Chapter 11
Exhausted, I top off my glass of wine, walk out into the backyard, and sit down on the chaise longue. I sink into the warm summer air, face up to the fading sun, and close my eyes. Then I let the emotions that have been warring inside me during the past week wash over me. I keep my eyes closed but lift my wine to my lips and drink the tart liquid as the tears well behind my lids.
I think of my sweet Maddie girl and how she cried and clung onto my neck earlier when I dropped her off at home. I think of the what-ifs and never-gonna-bes for her, and I’m filled with such melancholy that it’s easier to just sit here in the warm summer night with the light dwindling and the sound of kids playing beyond the fence than to go inside and face the silence.
Because in the silence, doubts creep in, memories come, and need swelters.
So instead, I sit and enjoy the sounds of life around me beyond my fenced in backyard and think what a metaphorically sad description that is of me and my heart. The wine goes down too easy, and with the comfortable warmth sliding over my skin, I slowly drift off, succumbing to the grueling aspects of my week.
I jolt awake when my wineglass is taken from my hand. I’m immediately startled, but when I snap my groggy eyes open, Dante is sitting on the side of my chair and has placed my empty glass on the table beside me. His gray eyes hold mine, and he appears both concerned and amused at my midevening nap in the backyard.
“Hey,” he says softly, his hand moving to the side of my face. My body freezes at the graze of his callused fingertips against the line of my jaw, but my heart races. I tell myself that my pulse is pounding because of being startled awake, but the simmer in my lower belly puts my cards on the table.
I rub my lips together, stalling for time to figure out what I’m thinking, what to say, but just end up staring at Dante, trying to get a read on the look in his eyes. “Hey, you okay?” I finally manage to ask.
I watch the muscle in his jaw tic and feel the tensing of his fingers, and then just as soon as I see something flicker in his eyes, it’s gone. “Yeah, I’m just not used to seeing you so sad.” He angles his head to the side for a moment. “You’re not my firecracker that I’m used to.”
I take in his hair curling over the collar of his T-shirt, and the goatee on his handsome face. When he rubs his thumb absently over my bottom lip, I sit up immediately, despite his hand still resting on the crook of my neck. The air between us shifts suddenly, and I need to put this back into comfortable territory for me.
“I watched Lex die. That kind of changes you, you know?” And I know he knows, know that he held his grandfather’s hand as he passed on from cancer too, but that was over fifteen years ago. My sister’s death feels like it happened yesterday.
He nods his head in understanding as his free hand moves from the cushion to the bare skin of my thigh, his eyes never leaving mine. Warning bells go off in my head, but I can’t figure out what is louder: the alarm or the desire. I work to swallow as his thumb rubs concentric circles up my inner thigh to the hem of my shorts.
“What are you doing, Dante?” My voice is barely audible, my warning lost in the exhale of breath that comes with it. I know I told him no sex, to not even go there … but at the same time, I’m so needy right now, so desperate to forget again.
The problem is, this time it’s not Lex I’m trying to forget.
It’s Becks.
And the flickering thoughts of forevers and tomorrows that I most definitely don’t want. Will not allow myself to have.
“You know Lexi wouldn’t want you to stop living. She’d hate that you have.” He begins to lean in, and I feel my eyes narrowing and my breath hitching as he gets closer.
“Dante …”
I know I should stop him, know I should push him away, but the minute his lips touch mine and his taste hits my tongue, I feel alive again. And I push all of the objections from my head—the ones that scream a warning about the devastation I know he can have on my heart once he gets ahold of it—and let myself fall under his spell. I want to lose myself, and the headiness I feel from his touch, his body, and his dominance doesn’t allow me to think.
Make me numb, Dante.
Right now, I just want to be taken. Transported away from my thoughts and my questions and my insecurities. And I try to lose myself in the physicality of it all to convince myself that I want this—to be pushed to the brink so hard and fast so that I can forget everything I don’t want and remind myself that this is enough for me. Will be enough for me. That this is the way I choose to live my life.
Sex with someone who wants nothing more. Someone who will be out of my life just as quickly as he came into it.
That’s safe. That’s what I can accept.
“No, no, no!” I stop Dante by pressing my hands against his very firm and tempting chest, forcing him back so that his lips tear from mine. I can’t do it. Can’t lose myself in Dante when Becks is the one I really want.
Dante stares at me, jaw clenched in frustration, eyes telling me he wants me. “Yes, you do,” he murmurs. “I can help you forget, Haddie. Make you feel alive.”
My body and heart have two different mind-sets, but I keep him at arm’s length as I try to calm myself down. He angles his head, his eyes holding mine until they glance down to where his fingers begin to untie the laced ribbon crisscrossing the cleavage portion of my shirt.
… but you’re going to find yourself all tangled up in those dangling ends you refuse to tie …
Becks’s words hit my ears again. Pull me back from the brink of making a huge mistake. Make me think of him when all I was trying to do was use Dante to forget about him.
“No!” I tell him with more determination.
Dante leans forward against my palms, his fingers untying one more lace. “C’mon, babe, you want me as much as I want you.”
I keep my hands up in defense as my heart and head win over the control of my body. I give one final shove against him and turn so that my legs fall over the opposite side of the lounger from where he is sitting, his hands still on my body. I shrug out of his touch and shove myself up out of the chair and start walking toward the house.
“Such a fucking tease.”
I hear his snide comment from behind me, and I falter in my footsteps, fingers on the handle of the sliding-glass door. “Make sure you taste your words, Dante, before you spit them back out.”
I start to tug on the door, anger firing in my veins at him, at me, at who the hell knows? “Now you’re just playing hard to get, babe. You know how hard that makes me,” he says, his voice close behind me, “and I do know you like it nice and hard.”
And Dante’s words should turn me on, but they don’t. They make me cringe, make me think of Becks—and how much more tempting the comment was from him instead. Jesus Christ. Why won’t he leave my thoughts?
“Touch me again and you’ll have to find a new place to stay,” I say with my back to him as I walk into the house.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” he asks with a chuckle.
“It’s a fact,” I shout back to him as I enter my bedroom and slam my door shut. And I just stand there. My hands fisted and my mind humming with confusion. Hell yes, I’m mad at Dante, but I think I’m mad at myself more than anything.
When did I become this woman who uses men to forget other men? I mean how fucked-up is that? Not that it’s right, but using sex—being a little festive—to help forget the grief of Lexi’s death is one thing, but to use it to forget another man? That’s taking it a bit too far even for my own standards.
I begin to walk to the bathroom and then turn abruptly and pick up my cell phone. I just need to hear her voice. That’s it. A little something to help me get a grip on my reality and remind me of that woman I used to be. Sassy and spunky. Not this whiny shadow of myself that I don’t even like.
I can’t seem to find and hold on to myself anymore.
Except for when I hear her voice.
Or that one night with Becks.