Bliss Brothers: The Complete Series Boxed Set, page 52
“What’s next for you, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” answers Katie with a sigh that seems mostly contented. “Probably Netflix, unless you’re going to kick me out before the laundry’s done.”
I scoff at her. “I would never kick a lady out before her laundry was done, unless she committed a truly heinous crime.”
“Good,” she says, then huffs out a laugh and lets her head fall back against my arm. “What did you mean, though? Like later tonight?”
“Like...later in the season, when the boathouse closes. You took this to cover a gap, didn’t you?” I shake my head. “You had to. There’s no way you got a degree in finance to work in boathouses and gas stations.”
She arches an eyebrow. “When have I ever worked in a gas station?”
“It was the first thing that came to mind. Plus, you’d look cute behind the counter at one of those places.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Fluorescent lights do wonders for my skin.”
She’d look good in any light. “You applied places at the end of the year, though.”
Katie frowns, and I regret asking, but I still want to know. “Yeah. My mom’s still in town, and I thought it would be nice to see her and make some extra cash before I head out to...whatever’s next.”
“You don’t know?”
She shoots me a glare so fake it’s hilarious. “Aren’t you the one who’s always considering the options?”
“Well, yeah, but I figured you had a plan. You usually do have a plan.” Katie, as long as I’ve known her, has had a plan for everything. She picked out her entire first year of college courses before we even left for our summer orientations. She planned to major in finance, and she got her degree, and now...
Now I assumed there was more of a plan.
“I have applications in,” she admits. “I gave them a start date of mid-October. I’ve...I’ve even had a few interviews.” There’s an edge to her words that tells me that this is a partial story—a broken-off chunk of what’s really going on.
This is the kind of conversation that belongs at the end of the season, when everybody’s packing up to go home. Back to their jobs. Back to their real lives. The air around us feels suddenly brittle. I’ve been kidding myself. It was easy, because September has been so warm, but that’s only window dressing. It’ll be like every other September. It will barrel straight into October, and then we’ll be forced into winter…
And then, and then, and then.
I can’t picture it here without her.
I can’t picture her here in the snow.
I can’t picture myself anywhere, except in this moment.
“Where did you interview?”
“Firms in the city,” Katie says. “Multiple cities, actually. New York. Seattle. Chicago. I figured I’d see what came of it all, and then decide based on the offers.”
“You’ve got offers?”
She has not once, not once, mentioned this, in all our time on the docks.
“A few.” It’s a whisper so quiet it could float away on the breeze.
I tighten my grip around her shoulders, pulling her close. “Are you going to tell me where, or is it a big secret?”
“One in New York. One in Seattle. And one in LA.”
Cold dread, like a disgusting winter breeze, sneaks between the sofa and my back and settles in. I can feel that same cold on my breath, in my lungs, freezing everything out. Two of those places are across the country.
And why should it make a difference? We’re not dating. She’s said it a million times, and it’s the sensible thing to think and the sensible thing to say. We’re not dating. We’re only going to be here for a matter of weeks and then it’s time for me to commit to this life or find another one. That half of me that loves the breeze and the sound of slow traffic and the water—that half of me knows where he belongs.
“And you’re going to be here,” she says. “No matter where I go.”
She says it like that’s what she needs to be true, and in a horrible sickening instant I know where this is all going to end up.
I’ve known it all along.
There’s no avoiding it, is there? No. So the only thing to do is be in this moment.
“Are you warm?”
“Yes.” Katie raises her head off my arm. “I’m a little hot. I was thinking of taking off the robe.”
I know as well as she does that she’s not wearing anything underneath.
I clear my throat, all that cold dread burned to a crisp. “Could you do me a favor, as one friend to another?”
“What’s that?”
“Stand up when you do it.”
12
Katie
“Huck, no. I thought we decided—”
The rain loves us. The rain has heard our pleas and answered. When it rains, we can’t take the boats out—we can’t let people out on the water in any of the watercraft. Liabilities, and all that. The moment the first droplets fell, Huck pulled me into the boathouse by the hand, and now…
Well.
He put both of my hands on the check-in counter, stepped up behind me, and kissed the back of my neck. He’s still kissing the small square that’s normally covered by my ponytail. It’s shocking, how much of an effect his kiss has. I can feel myself, damp between the legs. I’m going to ruin my shorts if I’m not careful.
And I am not careful.
I am so far from careful.
The rain beats against the roof of the boathouse in a driving cadence. It’s better than music. Better than the new Pilot Five song that’s been on repeat on the radio all summer. I have the fleeting thought that they should add the sound of rain to that song, but it flickers out like static. Huck’s hands glide down over my hips, pulling me back several inches so that our bodies connect. He’s solid behind me, feet planted, and I feel like a live wire stretched between my palms on the solid wood of the counter and my feet on the solid wood of the floor. I could conduct electricity. I could writhe against it like a fire dancer.
Hot. It would be hot.
“Sorry, what was that?” Every word out of his mouth sings through me on a frequency that’s low enough to run along every nerve. I’ve never been aware of Huck’s voice in quite this way before. It must have changed, over the years. I’ve known him for too long for it not to have.
It’s not just him. It’s me. Now that we’re here, now that we’re doing this, I’m attuned to him like a moth to an electric light. And I don’t care what happens when I get to the lightbulb. Not right now.
He pauses, but I want him to kiss me again. I want more of it, and I can’t help it.
“We decided that last time was the last time.”
The last time, after I undid the belt of my bathrobe and let it fall open, then let it slide to the floor, revealing all of me. Then I reached up and uncoiled the second towel from my hair, letting it fall in all its wet glory down over my shoulders. I watched him get hard. Maybe he thought I was the only one putting on a show, but trust me, I was not.
His breath is hot against the back of my neck. “If you want to stop, say the word.”
I heard the way he didn’t answer when I asked him where he’d be. That pause was enough to know that Huck might waffle, he might consider all the options, but he’s never going to leave Bliss. Why would he? Honestly, given the chance, I’d join my family business in a heartbeat. Only I don’t have a family business to join. If I want that, I’ll have to start one for myself, and I won’t be starting one in my career as a financial adviser for a Fortune 500 company. They’re all Fortune 500 companies. They all want me. And I want it to be summer at Bliss forever.
I want this moment to be going on forever.
Huck moves one hand up toward my chest, tracing a lazy line underneath each breast, and all the thoughts short out again. Useless, stupid thoughts. Who needs to think when he’s touching me like this?
The token resistance I’ve been putting up—and it really is token resistance, given that I haven’t yet moved my hands from the countertop—chips and shatters.
“No,” I breathe, giving in again. “The third time could be the charm.”
It’s not going to be the charm. I know that. He knows it. And we’re going to do this anyway.
I love it. I can’t help but love it.
“God, yes,” Huck groans. “If it works this time, we’ll both be free.”
Because last time—in his house, with the bathrobe, which sounds like the setup for a game of Clue—was meant to get this all out of our systems so we can stand to look at each other until we’re away. So we can focus on our jobs, and not the fact that all we want to do is hang out with each other.
That’s all I want to do, anyway. I was perfectly happy with four hours of Netflix after our last naked hang sesh.
I could do that with him forever. Especially if he orders pizza, which Huck is always willing to do.
He resumes kissing my neck, and I resume fucking falling for it, just like every other time.
Huck kisses around to the front of my neck and pulls me close, his hands working at the button clasp at the front of my jeans. Today was the first day we had cool enough weather to wear jeans on the docks, and it scares the shit out of me. Honestly, it does, because it means the time is getting away from me. September is slipping away, and it’ll be October, and then this…this will be over, whatever this is.
“Promise me,” I say, my voice ragged. “Promise me you’ll still talk to me when I’m at my job.” The breath I take is superheated, burning its way into my lungs and spreading across my chest. I want him inside of me, and I want him to promise me, even if the inevitable truth still stalks ahead of us like the ghost of Breakups Future. Distance always changes people. It almost changed us before. He can’t promise, but I want him to. I want it.
I feel the way his muscles tense and freeze, the way his body goes still, and the way he starts moving again so smoothly I almost could have imagined it. “Of course I’ll talk to you.” Huck is absolutely sincere, but there’s a breathless break in his voice that tells me he’d rather not talk about this.
“I don’t want it to be like college again.” In sex, the truth comes out. I think that’s a saying. My knees tremble as he strokes his hands down my sides, making his way steadily down to the waistband of my jeans.
“I don’t want it to be like that, either. You know what I do want it to be like?”
“What?”
“The other day at my place. Only better. Only…” He tugs my pants down over my hips, kneeling so I can step out of them. Then he does the same to my panties. And I am painfully aware that there are no curtains on the windows of the boathouse, that anyone could see, and it makes my nipples peak and harden. Huck stands up behind me and glides his hand around to the front of me, stroking two confident fingers between my still-spread legs. “Yeah. Like that.”
“Like what?”
“Even wetter. Keep your hands on the desk.”
“What—what are you, the boss of me?” I have to force the joke out on a breathy whisper because every single sense is pinpointed on my nipples, on my clit.
“Right now I am. Like it?”
“Fucking…love…it.” If anyone’s watching, I love that too. It’s such a dirty urge, straight out of the fantasies I let play in my head when I’m alone at night. I’ve been alone so many nights that the thought of someone watching…
It makes me even wetter.
Huck must feel it against his fingers. I couldn’t hide it from him if I tried, and I don’t want to try.
“So filthy.”
I rock back against him, because I can’t do anything else. I don’t want to do anything else. There’s the slide of metal on metal and then it’s flesh on flesh, his hardness against my opening, and I bend forward to let Huck have his way with me up against the reception desk. The moment he thrusts in, the moment he hits home, the air goes out of my lungs and the next breath is sweet and pure and so rich, so, so rich, I could eat it for breakfast.
His fingertips circle my clit, a slow, lazy rhythm as he pumps faster, thrusts harder—oh, oh, oh fuck.
“That’s it,” he coaxes. “Come for me. Let it all out.”
I do. I do, I do, I do.
13
Huck
“It didn’t work. It’s still in my system. Do you think I should see a doctor?” I say all of this as quickly as possible when Katie opens the door to her little rented house. It’s supposed to sound fake, supposed to make her laugh, but the way my heart knocks against my ribs and raced itself into a desperate cadence at the thought of seeing her isn’t a joke. “This is not your childhood home, by the way.”
Her eyebrows fly up to her hairline. “Did you go to my old house? What are you doing here?”
“I asked first.” Katie doesn’t need to know that I’d assumed she was living with her mom this summer. I’d wrapped my head around making small talk with Mrs. Lennon and the prospect of pinning Katie against the door of her childhood bedroom, but not for the possibility of looking like a total fucking idiot when Katie’s mom opened the door. It’s been a while since I saw her around at Ruby Bay, since I haven’t been in Ruby Bay, but it seems like things have improved. Improved so much, in fact, that Katie rented her own house for the summer.
Katie laughs, her gray eyes searching mine. “You don’t look feverish. I don’t think a doctor could help you. Not at this point, anyway. Also…” She frowns, but I see the smile lingering in her eyes. “What are you doing? You could have called, like a regular person.”
“I think you mean I could have texted, like a regular person. Are you going to let me in?”
Katie opens the door with a flourish, and I step inside and wait for her to close it behind us before I round on her, scooping her up in my arms and pressing her back against the door. I kiss her full on the mouth, devouring her sweetness, because that’s what I’ve wanted to do since I opened my eyes this morning and I’m not waiting another second.
Honestly, every second that I’m not with her seems like an enormous waste of life.
She murmurs something against my lips, but I ignore it until I’m done tasting her.
For the moment.
I set her back on her feet. “What was that?”
“I said, if you keep kissing me like that, we might accidentally ruin our friendship.”
“Total bull,” I tell her. “This was supposed to be about honesty, anyway, and having a nice hang sesh before you leave for Seattle. Or LA. Or wherever you’re going.” I say it casually, like saying it casually will make it feel casual, even though it does not feel casual. Having Katie on the other side of the country feels like being plunged back into the dark ages. It’s bullshit, but it’s inevitable. “And honestly,” I press on. “I missed you, and I came over. But I think I have a terrible disease.”
She puts a hand on my chest. “You don’t have to pretend to be afflicted in order to come see me.”
“I’m sick with it.” I clasp a hand over hers. “It torments me.”
“Is it that bad?” Her voice is filled with concern that would seem very nearly genuine if her eyes weren’t dancing. “What can I do to make it better?”
“There’s nothing that can be done,” I moan, because she’s starting to break, she’s starting to lose it, and I love it when she laughs. I can’t help myself. I love it.
I love…
No.
My mind shies away from admitting it even in the privacy of my brain. I did not come back to Bliss to fall in love like a fucking fool. I came here to have a good time. I came here, I realize in a rush, to get it out of my system.
“Nothing?” cries Katie, and my heart thud-thuds in recognition of a very, very old game we’re playing. Only it has new rules. “Nothing at all? Please, tell me, Huck. Is there anything I can do to save you?”
I tip my head back and stare blankly at the ceiling. “You can get naked, Katie Lennon,” I say on a rattling wheeze. “You can get naked, and bring me back from the verge of death.”
She loses it then, absolutely loses it, snorting with laughter. “Oh my god, that voice is so unsexy. It’s awful. Don’t do that. I’ll do anything to make it stop.” Katie leans in close, pressing a kiss to my exposed collarbone. I reach up and yank my shirt back.
“That seemed to help.” I keep my eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Do it again.”
She does it again, and the feeling arcs down over the front of my lips and sends a jolt of pleasure straight between my legs.
“You’re a true friend,” I wheeze.
Katie laughs again, but I hear the hesitation in her voices—I hear that microsecond of silence before the sound, and it winds my mind clean around it and twists it off in a knot that’s going to be impossible to unravel. She wants to be friends. That’s all she wants. She can’t stop saying it. Yet when I bring it up…
“Let’s get this off of you,” she says, with all the authority of a nurse on duty. “It may be the only thing that saves your life.”
Just like that, we’re back in the game.
“The light,” I croak. “The light…” Teeth dig into the front of my chest. Teeth. “You bit me!”
Katie straightens up, looking at me with a dead serious expression. “I did what I had to do to get you to stop doing that fucking voice.” She reaches for her top with the same focused expression. “I hope this seals the deal.”
The shirt comes off over her head and drops to the floor from her perfect fingertips.
She doesn’t have a bra on underneath.
In effect, Katie has just unleashed the most perfect breasts ever to grace the planet on my eyes.
“I swear I will never do the voice again,” I promise. “I swear it on my mother’s life, and on these two nipples here in front of me.”
