Singe (28 page)

Addie watches his face curiously. “Different?” Three years ago she was dating this guy who begged her to go on the pill because he hated condoms so much. Addie told him she was
not
interested in his preferences.

She is, um. Kind of interested in Eli’s.

“
Different
,” he tells her, nodding into her mass of crazy hair, mostly out of its braid now. Then, sounding near guilty about it, “
Good
different. So good, I wanted—fuck, you feel so good.” He rocks himself into her hard and rhythmic, mouth latched to the side of her neck. “Love you,” he mumbles again. “Meant it.”

“Uh-huh.” Addie slides her palms up into his shirt and the tank he’s got on underneath it, feels the taut thick skin of the scars on his chest and his belly. She tilts her hips up, angling for even more of him. “Take this off,” she orders suddenly. “We have to be fast, I meant it, but—” She rucks the fabric up, wanting to see all of him. Needing to. “Take this off.”

Eli pulls back and raises his eyebrows, this expression on his face like he knows what she’s after. Then he takes off his shirt just like she said.

Addie breathes in as he does it, the weight of him on top of her and the thick full feeling of him inside, the first time she’s seen the marks on his sturdy body since she found out where they’re from. She traces her fingers up his arms and down his shoulders, scritching at an oddly smooth patch under his clavicle.

“They had to do a skin graft there,” Eli tells her, nodding at his chest as he settles back into place. “Piece of something fell on my shirt, debris or. It burned.”

“I’m sorry.” Addie touches it with the tip of one finger. Traces the puckered edges.

“Will didn’t get burned hardly at all,” Eli adds suddenly. “It didn’t even look like there was anything wrong with him, when he was lying in his hospital bed. You couldn’t tell. Not like this.” He holds both his arms out for inspection. “He wouldn’t have had any scars. The wood in the shack was wet, I guess. Burned slow, plus I just didn’t do a good job setting it. That was normally Will’s job.”

Normally
.
Addie blinks.

Eli sees her expression and shrugs. “Yeah. He started with brush piles, sticks and junk. Campfires, really. We’d watch for a while before putting them out. Then bigger stuff. One of our bikes that didn’t burn too good. The box our new fridge came in. The shack was the biggest so far. I guess I wanted to show off.”

His hips have stopped moving. Addie reaches up to cup his cheeks.

“Was a shitty fire, in the end,” Eli continues finally. “But it did burn with a lot of smoke.”

Addie almost apologizes again, but manages to hold her tongue. She remembers the last time, the shutter that came down over his face, like her sorry was a piece of dog shit he stepped in.
Don’t worry about it
, he told her.

Well tough, Addie’s worried. She rubs at his streaky jaw, touches his pink month.
That sounds awful
is going to be her lame-ass second try.

What comes out of her mouth is a different three-word sentence entirely.

Eli stares at her for a long moment. “You don’t get to say it because you feel bad,” he says.

“I
don’t
feel bad,” Addie replies automatically, hands still on his good, good face. There’s dirt smudging away on her fingertips. “I mean, I feel bad, of course I feel bad, but that’s not—I’m just—
shit
, Eli, I don’t—I’ve never—I love you, okay? I think—I love you.” The words feel strange and almost ridiculous, unfamiliar. Addie comes from a family where people say it all the time, casual, before bed and as they’re walking out the door in the morning, but this is—yeah. This is not that.

Eli’s looking down at her, smoke-dark eyes and his body still still still. “You think?” he asks, and his voice is quieter than Addie’s ever heard it. “Or you know?”

“I
think
,” Addie repeats breathlessly. Then, off his dubious expression, “I’ve never
said
it before, Eli, I just—I think.”

Eli smiles at that, shaking his head a bit and dropping down to kiss her. “All right, princess,” he mutters against her mouth, starting up the rhythm again. “I’ll take it. You keep me updated though. Let me know when you’re sure.”

“Jerk,” Addie mumbles, arching her hips against the slow, delicious drag of him. She’s going to be able to this time, she’s pretty sure, no problem. “Hurry up.”

“Oh, is that how it is?” Eli’s still smiling. His face makes Addie forget about the arsons, about the past, about Jenn and her family. She doesn’t think she’s ever made another person look this happy. “Want me to fuck you hard?”

“Shut up.” Addie glances in the direction of the door again. It’s lunchtime, everyone probably in the kitchen eating and discussing this morning’s revelation, but. “Yes.”

“Can do,” Eli says cheerfully, rolling his hips. God, his face. Addie
thinks
, she really does.

One of his hands sneaks down between them, thumb working at her slippery, swollen body until she tilts her head back and groans. Addie’s own hands smear soot everywhere she touches. She imagines how that looks, her black fingerprints all over Eli’s body, across his scars and the clean skin of his back, evidence that she was here. She thinks, very clearly,
Mine.

“Faster,” she commands. She’s close.

He’s going hard enough to bounce her a little, the metal-framed bunk squeaking out a cheap porno rhythm. Eli starts cracking up after a particularly obnoxious screech, then groans when Addie crosses her ankles over the backs of his thighs, clenching.

“Addie,” he whispers, pressing his face against her neck. Then he reaches back and unhooks her legs. “Can’t do that, princess. I have to be able to—”

Oh. “Right,” Addie says, planting both feet on the mattress, knees bent. “Right.”

Eli takes her hands and wraps them around her own knees, applying pressure until her legs are pulled as far back as they’ll go. “Hold them there, okay?” he orders. “Now hold on.”

So. Addie holds on.

The orgasm hits barely ten seconds later, flaring all at once instead of rising up and cresting like normal, running right the hell over her like the truck racing toward a call at top speed. Addie bites down on Eli’s shoulder hard enough to break skin. He hisses when she does it and bites back right after, pain and pleasure doubled-helixed together, everything curling up inside her until she feels like she’s going to combust. Addie whines.

“Now you,” she says as he’s wringing the last of it out of her, these punishing little thrusts and their hips grinding together. It sounds like she’s begging—she
is
begging, God, wants to see him splinter apart even more than she wanted to herself. “Now you, want you to—please, Eli, I’m sure, I know, I love you, I—”

Eli wrenches back all at once then, a low groan as he pulls out so quickly Addie gasps. He puts his hand out to catch the mess but Addie grabs his wrist and yanks it away so he’ll get it on her stomach and everywhere, one warm pulse after another. Eli’s eyes widen, the look on his face like nothing Addie’s ever seen before in her life.

“Say it again,” he mutters afterwards, lowering himself down until the tip is brushing against her stomach. Addie can feel the mess drying, turning tacky and cool.

“I love you,” she whispers into Eli’s ear. “I’m sure.”

Chapter Sixteen

Two weeks later, Eli finds himself shrugging into the same too-old suit he wore to Drew Beecher’s funeral.

“It’s very…black,” Addie said when he first modeled it for her, a hot afternoon five days before her cousin’s wedding. Both of them were shut up in Eli’s sweatbox apartment, the AC barely making a dent in the heat and the sex haze so strong Eli could smell it in the kitchen. He promised Addie he’d buy a colored tie. She went down on him to say thank you.

Now, he’s smoothing out the lapels while Addie gets her hair done with Jenn, trying to decide if he looks good or goofy. Probably goofy. He remembers taking Joyce Largent to prom in a cummerbund and his mom’s old Toyota the last year he lived in New Hampshire, stumbling through the slow dances. He wonders if Addie can dance. It feels like something he should know.

He stands in front of the window unit for five full minutes before he leaves, for all the good it does him. His suit shirt’s sticking good to his back by the time the Outback cools down enough to drive. He remembers peeling it off in Addie’s apartment the afternoon of the funeral, her warm body and how sure he was they’d never talk again afterward. It feels like it happened this morning, and also a hundred years ago. He talked to Brooks about a transfer last week, should be starting at Fifteen after Labor Day. Jim O’Neill’s taking some time off to be with his kid.

Eli’s early, and feeling oddly nervous as he heads toward the farmhouse in Great Barrington—the occasion, he guesses, how weddings feel like a serious thing. He fights off the urge to stop at a bar for a cold, quick beer.
I think you drink too much
, Addie told him. He’s been trying to do a bit better with that.

Instead, he parks the car in the long circular driveway, texts Addie to let her know that he’s here.
You don’t see anybody from my family, do you???
she texts back, presumably from whatever secret location girls hide out in before weddings. Eli looks around, but he doesn’t. The sprawling farmhouse is crowded full of strangers, everyone funneling toward the aisle set up in the backyard.

Sorry, princess
, he tells her.
No luck.

They aren’t doing bride’s side and groom’s side, Eli knows. (“One,” Addie said, “because there
is
no groom, and two, because thanks to my gran, Jenn’s side would be basically empty.”) Instead Eli grabs a chair at the back, out of everybody’s way, trying not to look like a creep or a wedding crasher. It’s a pretty enough venue, a rustic pergola-and-fairy lights kind of affair, some white tents rigged alongside the farmhouse for spillover. The aisle is just a swath of grassy backyard, a little spongy from last night’s rain. Eli’s flying solo until after the ceremony, when Addie’s maid of honor responsibilities finally die down.

“It’s hair and makeup and pictures and then like, a ten minute build-up before the I do’s,” she said. “And then I can come hang out with you. I swear.”

Eli’s starting to wish he’d stopped off for that beer anyway when he recognizes one of the people filing into the rows of chairs. He has to double and triple check before he’s sure of what he’s seeing.

Addie picks up on the third ring. “What’s up?” she asks. “We’re just getting ready to come out.”

“Yeah, listen.” Eli looks again, verifying for a fourth time. But sure enough, beside the lady with the umbrella— “I think your dad is here? By himself?” It comes out like a question.

For a moment she’s so quiet Eli thinks he’s lost her. The mid-afternoon sun prickles on the back of his neck. “Addie?”

“Yeah.” Another pause. “Are you sure?”

“I—” He looks
again
, but David Manzella’s unmistakable: the salt-and-pepper hair and military posture, the sober-looking suit without so much as a single wrinkle. “Come see for yourself,” he says.

“Okay,” Addie tells him. “I think I will.”

Things happen quickly after that: Addie flying out the side door of the farmhouse, a blur of curly hair and silk, throwing her arms around her father in a show of emotion that’s unlike any Eli’s seen from her before this moment. How Manzella looks surprised—looks
happy
—for a moment before he hugs her back. Eli gives them space, hands in the pockets of his suit pants, not wanting to intrude on their moment. After a moment Addie pulls back and catches his eye through the crowd.

I love you
, she mouths, olive skin flushed and radiant.

Eli rubs at the back of his neck, feeling sheepish at his own stupid happiness. She has a flower in her hair, this huge white frothy thing that matches the trellises on either side of the aisle. Eli is a sweaty, undeserving mess.

I love you back
, he tells her.

About the Author

Ruby McNally double-majored in psychology and cognitive linguistics before ultimately deciding her talents lay elsewhere. She grew up hiding her diary from her five brothers, who will never know she wrote this book. She lives in Boston and has no cats.
Crash
is her first novel. You can visit her online at
rubymcnally.tumblr.com
or follow her on Twitter
@Ruby_McNally
.

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Lights and Sirens

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Love until the wheels fall off…or until they’re past the point of rescue.

Crash

© 2014 Ruby McNally

Lights and Sirens, Book 1

A year ago, after a gut-wrenching shift at work, Taryn Falvey made a huge mistake: she fell into the arms of fellow paramedic Nick Kanelos—and into his bed. Since then they’ve kept their distance, knowing their lives are too messy to mesh.

Taryn’s got her hands full keeping her many siblings and alcoholic mother from slipping into grinding poverty. A normal relationship—a normal
life
—isn’t even on her radar.

After that desperate night of passion, Nick retreated to the big, empty house on the edge of town he used to share with his late wife. Now it’s just him, his mutt, and his memories rattling around the empty rooms. He’s taught himself not to need anything or anyone too much, but he hasn’t been able to get Taryn off his mind.