Bet on It (58)
He blushed and it was simply delicious, the tips of his ears turning as beet red as his cheeks. “I never claimed to be cool,” he mumbled.
“Trust me, I know. You would have been lying right to my face if you had.”
He growled, propelling his upper body towards her until she was flat on her back, nearly underneath him. She looked up at him, and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he playfully snapped them at her.
Her eyes fluttered closed briefly. Having him on top of her, even fully clothed and in a completely innocent way, sent shock waves through her body. She’d been on top when they’d had sex. She hadn’t gotten to experience his weight on her, gently pressing her down. Her entire body flushed, heated and singing. She ached to part her thighs, to have him settle between her legs just before he moved inside her again the way she was so quietly desperate for.
His body shifted and the evidence of his same desperation became apparent. He was hard beneath the material of his shorts, and when he accidentally pushed against her crotch, they both sucked in a swift breath.
It was a gut punch when he pulled away, straightening himself up by tugging on the button of his shorts before resuming his earlier position.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s fine.” She cut him off too fast for her words to be honest. “This place is like a beacon of horny energy. We … got swept up in it.”
He laid back against the rock, moving his legs over the edge more and staring up at her. The sun was high and bright in the sky, so he had to squint. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who could find a logical explanation for being too horny to function quite like you, Aja.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept silent.
Chapter 19
The Piggly Wiggly was packed out the ass with people. The store was so old it didn’t have any self-checkout lanes, and the three cashier lanes they did have open had lines so long Walker briefly considered herding Gram out of the store and one town over to Beaufort, where they had one of those Walmart supercenters.
One glance at his grandmother and he knew that she’d never go for it. She’d been coming to this store for decades and outright refused to shop anywhere else out of pure loyalty. It wasn’t normally like this. Usually he could come in with whatever list she provided, pick up the items, and be loading the groceries in his truck in thirty minutes flat.
Right now, everyone was doing their Fourth of July shopping and it was extra hectic. Walking down the bread aisle, he felt a special kind of tingle in the back of his brain. One that told him he might have to wrestle somebody’s hapless husband for the last package of hot dog buns.
Like most small Southern towns, Greenbelt took the Fourth of July very seriously. In recent years, the celebration had less to do with patriotism than with giving everyone a good excuse to gather and be merry. Each year, there was a town-wide festival that took place at the Mayor’s mansion. The town events-planning committee put it together, making sure the start time was agreed upon and supplies were secured. There was always a smoke station for the meats and a huge cake provided by Castillo’s Bakery, but everything else was done potluck style. Gram always, always made baked beans and macaroni salad. But, in addition, she made sure to bring extra buns and utensils, just in case.
Walker had only been once. The year after he went to live with Gram, she’d pressured him into going. She’d bought him a new outfit and everything, waking him up, making him wash behind his ears, and dressing him in the cargo shorts and T-shirt she’d picked up. He’d spent the entire first hour following behind her like a lost puppy, hiding in her skirts. There had been no choice but to separate from her once she’d sat down to play a round of cards with her friends though. This was not a scene where children older than five could be “deep in grown folk’s business.” So he’d wandered off, trying to find some business of his own like he’d been ordered to. It only took him a few minutes to find a peaceful, shaded spot under a big tree, and an even shorter time for some of the other kids to find him.
Like in school, he’d been quiet. Reluctantly taking them up on their offer to play, running after them as they’d enjoyed the picnic, happy to hang out on the margins, relatively unnoticed. Then, like the snap of two fingers, things became much less agreeable. One moment, he’d been fine, only to look up and find himself surrounded by his new “friends” and tons of adults as they prepared to light the sparkling candles on the big cake. The other bodies were packed so close to him that he could barely see the sky. The sounds were loud and unfamiliar, the scent of meat smoke was making his eyes water. It was too much—so overwhelming that he started to panic.
His breaths came hard and fast, and his vision got blurry. He’d gotten so worked up that he’d vomited his lunch all over his new shirt. Looking back, it was one of the first panic attacks he’d ever had. A year removed from his father’s care, and his brain was finally reeling from the effects. Walker had been so embarrassed when someone had been forced to carry him over to Gram, and even more so when she’d cut her celebration short to take him home.
His panic attack also made the rumors resurface. By the time he got to school on Monday, the entire building had been buzzing with talk of what had gone down. The new “friends” he’d made regaled their classmates with fake tales about him kicking and biting the man who’d carried him off. Someone said that he’d only started panicking in the first place because someone tried to stop him from biting the head off a live rabbit. It was almost hilarious how he’d gone from baby meth addict to animal torturer over the course of one afternoon.