Playing for Love at Deep Haven (17 page)

The first
morning he woke up to find her curled up on his floor, he’d felt a flood of
confusion. He barely knew her, and she hadn’t asked to sleep in his room, but
there she was in a sleeping bag, her cheek resting on her elbow, fast asleep. His
mind had raced with questions: Should he wake her up and tell her to leave?
Should he be extra quiet so he
didn’t
wake her up? Should he say something? Leave the room quietly to give her
privacy? In the end, he stared at her for over an hour, looking down at her
from his bed until her eyes had fluttered opened. She stretched her arms over
her head and yawned, smiling up at him in a dazed, dreamy way.

“The dorm feels
so empty, it’s spooky. I got scared in my room all by myself. I didn’t think
you’d mind.” Then she asked with a grin, “You don’t mind, do you?”

He shook his
head, watching her.

“That’s good.”
She sat up, and the white tank top she was wearing pulled over her breasts.
“I’m hungry, are you?”

His eyes flicked
down to see her nipples, hard against the flimsy fabric, and the morning wood
in his boxers turned to stone.

“No breakfast in
there,” she said, looking down at her breasts, then winking at him. She stood
up and dragged her sleeping bag behind her to the door. “Let’s go get bagels.
I’ll be back in a few.”

Then she disappeared
down the hallway.

He had rolled
back over, staring at the ceiling, realizing he hadn’t actually uttered a word.
He rested his hands on his chest, resisting the urge to move them lower. He
closed his eyes, picturing her face asleep on his floor, the way her
crazy-colored hair had covered one cheek. His hands slid lower, over the
nonexistent muscles in his abdomen to his stomach. Fleetingly he wondered if
Violet liked a guy who worked out and thought that maybe he should start going to
the gym. He swallowed as his hand grasped his erection and moved his hand up
and down slowly, thinking about her nipples, wondering what it would feel like
to touch them, to roll them between his callused fingers. He groaned softly,
coming quickly onto his stomach.

“Zach! Earth to
Zach!”

Violet stood at
his door with her hand out for his key. The erection he’d gotten on the bench
outside, under the Japanese maple, was harder and almost painful now, after his
little daydream-flashback.

“Key?” she said,
smiling at him, eyes dipping to his crotch then slowly back up again.

Shit.
She knew him too well.

He took the key out
of his back pocket and handed it her. She held his eyes for a second and said, before
looking down at his pants and then back up again. “Be honest. Want to write or
make out?”

***

His Adam’s Apple
bobbed up and down as he swallowed, capturing and holding her eyes. She held
her breath, the muscles deep inside her body quivering.

“Make out,” he
whispered.

It felt bold to
ask him such a forward question, but her body was tingling from the way he was
looking at her, and all she wanted was to feel the weight of his body on top of
hers as he ran his fingers over her, kissed her lips, maybe found the courage
to tell her how he felt about her, so she could finally, finally tell him how
she felt about him.

And if sex was
the only way, then sex was the only way. In her mind she put it on the table
for him to claim. It wasn’t wrong if you loved someone. It wasn’t a mistake if
you were pretty sure they loved you back.

“Then let’s make
out,” she said, opening the door and slipping into his room.

***

He closed the
door by leaning against it, surprised by how dark his room was. It was an
east-facing room and tended to lose the light quickly as evening settled in.

She stood before
him with her hands on her hips, her lips quirked up in a tentative smile. Was
she offering him sex? He was fairly sure that she was. They’d done just about
everything else they could do, and he was sensing a shift in her mood as the
weekend came to a close—a need to solidify things, to literally and
figuratively go all the way.

“What’re you
thinking?” she asked in a breathy voice, dispatching her blouse and pulling her
tank top out of her waistband, her hands hovering by the button of her jeans.

The truth was
that he didn’t have an answer for her. Aside from the obvious—
I’m thinking I want to have sex with you all
night long
—his mind was a jumble. His body said yes. His heart said yes.
His mind cautioned no.

He was
undeniably attracted to her. His body reacted every time he looked at her. His
heart gasped and twisted with something that approximated love, but he didn’t
know for sure. He’d never felt anything like it before, and it frightened him—the
intensity of it, the way her eyes softened so completely when she looked at him,
as if he had answers he didn’t have, as if he’d promised her something he’d
never promised. His mind had been besotted with her from the beginning, but he worried
about losing the best friend and most treasured collaborator he’d ever known.

His forehead
broke out in a sweat, and his hands felt suddenly clammy. His body was sending
a clear message:
Don’t you fucking push
this away, Zach. We want this. We need this.
His mind fought back:
You can’t go back once you do it. You’ll
lose the friendship. She’ll want more from you than you can give her. These
feelings are so new, you can barely get your head around them, let alone
promise her anything.
He wanted to run away from her and bury his head
against her breasts at once. He wanted to back up and move forward at the same
time.
Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you
sure?

He wasn’t.

“I’m thinking of
how much I want you,” he responded, pulling his shirt over his head and
reaching for her.

***

“Zach,” she
whispered.

“Yeah?” he
panted, lying naked beside her on his back, his body still trembling with
aftershocks.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he
answered. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” Then, “That
was my first time.”

Silence. Then, “Mine
too.”

She propped
herself on her elbow. “That was your first time?”

He nodded.

“Oh, my gosh. It
was? Zach, I need to tell you something,” she said with happy tears in her
eyes.

“No. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s good.
This was our first time. I want to say it.”

“Don’t. You
don’t have to say it—”

“I love you.”

Silence.
Silence. Silence. Awkward silence.

“Violet, we’re .
. . friends.”

“We just—”

“I know. But
we’re friends first. We don’t have to say things like—”

“I’m not saying
it because I have to. I’m saying it because it’s true. You’re my best friend,
Zach, but I don’t just feel friendship for you anymore. I love you.”

“Okay.”

He lay on his
back, staring at the ceiling.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.
It’s fine. You told me. Okay.”

She rolled onto
her back, covering her eyes with her arm.

“Do you love
me
?” she whispered.

He didn’t
answer. He didn’t say anything.

“Zach, don’t do
this. Please don’t do this.” Her voice broke.

“Don’t do what?”

“Please don’t
ruin this. I just . . . I mean, we just—”

“I’m not trying
to ruin
anyth
—I mean, I . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Do you love
me?” she asked again in a direct, trembling whisper.

He covered his
face with his hands. “You’re my best friend.”

“That’s not what
I asked you.
Do you love me
?” she
asked a third time.

He sat up,
drawing the sheet up to his waist. “I don’t . . . I don’t know how I feel. I
just—”

“You don’t know
how you feel about me?”

“I don’t want to
hurt you, Vile.”

“Don’t call me
that.” She rolled onto her side, away from him, facing the wall.

“Violet, you’re
my—”

“I can’t be your
friend, Zach. I can’t
just
be your
friend now. Not after this. Not now.”

“Why? We can
just—”

“Because I love
you. Because I want you to love me. Because friends won’t be enough now.
Friends will break my heart.”

“This is just
moving really fast. It’s just not what I . . . I mean, I’m not ready to . . . We’re
just—”

Tears streamed
down her face. He ran the back of his hand over his eyes. They both looked at
the back of his glistening hand when he lowered it to his lap.

“Friends,” she
finished in a dull whisper. “No, we’re not. We were never just friends.”

“Fuck, Violet.
Please.”

She shook her
head, closing her eyes, biting her lip.

He swung his
legs over the side of the bed. He grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled
them on. She lay on her back, her face wet with tears.

He stood looking
down at her, and she looked up at him, pain and confusion mirrored in each
other’s eyes. “I love you whether you love me b-back or not,” she finally said.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it. I’ll go on loving you until I don’t
anymore.”

He didn’t look
away, but he flinched. He ground his jaw as his hand reached up to his bare
chest where it stayed, flattened, for several seconds before he turned and
reached for his T-shirt on the floor. She turned back to the wall, her
shoulders shuddering with sobs as he left the room without another word.

Chapter
13

Violet didn’t
know how long she’d been perched on the edge of the sofa staring out at the
driveway where her
Prius
sat alone. Maybe a minute,
maybe twenty, maybe forty, but her eyes burned, and her cheeks were wet with
tears by the time she forced herself to walk back to the stairs.

How could she
have been so stupid? How could she have allowed herself to fall for him again?
He had left her. Had sex with her and run away, just as he had the last time.
He’d taken his guitar, his room was empty, and his car was gone. Part of her
heart—the really stupid part that kept replaying his words—wanted to believe
there was another explanation for his absence.

In a million years I wouldn’t want to pick up where
we left off. Where we left off is the biggest regret of my life. I was falling
for you just as hard as you were falling for me. That’s the truth, Violet
Smith. Violet-like-the-flower, it was always you for me. I want a second
chance. I want two weeks with you, and after two weeks, if you want to walk
away from me, you walk. You go. At the end of two weeks, it’ll all be up to
you. But I promise you, Violet, I will
never
walk away from you again.

What bullshit.

He’d
sweet-talked his way into her pants, into another weekend fling with stupid,
fucking Violet who spread her legs again and was left alone—again.

She made her way
up the stairs woodenly, occasionally swiping at her eyes, her heart dropping
when she saw the time: eight o’clock. If his habits hadn’t changed, Zach was an
early riser. He was probably halfway back to New York by now.

Of course he’s halfway back to New York, you idiot!
Why in the world did you believe him? What did he ever do to make you trust
him? Nothing. Exactly nothing. He slept with you, then he walked away from you
and never tried to get you back.

“Idiot!” she
yelled, stubbing her toe on the doorway of her room, blinded by tears.

Slam.

When she heard
the front door open and shut below, her whole body jumped. She leaned down to
wipe her eyes with the edge of the towel and stepped back over to the top of
the staircase, peeking down to see Zach’s tousled head looking up at her. He
held up a brown paper sack.

“Bagels? I
remembered how much you like them.”

She didn’t
realize she’d been holding her breath, but she sighed in a strange
sobbing/giggling hybrid. She clutched the towel to her chest, blinking her eyes
furiously and clenching her jaw so she wouldn’t burst into relieved tears.

***

Her eyes were
red and puffy, and her lip trembled as she tried unsuccessfully to smile at
him.

“Hey,” he said,
moving closer to the bottom step. “Are you okay?”

She managed a
small smile and nodded, swiping the back of her hand across her eyes. “Yeah, I
just . . . I woke up and you weren’t here, and I didn’t know if—”

He took the
stairs two at a time and drew her into his arms. She was stiff at first before
relaxing into him, resting her damp hair on his shoulder.

“You came back
this time,” she murmured against his neck.

Her words hit
Zach like an arrow between the eyes, and he clenched them shut as his mind
flashed back to another time of his life when he hadn’t come back. When his
brain had felt like a pressure cooker as she kept asking if he loved her and he
couldn’t handle it. It had taken him a couple of weeks to process what had
happened between them, how he felt about it, and what he wanted. And by the
time he’d come around to knowing how much he loved her, how crazy in love he
was with her, she’d already moved on. For the first time in his life, he
understood what he’d done to her so long ago—the full extent of the damage and
pain. He understood that it still had the power to hurt her nine years later,
which blew his mind. While he’d spent those fall days so long ago trying to
figure out what he wanted and who she was to him, he was killing something
inside her. And it squeezed his heart until he could barely take a breath.

She spoke softly
near his ear. “When I woke up and you were gone, it just felt so much like that
weekend and—”

“I promised I’d
never walk away again, Violet. You have to trust me on that.”

“I want to,” she
said, exhaling a warm breath near his ear that made darts of heat shoot down to
his groin like wildfire. “But it’s hard to let go of the past. It’s hard to
trust you.”

He rubbed his
hands over the back of the towel in soothing circles. “I just went out to get
us breakfast.”

She leaned back
to look at him, her brown eyes wide and watery. “I don’t know how this can
work, Zach. Every time you go out for milk, I’ll wonder if you’re coming back.
And if you go back out on the road, I’ll be a wreck.”

“Then I’ll never
leave you. I won’t go out on the road, and we won’t drink milk. We’ll write
songs and we’ll fight and we’ll make up and make love and be happy, and you’ll
trust me again. Someday you will.”

Her eyes were
stricken, searching his with bewilderment, but he saw softness there, too, and
it gave him hope.

“I want to trust
you.”

“You can.”

Words weren’t
working; he needed to touch her. He needed to reassure her, to somehow make her
believe that she was safe with him—that since finding her again, there wasn’t
anything he wouldn’t do to keep her in his life. He moved his hands up her back
until he found the edge of the towel and tugged it back, loosening the knot in
the front until it slipped down her body.

“You’re always
taking my towel off,” she said softly, a sexy grin teasing her lips.

He took her hand
and led her back into her bedroom. “I wouldn’t complain if you just stayed
naked, Vile.”

“What fun would
that be?” she asked, standing in front of her bed. Her eyes dropped to the
obvious erection straining at the front of his jeans, then back to his face.
“Unless you were too.”

“You’re going to
be sore,” he said, referring to their lovemaking marathon the previous night.
But he held his breath as she reached out for the button on his jeans, catching
his eyes as she unfastened it with a soft pop.

“No,” she
murmured. “Whatever else happens between us? My body was made for yours.”

Her words lit
his body on fire, and he stepped forward, backing her up against the bed,
cradling the back of her head with his hand to steady her as he leaned down to
capture her lips with his. Violet opened her mouth, a moan from the back of her
throat making him harden painfully, and plunged her fingers into his hair.

“I have no
self-control around you,” he mumbled, helpless to stop the intense desire that
built up inside him every time he was close to her. He pushed his jeans down
with his other hand, stepping out of them as she moved her hands to his waist
and pushed his shirt up over the contours of his muscled chest.

“I don’t care,”
she said, touching her lips to his chest as he pulled his shirt over his head.
“I want you. I want you inside me.”

Again, her words
felt like ecstasy in his ears, flushing his skin with the promise of pleasure
until his body collapsed against hers. He snaked one arm around her, pulling
her up against his naked body, and dropped his lips to hers, plundering her
mouth with his tongue. He pushed her gently back on the bed, his breath
catching as she bent her knees and locked her legs around him, cradling the
hardness of his sex against the softness of hers.

He abandoned her
lips, kissing the warm, soft caves and curves of her neck as his hands gently
kneaded her breasts. He took a nipple into his mouth, licking and sucking it
into a rigid point as her fingers dug hungrily into his hair. She arched her
back up to him, and he released her before taking the other nipple into his
mouth and loving it until it was just as wet and puckered.

“Zach, please, I
can’t—”

“Yes, baby, you
can. Trust me.” He slid his lips down her tummy, carefully parting the soft
skin of her thighs with his hands, kissing the quivering skin to soothe her
before lightly flicking his tongue over the throbbing bud of her sex.

“Zach!” she
gasped, her hands fisting into the sheets by her sides. His tongue darted out
again to make contact with the swollen, hidden bead, and she almost bucked off
the bed, releasing a breathy murmur from the back of her throat.

“I’ve never . .
. no one’s ever . . .”

He panted, her
words slicing through his haze of Violet-induced lust.
How the fuck is that possible?
“You’ve never . . . done this?”

“Don’t stop,”
she moaned. “Please . . . don’t . . .”

She had a body
made for loving, so sweet and hot; and the way she responded—arching her back
and moaning with pleasure—made him so hard, he could barely wait to bury
himself inside her. It was unthinkable that no other man had enjoyed her, loved
her, pleasured her as Zach was pleasuring her now. And more than anything, he
fucking loved it that he was her first. Again.

He slid two
fingers inside her body, covering her trembling, sensitive skin with his mouth
and gently sucking until she cried out, arching her back again, her muscles
taut then trembling as she climaxed against him.

He reached for a
condom on the bedside table and slipped it over his massive erection, sliding
up her slick body to kiss her lips gently.

“I want you,
Vile,” he groaned, lightly biting her ear as he positioned the head of his
shaft over her.

“I need you,”
she sighed, pushing her pelvis up just enough for the tip of him to enter her.
With that one small motion he lost the battle with self-control and thrust
deeply into her, groaning with pleasure as her still-pulsing muscles tightened
around him like a glove, sucking him into her body. He rotated his hips as he
varied the speed and depth of his thrusts, leaning down to kiss her as the
pressure built inside him.

He leaned back,
capturing her eyes, which were glassy and tender, and her lips lifted briefly
before her eyes closed in pleasure. He heard her words in his head—
You came back this time
—as her fingers
curled into the skin of his back, and she shuddered, the cry of his name on her
lips like music in his ears. It was all he needed.

 
As her muscles quivered around him, he sobbed
her name, burying his face in her neck as he drove into her to the hilt,
convulsing inside her, a pleasure so deep and intense and profound, he knew
he’d rather die than ever live another day without Violet in his life.

***

Later they sat
across from each other at the breakfast bar, eating cold bagels with congealed
cream cheese and sipping lukewarm coffee. Regardless of the trust issues where
Zach was concerned, Violet couldn’t deny that the sex was staggeringly intense
and utterly mind-blowing. Never in her years with
Shep
had he gone down on her, so she’d never known what she was missing. And for all
that she hated Zach’s level of skill, knowing the practice it must have taken,
she couldn’t deny that she had just benefited from it. She shifted on her seat,
a wave of latent desire making muscles deep in her body contract and relax as
she relived the orgasm she’d reached with his head between her thighs. She bit
her bottom lip, looking up at him shyly.

“Wow. I’d love
to hear the audio file of whatever’s going on in
your
head,” he said, staring at her with dark eyes.

“I bet you
would.”

His face broke
into a rare, unguarded grin, and he laughed lightly. It was a happy sound. It
made Violet feel happy too.

“It’s good,
isn’t it? Us?”

She smiled and
nodded even though
good
didn’t crack
the surface. It was . . . frightening and overwhelming and unexplainable,
addictive and worthy of obsession. It was every human being’s dream to connect
with someone the way she and Zach connected with each other. But was it enough?
Was it sustainable?

“Hey,” he said,
reaching around to pull a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. He
unfolded it, smoothing it out on the counter and turning it to face her. It was
a flier for a concert in Portland. Tonight. She looked up at Zach in question.

“Stone Cold.
Have you heard of them?”

Violet shook her
head no, looking at the garish, angry fonts on the flier. The words
Stone Cold
were printed in black with
jagged silver icicles hanging off them like ominous spikes. The lead singer had
makeup on his face, and his long, pierced tongue practically touched his chin,
it was so far out of his mouth.

“They’re decent.
I mean, they’re not Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden, but they’re up-and-coming,
you know?”

She didn’t know,
but she gave him a small smile, nodding lightly.

“And they’re
probably playing one of my songs tonight. So I was thinking maybe we could go.”

“To a heavy
metal concert?” The words even sounded stupid and judgmental in her own ears.