Page 202 of One Wild Wish

“Will you keep repeating everything I say?” she asked.

“Only if you keep stating the obvious.”

She flicked my shoulder, and I squeezed the sensitive spot above her knee. She squealed, a sound I’d always loved. Happy Gwen. Giddy Gwen. She went to pinch my nipple, her go-to move, but I batted her hand away. I grabbed her waist and tugged her onto my lap, her back flush against my chest. Nowhere for her hands to roam. “You’re getting slow in your old age.”

She quit squirming. “You’re getting faster.”

And harder. She probably felt it, my erection free to roam in my workout shorts. Minimal contact was all it took. Like I was a teen again, my body always quick to respond to her. Needing to regain control, I eased her off my lap, but gripped her waist too long. Felt each of her lean muscles through her thin tank top. “You’ve been working out.”

“CrossFit,” she murmured while she stepped back and faced me, adjusting her camo pants. “But I’m considering taking up pole vaulting.” Her eyes focused on my groin.

The pole in question twitched, and my mind was back to ricocheting, too much stimulus—good and bad—to focus on one thing. I could handle this, though. Subtle flirting while we figured out what the hell to do with each other. While I figured out my next move. “I’d think you were already a skilled vaulter.”

“The poles I’ve used tend to buckle under pressure.”

“Then I guess you need a steadier pole. Something longer and firmer?”

I imagined her cupping the length of me, stroking me until I roared. Fantasies I should curb.

She touched her collarbone, ran her fingers toward the dip at her throat. “I need a pole that can go the distance. The kind that can support my weight.”

Her tone wavered from coy to uncertain. Trepidation that probably had little to do with me. The burden of her mother’s lost luggage must be affecting her. Unclaimed baggage, filled with years of neglect. I cocked my head, hoping the motion would organize my jumbling thoughts. Sex. Want. Guilt. Ire. The need to take Gwen in my arms and whisper soothing words.

Our eyes locked again and the air snapped, the way an extended note vibrated and hummed.

Abruptly, she hugged her waist. “Is your number the same? Should I text you where to meet?”

“My number hasn’t changed.”

Gwen suddenly had. She was on the move, snatching up the bible and journal. She stacked them in the open box that had held my PI badge. Her shoulder-length hair dipped forward, a wavy curtain covering her face.

To avoid looking at me? To avoid this intensity binding us, whether we wanted it to, or not?

Not surprising with the day’s craziness. I needed to stop thinking with my body, too. My bruised and battered heart. A shower would do me good. A cold one. An ice bath, maybe. Something to remind me why I’d avoided Gwen all this time, her ability to unbalance me powerful, the details I hadn’t shared enough to end this reunion for good.

If I could nurse the anger I’d harbored the past nine years, it would help me confess about her father and move on. Stop pretending the two of us could water these fledgling feelings, grow something good out of them.

Watching her gather and pack a tiny box that represented her few good childhood memories silenced that notion. She’d endured so much growing up, too much the past month, me and this lost luggage adding to her stress. The grudge I’d harbored seemed childish now. We’d been kids back then. Stupid. Led by our fears, unsure who we were and who we should be.

Today, I was a lonely musician who missed his best friend. Today, I was a man struggling to tame his desire for his first and only love.

* * *

Gwen

I couldn’t gather my paltry box fast enough. If I could eject myself from this overheating kitchen, that had shrunk with August in it, I’d strap myself in and brace for impact. One second I was ready to grab his pole and test how high it could make me jump, the next I couldn’t stop remembering the rabbit hole I’d fallen into after my WTF.

Losing August back then had been a sledgehammer to my heart. For two years I’d wallowed, barely going out. Self-imposed isolation. Until I’d met Rachel and Ainsley. The girls had reminded me there was life after a shattered heart, but the extent to which I’d suffered wasn’t something one forgot.

I was twenty-seven now, not nineteen, but the San Francisco fault line had nothing on my shoddy foundation.

One moment on August’s aroused lap, and the cracks under my feet showed.

I shuffled across the white linoleum floor, glancing at him as he returned my guitar to its case. His strong back stretched his jersey, his shoulder blades shifting with each move. My Badass PI partner.

Of our investigative duo, he’d been the clever one, quick to decipher leads and solve problems as we’d hunt down clues. I was the sneaky one who’d sweet talked “suspects” and “informants,” donning my meager acting skills.

Anything to spend more time with August.