Page 44 of Make Me Yours

Hell, maybe I alreadyamin love with her.

As I look down at her now, the outline of her profile and the faint freckles on her nose are enough to send an ache spiraling through my chest. I want to write a song for this girl, to paint her the way I see her—perfect and authentic and wildly, messily alive.

I’m a money guy, anumbersguy. I appreciate art, but I’ve never had the urge to do anything “artsy” in my life. The fact that now it’s all I can think about half the time…

I’m screwed, so fucking screwed.

Even if I could find a way to fit into Sully’s life, she would never want to fit into mine. She made me pick her up next to a dumpster for God’s sake. She wasthatworried about someone seeing us together.

I hold my phone out to the woman in the ball gown with only half of my mind present and accounted for. The other half is racing through the facts as I know them, trying to figure out a way to dismiss the emotion swelling behind my ribs.

It’s just the sex. The sex has been better than I could have imagined when a virgin cat burglar crawled into my bed. Sully makes me feel things I haven’t felt in so damned long. Maybe ever. I think about being inside her, about fucking her until she makes those husky, sexy-as-hell coming sounds at least two hundred times a day.

Fabulous sex is intoxicating, disorientating.

I’ve never mistaken a great lay for true love before, but there’s a first time for everything.

Then there’s the fact that I’m back in my hometown, dealing with my brother’s death, surrounded by people who profess to love me even as they plot and scheme behind my back. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m in a weakened state, and Sully is a dangerous person to let your walls down around. She’s too curious, too kind. If you let her, she’ll crawl right over yourdefenses, pull you into a big hug, and convince you that don’t need your armor anymore.

Not as long as you have someone like her watching your back…

That’s all this is, a case of disparate, but powerful outside forces combining to convince me I’m feeling things I couldn’t possibly feel.

Not after a week.

Not when I know there’s no future for me and this shining girl.

Shedoesshine, like she’s lit up from the inside. As we step into the ballroom, moving through a surprisingly realistic cornfield sprouting from the tile into a Stonehenge-type gathering of giant papier-mâché boulders positioned around the still empty dance floor, heads turn.

But Sully doesn’t notice, she’s too busy spinning in a slow circle, taking in the decorations.

“Wow,” she says, with a soft laugh. “This is so cool.” She motions toward the far right of the room, where several vintage wagons with brightly colored tents on top are parked in a row. In front of them, half a dozen women, wrapped in silk scarves, sit behind tables with tarot cards and crystal balls. “Fortune tellers, I assume?”

“Looks like it,” I say, still feeling off-kilter. My voice sounds strange, even to my own ears, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by my savvy companion.

Her brow furrows. “Are you okay?”

I nod. “I’m fine.”

“We don’t have to do the fortune-telling thing if you don’t want. My friend Maya never will, not even in Portsmouth, where the ladies at the witchy store are always the sweetest. She has a phobia that a fortune teller is going to foretell her doom and she’ll end up going insane and throwing herself into the sea.”

“I don’t have a phobia about a fortune teller foretelling my doom,” I say, forcing a smile. “I do need to go check in with the host in the dining area, however.” I motion toward the long table set up in a clearing in the fake cornfield near the stage where the band will start playing at nine. The table is filled with other people in ball gowns and suits, sipping white wine and coffee as they tuck into their dessert course.

“Oh, okay. Sure thing.” She starts that way, but I stop her with a hand on her arm.

“No, you go ahead, check out the fortune tellers. I’ll touch base with the host and meet you there.” I glance down at my watch. “We still have thirty minutes before they seat the second dinner service.”

She considers me for a moment, looking like she’s about to ask if I’m okay a second time. But in the end, she just nods and says, “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

I give her arm a light squeeze. “See you in a few.”

Then, I turn and stride quickly away across the room.

I just need a few moments to pull myself together and remember that tonight is for good times, good company, and fantastic, no-strings-attached sex. It isn’t for obsessing over what will happen when it’s time to leave Sea Breeze or getting swept up in some ridiculous feeling that isn’t even real.

It can’t be real.

It’s too fast, too intense. This surge of emotion is like a junk stock propped up by some Reddit chat board. It’s surging like crazy right now but will plummet just as quickly. Things that are built on unsteady foundations always do.

---