The Plan (Off-Limits Romance, #4)(57)

Instead, I squeeze Marley’s hand, and we walk downstairs. I can’t tell who’s leading who. Outside, she goes behind the house to get her bike and meets me at the sidewalk with a smile. “You ready?”

“Yes ma’am.”

It’s only 7:40, but the night is cool and dark. The air bending around me sinks into my skin and gives our ride a charged feeling. Downtown Fate glides by, and I fix my gaze on Marley’s amazing ass. The streetlights cast a gold glow on her between long, dark streaks of shadow. We pass people going into restaurants, stepping out of bookstores, standing beside street lights. I coast down the hill toward the water, speeding up a notch to ride by Marley as the sidewalk widens.

I wonder, as I pedal, why she hung the swing. Why did I find her there when I got back to the house? I wanted her so fucking much, and there she was.

Then we’re at the boardwalk, surrounded by people, vendors, lights… It’s a quiet night, but this stone walkway by the lake is always busy.

Marley locks our bikes and takes my hand and finds a burger booth for us.

“The whole shebang?” she asks me.

I smile slightly. “Mayo and cheese for you?”

She nods. “Always.”

I order and pay—because dammit, I’m not handing in my man card quite yet—and we drift toward a row of wooden benches tucked between blazing red trees, the ground around them covered in a crimson carpet.

“This is perfect,” Marley murmurs. She drinks her Dr. Pepper, and I start into my burger.

“Damn, that’s fucking good.”

“I think it’s venison,” she says, inhaling near hers with a dreamy face.

We eat in mostly silence. Marley smiles when a girl maybe ten or twelve bumps over the stone pathway on a hot pink skateboard, but she frowns when she shifts her eyes to me.

“Everything makes you think about her, doesn’t it?”

I don’t know what to say, so I just shrug.

Mar settles back against the bench, and then I feel her forehead lean against my upper arm.

“I hope you know there’s no strings here,” she says, so soft I almost don’t hear. “I’m in a pretty good place. I’ve got a lot of good friends, and I’m surprised to find this—this thing we’re doing—isn’t even really stressing me.”

That makes me bark a laugh. “Well that sounds like a ringing endorsement.”

She laughs, too. “Really, though. I just wanted to spend time with you. I can be your friend, Gabe.”

I turn to her, and there’s only one thought in my head. “A friend you fuck, who puts your Band-Aids on and remembers how you like your burgers twelve years later? Mar, that’s not a friend.”

Her eyes close as she tilts her head just slightly. “Maybe not.”

I lean in and kiss her lips, gently, the way I wish I had back then. And when I pull away, she’s beaming.

“You’re good for the ego,” I say as I lean over to toss my wrapper in a garbage can.

She hops up, too, and tosses hers, and looks down the stone pathway.

“I don’t want to go back over that way toward the dock,” she says, nodding behind us. “Let’s walk toward the beach.”



*

Marley





I’m holding his hand as we walk onto the beach. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Gabe is solemn—his hand big and warm around mine, his face beautiful and still. It’s as if no time has passed between that night when we held hands and wandered down The Strip. What’s between us is a dark pull, more strange than sweet, more like need and less like want, more like fate and less like choice.

“Why did you come back?” I ask as we stare out at the gleam of moonlight on the lake.

We’re standing in the damp sand, underneath a gnarled, old oak.

“I don’t know,” he says, casting his gaze down for a moment. “Victor found out somehow. Probably, I called him drunk. I guess he called my agent. Roy had no idea about what happened. We’re cool enough, but not bros.” I smile at that. “Roy came over. To my place.” He inhales. Lets the breath out. “I don’t know. I guess he didn’t find me well. Somehow he and Victor hatched this plan for me to come stay with my grandmother.”

Gabe laughs. “One day Victor was just there, like at my door, wearing muddy hunting boots and some old camo hat. He poured out all the liquor, badgered me onto the fucking plane.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I smile. “That doesn’t sound too much like Victor. I think that bossiness sounds more like you.”

He laughs. “Like me, my ass. Victor is a hen pecker. He thinks everybody is his fucking student. ‘Dry out, Gabe. You have to dry out or your grandmother will worry.’” He makes a snicker sound. “When I got here, I ordered a bunch of shit and had it shipped to Fendall, but I didn’t drink it.”

“Really? That’s impressive. No rehab or anything?”

He shrugs. “It was more of a controlled thing.”

What he means, I think, is that he made the choice to drink. “I do that sometimes with pie. It’s my most successful vice,” I smile. “Of course, my vice is less likely to kill me than yours is.”

“I’m calling bullshit on that, doctor.” He smirks down at me. The wind makes strands of moss above us sway. I step a little closer to him, and Gabe wraps his arm around my back.