Текст книги "My Soul to Keep"

Автор книги: Kennedy Ryan

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

THIS MAY BE THE BEST SLEEP I’ve had in months. Maybe it isn’t so much the sleep, as how I’m waking up. I’m curled up on my lumpy sofa, but my head rests on Rhyson’s warm, hard chest. Well-muscled arms cocoon me in strength and safety. And he smells absolutely divine. I pull in a long breath, relishing the clean scent of him even at whatever godawful time of morning it is. I hold my breath so my chest doesn’t rise and fall. I want him to stay asleep so I can enjoy this.

Being Rhyson’s friend for the last six weeks has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I knew I was attracted to him, but I had no idea we’d grow so close in such a short time. That every day he’d make me laugh with some outrageous text message. That his thoughtfulness, picking me up when San couldn’t, would make me look forward to our short rides home and to our long talks at the apartment. And I didn’t take into account how much I would want to kiss him every few minutes. He’s the kind of guy I’ve dreamed about, but didn’t think actually existed. And being his friend—just his friend—is exhausting.

So I’m holding my breath and hoping he doesn’t wake up. I want to look my fill without worrying he’ll read too much into it. The first night I saw him, I wasn’t even sure he was handsome. Boy, was I wrong. He’s gorgeous. Everything is prominent. His nose. His wide mouth and full lips. His high cheekbones. It’s almost too much, like the man himself. Too gifted. Too smart. Too funny. Too . . . right. And yet, so wrong for me. I’d lose myself in Rhyson. Before I’d know it, I’d be off on his world tour, following behind him and neglecting my own dreams just to be with him. I’d sink everything into him, and I’ve seen firsthand where that leads.

“Kai,” he mumbles my name in his sleep but doesn’t wake up.

Does he dream about me? Does he think about me as many times a day as I think about him? Does his heart skip beats when he knows we’ll see each other?

His arms tighten around me, and I don’t have the resolve to wake him up. His big hands run up and down my back, warm through the thin tank top I put on after work last night for the Sex and the City marathon. I haven’t been touched like this . . . ever. I’ve had a few boyfriends. Slept with a few guys, but even in his sleep, Rhyson is so tender with me. His hands move under the tank top until they caress my bare skin.

I’ll wake him up soon. I promise myself I will, but I can’t yet. It feels too good. One hand drifts down until he’s cupping my butt. I want to push my hips into him, relieve this pressure building between my legs. He groans, a frown pulling his dark brows together.

“Pep.” His sleep-husky voice seduces away what remains of my common sense. I slide my hands under his T-shirt. Oh, God. The lean muscles of his back flex beneath my fingers. He bends his head until his lips trace my neck. The layer of scruff on his chin is a prickly, tickly, tantalizing burn across my skin. Being touched by him, being kissed by him, even just on the neck, is heaven.

“Mmmmm.” He moans against my collarbone, eyes still tightly closed.

I have to stop this. He shouldn’t be kissing my neck. He shouldn’t be stroking my back. For the love of God, he should not be twisting my nipple between those long, gifted fingers, but he is. I push my breast deeper into his palm, needing the pressure. Needing his touch. An electric thread pulls taut from my breasts to my core. He hasn’t even kissed me, but I’m wet through my pajama bottoms. Embarrassingly wet, and I want his fingers on me. Pushing inside me until the world around me goes prismatic with an orgasm I know will be more spectacular than anything I’ve ever felt before.

I want him, but I can’t have him. Not and be who I want to be. Not and do the things I want to do. There’s too much of him. Not just physically. His presence. His talent. His fame. It’s this fabulous vacuum I won’t be sucked into. I’m afraid if I have him completely, he’ll take all of me.

I ease myself away, inch by careful inch, making sure not to wake him. My body mourns the loss of his hands and lips, his warmth, but I pull back until I can stand on shaky legs. I allow myself one last look. He settles back into the cushions, long lashes fanning down to cover the shadows I noticed earlier under his eyes. So much of his life happens late at night in studios while most people are sleeping. One day that’ll be me. The shadows under my eyes will be from doing what I love, what I’m meant to do. Not from waiting tables, teaching high school students dance routines, and reconciling Grady’s accounts.

It’s rare to have a break from all my jobs at once. And if Rhyson hadn’t come, I’d be spending the day exactly the way he predicted. Doing laundry. Instead, I get a day at the beach with the wind in my hair.

Speaking of hair, mine’s a rat’s nest. My tongue is covered in mink, and Rhyson may still smell good, but an investigative sniff under my arms confirms that I don’t.

Thirty minutes later, I smell like the pear cinnamon soap Mama sold in the diner. I’ve been meaning to get the recipe from Aunt Ruthie. I’m down to my last three bars. When that soap runs out, it’ll be one more piece of Mama I’ve lost forever. If I can make another batch, replicate her recipe, I’ll be able to hold on to that bit just a while longer.

With damp hair hanging down my back, I slip on a black bikini top and a pair of old cut offs. I have no idea how to dress. The smell of brewing coffee tantalizes my senses and pulls my caffeine-deprived body toward the kitchen.

Rhyson has such a great ass. It’s the first thing I notice when I enter the kitchen. His back—and ass—are to me as he scrambles eggs. His hair, per usual, dips and flops over his eyes and around his ears. My fingers itch to wind through its thick, not-quite-curliness. He grins at me over his shoulder.

“Morning.” His smile drops away and his eyes scroll down my body, lingering on my breasts in the bikini top and the length of my legs. “You look great.”

“Yeah, right.” I fold my arms under my breasts, self-conscious under his stare. “I’m not sure what I should wear.”

“What you’re wearing’s fine.” He draws in a deep breath. “And you smell great too. What’s that scent you always wear?”

“Pear cinnamon,” I say softly. “My mom used to make it.”

He crosses the small kitchen to stand in front of me.

“I like it.” He leans in to inhale at my neck. “A lot.”

Our glances tangle when he pulls back, and my breath hitches. He pushes my arms away so his thumb can venture over the skin covering my ribs. Every inch of skin he touches ignites like he’s branding me with his gentleness.

“You have a tattoo,” he says softly, voice rough from sleep or this moment sizzling between us. I’m not sure which.

I glance down at the cursive ink just beneath my breasts and over my ribs. My skin feels so alive beneath his touch I expect to see the ink move and dance under his fingers.

“My soul to keep?” He pulls his eyes from the script back up to me. “What’s that?”

“Um, it’s part of a prayer my mom used to say with me before I’d go to sleep.” His drags his knuckles over the skin, and I have to dedicate half my neurons to not wrapping myself around him like a koala. “You know that prayer they teach you as kids.”

“Nah, we didn’t learn any prayers as kids. Ever.”

“Not even grace?”

“No, my family’s not religious at all. Unless you count music as our religion. That, we’re fanatical about.” He crosses over to the stove, giving me back some space and air to breathe, and starts dividing the eggs between two plates. “Your family was religious?”

“Well, it’s small-town Georgia, the Bible belt and all, so that’s the rule, not the exception.” I sit down at the table, composing myself and saying a quick grace, something I haven’t done in a long time. My sagging faith would disappoint Mama.

“My grandfather was a pastor.” I sip my orange juice before continuing. “He and my Grams couldn’t have kids. They’d tried their whole marriage and were in their forties when they took that mission trip to Korea.”

“That’s cool.”

“Yeah.” Memories of my grandparents make me smile. “They were something else. Pops, that’s what I called my grandfather, said they took one look at Mama and knew she was theirs. Come to think of it, he said the same thing about Grammy.”

“That’s amazing.” He props one elbow on the table and holds his chin, eyes never leaving mine. “Just knowing you want someone right away like that.”

The way he looks at me as if nothing else in the room interests him at all is addictive. I know because I want it all the time now.

“Yep.” A laugh breezes across my lips as I drag my fork uselessly through the eggs on my plate. “Mama was just two days old when they found her. So yeah, she grew up a PK, a pastor’s kid.”

“And she kept the whole religion thing going with you?”

“Her faith was strong. Mine, not as much anymore. She married a pastor too.” My fork clatters on the plate when I drop it abruptly. “My father took over the church, Glory Falls Baptist, when Pops retired.”

“You talk about your mom all the time, but I’ve never heard you talk about your dad.”

“Let’s just say you don’t have the market cornered on the bad dad thing.”

Rhyson lifts his eyebrows and bends his head to that angle that silently encourages me to go on. I swallow the painful lump that always forms when I think about my father.

“My dad left when I was eight. He ran off with the church secretary without a word, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Asshole.”

I smile at the fierceness of his tone. The hard lines of his face soften only when mine do.

“My sentiments exactly.”

“His loss, Kai.”

I wish it were that simple. When a man leaves his family, there is a lot he loses out on, but it goes all ways. The wife who cried herself to sleep for months after he left, she suffered losses. The little girl who always looked up the dirt road every birthday, half wondering if he’d show—she lost too. She becomes lost. Sometimes she stays lost for a long time.

I gather our dishes and scrape the remnants down the garbage disposal. Once the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher, I turn back to find him staring at my bikini top.

“Should I change?”

“Huh? What?”

“I was gonna throw a T-shirt on top of the bikini. I wasn’t sure if it would be warm enough to swim, but thought I should be prepared.”

“Um, yeah. Good idea. I have some clothes out in the car. Lemme shower and we’ll get on the road.”

“Rhyson.”

My voice stops him, and he turns around.

“Thanks for last night.” I twist my fingers together in front of me. “I didn’t want to be alone, and with San in Vegas . . . well, thanks.”

“And how do you repay me?” he asks, eyes teasing me. “By force feeding me hours of Sex and the City. You owe me big time for that one, Pep.”

“Oh, don’t even try it,” I fire back, needing this lighter conversation to chase away my father’s ghost. “You loved it.”

“What do you see in that show?”

“Female empowerment. Strong, successful, independent women.”

“And the clothes don’t hurt, right?”

“Oh, I do love everything Carrie wears, especially her nameplate necklace.”

“Yeah, feminism and Manolos.” Rhyson’s mobile mouth smirks. “Spare me.”

“I know you stayed up and watched another episode after I fell asleep.”

“If you fell asleep, how do you know that?”

“I’m a light sleeper.”

“So am I, Kai.” A smile takes its sweet time spreading across his face. “You might want to remember that.”

He couldn’t have . . . surely he wasn’t aware . . . awake when I was cuddling and near-humping him earlier on the couch. He touched my nipple. My face burns, but I give no indication I have any idea what he’s talking about. I hold his stare for as long as I can before I have to look away. When he looks at me like that, I don’t know how to describe it except to say that his eyes speak. All the things I won’t let him say, his eyes do. And it’s too much sometimes, because there is so much I want to say in return.

With every conversation, he peels away another protective layer, coaxing me to reveal more of myself. To share more of myself, and I know it’s the same for him. I’m not sure how much longer we can go on with this intimacy blooming between us like a hothouse flower. I only know that I feel more alive than I have since Mama died. I don’t want to give him up. And that dependency, that is the very thing I’ve always feared the most.

WE’RE JUST A FEW WEEKS FROM Halloween. Back in Glory Falls, Aunt Ruthie’s probably making sure there’s plenty of firewood for cold nights. She’s serving hot cider to the morning crowd. Not mint cider. We save that for Christmas. By now, there’s a nip in Glory Falls’ autumn air that would make me pull my scarf closer and huddle into the light jacket I grabbed “just in case” before I left the house. We don’t get the variety of seasons as much on the left coast, and I miss it some days. But today, standing in eighty-degree weather in a bikini and cut offs with the sun suspended high in the sky, warming the bare skin of my shoulders and neck, today isn’t one of those days.

I’ve been working too hard. I can tell because my body and my mind soak up rest like water in a desert. Like it’s a mirage that might disappear any moment. On the two-hour . . . correction, almost three-hour . . . drive to Pismo Beach, I fell asleep. Rhyson’s deep voice was a lullaby, making a sleepy song of all the goings on in his life. His semi-addiction to Madden, his growing irritation with the details for the upcoming world tour, this group of musicians he has flown in from all over the world for sessions this week. It’s hard to believe the public sees him as broody and almost reclusive. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen firsthand how the guy wears disguises so he can go out in public undisturbed, but with me, he’s open and downright chatty.

He’s living the life I want so badly, and instead of listening with bated breath and sitting on the edge of my seat, exhaustion forces me to sleep. He wakes me up with his thumb whispering across my cheekbone. His eyes and his smile hold so much affection it makes my heart ache. Soon he’ll stop pretending with me. He wants out of the friend zone. It’s apparent, but I had my reasons for putting him there in the first place, and they still stand.

“We’re here, sleepyhead.” He pushes strands of hair back behind my ear. “Should I be offended that you fell asleep on me?”

I subtly pull back from his fingers, and his smile slips a little. It’s hard not to give him what he wants. It’s even harder to consider giving up our friendship though, so I’ll just let this go for as long as I can. I’m so selfish, but I can’t imagine my life without him now. By the same token, I can’t imagine risking my peace of mind, my independence, or my focus for the kisses I know we both crave. Well, I know I crave. I can only speak for myself, but Rhyson isn’t great at hiding what he wants either.

Once we’re out on the beach, I find myself grinning hard. There’s nothing but sand and ocean as far as the eye can see. Instead of renting from a public spot where he’d be spotted and stalked, Rhyson’s had the spot come to him. It’s just us and the dune buggy, this contraption made of fluorescent green metal bars, oversized wheels, and testosterone. It’s one of the larger ones, with an open top and two seats. Rhyson practically bounces even though he stands perfectly still, listening to the guy making sure we’re ready for the ride. The energy he’s emitting draws me in and has me bouncing inside too. When the guide moves to place the helmet on my head, Rhyson snatches it from his hands.

“I’ll do it.” Rhyson frowns and puts the helmet on, tightening the strap under my chin.

I can’t help but smile. If he ever got out of that friend zone—not that I plan to let that happen any time soon—he’d be a possessive handful. I can already tell.

“What are you grinning about?” He grins back at me as he puts on his own helmet.

“You, acting like that guy was trying to cop a feel or something.” I recreate his frown and imitate his gravelly voice. “I’ll do it.”

“He was flirting with you the whole time. You didn’t notice?”

“No, I really didn’t.”

He rolls his eyes and says, “Figures,” under his breath.

“Are you one of those jealous, possessive boyfriends?”

I’m a foolhardy idiot for asking him. I’m baiting a shark with a baby worm, but I want to know how he is when he’s off the friend leash.

“I’ve only ever had one girlfriend.” He walks over to the dune buggy and leans against the frame, nodding his head for me to get in. “And, no, I wasn’t jealous at all.”

That’s not possible, right? Rhyson’s twenty-eight years old.

“One girlfriend ever?” I buckle in and wait for him to do the same.

“Yeah, I was seventeen, and she cheated on me, like Carrie cheated on Aiden.”

“I knew you were watching!” I point an I-told-you-so finger at him. “Admit it. You loved Sex and the City.”

“Love is a strong word.” Rhyson rolls his eyes. “But Carrie did Aiden dirty, and that whole thing with Big was just a train wreck.”

“So, is that what happened with you and her? A train wreck?”

“She cheated with a supposed friend of mine, so it was kind of a train wreck.” Rhyson shrugs. “I don’t know that I was even really that hurt. Our parents wanted us together. It was just . . . messy. That was enough for me. I decided I just wanted to fuck, and I’ve never looked back.”

He challenges me with that look that reminds me that if all I want is to be one of the boys, he’ll talk to me like one. I prefer his frankness though. It’s one of the things I love about our tenuous arrangement.

“I’m just surprised, I guess, that there hasn’t been anyone you’ve wanted more with,” I say as we settle into our seats.

“Believe me, most girls are fine with just fucking as long as they get what they want.”

“And what do they want?”

“Damned if I know.” He adjusts the helmet on his head and turns a few knobs before giving me one last grin and gunning the engine. “Apparently just to sleep with a rock star since that’s all they ever get from me.”

Anger stirs in my chest and tightens my lips. I’d like to meet all these girls who were fine with “just fucking” Rhyson. Who are these nameless, faceless bimbos who have jaded him so much? And who was the adolescent idiot who at seventeen made him feel this was all he needed? If he did get off that leash, is that all he would want from me?

“Hey, you gonna fall asleep on me again?” Rhyson raises his voice over the revving engine, jarring me from my wayward thoughts.

“No. Sorry.”

“I’ll forgive you if you say yes to what I’m about to ask.”

I wasn’t born yesterday at ten o’clock. I’d never agree to anything Rhyson proposes sight unseen.

“Yes to what?”

“Yes, you’ll go with me to a birthday party next week when I get back from New York.”

“We’ll have to see about . . .” I frown as I process two things at once. “When do you leave for New York?”

“Wednesday. I’m there for a few days. I’m doing Fallon and some more session stuff for the new album.” The look he gives me is half teasing, half earnest. “You gonna miss me when I’m gone?”

“Sure.” I grin at him. “You think I like taking the bus?”

“Nice. That’s all I’m good for, huh? Transportation?”

“Girl’s gotta get around.”

“So will you come or not?” he persists. “It’s a private party. Just some friends at a bowling alley.”

I never know what Rhyson’s up to. This party at a bowling alley with “just some friends” has me intrigued.

“We’ll see.” I brace my hands against the dashboard as if ready for a crash. “Now are we gonna chew the fat all day, or you gonna drive this thing?”

My curiosity, my worries about medical bills, my fatigue from working like an indentured servant, all blow back and off my shoulders once we’re speeding across this vast stretch of sand butting up against the ocean. My stomach rises and falls when Rhyson races over hills. The Pacific, the sand, the birds meandering over the horizon—it’s all a beautiful blur zipping by. The only thing in clear focus is Rhyson and me in this niche of space and time, sailing over dunes.

And joy! This joy starts as a kernel in some long-neglected corner of my heart, and it burgeons with every second of freedom this ride offers. Before I know it, a laugh breaks free from my chest and spills all around us. My arms stretch wide and high over my head. Even though I’m strapped in, I’m flying. I’m propelled by this great joy forward, up, high! And Rhyson is right there with me, laughing and throwing his head back, as free as I am.

How long we ride, I don’t care and I don’t know. How long will I remember this gorgeous day with this gorgeous man? And this rediscovered joy that I thought maybe was lost?

Forever. I’ll remember it all forever.