Living in a small town could really suck.
Melody’s eyes met mine from across the room. The party had been going for a couple of hours, but Boyce and Landon hadn’t shown. When she’d invited them, they’d agreed to come right before walking off toward the beach road, where Boyce’s black Trans Am was parked. If they were coming, they’d have appeared long ago.
chapter
Ten
Boyce
The numbers had been telling me for months that garage business had picked up, but I thought the difference was a passing irregularity. Folks catching up on overlooked maintenance work, not an actual increase. When I entered the initial end-of-month numbers last night though, there it was—six months straight of higher revenue. Several new local customers too—more likely to be repeats.
More money I could appreciate. More work was pushing me to the limit. Hiring help would make more sense than turning away business, so I made a note to contact my old auto-shop teacher to see about employing a kid to do simple but time-consuming shit, clean up, and schedule appointments. Boyce Wynn: boss man. Huh.
I didn’t check the message alert on my phone until I took a five-minute break. After taking a leak and grabbing a Pepsi, I checked my notifications. The text I’d ignored, thinking it was likely Vega bitching about the Astros crapping out way early from any possible chance at the playoffs for another year, was from Pearl.
Pearl: Mel is on her way to Dallas. Is today still good for you?
Me: Sorry. Busy as hell today and just got a break. Tonight works better. Want to get something to eat first?
Pearl: Why don’t I bring something over? Whataburger? ☺
Me: You know I can’t turn that shit down.
Pearl: Avocado bacon? Vanilla shake, extra thick?
Me: You trying to seduce me, Miss Frank?
Pearl: You are perpetually sixteen. What time?
Me: 7 okay?
Pearl: See you at 7. ☺
I’d known I was going out on a limb, suggesting that we go out somewhere together—in public. It would have been more of a shock if she’d said yes. That’d only happened once.
When Maxfield cracked a rib kicking Clark Richard’s ass in high school, I’d followed her brand-spankin’-new Mini from school to her house in my ’79 TA so she could pick up the stethoscope her stepfather kept in his dresser. Then she’d followed me to the Maxfield place to check him out. She’d been cranky that day, which hadn’t been long after that kiss on the sandbar—a month or so, maybe.
The feel of her in my arms, the sound of her sigh and taste of her mouth when I took possession of it—she’d spun my head around that night. Three days later in bio, she’d barely looked at me, and I knew from the way Dover spoke to me that she hadn’t told her. If a chick doesn’t tell her best girlfriend something, it’s either so unimportant that she forgot or something she’s too ashamed to tell. Frankly, I didn’t want to know which one of those I was.
I’d gone to that sandbar the next weekend, downed a six-pack of Budweiser, and seriously considered motoring over to Dr. Frank’s floating dock, tying off my piece-of-shit boat to one of the cleats, and marching up to her door. In a rare burst of restraint, I’d settled for hoisting those cans one by one, toasting her in ways I thankfully can’t remember the particulars of now, cussing and kicking sand like a moron.
More swearing followed when I booted a mostly-buried something hard enough to break my big toe. I landed on my ass, clutching my bare foot, furious that some inanimate object would dare to be in my way while I was throwing a tantrum like the oversize man-baby Dover had accused me of being after I’d burped the chorus to “Gold Digger” in class. My anger flagged when the full moon came out from behind a cloud, lighting the small, visible portion of my buried enemy.
With only hands for tools, it had taken me a while to dig up the entire shell, which was about the size of a football. Even half-trashed, I’d known better than to use a rock or stick and risk cracking it. I’d never seen a whelk anywhere near that big, and my first thought was how much Pearl would love it. Once I dug it loose, I swept off as much of the sand as I could, wrapped it in my T-shirt, and left it by her front door.
She’d brought it to bio to show Mr. Quinn, nestled in a towel-lined boot box like it was a puppy. The whole surface, every spiral indentation, had been cleaned and polished. Quinn had her walk it around the classroom so everyone could see it up close. “The lightning whelk is our official state shell, ladies and gentlemen!” Quinn said, more excited than anyone else, as usual. But as Pearl circled the lab tables, even people who hated school and science in particular wanted to touch it. “Judging by its size, the previous inhabitant—a predatory marine gastropod, scientific name busycon perversum—was older than all of you.”
When she sat down, our eyes connected across the scarred black tabletop while our lab partners examined the shell.
“That must’ve been one scary, big-ass snail,” Dover said, and laughter broke our linked gaze.
I never did get that T-shirt back.
• • • • • • • • • •
Pearl, standing in my doorway in shorts and a God-have-mercy pink tank top, holding a bag of burgers and two shakes, was an assault on my senses. I didn’t know what to want first. My mouth watered and my stomach growled at the smell of those burgers, but when she stepped into the light my dick sensed that sweet little body feet away and said, Fuck y’all, food can WAIT.
“Thanks. I’m starving,” I said, forcing those three words out like they were near impossible to form. Hoping she took my asshattedness for hunger—for food—I took the bag and turned toward the table to hide the way my jaw steeled, fighting to bring my body under control. That was the moment I realized I hadn’t gotten laid in two weeks. No, more than two weeks—a month, maybe. I could have blamed the lack on being too busy or too tired to bother—God knows I was both—but what kind of loser is too busy to fuck? I’d go drown myself in the goddamned gulf first.
I hadn’t even been attracted to anyone since I’d realized Pearl was coming home. That was the only explanation, whether I liked it or not. It didn’t matter if I could probably go to bed right now and sleep ten hours straight. My body was more than willing to man up and perform like a superhero first—if I was fucking the girl who was currently pulling milkshakes out of a drink holder and setting them on the table right next to me.
My fingers itched to touch her. I’d barely stopped to eat all day and was starving, but her scent—oranges and flowers and a trace of saltiness, as if part of her belonged to the ocean she loved even though it had tried to kill her—was more potent than the smell of the food on the table. She peeked under both milkshake lids before leaning to place one at my spot. Leaning over the damned table to place it at my spot. My hands curled into fists, unable to look away from her perfect ass in those shorts and the sliver of warm bronze skin at her lower back when she stretched farther and her tank rose.
Hunger flared through me, a greedy flash fire of lust. I wanted to run my palms down her arms from her slim shoulders to her small hands, flattening them against the table in silent command. I would skim my hands beneath the front of that snug top, fill them with her soft tits. I would bury my face in the curve of her shoulder, inhaling her tangy sweetness. I would lap the tip of my tongue along the side of her neck, feel her pulse accelerate beneath her skin, suck her earlobe into my mouth and tug it with my teeth. When she leaned back against me, I would rush to untie, unbutton, unzip, tear open those little shorts and shove them down her legs, along with the lacy underwear my imagination conjured. Fingers sliding down her belly, I would slip one into her, adding another once she was soaking wet and her arms began to tremble. And then, fingering her with one hand while I unzipped my jeans and freed my ravenous cock with the other, I would whisper the words I’ve wanted to say to her for four years.
“Crap. They didn’t give us any ketchup,” she said, setting two huge burgers wrapped in greasy yellow paper at my spot and
one at hers, flattening the bag and upending an extra-large box of fries onto it. “Do you have some?”
She turned, her head angling at whatever lunacy she saw on my face, and I struggled to understand the simple words she’d just spoken over the gradually fading vision in my head. Without replying, I twisted for the fridge, pulling it open and leaning into the cold. Fuck. I was acting like a grade-A jackhole, and I couldn’t make it stop.
I just wanted her so bad. Still.
Pearl
The expression on Boyce’s face before he turned to yank the refrigerator door open was furious—jaw rigid, eyes sharp as broken glass—and I had no idea why. He couldn’t be angry that I’d brought him food? Maybe he’d reconsidered my idea for burying his dad’s ashes on the sandbar. He’d claimed he couldn’t have any closure, like it was an unattainable thing, but I’d hoped he was wrong. I’d hoped to help him find it.
Now I wasn’t so sure he could find closure. Wasn’t so sure I was the one to help him look.
I gripped the back of the chair, unable to shift my eyes from the broad, defined muscles of his shoulders and the vee of his back, flexing just outside the confines of his ribbed gray tank. His short hair was dark, damp. He must have showered right before I arrived.
“I figured you might be hungry, so I got you two burgers,” I said.
He turned back to me after a strained, silent moment, a ketchup bottle in his hand. “You figured right.” The anger—or what I’d thought was anger—was gone. In its place was raw hunger.
“Let’s eat then.” I took the bottle from his hand and smiled up at him.
He nodded once, more of a jerk of his head than a gesture of affirmation, and stepped around me to sit at the table. He worked hard six days a week, both manual labor and dealing with clients directly. I recalled how exhausted Mama used to be when she’d worked long hours at the pediatric office she managed. By the time she’d pick me up from afterschool care, she was often irritable from masking her annoyance all day. She’d tell me that working with the public was sometimes more taxing than the manual labor she’d done when she first arrived in the U.S.
“Sinks and floors and toilets don’t snap at you for politely requesting a co-pay,” she’d say, hands clenched on the steering wheel. “They don’t insist on seeing a doctor immediately when they show up late, or let their children wipe their snotty noses on the chair cushions in the waiting room.”
Boyce unwrapped a burger and took a huge bite, his eyes closing like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. His shoulders lowered just a smidge. He inhaled a long, deep breath through his nose and let it out just as slowly.
“Good?” I asked unnecessarily.
Still chewing, he opened his eyes and nodded, releasing a sighed, “Mmmm.”
I compressed my lips to conceal my smug grin at having tamed the beast prowling inside him when I arrived. He smiled back, eyes crinkling at the corners, reading me like my analysis of him had been scrawled across my forehead. His insight was simultaneously comforting and unsettling. For most of my life, Boyce Wynn’s smile had been three things to me: safety, warmth, and home, even as that same smile made my heart throb with longing for some shadowed, unreachable thing.
• • • • • • • • • •
Four years ago
“Just a minute,” I mumbled from the top of the staircase—as if whoever was standing outside pressing the doorbell could hear me. I wasn’t hungover, but I was groggy from lack of sleep. I’d lain awake half the night wondering why Boyce and Landon hadn’t shown and wishing Mel and I had just stayed on the beach with them.
I veered around a girl snoring on the steps, recognizing Shania Fowler, who’d been on the dance squad with Mel and me. Arms folded beneath her face, she made falling asleep in the middle of someone’s staircase look like a perfectly natural thing to do.
I heard the front door open just before Boyce Wynn’s ticked-off voice echoed in the foyer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I hurried down the last few steps to see him leveling a homicidal glare at Rick Thompson, who—the hell?—had just answered my front door.
“Jesus, Wynn, come in or go the fuck away, but shut the damned door.” Rick’s hand shielded his eyes from the glare outside as he backed away from Boyce. “I’m not ready for daylight.”
Boyce slammed the solid mahogany door shut, rattling framed prints hanging near the door. He noticed me over Rick’s shoulder at the same time.
“Fuck!” Rick hissed, both hands cradling his skull. Someone on the parlor loveseat whimpered at the noise.
“What’s he doing here?” Boyce asked me. Before I could answer, his gaze skipped over the passed-out girl on the stairs, the girl on the loveseat, and the guy wedged against the media center, drooling on the sofa cushion crammed beneath his head. There were probably people in various states of unconsciousness all over the house.
Arching a brow, I turned and walked back up the curved staircase, sidestepping Shania. I didn’t look to see if he was following, but I knew he was.
I padded down the hall and into my room, kicking a romance novel under my bed as he appeared in the doorway. He filled the space—wide shoulders and broad chest, hands braced on the doorframe, elbows bent, biceps flexed against the sleeves of his close-fitting T-shirt.
My heart thrashed harder than the music had last night.
“Hi, Boyce.” I stared into his dark eyes, unable to distinguish the green. From the opposite side of my room, they looked brown. Black, even. But I knew that up close, his eyes were the dark, multilayered green of a deep, thick forest.
“Hey, Pearl.” He entered the room and slid his big hand over the antique glass doorknob. “Mind if I shut the door?” He watched me closely, his words deliberate.
“Lock it, too,” I said, my voice warbling. I cleared my throat as the door clicked shut and he turned to pin me with those eyes.
He slid the lock into place.
Click.
Without moving nearer, he toed off his boots, which were always haphazardly laced at best. He pulled off his socks, one hand on the dresser.
“Why didn’t you come?” I asked, and he paused, frowning in confusion. “Last night,” I clarified.
His brow cleared. “Maxfield didn’t want to mess with Dover last night.”
“So… you went back to the beach?”
When he nodded, my imagination flooded with the probabilities that gesture implied. I wanted to scour those images from my mind. He wasn’t going to come here to me after going there and—stop.
Chin lifted, eyes narrowed, I clenched my fists to keep from hurling things at him. “Did you find what you were looking for there?”
His shadowed smile made me angrier. Until he said, “Course not. I knew what I wanted and where it was. Last night was about bein’ there for my boy. Right now is me bein’ where I wanna be.”
His gaze slid over me and I shivered. Lips pressed together, he started across the room, footfalls soundless, like a predator after small, easily spooked prey, but he slowed when I reached behind my neck to loosen the ties of my sundress. I pressed the bodice against my sternum, too chicken to let the dress drop to the floor, even with my fuchsia bikini underneath.
“Your shirt,” I said, my voice raspy in the silent room. I’d meant to play music, light candles. But that was last night. Now my white linen drapes were pulled wide to reveal a blindingly blue June morning, all cloudless sky and gently rolling waves that shimmered as if millions of tiny mirrors floated faceup in the cerulean water.
Obediently, he reached behind his head and yanked his shirt off, tossing it onto the floor in his wake as he moved across the room, and my breath went shallow.
I’d seen Boyce Wynn shirtless hundreds of times. I’d watched him grow from a boy to a man. But filling my bedroom, a dangerous fantasy come to life, he was unknown—from the fully developed muscles other boys his age would willingly drug themselves with lethal steroids to get to the freckles darkening the smoot
h skin of his shoulders, trailing down his arms like smudges on a population map—densely inhabited deltoids moving to sparsely occupied forearms dusted with coppery hair.
Toe to toe, he stood a foot taller than me, one finger hooked in my loosened neckline. His lashes were dark except for the very ends, where they shone red in the daylight. “Let go,” he said. His drawled command was soft, like a suggestion. “I wanna see you so bad.”
I never imagined Boyce Wynn could speak so softly. I relaxed my grip on the dress, and it pooled at my feet.
His perusal of my bikini-clad body was slow and thorough. The tiny hairs all over my body rose, as if straining toward the touch he withheld. His eyes came back to mine and he arched a brow—dark, dark red, like his short hair. “Looks like I’ve got me some unpackaging to do.” His voice had gone gruff.
I swayed at his words, assailed by too many sensations at once. His hands were at my waist, anchoring me, and my palms seared onto his chest. His skin was soft and hot. I inhaled the scent of him—subtle but spicy, piney, like the forest his eyes evoked. A boy who grew up on an island of sand and palms and scrubby dune vegetation shouldn’t have a forest in his eyes.
His hands slid down over my hips and he pressed me close. Through his jeans, I felt the hard evidence of what he wanted pressed into my bare belly. If it feels that big still covered up… My breathing hitched at the thought.
One hand inched up my back and he untied the bottom string of my bikini top before sliding around front to stroke one breast, fingers teasing the nipple under the pink fabric. The mattress hit the back of my thighs as he pulled the upper string and the top came away. He stared while setting me on the edge of the bed, kneeling in front of me and pushing into the space between my legs. I watched, spellbound, as he lifted his chin and sucked a nipple right into his mouth, his hands beneath both breasts, cupping them as though weighing them.