Page 70 of Salvaged Heart
He silenced me with another softer kiss.
“It’s okay, I forgive you. Can you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to…”
Our conversation was cut off by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and we took an instinctive step away from each other. Now would not be the time to be discovered by one of my parents. But instead of either of them, it was Laurel who appeared on the landing a moment later. A sweet, genuine smile on her face as she read our guilty expressions.
“I take it by the completely wrecked look on both your faces that you made up?” Her tone was laced with amusement, but it wasn’t unkind.
Was she smiling at me?
“Go on, make a break for it. I’ll cover for you both.”
“I’d love to hear the excuse you come up with for why me and Beck upped and ran off together.”
“I doubt I will have to come up with a good one. The second you left, your mother produced a bottle of Chardonnay fromGod knows where, and Dad started on the bourbon. I think they were trying to see who could consume the most before you came back down.” The look on Beck’s face told me Laurel wasn’t exaggerating. “Paulina’s already grabbing both your coats. Get out while you still can.”
She didn’t have to tell us a third time. Beck grabbed my hand, pulling me down the stairs and out the door. He tugged my coat around my shoulders and backed me up against the side of my car. The cold air was biting against the skin on my cheeks, the tip of his nose turning red already as his breath came out in short gusts of steam.
“I need to get you somewhere warm and private so I can strip you down and show you how much I’ve missed you.” He reached into my pocket, tugging out the keys stored there. “Get in the car, Anders.” He pressed a kiss to my lips before reaching around my side to tug open the passenger door and push me inside.
32
BECKHAM
Thirty minutes later, we pulled up outside my parent’s house, where I’d been staying the last few months. It wasn’t the ideal place to bring Anders. He deserved fancy hotels and high thread count sheets, not a cramped, full-sized bed in my childhood time capsule of a room. But at least here, we could be alone. My parents were in Florida for Christmas, visiting my mother’s cousin. They’d begged me to make the trip with them, but I’d used the excuse that I had spent too long far from home and surrounded by strangers, that a Christmas alone back in Nashville was precisely what I needed to reset.
I hadn’t dared tell them about my plans to spend Christmas Eve with Laurel’s parents. When I returned home, I explained my sour mood as a result of our breakup. It was the easiest thing to do. As far as they were concerned, my broken heart was caused by Laurel ending things, and my mother made it her mission to do everything in her power to cheer me up. I’d let her fuss over me with little complaint.
“This is where you grew up?”
Anders looked up at the small two-story brick house. I am sure it seemed very modest compared to what he was used to, but my parents had worked hard to afford this place. My dad, and later myself, as I got old enough to help, did much of the work to make the inside exactly how my mother had always dreamed. There was a deep sense of pride there that I’d been able to help give this to her.
I nodded. “I’ve been staying here since I left the lake.” He was fixing his hair in the mirror and straightening his collar, his hands suddenly shaky as he fussed. “My parents aren’t home.”
“Thank fuck.” It came out partly with a laugh and partly with a sigh of relief.
I leaned across the center console and kissed the last of the worried expression from his handsome face. “I told you I wanted to get you alone.” I hummed and pulled him closer to me as he deepened the kiss, but the small car’s interior didn’t offer a lot of room for two six-foot-plus guys to maneuver. “Get out.”
Anders didn’t have to be told twice. He was up and out of the car in the time it took me to turn off the engine, striding up the steps to the front door. It reminded me of when we'd chased each other up the porch of Arbor Ct. and fallen over one another trying to get into the house before I threw him against the wall and sucked his pretty dick for the first time.
My mouth salivated at the thought. I couldn’t make up for the four months we had been apart. The list of wicked things I wanted to do to his body and have him do to mine was too long to be accomplished in one night. But fuck, if I wasn’t going to try.
I let us into the house, and he stepped over the threshold, trying his very best to look cool and unhurried. However, he buzzed with the same restless energy that was coursing through me.
“This place is nice.”
“The full tour will have to wait until the morning.” I slapped his ass to encourage him further into the open-plan kitchen and living room so I could lock the door behind us. “Right now, I only care about how quickly I can get you upstairs and undressed.”
I pressed my body up against his back, nudging him forward step by step as I placed hot open-mouth kisses into his neck, my teeth biting his cold skin softly. He leaned his head back onto my shoulder, allowing me better access, and let me guide him to the base of the stairs before he reluctantly pulled away to climb up them.
“Which way?” He asked when he got to the top.
I pointed to the second door on the left. He opened it, stepping into the bedroom I’d called my own for almost my entire life. We’d lived in this house since I was three, the hundreds of pictures decorating the walls showing the progression of my childhood from diapers up until my last season playing ball. Anders grinned as he turned on the lights, taking in the decor I had selected as a teenager—baseball-themed, of course. I remembered the day my parents deemed it was time to retire the race car bed and let me pick out all my own things. I'd fussed over the decisions like they were life or death and took pride in showing it off to my friends who came over to visit.
“Cute.” He muttered. If I didn’t know him so well, I would have thought he was mocking me, but I recognized the jealousy in his tone for what it was. “Pretty sure my mother redecorated my room the same day I left. I love that your parents kept it the same all this time.”
“Yeah, I won the parent lottery.” I tried to shrug it off like it was no big deal, but knowing everything I now did about Anders’ and even Laurel’s childhood, I knew it wasn’t something I would ever take for granted again. “No more talking about them, it’ll kill the mood.”
