Heart Thaw (21 page)

Chapter Fourteen

“Is she ready to go yet?” I ask quietly.

Trent and I have been watching Ella drink and pretend to be having fun without Antonia for a solid hour.

She’s an amazing actress, and I catch glimpses of Antonia watching her with hurt, worried eyes from corners of the party. The whole raw outpouring of emotion robs me of the last few shreds of strength I had stored up in me.

It’s been a long, weird, wonderful, terrible Christmas.

Once I warmed up after my talk with Antonia, my muscles went slack and an incredible sleepiness came over me. Now I can barely keep my eyes open. As amazing as it feels to be leaned against Trent, I wish we were lying in each other’s arms.

I
wish
that.

I have zero idea how possible it actually is. I predict the way Ella reacted is just the tip of the iceberg. Something tells me Georgia and Mom will be ten times more furious and just as open about telling me why my being with Trent is the dumbest idea I’ve ever had in my life.

And I get it: I don’t even trust
myself
with his heart. It takes a courage I don’t claim to have to be enough for a person as amazing as he is. So maybe I will fail.

But I’m going to try, that’s for damn sure. If I know anything for certain, it’s that I don’t have any option other than to try.

“I think she’s waiting for—” Trent sucks in a quick breath, and I look over. Ella is kissing a girl with copper curls who’s wearing a sexy elf outfit.
Shit
. I glance over my sister’s head, and Antonia is watching, her broken heart displayed on both sleeves
and
her pretty, crestfallen face. “I think she was waiting for
that
.”

Trent nods toward Antonia, but he seems to be feeling more glee than sympathy.

“She loves Ella,” I protest, even though he hasn’t said a word.

Trent looks down at me with a frown.

“Are you seriously defending the girl who just broke your sister’s heart and threw her to the wolves?” Trent asks, his voice full of scolding judgment. 

“It’s not always that easy,” I say, but he’s shaking his head, already sure I’m wrong. I bristle. “It’s not, Trent. It’s just not that cut and dry.”

“Really?” he asks, dipping his head close to mine. “Why is it so impossible to wrap your head around the concept of someone loving you so hard for so long? Why can’t you just accept that when someone cares about you enough, shit works out? Why does there have to be all this fucking angst and cold bullshit?” His eyes are fiery.

“This isn’t about Ella and Antonia, is it?” I ask, my cheeks flushed red hot.

“No, Sadie. It’s not about Ella and Antonia.” He shakes his head. “Come on,” he whispers, and it’s more a plea than anything else. “I’ve never pretended. I’ve never been able to hide how I feel, not the way you can.”

“How do you know I’m hiding anything?” I ask, just to be an asshole.

His face falls, and my heart feels like a twisted dishrag.

“I don’t. I don’t know at all. I just hope. I fucking
hope
you feel for me a fraction of what I feel for you.”

I want to tell him that I do. I want to tell him that the way I feel for him scratches and claws under my skin. I want to tell him that I’m never free from thoughts about him. That I try not to overthink it, because when I do, I realize how much we could possibly lose, and it paralyzes me completely.

But I don’t say any of this because Ella—who’s pretty lit and is whirring with feelings schizophrenically pinging from extreme sadness to merry joy—rushes up and wraps her arms around us.

“Woot!”

“Alright,” Trent says, smiling down at her. “Enough ‘wooting’ from you. We need to get you home.”

I expect her to fight him, but she just nods and grabs my hand, never looking at me. Trent goes first, navigating through the waning crowds. I follow, my hand nestling Ella’s. I help her into the backseat, where she lies down, her eyes teary, her head pillowed by her arm.

She says, “Woot,” so forlornly, I kiss her temple.

“No worries, El. It’ll work itself out. I promise.”

Apparently Christmas gives me enormous, miracle-promising balls.

Ella nods sleepily. By the time I get to the front seat, she’s snoring softly. Trent pulls out, and there’s a dense silence between us I’m not sure how to break through.

“Did you have fun?” he asks, even though it’s not the question either of us care about hearing the answer to.

“I guess.” I clasp my coat tighter and lean toward him. “It was weird. I’m glad we went for Ella’s sake. It’s a little scary to think about what she would have done if we weren’t here.”

“She’s got an okay head on her shoulders,” Trent says, glancing over at me. “I think she went a little wild tonight because she knew we were here to catch her.”

“Oh.”

I look into the backseat and wonder what else Ella dealt with on her own while I was away at college, consumed in my studies, work, and social life.

“That’s normal, you know.”

His words are soft. I watch his hands grip hard on the steering wheel.

“Normal?” I parrot like an idiot.

“To let loose when you know there’s someone who’s going to catch you.” He lets the words hang in the air between us for a few long seconds before he goes on, staring straight out the windshield. “You know how much you and Ella mean to me.”

“I know,” I say, and I have no doubt about that. None at all. “It’s the same way I feel about you and Georgia.” This time it’s my turn to pause. “And that’s why, I think, no one wants us to be together.”

“What do
you
want?” he asks, raking one hand through his dark hair.

“I want…” I start and stop. “I want to do the right thing.”

“What’s that?” he asks, his words careful.

“That’s the problem.” I tug down at the hem of my dress because it’s not totally warm in the car yet. Trent barely looks over as he flips the dial on the heat, blasting it. For me. “I don’t know what the right thing is.”

“What do you
want
to do?” he asks, his hand hovering between the heat dial and my leg.

I realize he wants to put his hand on my knee, and I want him to, but I have no idea how to tell him that. More importantly, how do I answer his question? How do I answer a need that’s deep and so strong, it’s threatening to pull me under?

“I think it might actually be less knowing what the right thing is and more...more not knowing if I deserve it. If I deserve what I want.”

I twist my hands in my lap.

“Tell me what you want,” he says, his voice scratching in the cold air.

In the back seat, Ella moans softly and pulls her knees to her chest, curling into a tight ball like she used to when she was a kid, constantly kicking the covers off and spending the night freezing.

I shrug out of my coat—her coat—and unbuckle my seatbelt. I see the panicked look in Trent’s eyes as I turn and hang over the seat to lay the wool jacket over her body, tucking it tight so she’ll stop shivering.

When I sit the right way, the disapproving frown on his handsome lips makes me smile.

“Was I making you nervous?” I ask, pointing to his white-knuckled hands as I clip my seatbelt back in.

“Making me nervous?” he asks with a short laugh. “You always do. I know this is going to piss off your feminist sensibilities, but I’ve felt like it’s my job to protect you for a long time. Pretty much since we were just kids. I’m not saying I always did a good job. I spent a lot of my youth feeling like a failed knight in shining armor.”

I shake my head.

“Why?” I ask, truly baffled. “I mean, I think that’s sweet. I honestly do. But I’ve always been the tough, independent one, right? So why would you feel like you had to watch out for me?”

He stretches his neck from side to side, cracking it with a loud pop, before he sighs and answers, “Because I’ve called private bullshit on your whole ‘tough girl’ act for a long time.”

“Really?” I raise one eyebrow. “So you think I’m just some damsel in distress waiting for you to come save me?” I ask, glancing out the window at the bare skeletal branches of the trees arched over the road Trent is navigating with such care.

“No.” He tightens his fingers on the steering wheel. “I feel like you think you have to captain the ship. Like you have to keep complete control. I’m here to pry your fingers off the helm and let you take a breath. When you let go, when you forget to control every single detail?” He sucks his breath in through his teeth. “Damn, it’s a beautiful thing, Sadie. It really is.”

“But it’s my ship, Trent. That metaphor makes no sense. It’s
my damn ship
, so I can’t just ask someone else to man it. I’m all there is,” I insist, throwing my hands up because I can tell from his side grin that he doesn’t agree at all.

He glances over at me, his eyes hooded and sexy in the dim light of the car.

“That’s not the truth. That’s one option you choose. If you were honest with yourself, you’d see there are people around you, perfectly willing to be your crew.”

“Are you saying
you’re
perfectly willing?”

I slide closer to his side of the car because the hot air pouring out of the vents just isn’t enough to keep me warm. Now that I’ve had the warmth of his arms, I guess anything else is going to be a pretty crappy substitute.

“Conscript me, Cap’n. I’m ready and willing.”

He lets go of the wheel and steering with his knees as he peels off his coat, which he passes to me, wordlessly. I’m too cold to refuse it.

“Thank you,” I say as I slide my arms in. “What about your ship?”

“Maybe it’s not anyone’s ship. Maybe we’re all the crew of the
same ship
.”

“But how could that be?” It’s just a metaphor. Not something to get all bent out of shape about. So why do I feel twisted like a wire ornament hanger? “I mean, we all have different goals. Different paths.”

“Do we?” he asks, reaching a hand out to finally touch my knee, his thumb outlining the smooth, rounded shape in a way that makes me think of how he touches much sexier parts of me.

I close my eyes at the feel of his hands on me, glad he wants to touch as much as I want to be touched.

“I think one of your problems is that you tend to only think about what
you
want.” He keeps his voice soft as a lullaby. “It never occurs to you that anyone else might be going in the same direction.”

“Are you?” I ask, the words barely a whisper.

I press my hand on top of his and thread our fingers together.

“I am.” His voice is completely confident, so I believe him.

I don’t have many answers, but I think I’m finally asking the right questions.

“So we can sail together?” My voice gets sleepier, dreamier as the car heats up. I lean closer to Trent, let my head rest on his shoulder, and close my eyes, just for a second.

I just need to rest and think about all of this. How I feel about it all:
love and life, college, home...sex...sailing...Captain Trent Toriello…

The next thing I know, he’s laying me down, gently, on the pull-out mattress.

“Trent?” I mumble. “Ella?”

“Already tucked her in. She’s going to have a rager of a headache tomorrow.”

“You’re amazing. You know that?”

I catch the barest tug of a smile on his lips as he pulls my boots off one at a time, his fingers drawing down the length of my legs, making me break into goosebumps.

“Sit up,” he orders.

I do and he hooks his hands under the hem of my dress and shimmies it up over my head then drops it on the floor. For a few seconds, we’re so close, I can smell the clean tang of his skin, can see his pulse beating too fast at the base of his throat.

He leans his forehead close to mine.

“Sadie.”

“This morning—” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“Was like a drug.”

His words are whispered against my ear. He drags his lips down my neck, kissing me softly, and I catch my bottom lip between my teeth, bite down, and try to hide a long moan.

“I don’t do drugs.”

I couldn’t sound more like an uptight priss if I tried.

He laughs against the skin of my shoulder, licks me, then blows, softly on the damp spot. A shiver rattles up and down my spine.

“I don’t anymore either,” he says. drawing the backs of his hand along the skin of my stomach and over my ribs. “I gotta admit, it took me a while to quit for good though.”

“It d-d-did?” I stutter.

I close my eyes and drop my head back as he kisses and sucks on my neck. I’m drowning in the glow that radiates through me whenever his lips lock onto my skin.

“Kept going back for one final hit.
That’s
the mistake. You gotta quit cold turkey if you’re gonna quit. One taste—”