"When you left," he said. "You ran off with the money I'd saved up to get out of West Bend. Taking the state championship medal, that was just the icing on the cake."
I shook my head slowly. "No," I said. "The medal was the only thing I took. I felt badly enough about that. And about the leaving. I wanted to tell you in person, but I left the note instead. Your mother -"
Silas interrupted me. "What note?"
"I left a note in your room the day my parents and I left town."
"No," Silas said. "There was no note. Stuff was just gone."
"Didn't your mother tell you?" I asked reflexively before I realized. "No. Of course she didn't. She wouldn't have."
Silas looked at the medal in his hands, then back up at me, his expression hard to read. "All this time," he said. "I thought you'd just taken off."
"You thought I’d taken off without saying anything?" I asked. "And stealing your savings? I knew what that money was for. It was to get out of West Bend, to get away from your father."
He looked at me. "Us," he said. "It was supposed to be for us."
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight. "Yes," I said. "And for us."
"We were going to get married," he said, turning the medal over and over in his hand.
"You don’t have to remind me,” I snapped. “It’s not like I forgot.”
I couldn't forget. Even if it had been a lifetime ago.
"I hated you," Silas said. "For a long time, I hated you."
I nodded, blinking, biting my lower lip to distract myself from the tears that threatened to well up in my eyes. "I know."
"Why did you keep it?" he asked, stepping forward again, closer to me.
"Luck," I said. It was the automatic response I gave when Iver and Emir and Oscar had asked me about it, immediately followed by the honest answer. "I needed a reminder. Of you. Of us."
Silas looked at me for a long moment, his gaze steady. For a moment, it was like he was that same boy again, the one I had loved before. "Okay," he said. "A reminder of us…”
But his words weren’t wistful. They held all the promise of what he wanted to do to me, and I shivered. Standing on my tip-toes in my high heels, I brushed my cheek against his. "Take me somewhere," I whispered. "Somewhere that's not here."
"Ask me nicely," he said.
"Please."
He made the same sound again, that low growl that suggested he was about to bend me over and take me right here. "Let's go," he said, his hand on the small of my back.
We walked back inside, through the bar, Silas' friends staring at us as we passed. "Lucky son of a bitch," one of them said, whistling low under his breath.
Turning my head, I winked over my shoulder as we passed them.
"Excuse me." The maitre'd stopped us as we left. "Ms. Jameson."
"Yes?" I was distracted by thoughts of Silas and what I wanted him to do to me.
"The gentlemen who were with you earlier?"
I glanced across the restaurant at the empty table. "Yes?" I asked. "They left?"
He nodded. "They said that you would be taking care of everything.”
I laughed. "Of course they did," I said. "Add the bill to the room, if you would, please."
"Of course," he said. "And, Ms. Jameson, they said to tell you goodbye."
"I see," I said.
Silas' hand was on my arm as we left the restaurant. "Is everything okay?"
If you leave a group of grifters alone for thirty minutes, they'll find a way to stick you with the bill, even if you're one of them. "Everything is just fine," I said. "I believe we have a suite to ourselves."
We paused outside Tempest’s hotel room door, and I wondered if she was going to reconsider and tell me to get lost. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked up at me, her eyes wide, and did that thing with her tongue again, the thing where she ran it over her bottom lip. And all I could think about was bruising her lips with mine.
I remembered the way her tongue felt on my skin, how her sweet mouth felt wrapped around my cock. The thought sent warmth flowing through my body, rendered my dick immediately hard.
"Here it is," Tempest said, her voice breathy. That breathy voice was a flashback to being seventeen again, when she straddled me as we sat on a rock down by the creek, her breath warm against my ear while she rode me, her moans echoing through the outdoor space.
I reached for her waist and pulled her to me, pressing my hardness against her. When she inhaled, her chest rose, and I looked down at the dress, cut so low on her cleavage that it gave me more than a hint of what was underneath.
Hint, hell.
I remembered everything that was underneath that dress like it was yesterday. My hands had her body memorized-every curve, every angle.
Except, of course, that was when we were seventeen. Everything about her had changed. She wasn't the same girl I fell in love with back then. No, the Tempest I was holding now was all grown up.
And she'd kept that goddamned medal all this time.