Love Me Not (11 page)

Business boomed. My schedule was full, and I had to focus on not letting myself get lost in the fantasy. Thankfully, I didn’t get so confused as that day. It was difficult.

I continued writing my story. It was turning into a book. The main character reminded me a little of Holden Caulfield. I started to realize he was a lot like me.

Sometime in the middle of January, I hit the one hundred-page mark and decided if it was a book, I should figure out where it was going. This seemed to be my method. I’d several books written, only in notebooks and never read by anyone else, and always around the hundred-page mark I’d decide I needed at least a basic outline.

I sat on the floor in my room one Sunday and spread papers out around me. Sundays were slow—it was crucial I find some other way to occupy myself. Otherwise, I started thinking too damn much, like at Christmas.

The main body of the work, my hand-scribbled story, sat in front of me in a five-subject notebook, and all around lay single sheets of paper, each one notes on an upcoming chapter or a potential chapter or scene or whatever. Now I had to put it into some kind of order.

I shuffled the papers around, made notes, and stared at them for a while. Then I repeated the process several times.

A knock on the door.

It had to be around lunch. If I wasn’t with someone and Penny was going to grab something for herself, she usually asked if I wanted something.

“Yeah.” I didn’t bother cleaning up the papers. Penny knew I scribbled at stories sometimes, and she’d learned not to ask to read them.

My elbow leaned on my bent knee, and I continued to stare at my pages as the door opened.

Penny didn’t talk. I looked up.

It was Kimber.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought this was Penny’s office. She asked me to grab something off her desk. I knocked just in case you were…I never know where you disappear to.”

That was the most she’d said to me in almost a month.

“This is where I disappear to,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” She started to pull the door closed.

I stood. I wanted to tell her not to go.

One of the papers caught on the bottom of the door. She bent down to pick it up. “I’m sor—”

She stopped talking and looked at the paper.

“It’s just notes,” I said, “nothing important.” I held my hand out for the paper.

She kept looking at the page.

What in the hell was so interesting? My notes weren’t written to make sense to anyone else. It was just pieces of thoughts in my own goofy-ass shorthand, barely legible.

Then she looked at me. “It was you.”

“Huh?”

“Your handwriting. I recognize it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Charles Dickens.”

Fuck.

I locked the confused expression on my face. “What about Charles Dickens?”

“I know it was you.”

“What was me?”

“I figured someone had seen me reading in the store. I just couldn’t figure how they knew where I lived.”

“Someone left you a book at your house? That didn’t freak you out?”

“My employment application, that’s how you knew.”

“I think you’ve got something confused. Why would I leave you a book?”

Her forehead furrowed. “I don’t know.”

I took the paper from her hand. “It must be someone who writes like me. Guy-scrawl doesn’t have many variations.”

Her back straightened. “No.”

I rolled my eyes and held the paper up. “You don’t think this looks like every other guy’s handwriting?”

“You make your e’s like a c then with a line through, not one curl.”

“That’s how they’re supposed to be made.”

“But no one does.” She took the paper from my hand. “And your big M’s have a tail.” She pointed to the name Matthew written on the paper. “See?”

I snatched the page back and crumpled it into a ball. “You’re insane.” She had to be a goddam handwriting savant.

“No, I’m not.”

“Whatever.” I tossed the paper toward the fireplace. “Do I strike you as the kind of guy to do something so fucking corny?”

She paused. “I don’t know you.”

“That’s right. You don’t. You have no
fucking
idea who I am.”

She kept looking at me, not like she was angry, more like she was analyzing.

I gave her an
Are you stupid
expression. I hated myself for treating her like this—but I had to. She wouldn’t let it drop, and I couldn’t admit to the books. How would I explain it? I couldn’t handle letting her in, and she’d think I was a fucking psycho.

Her voice was quiet, calm. “But I know you get your sister coffee almost every morning, and I know you hate seeing us lift boxes, and I know it was you who gave her that ring.”

I kept my expression the same, even while my hands started to shake. She paid too much damn attention.
Son of a bitch
.

“And I know you don’t like yourself when you treat people like this,” she said. “You wouldn’t have apologized to me unless you felt bad.”

“Penny got on my case—”

“I didn’t tell Penny.”

I only glared at her. I couldn’t win the argument. The only thing I could do was treat her like shit and hope she stopped caring if I gave her the books. Maybe she’d realize I was just an asshole. She deserved to know that more than who’d given her a couple books.

“Why?” she said.

“Why what?”

“The books.”

“Just let it fucking drop.”

She met my glare with a calm expression. Her face was like a cool breeze in the dead of summer. She made it almost impossible to keep my fiery attitude, fake or not.

I turned away.

A long pause.
Please just let her go away.
I couldn’t do this.

I could barely hear her voice. “I’m sorry.”

Her voice was harder to take than her calm expression. She did things to me I hated, that I didn’t know how to deal with anymore. I thought I’d buried all this with Cassie.

And why was Kimber apologizing? I was the asshole. I was counting on her to get pissed off and tell me to go fuck myself. I knew she could have a fervid temper, and now I needed it to explode at me, to devour me in the flames of her anger.

But no, she had to fucking apologize.

The sound of her quiet footsteps.

She wouldn’t fight me, not like she did with the jerk from the hotel. Why in the hell was she just taking my shit? Why was she upset by my rudeness but no one else’s?

The door brushed carpet fibers as it started to close.

“Kimber.”

The sound of the door stopped.

I turned my head only halfway. “I did it because you deserve them.”

Chapter 20

Her Pretty Smile Hurts

Peripherally, I saw her pretty smile.

I looked away and prayed she’d leave.

Of course, she didn’t.

“You saw me at the bookstore?” she said.

“I go there a lot.”

“No, you don’t. I…I would’ve noticed.”

Why in the hell would she have noticed?
God, please I can’t do this.

She moved closer. “I don’t get it.”

My jaw clenched. “There’s a lot you don’t get.”

“Don’t be mean.” Her voice was gentle. “You don’t like yourself when you’re mean.”

I didn’t know what to do. She had me trapped. I was the lion in the zoo, trying to remember my instincts, how to fight and survive.

She was right next to me now. My body tightened, all except my hands. They shook.

“Heath,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

The way she said my name made me feel like…

Son of a bitch.
I stared at the opposite wall, trying to pretend nothing else in the room existed, trying not to smell the scent of gardenia drifting from her, making my head pound.

Then she touched me, her soft fingers on my hand.

I took a silent breath, through barely parted lips. My heart pounded and reverberated up my spine to explode in my head. I was hard. My god, I was so hard. My balls started to ache.

She caused me pain, and yet I wanted it, her touch, her attention, whatever she’d give me.

But I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t handle her.

“You’re shaking,” she said. “Are you—”

I took a few steps away and pulled my hands through my hair.

Her quiet steps. I’d be able to hear them in a thunderstorm. She stood in front of me. “Heath.”

I kept my chin straight and looked down at her with only my eyes.

“Are you mad?” she said.

My lips barely parted. “No.”

“But something’s wrong.”

“Everything.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

I hesitated. “I’ve never been mad at you.”

She smiled a little.

I focused past her on the wall.

“You don’t like when I smile.”

I took a breath and looked down at her. “Your smile is beautiful.”

Her lips continued to curve, like the limbs of a magnolia tree reaching for the sun. My expression faltered.

“It hurts you,” she said.

I only looked at her. I knew I was showing too much—how beautiful I thought she was and how hard that was for me, how her smile made me feel calm and weak at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You’ve never done anything wrong.”

“But I haven’t done it right. I don’t know…I don’t know how to…”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Her expression calmed. “I know.” She glanced down and then back up. “I don’t know about men, how to deal with them, but with you, I…”

“I’ve watched you deal with them.”

“I only know how to reject. That’s easy.”

We watched each other.

“You don’t want to reject me,” I said.

She shook her head.

This was the moment—either I was going to hurt her or try not to die of agony myself. If I let her get close, it could end in nothing but pain. This time I wouldn’t survive.

“Heath,” she said, “you don’t have to—”

I lifted my hand and touched her cheek with the backs of my fingers. She stopped talking.

“You’re beautiful,” I murmured.

She stared at me. She looked like she couldn’t breathe.

I touched her skin with my fingertips.

Then she touched my hand. Before she could ask why it was shaking, I brushed my thumb across her lips.

Her lips parted.

Slowly, I leaned closer. This would be the first kiss I really meant in seven years. I knew I couldn’t handle it, knew it was my kiss of death, but I kept moving closer. I would not hurt her again. She was worth my sacrifice. She deserved it.

My lips touched hers.

I couldn’t tell if she was trembling or if it was me.

I tasted her, my tongue lightly touching her upper lip. She kissed me back. My head tilted as my hand rested on the curve of her neck, and my tongue slid against hers.

The kiss was like water in a stream gently moving against itself.

The pain in my scrotum was like having my leg sawed off.

I kept kissing her. She rested her hand on my chest. I knew she had to feel my heart hammering.

Before it went too far, before I lost my fucking head and tried to make love to her, I gently brought the kiss to an end.

She kept her eyes closed.

“Kimber,” I murmured.

Her lips curved.

“Are you alive?” I said.

“I’m memorizing.”

I laughed.

She opened her eyes. “I’ve never been kissed like that before.” She took a breath, and then her eyes widened. “Penny’s got to be wondering where in the world I went. Fudge.”

I grinned. “Fudge?”

Her smile was bashful, not quite embarrassed.

“Tell her you took out the trash,” I said. “She hates doing it. She’ll be thankful.”

She stepped back and then paused.

“After the shop closes,” I said, “come see me. I’ll take you to dinner.”

She took a step toward me, kissed my lips once, turned quickly, and walked away, as if she’d never done something so brazen.

As soon as she was back out front, I took the trash out.

Chapter 21

The Whore

What in the hell am I doing?

I had to be losing my mind, losing touch with reality. How could I pull this off? I was fucking
dating
her? I couldn’t figure how my quiet Sunday had gotten twisted all around simply because Kimber knocked on the wrong door. She was twisting
my life
around.

This wasn’t how things worked. I fucked women. I didn’t date them. Now I was dating the one woman I wasn’t fucking. And I decided I had better not screw her. Look how messed up I got when I only fantasized about her. Yeah, this wasn’t going to be hard
at all
. My erection took a good hour to completely fade, and it hurt like hell.

My notes stayed on the floor for a while. There was no way I could think about the story, too busy trying to figure out what I was doing. I needed to set my boundaries now or, rather, reset them. I’d barreled over them today.

Before the shop closed, I managed to stop pacing my room long enough to change my clothes, a decent pair of jeans and a sweater. I wasn’t going to try to take her any place fancy. I wasn’t going to try to impress her, make this go somewhere. It was wiser—safer for me—not to encourage this. I’d show enough interest not to offend her, and that was it.

Now the question was could I do that? I wanted to know everything about her, understand all her contradictions. How was it she knew how to reject men but seemed unpracticed in talking to them? She’d obviously dated to some extent—she said she’d never been kissed like that, meaning she’d been kissed, enough to make the distinction. I didn’t let myself dwell on how it made me feel that she liked my kiss that much.
That’s your job, Heath. Of course, you’re good at it.

And sometimes she seemed so quiet, but she also knew how to push. It was probably unhealthy that I thought she was cute as hell when she fought me. Women didn’t usually do that, or rather, they never succeeded. I was pissed Kimber had gotten me to tell her what she wanted to know, that she’d controlled the conversation, but I was only really pissed at myself. She won the battle fair and square. I just couldn’t let her win any more.