Because beyond all reason, beyond his better judgment, he felt himself falling. Again. Just ass over teakettle taking the dive, much like Jack after he’d gone up to the hill to fetch his pail of water. And okay, that just proved his point, because look how that had turned out. Then, if a person—namely he—wasn’t inclined to learn any lessons from nursery rhymes, then said person—namely he—had only to take a long, hard look at history…
At what did history tell him, do you suppose?
Well, just that she’d betrayed him once. That she’d proven he couldn’t trust her. That it’d been her decision to go out with Blake Parish that night after she’d pledged to remain true to him and only him—of course what’d happened afterward wasn’t her fault, but the initial decision had been hers. So…falling for her again would be bad…asinine…the stupidest, craziest, most ridiculous thing he could do, right?
Right.
Unfortunately, he felt himself standing on the edge of a cliff, poised to do exactly that. Especially when she looked at him, all big doe-eyes and hero-worship and…shit.
He watched her pale, slender hand reach out to snag the top sandwich and just that one innocent move, that one silly, everyday occurrence felt somehow intimate. Suddenly, he was all about the I’m the big, strong provider caring for my little woman. Jesus Christ, it was pathetic.
“Thank you for taking care of the prop,” she murmured softly.
“It was nothing a good, sharp knife couldn’t handle,” he assured her. “I didn’t even need to come up for air.” And to prove it, the boat’s engine hummed happily beneath them, the autopilot directing them across Lake Michigan’s smooth surface toward Ludington.
“I should’ve—”
“Shh,” he interrupted her. “You should’ve done exactly what you did. Relax. It’s been one hell of a day.”
She nodded, swallowing. “O-okay. Thank you, Billy,” she said. And inexplicably he was thrust back in time, back to a moment twelve years ago when they were hot and heavy in the backseat of his Camaro with the windows all steamed up, with his hand in her pants and her sweet, pale nipple in his mouth. She’d been soft sighs and hesitant, searching hands, but the minute he thrust his finger inside her tight, wet body, she’d tensed in his arms and he’d known. Despite the slow-as-molasses-in-winter route they’d been taking to the ultimate physical discovery of each other, despite her assurances that she was ready, he’d known.
She hadn’t been ready.
So he stopped. It was the hardest thing he ever did, slowly removing his finger from her body while his balls pounded so hard he thought they might just explode. But he stopped, and he told her, “Let’s wait a little while longer, okay? Let’s just hold off until you’re really, really ready.”
He remembered her opening her mouth to protest, but he halted her with a kiss, a slow, thorough kiss. A kiss he tried his best to infuse with all sorts of promises. Then he remembered pulling back, resting his fevered forehead against hers. “We have all the time in the world,” he said.
She’d searched his eyes then, her expression torn. And he’d known the horny teenager in her wanted to know what lay beyond that final hurdle, and, talk about a Charlie Foxtrot, because he’d soooo wanted to show her, had been dying to show her. But the scared young virgin in her hadn’t been quite there yet. And she’d listened to that second part of herself that day. With a sigh that was one part regret and another part relief, she’d said, “Okay. Thank you, Billy.”
And looking back on all of that now, knowing how it’d turned out, he didn’t know whether he should give himself a medal for being a stand-up guy, or if he should just go ahead and dub himself Unluckiest Bastard on the Planet.
Blinking, he realized he’d kept the plate raised toward her for a ridiculous length of time, and he snatched it back, surreptitiously watching as she took a delicate bite of the sandwich. She licked a dollop of grape jelly from the corner of her mouth and he thought, Alrighty, then. It’s time to vamoose yourself, Bill ol’ boy, before you do something really stupid.
Turning to head back to the small booth and table, her voice stopped him. “Don’t go, Billy,” she pleaded quietly. “Won’t you…I…I’d like it if you sat with me.”
On the bed. She didn’t need to say those last three words. They were implied when she scooted over on the mattress, making room for him.
And talk about doing something really stupid…
For a moment he hesitated, glancing out the porthole on the starboard side, hoping…what? That there’d be a neon sign glowing out there, spelling out for him in no uncertain terms what he should do? But the only thing he could see outside the porthole was darkness, just a pitch-black void that gave him no help whatsoever.
Go figure. The universe was a total wad when it came to him, remember?
Which left him with no recourse but to swallow the lump of uncertainty in his throat before blowing out a covert breath and turning back to Eve. She sat looking at him, a combination of fear and hope in her eyes. Her usually sleek hair was still a little damp and a lot rumpled, and her red bikini bottoms were peeking out from where the hem of her T-shirt rode high on her hip. Her eyes were bruised and puffy, her nose was pink, and her left cheek sported a glistening tear trail. But even given all of that, she was still temptation personified, everything he’d ever wanted and knew for goddamned sure he shouldn’t, because he refused to put himself out there again. Not when he didn’t know if he could trust her. Not when it’d nearly killed him to have his trust in her, his faith in her broken the first time. Not when—
“It-it’s okay,” she said, tucking her chin and blinking rapidly as she hastily took another bite of the sandwich.
Damnit all to hell, and now he’d gone and made her cry again.
“Of course I’ll sit with you,” he said, promptly perching on the smallest edge of the bed, barely putting his weight down because…well, then he’d be on the bed. With Eve. He’d be on the bed with Eve and that could be very…stupid.
Shit. Had he covered this ground before? Eve plus bed equals stupid? Yeah, that sounded like an equation he’d already solved.
Giving her his back while he devoured one of the remaining two sandwiches in a couple of massive bites, the peanut butter and white bread stuck to the roof of his mouth and his tongue. He blamed them for the fact that he had a hard time swallowing.
Of course, the real reason his mouth was pulling the whole dry-as-the-desert-Southwest thing was because he could actually feel himself slipping closer and closer to the void with each passing second. Slipping closer and closer to that place where he threw caution to the wind and—
“I never did tell you how sorry I was about those pictures,” she broke into his frantic thoughts, a catch in her voice.
He turned, cocking his head and frowning. “You can’t blame yourself for those,” he assured her. “Not after today.”
“But I do blame myself,” she insisted, staring down at the half-eaten sandwich in her hand. “If only I’d had the guts to tell my father to…to shove it. If…if only I’d stayed true to you, kept the promise I gave you, then none of this would’ve happened. None of this…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’m just really sorry, Billy.”