Paper Kisses (13 page)

“Yeah, like a date.”

“Oh.
 
Sure.”

“Great.
 
Should I pick you up from
CeeCee’s
?”

“How about I meet you here?”

He nodded, leaned over and kissed
her soundly on the mouth.
 
So much for the morning
breath
.
 
And then he was gone,
leaving her in his big bed.
 
She listened
to him exit his house and heard the very faint drone of his truck engine as he
drove away.
 
She closed her eyes and
promptly fell back to sleep.

When she woke up again, it was a
decent hour.
 
She couldn’t imagine a job
where she had to get up at the butt crack of dawn every day.
 
She rose and took a shower and when she headed
out of Sky’s house, it was about nine-thirty.
 

Kevin’s micro truck was in
CeeCee’s
driveway and when she walked inside, it was to see
him in standing in a very short flowery robe with bunny slippers on his
feet.
 
He was standing over a pan, frying
bacon.

“So I see you managed to get into
her pants,” Alannah commented dryly.

“Cat is out of the bag now, I
suppose,” he said with a grin.

CeeCee
floated into the room, wearing Kevin’s t-shirt from the day before.
 
It cemented, without a doubt, what happened
between them.

“Friends with benefits,”
CeeCee
said breezily.
 
“Just like you and Sky.”

Alannah’s face must have said a
mouthful because
CeeCee’s
eyes went wide and her
mouth pursed.

“Not like you and Sky,” she
surmised.
 

Alannah sighed and grabbed a cup of
coffee before sitting down.
 
She was
trying her best to ignore Kevin’s silly wardrobe but her eyes couldn’t help but
drift over to him a time or two.

“Are you…falling in love?”
CeeCee
asked
,
her head cocked to
the side.

“Of course not.
 
It’s only been three days.”

“Well, technically it’s been twenty
years,” Kevin said as he sat a plate of bacon on the table.

“Twenty-four,”
CeeCee
added.
 
“They went to Kindergarten
together.”

“Oh yeah,” Kevin said as he grabbed
a piece of crunchy bacon.
 
“Mrs. Baldwin’s class, right?”

It took Alannah a moment to think that
far back.
 
“How did you remember that?”

He pointed to his forehead.
 
“Like a steel trap.”

“Which gets rusty when my birthday comes
around,”
CeeCee
remarked.
 

“Hey, what do you call a boomerang
that doesn’t work?” he asked, ignoring her.

“I don’t know,” Alannah said.

“A stick.
 
Funny, eh?”

He began to laugh at his own
joke.
 

“That’s not the adjective I
would’ve used,” Alannah murmured, but she smiled anyway.
 
The joke may have not been funny but Kevin’s
amusement was.
 
She waved a finger back
and forth between them.
 
“What happens
when you guys call it quits?”

“Why would we call it quits?”
CeeCee
asked, looking stupefied.
 

“Because everything ends,” Alannah
said, and even she could hear the bitterness in her voice.
 
“We’re all one big ball of failure.”

“Wow, pessimistic much?” Kevin
asked, right before he devoured a piece of bacon.

“Listen,”
CeeCee
said.
 
“If Kevin or I decide that’s it, I
hope we’re mature enough to remain friends. We’ve dated people that didn’t get
us, didn’t understand our dynamics and it was a disaster.
 
So we figured, why not see if what we have
can go the distance.”

“And
if it can’t,
won’t it
be painful to watch each other with someone else?”

“Maybe,” she answered with a
shrug.
 
“But the uncertainty of the
future doesn’t make me not want to try.
 
What about you and Sky?”

“I don’t know what Sky and I are,”
Alannah muttered.
 
“I shouldn’t have come
back here.”

“Why do you say that?” Kevin asked.

But Alannah didn’t answer.
 
She only shook her head, not wanting to go
into the reasons why she knew she was going to be heartbroken again.
 
Sky was showing her a side of herself she
never really knew she had, or craved, and where was she supposed to go from
there?
 
It wasn’t like she knew that
lifestyle back in LA.
 

“Alannah, do you want to go back to
LA?”
CeeCee
asked, as if reading her mind.
 
Damn, that was spooky.

“My whole life is back in LA,”
Alannah said.

“That wasn’t what I asked.
 
Why not stay in Dexter?
 
We could use a high-end decorator.
 
I mean, look at me.
 
I still have plastic roses on the porch
table.
 
They used to be red but now
they’re butt-ugly grey.”

Alannah had to agree with that
assessment.
 
She shook her head.
 
“No, I can’t stay in Dexter.”

“Why not?”
Kevin asked.

“Because…because this is the one
place I swore I’d never end up,” she told him.
 
“If I came back I’d be just like my mother.”

CeeCee’s
eyebrows shot up.
 
“Honey, you’re about
as different from your mother as you can be.
 
Can’t you see that?
 
You’re
nothing like her.”

Alannah got up from the table and
dumped the rest of her coffee.
 
She
didn’t want to reflect on any more old memories.
 
Her friends simply didn’t understand.
 
While she was washing her mug, she heard
someone leave the kitchen.
 
She had
assumed it was Kevin, but when she turned around, she saw him still there, watching
her with dark and solemn eyes, which was very un-Kevin-like.

“I was in love once,” he told her,
out of the blue. “I went to vet school in Texas and I studied large animals
before transitioning into small animals.
 
For a while I worked on a ranch and the owner’s daughter used to assist
me.
 
She had a passion for the animals
like I did.
 
She was beautiful and smart
and man, I fell for her hook, line, and sinker.”

“What happened?” she whispered, her
heart already aching because she knew this story didn’t have a happy ending.

“She died,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.
 
Only the tightening of his lips told her how
he was still affected.
 
“She was riding
and a stampede broke out.
 
Her horse was
green and she was thrown.”

“Oh, Kevin.
 
I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged, and it was more than
obvious that he was acting cavalier to a memory that still haunted him.
 
“Life happens, Alannah, to all of us.
 
I had a broken heart but I came back to those
that loved me, back to the people I care about.
 
Cee
kept me going.
 
I don’t know how I would’ve made it through
without her.”

“So what you feel for her is
gratitude?”

“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“There’s not a day that goes by, that girl I
lost doesn’t cross my mind in some way or another.
 
But with
Cee
I’m
able to push aside that pain and be happy.”

“Aren’t you afraid…” and here was
the real crux of the matter.
 
“Aren’t you
afraid the next time will end just as badly?”

There.
 
It was out.
 
She’d finally vocalized her own fear.
 
If she were to allow herself to fall in love with Sky, all she could see
for their future was a goodbye.
 
But
Kevin smiled and shook his head.

“It takes a leap of faith and a whole
lotta
kisses.”

****

Alannah pushed all the questions
and doubts aside as she drove up to Sky’s house.
 
She had spent the rest of the day driving
around Dexter and reacquainting
herself
with the small
Missouri town she’d grown up in.
 
At the
high school she’d remembered going to all the football and basketball games,
part of the cheering section for the home team.
 
It’d been just an excuse to escape her home and her sarcastic, often
drunk, mother.
 
It was no wonder her
father had split before she was born.
 
She couldn’t wait to leave either.
 

There was no way to step back and
examine what her feelings toward Sky had been back then.
 
He’d been her best friend, her confidant, and
yes, he’d been a fantasy she was too scared to reach for.
 
She hadn’t let herself scrutinize her
feelings for him too closely, because if she felt more than friendship then
maybe…maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to leave.

And back then she’d needed to
leave.

Perhaps she hadn’t made the best
decisions after that.
 
She’d gone to
design school, had met Bryce Burns and had believed he was the perfect ending
to changing her mother’s fate.
 
Boy, had
she been wrong.

And now this “thing” she had going
on with Sky––she didn’t know what the hell to call it.
 
Sure, friends with benefits, but…holy heck,
how could a woman like being tied up and blindfolded so much?
 
Perhaps she needed to go back and read all those
BDSM
books she’d turned away from.
 

Sky greeted her with a hug and
delicious kiss that almost melted her panties right off.
 
Seriously, if they had gold medals for
kissing he’d blow the doors off everyone else.
 
They talked pleasantries about their day and Alannah made sure to keep
him talking since she really didn’t want to share what had been on her
mind.
 
He’d driven them to the festival
and they’d eaten greasy cheeseburgers and funnel cakes for dinner.
 
She was going to need to go back on her diet
once she got back home.
 
She’d lost ten
pounds and she really didn’t want to gain it back.
 
Her weight was part of her failure, an
albatross around her neck.
 

They finally arrived at the hayride
area and the tractor that pulled the hay-lined flatbed was idling as it waited
for the last few people to get on board.
 
The driver handed Sky a blanket and he climbed in first before leaning
over to help her in.
 
He shook out the
blanket near the back against a pile of loose straw, making a sort of comfy
cove for them.

Alannah sat first and Sky followed,
pulling her into his arms as he rested back and made himself comfortable.
 
She snuggled into the V between his
legs.
 
There were several other couples
with them but spaced far enough apart that she didn’t feel uncomfortable.
 

“Howdy, Sheriff,” said a male
passenger who was getting on.
 
“How’s it
going?”

“Going good,” Sky replied with a
smile.
 
“Enjoying the festival?”

“Always.”
He nodded toward Alannah.
 
“How do,
miss.”

“Hello,” Alannah murmured.

“Great night for a hayride,” the
man continued.
 
“Yep,
yep, yep.
Good to see you out and about instead of always toting that
badge.
 
Good to relax.”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Sky agreed.

Alannah saw the man eyeing another
passenger.
 

“Well,
lookie
there,” he said gleefully.
 
“It’s Emma
Train.
 
I’ll let you two get back to schmoozing.
 
I’m going over to see if the widow Train will
be schmooze-y with me.”

Without another word he made his
way carefully over to the woman he’d been eyeballing, an elderly woman sitting
all alone.
 

Sky laughed softly.
 
“He’s a character.
 
I think he tries to
schmooze
every widow in Dexter.”

“He’s one of those old people you
just shake your head to,” she murmured.

“And then you pray you don’t turn
into one yourself.”

The tractor began rumbling along,
pulling the flatbed, and the lights of the festival were soon left behind as
the tractor settled into the familiar ride through the woods.
 

“How long has it been since you’ve
been on a hayride?” he asked her in a soft tone.

“Mm, years.
 
Not many hayrides offered in LA.”

“God, this brings back memories.”

“Yeah,” she said with a
giggle.
 
“But this time we’re not egging
houses.”

Sky groaned.
 
“You know, I arrest kids for the same shit I
used to do.”

“Doesn’t that make you feel old?”
she asked.
 
“Back then that was
considered cool.”