Page 57 of The Ones We Fight For

“Of course. Sorry.” Cliff got up from his seat and looked around her living room. Unlike every time Walker had been there, Cliff looked out of place. Talia didn’t miss the touch of surprise in Cliff’s voice that said he wasn’t expecting her to have much going on after leaving New York, either. Pride swelled in her chest. She had accomplished a lot since she left. She wasn’t that same lost girl anymore. She had rebuilt herself into someone better.

“It’s fine.” She gave him a polite smile. “The guest bedroom is the first door on the right, down the hallway.”

Chapter 21

Walker

Aplastic stir stick balanced on top of the to-go cup Walker sat behind. He had positioned himself on the couch so he could see the moment Talia entered Roaster’s Republic. It was a bit obsessive and over-the-top, but he was—well, he was both of those things when it came to her. Compulsively, he straightened Talia’s morning chew stick atop her drink so it was parallel with the counter, as if she would somehow notice that the stirrer was slightly off-kilter like he was.

He might have been losing it.

What little sleep he had gotten alternated between replays of the night before and his usual recurring nightmare before he jerked awake and settled back down to repeat the process again. Both dreams ended with him drowning somehow. With Talia’s, after leaving her house, he’d drive right off the bridge that magically appeared on the road back to pick the kids up from the Winston’s. Once, his brain had even combined the dreams. The second he hit water with his car in the first dream, he was locked in a water chamber again, catapulting him into dream number two.

Occasionally, the replay of the forehead kiss in his dreams transformed into something more sensual, and he’d wake up after drowning again, gasping for air, with a raging hard-on. It was truly a confusing mix of emotions, like his brain couldn’t decide what to focus on, so it just threw him everything at once.

What was that forehead kiss, anyway?

Truthfully, Walker knew what it was: a territorial way of telling Clifford Talia was his. It was also the closest thing he could do to kissing her without actually taking her inside and throwing her down on her bed, leaving Clifford waiting in the wings. (That may have happened in his dreams once or twice.)

“Creative,” Walker muttered to himself, congratulating his overactive brain for yet another round of sleep deprivation. Talia was often up in the middle of the night too, and usually they would wind up talking on the phone or texting until one of them fell asleep, but the night before, Walker thought it best to put up a barrier of space between them after almost demolishing all the rules of what was supposed to be a platonic friendship.

On cue, Talia materialized inside the coffee shop, her hair tied back in her classic ponytail. Walker wanted to take her hair down, watch it fall around her shoulders, lace his fingers through it, and gently pull her head back so he could kiss just under her ear. Then he’d whisper every single dirty thing he did to her in his dreams. But friends didn’t do that. Friends didn’t usually stay up the majority of the night pissed off that Clifford probably had more of a chance at doing those things with Talia than Walker did, either.

“Hey, I already got your coffee,” Walker called out, waving Talia over. He adjusted back in his seat, attempting to play into a relaxed attitude while simultaneously wanting to jump into a game of twenty questions. In his head, the line of questioning was followed by a demand for Clifford to get the hell out of Archwood and go back to the city that stays awake too much. Let Clifford be the sleep deprived one for once.

“Thank you!” Talia’s eyes lit up as she bounced over to Walker, dropping onto the couch beside him and picking up the stir stick to twirl it between her fingertips. She took a long sip of her coffee, eyes closing with a soft hum of pleasure.

“I realize the coffee is hot, but it’s not supposed to make you hot and bothered.” Walker grinned stupidly at Talia, cutting his arousal the best way he knew how: with a joke. A light flush of pink dusted her cheeks, and Walker hid his amusement behind his own coffee. “Am I intruding on a personal moment between you and your coffee?”

“I can’t help it,” Talia said dreamily. She put a flat hand to the side of her mouth like she was sharing a secret, leaning toward Walker and quieting her voice to a whisper. “I want this coffee inside me.”

Walker choked. The hot liquid lodged in his throat, a prickly cactus making him cough and beg for air. The term “down the wrong tube” came up short. It felt more like the coffee had taken seven different tubes, all equally painful. His eyes began to water as he hacked up a lung and frantically tried to clear his throat. Talia slapped his back to assist, unaware that touching him would be the opposite of good.

“Probably shouldn’t have said that while you were drinking,” she said when he calmed down enough to take another sip of coffee.

“Jesus,” he huffed under his breath. “Look, I’m sure the coffee wants to be inside you, too, but if you could refrain from making the coffee eject out of my body that would be fantastic.” Classy, Walker. Very smooth.

“Sorry, I’m really tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Talia set her coffee down and got to work chewing on the stir stick while Walker tried to keep himself from imagining why she didn’t get any sleep and praying it had nothing to do with her ex-fiancé.

“So. Last night went well, then?”

“If by ‘well’ you mean Cliff was acting really weird and we both decided that we should talk after a full night’s rest, of which I didn’t get any of, then yes.” Talia flopped back against the couch, and it was only then that Walker noticed how bloodshot her eyes were, like she had been rubbing them, or maybe crying.

“What did he want?” Walker asked. He meant to ease into the conversation, but he had become tactless the second Talia walked into the coffee shop.

“He said he wants me to come back to New York.”

If Walker didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was having a heart attack. If not a heart attack, at least heart palpitations, but he could feel all of his limbs if he focused on them hard enough, which confirmed that it was a panic attack making him feel as though someone was standing on his chest.

Breathe, just breathe. Choose something to focus on. Talia’s eyes.

“He said he missed ‘us,’” Talia continued, the pressure in Walker’s chest bearing down even harder. “I just… I don’t want to go back to New York.”

Air finally entered Walker’s lungs. The vice grip on his heart loosened with Talia’s statement, and he found his feet were firmly planted on the ground again. He could wiggle his toes and feel the weight of the to-go coffee he was still clutching in his hand, the paper cup creasing under his grip.

“You don’t?” He met her gaze, doing his best not to look pathetic.

“I don’t. I like it here. There’s nothing for me in New York.”

---