“And you’re sure she’s okay?” I finally ask.
He touches the side of my face. “I promise, okay? You can call her tomorrow. Stop trying to take care of everyone and think about yourself this time.”
I close my eyes. That’s what he doesn’t understand—what he doesn’t want to acknowledge. I was thinking about myself when I came here. “I’m trying,” I say in a strained voice. “I’m trying to do what’s best for me.”
“I’m not talking about what your head tells you is right.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to tell me to think with my heart.”
“You said it, I didn’t.” He drops his hand from my face and lifts my fingers to his chest. “I need you around.”
“I work for Lucas, you see me all the time.”
He puts pressure on my hand so I can feel how fast his heart races. God, why is he doing this to me? Why can’t he just let us fall apart this time?
“Fuck, then just give it one last time.” Before I can speak, he moves both of our hands to my mouth and then rests his forehead to mine. His naturally tan skin is hot to the touch. “I know why you came here of all places. You can lie to me all you want, Ky, but New Orleans is really where it started for us. Let’s end it the right way. Spend the rest of your nights here with me and when you go back to L.A . . . ”
The last few words are broken off, leaving me to mentally fill them in for him.
I’ll not f**k with you again.
You can finally forget me.
We can pretend like you never loved me.
I wrap my fingers through his, as if I need to hold on to him like this to stay upright. My chest is cold, and I try to figure out why. Whether the fear is there because he’s asked me to spend tonight and tomorrow night with him, or because he’s agreed to what I’ve already settled my mind on, to let things between us go after we’re done here. “And here I was thinking you’d keep your word about not trying to get me into bed.”
“Shit happens.” But he grins, which makes me smile back. Mine is shaky and unsure. “You in or not?”
Maybe it’s because I still want Wyatt and this may be the last time I can act on that desire before I move on—or because not only a week ago, I convinced Sienna Jensen to take a chance on helping the man who screwed her over in the past—but I know that I have to do this. I need to get this man out of my system. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m in.”
Because Heidi soon texts me that she and Shiner Bock—or Finn, as she calls him—are having “drinks” in our room, staying with Wyatt tonight is inevitable anyway unless I want to get another room. To my surprise, though, when he comes out of the shower with a towel slung low on his hips he says, “”Night, beautiful.”
“You’re going to bed?” I ask.
He stands on his side of the bed with his back turned to me but glances over his shoulder to c**k an eyebrow. “Thought you were tired.”
“Well, I am, but—” He drops the towel, revealing his incredible ass, and now it’s my turn to lift an eyebrow. “Really, Wyatt?”
He pulls a pair of boxer briefs on before turning around. Grinning, he jerks back the bedspreads and stretches out on the oversized bed. What the hell is he doing? “Come to bed.”
I keep my eyes trained on him as I shimmy my jeans down and step out of them, pulling my boots along in the process. I drag my tee shirt, which smells like booze, cigarettes, and my Betsey Johnson perfume, over my head and drop it beside of my pants. “Got a shirt I can wear?”
His gaze dips to the tattoos on my shoulder and then to big star in the center of my underwear. “Bag on the chair.”
I grab the first thing I can find—a plain white tee shirt that smells like the Tide detergent his housekeeper washes his clothes in—and climb into bed with him as I finish pulling it on. When I move to lie down, he stops me, squeezing my hips gently between his hands.
“What?” I whisper breathlessly.
“How many of those things do you have now?” he asks, a serious expression on his face.
“What things?”
“Those goddamn blackbirds.”
Unconsciously, my hand flies up to the left side of my chest to the tattoos, blackbirds in several different sizes. His tee shirt is covering most of them, but a few are still clearly visible. “Eighteen.”
One for each time things have gone to hell between us. Eighteen tiny reminders of why accepting his challenge to stay with him for tonight and the next is as much of an omen as the ink itself.
Seventeen too many tattoos.
Wyatt inclines his head, and I almost expect him to say something else about the blackbirds, but when he speaks, it’s about sex. How typical. “There is nothing I want more than to wrap your legs around my shoulders and f**k you for the rest of the night.” He pulls me on top of him, one leg at a time. “But in all the years we’ve been doing this, not once have I ever just slept with you. I figure if we’re pulling the plug, might as well do it just once.”
The change of subject is like a fist to my stomach, so painful that it comes damn close to knocking the air out of my lungs. It’s hard for me not to react, but I maintain my composure as I grip his shoulders tightly and lower my face down to his. Our lips graze.
“Sweet dreams.” I don’t give him time to respond. I roll off of him and curl up on my side with my back turned to his body.
“Come here, Ky.”
He wraps his arm around my waist. His body finds mine in the dark, and he presses his lips against my only other tattoo—the caged bluebird in between my shoulder blades. He picked it out for me a few years ago, when I went with him to Atlanta for his father’s funeral. It was supposed to symbolize happiness, a new beginning, but it hadn’t done me much good.