A Stone in the Sea(30)

I grabbed the half-empty beer from the coffee table cluttered with papers, empties, and overflowing ashtrays, and gulped down the bitter liquid that had turned warm and tasted like piss. “Just been in the mood to write.”

“Huh.” Eyes narrowed in speculation, Lyrik scratched his temple with the tip of his index finger. “All right then, let’s see what you have.”

He reached across the coffee table and snatched up the open notebook with my handwriting scratched all over it, deep lines cutting into all the shit I kept crossing out. The nearby pencil was dulled and blunted with the indecipherable chaos that had bled out on the pages.

That was the problem. I’d been sitting down here for days, searching for the right note. For the right words. For the right feeling.

But all of it remained convoluted. Just contradictions and misapprehensions.

All of it was her.

Dark. Light. Heavy. Soft.

Trouble.

Trouble.

Trouble.

Sitting down here, I’d been fighting through the myriad of conflicting emotions that continued to tear at me, assaulting my insides, squeezing my chest like the girl had some kind of physical control over me.

And God, she wouldn’t let me breathe.

Worst part was, I had no clue why I was letting this torture me. Why I was allowing it to eat me alive. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t purge that gorgeous face from my mind.

It just kept growing clearer, sinking deeper, coming nearer. Like that sweet, soft spirit was looking for a fracture. A weak spot in my hardened heart where it could slip inside. Where it could cloud and distort and pervert.

Where just for a little while, she would make me forget.

Like she was desperate to as well.

Standing outside the bank, realization had rushed in, and all of her warnings became so blatantly clear. I’d felt like an idiot. Shea pushing back wasn’t invented to put me off, an easy excuse to shake off unwanted advances. That connection—the overwhelming awareness that gripped me every time I was in her space—the feeling I stood at the cusp of something significant just waiting to transpire. It was real. Undeniable. I could feel the attraction running on a circuit through her, the burn of desire skimming across the surface of her skin.

But below it was something even greater. Something I’d spent the last three days trying to decipher. Something I craved and feared all the same.

The thing about Shea? Good was written all over her in bold streaks and colors, and it’d gleamed from her like some kind of halo while she’d stood there holding that little girl’s hand…without portraying even an ounce of guilt or shame. I’d been the asshole who’d wanted to scream at her. To demand to know how she couldn’t have clued me in on something so important, as if she owed me an explanation. As if she owed me anything at all.

All the while my brain had sped to reorganize every idea I’d had about this girl.

She’d just looked across at me, her expression soft and pleading and filled with every I told you so that had come out of her mouth.

She didn’t have time for distractions. And she’d meant it.

And I didn’t have the capacity for that type of complication.

So I’d walked away.

What I shouldn’t have done was look back.

I should have stayed course, hopped in my car, and driven away like every instinct rippling through my body told me to do.

But no.

I’d looked back.

Back on beauty.

Back on the source of confusion that had twisted me up for weeks. Back just in time to catch the hurt I’d inflicted darken her storm, cast shadows all over her face, flickers of disappointment, and a spark of anticipated sorrow. Back on a love that my foul intentions didn’t have the power to blot out—her intense love for a little girl who looked so much like her mother it had rattled me. Back on a fierce protectiveness as Shea stood unflinchingly at her side.

Back on what for a fleeting moment I wished I could have.

Something good and pure. Something simple and right. Something beautiful and sweet.

Those kinds of thoughts were nothing but stupid and dangerous.

Because I definitely wasn’t good and nothing in my life was right, and the last thing Shea needed was someone like me waltzing in to set her world ablaze. God knew I’d burn it right into the ground.

Did it stop me from wishing to take her anyway?

Hell no.

I was pretty sure sitting here stewing in it had only made me want her more. And here I’d been foolish enough to ask her for one night. Like somehow that would answer all the questions she’d created in me.

Of course, having that taste of her sweet little body as it was pressed against the wall of her house hadn’t helped things one bit. Now I was aching to know every inch, to discover it as I peeled all the clothes from her, to expose her—layer by layer, thought by thought, touch by touch.