“Uh-oh.”
“We’re actually only three hours apart if we meet in the middle.”
“Are you being serious?” All humor had left his voice.
She pulled her lip between her teeth and considered for a moment. “If you’re up to it, absolutely. Not like this minute, because I need more sleep, but I just want to see you. I want to be there for you when I can. If you need to get away and you can’t come all the way home…I’ll come to you, I’ll come all the way if you need me to, but… say the word and I’m there.”
“I’m… I don’t know what to say, really.”
In the darkness of her room, she cringed. “Too much? I’m sorry.”
“No—”
“You’re dealing with something I have no experience with and I don’t know what to do to help. So tell me if I need to back off.”
“You’re helping me by talking to me. By being there. By doing every damn thing you’re already doing.” He was quiet for a minute. She was tempted to fill the silence herself, but she let him have it. “This is more bearable because of you.”
Her heart warmed, and she wanted so much to feel his lips on hers she might have driven those six hours right then, sleep be damned. That she wanted to be his any and every way she possibly could, both physically and emotionally, was a revelation that knocked the breath from her.
Cautious Macy had fallen for the very kind of guy that should send her running for the hills.
That had once, but she had her bearings now. She had a little of her old self back. Tiny, but it was there, and it was all thanks to him. She owed him far more than he could ever owe her.
“Are you off Saturday?” he asked.
Saturday. She was supposed to go to Jared’s Saturday. But if it came down to one or the other…there was no question.
“Yeah. I’m usually off on weekends.”
“Hmm.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking by then I will damn sure need to get away for a few hours. I’m thinking overnight.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure I should, but…” He gave a frustrated growl. “Shit.”
“Whatever you think,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to pull you away if you need to be there.”
“I know that, baby. But I wouldn’t be considering it if I didn’t need to see you, too.”
“You have to take care of you. I don’t care if we just talk all night.”
“Oh, I think we can find more to do than that.”
Chapter Nineteen
It had been the longest week of his life. Whether it was the anticipation of seeing Macy or the absolute devastation of basically being on a death watch, he didn’t know. The two factors simply amalgamated into one long, never-ending stretch of agony.
He felt better the instant he got away from the sterile hospital smells and on the road, putting miles between him and that damned place and eating up the ones that separated him from his girl. He ate them up a little too eagerly, resulting in a speeding ticket halfway to Fort Worth. It didn’t even matter. Minutes after getting back on I-35, he was flying again.
She would probably get on his ass about that if she were here. He could almost hear her, and it seemed even her imagined nagging made him grin. He supposed he wouldn’t do either one of them any good if he got himself killed, so he managed to ease off the accelerator a little. The closer he got, the calmer he got.
Macy had booked the hotel room and texted him the directions. She’d also said she would call him when she got there, so even though she’d left home earlier than he had, he figured as he pulled into the parking lot that he must have beaten her.
Well, given the f**king ticket tossed over in his passenger seat, it was no wonder. At least the cop had let him go without searching his damn car. His appearance didn’t exactly present him as an upstanding citizen.
After parking and stretching his legs for a minute, he grabbed his cell and dialed her. It was a perfect day, the sky a flawless, early spring blue. He stared at the cars zooming past on the interstate while he waited to hear her voice again.
“Do not tell me you’re already there,” she answered.
“Yeah, I am. Where is your slow ass?”
“Hey, now. I’ll show you slow in about…twenty minutes, according to my GPS.”
Oh, hell yes. “A’ight, then. Just making sure I wasn’t about to get stood up.”
“Not in a million. See you soon.”
“Be careful.”
While he waited, he texted Steph, then called and shot the shit with Brian for a few minutes. The dude sounded frazzled but hid it fairly well. If Ghost hadn’t known him for half his life, he might have missed the strain.
Did Brian think the same about him? Probably. Weren’t they just a couple of miserable clods. But brighter days lay ahead. They had to. He could put a bug in Macy’s ear that she needed to get her best friend to drag that guy away and f**k him senseless for a few days. He’d be a new man.
A burgundy Acadia caught his attention as it whipped into a parking space a few down from him, and he said his good-byes to his friend.
All through the week while he’d been away from Macy, he’d told himself she couldn’t be as beautiful as he remembered, he couldn’t feel for her this much this soon. He’d spent days having to look at Brooke, whose beauty was like a knife carving his heart out all over again. When Macy came around the back end of her SUV, her bright smile all for him, she was like a balm to his ragged senses. His breath fled him. He literally couldn’t take in air for a moment; he damn sure couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t know she did this to him. Not ever. How could he give someone that kind of power over him, when every time he’d allowed it to happen before, everything had gone to shit?
Macy flew into his arms, and he held her with all the conviction and determination he had in that moment to keep her at a distance. To not get so crazy so fast. It wasn’t smart, and he knew it; he just didn’t think good sense would be enough to trump his need for her. He was so f**ked, careening madly down the path to getting his heart splattered all over hell. And grinning like a buffoon the entire time.
Her scent engulfed him. Warm vanilla, even sweeter than he remembered, tempting him to eat her alive. She made a little helpless sound in his ear, and he damn near lost control of himself.
“You okay?” he asked, wondering at her exuberance. They’d talked a lot in the past week, almost every night, but he realized they’d mostly talked about what was going on with him. What hurts and stresses had she come here to work out? He simply couldn’t believe she was only here to see him, but he had all night to get to the bottom of it.
She nodded against his neck. “Mm-hmm. Long drive. Glad to be here, glad to see you.” She gave him another squeeze, and he set her feet on the ground, only then realizing he’d lifted her.
“You look… You’re stunning, Macy.”
A blush rose in her cheeks, and he couldn’t resist reaching up to caress them with his thumbs. Had no one other than him ever told her that before? It was most likely an idiotic assumption, but even so, it pissed him off. Any man she’d belonged to who neglected to praise her every damn day was a damn fool.
“Thanks. I feel kind of wilted after being in the car all this time.”
“Wilted, my ass. You’re in full bloom, baby.” He ducked as she laughed and swatted at him. “Hey, are you hungry? The city is our playground. I know we can find good sushi around here.”
“Mmm. Yes, I’m hungry,” she said, running her finger underneath his chin and getting an instant reaction from down south. “But the food can wait awhile.”
Damn straight it could. Somehow he made it through the next few minutes, waiting while she checked them in, unloading her bags for her, finding their room. It all passed in slow f**king motion. Lust had sucker-punched him. He hoped that woman knew what she’d signed on for, because he kept thinking he was going to go to hell for all the things he wanted to do to her.
“I can’t help but feel naughty about doing this,” she said as she fitted the key card into the slot. “It feels like some illicit affair, sneaking off from life, meeting up at a hotel…”
He grinned and hauled their overnight bags inside, dropping them by the door. “Then that’s what it is.”
“Secret lovers. That aren’t exactly so secret anymore.” She glanced around the room. It was nice, cool, dim from the closed curtains. Hell, he didn’t give a f**k about the room. He only gave a f**k about the bed and the woman in the room.
“Oh yeah? Who knows you’re here?” he asked.
“You know…no one, actually. I didn’t even tell Candace or Sam where I was going.”
“I hope there was no important reason for that, because Brian knows. So Candace probably does too.”
Macy muttered something that sounded like, “That isn’t necessarily true,” as she leaned over and tested the softness of the bed, but he couldn’t be bothered to ponder over it. All he could focus on was the way her blousy brown shirt cinched at her little waist and those f**king ass-bling jeans molded to her butt.
“Secret lovers, huh?” he said, moving toward her. She turned around and gave him a little smirk, taking a step back for every one he took forward. She wore her hair long and straight, and it spilled around her shoulders, inviting his fingers to sink into the heavy, lustrous silk of it. “That the way you want it?”
“No. I didn’t mean that. Like I said, we aren’t so secret now.”
And she didn’t mind. Jesus H. Could he love this girl the way she deserved? He could love her with everything he was, and still it wouldn’t be enough. He would f**k up somehow, because that was what he did.
She’d stopped her teasing retreat from his advance and stood still now, big hazel eyes watching his approach until she was looking right up into his eyes. Unflinching. Open. Her breath came a little quickly; her pulse fluttered at the side of her neck.
Would he ever get used to this breathless, speechless, f**king stupefaction she instigated when she was close to him? It all seemed so fragile… One wrong word, one wrong action from him and the whole thing would crack. He only knew how to really communicate with girls like Raina. Brash, in-your-face girls who knew why they were here: to f**k and fight and above all have a good time.
Not girls like Macy, who looked at him with expectations beyond what he could give them physically. Girls like that should know to go elsewhere to get those needs met. Brooke sure as hell had. She’d even known right where to go.
“Why’d you come here?” he asked, gently brushing back a lock of hair straying near her eye.
Confusion flitted across her delicate features. “What?”
“I’m sure it’s not about walking on the wild side anymore—hell, we never even really got there, did we? I’ve been a sucky tour guide.”
“Seth, you’ve said and done things to me no one else has. I’ve done things and thought things and said things I never thought I would. So, no, you haven’t been a ‘sucky tour guide’. You’ve been…perfect. For me, you’ve been perfect.” She took his hand, the one that hadn’t quite been able to stop touching her hair, and let her fingers slide through his. “I even talked to my parents and one of my old friends about racing again. Baby steps,” she added quickly.