Page 22 of Rules in Love
“This is a nice street. I like the trees.” I smiled, plucking and rubbing the Gingko leaves between my fingers.
“Yes, trees are good.”
She looked so cute, shy, but with a kind of naughty twinkle in her green eyes. She looked me up and down and fidgeted, rolling back and forth onto the outer sides of her feet. I hadn’t known Scarlett for long, but even I knew that would never be a good thing for her to do in heelsorflats. Her ankle rolled, and she went hurtling toward the ground, expeling a massive, grunty, “Oof.”
In one sweeping action, I grabbed her, bracing the small of her back in one palm, her flat stomach in the other, and pulled her back to her feet. “Scar, are you alright?”
She felt so good in my arms. So natural. She also seemed unable to reply. Her eyes were focused on my hand. On the sweeping of my fingers over the soft fabric of the sexiest dress I’d ever seen. With the hand resting just above her ass, I pulled her tighter against me. She had to have been able to feel my hardness, but I didn’t care. I wanted her to feel me.My eyes shifted off hers as my thumb drifted higher and higher towards the breast I wanted to pull into my mouth and bite. The teasing thumb briefly paused at the underside of her rapidly hardening nipple, and when I grazed the pebbled edge, I moaned. She gasped, and I freaked out.
“Shit. Sorry, I didn’t mean to feel you, shit. Are you alright? Do you need me to walk you in?”
She nodded, and my heart raced. “I do…I want you to come…inside. I want you to come…to walk me inside my house, but I don’t know if you should…do that. If we should do that.”
It was a confusing, devastating relief. I wanted to go in but was terrified of doing so. I wanted to kiss her and felt she wanted me too, but I knew It would be a mistake. If I allowed what I wanted to happen to happen, I wouldn’t want it to stop. I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think Scarlett was either. Proving me right, she stood on her tippy toes and laid her trembling hand against my chest. With my heart pounding beneath her palm, she gently pressed her lips against my cheek. The scent of sweet peas and violets dizzied my head and stiffened my cock as she softly whispered goodnight, then turned to walk away.
“Bonsoir, Scarlett Grant.” My voice came out as a rough scratch I barely recognized. She looked over her shoulder, her beauty almost knocking me flat on my face.
“Bonsoir, Finn Austen.” With all the elegance and poise of a baby giraffe, she floated up the stairs, swinging the hips my fingers ached to touch a tad more than proper.
“Lord, give me strength.”
“You’re home late. I thought you were only going for a beer?” said a voice traveling down the hall from the kitchen. With much reluctance, I walked toward it, knowing my sister would probably follow me upstairs for her answer if she didn’t get one.
“I was. But I ended up having fun and stayed. Then I had to drive Scar—a friend home. Is that okay with you?”
“Jeez, calm down, Snappy Tom. I just asked.”
“Yeah, I know you, and you don’t just ask anything.”
“Bloody hell, Finn. I gather whoever you took home didn’t put out, or you wouldn’t be in such a shit mood.”
“You’re disgusting. I’m going to bed.”
“I knew it. She didn’t put out. Probably just as well. You don’t have time to chase girls around New York, not when you should be home with your daughter.” Evie Austen, my little big sister, could be the most incredible and giving woman. She’d truly been a lifeline for me since my girlfriend, Shelby, had died. She also was a walking, talking pain in my ass. One that loved to antagonize me, and one I normally loved to fight back against. This, though, was bullshit. I knew it. She knew it.
I swallowed the venom stinging the tip of my tongue. Walking away was the only way I could stop myself from getting into something I had no desire to get into. I’d had a great night and felt more alive than I had in God knew how long. I wasn’t about to let my sister ruin it. I made it up three steps before I heard her again.
“Finn. Stop. That was uncalled for. I’m sorry.”
“Damn right it was. Before last week, I hadn’t been out once since we got here, Evie. Not once. Even before we left Byron, I could count on one hand how many times I left Iris, apart from school. You can take your apology and shove it.”
After stomping up to my room, grumpily mumbling about assholes through teeth-brushing, aggressively discarding my clothes on the floor, then sighing, stopping, and neatly rearranging them, I made my way to bed. I knew it was futile, but I had to try.
The city that never sleeps. It might have been the most apt nickname ever, as I hadn’t had a solid eight hours in weeks. The streets were alive and kicking day and night, and even in the quieter residential areas, it was impossible to escape the pulsing hum.
But tonight, it wasn’t noise keeping me awake. It was visions of wild eyes shining up at me through untamed falling strands of red. A round ass, sashaying away from my car. And a devilish grin that beamed over her perfect and bare shoulder. Scarlett had awoken an almost forgotten part of me, and I feared I might never sleep again.
At three a.m., exhausted, and with my sheets wrapped around my sweat-covered body, I gave up hope for slumber. After freeing myself from my Egyptian cotton bindings, reorganizing my desk, and straightening my wardrobe, I went through the last remaining moving boxes in my room. Evie had been nagging me endlessly about them, so she’d be thrilled. Not that I wanted to thrill her. After the shit she pulled, I should have dragged the bloody boxes to her room.
Choosing the higher ground, I grabbed a pair of scissors from my immaculate desk and began hacking away at the cardboard. Houdini himself would have had difficulty getting past the seventy-six layers of tape, but eventually, brute force won the day, and with a cheer of success, I got them all open.
Halfway through the second box, I realized how valid my procrastination had been. Each contained various oddities that could be grouped into two categories—utter crap or utterly heart-breaking. The first box I opened was the crap. Old Women’s Weekly cookbooks, an Australian cooking icon that had a place in every home. A dozen old tablecloths and two of the ugliest vases I’ve ever seen, haphazardly wrapped in sun-bleached beach towels.
The second box was equal parts crap and items of enough sentiment to cause an unease, while the third, marked “Evie”, was jam-packed with pure, tear-provoking heartache. Individually and lovingly wrapped were several of Mum and Dad’s old photo albums; my, Evie, and Iris’s baby things, and one of my old shoe boxes with ‘Shelby’ handwritten in the white Nike swoosh.
Sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of stuff, I removed the lid. Its distinct, musty, old-photo smell hit me, and I fell to pieces. The first thing I removed was a photo of Shelby and me from school. We were maybe sixteen, both sunburnt and smiling, with no idea that tragedy was lurking just around the corner.Christ, she was probably pregnant.
Tears fell freely and increased with each discovery. There were more photos of her and Nate and some more with me. The next layer revealed an ugly-as-hell shell necklace I’d made for her seventeenth birthday, her final year report card, and then, at the very bottom, something I’d never seen until that moment—an envelope containing more photos and a handwritten letter from Shelby.
