“Thanks. I’m starving,” I said, forcing those three words out like they were near impossible to form. Hoping she took my asshattedness for hunger—for food—I took the bag and turned toward the table to hide the way my jaw steeled, fighting to bring my body under control. That was the moment I realized I hadn’t gotten laid in two weeks. No, more than two weeks—a month, maybe. I could have blamed the lack on being too busy or too tired to bother—God knows I was both—but what kind of loser is too busy to fuck? I’d go drown myself in the goddamned gulf first.
I hadn’t even been attracted to anyone since I’d realized Pearl was coming home. That was the only explanation, whether I liked it or not. It didn’t matter if I could probably go to bed right now and sleep ten hours straight. My body was more than willing to man up and perform like a superhero first—if I was fucking the girl who was currently pulling milkshakes out of a drink holder and setting them on the table right next to me.
My fingers itched to touch her. I’d barely stopped to eat all day and was starving, but her scent—oranges and flowers and a trace of saltiness, as if part of her belonged to the ocean she loved even though it had tried to kill her—was more potent than the smell of the food on the table. She peeked under both milkshake lids before leaning to place one at my spot. Leaning over the damned table to place it at my spot. My hands curled into fists, unable to look away from her perfect ass in those shorts and the sliver of warm bronze skin at her lower back when she stretched farther and her tank rose.
Hunger flared through me, a greedy flash fire of lust. I wanted to run my palms down her arms from her slim shoulders to her small hands, flattening them against the table in silent command. I would skim my hands beneath the front of that snug top, fill them with her soft tits. I would bury my face in the curve of her shoulder, inhaling her tangy sweetness. I would lap the tip of my tongue along the side of her neck, feel her pulse accelerate beneath her skin, suck her earlobe into my mouth and tug it with my teeth. When she leaned back against me, I would rush to untie, unbutton, unzip, tear open those little shorts and shove them down her legs, along with the lacy underwear my imagination conjured. Fingers sliding down her belly, I would slip one into her, adding another once she was soaking wet and her arms began to tremble. And then, fingering her with one hand while I unzipped my jeans and freed my ravenous cock with the other, I would whisper the words I’ve wanted to say to her for four years.
“Crap. They didn’t give us any ketchup,” she said, setting two huge burgers wrapped in greasy yellow paper at my spot and one at hers, flattening the bag and upending an extra-large box of fries onto it. “Do you have some?”
She turned, her head angling at whatever lunacy she saw on my face, and I struggled to understand the simple words she’d just spoken over the gradually fading vision in my head. Without replying, I twisted for the fridge, pulling it open and leaning into the cold. Fuck. I was acting like a grade-A jackhole, and I couldn’t make it stop.
I just wanted her so bad. Still.
Pearl
The expression on Boyce’s face before he turned to yank the refrigerator door open was furious—jaw rigid, eyes sharp as broken glass—and I had no idea why. He couldn’t be angry that I’d brought him food? Maybe he’d reconsidered my idea for burying his dad’s ashes on the sandbar. He’d claimed he couldn’t have any closure, like it was an unattainable thing, but I’d hoped he was wrong. I’d hoped to help him find it.
Now I wasn’t so sure he could find closure. Wasn’t so sure I was the one to help him look.
I gripped the back of the chair, unable to shift my eyes from the broad, defined muscles of his shoulders and the vee of his back, flexing just outside the confines of his ribbed gray tank. His short hair was dark, damp. He must have showered right before I arrived.
“I figured you might be hungry, so I got you two burgers,” I said.
He turned back to me after a strained, silent moment, a ketchup bottle in his hand. “You figured right.” The anger—or what I’d thought was anger—was gone. In its place was raw hunger.
“Let’s eat then.” I took the bottle from his hand and smiled up at him.
He nodded once, more of a jerk of his head than a gesture of affirmation, and stepped around me to sit at the table. He worked hard six days a week, both manual labor and dealing with clients directly. I recalled how exhausted Mama used to be when she’d worked long hours at the pediatric office she managed. By the time she’d pick me up from afterschool care, she was often irritable from masking her annoyance all day. She’d tell me that working with the public was sometimes more taxing than the manual labor she’d done when she first arrived in the U.S.
“Sinks and floors and toilets don’t snap at you for politely requesting a co-pay,” she’d say, hands clenched on the steering wheel. “They don’t insist on seeing a doctor immediately when they show up late, or let their children wipe their snotty noses on the chair cushions in the waiting room.”
Boyce unwrapped a burger and took a huge bite, his eyes closing like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten. His shoulders lowered just a smidge. He inhaled a long, deep breath through his nose and let it out just as slowly.
“Good?” I asked unnecessarily.
Still chewing, he opened his eyes and nodded, releasing a sighed, “Mmmm.”
I compressed my lips to conceal my smug grin at having tamed the beast prowling inside him when I arrived. He smiled back, eyes crinkling at the corners, reading me like my analysis of him had been scrawled across my forehead. His insight was simultaneously comforting and unsettling. For most of my life, Boyce Wynn’s smile had been three things to me: safety, warmth, and home, even as that same smile made my heart throb with longing for some shadowed, unreachable thing.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Four years ago
“Just a minute,” I mumbled from the top of the staircase—as if whoever was standing outside pressing the doorbell could hear me. I wasn’t hungover, but I was groggy from lack of sleep. I’d lain awake half the night wondering why Boyce and Landon hadn’t shown and wishing Mel and I had just stayed on the beach with them.
I veered around a girl snoring on the steps, recognizing Shania Fowler, who’d been on the dance squad with Mel and me. Arms folded beneath her face, she made falling asleep in the middle of someone’s staircase look like a perfectly natural thing to do.
I heard the front door open just before Boyce Wynn’s ticked-off voice echoed in the foyer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I hurried down the last few steps to see him leveling a homicidal glare at Rick Thompson, who—the hell?—had just answered my front door.
“Jesus, Wynn, come in or go the fuck away, but shut the damned door.” Rick’s hand shielded his eyes from the glare outside as he backed away from Boyce. “I’m not ready for daylight.”
Boyce slammed the solid mahogany door shut, rattling framed prints hanging near the door. He noticed me over Rick’s shoulder at the same time.