Chapter Three Hundred Fourteen
KENDALL
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This isn’t real. This cannot be real.
I watch through the window as Timmons and Doc Rhodes say their goodbyes, each of them gazing over their shoulders at me and where I’m stuffed into the front seat of Timmons‘ Charger.
But it is real. And I really heard him say it.
What…
The…
Fuck…
Charlie! Damn you! You told him, didn’t you?
Turning my face toward the front windshield as Timmons piles into the car next to me, I watch the thick drops of rain smatter the glass as he turns the engine on and immediately sets the heater to blasting.
“Why-” I begin, cutting off abruptly because I’m not really sure if I want the answer to my question.
“Why, what?” Timmons‘ boyish timbre cuts through the gloom of my thoughts, showering me with sunshine when I don’t feel even a tremor of his usual anger rush through his voice.
I look at him, battling with the tears in my eyes as I do. The way he’s looking at me has my guard going up as shadows of the past come climbing up a sharp ravine, memories that stagger forward on shaky legs, promising that even if he’s being nice to me right now, ne inevitably will hurt me again.
“Charlie told you, didn’t he.” It’s a statement, not a question and when he grits his teeth and turns away, he doesn’t need to respond to it. “Just because you’re feeling guilty about what happened – doesn’t mean you have to lie and say-”
“So about this double shift thing the Doc is worried about,” he starts, cutting me off and ignoring the fact that I just blamed him for my…episode…and called him a liar. He steers his Charger onto the street, making for the road that leads toward the beach. Toward the house I happen to know is his. “I’m inclined to agree with him. You can be working two jobs the way you have, Kendall. It’s not good for you. So tell me,” he says, ignoring the fact that my jaw is now sitting on my belly as I stare at him in complete and utter astonishment. “Which job do you want to keep?”
“I need them both,” I say without even a breath of hesitation, my eyes narrowing on him when he shakes his head at nothing.
“Nope,” he says, hitting the gas and racing toward his house on the hill Not an option.”
Has he gone nuts?
I mean…did my fainting spell break something in his mind?
Honestly?
“It is an option,” I snap, my eyes flashing as I glare his way. “It has to be I don’t have anyone-” again I cut off, jerking my chin to the right so that I can stare out the window as he pulls into his driveway.
T
I don’t have anyone to help me with this.
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Chapter Three Hundred Fourteen
I’m going to need all the money Fcan get.
Timmons cuts off the Charger’s engine and before I can even think to ask him what the fuck we are doing here, at his house, he’s leaping out of the car and coming back around to my side again.
When he opens the door and I start to get out, he stops me. “I’ll carry you,” he says somewhat breathlessly. “At least until you’ve eaten something and you have your strength back.”
I almost laugh in his face, but what I see in his eyes stops me. A vulnerable longing swirls in the depths of his cinnamon brown eyes, one I could almost fall in love with if I didn’t know for sure what an asshole he could be.
“I can walk,” I insist weakly, but I don’t fight him when his arms go beneath me and he carries me into the warmth of his beach house. He doesn’t put me down once we pass the threshold and for one long moment I’m left staring up into his eyes. It’s right then, when he’s staring down at me, that my heart decides to push past its commonly constructed barrier of protection and leap into my mouth. I ask him, “What happened? What…changed?”
He flinches, his eyes shifting from my gaze then downward toward my lips and back again. “What?”
“Why did you decide to hate me? Was it something I did that first night? Or after? Because when we first met I could’ve sworn that-
“I don’t hate you,” he interrupts me, ripping his gaze away and bounding toward a hallway on the right, then down a flight of steps into
what just has to be his room.
It smells like him. This space. And for a moment I allow myself to close my eyes and pretend I belong here in it. With him.
A stupid thing to do!
You know better.
He’s feeling guilty about what happened right now, but when he’s done…
He’ll go right back to treating you like garbage.
You know this, Kendall!
I open my eyes at the very same time he drops me down in an armchair in the corner of the room closest to the unshaded sliding glass. doors that make up his back wall. It’s beautiful, the view beyond, especially with the rain splattering down and the fog rolling in across the black of the sea. For a moment, I’m transfixed by the sight, that is, until I hear the sound of a heavy belt hitting the carpet somewhere behind me. Turning my head just slightly I watch in awe as I spy Timmons beyond an open door along the far wall, in a half naked state
of undress.
Holy shit!
Really?
Am I getting this?
A free show?
Every muscle God graced him with – or I should say graced me with is n full display as he shrugs out of his wet uniform, kicking off his wet boots and making the tendons of his ass harmonize, in sinful glory
Mother May 1? Can I please? I’ll ask for nothing more than these…
gasp, my eyes wandering over all of his Greek Goodness from his bulging calf muscles to the tree trunks that are his arms. The sculpted grooves in his back alone are begging for my fingertips and I very near stand to help him dress.
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Chapter Three Hundred Fourteen
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“Timmons,” I breathe out like a fool, and upon my exhale of his name, s head turns, catching me staring. My face riots, my cheeks heating so wickedly that I’m sure I’m red enough to blow, but try as I might, I cannot look away.
His eyes heat, zeroing in on me just before he smirks and turns back toward the rack of clothes before him. “Would you like to borrow a sweater of mine for our first date, Kendall?”
Our first date?
Did I just hear that properly or did the rain beating on the roof this place distort his words?
My eyes rip away and I turn toward the back patio, gazing out at the typhoon of rain now pelting out onto the patio. I think of the extremely skimpy crop top I’m wearing and of how I am supposed to be at work, then I shake it off, reminding myself that Timmons is one of the twelve self righteous pricks that seem to own this town. Without looking away from the window, I say, “A sweater would be nice, thanks.”
“Good,” Timmons replies, dropping a dark green hoodie onto my lap and causing me to reel back in surprise, the fact that he’s now fully dressed does not escape my notice and somewhere in the back of my mind I am allowed to pout about it. “Put that on, then we’ll leave.”
I nod woodenly, like a puppet, or a spineless fool.
In what world am I allowing this man to treat me the way he has and then order me around?
In this world, Kendall. Been that way for a while now. Where have you been?
Seeming to take notice of my detachment at that moment, Timmons watches me with a guilty gaze as I shift my body into the outrageously soft fabric of his army green sweater and he says, “I know have a lot to answer for…” Wait what? Am I hearing him correctly? Or could my ears perhaps be waterlogged? “But so do you.” So do I??? Huh? What? “So let’s just get through this evening first and then when we’re back here tonight, at my place, we’ll talk about…what changed and…what didn’t.”
“Wait a minute,” I start, sputtering as my head pops out of the top of his sweater. “Back here tonight? Timmons I-”
“No!” he snaps, suddenly lifting me back into his arms and against his chest, thrusting me back into the strange fantasy world I must have accidentally spun around myself while I was unconscious on Bartlett’s new rug. “Don’t argue,” he fairly begs and I’m so completely dumbfounded by the supplicant tone of his voice that all I can do is shudder in his grip. “Someone has to take care of you! The Doc said…I just…please. Just give me a chance to…” his jaw clenches and he glances away from my face, seeming at a loss for words.
“To what, Timmons?” I whisper, tilting my head so that I might catch the line of his eyes. He doesn’t let me. “It’s not your fault. None of this…is your fault. Not really.”
He chuckles harshly, before turning his cold gaze back on me. “I wish that were true.”
“It is true!” I exclaim, not wanting him to ever let me go, but knowing at the same time what when I say what I say next, he might decide right here and now to drop me and leave me where I stand. “And what Charlie told you about the baby’s father-”
“Stop,” he growls, clamping his eyes shut, his body erupting into a steel trap of tension all around me. “Don’t Kendall! I’m warning you! Whatever you’re about to say. Don’t! Please!”
“I know who he is!” I screech, my eyes falling shut. “I just don’t know his name. But I do know this – you’re not him.”
