AllFreeNovel
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Still, that burn intensifies as I watch Will watch her. She's beautiful, so I get it. He can't take his eyes off her. I get that too. But she's mine. I've staked my claim. Or have I? Fuck, I don't even know anymore. It's been so long since I’ve let myself want a woman enough to claim her. And can she even be claimed? Does she want to be? And from me?
Shit.
I rub the fingers of my good hand into my brow because even though I’m deep in my head, I’m also present at this table. And I’m the only sober one here. Allie and Sadie definitely aren't sober. They are still giggling like two teenage girls behind the bleachers, lost in their own conversation, which I'll say at times sounds fucked up. Women are weird. They talk about weird shit. I mean, I've heard all about Allie's third birth, which happened to be a C section—andJesus Christ.
I need another beer.
As I stand to do that, Will leans forward, his eyes on my woman. “So, Sadie, I still haven't heard how you came to be here.”
“Oh.” She giggles again. It’s cute and sweet and it does shit to me.
My body freezes, my eyes cutting to my friend. He's been my friend for years. Since we were kids, so he knows what he's doing to me. If anyone can see what he's doing to me, it's him. I feel a muscle tick in my jaw as my teeth clench and I continue moving to the fridge. I'm no blind man. I saw that little grin the fucker let loose. He likes playing with me like this. Likes seeing me want a woman.Want her.
He always hated Patricia, but after the accident he loathed her. The dark rage I saw color his eyes every time I spoke about her, or she came up in conversation after the accident left me no question on his feelings for my ex-fiancée. He’d even once told me I should be thankful for the accident—for the fire that burned a monster into my flesh—because without it I’d have been bound to a cold-hearted ice bitch for the rest of my life. He’d been really drunk when he said it, but so had I. I’d punched him. He punched me. And in the morning, we never spoke of it again.
Since the accident, he’d tried to get me back out there more times than I could count. I’d refused. The thought of a pity fuck just didn’t do it for me. And I wouldn’t want to fuck me, so why would anyone else?
I thought about Sadie, with her soft, flawless skin and gentle, kind eyes. I’m confident she wants me like I want her, because when I kiss her, when I touch her, there’s nothing but heat. Still…
Patricia had been a good actress. A good liar. A fucking master manipulator.
But Will had always known just what Patricia was, and the way he looks at Sadie says he likes her a whole lot. Too much.
“It's a really funny story,” I hear Sadie say.
“Oh my God, it is,” Allie agrees. Clearly Sadie told her how she came to be here while they were changing the sheets. They’d been in the bedroom for over a half an hour, and it had taken everything inside of me not to go check on them. Not to bring Sadie back out with me, to sit her in my lap and wrap an arm around her waist like an iron cuff chaining her to me, because that’s too much, taking things too far. Being too possessive.
Christ, it's been too long. I don't know what I'm doing. I feel too much.
Maybe that's why I feel so much, because it's been so long.
I don't know how to do this anymore.
I feel everything more intensely than I would have three years ago. The time that’s passed has made me hungry for affection and touch in a way I've never been before.
“We’re waiting,” Will urges as I pop the top off a beer and take a pull as I back to the table to see Sadie reaching into the middle, plucking a cookie from the plate.
She'd brought out a container of her baking around ten o'clock. It's now past midnight.
She takes a cute little nibble from the tip of a Christmas tree sugar cookie, and I watch Will watch her as her tongue pokes out to taste the icing from her top lip. Jeez, she's a temptress and she doesn't even know it.
She sets in to tell them the story of how she came to be here in my house, and all over again, I feel my chest burn. But this time it’s something else. It'swithsomething else. I don't know what this something is. But it's hot. It burns at my insides as though she's invaded me, because as she speaks, I feel like this—her here with me—coming to me—as crazy as it is—is fated.
Will leans back in his chair, shock on his face. “You're telling me Lucy schemed to get you here? She put out an ad and you answered?”
“That's what I'm telling you.” Sadie nods affirmatively.
Trevor rubs his brow. “I knew Lucy was worried about you, man. But, fuck, that's messed up.”
“I think it’s the most perfect story ever. They could tell their grandkids this story one day, it’d never get old.” Allie sighs dreamily, but I’m frozen in place, thinking about kids with Sadie.
“I think it’s a bit weird. Weren’t you pissed? Scared that you ended up on some dude’s doorstep instead of on the little old lady’s you’d been expecting to land on?” Trevor asks Sadie.
“At first, maybe,” she admits. “I was a bit scared.” Her eyes flash to mine and she breathes, “Nick can be intimidating.” Her cheeks flush red and she sucks in breath before she cuts her eyes back to Trevor. “But I wouldn’t call Lucy an old lady. And I definitely wouldn’t let her hear you do it.”
Trever chuckles. “Noted.”
I sit back down in my chair next to Sadie, noting that her cheeks are still flushed. My hand twitches with the desire to touch her thigh, to show them all that this woman is mine. Mine to touch. Mine to claim.Mine.
