It was late. I was tired. And life was short.
Those were the reasons why I wound up giving him my answer, despite knowing it should have remained a secret I took with me to the hereafter. “It doesn’t seem to matter how far away I go or how many years go by. I’m starting to accept that there will always be some part of me that is going to hold on to some part of you.” I just barely glanced over my shoulder to make sure he was still there. He was. “And you’re here right now, saying these hurtful things, trying to push me away, because some part of you has held on to some part of me too.”
Boone remained frozen behind me, his breathing silent. The night seemed to circle in tighter around us, relentless. The longer he stayed quiet, the more tempting my desire to leap inside the Chrysler, speed to the airport, return to California a few days early, and never come back to this godforsaken part of the country again became.
Boone had been my source of strength for much of my life. He’d been just as much my weakness. I wasn’t sure what he was more of now, but I also wasn’t sure how much longer I could wait with my words hanging between us before I ran away and, this time, stayed away. For good.
A half a lifetime had passed, and Boone was still silent. I guessed he would stay that way, no matter how long I hovered on this dirt road.
My lungs had felt like withered balloons for years now, but I couldn’t feel them anymore. The part of me that was responsible for keeping the rest of me alive had disappeared. I’d been losing parts of me for a while. Scattered pieces of Clara Abbott were strewn all over this county. I only had one piece left, and I was leaving it on the side of this dusty Charleston road.
I managed to take a step and then another, the second harder than the first. By the time I was taking my third and closing in on the car, my legs felt as if the moon had been tied to one and the sun to the other. Moving seemed impossible, but somehow, I did it.
My arm was reaching out for the door handle, and just when my fingers were about to curl around the kiss of cool metal, something intercepted their path.
Warm fingers tied through mine, his firm palm pressing into mine. Boone’s footsteps crunched closer. Nothing but the sound of the car’s engine, the sounds of the night, and his slow and even breathing filled the air. But he had my hand. He’d reached for me. He hadn’t let me walk away. Instead of his grip loosening, it grew stronger.
“You were right.” His voice echoed into the night, his body so close to mine I felt the warmth of his words on the crest of my shoulder.
I tipped my head back. He was closer than I’d guessed. “Right about what?”
His other hand lifted to my face, his thumb tilting my chin up until I was looking at him. The veil that had been shading his eyes since I’d seen him in the bar was gone. The boy I fell in love with was in those eyes, in the man standing before me now.
His thumb swept up the line of my jaw, his forehead drawn together, before all at once, he seemed to relax. “About everything.”
My heartbeat thrummed in my ears, slow and steady and strong.
“I’m going to kiss you.” He spun me around slowly, his hand on my hand and the other one lowering into the bend of my neck, anchoring himself to me. “And I see you’ve got two options for how you can react to that.”
My eyebrows came together, my chest rising and falling heavily between us. “I do?”
Boone nodded, his eyes glimmering. He slid closer until our chests were just barely touching. I felt the car brushing against my back. “You can slap me across the face like I know you were desperate to do a few minutes ago, get in that car, and drive away. You can leave me in the rearview and the dust, and this is where I’ll stay if that’s what you want.”
I was about to ask what my other option was, because as much as I might have known leaving was what I should have done, it was the very last thing I wanted to do.
Boone pressed closer, cocking a brow and not letting my eyes leave his. “Or . . .”
But he’d said enough. The instinct that resided deep within me broke to the surface, and before I knew it had escaped, I was lifting onto my toes, my fingers curling around the material of his shirt and pulling him to me at the exact moment I was pushing myself closer.
My lips pressed into his, lingering there for only a moment before I lowered back onto the balls of my feet. It had been an innocent kiss, unexpected and fleeting, but it had sent a torrent of emotions cascading through me. One simple kiss. That was the only simple aspect of it.
“Or you can kiss me back,” Boone finished his sentence, looking not quite as surprised as I guessed I did, but surprised enough for me to assume he’d been bracing for a slap just as much as he had for a kiss.
So many things fired to life inside me, places I thought had gone dormant, hidden caverns I’d forgotten about. I felt as if I was coming to life, shedding the shell I’d been traipsing around in the past seven years.
I pressed my body into the car, not trusting myself to listen to reason and behave if I remained so close to Boone. Instead of heeding the fresh distance I’d put between us, Boone moved closer.
His lips were parted, his breath coming in quick pulls, but no other part of him told the tale of a man being rattled. He was as solid as he’d always been. “I do believe I said I was going to kiss you.”
His smile was more crooked than straight. Our bodies locked like I remembered, two pieces made to fit together. My jagged pieces accepted his. His rough edges smoothed out mine.
“It didn’t seem like you were in a hurry to kiss me.” I returned his smile.
“It’s been seven years since our last kiss. I stall for two seconds, and its one too long?” His fingers curled into my neck lightly.
“Like you said, I’ve been patient for a long time.” I slid one hand up his chest and let it curve around his shoulder. “I’m done with patient.”
His smile stretched, then his head lowered toward mine. His smile dissolved, replaced by a look I loved even more—the intent one he got whenever he was about to kiss me. The one that made me feel like I was and always would be his beginning, middle, and end.
“Then let’s be done with it together,” he whispered right before his lips brushed across mine.
It wasn’t really a kiss, but it was something just as good. His lips brushed mine again, this time from the opposite direction, and made my heart scramble as it seemed to have forgotten its purpose. When he repeated the same thing, the sensation of it—just as satisfying as it was insufficient—made a gasp slip past my lips as my body suddenly trembled.
Either the shudder or the gasp pulled something from Boone. His lips stopped teasing mine with slow, gentle brushes, and his mouth pushed into mine with as much intention and strength as his body pressed into mine. Pinning me to the car, Boone’s hands tightened around me while mine did all they could to hang on to him.
I felt the cool metal of the top button of his jeans through the light material of my dress. I felt his narrow hips holding my fuller ones in place, anchoring me. I felt his urgency in every touch, every kiss, every breath . . . yet I also felt his careful hold on his restraint. He wanted more. From the way I’d started to feel him slide himself against me before easing back, he wanted it all, but where we’d shown next to no restraint as kids, we seemed to have picked up some as adults.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take all of this kissing and innocent touching before my body combusted, but it felt closer to the short end of the spectrum than the long. Leaping, I managed to wind my legs around him without skipping a beat of returning his kisses. Boone’s hands lowered around my backside, a deep grumble crawling up his chest when I pitched my hips against his.
“The backseat.” I turned my head to reach for the door handle.
Boone’s mouth moved from mine to the base of my neck, sucking at it in ways that made it seem as if that part of my body was directly hardwired to what resided between my legs.
Boone shook his head, still playing with my neck.
“No.”
“The front seat?” I panted as his mouth moved lower, just skimming along the neckline of my dress.
“No,” he said with another shake.
A groan of frustration was almost immediately followed by a gasp of pleasure when his mouth found a very sensitive area on my body. His tongue circled it, drawing wet patterns through the thin material of my bra.
“I’m not going to fuck you in your daddy’s car like I might have been content to do when I was a kid.”
My inner thighs contracted. His legs spread them back apart.
“Why not? Backseat, front seat, hood, bent over the bumper . . . all sound like good options to me.”
When he pressed himself between my legs, hard and ready, my head fell back against the roof of the car. I swore if he would had just moved against me a few times right there, fully clothed, I would have come.
“Because I’m not a boy anymore, Clara.” Boone sucked my nipple, toying at it with his tongue.
My legs tightened around him, my lap pressing hard against his. He gave a sharp grunt, nipping at me before releasing me.
“Fine, I get it.”
When his mouth moved to my other breast, giving it the same attention he’d just given the other, I forgot what I was saying, or what I’d been about to say. I was reminded when his hips flexed against mine, giving me the friction I wanted in the exact place I wanted it.
“Then fuck me like a man. Whatever the hell that means.” My arms wound around his head and my fingers wove into his hair, smoothing through it or pulling it based on whatever his mouth and hips were up to. “Take me out into the woods, throw me up against a tree, and show me what this screwing like a man thing is all about because right now . . .” He’d just gotten to the nipping part again. My back sprang into an arch, inadvertently creating more friction in the space between my legs. I could feel it—my orgasm was starting to spiral. “I don’t care how you do it, just so long as you do.”
Boone nodded once as his head lifted above mine. His eyes were wild, his expression the same. His lips were dark and wet, his breathing rushed and shallow. “I don’t want to hurry. I don’t want to rush. I don’t want to feel like we’re moments away from getting caught or like we’re doing something wrong. I want to take my time. I’m sick of feeling like I’m two minutes from sharing my last ones with you.”
I bobbed my head in agreement, knowing I would have agreed to him tying me up to a tree and painting me in honey before doing whatever other freaky things the freaks of the world performed, just so long as sometime tonight, I got to feel him inside me. “Sounds good. Perfect. Why are we still standing here when the woods are over there?”
Boone’s face shifted into a smirk as he stared at me spread out on the hood of my dad’s car. “You’ve always been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Clara.” The backs of his fingers ran down the length of my cheek. “That still hasn’t changed.”
I was just sitting up as he was winding his arms around my back when a pair of headlights appeared down the road. They started out small and became large so quickly, whoever was behind the wheel of that thing had to have been cruising. We barely had time to adjust our bodies and clothes before the car slowed to a crawl and swung around us. It was a gun-metal Jaguar. A couple of heads popped out of the open windows.
“Hee-haw!” Ford’s drunken voice echoed around us. “I see I wasn’t the only one worked up into a hot and bothered mess after seeing your sister’s fine titties flashed in my face.”
Boone’s body went rigid in my hold, his expression shadowing in a familiar way. “You’re lucky to still have the use of your jaw after what you pulled, Ford. Keep jabbering, and I won’t show the same level of restraint I showed back there.”
When Ford’s gaze drifted to me, all flushed and clothes twisted around me, his expression turned sour. He looked away like he was disgusted. I looked away from him because I felt the same.
“Hey, Boone!” one of the guys stuffed into the backseat hollered out the window. “This whole time I’ve been curious about your sister being a natural redhead.” He stuck his head out and waggled his brows. “Let’s just say my curiosity has been sufficiently squashed.”
Boone lowered me to the ground quickly and rounded the back of the Chrysler. I didn’t need a glass ball to know where this would go, and I also didn’t need one to know that no matter who might have started it or how many were pitted against him, Boone would take the fall for whatever went down tonight.
Rushing around the car faster than him, I said, “It’s a Friday night, guys. Why don’t you all just go jerk yourselves off like you usually do, before making a bowl of popcorn and watching your old football games for the millionth time as you relive the glory days?”
The loud mouth still hanging out the back window shook his head at me. “Nah, I’d rather go find myself that fire-crotch and play hide-the-hot-dog.” A round of chuckles rang inside the car. “God, there sure wouldn’t be a shortage of hiding spots with the tits and ass on that thing.”
Boone charged ahead, not saying a word, but that was how he did it. Why waste words when talking wasn’t what he had in mind?
I threw out my hand, splaying it against his chest. It shouldn’t have stopped him, but somehow it did, albeit temporarily I knew.
Since the guys in the car didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave and Boone wasn’t going to tolerate much more of those assholes talking about his sister, that left the responsibility of forging a peaceful resolution to this stand-off in my not-so-capable hands.
The only option I could think of wasn’t exactly peaceful, but I was hopeful it would get Ford to screech off and leave us alone. Leaning over, I removed one of my shoes and moved toward the back of Ford’s car. All eyes shifted to me, most of them staring like they had no idea what was coming next. To me, it seemed pretty straight-forward.
When a girl approaches a guy’s car, his most prized possession, with the expression I had and armed with a heeled shoe—whether a five-inch pump or the chunky one incher I was aiming—what did they think was going to happen?
Pulling my arm back, I crouched into position right behind the Jaguar’s right taillight, and I swung my arm down hard. It took me a few hard stabs with the heel to get the taillight to break, but it worked.
Ford dropped a series of curses while the other guys in the car watched me like they were both appalled and enraptured. I was making my way over to the other taillight when the Jaguar’s wheels spun out right before the car sped away.
Ford stuck his head back out the window and hollered, “Crazy bitch!”
I didn’t take my eyes off of the car until its one intact and one broken taillight disappeared. From the look and sound of Ford, he was in no condition to be driving. I should have done the honorable thing and called Charlotte to let her know her fiancé was about to drive himself—and the rest of his soon-to-be extinct kind—into a tree, but I didn’t.
I believed in natural selection, and it clearly hadn’t caught up to the Ford McBrides of the world yet. Tonight might have been the night.
“Glad he finally figured that out,” I said as I slid my shoe back onto my foot.
“Figured out what? That he’s a dead man walking?” Boone moved up beside me in the middle of the dirt road, staring at the spot where their car had disappeared.
“That I’m a crazy bitch,” I shrugged.
Boone’s shoulder brushed mine. “Did you just do that because you hate Ford or because you like me? Because I’m pretty sure what you just did could be charged as a crime.”
So much adrenaline was surging through my system from what had just happened and what had just been about to happen before Ford and his gang of future dodo birds showed up, I felt drunk with it. “I might hate Ford McBride, but I just went ‘crazy bitch’ on his taillights because I like you.”
Boone smiled at the ground, kicking it with the toe of his boot. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
&nbs
p; “I’m not sure I just like you, Boone . . .” The adrenaline was giving me courage, making me heady with power.
Boone’s shoulder tensed right before he moved toward the car, leaving me straddling the middle of the road all alone. “We should get going,” he said, his voice flat. “We don’t belong here.”
I was in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed, wringing my hands in my lap, and waiting for Boone. The sensation of déjà vu was so violent and intense, it almost knocked me over.
A lifetime had passed since that day seven years ago, and even though I wasn’t the same girl I’d been then, she was still a part of me. I’d waited for hours that afternoon, not giving up hope until I woke up the next morning not having remembered falling asleep. Boone hadn’t come that day. He’d left me waiting.
Part of me felt like I’d been waiting for seven years, but for what, I wasn’t sure. An answer, maybe? An explanation in the least? Some reason that would justify why he left me after what he’d found out.
That was what I felt like I was waiting for now, on the edge of my bed again. Answers. Yet another part of me wasn’t waiting for answers that might explain the past, but answers for right now. What had happened between us only a short hour ago. What had been about to happen between us. What might happen between us going forward.
Answers. That was what I needed.
That was what I hoped Boone would be willing to give me.
The shower shut off, and I heard him step out of it and pad across the bathroom. Unlike the past few days when he’d left the bathroom door cracked open, tonight it was closed. I didn’t have to test the handle to guess it was locked as well.
Another closed and locked door hanging between Boone and me. Another one to add to the pile. I was a fool for believing we might have a chance for something different. Our pasts might not have predestined our futures, but they certainly made it predictable.
He took his time in the bathroom; I couldn’t be sure exactly what he was doing, though I guessed it had plenty to do with avoiding me. We hadn’t exchanged a word since sliding into my dad’s car, driving back here, and trudging up to my bedroom. We might have had plenty of things we wanted to say to one another, but I wasn’t sure where to start, and I guessed he felt like he’d already said too much through his actions.