Bend (51 page)

And the decision for him to stay behind, was that hers or his? I’m guessing hers, because if it wasn’t, then my brother-in-law is not the man I thought he was.

Paige clamped up when I asked. I managed to get her to admit they’re having problems, but she downplayed it, assuring me it’s not a big deal—while still refusing to give any details.

So I let it go. Because unlike her, I’m not a pain-in-the-ass busybody. And if anyone is capable of taking care of and standing up for herself, it’s my big sister.

The last thing she told me as I exited her rental car was, “Be nice.” Which just wasn’t necessary, because I’m twitchy and nervous but not angry, and I’m not here for a confrontation.

No, I’m here for one of two possible outcomes: reconciliation or closure. Which one it’ll end up being, I have no idea.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I clench my hand into a fist and lift it up to the door. And there it hovers while anguish twists and stabs inside me. I can still change my mind. Catch an Uber back to my parents’ house and just go to bed. That’d definitely be easier. I’m pretty tired. Might even be able to sleep.

No, actually, there’s no way I’ll be able to sleep.

I knock, and then I wait. And wait and wait and wait. Shit. Is he not here? Guess I hadn’t considered that possibility.

But just as I raise my fist to rap on the door again, I hear the click of the lock on the other side. The door opens inward, and there he is. My heart surges at the sight of him.

He’s barefoot but still wearing his navy-blue suit pants with a white shirt, its top buttons undone. His hair looks disheveled, and he’s squinting sleepily at me. I must have woken him up. Which probably means he flew up here this morning straight from a night shift. The thought leaves me kind of breathless.

“Can I come in?” I ask cautiously.

“Depends.” He raises and twists his arm to glance at his watch, and I’m gritting my teeth. Then he fixes his inscrutable gaze on me and asks, “Are you going to yell at me again?”

“No,” I promise, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

He steps back and aside, holding the door open for me to enter. So I do.

The hotel room looks like a hotel room—a dresser with a small flat-screen, a desk with an office chair, an armchair in the corner, and nightstands with lamps on either side of the king-size bed with its rumpled sheets and pillow.

I stop by the foot of the bed as the door slams shut, turning to watch him approach me. He comes to a halt just out of arm’s reach and outside my personal space.

It shook me to the core earlier, when I saw him standing there in church. He looked so handsome in that perfectly fitting suit, still Jay and still gorgeous and sexy. Jay, with his soulful blue eyes and square, stubble-shadowed chin, and his firm lips that I hadn’t felt on my skin in so long that I could scream with the yearning of it.

“I’m sorry I got mad at you earlier,” I say.

Calmly scrutinizing me, he shoves his hands into his pockets. “That’s okay. I should’ve told you I was coming.”

“Yeah, but I definitely overreacted.” I meet his gaze as long as I can stand it, hopefully long enough that he can see I mean it, and then I shrug off my purse and set it down on the dresser before going on. “And I actually appreciate you coming. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

God, I wish this was over with. Maybe I should just get it all out at once, the stuff that’s pressing down on my chest and pounding inside my head? I don’t have the energy for a long, drawn-out rehashing of that nasty exchange in my car. I just can’t do that, not today.

So, yeah. Best to get it over with. After a quick mental checklist of everything I need to get off my chest, I jump right in, saying, “My dad told me what he said to you back in May. About you and me. He apologized. And I’m sorry, too, Jay. I can’t believe he said that to you. It’s crap, and I’m sorry.”

He’s blinking at me, his eyes glinting with emotions I can’t define, except I know now that my dad’s words bothered him. But how big of a part did that play in his decision to end things with me?

“I thought about you,” I continue without giving him time to say anything, “the day your dad was—”
Executed.
I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. “I thought about you all day and wished I could be with you.”

Jay has no reaction to that except to regard me calmly. Gone is the obvious turmoil from when he told me about his dad. I want to ask him questions, get him to talk about it, but now’s not the time. I feel like I have no time left at all, so I forge on.

“I saw Matt.” The words kind of fall out of my mouth, and my heart starts hammering. Jay’s brows come crashing back down, confusion flickering in his eyes while I rush on with an explanation. “I got tired of you—and Angela, too, actually—accusing me of still being hung up on him, so I decided to meet him and talk to him. And you were both kind of right, I guess.”

His jaw flexes. “Right, how?”

“That I hadn’t really moved on. But it was more about me than him.” I look down at the carpet, which is striped in multicolored earth tones. Absently, I start picking and scraping at the blood-red nail polish on my thumb. “I thought he felt the same and wanted the same things I did. So when he cheated and left me for her, I thought it was because he’d decided I wasn’t good enough. That there was something wrong with me.”

Jay is silent for a split second, and then he scoffs. “That’s ridiculous, Mia.”

“I know. Well, I know that
now.
”

Our eyes lock. His look is bright and penetrating, and there’s something about his stiffened stance, the way he’s standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders squared, that makes it seem like he’s restraining himself.

“Matt wanted to see me again,” I tell him.

“And did you?” The question comes out like the crack of a whip, and I can hear from his ominous tone that if I don’t give him the right answer, this laid-back man—who I love so much it almost slays me—that man is going to totally lose his chill.

Do you love him? Have you told him?

I swallow hard. “No,” I say, hearing my own voice soften and crack. “No, I told him to go to hell. And I told him I’m in love with someone else.”

“What?” The dark and coiled anger in Jay’s face drains away, replaced by frozen and blinking surprise.

“What I didn’t tell him is that that someone else is you,” I go on, my throat and voice growing thick, “or that the biggest reason what he did was such a good thing for me was because then I found you. And I can’t regret that, not for anything.”

Jay exhales loudly.

I don’t wait for his reply, though. I have more to get off my chest first. “Matt also told me he didn’t feel bad that he lost your friendship. And he said that was because he thought you were in love with me.”

With a sigh and barely audible grunt, Jay slides his gaze away. Runs his hand through his sleep-mussed hair.

“Is that true?” I ask with my heart in my throat and my limbs trembling, unable to stand the uncertainty for another second. “If it’s true, I need you to tell me, Jay. Because I love you, and I’ve missed you, and I want you back. And not just as a friend or a friend with benefits. I want more than that.”

While he frowns and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s in pain, my throat closes up, and tears burn behind my eyes. I need him to talk now. My breath shaky, I choke out, “If you don’t feel the same way, please just tell me so that I can go away and we can be done with this.”

One minute he’s standing there silently, still too far away from me, and then he’s invading my space. His hands cradle my head, his fingers digging into and loosening my tightly pinned hair, and I tip my neck back to welcome his lips as they come crashing down on mine.

I’m clutching at the front of his shirt, a startled whimper of wanting building in my throat. This isn’t a friendly peck. He’s kissing me like a lover, like a soul mate—like a man who’s claiming me, branding me, and planning to keep me. It’s Jay, and he’s kissing me, and before today I truly thought I’d never see him again, never get to talk to him or touch him or experience the joy of just being near him. And now he’s holding me and kissing me, and the relief and pleasure of it is dizzying.

With his firm hold still on my head, he pulls back an inch, his eyes boring into mine as he says harshly, “I’m crazy about you, Mia. And if you think I’m going to let you walk out that door, you’re fucking crazy, too.”

“Really?” I whisper, his face blurring as my eyes fill with liquid.

“Really.” His Adam’s apple bobbing, he slides his thumb up to wipe away the tear that escapes from the corner of my eye. “I’ve wanted you since the day we met. I was already in love with you when you asked if I was attracted to you; I just hadn’t admitted it to myself, and that’s why your wanting to be friends with benefits was so fucking terrifying.”

Sniffling, I close my eyes, which squeezes more tears onto my cheeks. “You hurt me more than Matt did,” I confess in a strangled voice. “When you kicked me out of your life.”

He nods. Bends closer so that his forehead and his nose touch mine. “I’m sorry. I was being a coward and an asshole,” he grinds out. “It was easier and safer than telling you the truth. Easier than telling you that I love you and that what I actually couldn’t do anymore was pretend I don’t.”

I feel like I’m melting and bursting all at once.
Jay.
I want to climb inside him and never leave. I want to live and breathe and love him, and only him, until I can’t remember even my own name anymore.

I decide to say one last thing about my ex-boyfriend, and then I never want to talk about him again. Reaching up to put my hand on Jay’s cheek, I murmur, “Matt was my first. I want you to be my last.”

His answer is to slant his head and capture my mouth again. Letting go of my head, he slips both hands down to my ass. I feel the warmth from his palms as he pushes me against himself, so that I can feel his hardness against my lower abdomen.

“I missed you,” he says in between the kissing, the nipping at my bottom lip. “So fucking much.”

A stabbing, throbbing heat shoots down my spine and between my thighs. Tugging at his shirt buttons, I say, “Show me.”

I don’t think I or anyone else has ever gotten me undressed so fast. Kicking off my flats, I’m raising my arms while he yanks my dress up and over my head, and then he unsnaps my bra with a lot less effort than that first time in my bathroom when he was so reluctant to help me get ready for the shower.

Hooking his thumbs into the waistband of my panties, he bends his neck and draws a nipple into his mouth, and I let out a small moan as he pushes my underwear down past my thighs, where it slides to the floor on its own. While he keeps sucking and grazing his teeth on my tits and seems content to take his sweet-ass time about it, I’m clawing at his belt.

“Help me, dammit,” I snap at him as I struggle to get the belt undone, and he thankfully brushes my hand away, and almost before I can blink, his pants and his boxers and his shirt are all gone.

“The watch, too.” I gesture at the metallic band on his wrist.

Raising his eyebrows at me, he unclasps the watch, tosses it down on his pile of clothes, and then he pushes me so that my butt bounces down on the bed.

Immediately I draw my legs up and dig my heels into the mattress, scooting myself backward until I’m all the way on the bed. I lie back on the cool sheets, my breathing shallow and loud in my ears, and I keep my eyes fastened on him as I spread my knees wide, baring myself to him.

“Jesus,” he breathes out, his face taut with lust, his eyes burning darkly. And while he takes a moment to just stand there and watch me, I’m running my gaze down his naked body, too—from the veins in his neck to the broad span of his shoulders and the toned planes of his chest and abs, down to his muscled thighs.

And there at the center of him, his thick and long cock, erect and straining. My pussy is aching with my need for him, and when he crawls onto the bed between my legs and pushes them wider apart, I reach down and wrap my hand around him. He hangs his head and lets out a groan, and I tighten my grip around the hard and smooth length of his cock, panting so fast my mouth feels dry, my lungs heavy.

Stroking him, I murmur, “I want you inside me, Jay. It’s been so long. I’ve missed it. I’ve been dreaming about you again.”

“Jesus, Mia,” he says, echoing himself. And then he slips a finger inside me, his thumb finding my clit, and I moan and arch off the bed.

He dips down, and I shudder and shiver as I feel his teeth on my neck. Easily sliding in a second finger, he curves them both up to rub my G-spot. With a gasp, I press myself against his hand, thrusting my hips to the rhythm of him finger-fucking me.

“You’re so goddamned wet,” he growls near my ear.

“Because I’m ready for you,” I say breathlessly. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

He lets out a disgusted grunt, and while he pulls his slick fingers out of me and grabs his dick, stroking it a few times, lubricating it with the stickiness from my pussy, he says, “I need to get a ball gag or something for you.”

Ugh. Jerk. I narrow my eyes and reach down to grab him and guide him inside me, but he catches my hands and wrenches them up above my head, pinning them to the mattress.