Unfixable

Chapter Twenty-One

Shane is working late tonight, thanks to a bachelor party and a thirty-person pub crawl that stopped crawling once it got to the Claymore. I waited in my room as long as I could, restlessly watching the sky darken, not sure if I should wait for him to get off or go out on my own. While the afternoon on Bull Island had started out incredible, it had left something unsaid hanging in the air between us. I don’t like it, the not knowing. Not having everything on the table. My whole life, I’ve been the queen of avoidance, but secrets between Shane and I stretch and widen with every second that ticks past. Every time we’re together it seems like we’re interminably close, but when I can’t see or touch him, he feels eons away.
Thundering laughter below my feet sends me striding across the room to snatch up my messenger bag. I just have to get out of there and think. No more pacing around in this white-lace room, trying to figure out me and Shane when the answer has been the same since the beginning.
I squeeze through bodies inside the pub, trying to keep my eyes on the door, but they unerringly stray to Shane behind the bar. Dim bar light spilling over his dark hair, he’s nodding absently at the smiling girl who’s shouting to him over the music, but he looks distracted. Like he’s already picturing himself a thousand miles from the smell of alcohol, the sloppiness of the crowds. I think of him today, how his voice had changed when he explained the mechanics of driving manually. He doesn’t belong here, taking orders. He should be giving them. Behind a steering wheel, without a single thing to hold him back.
As if he can sense my specific thoughts in the midst of hundreds, his head snaps up and he’s searching through the crowd. For me? Yes. Our eyes lock with one another’s and the bottle of vodka he’s pouring drops to the bar. He wants to come after me. I can see it. Not that it’s unusual for me to go out this late, to explore Dublin at night. But I understand the look because things are different now, aren’t they? We’ve turned into a couple, even though we weren’t supposed to. Temporarily inseparable. Mustering a smile, I wave to him and keep walking, as if there should be no questions asked about my leaving this late, without him. Really, there shouldn’t be. That’s what I keep telling myself as his eyes burn a hole into my back.
As soon as I’m outside, I take a deep, gulping breath, feeling as though I’ve been underwater for the last two minutes. My feet start moving in the direction of the park, where I know there will still be a healthy crowd even at this time of night. I want to watch other people, witness their expressions and listen to their problems, so I don’t have to think of my own. I need a distraction. I need my sister.
After walking another block, I sit down on a bench across from the Liffey and dig my phone out of my bag. Ginger answers on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.”
I close my eyes, the comfort of her voice wrapping me up like a flannel blanket. “How’s my niece? Is she cursing like a sailor yet?”
“Not an f-bomb to speak of. Truth be told, we’re starting to get worried.”
My mouth twitches. “Aw, you know us Peet girls. All in our own time.”
We’re silent for a moment, and I can hear someone singing softly in the background, presumably to Dolly. When I realize its Derek, my throat closes up. I miss them so much. I know if they were standing in front of me, they would read me like a book. They would know the right words to say, or at the very least, Ginger would feed me chicken pot pie. But they can’t fix this situation with Shane for me. I’m an adult now, I went into it with my eyes open, and I have to take the inevitable pain that comes along with it.
“You going to tell me what’s wrong, or am I supposed to guess?”
Ginger’s astuteness surprises a laugh out of me. I thought I’d been doing a decent job of sounding normal. “What’s wrong, your crystal ball is in the shop?” She says nothing and I sigh. “It’s no one.” I cringe. “I mean, it’s nothing.”
“Uh-huh. Does this no one have a penis?”
“You kiss your baby with that mouth?”
“Hmm.”
I slouch back against the bench. “Yeah, no one has a penis.”
“Now that would be a crying shame.”
I don’t need a crystal ball to know we’re both smiling, but mine eventually fades. She’s just waiting on the other end for me to talk. Dammit, I love her for that. No pressure, just patience. She hasn’t brought up Evan, or the breakup I’d taken so hard. Hasn’t asked how I’m feeling or what I’ve learned on my trip. It makes me want to tell her everything. I suspect she knows that, too. She might be patient, but my sister is no dummy. “Ginger, that first week when you met Derek…could you have walked away?”
She chokes on a laugh. “You think he would have let me?”
Excellent point. “No. But if you absolutely had to, if you knew it was best for both of you, could you have done it?”
“No.”
I wasn’t expecting her to answer so easily. “Why?”
Ginger hums in her throat, the way she does when she’s thinking. “Love comes in many forms. It’s not always sweet. Or comfortable. Sometimes it’s selfish and consuming. Volatile.” Derek’s gentle singing in the background has stopped. “It makes choices for you. It demands you obey it, not taking no for an answer. And it’s usually right. It knows you better than you know yourself.” Ginger’s voice has gone soft. It sounds like she’s sitting right beside me on the bench. “It turns you inside out. Occasionally, it hurts, but in the best way imaginable. To remind you of how powerful it is. To keep you feeling alive.” She pauses. “I could have tried to walk away, but the love would have just come with me. Above all, love is stubborn as hell.”
“Shit. Good answer,” I manage in the understatement of the year. “I was just asking for a friend, of course.”
“Of course.”
Shaking my head at myself, I search for something to change the subject. When I remember what I wanted to tell her, I slap my hand to my forehead. “Hey, get this. Our great-great-grandmother was a nun.”
“Shut. Up.”
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.” After gaining my feet, I start walking once more in the direction of the park. “I went to the Heritage Center the day you had the baby. We actually have an ancestor who saw fit to take a vow of celibacy. They gave me documentation as proof of her virgin status.”
“Good thing, because I need to see it with my own two eyes.”
“You will.” My steps falter a little. “I’ll be home next week.”
“Dolly can’t wait to meet you.” She clears her throat. “I, uh, wouldn’t mind seeing your scrawny butt either.”
“Hey, I make up for my scrawniness in attitude.”
“Amen to that.” Ginger pauses a moment. “Listen. You know I don’t like to give advice, but seeing as I’m sleep-deprived and my tits are now a twenty-four-hour feeding station, I feel like I’ve earned the right to say my piece.”
I nod, as if she can see me. “Fair enough. Shoot.”
“I get the sense that maybe you’re in a difficult spot.” Slowly, she blows out a breath. “But there will be a moment, Wip. It’ll come when you’re not looking for it, but it will smack you upside your head. You’ll realize everything is bigger than you. Already planned out like a road map. It happened to me, and I shied away because I was scared. This moment, it can be the worst of your life, or the best. Just make it your best. Let it be your best. Okay?”
I can’t speak around the lump in my throat, so I just mumble an acknowledgment. Ginger seems satisfied with that, however.
“I love you, Wip. You call me or Derek if you need anything.”
“Love you, too,” I whisper, then hang up. I walk back toward my bench and sit down. It’s the middle of the night before I stand on stiff legs and walk back toward the inn.
…
I wake up the next morning to the liquid sound of Kitty pouring tea into my cup. Weird. She usually knocks. Too tired to question the anomaly, I bury my face into the feather pillow and attempt to reenter the dream I’d been having about giant, dancing coffee makers in top hats. When my bed dips and I feel a breeze against my bare legs, I frown. A solid form presses against my back, pulling me up against it. My eyes pop open, my lips part on a gasp. That ain’t Kitty.
“Shane?”
“You were expecting another man to crawl into your bed?”
“Of course not. I keep a very strict schedule.” I suck in a breath when he starts circling a finger around my belly button. My nipples tighten, and I’m jolted into awareness of my skin. Every inch of it being cradled by the soft sheets, everywhere it presses against Shane’s warm flesh, the juncture of my thighs.
“Where did you go last night?”
“For a walk.” My eyelids flutter as he cups my breasts. “Needed some air.”
“Next time, I come with you.”
I shake my head on the pillow. “How do you know there’ll be a next t—”
Shane flips me over onto my back, mouth silencing mine in one swift, move. It’s more than an urgency to kiss me, he didn’t want me to finish what I was saying, even though it was true. There might not be another walk, another chance to take him with me. So that’s how we’re playing it? Avoidance? When his hips fit between the notch of my thighs and pushes forward, I decide I can live with that for now. As long as he doesn’t stop touching me, I can pretend just about anything.
Finally, he breaks the kiss, speaking gruffly near my ear. “Soft, warm girl. Will you let me bury myself inside you this morning?”
Those words make me moan a little, make me drop my hands to his ass and pull him closer. “You’re naked in my bed. That’s as far from a rejection as you can get.”
“I want the words.” His mouth traces a path down my naked chest. It reminds me I went to bed without clothes on. I must have expected to be woken this way. “Every time you say yes, it feels like a victory. Better than the rush of winning any race or having some trophy handed to me. Are you hearing me?”
“Yes,” I manage breathily as he draws on my nipple hard.
He lifts his head to trap me in his gaze. “Are you?”
I’m not sure what I see in his eyes, but it makes my heart trip over itself, then pound so loud I can hear it. I’m terrified of that look, of the determination behind it. No. No, I thought we were avoiding. I curl a hand around his neck and try to draw him down for a kiss, but he resists.
“At least give me my victory, Willa. Tell me I can have you.”
“I can do better than that.” I’m thankful that he seems to be letting me off the hook for now. Whatever he was trying to communicate, it’s obvious I’m not ready for it. There’s guilt, too, that I’m leaving him hanging, even if I don’t know what his change in attitude is all about. I don’t know another way to make my denial up to him, so I push him onto his back. Giving him a moment to look over my naked body above him, I lean down and drag my tongue down his chest, his belly. I grip him in my hand, stroke until he chokes my name.
Then I take him into my mouth. Remembering in vivid detail everything that drove him crazy the last time, I start slow, using gentle suction up and down his length until his fingers tighten painfully in my hair. Letting my fingernails dig into his inner thighs, just enough to make him growl, I increase the pace of my mouth.
“Use your hands…Christ…that’s how I like it. But you know that, don’t you? Know exactly how to make me go f*cking crazy.”
I purr in my throat, sending vibrations up his flesh. Last time, this move is what sent him over the edge and today is no different. His muscles tighten everywhere we’re touching, his voice goes raw. Only this time, he holds back. Before I even sense him moving, he sits up and pulls my head away from his lap. He comes up on his knees and spins me around, putting me on my hands and knees in front of him. Calloused fingers trail down my spine and smooth over my bottom, sensitizing my skin even more, making me arch my back into his hands.
Across the room, I catch sight of us in the full-length mirror. Shane’s strong frame towering over mine, the exotic position, at least to me, is so provocative and trusting that arousal twists and turns inside me. He hasn’t noticed our reflection yet, so he’s not aware that I can see his face. The way he’s looking at me traps my next breath in my lungs. It’s as though he’s savoring the moment, cherishing the sight of me waiting for him. Then he sees me watching him in the mirror across the room and lust takes over, glazing his blue eyes. Keeping his gaze on me, he slides two fingers between my legs, applying pressure right where I’m dying for it. We both bite back at the sight of him touching me, of my body’s reaction.
After reaching into his discarded jeans for a condom and rolling it on, he grabs a pillow from the bed, tossing it down in front of me. “Scream into this.”
Then he thrusts inside me, pushing deep and holding while my voice cracks on a scream, muffled by the soft material of the pillow. He grips my hips and starts to move and honest to God, the sight of his muscular body taking me this way, watching it happen in the mirror, is the one of the most liberating experiences of my life. I’m not embarrassed or shy or worried about what comes afterward. I’m just alive. Shane’s abdomen flexes with each twist of his hips. My flesh gives under the bruising grip of his fingers. We’re both biting our lips to keep quiet, but the bed is creaking underneath me.
“Do you like watching me f*ck you, girl?”
“God, yes,” I answer without hesitation. “D-do you like it?”
His eyes squeeze shut when I start pushing back against him, meeting his drives, urging him to go faster. “Is that a…serious question?” One of his hands leaves my hip to massage me where our bodies meet. He laughs under his breath when I have to drop my face into the pillow to moan. “Babe, it has to be soon. I don’t want it to end, but…”
“It’s too much.”
“Yes.” His hips are moving in a blur now. “F*ck, yes.”
Watching him struggle to hold back for me, seeing his arm and neck muscles strain with the effort, sends me crashing into pleasure. I force myself to keep my eyes open so I can see him come apart…and it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. He falls forward to press his chest against my back as he pushes deep and growls through his climax. His eyes never leave mine. I know he wants me to see it, what I do to him. What we do to each other.
A mess of emotions whirls in my chest, so intense I have to look away. Shane pulls me down onto the bed, tucking me against him before I can get up. He’s holding me so tight, I have no choice but to relax little by little. I’m afraid he’s going to give voice to what I sense hanging over us, so I’m relieved when he doesn’t. I want to stay in the dark where it’s easier and I don’t have to say words that will leave me vulnerable.
“So my plan was to come in here, fix you a cup of tea, and make slow, passionate love to you.”
I smile in response to the amusement in his voice.
“Of course, I also expected to find you in an oversized police department T-shirt.”
“Oh, I’m shouldering the blame?”
“Exactly.”
I yawn through a laugh, allowing myself to feel content for now. “You made two errors in judgment, I don’t drink tea—”
“I’ve noticed,” Shane says. “I’m convinced you’ve just never had anyone fix it for you properly. We’re going to remedy that now.”
Abruptly, he sits up. I roll over and snuggle into the sheets to watch him. He pulls on his pants and leaves them unbuttoned, then starts doctoring the cup of tea he’d poured earlier with milk and sugar. When I make a disgusted face, he narrows his eyes at me. I’m having a really difficult time not smiling like an idiot when there’s a gorgeous guy making me a cup of tea with no shirt on, hair all mussed. He catches me eyeing his happy trail with speculation and smirks.
“Sit up. I’m about to banish the word coffee from your vocabulary.”
I prop myself against the pillow and take the offered cup. “Never going to happen. When I die, I want my ashes sprinkled over a Starbucks.”
“Drink.”
With an eye roll, I take a sip. And holy shit, it’s so good. He’s made it strong enough that I get a caffeine kick, but it’s smooth and…delicious. “Wow.”
He nods once, then begins crawling toward me on the bed, looking like a big, hungry jungle cat. “Now what was my second error in judgment?”
It takes me a moment to catch up. “You, uh…said you were going to make slow, passionate love to me.” My breath hitches when he takes the cup of tea from my hand and sets it on the bedside table, never once taking his attention off me. “But we never do anything slow.”
“Oh no?” He tugs the sheet down to reveal my breasts. “You should know better by now than to challenge me. Now I have to prove you wrong.”
I gasp when his tongue traces a circle around my nipple. “In that case, I bet you can’t do that again.”
His laughter puffs out over my damp skin. “You’re a quick learner.”