Page 50 of His Best Friend's Baby

He swallowed and felt himself hit the bottom of that pit of quicksand. He nodded. He let go of the charade and breathed deep, a full breath. His first in months. “You’re right,” he said.

“Then why won’t you let me—” She reached out to touch him and he grabbed her hands, stared right into her eyes. “Mitch is dead,” she whispered. “He isn’t between us anymore.”

“He’ll always be between us.”

“But—”

“You married him, Julia.”

She nodded.

“And I killed him.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

He stood, the chair screeching across the linoleum. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked. “You know, go ask anyone in this town whose fault that accident was. Go ask Agnes, she’ll tell you.”

She put her hands on his arms, his chest. She stepped closer, like some new version of Julia, someone brave and daring.

“I don’t care what anyone else says.”

He pushed at her arms, angry with her foolishness. Her recklessness.

“Mitch knew how I felt about you,” he told her, and watched her eyes go wide with surprise. That he should admit his feelings for her this way seemed wrong. But he could tell it didn’t matter to her. And he wanted to touch her, taste her, claim her.

But he had no right.

“He told me I shouldn’t sniff after married women. I shouldn’t sniff after his woman.”

She opened her mouth to say something.

“How do you know that I didn’t let him burn in that helicopter so that I could have you? So that you would be free of him?”

There it was. There was the truth, the dark cancer that ate at him in the dark hours.

“You don’t believe that,” she said. “You’re not that kind of man.”

“How the hell would you know what kind of man I am?” he yelled.

“I knew you the moment I met you. You’re good, you wouldn’t let anyone die if you could help it. My God, Jesse, look at what you did for Caleb Gomez—”

“Right. I put him in a coma. I’m a real hero.”

“You are, Jesse. Even if you don’t see it. Even if this town doesn’t see it. I see it. I know it.” Her voice shook, but her eyes were steady, those blue eyes that seemed to know even before he opened his mouth. “Why don’t you let someone else be the judge?”

She stroked his hair back from his forehead the way he’d seen her do with Ben and in that gesture, that sweet touch, he was lost.

He resisted for a moment. A second of telling himself that her foolish hopes held no sway over him, that her romantic vision of what and who he was were her problem and he’d best just stay clear. And then all his restraint snapped and he leaned down and did what he’d wanted to do since Germany. He pressed his split, sinner’s lips to hers.

She sighed, and he could taste her breath, sweeter and hotter than anything he’d ever known.

He cupped her face with his rough hands, slid the tips of his fingers into her short, silky hair and memorized her, one sense at a time. Her small body trembled and her hands gripped his shirt as if at any moment he might push her away again. So he pulled her closer until her breasts touched his shirt and he could feel the bones of her hips against his thighs.

They were suspended, hung in amber, in the bright sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows.

Slowly her mouth opened and her tongue licked his lips, an unholy, earthly benediction against his wounds and his lies.

He groaned, a lost man, and his hand cupped her head. He opened his mouth and the innocence of their first kiss burned in the heat of the second, the fourth, the tenth. Unending, until she was on her toes and he had gripped her hips and pushed her backward against the counter. His hands slid up her rib cage to the warm curve of her breasts.

She hiked herself up onto the counter, curled her legs around his hips and his erection pressed tightly into her.

“Yes,” she hissed, when he raked her neck with his teeth. She sighed and groaned and pulled at the back of his shirt until he felt her hands, her short nails against his skin.

“Anyone home?”

She jerked away and stared at him in stunned, panicked silence.

---