Текст книги "After This Night"

Автор книги: Lauren Blakely

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

“If only this were as simple as French fries,” she said as they stepped out onto his floor. “But you can help me pack.”

“Then I will gladly help you pack,” he said, and together they went upstairs, both like beaten-down ragdolls, listless when they should have been joyful. They didn’t speak as she gathered her lotion, shampoo and makeup from the bathroom, dropping them into a plastic bag, and layering that on top of her clothes. Maybe there was nothing more to say. The time for words had passed. This wasn’t about arguments, or trying to convince someone you were right or wrong. This was about whether she’d listen to her heart or her head, and what both had to tell her.

“So what happens, Julia?” he asked as he zipped her bag. “Are you coming back?”

She met his eyes, the sadness in hers reflected back. “I want to, but I really need to think about everything now. I need a solid week apart. No contact. To make sure I’m not making a mistake. It’s easy for you if this doesn’t work out. You’re not giving up anything. I’m changing everything.”

“And I would never take that or you for granted. I promise, I will cherish you, as I already do. Will you let me buy you a ticket to return?”

“You are free to do whatever you want, but I need to be certain that this is right for me. So I can’t promise you I’m going to use it. This has been a crazy weekend, from the game, to things ending with Charlie, to you and me. You hurt me, and I need to go home and take some time alone to make sure I’m not being foolish again, Clay.”

“You’re not,” he said, reaching for her hand, clasping it in his. Oh, how she wanted to fall into his arms. Those strong sturdy arms that had protected her, fought for her, held her. But this wasn’t about him. It was about her, and whether she could let herself turn so much of her life, and her heart, and her home, over to someone else again. “I swear.”

“You asked me to move my life across the country for you and I said yes in a heartbeat. Because I love you. And the whole time you were hiding something from me. And that something makes me feel like a fool,” she said, whispering the last words like a eulogy.

To her, it was the worst name in the world she could call herself. Because she’d been there. Oh, had she been there.

* * *

A little while later, she walked to the door, down the stairs, and to the waiting town car that would whisk her to the airport. He’d offered to ride with her but she’d declined, saying it would be too tempting, and she needed not to be tempted in that way.

He held onto that sentiment like a fragile glass globe of hope, clutching it for several minutes on the way downstairs. But then, he knew better. They’d always been good together physically. What was happening between them now was no longer about chemistry. It was about trust, and she needed to know he was a man of his word in all matters. There was no room for anything less. He had to keep all his promises to her, the big ones and the small ones. Life was rarely about the big things; it was usually about the impact—the potentially damaging impact—of the little things.

After the driver stowed her bags in the trunk, Clay reached for her, pulling her in close. She tucked her face in the crook of his neck, her breasts pressed against his chest. He could feel her heart beating against him and he could have stayed there all day. As she broke the embrace, she cupped his cheek with one hand, a soft fingertip tracing his jaw, sending tremors like quicksilver through his body. He would miss her touch; he would miss all of her.

She stood on tiptoes, brushing her soft lips against his, lingering slowly on his mouth. The kind of kiss that stays with you for days. The kind of kiss you never forget.

Because of how it tastes.

Like goodbye.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

He clicked on the flight tracker, and watched the black arrow snake across the Midwest. He dropped his head in his hand, and looked back up minutes later, as if the computer would tell him something. As if she’d appear on some futuristic TV screen from the plane, waving, saying he was forgiven.

“It’s okay. I know you were just so caught up in loving me that you forgot to tell me,” she’d say with a twinkle in her green eyes, then a pretty wink. She’d press her soft lips against the screen and blow him a kiss. “I’ll be back,” she’d say and the screen would crackle out, like static, fading to black, but everything would be okay and she’d return to him.

Instead, his life was up in the air. Because he’d been an ass. He’d been scared, wanting to secure his future before he faced his present. He, of all people, should have known better. You don’t ask someone to sign until you give them all the facts, and spell out the terms. He’d gone about it the wrong way, thinking that by asking her to move in first, he’d be able to keep her without reservation. But you don’t get the girl until you’ve gotten the girl. And even then you have to put in the effort every single day to keep her. You don’t win before you’ve won. You keep playing, and fighting for love every day.

He reached for the screen, running his index finger across the cartoonish line of her airplane, scurrying her back to San Francisco. Was she sleeping on the plane? Watching a movie? Having a drink? Vodka on the rocks, probably.

Wait.

If she was drinking, it was whiskey.

Whiskey for loneliness.

But then, maybe she wasn’t lonely, he figured as he shut his laptop and made his way to the kitchen, opening the cabinet. Maybe she was happy, and toasting with champagne to better days without him. Chatting it up with the random stranger next to her in seat 2B. Sharing her story. Telling the stranger about what an ass Clay had been. They would laugh at him, and he deserved it. Maybe he didn’t deserve anything but to have lost her this way.

This foolish way.

He should have taken the chance, and told her when it happened with Charlie’s change-up, rather than waiting. Waiting never did anyone any good. When you waited, the world passed you by. Life passed you by. And the love of your life flew in the dark of night over the country, stretching the distance between you to so much more than three thousand miles.

He left the kitchen and opened the door to his balcony, walked to the railing, and stared at the city as he finished his glass, the liquor burning his throat as he wanted it to.

They should have spent those precious last few hours tangled up together. Or having lunch together. Or shopping together. He wasn’t even fond of shopping, but he’d have happily taken her anywhere, letting her pick out the towels she wanted, the new bench for the balcony. Hell, she could redecorate the whole house from stem to stern, any way she wanted. They’ve have shopped, and then wandered through the neighborhood, his arm around her, discovering the places in the Village that would become theirs: a cafe here, a store there. He’d have gotten her worked up at lunch, touching her legs under the table, slipping his fingers under her skirt, driving her so wild he’d have had to pull her into the restroom at a cafe and fuck her against the wall, her legs wrapped around him, certain that she’d be returning to live with him.

Instead, he was left with this loneliness that could have been avoided with a few simple words spoken hours before.

Avoided with the truth.

He held up his glass, cocked his arm, and considered chucking it five stories down to the street below. Cabs and cars streaked by on a Sunday night, and soft jazz music floated up from a few floors below him. Some kind of melancholy John Coltrane song that might as well have been ordered up for him by the gods of regret.

Maybe that’s what whiskey was good for. Maybe whiskey was best for regret, because that was all Clay could taste tonight.

He lowered his arm, the glass still in his hand. He wasn’t going to make a mess for someone else. He’d somehow have to find a way to clean up the mess he’d made of this love.

He left the balcony, closing the door behind him as if he could seal shut the memories of all they’d done there. But he couldn’t. She was everywhere in his home. She was naked on his couch. She was undressing on his stairs. She was laughing joyfully over a gift in his kitchen. She was dancing in his bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully on his bed. She was giving him her most vulnerable yes in the bathroom, telling him she’d leave her life in San Francisco for him.

Like a ghost shadowing him, she was everywhere and nowhere.

He returned to the kitchen, dropping the glass into the sink. Turning around, he reached for the whiskey bottle, and tucked it back into the cabinet. But the bottle rattled. He steadied it quickly, then peered in the cupboard to see what had knocked it off-kilter.

An envelope.

He took the envelope, fat and stuffed. His name was on the front, and his stomach dropped when he read the words: “This belongs to you. Thank you for the loan. I always pay back my debts.”

But there was no xoxo. No secret message to decode that would reassure him she’d be coming back. There was only money, all ten thousand dollars that she’d won, and he’d lost.

* * *

The next day he wasn’t any wiser as to whether she’d be returning. He hadn’t heard from her: no emails, no calls, only a text to say she’d landed safely. He took some small solace in the safety update, but it truly wasn’t enough for him. He wanted all of her. He needed all of her. And he had virtually none.

He’d zombied his way through the day, grateful that the Pinkertons had signed on the dotted line after the emergency soothe session the day before. Warding off that near-fiasco had given him the mental space to manage the bare minimum he needed to get through the contracts and phone calls on his agenda.

He emailed her the ticket back to New York. He’d booked it for two weeks from now, hoping that was fair—a week apart, a week to plan. She replied with a thank you.

He checked countless times for messages from her. Each time he’d come up empty.

He scrolled through his emails on the subway home just to make sure he hadn’t missed one from her.

After a workout at his boxing gym that left his shoulders sore and his body tired, he still was no closer to knowing whether she was going to need those fluffy towels or not.

The time without her was like a black hole, a vacuum that gnawed away at him. He’d subtract a few years from his life simply for a note that gave him some sense of which way she was leaning. Something, anything to hold onto, to give him purchase. How had it only been twenty-four hours when it felt like a fucking year?

But that was what love does. It changes your perception of everything, of your own capacity for pain, for hope, and most of all—your perception of time. Because now, time was measured by her, by her presence, by her absence, and his relentless desire for her yes.

He checked his phone once more on the way home from the gym, like an addict. He was going to wear a hole through the screen with his thumbprint from all the times he’d swiped it. He needed company; he needed someone. He showered and headed uptown, reasoning that if he wasn’t going to find an answer from her, he could at least ask questions of someone else.

When he arrived at the building off Park Avenue with the green awning, the doorman buzzed her apartment. “You have a visitor. Clay Nichols is here to see you,” the man said, then paused. “Very well.”

He hung up.

“She said to come on up,” the doorman said, gesturing to the elevator.

Clay hadn’t been here in a long time. He hadn’t needed to. Now, he did.

When Michele opened the door, she was wearing a tank top and slim jeans, her hair pulled into a high ponytail, showing off her neck.

A neck that he’d once kissed.

He didn’t mince words, or bother with preambles.

“Are you in love with me?” he asked as he walked inside.

“I have been for years,” she said, as the door closed behind them.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“I’ve been thinking of new names for cocktails. Well, Craig and I have,” Kim offered during a lull in the crowds on Monday night.

“Yeah? Do tell.”

“We came up with a whole list of great names while you were out of town.”

“Your hubs is usurping my spot as a partner-in-crime?” Julia asked, resting a hip along the bar as she wiped down glasses.

“Ha. Hardly. But he does like to name drinks. Here’s what we’ve got. A shot called the Long, Hard Night. A stiff drink called the One Night Stand. And a variation on the lemon drop martini that we called Lemon Drop Your Panties,” Kim said, and the edges of Julia’s lips lifted in a smile.

“Great names,” she said, then looked away from Kim because all of them—every single one—reminded her of Clay. He’d been her One Night Stand, her Long, Hard Night, and she’d dropped her panties countless times for him. Every time, he’d risen—no pun intended—to the challenge, stripping her down to the bare essentials of pleasure and desire, and somehow all that desire had morphed into so much more. Into a mad and passionate love. The kind of love that thundered down the road with wild hoofbeats after midnight. Desperate, reckless, and headfirst.

That was the problem. She needed to pull back and analyze. To think. To consider. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“Has Craig ever lied to you about something because he thought it was for the best?”

Kim shot her a quizzical look. “Well, how would I know?”

“I mean something he eventually ‘fessed up to,” she added.

“Ah, gotcha,” Kim said, scrunching up her forehead as she considered the question. Then she thrust her finger in the air. “Yes! He used to tell me he loved my pot roast when we were first dating, and it turned out he really thought it was dry and stringy.”

Julia laughed. “Tell the truth, Kim. Is your pot roast dry and stringy?”

Kim threw back her head and chuckled. “Evidently, I make the worst pot roast in the entire universe. It’s that bad. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Now if he ever bugs me by leaving his dirty socks on the floor, or failing to put the toilet seat down, I just threaten him with my pot roast. Keeps that man in line,” she said, straightening her spine like a drill sergeant issuing orders.

A pair of young men in suits sidled up to the bar and Kim turned her attention to them. Julia’s mind stayed put on Kim’s story and how it had a happy ending. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? A happy ending? But was a pot-roast fib the same as an omission of the truth?

She didn’t know, and wasn’t sure how to arrive at an answer. Her brain had grown cloudier in the last twenty-four hours, fuzzier with the distance. Had she overreacted? Been too quick to anger? She was a hot-tempered woman. She knew that about herself. But she valued independence more than anything. Even more than love. If she were to give up her independence, her job, her bar, her home, her sister, even her hairdresser, she had to know with the same clarity she had about how to make a kick-ass cocktail that uprooting her whole damn life—like she were picking up a carpet and shaking everything off it, come what may—was as right as right could be.

Come what may.

That was the real risk, wasn’t it? Charging headfirst into the great unknown. Throwing away the self-protective armor she’d built since Dillon’s betrayal, and shedding all her fiery independence for a chance that could flame out and fade away. Living in close quarters could turn the two of them—two strong-willed, stubborn, controlling people—into a collision course for disaster.

Or they could become better together, come what may.

“Hey Kim,” Julia called out as her co-worker deposited the drinks to the customers. “I just thought of another name for a drink. Come What May.”

“What’s in it?”

“Something risky. Something that makes you want to take a chance. What do you think?”

“I think we need to break out our beakers and start mixing,” Kim said, bumping her hip against Julia’s.

“Ouch, I think you whacked me with your gigantic belly.”

“It’s a weapon of mass destruction. Beware,” Kim said, rubbing her hands over her beach ball-sized stomach as she reached for spirits to test. “Let’s start with– ”

But Kim’s suggestion was cut short by the clearing of a throat. Julia swiveled around to the bar and spotted a familiar face. She couldn’t connect a name to the man, or why she knew him, but the older, dapper gentleman was giving her a serious case of déjà vu, and she hoped he’d alleviate it soon.

“Good evening. I was hoping to find Julia Bell,” he said, and that didn’t help her one bit. In fact, all her instincts told her that he was working for Charlie, or looking for Dillon, or somehow that she was going to be in a heap of trouble again. A fleet of nerves launched inside her, and she could feel the inklings of flight or fight kick in.

“That’s me,” she answered, calling on her best tough-chick-behind-the-saloon-bar persona.

“We met briefly before,” he began, and something about his classy voice tickled her memory. He wasn’t one of Charlie’s men after all. Charlie’s men were rougher around the edges. This man was proper and finished, like a gentlemanly professor. “And you made me the most fantastic drink I’ve ever had.”

Her lips curved up, a smile threatening to break across her face. “Was it my Purple Snow Globe?”

“Indeed it was.” He extended a hand to shake. “I’m Glen Mills, and my magazine has been running a search for the best cocktail ever.”

Julia took his hand. “And I trust you found that cocktail here at Cubic Z?”

* * *

Clay sank down onto Michele’s couch. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

She flashed a small, sad smile. “Why didn’t you ever notice?”

He held out his hands, showing they were empty. “I don’t know.”

“Did you? Notice, finally?” she asked, and her voice rose, touching some kind of hopeful note as she sat down across from him in a dove gray chair in her apartment.

He shook his head. “No. But then, lately, I haven’t been so astute at connecting the dots, in the right time or the right fashion.”

“Then how did you figure it out?” she asked, cocking her head curiously.

“I didn’t. Julia did. She mentioned it when we went outside during the game.”

Michele winced, then dropped her head in her hands. “She must hate me,” she muttered.

“No,” he said quickly, needing to reassure her. “She doesn’t hate you at all. She’s not like that. She thinks you are lovely, and smart, and funny,” he said, repeating Julia’s words from Saturday. “And I happen to agree with her.”

Michele raised her face, and rolled her eyes in self-deprecation. “Some good that did.”

“Michele,” he said gently.

She shook her head several times. “I feel like an idiot.”

“Please don’t. You’re the farthest thing from that. If anyone’s the idiot, it’s me. I didn’t have a clue.”

She managed a small laugh. “I wish I could say that’s because I was so good at hiding how I felt, but seeing as Julia noticed it instantly and you didn’t have an inkling for ten years, I’m going to have to go with you being completely blind to what’s in front of you sometimes. I just have to wonder, though, Clay, how could you not tell?”

He raised both shoulders, shrugging. “I’ve been trying to figure out how I missed it and all I can conclude is this—I care about you so deeply as a friend, and you’re Davis’s sister, and I feel like the three of us are kind of in the trenches together. Like we’ve risen up together in our jobs, and we’re this great threesome of friends somehow. I guess I only ever saw you that way.”

“Let me ask you a question then,” she said, taking a deep breath, the look in her eyes one of fierce determination. “If you’d have known how I felt, would it have made a difference anyway?”

He locked eyes with the woman he’d been friends with for so long. With his best friend’s sister. With the gal he had drinks with every Thursday night. The person he’d turned to for advice on the woman who had confused him. She was his friend, always had been, and that’s how he wanted to keep her. He shook his head, and sighed. “No,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

She held up a hand. “Please,” she said firmly. “No pity for me.”

“It’s not pity.”

“I mean it, Clay,” she said. “I’m going to be fine. I’ve been in love with you for ten fucking years, and have managed it. Now it’s time I get out of love with you.”

He sank deeper into the couch, and breathed out hard. “Why didn’t you say something, if you felt that way?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. Her mouth was set in a firm line. Then she spoke. “I think, deep down, I knew it was unrequited. That even if I told you, I knew that it wouldn’t change a thing. That whatever that kiss was about in college was all it was ever going to be, but it did a number on me.”

He tilted his head, stared at her as if she were a science project he was in the middle of constructing. “Why? From one kiss?”

“It was the kiss, but most of all, it was you. I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever met, and smart, and funny, and most of all, you had your act together. You have no idea what my days are like,” she said, with a light laugh. “I love my job. But I spend my days with a lot of messed-up people. And you’re the least fucked-up person I’ve ever known. You don’t have issues. You don’t have baggage. What you see is what you get. For someone who spends all day fixing people, I suppose I really have been longing for someone I didn’t have to fix.”

“I take it Liam isn’t doing it for you?”

“See, that’s not fair. How can you be so observant about my feelings for Liam, but so clueless about how I felt for you?”

“Pretty amazing how I can have blinders on about certain things, isn’t it?”

“I do like him . . .” she said, then let her voice trail off.

“But?”

“But, it’s hard to like someone when you’ve been focused on someone else.”

“I can understand that,” he said, since Julia was his whole world.

“You’re madly in love with Julia, aren’t you?”

“Madly doesn’t even begin to cover it. But we really don’t have to talk about her,” he said softly.

“I’m a big girl. I can handle it. Talk to me.”

“I mean it, Michele. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. You need to tell me if it upsets you if I talk about her.”

“I survived six hours of poker with you having your hands all over her, and watching that dopey look of love in your eyes the whole time,” she said, both teasing and being truthful. “I can handle talking about her. And if I can’t, I’ll let you know.”

He patted the couch. “Sit next to me.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“What, are you going to throw yourself at me? I’m strong. I’ll fight you off.”

“Oh, gee. Thanks.”

“C’mon. We’re friends, and hell if I’m letting you go over this.”

She moved off the chair and sat next to him on the couch, tentative in the way she folded her legs up under her, keeping a bit of distance. He took her hand, clasped it in his. “I need plenty of fixing. Trust me on that.”

“Okay,” she said playfully. “You need Dr. Milo again?”

“I always need Dr. Milo, but I also need you to know I think you’re an amazing, beautiful person, and you are going to make some man the happiest man on the planet, and you probably won’t need to fix him either.”

She squeezed his hand, and it felt good, comforting. Like something he didn’t want to lose. “But now you need me to fix something, don’t you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You just said you’re tired of fixing people all day. I’ll be okay.”

“I said I don’t want to fix the man I’m going to be involved with. But I think we’ve established that we’re friends. And besides, I have a feeling—call me crazy—that you might really need my help. You screwed things up with Julia, didn’t you?”

He nodded, guilt written all over his face.

“Tell me everything,” she said.

He didn’t tell her everything. He’d promised Julia to keep her secrets about her debt. But he told Michele enough about what he’d done. “So what do I do? Just wait for her to decide if she’ll move to New York for me?”

Michele nodded. “I’m afraid in this situation, patience is going to be a virtue. But I also think you need to find a way to show her that you can fix things. That when a mistake has been made, you can do more than apologize. Show her through your actions, not just your words. Show her you can fix the things that matter to her.”

And with blinding clarity, he knew what to do.