MAVIS TOOK HER TIME. She’d started teaching a restorative yoga class bright and early on weekdays. She’d spent two busy mornings in a row at her father’s garage, Bracken Mechanics, where she often handled the bookkeeping. Yesterday afternoon, she’d gone on a field excursion with Zelda and Errol. They’d spent an hour or so scanning the inside of a 1930s townhouse with their EMF readers. She’d then stayed up all night listening to audio recordings and screening new voice mails from potential clients.
She had definitely earned a few hours in the Bracken stable with her new mare, Mollie. The name had stuck since the day in Mobile when they met.
Mavis ran a comb over Mollie’s mane, brushing out the snags. Now that the horse was eating right and had been cared for, her coat held a lovely sheen. Moving her hand over it, she worked the comb over Mollie’s neck gently. During their small getting-to-know-each-other sessions, Mavis had found that the mare found song comforting. Her ears were no longer peeled. They stood at ease together. Her eyes, no longer wide, had lost their wariness as Mavis hummed into the restful lull.
She stopped humming, however, when she realized what song she’d chosen.
Mavis frowned, stepping back from the horse to pick the horsehair from the comb’s bristles. She tried to think of another song, but “Brandy” was on a constant refrain in her head. Maybe because Gavin had been gone for nearly a week.
He’d kept his promise to her. They’d had a conversation before he left. He’d told her he was leaving, though he didn’t know for how long. She’d asked where he was going.
“There’s something I need to take care of.”
When she tried for more details, he had asked, “Mavis, do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she answered.
Two days had been fine. Three was acceptable. Four days with no word from him and she had caught herself biting her nails. Now five and she hadn’t slept and her stomach churned because she knew the pull he must be feeling—the instinctual tug to head for open seas. All this on the heels of Tiffany’s visit didn’t bode well for his return, either.
“I’ll handle it,” he’d said when she brought up Tiffany, and nothing more.
Mavis tapped the comb against the surface of the stool before returning to her chore, humming something new.
The footsteps coming through the stable fell hard and with enough economy for her to know her father was there before she saw him. “I thought you were at the airfield,” she said when he reached the gate to Mollie’s stall.
“It’s after five,” James said. “Quittin’ time, baby girl.”
Mavis peeked at the face of her wristwatch. Hmm, she thought. Time flies when you’re doing your damnedest not to mope. She went back to brushing Mollie’s withers.
James waited a full minute or two before he asked, “Are we not talking?”
Mavis lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “I thought you had enough say at dinner the other night.”
He blew out a breath. “All right.” She heard him shuffle his feet. “What I said the other night…about him…”
Mavis waited, stopping once more to clean the comb.
She’d started back on Mollie’s face when James began again. “Emotions can cloud our thinking,” he ventured, carefully. “Especially when it comes to the people who matter. Gavin matters, much more than I think William Leighton mattered or any of the other fellows you tried to hide from us.”
Mavis frowned, grazing the star point between Mollie’s eyes with her fingertips.
James made a gruff noise in his throat, as if he were frustrated with himself. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve been sober over thirty years. To this day, I’m still an alcoholic. And I remember, like it was yesterday, how the grip of withdrawal made me reach for your mother. I saw her as a lifeline, and in a lot of ways, she was. I’m ashamed to say it, even after all this time, but in some ways, I did use her. I loved her, but I used her just the same.”
Mavis crossed her arms over her chest, planting her feet as she faced James for the first time. “First of all, let’s leave love out of it. It’s not helpful. Okay? Second, you realize Gavin isn’t an addict? He suffers from PTSD, and unresolved grief on top of some mental abuse, thanks to his mom. Not addiction. There’s a big difference.”
The light from the window at the back of the stall caught James’s beard, bringing all the silver notes to the surface and making him look more salt than pepper. His eyes were alive with blue, however, and they were lined with apprehension for her. “Neither PTSD nor addiction has symptoms that can be healed overnight. It doesn’t matter how much you love the person…”
“That’s twice you’ve dropped the L-word,” Mavis warned.
“Yes,” James said simply.
I’m not emotional. The words came and went quickly, yet they were anything but fleeting. It was a terrible denial. An even worse lie.
“Don’t let the truth chase you around like it did me,” James went on. “Eight years. I stayed away eight long years. That’s eight years I could’ve watched Kyle grow up, like I watched you.”
“You were getting clean,” Mavis reminded him.
“I was running,” James admitted. “Just like Gavin.”
Mavis felt as jumbled as a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. Mollie shifted restlessly beside her and she reached out to soothe her. Contact with the horse made her relax by a fraction. She realized then how tense she really was. “What is it that you want me to do, Dad?” she asked. “When he comes back—” if he comes back “—you want me to walk away?”
“I don’t know,” James said. He ran a hand through his hair, still as thick as it had been when she was a girl. “Between what he’s got going on and the unresolved issues between him and your brother…it’s a pickle, and it involves every one of us.”
“His issues with Kyle are theirs,” Mavis replied. “They can work it out between them.”
“What if they don’t?” James wondered out loud. “What if it goes on? It’d make the long game tough between you and Gavin.”
Mavis couldn’t think about the long game. Why she’d considered it in the first place… Well, she was starting to wonder.
“Unless…” James’s facial muscles twitched, hinting at discomfort. “Unless you say the two of you never thought about the long game, that your relationship is temporary.”
“You know, people choose each other because they need each other even if it’s not lifelong commitment like you and Mom,” Mavis explained. “It can be temporary and still mean something.”
“I know,” he said. “I thought about your mom every day I wasn’t a part of her life.”
“Maybe I see something in him,” she argued, “like Mom saw something in you back then. He is mine, maybe for a short time—maybe for a shorter time than the summer you had with Mom initially—but that doesn’t make what Gavin and I have less real.”
James shook his head. “I’m not asking you to be ashamed. Your mother and me… We’re the last people who’d punish you for lov—” She winced and he quickly revised. “For feeling that deeply for someone. We love you, Mavis Blythe, and you ought to know that there’s nothing you’ve done in this life that has ever disappointed us. We just want you to be careful.”
“He’s not here,” she said, the statement sneaking through. She stopped short of letting the wall inside her fall down under the force of what was behind it. The stool behind her drew her attention as she turned away and set the comb down. She rubbed her hands together. “I don’t know if he’s coming back, so you, Mom, Kyle and everybody else can stop worrying about it.”
“I don’t want him gone,” James said. “Not if it makes you unhappy.”
“I told him he could go,” she revealed. “From the beginning, we agreed that if he needed to run then I wouldn’t stop him, so long as he let me know beforehand. That way, I wouldn’t have to find out from somebody else.”
“That doesn’t make it hurt any less,” James said. “Does it, baby girl?”
She rubbed her hands on the front of her jeans and faced him again. “I can’t talk about this anymore, Dad. I’m sorry.”
James noted the tilt of her chin, the stubbornness behind it, and hopefully none of the resignation. “And I can’t argue with you anymore. Not when you look more like your mother than ever. I hurt her once, the way he’s hurt you. It’s almost like history’s repeating itself, and that’s not an easy thing to watch.”
Mavis looked at the wall. “She did okay without you.”
He raised a brow. “It took a lot of truth to get her to come around to me again. And hugs, but those I had to sneak in so she didn’t break a vase over my head.”
She felt a smile along the fault lines of her mouth and wanted to hold on to it. “Are you trying to tell me you want a hug?”
“Would it make you angrier?” he asked, cautious.
“I’m not angry at you.” Giving in, she walked to the gate and let him swing it open. “Even so, I don’t have a vase.”
James didn’t so much hug her as scoop her against his chest. How he managed to hold her firmly and softly she didn’t know. When she took them, his hugs were always the same—just right.
“We don’t do this enough,” James said, and held her a smidge tighter before releasing her.
Mavis stepped back, brushing the hair from her face. Maybe it was easier for other people to be affectionate with those closest to them. For her, this meant more. “Don’t worry so much about me. I’m fine, just like Mollie here.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that women are made of tougher stuff.” He tapped the edge of her nose. “Dinner?”
“Kyle?” she asked.
“He’ll be there. And you’ll have to talk to him eventually, too.”
“Sure,” she acknowledged. “First I think it’d be best all around if I curb the urge to clock him.”
“With a vase?”
“In my dreams, it’s been more like one of Edith’s old dinner dishes,” she said.
“The ones with the peonies?”
“No, the ones with the quails she made us eat off of at Christmastime. I broke one once, so it’s not like it’s a complete set.”
James threw an arm around her shoulders. Jerking his chin in the direction of the tree line, he said, “Heard your hound ’round back yonder. Chasing the cats again.”
Mavis raised her voice and called, “Prometheus!”
Someone answered back, but it wasn’t the dog. “I found you! Put on your party boots, my friend. We’re going out a-drinkin’!”
They stopped and pivoted as one to Harmony. She’d taken the walking path with Bea from the mother-in-law suite where they lived. After the wedding, Kyle would live there, too.
Bea skipped ahead of her mother, wildflowers tumbling one by one out of her fist. She threw herself at James. He laughed and boosted her to his shoulder for a ride.
“Um, what?” Mavis asked, wiggling the toe of Bea’s sneaker as James made a circle around her.
“I said…” Harmony said, closer. Her hands were hidden in her back pockets and she had a gleam in her eyes that said trouble. “You, me, the tavern, drinks. Too-night. Your Mom said she and your dad could watch Bea.”
“Dad and I just agreed to dinner,” Mavis said, looking around for the man. He’d escaped into the house.
“You can do dinner at the farm any night of the week and so can I,” Harmony reminded her. “But it’s not every night that both Bea and Kyle are occupied elsewhere. Plus, your brother will have me married by next season. My bachelorette days are numbered, again. Let’s go! Let’s have some fun! Two single gals raisin’ hell.”
“You and your daughter raise hell all on your own on a day-to-day basis. Isn’t that enough?”
Harmony shifted up on the balls of her feet, speaking out of the corner of her mouth. “It seems you’ve had a taste for hell-raising lately, too. Your shake-up with Gavin surpassed us. I’d be kind of proud of you…”
“If it wasn’t him,” Mavis finished. “I’m not going out.” She decided firmly and made a move to follow James.
Harmony moved smoothly into her path. “I need you.”
Mavis grimaced. “Don’t do that.”
“I mean it,” Harmony insisted. “A bride can’t celebrate her engagement without her maid of honor.”
Mavis blinked. “You…want me to do that again?”
“Uh, yeah,” Harmony said, as if it were obvious. In a second, she was back to serious. “You’re my best friend. I want you standing beside me when I make an honest man out of Kyle.”
“You’re not going to make me wear aquamarine again, are you?” Mavis asked, wrinkling her nose. “Because once was enough.”
“My aqua phase ended long ago,” Harmony granted.
“Thank you, sweet baby Jesus.”
“Besides. A little birdie told me you look much better in red.”
Mavis frowned. “Little birdie?”
Harmony pursed her lips. “Okay, a big birdie. A big, smitten birdie.”
“Smitten,” Mavis said. Gavin had been coined a lot of things but smitten wasn’t one of them.
“I might’ve cornered him,” Harmony admitted, “at the inn, before he took off.”
“You didn’t think to mention it?” Mavis asked.
A thoughtful pause filled the void, along with a light breeze and echoes of a nicker from the stable. “To tell the truth,” Harmony said, “what he had to say for himself took a few days to sink in.”
Mavis opened her mouth to ask. Just as fast, she let it close.
“I went swinging at him,” Harmony explained. “Verbally ’cause I figured he was still sore from Kyle’s dinner interrogation.”
“Ambush,” Mavis amended. “Even you have to agree. It was a cheap ambush.”
“Kyle got his licks from my end,” Harmony acknowledged. “It helped Gavin out when he admitted he hadn’t gotten you entirely out of your drawers.” At Mavis’s steaming silence, Harmony demurred. “I was confused. When we were kids, I thought you hated him.”
“He irritated me,” Mavis said plainly. “He was my big brother’s best friend. I didn’t think to look beyond that until a few weeks ago.”
“You haven’t carried a torch for him like I did for Kyle all those years.”
“No.”
Harmony closed her eyes briefly, relieved. “So what changed?”
“I was like a lot of other people we know,” Mavis told her. “I never looked at much but what was on Gavin’s surface, or what he projected.”
“Even you,” Harmony said with surprise. “The observer.”
“He didn’t want anybody to see the real things. He didn’t want me to see, either, but when he came back, I don’t think he was at the point anymore where he could hide them.”
“Why did he pick you?” Harmony asked. “Me, Mom and Dad have been banging on that door for as long as I can remember.”
“I don’t know,” Mavis said truthfully. “But I’m glad he did. I’m not sure I would’ve left him alone had he not chosen me. I’d still be banging at the door, same as you.”
“I didn’t get much out of him before he left,” Harmony continued. “But he did say that he was glad, too. And he wasn’t sorry for any of it.”
Mavis frowned over the flurry of emotions. It took over, from her navel to her clavicle.
“I’m just going to say it.” Harmony licked her lips, prepping herself. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say my brother’s a little bit in love with you.”
Mavis grimaced. “Everybody needs to stop saying that.”
“Tight-lipped men just happen to be something I know a thing or two about.” Mavis shook her head, but Harmony kept on, relentless. “He’s never known what to do with love at its purest. He loves Mom and Dad. He loves me and Bea. He loved Benji. And that’s part of what’s been chasing him all this time. I know it.” Before Mavis could escape to the house, Harmony grabbed her. “Mavis. Please. I need to know.”
“Know what?” Mavis asked, frustrated that her heart was pounding under the scrutiny. “What is it you want to hear?”
“If he’d decided to stay, if he was in love with you…how long could you see it going? That’s all.”
That’s all? Yeah, right. “You won’t tell a soul I said this,” Mavis warned.
Harmony lifted two fingers, eyes wide. “Scout’s honor.”
“I would’ve stuck as long as he needed me.”
As Mavis breathed heavily into the quiet, Harmony let the answer dig in. Shock painted her. “God. Mavis.”
“But it’s over, as far as I know now,” Mavis said quickly. “Right now, that’s irrelevant.”
Harmony surprised her by grabbing her into a fast hug. When Mavis stiffened, Harmony tightened her hold. “You need this. You can lie to everybody else, but I know you need this.”
The statement was rife with truth. Mavis remembered how Harmony had loved Kyle for years. Well over a decade. Since she was a girl and he was practically a man, as far out of reach as the moon. So she didn’t step back from the embrace.
“I wish you could have told me,” Harmony whispered. “So what that he’s my brother? You could’ve talked to me.”
Mavis tried to take a gulp of air. “Can’t breathe.”
Harmony patted her on the back, consoling. “It’s going to be all right.”
“No. I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry.” Harmony let go of her.
Mavis took air in. Pushed it out. “I’m not emotional.”
“You might be an island,” Harmony observed, “but chances are, your place is crawling with pineapples.”
Ugh. Pineapples.
Harmony tilted her head. “You feel like getting drunk?”
Mavis let out a startled laugh. “You might talk me into it.”
“Good,” Harmony nodded. “After this, I could drink enough for both of us.”
“You usually do,” Mavis said as they walked to the farmhouse.
“That’s the spirit.”
* * *
“DON’T TALK TO ME,” Mavis told Kyle the moment he appeared at Tavern of the Graces.
“Yeah,” Harmony chimed, already three sheets to the wind. She raised her margarita. “Single girls for life!”
Kyle grinned. “Says the future Mrs. Bracken.”
Harmony brightened. “Oooh. That’s the first time I’ve heard it. Say it again!”
He obliged her, drawing closer. His mouth didn’t so much meld with hers as clash with it, heatedly.
“Oh, good,” Mavis groaned. “You’re doing that.” She picked up her half-drunk margarita and rattled the ice that remained. Catching William’s eye from behind the bar, she lifted it in indication. She was going to need another, she thought, tipping it back for a watery swallow.
“Mm-mm,” Harmony purred as she and Kyle parted. “I’m looking forward to that more on a day-to-day basis.”
“Like you two don’t do it enough already?” Mavis drawled.
“What’s she so aggro about, anyway?” Kyle asked his intended.
Harmony rolled her eyes at him. “You know what you did.”
“Are you still mad about dinner?” he asked Mavis.
Mavis narrowed her eyes on him. “No, I’m mad about what brought dinner to a screeching halt.”
“Sorry.”
She snorted. “That’s it? ‘Sorry’?”
“Well, what do you want?” he wanted to know.
“You choked him out,” Mavis stated, “like you were still recruits and it was time for initiation!”
“It was a reflex,” Kyle said.
“You might want to work on that,” Mavis pointed out, turning away to face the bar again.
“He’s using you, anyway.”
Mavis started to count to ten. She gave up at four. Swiveling, she confronted him. “I know when you look at me you have this irritating habit of seeing a six-year-old with hair like a porcupine. But just this once, could you maybe open yourself up to reality? I’m twenty-eight. I have all my adult teeth. Even if I do still have freckles and haven’t grown an inch since fifteen, I’ve been to college, I’ve held down three to four jobs for most of my professional life. I’ve met my fair share of people—men included. Not one of them was a saint and neither am I.”
His face had gone blank. “Where are you going with this?”
“I know what it is to use someone,” she replied sharply. “I’ve cut lovers off because they tried to get closer than I wanted them. If anyone’s a competent judge of whether your buddy was using me or not, it’s me.”
“Give me one reason he wasn’t,” Kyle said. “Because I can’t figure it out.”
“Why is that?” she asked. “Am I not what a man would want?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mavis,” he warned.
“It was more,” she threw at him. “He needed me and I needed him.”
“And now he’s gone again,” Kyle picked up. “He’s disappointed the people who love him again, and he hurt you in the process. Don’t paint him as the innocent party in this. That’s not what he is.”
“He made me no promises. I told him not to. I knew it would end this way.”
“Yes,” Kyle said with a nod. “Because that’s who he is.”
“I think you’re wrong,” she told him. “I saw things in him. I saw fear and defeat, grief and loss and everything in between. I saw someone who wants to stay. He wants to belong to something. He doesn’t think he deserves it. There’ve been too many who’ve told him he’s a lone wolf. The restless troublemaker who needs to move on so all the tidy notions people have about small-town life can keep on existing. That voice in his head, you know who it is.”
“He and Tiffany haven’t spoken in years.”
“They spoke the day before he left,” Mavis told him. “I got to hear for myself the things she tells him. You’re there, too—in his head.”
“Do you know how hard I worked to get him to come here in the first place?” Kyle said, raising his voice.
“Yes,” she granted. “You brought him back. But he touches me and you’re the one chasing him off into the night like a frigging dingo.”
“He shouldn’t have touched you,” Kyle said, undeterred. He raised his beard-stubbled chin. “He knows he shouldn’t have touched you.”
“Like you shouldn’t have touched Harmony,” she batted back at him.
“Maybe not, in the beginning,” he said. “But Harmony and I… With us, things could never be temporary. It was all or nothing. You and Gavin both knew whatever this was wouldn’t last. And he went ahead with it anyway. That’s where he used you.”
She lifted a finger. “I’ll remind you of one thing before you and I drop this forever.”
“Forever?” he said doubtfully.
“Forever,” she reiterated, piercing him with a glare. “When you and Harmony were first sneaking around this summer and I was the lucky party who stumbled in on the fact, what did I do?”
Kyle became reflective. “You called me a frog-faced good-for-nothing and hoped I’d get myself trampled by wild heifers. Then you gave me a nurple and told me to mind where I pointed my nether joints.” His gaze rested on her again. “Hard to forget.”
“After that,” she said, “when the initial shock and ‘ew’ factor had worn off somewhat, I kept it a secret when you both wanted it secret. More, I didn’t keep you apart.”
Kyle spoke levelly. “So…you’re asking me to believe that what happened between you and Gavin is equal to what’s between me and Harmony?”
Mavis glanced from him to Harmony. Her friend’s eyes were wide on hers. Mavis shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Kyle surveyed her, his stare passing left and right over her before settling. “I’ll say one last thing.”
Mavis couldn’t contain a quiet sigh of relief.
“If it was me where he is and Harmony where you are…nothing would be keeping me away at this point. You see, that’s where I doubt he’s in the same place you are, emotionally.”
“I’m not emotional,” she denied.
He stared at her, grim. He raised his beer to his mouth. “I’ve never seen you so emotional. Why do you think I’m so worked up about this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, and shrugged, because she didn’t know what else to say or do. Gavin was still gone.
“Your heart isn’t any different from the rest of ours,” Harmony said kindly. She glanced up at Kyle. “Neither is his.”
“Hey, Kyle,” Olivia called from across the bar. She jerked her thumb to the stage. “You’re up!”
Kyle took a breath. “We’ll finish this later.”
“I’m good with now,” Mavis replied.
He took off his hat and placed it backward over Harmony’s braided red updo. “Your cousin talked me into hitting the karaoke.”
Harmony crooned. “What’re you going to sing for me? No Beyoncé. Liv’s saving that for me. Do ‘Beast of Burden.’ I love when you do Jagger.”
“As you wish.” He kissed the skin along the ridge of her shoulder soundly before pointing sternly at Mavis. “No throwing peanuts at me like last time.”
Mavis shrugged, nonchalant. “There’s a reason they leave the singing to me.”
Olivia met Kyle at the head of the room. A grand introduction and overtures of homecoming followed. Mavis raised her glass as Harmony bounced on her stool, clapping like a lunatic. “That’s my husband, y’all!” she hollered.
Mavis shook her head. “Your single girl status has been wiped.”
“Kyle, do the hip roll!” Harmony guffawed when he did as she suggested.
Mavis turned away from the display and found a fresh margarita waiting on the bar. William stood behind it, polishing an empty pint with a cloth. “Round two,” he supplied.
She wrapped both hands around the glass. “Your timing is impeccable.”
William gave her a sideways smile, set the clean pint aside and reached for another. “That’s why I’m the new boss.”
“That’s right,” Mavis said. Olivia had only recently handed over the tavern reins to her eldest son. She and Gerald now were in charge of special events alone. She raised her glass again. “Well deserved.”
“Why, thank you,” he said with a bow of his head. “Only took a decade to wear the lady down.”
Chin propped in her hand, Mavis looked at him thoughtfully. He was the reedy kind of tall. He had green eyes, a slow grin and a voice like a baritone. Plaid was his go-to shirt pattern, much like her father. He liked to pair it, oddly enough, with board shorts and flip-flops. Blond and tan, he’d become a maverick behind his parents’ bar not because legacy dictated it but because he came by bartending naturally. Observing was Mavis’s gift; listening was his—and mixing.
He’d once made her palms sweat and her glands sing. And after all this time, there was sentiment there. As well as a little awkwardness. And now that everyone knew what they’d carefully buried, the awkwardness had doubled down. Bringing the margarita closer, Mavis scooped salt off the rim with her fingertip. She stuck it in her mouth. Her insecurities from years ago flared like a sore tendon. “Out of curiosity,” she said cautiously, “how did she take the news…about you and me?”
William raised both brows. “At first, she didn’t believe it because she thinks she’s better at reading Finnian and me than she actually is. When it finally sank in, she was impressed that I pulled it off—sorry. That we pulled it off, together, for so long. Also that Finn was able to keep his mouth shut about it.”
Mavis thought about that. Finnian was a notorious blabbermouth. “Yeah. How’d he manage that?”
“I paid him,” William said, ducking his head as if he were still ashamed.
Mavis laughed out loud. “You did not.”
“I learned early that the only thing that can shut my brother up is money,” William pointed out.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Any other feelings from the home front, about us?” she asked.
“Well, she did say that the subterfuge wasn’t necessary. She likes you. I think she’s a little upset with me for letting you get away.”
Mavis took a sip from the margarita. “I thought it was what you wanted.”
“What?” he asked, his hand hovering over the next pint in the queue.
She set the glass down, carefully. “Wasn’t it?”
William braced both his hands on the edge of the counter, scrutinizing. “I thought it was what you wanted. That’s why you ended it.”
Well, hell. Mavis sighed. “Oh, brother.”
He continued to stare, blank-faced.
She shook her head. “If you wanted to keep on, why did you let me end it?”
“Because I was a dumbass,” he said blandly. “I was young. I didn’t know the first thing about holding on to a woman. I figured you wanted something else. So I let you go.”
“Oh, I wanted something else all right,” she grumbled. Then she winced. “You didn’t…pine for me. Did you?”
William glanced over her head. He lifted his shoulder, eyes tracking their way back to her slowly. “Maybe a little.”
Mavis put her face in her palm. She cursed out loud.
“I don’t like the word pine,” he said, using the cloth to wipe down the space of the bar between them. “I like to think it was a little more dignified than that. Like brooding.”
“You pined!” She was going to need another margarita. “And you never said a word?”
“I cared enough to let you go,” he noted. “That’s what you do. ‘Love ’em and let ’em go’? It felt adult, at least. I figured if what we had was right, you’d find your way back at some point.”
She’d often wondered why some other woman hadn’t married him already. She wanted to believe, more than anything, that it wasn’t because of her. However, William had just blown up a whole decade’s worth of insecurities and assumptions. Now she didn’t know what to believe.
“Don’t hate me for this,” he said, treading gingerly. “But…would now be a bad time to ask if you’re available?”
She blinked. “No. Yes. No.” She held up a hand to stop herself. “Okay, it’s clear I don’t know the answer to that, either.”
“Are you—pining?” William asked. “Over him?”
Gavin. Of course he knew about Gavin. Everybody from here to Shreveport knew about her and Gavin, the same as everyone knew about her and William.
He nodded, gleaning the answer for himself. He went back to wiping, though the bar was noticeably clean. “It’s, uh, none of my business.”
Mavis frowned deeply. “You’d be the first to say as much.”
“Can I ask how you’re doing?”
“Fine.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said. He was doing his listening thing, she knew.
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Look, just do yourself a solid and stay away from the lunkhead onstage,” she advised. “I’d prefer to keep seeing more than the top of your head.”
“The top of my head?”
“After he buries you,” she said, and paused for impact. “Alive.”
William glanced askance at the singing amateur. “Oh.”
She spread her fingers. “What’d you expect getting involved with the commando’s sister?”
He scratched his forehead with one finger. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t know. What’d you want to be with me for?”
“It felt safe.” It tumbled out before she realized she was saying it. When he homed in on her again, she looked away for the first time. “I…felt safe with you,” she finished lamely.
It took a moment. William’s mouth moved to a smile.
She lifted a finger at him. “Not another word.”
“Okay,” he said easily. He looked down. The smile grew.
Dear God, would somebody marry him? He was decent—likely the most decent guy she’d ever known. “Liv’s still got her double shotty,” she said. “Keep it loaded and take it to bed with you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me and your brother,” William said with something of confidence.
That was something. “If only,” she said out loud.
William’s part-time bartender shouted at him from across the bar and rattled off a large order of draft beers. He logged the information in his mind, tossed the cloth into the sink behind him and moved to fill the requests. He took a glass off the mirrored shelf above the long row of chrome-and-gold taps, chose one and began to build the draft with only a small bit of foam on top. “Do you think we’ll hear you sing tonight?” he called back to Mavis.
She glanced at her near-empty margarita. “Make me another when you’ve got a minute and time will tell.”
“Easy there,” he advised. “You never were great at holding tequila.”
“My homegirl’s getting married, and I’d like to forget some stuff, at least until tomorrow.”
“All right then,” William acquiesced. “Round three, coming up.”
No sooner had he moved down the row of taps than a large hand clapped over her shoulder. “It’s your turn.”
Mavis squinted at Kyle. “Huh?”
“I’ve humiliated myself,” he indicated. “You’ll kill up there and humiliate me further. Win-win on your part.”
“I like where I’m at,” she claimed, and started to turn back to the bar.
“Don’t make me start,” Kyle advised. When she only doubled back to frown at him, he began to chant, “Mavis. Mavis. Mavis—”
She straightened when Harmony and several other tavern regulars struck up the tune. “Stop it.”
Kyle raised his voice, pumping his fist. “Mavis! Mavis! Mavis!”
The chant went up through the bar like wildfire. She scowled when she heard William taking up the call to arms, too.
Kyle grinned. “Come on! Give the people what they want!”
“Later,” she said, low, as she rose from the stool, “I’m going to throw a quail plate at your head.”
Kyle answered by tossing her unceremoniously over his shoulder.
Mavis thought about clawing him as he hustled her through bystanders to the stage. They parted for him. When he set her on her feet, he pecked a kiss to the center of her forehead and backed off quickly before she could bludgeon him. “Mavis Bracken, ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mic before darting off.
Mavis pushed the hair from her face. As the music queued, she stepped to the microphone. She cleared her throat and raised her hand to the crowd. “Hi.” Lyrics flashed on the screen overhead. It was a Beatles song. She glanced at Kyle, tall and distinguishable despite his retreat to Harmony’s side.
Beatles songs had always been their weekend specialties at the farm.
He hooked an arm over his fiancée’s shoulders and raised his pint in encouragement.
Holding a grudge against him would be ten times easier if she didn’t like seeing him so damn happy. Returning her attention to the lyrics, she let the first piano notes drop. “‘Hey Jude,’” she sang. “‘Don’t make it bad.’” The crowd whistled along to the popular tune and she managed a smile as she went on with the song.
It was a popular choice. Soon, she wasn’t singing alone. Soon, it was simple to intone the familiar words. More comfortable, she closed her eyes, going full McCartney. The sore knot inside her unraveled. She tried sieving it out, one chord at a time. Raising herself onto her toes, she belted through the bridge and the tavern patrons joined her in an enthusiastic round of “nah, nah, nah, nahs.”
On the third round, she opened her eyes. Her “nah, nahs” died.
Gavin.
He was three rows back, packed shoulder to shoulder with William’s customers. The mic in her fist dropped to her hip, the knot in her strung tight again. It was tempered, though, by a sun-bright flash of hope.
Gavin, she thought. His name soon became as much of a mantra as the “nah nahs.” Gavin’s back.
The song wound down to a finish. The crowd applauded. Those seated came to their feet for a standing O. Their buoyancy had smoothed over her glitch.
He was smiling. Gavin was smiling at her, in the quiet way that sparked heat inside her.
One of the waiters appeared at her side. Mavis jerked in reaction. She let him take the mic and dipped into a small curtsy as he led another round of applause for her. Exiting stage left, Mavis scanned the milling faces. If she’d thought hers had been hot under William’s gaze…
Now it was awareness that brought the flush to her neck and cheeks. He was here, he was near, and she needed to get to him. “Scuse me,” she muttered as she elbowed through the thick clutch.
Warm fingers wrapped around her elbow. They tugged her around. Looking up, she found him. Or, he found her. Oh God. Gavin!
He was clean-shaven. Someone had given his fade haircut a trim. He looked great. He looked fantastic. Her heart knocked against her throat. The tavern seemed to rock like a canoe. She could smell him.
Words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t bring them up so she concentrated instead on leveling her breathing as she looked at him and he looked back. The low lights brought the warmth of metallic umber to his eyes. They flickered. Longing, an unbridled sweep, lashed her as his eyes caressed her.
Someone bumped into her from behind and she stepped into him, his circle of heat. When he laid his hand on her shoulder, the other on the small of her back, she shuddered…she didn’t think about moving. In fact, she closed her eyes again. After a few seconds, under the cover of the crowd, she turned her nose into his chest.
Hard. Real. Gavin. She wasn’t sure how the emotions came at her. They were there, hair-triggered. They built and she had no recourse but to press her face to his shirt and hang.
His palm swept up her spine. Stiff, she tried not to buckle when it draped warmly over the nape of her neck.
He spoke against her temple. “You with me?”
“Mmm.” She gave a half nod. “I’m just—” she groaned at the obvious “—emotional.”
His hold tightened. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Frexy.”
“You’re here,” she said on a tumult of air.
“I am now.”
“Why…?” She began to shake her head. She didn’t understand…
It took him a minute to answer. “I…wanted to come home. So I did.”
“Just like that?”
“It was simpler this time.” His voice was a rumble and it fired in her veins as his lips grazed her ear. “You made it simpler.”
She was going to kiss him—the chick who didn’t do PDA—right here, in front of everyone. She was going to kiss him so everyone knew he was hers. Keeping her nose pressed to the wolf beneath his collar, she breathed. In and out. It wasn’t enough—not enough.
Harmony poked her head in. “Hi! Remember me?”
Mavis’s head sailed back.
“Hi,” Gavin responded. “And sure do.”
“You’re back!” Harmony chirped.
“Just,” he acknowledged.
Harmony glanced to Mavis, then back to him. Her eyes were bright. “Where’d you go?”
Mavis saw reluctance pass over him. Kyle cut off any excuse by becoming the fourth point of their square. “He’s back. There’s a surprise.”
Mavis circled Gavin’s wrist, passing her thumb gently over the pulse point and daring Kyle to say anything else.
“You forget something?” Kyle asked.
“No.” Gaze falling over Mavis again like gentle rain, Gavin’s expression went from tense to intense in the flash. “I didn’t forget. As for where I’ve been…”
“Don’t leave us hanging,” Kyle said.
“I was in Monroeville,” Gavin revealed. “Visiting an old friend.”
Harmony’s eyes widened on her brother. “Tommy? You went to see Tommy?”
Gavin nodded affirmation.
Mavis’s lips parted. Thomas Zaccoe was Benji’s father. He lived in Monroeville in the same house he’d raised his son in—not but a walk from his grave site. When Gavin had trouble meeting anyone’s eye, she caressed the inside of his arm.
“How was he?” Kyle asked. He didn’t sound stern anymore.
Gavin nodded again. “Good. He’s, uh…seeing someone. Some widow he met at the supermarket.”
“That’s sweet,” Harmony said with a smile. “I’ve been meaning to take Bea up to see him before the end of summer.”
“He’s got pictures of her everywhere,” Gavin mentioned. “He needed a few things done around the house, so I wound up staying a few days.”
“Did you see it?” Harmony asked quietly.
Gavin rubbed his lips together. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I saw it.”
They were speaking of the memorial the city had built in honor of its hometown hero. The statue stood at the entrance to the cemetery.
“It’s beautiful,” Harmony said. Her eyes grew damp. “Isn’t it?”
“He wasn’t one for show,” Gavin said quietly. “But I think he might have liked it.”
“Are you okay?” Mavis asked before she could think better of it in front of the others.
He grabbed on to her visually, like he was a squall and he wanted to hug her like a lighthouse. “Better,” he acknowledged.
“Kyle!” William called from the bar. When he had Kyle’s attention, he cupped his hands over his mouth to be heard over the music and crowd noise. “They want you to draw tonight’s raffle!”
“Oooh.” Harmony jumped to, drawing half a ticket out of her back pocket. “My number’s seven-seven—”
“That’s cheating,” Kyle muttered as the two of them squeezed through the crowd to get to the raffle jar.
Mavis was alone with Gavin again. Thank God.
Gavin humphed as someone pushed into him from behind. She saw the dark look he tossed over his shoulder and grabbed his collar, turning him back to her. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He nodded decisively and smiled. “Hell yes.”
She beamed when he fell into step with her. She pushed her way to the door. She moved quickly. The raffle would only last so long. Before anyone else could get in their way, she pulled him out into the tepid night.
No sooner had the doors whooshed closed behind them than she spun. Her arms twined around his neck.
He didn’t fall back. Instead, he banded his arms low, boosting her up.
“Yes.” She shivered, tipping her head to the side so that he could kiss her deep. Inside. Her brows arced together as he flicked his tongue over hers, dragged it out. “Mmm, yes.”
“Mavis.” It escaped on a whisper, her name and everything behind it. His arms hardened. He said it again, bringing her hope to the joy of eclipse.
Her feet weren’t anywhere near the ground. Her heart hammered against his breastbone. She felt the great muscle underneath his sternum responding at a gallop. With an unsteady breath, she pulled away slightly. “I—I missed you.”
It took him a second to focus. The edge of need was thick, wrapped up tight in metal and ivy. When he realized what she’d said, his soul peered through the brush and ironwork and made her knees go stupidly weak. “I missed you, too.” A bar twined between his eyes. “I missed you like crazy.” Tipping his forehead to hers, he added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t call. I made you think—”
“No.” Mavis shook her head. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.” She planted her mouth on his, inhaling in a quick rush. “Damn it,” she cried. “You’ve made me sentimental.”
“You make me a lot of things. Like happy. I realized that on the road. I thought I was ready before. You were right—I wasn’t.”
“And now?” she said, buzzing from head to toe.
He nodded. “Now.”
Never had a declaration sounded so finite. Or sexy. “Come home with me,” she insisted. “I want you. With me. On the river. In my bed.”
Those eyes darkened, glittering with promise. “Did I mention ‘hell yeah’ back there?”
“A girl doesn’t get tired of hearing it,” she suggested.
“Then ‘hell yes’ again.” And he kissed her once more, in a bruising way that demanded. She felt immersed, just as she wanted.
* * *
THE RIVER. IT smelled like soot. Like home. Mavis had driven so fast, a tinge of burned rubber hit his nostrils, too, as he opened the passenger door to get out of her car. “I don’t question why Errol drives you and Miss Zelda around anymore.”
He saw her outline under the far-off streetlight, ghostly in black. The flowing bodice of the blouse he knew to be silk now that he’d had his hands on her draped low beneath her collarbone. The skin-hugging pants were leather—knowing her, some vegan alternative. Along with the high-scaling boots, she looked classy and edgy.
Every inch of him was taut. She wanted him in her round house, in her sheets. He didn’t have a clue what Mavis’s bedroom looked like, but he could see lowering her into the pillows. Losing the both of them there completely.
He could’ve shucked those leather pants right here under the carport but the air was misty. Yet another summer storm was on the horizon. “I need to get you inside,” he said.
She began to take steps backward to the stairs. She blended into the shadows.
By the first step, he was beside her. Lifting her by the waist, he carried her up, up.
Her legs locked around his waist. He groaned. Grabbing her underneath, he followed the path of supple material and the round curve of her bottom, digging in. Her breath grew hot against his neck. Her lips kissed their way up to the cup of his ear. There, things got interesting.
He nearly stumbled on the last step. His hand got between her and the wall he nearly crashed into at the landing. He held her there as her attention centered on the spot she’d found that was turning his knees supple. “Whatcha doin’ there?”
“Nerves.” She sucked, bringing him to the bank of intense arousal. “They live in the cartilage.” She laved. “Lots and lots of them. Waiting to be played with.”
When the edge of her teeth joined the onslaught, he felt himself shiver. Once. Twice. The third time, he ground against her center and groaned.
She pulled back, licking her lips as she tipped her head against the siding of the house. “Erogenous zones. Men have them, same as women.”
His breath was coming through his teeth, he realized. Hefting her beneath the thighs again, he transferred her to the door.
She endured being pressed against glass, his leg wedged between hers to keep her off the porch. As he unlocked the door with a grip that wasn’t at all steady, she drew barely there lines across his chest until his skin grew sensitive beneath the cotton of his T-shirt and he wanted nothing more than to shed it or rend it in half to give her free autonomy. He felt clumsy as he boosted her high against his chest once more and stepped blindly into her dominion. “Where’re the lights?”
“No lights,” she whispered.
“None?” he asked.
“Do you trust me?”
“Frexy,” he whispered against her lips. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to come home to. What do you think?”
She sighed, scraping her nails over his scalp in slow motion. Her soft, shallow kiss caught him off guard. She was normally bolder. She slid her legs from around him and planted herself on the floor, using the neck of his shirt to bring his mouth down flush with hers.
He clasped her by the shoulders. He kissed her as she’d kissed him. Intimately. No rush. It took him back to her parents’ house and the “accidental” lip-lock that had started everything.
She broke away. “Gavin?”
“Hmm?” he asked. He nosed against the hair that tickled the angle of her jaw. Mangoes. For days, he’d had a fierce hankering for mangoes.
“Give me your wallet.”
The command struck him off guard. “Say what?”
She reached around to the pockets of his jeans. Cupping each, she dipped her fingertips into the one with the telltale bulge and dragged his billfold out herself. “What’s the magic number?” she murmured as she peeled it open between them.
He tried to see her in the dark. He tried to carve her out of the outline in front of him. It didn’t work as well as he would’ve liked. “Why lights off?” he wondered. Why not lights on, all the way on so if he studied her closely, every inch, he could pinpoint all the secrets she hid under leather, silk and mystery.
“We’re even,” she said in explanation. “I can’t see you any better than you can see me.”
“Mavis,” he said, not for the first time.
“Two.” There was a smile in her voice, woven smugly alongside approval. “You still carry two condoms in your wallet.”
He planned to use them. Unable to hold off any longer, he asked, “Which way?”
“To the bedroom?” she asked coyly. He felt her tug along the front of his belt.
“Which way?” he said again.
“Up the stairs, to the left if you follow the—”
She’d told him once she hated brute male strength. He wondered then why she gasped in delight as he tossed her over his shoulder and made quick strides. Groping, he found the railing to the stairs and followed its smooth curve up and left.
He wanted to tell her everything he wanted to do to her. Everything, in stark detail. He wanted to tell her what it all would mean. It got caught in his throat, though.
The room was nearly pitch-black, but he sensed the panoramic view that opened up on the landing. He saw four posts. A bed. River lights shone beyond, gauzy. The bed was curtained and the curtains were transparent. Near his shoulder, the light from the street peered through more glass. The bedroom was the only room at the top of the stairs. Gavin set Mavis slowly on her feet. “No curtains on the windows?”
“They’re tinted.” Her voice was barely there. For the first time, he heard nerves from her. Then he felt her fingers rucking up the bottom half of his shirt. “So the neighbors can’t see.”
He didn’t give a rat’s ass if the army was posted outside buying tickets to the show. She pushed the shirt up, gathering as she went. Bending slightly at the waist, he let her tug it over his head.
It took her a moment to unlatch and unloop his belt in the dark. “It’s almost senseless. How much I want you.”
He felt his jeans unsnap. Heard the zipper rasp. He closed his eyes and harkened back to the conversation they’d had weeks ago. “What scares you most?”
Mavis stilled. In the light from the street, he could barely make out the shape of her face. “Emptiness,” she said. “I used to think feeling nothing was better and that keeping my head was more important than embarrassing myself with emotion. Since you…” She peeled the waistband of his jeans down over his buttocks by scooping both hands under, molding the shape of him from his spine to the bottom curve of his glutes. “…the thought of being hollow… It’s not what I need, any more than the cocoon my grandmother thought would be best for me.”
He skimmed his knuckle up her arm, took it over the point of her shoulder. “You’re not cold,” he observed. Winding his fingers tightly beneath the slight spaghetti strap of her blouse, he savored the feel of the sliding silk. “I’ve touched you. You’ve never been cold to me.” He twisted the strap. It snapped.
“What scares you?” she returned. She was trembling. And yet she was back to speaking to him in that Zen hummingbird voice that soothed him to no end. He’d missed the lure of her voice.
“Using you,” he said, giving her the same answer he had weeks before. He pressed an open kiss to the shoulder he’d bared. Then he turned his mouth into her throat.
“Gavin?”
“Hmm?”
She sighed. “Use me.”
Shit. His arousal took a jump. With a grunt, he picked her up again. The silk had to compete with the satin of her skin against his chest. It all went in tandem with the leather. The triad of texture was erotic as hell.
He found the bed and dipped a knee into it, taking her down to sheets that were already rumpled and…
Silk. Dear God. The material would make him lose his mind before daylight. The simple thought of taking her wrapped up in silk sheets made him moan. He sat up. Reading him in darkness, she handed him the packet she’d stolen from his billfold. He made quick work of the clasp of her pants and peeled them off, one leg at a time. He pushed the waistband of his jeans farther down and carefully fed the rubber around his girth. Then he grabbed her by the calves and dragged her closer, kicking off his jeans as he came down on his hands. He teased her mouth with a kiss before working his way down. The lone strap holding the blouse gave a satisfying snap when he balled the material near the neckline and gave a hearty pull. She helped him work it over her hips, down to her toes.
He turned his knee out against hers, opening her up. He couldn’t see. But he could touch. He could taste. He’d take advantage of that. But first—
His weight settled over hers, torsos aligning. Grabbing her hands in his, he tugged them straight to either side. He fit his hips against hers. Her pelvis jumped. A hot gasp lifted. “Warm,” she panted, dipping her head back into the covers. Her hips rose against his in a circling wave. “You’re so warm.”
“I’m burned up, baby.” He brushed his lips across hers. He brought her knees up and arched, lifting his head when he felt her bloom and dampen. He turned his palms into hers, twining finger by finger.
She dug her heels into the mattress and hiked her hips until the head of his arousal met the juncture between her thighs. Then she dug her ankles into the base of his spine, inviting him in one glorious inch. “Warm me up, too,” she ordered. “I want to be warm like you.”
His restraint snapped like the strap of her blouse. Any thought of finesse climbed into the back seat and he found himself buried, his face burrowed in the sheet near her head.
She quaked from head to toe. Her legs didn’t leave him, but the fine bones of her hands trembled under his. “Ah,” she said as he remained deep inside her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Mavis. I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, pressing her cheek to his. She swallowed. “No.”
“I’ve hurt you.”
She shook her head. “No. Just…ahhh.” Her lips grazed his cheek. Still, she trembled.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, stiff and still.
“I think…” She sighed. “I think you should kiss me.”
Instantly, he fit his mouth to hers. He treated her, kissing the way she always seemed to want. Curling his palms beneath hers, he kissed her slow. He kissed her deep. He kissed her as if they had the rest of their lives for kissing.
The tension in her muscles melted until her fingers laced with his and her legs loosened so her feet could venture down his calves. They flattened, caressing. She kneaded her center against his in circles, rivulets of friction. He caught on to them, drawing shapes from the center of his hips. Releasing her hands, he cupped the back of her head, spreading his fingers wide in her hair, guiding it back to the bed. He kept kissing, not giving up the link she needed as the circles grew wider and faster.
Her toes pressed against the tops of his, like boots in stirrups. It was her hands now that dug into the small of his back, mashing his pelvis into hers. He felt her nails. He felt her grow harried and piqued.
“What do you need?” he breathed. “What do you need from me?”
“Harder,” she said.
His curse was reverent. He pressed down into the bed. She lifted. He thrusted.
“Oh,” she said on a rush.
He dropped his chin to his chest. “I can’t… I’m not gentle.”
“Stop it.” She brought her hips up again to meet his and kept circling. “Stop whatever makes you think this isn’t right. That you’re too big, too rough. Stop whatever’s telling you you’re wrong for me. You’re worthy. This is good. So good. Gavin, if you stop, one of us is going to scream, and I’m afraid it might be me.”
“I can’t stop.”
“Good.” She tipped her chin up as he went from circling to rocking.
Light flickered against the windows. Heat lightning at a fair distance. For a second, he saw her, the parts of her visible to him. Her fists were wrapped up in sheets. The smile on her face and the high-stepping friction at the point where they joined…it was enough. Mavis disappeared again into the cloak of night and he closed his eyes to keep her painted against his eyelids.
She was right. It felt good. Like coming back to life. He rocked faster.
She began to make noise, little mewls.
Hold it together, he thought as the skin around the waistline of his back drew in tight and his nervous system went up in flames. Hold it together.
She cried out, once. Her head slammed back into the sheets. She cried out again, her feet lifting her lower half against the brunt of his charge. Gavin groaned in appreciation as the climax ripped through her. With an animal sound, he lowered his head and kept charging.
Her arms locked around his middle, not giving up the link. She raised her torso to his so the slide would be complete, toes to chest. She kissed him. Then she kissed the wolf on his chest.
He couldn’t stop, he realized again. He ground to a halt as the dark room reeled and the badass sensations he’d felt up to this point tore off their wee lamb skins and went on a Hulk-sized blitz. They blitzed until he was nothing but a shaking, heaving beast. Then he dissolved over her, rubber all over.
She clasped him around the shoulders when he began to shift his weight off of her. “Don’t,” she said. He could hear the hum of satisfaction in her throat. “Don’t you dare, Gavin Savitt.”
“Taking you with me,” he whispered raggedly. He shook his head to clear it. “Taking you with me this time, Frexy.” Then he flopped the both of them back to the bed, her on top where she could nestle.
* * *
MAVIS FELT GAVIN wake three times in the night. Once to entangle himself with her further. The next to turn away. She curled against his back, caressing until she felt him subside. Nightmares jolted him even as sleep held him in repose—repose that was not repose. He kicked her only once, lightly on the shin before muttering a sleep-rasped, “Frex?”
“Still here.” She kissed the center of his spine as proof.
He tugged her hand from his waist. He pressed it against the wall of his chest, covering it with his. She counted the beats beneath her hand until they dwindled back into an easy cadence.
I’m not going anywhere. The certainty had been there throughout the experience. She’d ride out his storms until he no longer doubted that she could handle them. Then she’d ride out some more, however many he had to endure. Touching her cheek against the warm press of his back, she gathered his heat. She let it cover her like a blanket and drifted back to sleep, satisfied he had done the same.
When next she woke, it was near dawn. The room was dark, yet the night had lost its inkiness.
Gavin was gone.
She padded downstairs, wrapping the loose sheet around her. Halfway down, she heard the shower running. At the bottom, she found the door near the landing closed, the light a golden stripe underneath.
She entered. The shower door was pulled to. She saw his outline through the glass.
Mavis shed the sheet. She made sure to make noise so that when she opened the shower it wouldn’t trigger reflexes she knew he wanted buried.
His head was under the spray when she stepped in. He peered back over his shoulder and the arm he had posted high against the wall. The one good eye did a steep dive over her naked torso. “Beautiful,” he greeted.
Nobody had ever called her beautiful. Not since she was a girl and her parents didn’t know any better. She moved to him, admiring his lines. The perfect shape of his behind. He had a birthmark on his right cheek. It was shaped like an apple. A smile snuggled into the lower half of her face, right at home. “You’re still here.”
“Still here,” he echoed.
She touched him. He smelled like the soap her mother made from scratch and sold at Flora. “Thank you.”
His feet circled until she was looking at more than his lines. More muscle. More flesh. Ink and sex.
Then he kissed her again and the ache she’d thought he’d treated swallowed her up. Smoothing her palms up his chest to the column of his neck, she linked them over his nape. His hands planed over her, around and back to rest low on her hips. They melded together as one.
She broke away. “Did you happen to grab the last—”
“Condom? No.”
She cursed.
He chuckled.
“What?”
“I’ve never heard you cuss that badly before.” His head angled down to hers again before his gaze seized on her collarbone. He stopped, eyes narrowing as he tried to make out the shapes that ranged from one side to the other. His fingers came up to trace, barely there. “Ah. This is what got you in trouble.”
“Moon cycles,” she explained. Helping him, she moved from the first shape to the last, left to right. “Waning…to waxing. But this isn’t the tattoo that got me into trouble.”
His stare fused to hers. “There’s another?”
Guiding his hand around, she planted it against the back of her ribs on the left. “This one got me grounded for an entire season.”
“What is it?” he asked, grazing the skin. “Butterfly?” He grinned. “Dream catcher?”
Mavis turned her eyes to the feral thing on his chest. “Did you know that ancient Romans claimed they were descended from wolves?” she asked, quietly. When surprise dawned and his gaze swept back to hers, her nerves flared. “And in Scotland…there was supposedly this goddess named the Cailleach. She ruled the dark half of the year and was often depicted riding a wolf.”
Gavin had stilled.
“They called her the ‘protector of wild things.’” When he said nothing at all, Mavis shifted her feet. Water driblets had glossed the side of her face. She swiped them off. “I always wondered…what riding a wolf would be like.”
Slowly, he brushed shower mist over the surface of her hair. He brushed her cheek, tipping her face to the light. His thumbs rubbed the space beneath her eyes. Makeup, she realized. The water, heat and sleep had no doubt spilled her eye makeup down her cheeks. He rubbed gently, methodically until it was gone. Then he scanned her, seeing beyond the shadows. “I like lookin’ at you in the light.”
She dragged teeth over her lower lip. “I like when you open your mouth.”
“Thirty-seven,” he pronounced. “You have thirty-seven freckles. Just on your face.”
She didn’t have an answer. Not yet. He was looking at her. Nothing between them. No pretenses. No expiration date.
Nakedness came in so many forms.
“You spook me.”
She rubbed the back of his shoulders when the whisper caught. “You spook me, too,” she said back. Her heart walloped her breastbone because it almost sounded like they were saying something else.
Like I love you.
“You know me,” he acknowledged.
She nodded. “I know you.”
He went back to exploring the moon cycles. “I was rough.”
“The best things are,” she told him. “But that doesn’t change how lovely…emboldening—how great they can be in the end. My body’s singing, Gavin.”
“I haven’t always been nice. I pushed in the beginning. Pushed you.”
“You didn’t push me away,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t strong enough,” he admitted. “I don’t think I need just anybody. I needed you then. I need you now.”
It felt good to hear. “I’ve pushed you, too,” she acknowledged. “I pushed you when some might say it was unwise to.”
“Yeah. ’Cuz here there be monsters.”
She smiled at his pronounced drawl. “I’m glad you’re here, pushing me.”
He looked at her in the stark way that made her forget he was legally blind. “Keep pushing me,” he told her. A rakish smile took over. Mavis saw the old Gavin, and her pulse was slipping and grabbing all over the place again. “Good things happen when you push.”
“I will,” she vowed.
Carefully, he turned her to face the opposite direction. She let him guide her around. His hands swept, roving, over her torso. She felt him at her back, his heat. His sex. “No protection. Remember?”
He nibbled a concise path along her jaw, grasping her breast in a hold firm enough to bring her to attention. “Admit it that I hurt you.”
Mavis moved, unable to help herself, when his fingers veered toward the apex of her thighs. As they rubbed her folds together in a light pinch, she felt friction. She felt an instant of recharge. “I’m okay, Gavin.”
“Okay isn’t acceptable,” he said at her ear. “Okay’s basic.” He rocked her from side to side simply, soothingly. A contrast against his rough-textured fingertips. “You should have something else. Something nonbasic.”
“Sounds excellent.” She rocketed onto her toes, stretching her back along his front as he flicked her chief erogenous zone with his thumb, then delved inside her.
“Hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head. She latched on, roping one arm up around his neck. She swayed into the lance arcing against her back.
He panted against her shoulder. He kissed it. “Thirty-one. You have thirty-one freckles on this shoulder.” He kept kissing, connecting the dots.
“If you don’t stop counting—” she rocked on her toes again as he plucked her like a well-strung harp “—you’ll never be done.”
“You think so good, Frexy.” He took her mouth when she offered it. “Come.”
She nodded quickly because it was coming. Her back arched as the wave curled.
“That’s it,” he said as she rode it out. He groaned as the orgasm gripped her. “That’s it, Mavis.”
It released, tossing her messily to shore. Her knees buckled. His arms banded against her middle, keeping her upright.
“I aim to do that again,” he whispered against the cup of her ear.
Mavis caught her breath and turned around. “That sounds good. Really good. But before you do that…” She planted her hands against his chest, backing him up until he was flush with the shower wall. She eyed him up and down, homing in on the areas that needed work. “Let me reciprocate.”
* * *
“THIS ISN’T WHAT I had in mind,” he noted.
“You got yours in the shower,” Mavis reminded him. “Think of this as a bonus round. Inhale, roll the shoulders forward, releasing the neck as you tuck your chin into your chest. Round your spine.”
Gavin pushed the breath out, following Mavis in what she called “cat-cows.” The view wasn’t bad. He sneaked a glance at the mat to his right. Dawn was just creeping through the windows, fresh new-day dew clinging to the screens. She’d opened a few panes so that the sounds of the river, the birds, could accompany the flow of respirations. She wore yoga pants and a sports bra.
As he toweled off after the deep-tissue massage she’d offered in the shower, she’d come at him with a pair of rolled-up mats and his discarded Fruit of the Loom briefs. “Put these on,” she’d said, “and meet me downstairs.”
By the time he joined her in her living room, she’d pushed the couches back to the walls to make space for the mats. They’d started cross-legged on the floor, breathing. He hadn’t thought much of the exercise. What good was he at relaxing?
Watching her, though, in her element, was a trip.
“If your knees hurt,” she murmured, “you can fold a blanket under them.”
“Knees are fine,” he answered.
“Good. Exhale, come back up. Broaden those shoulders. Press the hips back. Arch the spine, looking up… And exhaling, round forward and down…”
Here’s what that Zen voice had been made for, he thought. It helped, as much as the stretch.
“If you draw your belly button in toward your spine, you can bring it deeper.” When he couldn’t stifle a groan, she added, “It’s almost like massaging the abdomen.” With a glance at him, she instructed, “Don’t force your chin in. Just release the neck. Nice, gentle stretch.”
He was neither nice nor gentle, but he did as he was told. The hell if it didn’t feel good.
“Cat-cowing is great first thing in the morning,” she said. “It creates room in the back and torso. It strengthens the abdomen, opens the chest. It eases the mind and is great for stress. It’s really just an awesome way to wake up, warming up the body.”
“I can think of other ways to warm up the body,” he quipped.
“We’ve already done those things.”
“Most of them.” He smirked at her as they both came out of the stretch. He couldn’t tell if she was amused.
Mavis stood. “Stay down,” she said when he made a move to do the same.
“Why?” he asked, suspicious as she came to stand beside his mat.
“I’m going to guide you through a Fallen Angel,” she informed him.
His jaw loosened. “Huh?”
She gave a low chuckle, rubbing her hands up and down his bare shoulders. Then she eased them down the length of his back to rest on both of his hips. “Bring these up.”
“How far?”
“How ’bout all the way?”
“What are you up to?” he asked as she guided him up until his legs were straight.
“Press your hands down into the floor,” she told him. “Good. Press the feet into the floor. You can bend the knees if you’re not as flexible in the calves. Concentrate on the hips. Really try to draw them up and back. How do you feel?”
“Ridiculous.”
“Well, it looks great.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“From Downward Dog…come to your knees again. Spread them wide. The tops of your feet are down and flat. Good. Try touching your big toes together. Now come forward, not in tabletop—keep the legs to the mat and cradle your belly between your thighs. It’s simple,” she said when he gave her a winged look. She helped him flatten against his legs. “It’s called Child’s Pose. Touch your forehead to the mat.”
“What are my arms supposed to be doing?”
“Whatever feels natural.”
“None of this feels natural.”
“Give it a few seconds. You can either stretch your arms out in front of you, or you can lay them against your thighs. Just let them rest.”
“Mmm-hmm. And what do I do now?”
“You breathe.”
“Breathe,” he muttered.
“Yes. In yoga, everything comes back to the breathing. After a couple of respirations, you should really feel yourself relax into it.”
“Hmm.” He did breathe. And after a few moments, he might’ve felt himself relaxing, just as she’d suggested.
“Keep breathing.”
Keep calm. Keep breathing. Two of the hardest things to manage. Though that line of thinking might’ve been somewhat easier to overcome lately.
If he hadn’t come home… If Mavis hadn’t cornered him under the bougainvillea… Would he be in the same place, this new realm that felt something akin to the calm after the storm?
He might never be free of PTSD. He hadn’t chosen it any more than he had chosen to be blind. But he didn’t want to be defined by it, nor did he want to be defined by his visual impediments. Mavis had shown him that, too—the day they took her canoe downriver. She’d chosen not to be defined by her epilepsy. In spite of its intrusions into her life, she thrived.
He would relapse, he was sure, perhaps as long as he lived. The idea wasn’t an easy one to process. What was becoming more and more easy? Believing that he could thrive one day, as well.
Gavin realized he’d been lying in Child’s Pose for some time. He blinked, pushing up from the heels of his hands. “Frex?” he called.
“Kitchen!”
He gained his feet, getting up from the mat. Padding in the direction of her voice, he reached back for his neck, rolling it on his shoulders. More range of motion. He rounded one of the columns that separated one room from the other in the open floor plan. He saw the low table in his path and managed to skirt it at the last second.
She was busy at the island slicing fruit. “Feel better?”
“I felt good before,” he noted. “But yeah.”
She extended a hand. He plucked the red strawberry from her. “These are from Briar. She sent me a basket a few days ago.”
“I’ve got some fig jam I need to give you,” Gavin recalled, popping the strawberry into his mouth. His taste buds savored the fresh bite of nature’s bounty. “Mmm.” He beckoned for more. She obliged. When he growled and reached again, she quipped, “Just open your mouth. I can bean them in.”
“Or I could just…” He scooped into the bowl on the counter and grabbed a handful.
“Hey!” she said. He’d eaten them before she could retrieve them. “Okay, at this rate, we’re never going to have oatmeal.”
“No control,” he claimed, mouth full. “Not when I’m this famished. And oatmeal?” Lowering his brow, he walked to her refrigerator. “Woman, when you have an eight-hour religious experience, you gotta cap it off with a hearty breakfast.” He opened the door and hunched over to peer inside. “Where’re the eggs?”
“By now, I hope they’re baby chicks.”
“A hard-lovin’ man’s got to have the protein. That’s the point of a meat drawer.”
“Is it?” she asked. She eyed him blandly as he showcased the bottom drawer by sliding it open then closed, then open again. “There’s quinoa. Hummus. Peanut butter. All rich in protein.”
He shut the fridge, dejected, and braced his hands on his hips. “You were raised on a farm.”
“What’s your point?” She walked away. “I bought some canned salmon a while back for Prometheus. I can make patties and give you some whole wheat rotini with black onions. Would that be better for you?”
“You’re giving me dog food.” He glanced around. “Where is the beast, by the way?”
“We were at the farm yesterday when Harmony talked me into going out,” Mavis said from inside the pantry. “I left him there since Mom and Dad were spending the night in with Bea.”
Gavin waited until she reappeared. He watched as she bent to retrieve a saucepan from one of the cupboards. As she filled it with water from the sink, he closed the gap between them. “Did he, ah…miss me at all?”
In the light beaming clearly through the windows around them, he could see her as well as he had in the shower. Her lips curved. “He’ll be happy to see you. I’ll be happy when he stops loafing.” She took the pot to the stove on the island. “It’s pathetic.”
He leaned back against the sink. “Did you loaf some?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she teased. A quick fwume accompanied the switch of the gas burner.
Gavin lifted two fingers, taking his time drawing the sweep of her hair back. Gingerly, he tucked it securely behind the small cup of her ear before sliding his knuckles against the underside of her jaw in a featherweight caress. “It might be better for you if you didn’t. I couldn’t blame you for cutting your losses and moving on.”
“I thought your time away would’ve healed all that nonsense,” she said with a frown.
He dropped his hand from her skin, regretful. “I don’t come with a warranty or any guarantee. I’m covered up in warning labels. At some point or another, I’m going to burden you.”
“Warning labels don’t scare me. I said once that the people who matter will never see you as a burden, didn’t I?”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not,” he said, refusing to budge on that point.
Mavis kept frowning at him. Then she shifted her body to face him and kissed his mouth.
His blood tuned in instantly to the offering, even if the kiss felt like a rebuttal. When she pulled away, they were both breathless. “I want every part of you,” she stated. “That entails everything, Gavin. Even the dark side of you.”
“I don’t want the dark side.” His lips had that bee-stung feel. He licked them, trying to gather her taste further inward. “I’m hardly going to hang it on your shoulders.”
Her palm fit over the neck of the wolf on his chest. “You know why you’re here, Gavin? Because I need you. That includes your dark parts.”
Gavin swallowed. Nobody had ever come out and said it like that. I need you. He wondered if anyone had ever thought it.
To be needed…the concept was potent. “How long does that have to boil?” he asked of the rotini.
“I don’t know. Ten minutes?”
“Good.” He picked her up by the waist. Turning her away from the island, he set her on the counter safely away from the cooking eye.
“We’re out of condoms,” she said as she spread her legs.
He stepped into the vee and roped his arms around her waist, boosting her forward on the counter. He brought her torso flush against his. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of you. Just hold on.”