MEREDITH TRIED TO ignore the trembling in her fingers as she poured two glasses of lemonade fifteen minutes later. She’d entered the house with Ryan at her side, nerves fluttering like the whisper of hummingbird wings, only to be greeted by the dogs and Mo, her tailless cat.
As always, her menagerie’s enthusiastic unconditional love had the immediate result of relaxing her. She and Ryan followed them into the backyard and watched as the dogs investigated the fenced-in area like it was brand-new, did their business, then trotted back toward the house ready to take up residence on their beds once again.
The calm she felt from that evening routine lasted just until Ryan leaned in and placed a quick kiss on her mouth after they returned to the kitchen. It was tender and chaste, but desire howled to life inside her, and that roar scared the hell out of her.
Confusion flashed in his eyes when she pulled away before he quickly replaced it with acceptance.
He took the glass from her and put it on the counter. “What’s going on?” He touched a finger to her lips when she would have answered. “Don’t tell me nothing. Please. You don’t have to lie.”
She tried to process that concept. She’d been lying for so long—to herself and everyone around her. Did she even truly understand the full truth anymore?
Yes.
The word blew through her like a gust of wind, rattling the windowpanes of the fortress she’d built around her heart. Of course she knew the truth. She was broken. Not bent. Not fixable. Broken.
How could she explain that?
For several seconds all she concentrated on was pulling air into her lungs and then blowing it out again. The wind still whipped around inside her, hurricane-force now, and the door to her protective inner fortress slammed open with the force of it.
“I’m not very good at sex,” she said on a rush of breath, then cringed at how that sounded. “Sober sex,” she clarified but quickly realized that was even worse.
“What makes you think that?” Ryan asked, his voice so gentle it felt like a caress.
“It’s the only... I’ve never... I don’t do men sober,” she finished, feeling her cheeks heat with shame. This could be the most embarrassing conversation of her life, and she’d had some pretty awkward talks. Her body screamed at her to shut her damn mouth and just kiss the man. Might as well run the hot doctor off for good, her mind argued. Nothing could come of it, anyway.
“Then, let me clarify for you,” Ryan said, his tone still achingly soft, “I’m not looking to be done.”
Meredith groaned and turned away. “I’ve screwed everything up. You see why I don’t date, right?” She stalked to the edge of the kitchen, then started back again. “This is stupid. I’m stupid. We should just agree that—”
“What happened?”
She paused midstep and glanced at Ryan, his gaze somehow curious and too aware at the same time.
“There are a lot of amazing women in the world,” she said instead of answering. “Ones that don’t come with loads of baggage. Ones who can sleep with a guy without freaking out.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’d like to understand.”
“Have you ever heard the expression dog with a bone?” she muttered, and one side of his mouth quirked.
“Coming from you, I take that as a compliment. You can tell me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Nothing happened. Not really.” She focused her gaze on a spot just over his right shoulder and tried not to grind her teeth into dust as the emotions from that night came flooding back. “I made some stupid choices and got myself in a bad situation with a boy. It was a long time ago, so it shouldn’t matter.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Meredith bit down on the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. What was pain, really? “I don’t remember,” she whispered, miserably. “I mean...it was my first time, so after...yes, it hurt. But during...when we...I was drunk and maybe he’d put something in my glass...I still can’t remember.”
The silence stretched between them like a heavy fog. She concentrated on the familiar scent of her house to ground her, the sound of a dog snoring quietly in the other room.
“How old were you?” Ryan’s voice had taken on a different quality, soft but also strained. She could only imagine what he must think of her.
“Sixteen.” She tried to move the muscles of her face into a smile, to laugh it off like it was no big deal, but her recalcitrant mouth refused to budge. “My brothers had both left home, and I wanted to prove that I didn’t need them to be popular or have fun. I was hanging out with a wild crowd, older and into partying. I thought it made me special when, in reality, it made me an idiot.”
“I doubt you were ever an idiot,” he said. “You couldn’t consent if you were drunk, Meredith. That’s not something to take lightly.”
“I know what you’re implying, but I don’t think it applies here. No one forced me to do those shots or down that liquor. No one held a gun to my head when a boy I barely knew handed me a drink laced with who knows what. I made those choices.” She pressed two fingers to her chest, the keening ache there making her feel like her rib cage might split apart. “I deserved—”
“Don’t say it.” Ryan took a step closer, reaching for her.
She tried to shrug away, but the attempt was half-hearted at best. She liked him touching her, craved the heat and comfort of his body.
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Did you go to the hospital after?”
The word hospital triggered the realization inside her that he probably understood that night more than most people could. She didn’t want to imagine how many women he’d seen in the ER after they’d been truly violated. Knowing she wasn’t alone offered little comfort.
She shook her head. “He called me the next day. Said he’d had a great time and asked if I wanted to hang out that night.” Her jaw tightened. “Like everything was normal, which made me think the situation was normal.”
“Did you see him again?”
“Only at school, but something changed in me at that moment. I believed I was the person he assumed me to be. A girl who got drunk and slept with a guy she barely knew in somebody’s smelly basement bedroom.” She raised her gaze to his. “That’s what I became for a while after. It was like I needed to prove that he’d been right about me, which was the dumbest thing ever.” She shook her head. “I went down a bad path.”
“You have to give yourself a break.” His hands tightened around her arms like he could will her to believe him by the strength of his hold.
“I garnered quite the reputation my senior year of high school and then partied my way through freshman year of college.” Her throat felt like it was coated with sandpaper, but she forced herself to keep speaking.
To her surprise, it wasn’t difficult. Now that she’d started to share her past, the details rushed forward like a caged bull stampeding out of its pen. Underneath the shame of sharing her mistakes ran a steady trickle of relief at not having to carry this hidden truth alone. No one, not even her sisters, understood the full extent of her shame. “I flunked out of school.” She managed a wan smile. “That’s why I’m working so hard to get my degree online now. Because I partied away my first chance.”
“Everyone has regrets.”
She laughed without humor. “Not like mine.”
“Everyone,” he insisted.
She wanted to believe him but couldn’t let herself. She wanted to ask about his regrets but was so afraid that he’d list off something like not making the dean’s list one semester or only saving a hundred lives instead of a thousand, and then she’d just feel worse.
If that were possible.
“So now you know,” she said, stepping away from him when all she wanted to do was lean in. “I’m damaged goods.”
“Don’t say that.”
Her heart hammered inside her chest and panic skittered across her spine as she thought about everything she’d just shared.
Mind racing for a way to regain her emotional equilibrium, she moved to the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of wine that hadn’t been opened when she’d hosted Thanksgiving dinner. She held up the bottle and gave him an exaggerated wink. “Since we both understand that I’m an emotional train wreck with all kinds of intimacy issues, why don’t we get drunk and scr—”
“Stop.” He grabbed the bottle from her hand and placed it on the counter, then handed her one of the glasses of lemonade she’d poured earlier. “I’m in the mood for a distraction. You like action flicks?”
She glanced back and forth between the glass in her hand and the man standing in front of her. “Sure,” she said after a moment.
“Let’s see what’s on late-night.”
“You want to watch a movie?” She placed a hand on his arm. “My crazy story was an out for you, Doc. A warning. Don’t get involved with the nutty dog lady.”
He chuckled. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s cute. Remember, I work in an urban ER. You can’t come anywhere near the crazy I’ve seen. Besides...” He dropped a quick kiss on her forehead. “Nothing you told me tonight makes me want you any less. In fact, what you’ve been through and battled back from only makes you more fascinating as far as I’m concerned. We’ve got time, and whatever happens between us is going to be 100 percent sober and 110 percent consensual. I can damn well promise you that.”
“Oh.” She exhaled the soft sound, and about a million pounds of shame went with it.
He laced his fingers with hers and drew her toward the family room. Marlin had taken up residence on the old love seat, and she and Ryan sat on the overstuffed sofa, so close that their thighs grazed against each other. She placed her glass on the coffee table and picked up the remote.
She found an old Sylvester Stallone movie, laughing at Ryan’s excitement. “This is a classic,” he murmured when the opening credits rolled. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, he put an arm around her and gathered her close.
Meredith had to swallow back the emotion that rose up into her throat. She’d carried the secret of the summer night that had changed her whole life, who she was on a cellular level, for so many years. It still boggled her mind that she’d shared it with Ryan. And somehow the revelation shifted something inside her again. As if there had been tiny pieces of her floating in the air for all this time. They were with her but not part of her.
Ryan’s reaction allowed her to begin to gather those bits and reposition them within her. She might be broken, but for the first time she wondered if maybe she didn’t have to stay that way. Maybe there was a way to once more become whole.
RYAN BLINKED AWAKE SLOWLY, unable to say where he was or what time it was but aware that he wanted to go right back to sleep and return to the amazing dream he’d been having.
He felt something press against his jaw, light and soft like the flicker of butterfly wings.
“Are you awake?” a voice asked, and he heard both humor and desire in it.
“I hope not,” he answered automatically, earning a breathy laugh that tickled his skin.
Suddenly he realized he wasn’t dreaming. His eyes adjusted to the dim light of Meredith’s family room, and he became conscious that the butterfly wings were from the woman at his side. She kissed his cheek, and he quickly turned his head to capture her mouth with his.
She moaned against him and shifted. His still-fuzzy brain took a moment to process the situation, but when he did it was the most natural thing in the world to lift her into his lap so that she straddled his hips.
“Good call,” she said, pulling back to look at him. “You fell asleep and missed the end of the movie.”
“Rambo won,” he told her, still trying to wrap his brain around what was happening.
“Yeah.” A smile tugged at one side of her mouth. “He won.”
“You should have kicked me out.”
She shrugged. “You looked so peaceful, and I needed to check on the puppies.” Her green eyes darkened a touch, reminding him of the color of the ocean in winter. She cupped his cheek with a soft hand. “So we’re clear, I’m not kicking you out now, either.”
“We don’t have to—”
“What if I want to?” she asked with a small smile that was both flirty and the tiniest bit hesitant.
His body went from zero to hell yes in an instant. He did his best to tamp down the need surging through him so that his brain didn’t short-circuit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted a woman the way he did Meredith. Everything about her captivated him. But she’d shared some heady stuff with him earlier. He’d seen enough women hurt by men to know that scars weren’t always physical. He didn’t want her to feel pressure to take a step she wasn’t ready for. They might have only known each other a short time, but she was already precious to him.
“There’s no hurry,” he told her, even though it was a struggle to get out the words. “We have time.”
“How much?” She shifted against him, and he lost all ability to process coherent thought for a moment. Her smile widened as if she liked the torture she put him through. “How much time?”
“Time,” he repeated, his mind still trying to catch up to her words. “All night.”
Her laugh was husky and did crazy things to his insides. “How long until you leave?”
A five-alarm fire couldn’t force him to leave this moment. He started to tell her exactly that and then realized what she was really asking. When was he leaving Magnolia?
“I have another three weeks until I can be reassessed and cleared to go back to work.”
He couldn’t tell if relief or disappointment flashed in her gaze, but she replaced it with a smile before he could react.
“That’s good,” she said, then leaned in and kissed him again.
Did she mean good because it was enough time or good because they had a built-in end date to whatever happened between them?
“I should be able to get you out of my system in that time.” She paused, and her eyes widened as she pulled away. “I didn’t mean it like—”
He wrapped his arms around her waist. “I’m yours for however long you’ll have me.”
“I’m bad at this,” she muttered with a shake of her head.
“You’re amazing,” he countered and pressed his mouth to hers. He hadn’t been lying. He’d take whatever time she’d give him, although the fact that they both knew it was temporary probably made it easier. At least it did for him, even though he shouldn’t admit it.
But Meredith made him feel too much, made him want things he’d told himself he wasn’t cut out for in life. As a kid, trying to balance the privilege of his family’s wealth with the conditions his father had set on proving his worthiness had messed with his sense of self.
His desires had never been a priority. He’d been taught to put his professional goals ahead of personal ones until he didn’t have any of the latter. Ryan knew his existence would always revolve around his career. He didn’t want to settle down or have a family of his own.
In fact, he’d never even considered it. So it made no sense that he couldn’t stop thinking about a future with Meredith.
But then the tip of her tongue touched his, and all the thoughts of the future disappeared, blotted out by the blinding pleasure of this moment.