, call him to me, and let it all slide away—my fear, his motivations.

I hold my breath as I hear his quiet footfalls approach the staircase, and pause for a long moment. Then, just as quietly, he moves away again. Finally I hear the soft click of the front door closing.

When I head to the kitchen for a refill on my coffee the next morning, Danny is sitting at the counter, pressing his fingers into his head as if that alone is keeping it on straight. “As God is my witness, I'm never drinking again.”

“Demon Baby?”

He winces, green-faced. Demon Baby is our term for the unholy bastard child conceived of too much alcohol: a malicious roil in the depths of the abdomen that typically doesn't surface until the following morning, when it's too late to do any good by throwing up.

I feel irresistibly compelled to tell Danny about what happened with Eamon. It's lame, and a cop-out, to pester the mutual friend between you and the object of your affection for insight, but apparently I am lame, and a cop-out. And besides, the need to
talk about Eamon is burning in my throat. I make a production out of pouring us fresh mugs of coffee, carefully avoiding looking at the dining table.

“So, I almost slept with Eamon last night,” I announce as I stir in my sugar, “but I couldn't go through with it. Panicked at the last minute. Honestly, I think it's best in the long run.” Oh boy. Even to my own ears, I sound like I'm trying to convince myself.

If I was expecting any show of sympathy from Danny's corner, I am sorely disappointed. He raises his head and regards me with bleary blue eyes. “Then you're a fool. You wasted four whole years of your life on Noah, but you keep yapping about how you're scared of getting hurt by Eamon. And meanwhile he's worth twice what Noah was. I thought you had figured that out.”

I slap his coffee mug down so hard it sloshes. “Fantastic! A lecture on taking risks, from a man who's so scared of failure he stopped having sex. Let me know when you decide whether you're the pot or the kettle.” I stalk over to my office and slam the door.

He scuffs softly at the door a few minutes later and enters, the picture of boozy contrition. “I'm sorry I barked at you, sugarplum. It's just frustrating to see you spinning your wheels over this vague possibility that you might get hurt.”

“Vague possibility?” I repeat. “Did you forget the part about him fucking some other girl while I was driving back from Virginia?”

He bats my question away like a housefly. “You never asked him what was up with that. I guarantee he would have drop-kicked what's-her-tits into Lake Travis if you'd asked him to. Did you even tell him you'd broken up with Noah?”

Without looking at him, I spin my drawing pen inside its cap.

“Hmmm,” he says, and I dart a glance at him. One eyebrow is pitched at such an angle I briefly wonder if it's possible to sprain
it. “Seriously, Ree-Ree? You know I love you, but I hear it's mighty hard to breathe with your head in your ass.”

By the end of the day, I've accomplished roughly a third of what I should have, because I can't stop thinking about Eamon. He hasn't contacted me, undoubtedly figuring that he's given me more than enough to stew over for a while. Either that, or he's busy showing the house I made for him to his gorgeous ex-girlfriend who can bench-press my entire body weight.

We're supposed to be driving to San Antonio tomorrow, to check out the inventory of this mid-century furniture and lighting dealer down there; and I need to have a conversation with him before we set out on the trip. I just need to talk to him, seriously and candidly, about what's going on between us; he has to understand that I'm not interested in being a plaything, and I won't jeopardize my professional life over sexual attraction. I picture myself saying these things to him, calm and self-assured; him nodding seriously.

“You're right,” he'll say. “It won't be nearly as fun”—wry smile—“but it's smarter this way.” And then I'll be safe. He respects me—he won't push it. I don't think. But just to make sure I don't give in to temptation, from now on I'll have to avoid being alone with him, and I'll have to stop noticing every maddening, sexy detail about him, and forget how delicious he is to kiss, and touch, and be touched by.

Oh, and I'll have to stop loving him. But no big deal. One thing at a time.

When Eamon arrives for the San Antonio trip the next morning, he looks good enough to eat: cuffs of his fitted plaid button-down rolled up over his forearms, open top button showing off the hollow at the base of his throat. For an instant, I remember the heat of his mouth on my skin, the impatient glide of his hand up my thigh.

As I walk to the passenger side of the Jeep and climb in, I quickly run through the bullet points of the speech I have prepared. Our professional relationship. Unwilling to jeopardize it over sexual attraction.

But no sooner am I seated, reaching to buckle my seat belt, than he leans over, pulls the seat belt out of my hand, and kisses me.

I force myself to pull away. “Wait, Eamon, I…” I can't finish my sentence, because there's no objection I could offer, nothing I could say with any conviction, that would convince him I actually want him to stop.

He clearly senses this, because instead of releasing me, he cups the back of my head with one hand and scatters soft, drifting kisses across my cheekbone, my jaw, the spot just below my
ear. “I haven't stopped thinking about you since the other night,” he says between kisses. “The way you feel, and the way you taste. I need to taste you some more.”

His words and his touch are utterly intoxicating, but he is deploying them with the ease of experience. This is not emotion, this is seduction. Without warning, the hurt I've been trying to stifle since my return from Virginia flares brightly, and I jerk free of him. “Forget it, Eamon,” I snap. “I am not interested in a fling with you. Can we please just go, and never talk about this again?”

His brown eyes are startled and hurt. “Whoa, wait a minute. A fling? Where are you getting this? What did I do to make you think that? Ree, talk to me.” He tugs my hands away from my lap and begins massaging my palms with his thumbs.

I give an impatient huff. “I just—the other night was a mistake. Please, for the sake of our professional relationship, don't pursue this. It isn't worth it.” I avoid his eyes, staring instead at my hands in his, palm-up and vulnerable.

And then he drops them. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he says acidly. “For some stupid reason I thought it
was
worth it. Maybe the fact that I've been crazy about you for fucking months, waiting for you to stop wasting your time with that pretentious douchebag you call a boyfriend.”

“Hey!” I yell, stung by his casual contempt for Noah, but he barrels right over me.

“And the fact that I was damn sure you had feelings for me, too, if I could just get you to admit it. But apparently I was wrong, so to preserve our
professional relationship
, I'll never mention it again.”

“Spare me,” I snarl. “If you really had feelings for me, you wouldn't—” I stop, teetering on the edge of admitting I went to his house that night. The night I thought I was coming home to him.

“I wouldn't what? Sarina, look at me. I wouldn't what?”

Reluctantly I lift my head to look at him. His eyes are blazing, his jaw clenched.

“I wouldn't
what
?”

I struggle to come up with something to say, to provide even the flimsiest footbridge over the chasm of humiliation I've just opened beneath my feet. But there's nothing else I can think of, no lie I can tell.

“You wouldn't have been fucking some other girl the night I got home from Virginia,” I say finally. Somehow, it's a relief to lay it out in the open.

Shock sparks in his face, but to his credit, he doesn't try to deny it. “Oh, so I was supposed to be celibate this whole time?” he snaps. “The last time we had talked, I asked you point-blank if you were going to leave your boyfriend, and you said no. But I was supposed to just pine away for you until such hypothetical time as you changed your mind?”

“Well…no, but—”

“Then why are you so
pissed
at me? And how do you even know about that, anyway?”

“Because I came to your house!” The words come tumbling out of me, out of control, like marbles bouncing down the stairs. “I'd been driving for three days straight, by myself, talking to you for hours every night, missing you so much my teeth ached; I couldn't wait to see you, and I thought you felt the same way. And when I got into town I drove straight to your house instead of going home, because all I wanted to do was crawl in bed with you and put my arms around you and fall asleep. And then I got there, and there was some bimbo's car parked in your driveway because
obviously
I was the last fucking thing on your mind.” Noah's admonishments about giving rein to my acid tongue during arguments are ringing in the back of my head, but I don't care, I'm too hurt and too angry.

“So why am I
pissed
at you?” I repeat, pounding my thigh with my fist as I land on the word. “Because I feel like the biggest fucking fool on the planet. I leaned on you so much when John died; knowing that you were thinking about me meant so fucking much to me—I actually started believing you cared about me like I did about you. The night before I left Virginia, I realized I had to break up with Noah because he doesn't mean anything close to what you do. But when I got here, stupidly thinking you'd be waiting for me with open arms, you were with somebody else. That, Eamon, is why I am pissed.”

For a long moment I stare at him, trembling and out of breath.

He stares back. “That's why you were so cold to me that day you got home.”

“Yes. Because I don't mean anything more to you than whatever random you'd been banging a few hours earlier.”

“I don't know how you can be so wrong about that,” he rasps, and grabs my head to kiss me, his lips velvety and warm. Nothing in my life has ever felt so natural or so good. And though it scares the living hell out of me, I don't know if I have ever needed anything as badly as I need him. I open my eyes briefly as we kiss, and the view of him—dark lashes, cheekbone, sideburn—sends a rush of lust and tenderness spiking through me.

We are both panting by the time we break apart. He shakes his head in mingled disbelief and frustration.

“Baby, of course I wanted to see you. More than anything. But you'd given me no reason to think you felt the same way. I missed you so much while you were gone. And I wished so much that I could have been there with you, but when I told you so, all you said was ‘Thanks.' I felt like an idiot.” He pauses, blows out a sigh. “She didn't mean anything—that girl. Brody dragged me out that night on purpose, to meet women who weren't already taken.”

“Apparently he succeeded,” I snark, but without the heat of before.

One corner of his mouth kicks up. “I needed a break from getting rejected,” he says softly, rubbing my lips with his thumb. “Yes, I have dated other women since that time we kissed, because every time I tried to show you how much I liked you, you just backed away. And there was no sign of Noah disappearing from the picture, so what was I supposed to do?”

I am still stuck on the earlier part of this comment. “Other women, plural?”

He growls like a tire in snow. “Sarina! You are not hearing me! I'm trying to tell you, you are the only one who matters! If you hadn't run away that day you slept over, that would have been it, done deal. We wouldn't even be having this conversation. And, by the way, it's ridiculous for you to be pissed at me for seeing other people when you
still
have an actual boyfriend.”

Oh god. I can't hide behind the cardboard cutout of Noah anymore, not after this. I have to tell him.

“Um, actually, I don't.”

He looks blank. “You don't what?”

“I don't have a boyfriend. Not anymore.”

His smile is like the sun coming out. “What the hell! Since when?”

He is not going to like my answer. “Since November,” I say quietly. “I broke up with him when I was on the road. Somewhere in Tennessee.”

His jaw goes rigid, and he stares at me silently for a long minute. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I swallow nervously. I had expected exasperation from him, but not this cold rage. “I know I should have told you,” I continue in the same quiet voice, trying to pacify a wild and dangerous animal. “But after that girl, I didn't see how anything could happen between us, so it was safer just to let you believe he was still in my life…”

“It was safer to lie to me, you mean.”

I start to correct him, insist that I didn't lie, but the look on his face dares me to finish the sentence. A lie of omission is still a lie.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper.

He shakes his head and turns to stare out the driver's-side window, cheek propped on his left hand. “I can't believe it's taken you this long to have an honest conversation with me,” he says finally, still not looking at me. “All this time, you let me think you were still with him. If you weren't going to tell me what happened, why even bother breaking up?”

I struggle to explain. “It's not like I consciously tried to mislead you. When you asked if I was going to leave him, I almost told you that I had, but I panicked at the last second.”

“Jesus, I wish you had just told me. I've been waiting for you to leave him for so long. I don't understand, what are you so afraid of?”

“I'm afraid of
you
,” I flare. “And…of giving too much of myself up to someone who doesn't really want it.”

He turns back to me at that, and the raw hurt on his face shocks me. “Do you know what it feels like to hear that you don't trust me to treat you well? I know I was a jackass when I was twenty-one, but you can't possibly think I'd behave that way now.”

“It's not that,” I say. “I just didn't think you wanted the kind of relationship that I do. I want to be the only one you think about. I want to mean as much to you as you do to me, and it would hurt too much to settle for less than that. So it was better not to have anything at all.”

“And you never bothered to talk to me about it,” he says. “I just don't understand how you got it into your head that I couldn't be serious about you. Do you think because I'm an athlete, I run around sticking my dick in anything with a pulse?”

“No, but…”

“No! There is no ‘but'! Except for the last couple years, I've
mostly been in relationships. Hannah and I were together for five years.”

“Hannah is the female version of you,” I remind him. “I'm nothing like that. She's perfect for you—I don't even know why you two broke up.”

His voice is sharp with exasperation. “Okay, first of all, you're wrong that you're nothing like her. Not on paper maybe, but you both have the same kind of comfort in your own skin. It was the first thing I noticed about both of you.”

The compliment prickles my skin with pleasure, but he's not done yet.

“Second of all, she is
not
perfect for me. I love the hell out of her as my friend, but as my girlfriend she was exhausting.”

“Why?” I feel oddly defensive on her behalf.

“Ugh, so much drama. I put up with it at first, 'cause I was young and I figured that was what girls were like. And dating another athlete in my sport was great as long as we were keeping pace with each other. But once I got hurt, and we weren't training together anymore, I realized swimming was all we had in common. My body had been smashed to shit and I was scared as fuck that I wasn't going to race again, and I just wanted
something
in my life to be easy. But she didn't know what to do with me if she couldn't compete with me. She started picking fights to fill in the gaps.”

“I don't get it, though. How would she compete with you?”

“In every possible way except at actual meets. Distances, splits, medals, endorsements. Everything. And I was constantly on notice to prove myself to
her:
how much I would compromise for her. How much I loved her. It was never-ending.” He levels his eyes at me, and my breath catches in my chest. “But with you, I always just felt…at rest. Not like motionless, I mean like…like it was just
right
. That's why I was pushing you to break up with Noah. It made no sense that I could feel like that about you,
if you were set on a future with somebody else. I thought that was the answer.”

At his words, a boulder lands on my chest. “You
thought
it was?”

He kneads the back of his neck. “This is a huge deal, Sarina. You've been lying to me for a month about a phantom boyfriend, while I've been obsessing over what I had to do to get you to leave him. And then the other night, knowing I could make you melt like that, and then having you push me away because I didn't have the
right
to, and somebody else did…Christ, I was so fucking jealous. And now I find out that you were just playing with me.”

“Ame, no,” I plead, horrified. “I never meant that. I did it because I was scared, not because I wanted to manipulate you. I was just trying to protect myself.”

“And that's the other thing,” he continues bleakly. “I don't know what kind of future we can have if you're convinced I'm going to hurt you. If that's how you feel, there's no way anything can get off the ground. I'm not going to start a relationship fighting an uphill battle to persuade you that I care about you.”

“This is the first time I've actually believed it,” I whisper. “I think I was so stuck in feeling rejected from last time, I didn't really think anything had changed. But what you said just now…I believe you.”

“You think you do. But I need you to be sure. I can't have this conversation again.”

I drop my eyes to the hands twisted in my lap. “So what now?” I ask, reaching for, and missing, a dry, ironic tone.

“Well, I don't feel much like a road trip to San Antonio anymore,” he says flatly. I wince. I shouldn't be surprised, but his withdrawal is jarring nonetheless. “I think we should just take some time to think about things, and see how it goes.”