He came to stand next to me and we stared at the park.
“They let you do that? Use their points to stay with me this weekend?” He was still holding both bags, as if he might bolt right back out of the room with them.
I took them from him and set them aside. “They didn’t want me staying at some seedy motel in the middle of Houston.” I took his hands and leaned to put my chin on his chest. He stared down at me. “So… have you noticed the bed?” I asked. “The one right there behind me?”
His gaze flicked over my shoulder to look at it. “It’s big.”
I bit my lip at that straightforward observation and the way his eyes darted around the plush room. I wondered if he’d ever slept in a king-sized bed. Or seen one. He reminded me of Mama in New York on my parents’ honeymoon—a bit overawed.
Distraction—that’s what he needed. “We’ve got an hour until dinner reservations at an awesome steakhouse between here and the ballpark. Just don’t wrinkle me.”
His arms slid around my waist, dragging my hands behind my back, and that dark red brow angled up. “How do you propose I keep from doing that? Especially when I aim to toss you right in the middle of that bed in a couple seconds to build your appetite for round two later tonight.”
I turned to hide my smug smile and pulled my heavy ponytail aside, and he slid the zipper down my back at an agonizingly slow pace. “I did say we only had an hour, right?”
He sped it to the bottom and spun me around to pull the dress down my arms. “I aim to please, ma’am.”
“I believe you.” I leaned up to kiss his scruffy chin. “So do I.”
• • • • • • • • • •
Over dinner, Boyce told me what Thomas was doing for him. I was so stunned and grateful and happy I started crying.
The waiter hovered politely out of earshot and Boyce leaned closer. “Why are you crying?”
“I just… You were going to leave town, and now you’re not, and… I don’t know. Because I’m happy?”
He shook his head. “So because you’re happy, you’re crying?”
I laughed once and patted my napkin under both eyes. “Yeah.”
“Women do understand why men get confused over these kinda responses, right?”
“Of course not,” I said. “We give you all the clues. You just have to read them.”
He angled a brow. “That right there is a trap.”
• • • • • • • • • •
When I came out of the bathroom, Boyce had switched off all the lights but one. He sat in the middle of the bed in boxers and a gray tee, watching me cross the room. “Thank you for tonight,” he said. “Nobody’s ever done something like this for me.”
I shook my humidity-defeated hair loose from the elastic and slid the band onto my wrist. Boyce’s green eyes flared. I might lament my hair’s irrepressible nature, but he liked it. He liked the glasses I was wearing too. Liked removing them, as if they were one more item of my clothing he was confiscating. I pulled at a coil of hair and twisted it around my finger, and his mouth tightened.
“I’m glad you had fun,” I said. “Sorry they lost, though. At least it was just one point.”
When he smirked, the action always came from his left side. Left eye crinkled at the corner. Left corner of his mouth angled like it was pointing at something. One barely-there dimple in his left cheek. He ducked his chin, staring, and my whole body strained forward, needing his touch.
“A one-run loss is aggravating, but they lose a lot. Us diehards are conditioned to it. Watching that game live and in person—being there with all the other fans—it was fucking awesome. I don’t even care who won.”
“Is that true?”
“Okay, not the last part. A win would have been nice. Shocking and miraculous, but nice. Everything else is true, though.” He angled his head as I put both palms on the bed and then a knee. “Is that… my shirt?”
I crawled onto the bed, wearing the green-sleeved baseball tee he’d used to wrap that lightning whelk shell in years ago. It hung to mid-thigh and the sleeves—three-quarter length on him—were almost at my wrists unless I rolled them up. “Maaaaybe.”
He reached for me and I took his hand.
“I have something I want to discuss,” I said. “It’s about…” The night after. My heart balked and the words jammed in my throat. It had been four years. Maybe I didn’t want to talk about it.
“About…?” he prompted, pulling me to sit on my knees, facing him.
“That night, on the beach—”
“Stop.” He brushed the ridge of my knuckles with one finger, traced zigzags up each digit to the short, unpolished nail and back. “I know what you think you saw that night. No. What you saw.” He tucked a bent finger beneath my chin to coax my gaze up to his and held it there with the urgency in his eyes. “Sweetheart, there was no one but you that day. That night. That summer. And every single day since then.
“Nothing had happened with that girl and nothing would have. Nothing did, even when you ran off. I was high—we were all high—but I’d been waiting for you, hoping you’d show. I couldn’t see anyone else. I wanted to call, tell you how I couldn’t stop thinking about you. But I was following the stupidest advice guys have ever passed around—don’t call too soon. Don’t look too eager.
“I thought a little weed would take the edge off. When I saw the look on your face—” His jaw tightened and his hand curled around my chin. “You didn’t see me come after you, did you?”
I shook my head, forgiveness filling me up, ready to overflow and saturate us both.
“I don’t know how long I looked for you that night. There were so many people, and I was so ignorantly fucking stoned.” He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “And then it took a few days before I wised up and thought fuck the guy rules—because they could never apply to who you were for me. But by then you’d left town for that internship. When you came back, it was like that morning had never happened. I convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough for you and never would be.”
My eyes filled. “Boyce—”
“I hurt you that night, and I’m sorry. I can’t promise you I’ll never be an idiot because I’ll probably be one before the end of this conversation, but goddammit, I swear I’ll never hurt you like that again.”