Page 47 of Stone Promises

Cole sets up outside the front of the tent, putting a large thermos of coffee on a table next to his chair.

Chad holds the fabric door for me and I walk through, surprised to be met with a wave of heat. I look around and see what he’s done. There are a few of those tall propane heaters scattered throughout the tent enclosure. At one end of the tent there is a couch and coffee table with a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket. In the center, a well-appointed dining table for two. Strings of white lights like tiny Christmas lights line the entire ceiling, and ornate candles illuminate the dining and coffee tables. Off to the far end, there is what appears to be a smaller tent-within-a-tent. I question him with my eyes.

“Port-o-potty,” he says. “Damn nice one. Toilet flushes and everything, you should check it out.”

I can’t help myself, I walk over and peek into it. It’s nicer than my bathroom at home. I laugh at the absurdness of it all. I feel like I’ve walked into someone else’s life. Part of me wants to chastise him for spending so much money, but I know it’s not just for me. It’s for him, too. To keep what we have private. At least for now.

“Can I interest you in a drink?” Chad asks, motioning to the couch.

It’s so warm in here, I start to remove my coat on the way and he helps me, hanging it on a coat stand by the door. Who thinks of stuff like that? A coat rack inside a tent with a port-o-potty in the middle of Central Park?

He pours me a full glass of bubbly, but only a half for himself. He raises his glass. “To new beginnings.”

I smile, thinking of how my life may never be the same. I hope it won’t anyway. I hope I’ll never have to live another day without him in it. “To new beginnings,” I say, clinking my glass to his as one side of his mouth turns up in a sexy smile.

Chapter Fifteen

Chad

It’s a good thing we’re in the middle of Central Park where Cole or Skylar could walk in at any minute, because the way she looks in that dress, if we were at her house—or Ethan’s—all bets would be off.

Those legs. She’s wearing pale black stockings and when I reach my hand over to hold hers, placing them to rest on her thigh, I swear I can feel the outline of a garter through the fabric of her dress.Fuuuuck me. She’s wearing garter belts.

I try to think of something to get rid of my rising problem. “I’m going to need you to clear something up for me,” I say. “I need to know why you and Julian didn’t work out.”

She looks around the room, stalling like she’s pondering what or how much to tell me.

“Come on, Mal. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m leaving you here with him—again. I know you are close and, yeah, it makes me jealous as hell, but I’ll deal with it because I have to trust you as I’m asking you to trust me. But I need to know. You said you wanted different things. What does that mean exactly?”

She looks down at our entwined hands and nods. She blows out a deep sigh. “It means he wanted to screw his philosophy TA because I wouldn’t sleep with him, and it means I wanted to kill him because I wasn’t exactly okay with that.”

“Oh, shit, Mal. He cheated on you?” Warring emotions are raging through my head. Part of me wants to beat him bloody for hurting her. The other part is happy he was such a douche and she ended things. “That’s a pretty low blow. How is it you’re still friends?”

“It took a while,” she says. “I didn’t see him for three years after we broke up. But it wasn’t hard to avoid him, he was away at Penn State.”

“You said you started dating after your mom died. So you were a junior and he was a senior?”

“Yeah. It was right before summer break at the end of my junior year when we got together. But as soon as he went away to college, everything changed. We never should have dated. We were much better as friends.”

“Why didn’t he go to Berkeley like we always said?”

She gives me a sad smile. “Why didn’t you?”

“Right,” I say. “Things change. So how did you end up friends again?”

“Funny story, actually. Or maybe ironic,” she says. “Melissa and I were out at a club. She went up to the bar to get us some drinks. She came back mooning over some guy she met there who had just grabbed her out of nowhere and kissed her. Right there in the middle of the bar, some guy kissed a complete stranger. She invited him and his friends to sit with us. I about died when I saw it was Julian. He’d just graduated and was back in town interviewing for jobs. Apparently, he’d just gotten a great offer at Walters and Leeman and he was so excited, he started kissing random girls.” She smiles and I’m glad she can think about that time without being upset. “Once Mel realized who he was, she quit salivating over him. And it didn’t take long to realize we could still be friends; that we should have never tried to be anything more. That was three years ago.”

Twice now she’s said something that resonates with me. “That’s not how you think of us, is it? That we’re better as friends?”

“I’ve thought about that a lot over the past week,” she admits. “Back then, when it was the three of us, and even when Julian was in Brazil that summer and it was just you and me—I think it would have been a mistake. I think we might have ruined a great friendship. But now, well, we have all this distance. Nine years of it. There’s nothing to ruin. I mean, yes, I want to be your friend again, but I think there’s a chance we could be good at more now.”

A triumphant smile travels up my face. “I think there’s a hell of a lot more than just a chance. I’m betting on it being a sure thing. Do you know how difficult it was for me to keep my hands off you back then? I was a horny teenager and you were this beautiful, smart, kind girl who knew everything about me. I basically walked around with a perpetual hard-on because of you.”

She almost spits out her champagne, putting a hand over her mouth as she swallows it. “You did not,” she says.

“It’s true. And some things never change.” I wink at her.

Her eyes quickly scan my lap and then she blushes when she sees I’ve caught her looking.

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