The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three) (28 page)

He feels so good between my lips. On my tongue. I can tell he’s already close too, and I don’t want him finishing without me. But we’ve been apart too long, and something in me needs to re-experience every inch of the man whose touch I’ve missed for so long.
 

I only take a minute to lick and suck his length because I can’t remain untouched. He’s running his hands through my hair, feverishly grabbing for my hanging breasts. My sex pulses with need. He exhales harder, nearing an immediate peak, and I slide along him, his wet cock drawing a line of my own saliva down my chest. I stop when the line does, when my lips are kissing his shaft longwise as it lays on his chest.
 

I come up slightly then reach down to slide him inside me.
 

In the scant moonlight, I watch Grady’s eyes close as he enters my wetness. I almost can’t take the sensation. It’s not just sexual. It’s not just about the building climax I’m barely keeping at bay; this is the potent force of long-forgotten years. My hands are on his chest, savoring every detail. When I lean down to kiss him and his hands cup my breasts, I’m hopelessly trying to register every bit of minutia as it’s all lost in the soup of sensation. My head is spinning as my first orgasm builds, as Grady’s shaft moves into and out of me. My heaving breaths push my tits into his hands.
 

And I love him.
 

And I love this man, and my heart missed him so much.
 

As fast as I feel ready to climax, I’m sure I’ll be able to come twice. But the wait must have the same effect on Grady because despite the lasting power I remember, he’s already moving faster, gripping me like he’s close. I sigh into it and let go as he thrashes on the sheets beneath me, our orgasms perfectly synchronized. I grip his cock with my muscles as he throbs into me. I call out, heedless of who might hear, and he gives this helpless little noise as he makes his final, spastic thrusts. Then I lie down, my bare chest on his, and we breathe into each other as if we were a single body. My heart hammers. I can feel his thumping against me, like a twin.

“I shouldn’t stay for long,” he says as we roll to the side, looking toward the guest room’s door and his couch beyond.
 

“Then stay for just a while,” I say, hugging him breathlessly into me as if I’ll never let go.

CHAPTER 32

Serenity doesn’t last long.
 

I wake the next morning to three texts from Chadd. I have no idea what’s wrong with this asshole. I haven’t responded to him since we hooked up, and now he’s tormenting me.
 

I definitely don’t want him anymore. But I hate that
anymore
is part of my thought and can’t believe, in retrospect, that I wanted him at all. Now that I’ve had a dose of Grady, something inside me has snapped back to where it was maybe supposed to be all along. With those eyes, what I did with Chadd — and, really, many others before him — is so repugnant it makes me want to hide. And really, one of the emotions I feel, looking at Chadd’s texts, is pity. It’s not sexy at all to pity a guy, and for that, I guess I’m happy. I don’t want to be tempted, and I’m not. But still the pity is there, because confident sounding or not, the amount of times he’s tried for an encore seems pathetic. And on top of it all, it’s not even hard to understand. I’ve been jilted before. Now I’m jilting this man because it’s not like I never gave him the time of day. I succumbed while weak — it’s not outrageous that he’d think I might be game for round two.
 

I delete Chadd’s texts while my eyes tick around for who might have seen. I forgot I left the phone charging in the kitchen before our sleeping arrangements were decided, and anyone standing beside it when those texts came in might have seen them on the lock screen. It was maybe fifty feet from where Grady spent the night. I happen to know he has the same phone I do. He could have come in for coffee, seen it, and unplugged it in a forgetful moment. He’d have seen plenty, plain as day …
 

But I won’t think about that because it didn’t happen. I was up first; I tiptoed around the back way from the guest room to the kitchen so I wouldn’t disturb Grady in the living room. My heartbeat definitely sped up when I saw what was waiting and what might easily have been seen. It may have been a near-miss, but
it was a miss
.
 

And yet I still can’t stop my skin from crawling.
 

I kind of wish I was just being harassed. Women get harassed all the time. By my definition, harassment is a guy showering a girl with unwanted attention that she’s in no way interested in. I guess that’s me right now, but my brain gives Chadd a loophole. This isn’t harassment in my head; this is simple pursuit. I fed a stray dog, and it’s my own damned fault that he keeps sniffing around for scraps.
 

I’m being wooed, not harassed. It’s twisted and he won’t take a hint, but it’s not like I’m psychologically healthy.
 

I want to erase the past. Last night, before we made love, Grady talked to me about his seventeen-year-old self as if that kid had been an entirely different person than he is now. That’s how I feel about younger me, but
younger Maya
, who was so stupid and shortsighted and different from the woman I am now, existed just a week ago. But I’m no longer her.
She
had sex with a man in the bathroom. I’d never do anything like that, and I wish Chadd would get it through his head.
 

I’m not deluding myself this time. In the past, I’d want a man’s advances, even while I brushed them away. I’d tell myself I didn’t want these texts while wanting him if the time was right. That’s not how it is now. I never want to see Chadd again.
 

(Or Tommy Finch.)
 

The last is like a voice whispered in my ear, as if reminding me. And my brain says,
Oh yes, of course. I forgot about that guy, who’s not a problem at all
.
 

Grady’s arms wrap me from behind as I’m still futzing with my phone. I’m almost shocked enough to drop it. I hope Grady takes my rapid pulse for simple surprise rather than guilt. I sure hope he doesn’t think it’s strange, the way I immediately pocket my phone, which had three incriminating texts just sixty seconds ago — messages he’d clearly have seen if he’d approached me from behind a minute earlier.
 

“Good morning.” His face has grown stubble, and it’s rough against my cheek, but I don’t mind. There’s nothing I mind about Grady right now. I’ll take all of him, no matter his form … if he’ll have me, and never uncovers the secrets and regrets I don’t want to reveal.
 

He’s just now, after nine and a half years, willing to move past the idea of me and Tommy. And because he’s not naive, he must be willing to move past the idea of the lovers he assumes I’ve had in the meantime.
 

But if he only knew. If he only knew what he was forgiving.
 

I force myself to wish him a good morning back, but I can’t meet his eyes. Not yet. Not after what we finally shared again last night, and the horrible weight at the bottom of my heart this morning.
 

“Did you sleep well?”
 

“Well enough, thanks,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady as my phone vibrates in my pocket. “You?”
 

“Not so great.”
 

I turn. I’m sure, suddenly, that he’s going to say “We need to talk.”
 

But Grady smiles instead. “I kept thinking about you.”
 

I feel undeserving. Unworthy. Ashamed that he’d say such a thing to someone like me.
 

“Oh.”
 

He reaches past me for the brewing coffee then pulls two cups from the cupboard. Without asking, he tips a packet of Equal into the cup. Not only does he automatically know the little things about me like how I prefer my coffee; he even knows, after just a few visits, where things are in my parents’ kitchen.
 

“I should be mad at you, you know,” he says.
 

“Oh?”
 

“I had a whole trip planned.”
 

“A trip?” I feel like an idiot, giving him these little, unsatisfying responses. But I have no context, and feel like I’m tottering atop an uncertain pedestal.
 

“I was on my way to Alaska.”
 

“‘Was’?” Damn me. I sound like a parrot.
 

Grady smiles that sexy, disobedient smile that used to irritate our high school teachers so much. “I’m reconsidering those plans.”
 

I feel something catch in my chest. The moment hangs for a second like a ball at the top of its arc. Does this mean what I think it is?
 

And then:
I’m happy if it does, right?

I’m not at all conflicted, not at all feeling caught?

My phone, in my pocket, buzzes again, reminding me of the text I haven’t acknowledged. It’s a tap on my shoulder, and I can practically hear the voice of sense whispering in my ear.
 

Good God, girl. Don’t let him stay in Inferno Falls with you. The water here is filthy with your misdeeds. The two of you will be a ticking bomb, just waiting for the moment you’re together and run into the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
 

That’s not fair. I deserve grace. I’ve changed. Grady is back, and now it seems like we might even be okay. Maybe it’s foolish to believe a person can change in a moment, but I have. If the world were fair, I should be able to unhitch old Maya from behind me like uncoupling a car from a railroad train. I should be allowed to move on free of baggage, my sexual bankruptcy case duly declared, filed, and sealed forever. Grady doesn’t need to know. Nobody needs to know. I got away with what I did for so long because despite the lip service paid to the idea of protecting Mackenzie, I must have secretly wanted to be caught.
 

Deep down, I didn’t want to be a good girl who got away with bad behavior. I’d done a single bad deed, once, and I suspect I’ve known I was bad ever since. And those who are bad — who are selfish and stupid and hurt others — must be punished.
 

If I’d been found out and judged two weeks back, it would have crushed me, but I would have had it coming. I got away with it too easily when I was seventeen, but what goes around comes around.
 

Now, if this all falls apart, none of us will ever recover.
 

“You’re not going to Alaska?”
 

“It’s lost a lot of its appeal.” He shrugs. “Going alone has, anyway.”
 

“You’d have your cat.”
 

“Carl is lousy company. He poops in a box and sometimes tries to sleep on my face.”

I can see the uncomfortable places this might go next — places that seem good and that delight Grady but that fill me with foreboding and guilt — but I’m saved when I hear the distinctive sound of Mackenzie hopping down the stairs. Grady laughs when he sees her. She’s holding Carl, who I’d assumed was near his owner. But instead, he’s on his back in Mackenzie’s arms, looking at Grady as if to say,
Don’t you say a fucking word.
 

“Mr. Grady!” she says, her face lighting up. “I taught Carl a trick!”
 

Grady gives me an affectionate little glance then half stoops. “You did?”
 

“Yes!” Mac puts the cat on the ground, says, “Roll over,” then laughs with delight when the cat sort of slouches an inch to one side, looking annoyed.
 

 
Grady seems like he’s about to engage Mackenzie over the finer points of pet training, so I step away and look at the message on my phone.
 

It’s not from Chadd.
 

It’s from Tommy.
 

Let’s get together tonight after you work. I figure either you, me, and Mackenzie — or you, me, and Chadd. See you there.
 

Insultingly, horribly, it ends with,
XOXO
.

CHAPTER 33

Maya and Mackenzie are getting ready for work and school, leaving me unsure of what to do with myself. It would probably be awkward for me to stay. I seem to have a room (or at least a couch) here for as long as I need it (even if I don’t want it), but it didn’t occur to me how I’d handle the daytime.
 

I like Maya’s parents and Mackenzie a lot, but this is too much, too soon. If things keep going as I think, I’ll be part of this family in no time. But for now I’m on self-imposed thin ice. I won’t wear out my welcome, or presume. They may all accept me, but I’m still a drifter in my mind. I’m still the guy who left Maya high and dry. That decade may be water under the bridge for Maya’s parents, who blame the absentee father much more than they blame me, and Mackenzie might not even know — but I’m neither as forgiving of myself nor as forgetful.
 

When Maya starts gathering her few things, I do the same. Mackenzie begs to keep Carl for the day, and Arthur and Charlotte give their blessing, so I leave him.