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We reach the truck at last. I let the pack slide to the ground with a groan and massage my aching shoulders. He lowers the tailgate and I hop up, groaning again as I sit.
He pulls the dry bag out of his pack and hands me a hoodie. “Put that on. Once we’re in the truck, the sweaty clothes are gonna make you cold. Take off the sports bra too.”
I raise a brow. “Trying to see me naked again?”
“Face it, Kate,” he says with a muffled laugh, pulling on a clean shirt while I slide my sports bra out through the sleeve of my shirt. “I could tell you to get naked and on all fours right here and you’d do it.”
Okay, yes, perhaps.
Once the stuff is in the truck, I climb in, marveling at how luxurious car seats are for the first time in my life. He cranks the heat—another luxury. It’s too late in the day for breakfast burritos and we’re too muddy to go into a restaurant anyway, but nothing has ever tasted better than the cheeseburgers and fries we get from a drive-thru on the way home. He’s got some early 2000s station playing and I sing along with every song, still happy, still wanting for nothing.
The sun is out by the time we arrive. He showers while I throw our filthy clothes in the wash, humming a song we heard earlier. It’s not until I’m standing in the shower myself that reality sets in. I’m still his closest friend’s wife and there is no way for us to incorporate who we’ve been for the last day into our normal lives.
But then I emerge from the shower. My face is bare, my hair is wet, my legs are covered in bruises...yet he still watches me as if he’s never seen anything as delicious, his features sharpening like an animal on the cusp of attack.
Gulp. Maybe we aren’t returning to normal.
I sit on the barstool and start towel-drying my hair. “I guess it’s safe for me to leave the room wearing a T-shirt now?”
“Definesafe,” he says, walking toward me. My heart is fluttering and the excitement borders on unbearable.
He pulls the towel from my hands as he moves between my legs, his tented shorts brushing my inner thighs. “It’s probably time I stop pretending this isn’t happening. And you’re not wearing panties. So I guess you were done pretending too.”
This development should terrify me. Instead, I’m simply relieved.
* * *
I’d thoughtit might be weird if I stayed in his room. It’s something couples do, and we are not a couple.
It is not weird, given that I’m still half asleep when he’s inside me the following morning, and it’s pretty hard to pretend something didn’t happen when it’s still going on.
He goes into work, assuring me we won’t have sex again for “at least seven hours,” but when I walk through the bar’s saloon doors, my gaze is on him like I’m the bad guy in a western, and he’s the sheriff. As if he’s my only reason for walking in here in the first place.
This time I don’t give him my standard half-assed wave—nor do I act as if I haven’t seen him. I walk straight to the bar with blinders on, drawn to that dirty thing in his eyes, that filthy half-smile on his face. “If you keep looking at me like that, we aren’t going to make it seven hours.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Hasn’t it been seven hours already?”
I glance at my watch. It’s been ninety minutes. “Yes, it’s definitely been seven hours.”
We have sex in his office. Later, it’s the ladies’ room at The Midnight House. In the days that follow, it’s in his truck, the stairs to his front door, the stairs out the back door, and atop every piece of furniture he owns. We are like children playing obsessively with a new toy we know we can’t keep.
He closes the bar a lot less than he used to. On the nights when he does come home late, I’m already in his bed or he scoops me off the couch to bring me there. In his spare time, he talks about places he’d like to see and even pulls up Shelter Cove online and plots out a weekend there for us.
It’s as if we’re on vacation from real life, except we’re not. He’s still got this bar he hates and a group of friends who’d probably never forgive him for what’s going on with me. And I’m still planning to move my life forward, somehow, in ways that can’t involve him.
“Anything today?” he asks when I walk into work after my standard hour of combing the Internet for jobs.
“There was one, actually. Holzig. This ski company. They’re hiring a vice president of business development.”
The moment I saw the job in my inbox, my blood began to flow faster. Holzig makes amazing, cutting-edge ski and resort wear. They have the potential to become a Hurley or North Face with the right guidance, andGod,I’d love to be the one providing it.
He closes the dishwasher. “You’d want to do that?”
“It’s the job of my dreams, but I’ll never get it.”
“You don’t know that. I’d hire you if I was their CEO.”
I need to change the topic because this one depresses me. I lean closer, though no one else is around to hear us anyway. “That’s because I’d blow you every day after lunch.”
