At Peace (The 'Burg #2)(88)

We made out more and it got heavy, mainly because we both liked it, but the progression was slow, natural, strangely like we’d fooled around on his couch hundreds of times before and when we did it, we always knew we had all the time in the world. This was a change from Joe, a nice one but one that reminded me of Tim, who also took his time, and I’d liked that too.

Eventually Mike’s hand curled around my breast and his thumb slid over the fabric of my blouse at my nipple.

I sucked in breath against his lips and arched my back to press into his hand.

“Sweetheart,” Mike called and I realized my eyes were closed so I opened them.

“Yeah?” I whispered, his eyes got soft, his lids lowered and his mouth touched mine as his thumb slid back across my nipple and I inhaled again.

“I wanna f**k you, honey,” he said quietly and I held my breath, wanting him to and not wanting him to, both at the same maximum strength.

He went on. “Right here or I take you to my bed. But before I do that, we gotta talk.”

“Okay,” I whispered, unsure about this talk because I was pretty sure what this talk was going to be about.

His hand left my breast and he fell to his side, rolling me to mine with his arm around me and he got up on an elbow, head in hand and looked down at me while he tangled his long legs with mine. I decided to get up on my elbow too and I rested my other hand on his chest.

“You ready for this?” he asked softly and I closed my eyes, drew breath into my nostrils and remembered he was a really good guy.

I opened my eyes and replied, “I don’t know.”

“We can go fast, we can go slow, I’m good with both. What I’m not good with is us goin’ fast when you wanna go slow but you not sayin’ anything, yeah?”

I nodded.

Then he spoke again and my entire body went solid because what he said introduced the part I knew he wanted to say.

“I’m also not big on sharing.”

“What?” I asked even though I knew exactly what he meant.

“Cal was at your house today.”

Shitshitshit!

I tried to be casual. It wasn’t like it was 1890 and I had to make sure no one saw my ankles. These days, women played the field just like men.

Right?

“Yeah, he was,” I affirmed, even though he was there, Joe was there and I was there when Mike asked me over for dinner.

“What was he doin’ there?”

“Fixing my garage door opener.”

“He do a lot a shit around your house?”

“Um… just the alarm system and the garage.”

“Things still complicated?”

The answer to that question was, more than ever.

Except, after that afternoon when Mike asked me to his house right in front of Joe and Joe didn’t blink, he didn’t freaking care, not even a little bit, maybe they weren’t.

I just didn’t want to admit it yet, even though I knew at the back of my mind and at the bottom of my heart, I knew.

I also knew, when I uncomplicated things, it would hurt a lot more than it should and more than I could take right then.

“He’s wound you up,” Mike said on a sigh.

“What?”

“Cal, he’s wound you up. Women get like that with him.”

“They do?”

“Yeah, the whole history… women love that shit.”

“What whole history?”

Mike stared at me then he asked, “You don’t know?”

“Don’t know about what?”

“About Cal, his wife, his Dad and his kid.”

I felt my body twitch and I whispered, “His kid?”

Mike stared at me a second then muttered, “Fuck.”

“Fuck what?”

Mike didn’t answer.

I got up on a hand and looked down at him. “Fuck what, Mike?”

Mike pushed up too then, with his arm around me, he pulled me further up the couch to the armrest. He leaned back against the couch and pulled me to him, into his arms, my chest pressed to his, his hand in my hair.

Then he said in a way I knew he didn’t want to say it, “The story is ‘burg lore so someone’s gonna tell you, might as well be me.”

I waited.

Mike spoke again. “You know Feb and Colt’s story? How they were the big item in high school, even before, everyone said they were born to be together?”

I nodded.

“Well, Cal and his ex-wife, Bonnie, they were that way too.”

I blinked, not believing that, not for a minute. Not about the emaciated, lank-dirty-haired, filthy-slutty-clothed Bonnie who crashed to the floor after offering the tall, huge, strong, amazingly beautiful Joe the opportunity to take her up the ass if he paid for it.

“That can’t be true, I’ve met Bonnie, she’s –”

I stopped talking when I saw Mike’s face register out-and-out shock. “You met Bonnie?”

“Yeah.”

“Cal’s Bonnie?”

I didn’t like to think of her that way but I still answered, “Yeah.”

“Jesus, how’d you meet her?”

“I was over at his house, she came over.”

“You have got to be shittin’ me.”