Page 37 of Crashing Into Me
Man, was it nice, she thought, but I’d give up fifty of them for one Kayden. She thought of the wedding plans they had made one evening in front of the fire. They were throwing ideas out, but it came together rather perfectly in her opinion. He wanted to fly them to New York sometime in the upcoming weeks to pick out the wedding bands and get their registry started. It was early March now, and they had decided on a December wedding.
The house would be finished by then, and Kayden thought the best way to christen it would be a lavish estate wedding. They would spend two weeks in Bali on their honeymoon before moving back to Hamby for good. It was a fast timetable, and if she thought she was actually getting married, she would have called her family by now. One day, the truth would eventually come out, she hoped, but when that was and whether it would make a difference to him were other things. She zipped up the suitcase and stood in the closet, saying a mental goodbye to him and Hamby. She wept quietly for a moment, then calmed herself before going downstairs.
THE SUN BLAZED overhead,set against a sweep of cerulean sky. Paula strutted in her designer swimsuit and towering Louboutins as if the world were her runway. Other women at the pool were shooting her nasty looks, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy sipping her Bahama Mama drink and watching the DVR feed from her house on her laptop. From the screen, she could see her mom, Kim, Lana, and Kayden. She turned up the headphones’ volume to listen in on what was happening.
After the scene unfolded with Lana telling her mother off and stalking up the stairs off-camera, Kayden turned to his mom and spoke. Paula couldn’t believe the words from his mouth, although she knew everything he said was true. Their mother did treat him badly, and so did she at times, but she was happy to see for herself the changes that had begun to happen in him. Lana was a good influence on her brother, and Paula could see herself proud to be his sister again if he kept it up.
Paula also wished she hadn’t seen quite so much of her brother and Lana in their intimate moments and fast-forwarded through them. Peeking in on them was becoming like her own “Netflix and chill,” and she was hooked now. The time stamp on the video was already a week old, and it made her wonder why she hadn’t heard from her brother, mom, or Lana yet. She closed the laptop down, vowing to watch it all first before she called. She picked up her phone and looked at the signal bar: nothing at all. The signal sucked on their part of the island.
Her mom had no right to tell Kayden who he could be with. Especially pushing that conniving she-slut Kimberly on him to make matters worse. Garrett splashed water at her from thepool, and she smiled, putting the laptop down, kicking off her heels, and jumping into the deep end with him.
KIM,MAUREEN, AND Heathcliff were seated in the small café downstairs at the Spence Hotel and enjoyed an early dinner. Heathcliff kept shooting loving gazes at Maureen, and while sweet, Maureen wasn’t the affectionate type, and Kim felt a little bad for him. Maureen chewed men up and spat them out back home, so she doubted there’d be any difference up there. The two were having a conversation under hushed tones, but Kim wasn’t paying either of them attention anyway.
She hunched over her laptop and ignored the Cobb salad on her plate, eyeballing Kayden’s Insta feed. The unblock program had taken longer than usual to finish its job, but now she was finally back on his page. As she scrolled through his timeline, a picture of him and Lana popped up on her screen, and she snorted and kept scrolling. Kim clicked on Lana’s Instagram profile to check out her timeline, but it was set to private. Damnit, she thought and finally picked up her fork, stabbing a chunk of ham and lettuce.
As she chewed, a notification popped up on her laptop. It was from Kayden. She dropped the fork and clicked it before she was blocked again, and was instantly livid. It was a picture of Lana’s man-hand wearing a diamond ring, the caption reading:
“She said yes!”
Kim turned her laptop to Maureen.
“Look at this,” she yelled way too loudly in the quiet room, as other patrons were now all looking at the three of them.
“Calm yourself,” Maureen started evenly and coolly, “What is it?”
“An engagement ring? Why would he be buying that for her, if the wedding is off ?”
Maureen smiled at the not-so-bright girl in front of her as she spoke.
“Why wouldn’t he? He has no idea the wedding is even off yet, remember?”
Kim sat back in her chair and breathed an audible sigh of relief.
“Oh. Duh,” she replied matter-of-factly and turned the laptop back around to face her.
She hit reply on the message, but the page was gone again. She rolled her eyes, clicked her desktop, and reran her unblocking program.
“Anyway, the ring is ugly and small. Just like her,” she chimed with a massive grin on her face, then started eating her salad.
Heathcliff gave Maureen an odd glance.
“What’s that about?” He asked, not being in the loop.
“We’ll discuss it later,” she replied, giving him a sexy wink.
He grinned at that, knowing what it meant, and forgot what had bothered him about the conversation minutes before.
DINNER WAS LONG finished—poachedsalmon, crisp salad, and a shared bottle of wine—when Lana stretched across Kayden’s lap on the couch. The fire cast a soft, wavering glow as he read from a worn book of poems. Discovering that he had a romantic side, one shaped by verse and quiet beauty, was a dangerous kind of temptation. They should have had endlesstime to learn each other’s hidden pieces. Tonight, he read one of her treasured William R. Stoudt favorites, his voice steady against the crackle of flames. Feeling tears well in her eyes as he spoke, she shifted her weight and turned toward him. His firm, muscular stomach was breathing slowly in rhythm with the words he spoke as he finished the end of the poem.
“Life and love run in circles; once begun, the circles never end. Through time, across generations, over distances unimagined, their love maintained its intensity, its warmth, its genuine pull of hearts towards the unknown known. The circle came all the way around, and true, genuine love was discovered again, a love that will continue to span the universe and last throughout all time,” he finished.
He put the book down slowly and looked down at her, a faint smile on his face. He gathered her up in his arms and kissed her slowly. It wasn’t a kiss full of lust, it was normal, patient—an expression of love. She looked into his sparkling eyes and leaned her forehead onto his. She wanted to capture this moment and reached for her phone that sat on the couch next to him.
Sitting up and straddling him, she held it up and snapped a picture of them. Two days left, she thought as she pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it and the phone on the coffee table. They embraced again, and their kiss grew more intense and more urgent for her. Her desire to be with him made her movements erratic and greedy.
He grabbed her hips and stood up from the couch in one decisive move. Pushing the coffee table away with one leg, he slowly bent his knees until they hit the soft area rug underneath them. He lowered her onto her back, running his hand from her neck down her stomach as she arched her back. With her legs still wrapped around his waist, he slowly pulled down her panties, exposing her the way he liked. He slowly raised herlegs and pulled them free, where he placed her right leg on his shoulder.
He ran his other hand up her thigh, then back down again, holding her left leg above his head. Kayden sat up on his knees slightly, which lifted her from the carpet a little, and kissed her ankle, her calf, and her thigh. She moaned with every kiss of his mouth as he slowly made his way down to his favorite place. Instead of going there, he grabbed her rear and pulled her up onto his face, holding her up with nothing but his muscular arms, as she balanced on his strong shoulders. He took all of her in his mouth and used his tongue like a joystick as she writhed and moaned, barely able to contain herself.
