“That went well,” I say, wiping myself down with the back of my arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” he slips his arm around my waist and leads us out into the cool night air. Mitch waits until we hit the parking lot before he pulls me in, and his entire face explodes in a grin. “I think I like you jealous.”
Kat appears, panting from the trek over. “Can you take her home for me? She’s way more excitement than this pregnant woman can handle—for any pregnant woman to handle.” She needles into me like she wants me to tell him about the baby right here in the parking lot in my soaking wet T-shirt.
Kat takes off without so much as a goodbye.
“Let’s get out of here.” Mitch washes me with his eyes, pauses when he hits my hips. It’s like he knows, neither Kat nor I had to tell him. He weaves me through the parking lot and into the passenger seat of his truck.
I guess we’re breaking all the rules tonight. After the bomb Hudson dropped this morning, all of Dr. Van Guard’s rules have been reduced to nothing more than debris on the war-torn landscape of my life.
Mitch and Max are in the heat of the battle.
War is hell.
I’ve got the battle scars etched over my heart to prove it.
Mitch
Lee and I drive down the ebony streets of Mono as the ground clouds roll over the boulders that line the side of the road.
“Swear to God, I was merely doing time when Colt’s gal pal strolled up,” I say as we round out the coast. I’ve already rehashed the story to her twice. The last thing I want Lee to think is that I was trolling for chicks in my spare time. In truth, I was mulling over my stint in China, trying to figure out whether or not this could possibly have fit in the hierarchy of plans that someone upstairs dreamed up for my life—the master plan that eventually revealed itself to be the disaster plan. I thought I’d be free once I left the detention center, but I can feel its looming presence in my life like shadowed wings that hover over me everywhere I go.
“She was all over you.” Lee bites down on her lower lip, and I can’t help but fight a smile.
“I never said she wasn’t.” I give a quick wink. “I’m teasing, Lee. You have to know the only woman I want all over me is you.” Can’t say I’m not impressed as hell by Lee’s reaction though. I was just about to take off when Lee decided to castrate the furniture and break all the dishes. It must mean something. If she’s that bent out of shape, she must still want me. “So, you were hanging with Kat in the bar?” I ask, never taking my eyes off the road. Kat looks as if she swallowed a pumpkin, hell an entire patch.
“Restaurant was full. You know how that goes.” She gives a hard sigh out the window. “You want to go to the dunes?”
My adrenaline kicks in. Lee wants to go to the beach—our beach—the dunes. Maybe this is it. Maybe all Lee needed to fully commit was seeing another woman trying to dig her claws in my back.
“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather take you.” I flip a U-turn and head on up. The fog stretches over the beach, thick as a blanket. The sun set about an hour ago, leaving a tangerine sky in its wake. I park and grab the blankets still stowed in the back from our last adventure.
Lee comes around and wraps an arm around my waist as we make our way over to the sand.
I want to ask her about the baby. If she’s having one, if she thinks it could be mine, but don’t see any reason to inject more confusion into the situation.
“You’re quiet.” Lee props her head against my shoulder.
“Just content to be with you.”
“You worried about breaking the rules?” There’s a slight sarcastic edge to her voice.
“I don’t like rules that keep us apart, Lee.”
“I don’t like rules that keep us apart, Mitch.” She matches my tone but ends on a hard note when she says my name. “Or trips, or countries.”
Here we go. “Looks like I get angry Lee—dishes-wielding Lee.” I tickle her ribs trying to make light of it, but I think we both know I just landed us in a pile of crap.
She stops short and looks up at me. “You don’t need to hang out with me, Mitch.” She pulls away. “In fact, maybe you’d just better take me home. I’m all over the place. Hudson’s outburst really fucked up my entire day.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard an expletive fly from her mouth. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep a smile from blooming. Something tells me it’s only going to piss her off.
“Honest to God, I was teasing.” I land a kiss over her cheek. “I love all of your moods. Believe me, I’m just thrilled to be standing next to you.” I pull her in close. “Holding you, seeing you. That’s the prize Lee, and I already have it.”
Her gaze dips to the sand. “This isn’t enough, Mitch.”
“It is for now. Next week it’s all you. Send Max packing, and we’ll have our lives back just the way they were.”
Lee glances up. She spears me with something just this side of hatred before taking a full step back. “Send Max packing? You think that’s all it takes? What about Stella and Eli who know him as their father? Should I send them packing, too, and we can just start over?”
“No.” I reach down to take up her hand. “That’s not what I meant. I know this isn’t easy for you. And, I care about Max, too.”
“Bullshit!” She spits it in my face. “You couldn’t care less if he croaked right there in Townsend field. I don’t like the way you’ve treated him since you came back when what you really owe him is a thank you! You know what else I don’t like?” She jerks her hand away. I stare ahead not wanting to provoke anymore of her anger, although mine is picking up at a descent clip right about now.
“This conversation?” Because it’s not my favorite.
“The fact you think I should have waited around in a giant black shroud, hoping my dead husband would miraculously show up.”
“I never said that. I never even implied it.” I never thought it for a minute.
“You wanted that. Admit it,” she shouts into the wind.
“It’s a pointless conversation. You want to go back to the truck? I’ll take you home.” I’ll take myself to my mother’s for the night—let Max deal with the fallout of Colton’s ambush matchmaking.
She gives a hard shove into my chest. “Pointless?” I have a feeling she could snap my neck just for the fun of it.
“Don’t do this.” I back up. “I know your head’s all over the place today. I know you wish you didn’t have to choose. I know you love Max. Is that what you want to hear? There, I said it. I know you love Max!” The words thunder from me like a curse.
“I do love, Max!” Her voice rivals mine. I’ll hear that echo in my dreams. “But it’s you, Mitch! I want you back—our whole life. And I can’t figure out how to do this, and nobody in the world can help.”
Lee melts to her knees and presses her hands into her face. I sink to the cold waiting sand and wrap my arms around her as she shakes from grief.
We’ve fallen into a well of deep emotions with nothing but heartache to greet us at every turn. We need the moon, the stars to let us know which way is up.
“I’m sorry.” Her breath blooms over my face. Lee conforms to my body and I hold her like that. “When you came home everything changed,” she whispers. “I thought about what would happen all the way on the car ride back to Mono. I thought everything in my world would change, but nothing did. I couldn’t figure out what to do with Max, and I didn’t want to leave him. He deserves better than this, Mitch I swear to you Max is good.”
“I know he is.” I press a kiss into her temple. “After getting to spend some time with him, especially seeing how great he is with the kids, I don’t feel like Max was the worst decision you’ve ever made. It’s the opposite, Lee. He was a good one.” My stomach clenches, but I mean every word.
“You still wish I’d left him that night.” She looks out at the ocean as a wave sweeps over the shore, white as a pearl. “You wanted that. I know you did, and I
disappointed you.”
I wish I could say that wasn’t true—that I would never have wanted that, but I can never say it.
“I hoped.” I barely have the nerve to whisper it. “I knew it would be complicated. And if it had been anybody else but Max”—I hang my head—“I probably would have backed off—for like a minute.” I push my shoulder into hers and we share a stifled laugh.
“Do you still hate him?”
“No.” I want to. It feels like self-sabotage to admit I have no more hatred left for Max Shepherd.
“You tried to keep us apart.” It comes out drenched with disappointment. “You gave up your best friend because you didn’t think you could trust me.”
“I trusted you plenty. It was him I didn’t trust. I wasn’t going to make a big deal of what happened that night. But he wanted you, Lee. And there was nothing in me that was about to stand around playing third wheel. He slept with you. I had that small window, while he was away, to get your attention.” The moon glints over her glossed features, and I brush my thumb over her cheek to wipe away the tears. “I thought if he wanted to play dirty, so would I. I thought I could control things, but I was wrong. I couldn’t control losing my father. I couldn’t control the inexcusable way he emotionally slaughtered my mother, so I vowed the day he died I would do anything to protect the ones I loved—that I would never hurt them, but I did. I hurt you, and I hurt Max. All along, I was trying to get my way. I was no different from my father after all. Turns out the selfish bastard didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Mitch.” She folds into me. “That was the end for Max and me, but not because of anything you did. It’s because I chose to be with you.”
“It wasn’t the end.” I shake my head. “Not even close. I’m being humbled. God is taking me down in grand style. He’s showing me who’s really in control. He put Max in your path once, and he did it again. I’m not the one who’s in control, Lee, I never was.” The detention center blinks through my mind in snatches, quick and haunting like clattering teeth. It’s as if the entire universe is working in favor of Max Shepherd, and, if I’m not careful, I’ll wind up right back in the dungeon where I came from.
Lee winces into me. “So you’re trying to tell me, you think Max and I were meant to be together—that you were just some obstacle to our destiny? I don’t think you believe it for a minute.”
The ocean and its menacing thunder fills in the silence. We watch the waves collapse on the shore and pull out in a fury while trying to drag everything with it.
Max and Lee. It couldn’t be right. Mitch and Lee, we were the super-couple. We were the great loves of our lives, weren’t we?
“Max isn’t going away,” I whisper. It sounds like a betrayal coming from my own lips.
She pulls back. “And we’re not going to arrange that.” A fire ignites in her eyes. She’s all hell and fury over the thought of me hurting Max.
“I think the bigger question is when is Max going to make me disappear? I still haven’t ruled that one out. If I wind up in a ditch, don’t be afraid to point fingers.” I’m only half-joking.
“He would never hurt you.” Lee pulls me in by the chin. A sad smile breaks loose on her lips. “Mitch,” she whispers it solemn as a eulogy. Lee holds my face and offers a careful kiss over my lips, soft as air. I pull her down to the sand and cover her mouth with mine. It’s an inventory of gums and teeth, nothing but the fire from our mouths to keep us warm. Deep, meaningful groans expel from our throats as we soak it all in. If my soul were required of me at this very hour I’d die a happy man in the arms of the woman I love.
My father and his philandering ways blink through my mind, and I lock him out. This is different. This is Lee.
She tugs at my shirt and pulls it over my head. Lee runs her hands over my chest, slow and easy as if she were committing it to memory. I think we’re all done discussing Max and homicidal tendencies.
“You taste so good.” She gives it in a heated whisper right over my ear.
I pull the blanket out and roll Lee and I over it. We spend a small eternity exploring the hot of one another’s mouths until she lets me peel off her jeans. I slip my hand between her thighs and she gives a quiet groan of approval.
“Mitch,” her eyes float to the back of her head as I plunge my finger deep inside her. She reaches down and frees me from my boxers, pulls me out like she’s about to hold my cock for ransom.
“Do you want this?” I pull back to give her a moment to think.
Lee bites down on her lip as if she were unsure, as if her hormones overruled any rational thought she was capable of making.
Lee pulls me in by the back of the neck and dives her tongue into my mouth, hungry and needy. She reaches down and strokes me until I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to come right there in her hand. Lee guides me in, and I die from the sheer glory of the moment. I was starting to doubt this would ever happen again, and here we are, back in our own private paradise. I glide in and out determined to make it last. I plan on showing Lee exactly how much she means to me, how much I love every ounce of her, body and soul. And I plan on loving every last ounce, right here, until the sun comes up, then long past that into forever.
Tonight we’re breaking the rules.
I don’t mind breaking the rules with Lee.
Max
It’s hard falling asleep when it’s four in the morning, and your wife is still not home—and by some almighty coincidence neither is her ex. She’s not answering her cell, neither is Mitch. Kat said she left the restaurant with him and apologized profusely as if she had shoved them into a hotel room herself.
The kids are at Janice’s, and I’m holding out hope that Mitch is there, too—hell, I’d love it if Lee were there—if they were having one big family sleepover. Sure beats the alternative.
Wish I could fall asleep. Wish I could wake up and find Lee next to me—that it was months ago. I’d fly to China and strangle that son-of-a-bitch before he ever got a chance to set foot in an airport. He’s taking advantage of her. Lee is too jacked up on hormones to notice. I’m sure she’s hoping this will all somehow work itself out. Sex with Mitch on Tuesday—
The unmistakable rattle of the door sends me flying out of bed. I race down, and as soon as I see Mitch I jump the lower third of the stairs and crush him with my full body weight. The last thing I see is the surprise in his eyes. If I’m lucky enough to kill the bastard, I can always say I fell. I don’t waste any time, just pummel him in the gut, hard and fast.
“You’re killing him!” Lee screams.
I want to tell her I’m not that lucky, instead, I clock him in the face so hard I feel a satisfying pop beneath my knuckles. Mitch lobs me in the upper jaw, and I bite down hard on my tongue.
Shit!
The salt in my blood distracts me enough for him to blindside me with a fist to the chest. A blinding pain rips through my body. My lungs deflate, and I struggle to take my next breath.
Holy fucking shit. He gave me a heart-stopper. I twist over him and shake him by his sweater.
“You trying to kill me?” I roar.
Mitch brings up his knee and lands another powerful blow to my gut.
“That’s for Lee.” Mitch jumps up and hobbles to the back room.
“Are you okay?” She pulls at my elbow until I rise unsteady on my feet.
Her hair is disheveled. Her makeup has been cried off, leaving long muddied streaks down the sides of her face.
It crushes me to see her like this, broken, coming home with Mitch.
I don’t want to look at her. I want all of my rage focused in on the right person tonight. I speed over to the family room and find Mitch sprawled out on the couch.
“Get up,” it comes out hoarse.
Mitch gives a slow blink past my shoulder. “Lee, end this bullshit right now,” he groans, struggling to stand.
Lee doesn’t say anything. Instead, she comes around and parks her body between the two of us like a barrier.
/> “It’s your bullshit, Mitch.” I knock a stack of books off the end table. “You keep throwing yourself at her, and she still hasn’t left me. There’s not a single document drawn up to take down this marriage. What does that tell you?”
His eyes dart over to hers. “End this.” He moves to stand beside her. “Tell him right now.”
“Tell me what, Lee?” I lock onto her. I’m ready for it. Whatever it is she wants to say, whatever she’s been sharing with Mitch behind my back, I want all of it dumped at my feet like vomit.
She presses her hand into my chest and takes a step closer.
“Tell me.” I lift my hands with the invitation. “That you slept with him again? I figured that out myself.”
“Lee.” Mitch could slice tension wires with the desperation in his voice.
She gives a sad smile never breaking our gaze.
“Now,” he urges, placing his hands square on her shoulders. “If you meant it at all, do it right now.”
Lee doesn’t move. She closes her eyes and presses her lips together to keep them from quivering.
“You lose, Mitch.” I force a smile to come and go. “Now leave us the hell alone.”
“Look at me.” He spins her around with a crazed look in his eye. “What do you find so difficult about the truth? Say it, Lee. Say it right now,” he barks within an inch of her face.
Lee’s entire person seizes.
“Let go.” I free her from his grip. “Keep your hands off my wife.” I pull Lee toward the door and broaden my chest in the event he feels the urge to charge—hell, I’m inviting it.
He circles around me and steps into her line of vision.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He’s pleading with those algae-riddled eyes. “I thought I could take it. I thought that you’d eventually come around. But it looks like I’ve just stepped in your way.” A single tear tracks down his face. “You know what it feels like?” His voice jumps up an octave, his lips twitch. He’s shaking, trying to keep his emotions in check. “It feels like I’m some guy you have on the side. Like you’re having an affair with me. It feels wrong. And if I feel that way maybe you do, too.” His voice reverberates off the walls. I don’t think I’ve seen him this angry before, not even at me. “I’m sick and tired of trying to saw your family in half. This should have been black and white, Lee. It would have been for me. But, then, I guess I don’t really know you. I guess we were never who I thought we were.” He turns and heads into the guestroom—nothing but the slam of drawers, the pump of hostile footsteps. Mitch reappears with his backpack slung over one shoulder as he makes his way past us, marking his exit with the quiet click of the front door.