Rough Play (19 page)

Flora shook her head. “No, I’m not. This is too hard. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

“What shouldn’t?”

“To not want him.”

Tonya sat on the edge of the bed. “Why don’t you want him? An actual, short sentence answer. What is so wrong with Jacob that you are fighting yourself tooth and nail not to give in?”

“Nothing is wrong with him.” She fisted her hands. “I want to be able to pick. I should be able to choose if I want him or not, and with him I can’t. There’s no choice inside me. I can call him names, think awful thoughts, but in the end, I still want him.”

Tonya rested her hands in her lap. “Honey, that’s not a bad thing.”

“Yes it is.”

“What are you afraid of?” Tonya eased on the bed next to her and wrapped her arm over her shoulder.

Her head hurting and feeling heavy, she leaned over on her friend’s shoulder. “That he has the choice. And by the way he’s acting today, it seems like he does. That he can just turn his feelings for me on and off.”

Tonya gave her a squeeze. “In some of this, you do have some control, Flora. You could sit here, be miserable and always wonder. Or you could simply ask him.”

She sniffed as the lump in her throat eased. “For only being in a fake relationship, you really sound like you know what you’re doing.”

Tonya chuckled. “I’ve had my share of learning experiences. Be glad I’m sharing my wisdom with you.”

Flora hugged her back. “Thanks. For everything. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that out loud before.”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Can I get a hug too?”

Flora looked up to Gretchen in the doorway. She opened her arm up and Gretchen dove in the middle of them.

“I’m not sure I like all this change.”

Gretchen glanced up. “What’s so wrong with change?”

“Change can be trouble.”

Tonya tugged her hair. “And it can be good. Change brought us you.”

True. Change got her away from her home. Change got her here. Where she was happy. Or was happy.

Chapter Eighteen

Jacob was never one for punching things when angry, but right now he was so mad he’d like to pick his couch up and fling it through the nearest wall. He walked in his house, slammed the door shut behind him.

She wanted to forget. No, wanted
him
to forget because she couldn’t do it herself. If it was that damn easy, he’d forget her all the way up until that moment he first saw her. He’d love to forget. Anything to get rid of this heavy funk wrapping him tight and choking the life out of him. A car pulled through the trailer park and he dropped into his recliner.

A home and his own place was all he ever really wanted. Somewhere with roots. Things he didn’t even know he wanted until he had them. And now? All he wanted to do was run the hell away. Everything here was laced with Flora. From the kitchen counters, the couch, his bedroom and bath, she’d touched it all.

Footsteps trotted up his back steps and he groaned. The last thing he wanted was his brothers’ pity. Hell, he’d left the party when Flora ran from him to avoid it. The door shoved opened without a knock and instead of his brother, Flora stood there.

Great. More hashing it out.

She kicked the door closed with her foot, finger pointed at him and color high on her cheeks. “I don’t need you in my life. I don’t need your protection, or for you to put a roof over my head. Or to put money in my wallet.”

For a moment, he wanted her still, despite it all. Not so much now. “Thanks for clarifying, but I got it loud and clear the first time.”

“I’m saying I don’t need you for anything in my life.” She straightened, arms hung by her side and breath slid out of her in one long, slow exhale. “But I want you. I want you to touch me like you do.”

More sex? Not surprising. Flora liked things her way. For the first time though, sex was the last thing on his mind. “No.”

“No?”

“No, Flora. We’re not doing what we were. We tried. It didn’t work. You wanted out. It’s finished.” He stood and walked toward the kitchen. He needed a beer. Or ten.

She frowned. “That can’t be it.”

He shook his head, somehow a laugh managed out. “What did you expect? You’d come in here, say you wanted to go back and I’d just say okay and take you against the nearest wall and count my lucky stars?”

“No.” She paused and bit at her lip for a second. “That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t have a choice whether or not I like you. I just do.” She waved her arms around. “You’re in my head. And you won’t go away. I tried making you go away, but you don’t go away.”

And just when he thought he couldn’t feel any smaller or less important. “Gee, Flora. Should I be flattered by now?”

“I’m making a mess of this.” She sank on his couch. “I don’t have a choice but to want you. I don’t need you in my life, but it doesn’t matter you’re here anyway. And I want to know how you feel about me.”

He opened a cold beer. “You’re not going to like the answer.”

“I have to know.”

He leaned back on the kitchen bar and crossed his legs at his ankles. “You piss me off like no one else has ever done before.”

Did she get up and argue? Say anything? No. She just stared toward her knees. That just pissed him off all over again.

“Your life was shit, but you didn’t let that stop you. You scrambled and climbed and took what you wanted until you had it. Until me. Over and over again I watched you cave when it came to me. Instead of just standing up and saying ‘go home Jacob’ or admitting to yourself that you wanted me to stay, you suffered through insecurity. You let me tease and play with you until I forced you into taking some sort of action. I just don’t get you Flora. You make me crazy trying to figure you out.”

“I deserve that.”

“Hell yeah, you do. That and more. Because right now, in this moment, you’re still doing it. I just ran you through with cold hard truth, and you’re sitting there with your hands between your knees looking lost. Still you won’t stand up for yourself. Sometimes I look at you and think, that’s how she made it. She’s so strong. So quick witted. Then times like this, I wonder how you did manage to pick yourself up.”

She glanced at him. “This is what you do to me. You change me, you change things.”

“No, doll, that’s not the case. I don’t change shit when it comes to you. The last thing I would ever want to ever do is change one damn thing about that woman I met in that ripped apart kitchen when she was taking measurements. That woman made me laugh, made me think, made me feel things I’d never felt before. I tried holding on to you, but it didn’t matter. Things got more involved before you could blink, and you shut down and slipped right through my fingers.”

She let out a breath that sagged her shoulders. “Why is it so easy for you?”

He sat his beer aside, his thirst lost. “Why is what so easy?”

“Us.” She stood. “Why is it that when things got involved, it was easy for you to stick with us and accept it? You’re a supposed big-ass bachelor. Love ‘
em
and leave ‘
em
kind of man. Not-a-nice-boyfriend-kind-of-guy, you said.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and fought the smile of watching her march across his living room with her arms out and doing what he could only guess was her interpretation of a man walk.

She stuck her thumbs in her waistband. “Slick with your pick-up lines and easy going smile. With all that about you, what made you accept an ‘us’?”

He smiled even though he didn’t want to, but it just couldn’t be helped. How could she be so dense? “You did.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. I just told you. You made me laugh, think and feel. You made sense to me, Flora, and because of that, I wanted to know more. It’s as simple as that. You say you don’t have a choice but to want me, that you just do, but have you ever asked yourself why?”

She swallowed and her gaze slipped from his.

“Well? Let’s hear it.” He leaned back on the counter and spread his arms wide. “Other than I’m a sexy beast, why do you keep coming back?”

She pointed at him. “That’s why.”

“What is?”

She crossed her arms under her chest and stared at him. “What you’re doing right now.”

“Breathing?”

She groaned. “No, you’re being you. Being….” She pulled in a deep breath and tucked hair behind her ears. “Being easy. Being with you is easy. You’re easy to talk to. I’ve told you stuff that I haven’t voiced in years. You listen. You worry.” She smiled a little as she glanced around. “I’m not just some girl you think is sexy in a tool belt.”

“I do like that look.”

She smiled at him. “I know you do. I came from trash, from nowhere. Three months of my life I spent sleeping in a diner booth because I had nowhere else to go, but you respect me.”

“Anyone who doesn’t respect you because of your past can take my boot up their ass.”

“And that.” She smiled. “You have a big heart that pulls me in, and I can’t let go of it. For so long I didn’t have a choice. Life didn’t hand me options and I got to pick. Things just happened and I had no choice. I finally got options. I finally got a say in my life. Then you came along. In a way, you took an option away from me. You took away the option of me walking away or staying.”

“You did a pretty good job of telling me we were over with.”

“I walked away from you before you had a chance to walk away from me. I’ve been miserable ever since. And change isn’t always so bad. Change and no options brought me here, gave me my life. So I’m saying it again, I want you in my life. You, who didn’t laugh when I said I never wanted kids but understood. You, who loves my tool belt when I always hated the stigma of being a plumber even though I love my job. I want you, Jacob, because I can’t get you out of my head and I like the warm
tinglies
I get whenever I think of you.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. Her head rested on his shoulder. Arms cupped around under his and a purr slid from her throat. The hard knot that had been tied in his chest since she told him to get out of her house relaxed. Air managed in and out of his lungs with a heavy sigh.

She smoothed her fingers across his back. “And I like this too.”

“Even at night?” He leaned back enough to glance down. “Because there will be sleepovers. I expect every night.”

She hugged him tighter and he could feel her smile seep through him. “Every night.”

“And no running out the door in the morning in less than two minutes. You either need to set your alarm earlier or start your day later.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll at least have coffee for breakfast at home. Mine or yours, wherever we are. Maybe eat breakfast with me too.”

She nodded. “I can do that.”

“I’m going to leave a toothbrush at your house. And probably wet towels on the floor.”

Her face pinched. “The toothbrush I’m okay with.”

“We’ll work on the towels.”

“Or you could just hang them up after you’re done.”

He grinned. “Of all the things we’ve talked about, this conversation is my favorite.”

She was biting her lip again. “Except, you haven’t told me what you want.”

He just wanted. “I want an ‘us’. And I want to enjoy it, just let it ride and see where we go while trying to avoid breaking up as much as we can.”

“I don’t like the breaking up part.”

“Good. I don’t either. Let’s not do that. Deal?”

“Sounds really, really good,” she smiled. “Deal.”

He lowered, ready to cover his mouth with hers, but she pulled out of his arms. “I forgot something!”

“Now?”

But she was outside, door slamming shut in her wake. He blinked at the closed door. The empty living room. What the hell? He started toward the front, but the squeak of the screen door outside and the twisting of the front door stopped him. The door opened wide inside, blocking his view. “I hope that’s you.”

“It’s me.” she called. Then a pair of shorts flew from the behind the door and across the living room. Quickly followed by a pair of purple lace panties. “Middle Iverson Triplet, I am ready for our date.”

She stepped around the edge, still in her white tank, but her tool belt was buckled on sideways so that one of the deep pockets that was normally against her outer thigh hung down in front of her. She turned. All naked thigh and hip with the other pocket covering her ass. “I’m finally ready for our date now.”

He leaned back against the counter and took another sip of his beer as she walked his way. “Are you asking me out because you think I’m easy?”

She flashed him a grin. “If I thought you were easy, I wouldn’t have bothered with the date part.”

He pushed off the counter and walked to her, pulled her in against him. “Good thinking.”

She snorted, grabbed him by the head and pulled him down to her.

THE END

From The Author…

When I sat down to write this story, I knew I had two characters on my hands who were going to be a handful. And boy were they ever! Jacob and Flora really put me through it to get their story told and get it out like they wanted. Stubborn those two, but also so fun.