Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (6 page)

“How many'd you get?” I ask, friendly.

He smiles back. “About a dozen. Want some?”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later I find myself climbing the stairs to Matt's beach bungalow carrying a child's bucket with two crabs in it while Buster trots beside me. What am I doing? Is this allowed in our relationship, whatever that means, to just show up on his doorstep?

As I climb the stairs I see him on the deck, talking to his laptop, smiling and laughing. He looks over the top of it at me, then back down at the screen, says he'll talk to whoever it is later, and closes the lid. He stands up, smiling.

I stop and hold up the bucket. “I don't know if you have plans already, or even if you like crab, but I was just at the beach and I thought...”

And then I stop, feeling self-conscious and intrusive. “I should have called you first. I can come back another time.”

I turn to go, and feel a hand on my arm stopping me.

I turn around. And there is that face, that mouth, that body, right in front of me.

“It just so happens,” he says, “that I've never had American crab before, so I have no idea if I like it. And no. I do not have plans tonight.”

He takes my arms and folds them behind my back, then pulls me close to him and kisses me. My insides turn to warm liquid and I feel an incredible need. The want I feel is animal, and I'm suddenly afraid of it. I'm worried about letting someone take me over again, like Paul did.

I pull back a little bit. “Should we try to cook them?” I ask. He looks at me, surprised that I've pulled away.

“Sure,” he says. “We can figure it out, right? Two of us, two of them, 50/50 odds.” I smile at him, not wanting the moment to end but needing to feel like I have some control.

He takes my hand and leads me into the house. Inside it's cozy and nice. Comfortable furniture, basic decorations, clean. But the view is wow. It's easy to take the ocean for granted around here, but this bird's eye view is front and center and hard to ignore. I imagine sitting here with him watching the sun set over the water. Making love with him on the couch in the moonlight.

I snap out of it to find Matt rustling for pots and pans in the kitchen. As he figures out the crab cookery, I look around more closely. I see photos of Matt with friends, Matt traveling, Matt with a woman. A very good-looking blonde woman. Then another of Matt and the same blonde woman kissing. I turn away.

He has a past. Of course he does. How could someone like him not? It's just that I don't know how in the past it is. He's come halfway around the world for something, or to get away from something, and the past might not be all that far behind him.

He comes over to me and hands me a glass of wine. “White okay?” he asks. I nod and take a sip. “You have a good day?” he asks.

I smile. Like we're a couple reuniting at the end of our workday. But underneath it all I'm still feeling antsy, worried, like the old familiar losing myself to someone is happening again. I can't let it happen again no matter how strong my feelings are for him.

“Matt,” I start.

He doesn't say anything, he just holds out his hand to me. I put mine in his.

“I would like to have a normal evening with you doing normal things,” he says, “Like cooking, and drinking wine, and watching television. What do you say?”

I look at my hand in his hand, and turn it over. Big, callused, with the crooked pinky. I put my other hand on top of it. Buster paws at Matt's leg.

“I don't know if I even get to vote,” I say. “Buster has spoken.”

Matt laughs and picks Buster up. I walk over to his fridge and open it like it's mine. “You have any salad stuff?”

Matt smiles and comes over. “Should be in there. Use whatever you want.” He kisses me on the back of my head and returns to the crab.

I'm sure of one thing suddenly, and that's that Matt is not Paul. Where Paul was already manipulating me a week into our relationship, Matt is giving me breathing room. He isn't pushy, he isn't demanding, he isn't playing mind games.

Looking around, it's also clear that he's okay being on his own. He doesn't need a woman to keep his house looking nice. He can get himself up in the morning and go to work. He can function in the world as an independent human being. All the things I'm not used to in a man, and all are things I admire.

The next hour is spent boiling crab, making salad, cutting bread, melting butter, and drinking wine. Before we know it we have a whole delicious feast in front of us.

As we eat we're still joking around from both of us being squeamish about putting the crabs into the boiling water.

“You slice open humans for a living and you can't put a crab into hot water?” I tease.

“Me! You deal with trauma constantly and you were afraid of a tiny pinch!” He laughs.

I lean back and pat my stomach, satisfied. He watches me and smiles. “It's nice to see a girl tuck in.”

I sit up and match his gaze. “First of all. 'Girl.'” I say. “I'm a little old for you to be calling me a girl.”

He laughs. “What am I supposed to call you? Lady? Ma'am?”

I shake my head. “Nevermind. Girl is fine. Secondly, assuming that 'tuck in' means 'eat' in your language,” I smile at him, making fun, “I was hungry. Am I not supposed to eat?”

“Some girls, you may have heard, pretend they aren't hungry so as to appear more dainty in front of their male counterparts.”

“Does it work?” I ask.

“It always made me think they went home afterwards and ate the whole icebox. Never bought it for a second.” We laugh and I love how real he is.

It's easy with him. I feel comfortable. I feel happy. All the things I thought I had once, but now realize I never did.

I glance around the room and my eye lands involuntarily on the picture of him with the blonde woman. I look away, but not before he notices. He turns around to see what I've seen. He lowers his gaze.

“It's okay,” I say. “You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. It's pretty unlikely anyone who looks like you hasn't been with some women. Or girls, as you say.”

He smiles. “Looks like me? Is that a compliment? You fancy me, then?”

I smile back. “I think you can tell by the way my body responds to you that I do.”

His gaze turns intense and he gets a smoldering, animal look in his eyes. I can't take my eyes off him as we sit across the table from each other.

“I get rock hard just looking at you,” he says. And then I'm instantly the girl-equivalent of hard.

“Come here,” he says.

I stand up and walk around the table to him. Not just because he wants me to, but because I want to.

I stand in front of him. He pulls me toward him, cupping my ass with his hands. He pulls me onto his lap, facing him. I immediately feel how hard he already is, and this turns me on like crazy. I want to unzip his pants, but I wait, letting him do what he wants with me.

He looks up at my face, his eyes still burning, and then he slowly unbuttons my shirt. Then he pulls my bra away from my breasts and covers them with his hands. I moan a little bit, I can't help it. Then he reaches back and pulls my hair as he nibbles on my nipple. I almost go crazy and we both still have our pants on.

“Are you ready?” he breathes. I want to laugh because I've never been more ready for anything in my life. I bite my lip and nod.

I stand up and he unbuttons my pants. He pulls them over my hips slowly, his mouth close enough to my skin that I feel his breath on me. I step out of them and I'm mostly naked in front of him, except for the askew bra, and I can tell he likes that. I step toward him and lean my face in near his, then pull his t-shirt up over his head. I run my hand down his stomach and to his belt buckle near his big bulge. I hear him stop breathing. I undo his belt buckle and pull his jeans down to his knees. Then I sit on his lap.

“Breathe,” I whisper.

“I don't think I can,” he whispers back.

“Maybe we should call 9-1-1,” I say.

He lifts me up and onto him and as he enters me I gasp. I grab the top of the chair behind his shoulders for support. We sit still like that for a moment, both of us trying to calm our breath. Then he watches me as he puts his thumb on my clit and rubs it in circles. I think I'm going to explode. Then he starts to move in me at the same time, and then I don't know what year it is anymore. I let the feeling take over and rock with him. Then he puts both hands on my hips, pushing hard in me, and I've never felt anything like this. The second he starts to grunt I feel everything in me crescendo and go loose and I cry out, and we both come at the same time.

We sit there panting and sweating, body parts and clothes tangled up in the chair, our torsos slick and rubbing together. “Wow,” he says.

I just shake my head. Can't speak yet.

“You want a drink? Want some water?” he asks, not moving.

I shake my head no. I just lean into his mouth and kiss him for a long, sweet time.

* * *

Later, Matt and I are on the couch, and he's asleep with his hand on Buster's head on the floor below us. The movie on TV has just ended and I yawn. I'm wearing Matt's t-shirt, and I pick up the empty pint of ice cream and two spoons on the coffee table and take them to the sink. As I drink a glass of water I see his laptop still outside on the deck.

I open the sliding door and step out into the night. It's damp, a little chilly, and the waves are loud. I can see lights on the fishing boats in the distance, and the foghorn in the harbor is blasting its tune every ten seconds to warn the boats away from the jetty. It's beautiful here. This is everything I've ever loved about this town.

I pick up Matt's laptop and take it inside, wiping the dew from the case. I sit back down on the couch next to him, thinking I'll check my email and my schedule for the coming week. I open the lid.

On the screen are the remnants of his earlier online phone call. I see a frozen captured photo of him in the bottom right corner, smiling happily. And then in the middle, a picture of a woman. Not the blonde woman from the photo, but another woman, equally beautiful, smiling happily. Someone who isn't me. But someone who is close to him, who makes him smile. I close the lid and put the computer on the table.

I try to shake it off. We aren't exclusive. We have no agreement to see only each other. He could be dating five other women, ten other women, and I could be dating twenty other men. It's never fair to assume you know what the other person wants if you haven't talked about it yet. Do I even want to be exclusive? I've barely been divorced a month. Why would I want to jump back in?

I look at the computer and wonder if I should ask him about it or if I should let him come to me. Will he tell me the truth? Will he make an excuse? Will he realize he wants to be with her more and will that be the end of us? Do I want to be with a guy who can feel this way about two women at the same time?

I look down at Matt sleeping, his hand on Buster, and wonder what's to come.

Chapter Ten

Tonight I'm back on the rig, and it's crazy out here. It's like all the drug users and wife abusers in town held their shit together while I had my days off and then let it all out the second my shift started.

Danny and I are on back to back calls from the minute we clock in, and among them are a woman who has a heart attack in an elevator, a motorcycle accident, a 9-1-1 hangup from a known abuse victim which thankfully turned out to be her two-year-old calling in accidentally, medical response for an elderly person, and an assault and battery.

On the last call, the assault and battery, I'm back at the hospital in the ER for the fifth or sixth time tonight, but I haven't run into Matt yet. I'm missing him, and I'm wondering if or when he's going to mention the woman on the computer.

Danny is relaying the information he knows about our assault vic to the ER nurse, and I see Maria behind the desk trying to coordinate rooms and beds and specialists, and I think about how crazy this ER dance is, and how well it works considering all of its many moving parts.

As the nurse takes notes from Danny, I'm trying to help another nurse get our assault and battery patient into a hospital bed, and it's not easy because this guy is big.

Not only is he big, but he's got a mouth on him, and he's handsy. If there's one patient you don't want when you're a woman paramedic, it's a giant, violent guy who likes grabbing girls inappropriately.

We're grappling with this guy, who is drunk, and whose forehead is cut open and whose leg is twisted and broken from a bar fight—and how you get a broken leg in a bar fight I couldn't tell you— and he's touching my ass and telling me what he wants to do to me. The male nurse with me keeps telling him to shut up, but the guy isn't listening. I can take the verbal, but the touching I do not like.

The third time he grabs me, I swat his hand away and tell him to knock it off. The next thing I know, the guy is sitting up in bed, and he's got his giant cro-magnan hand around my throat. He's choking me, and he's too strong, I can't stop him. The male nurse grabs his arm and tries to pull him off, but the patient pushes him and sends the nurse flying into a tray of supplies.

Everybody starts yelling and screaming, and my vision starts to tunnel and I can feel consciousness starting to fade out, and I see Danny running toward me, but before he can get to me somebody's fist smashes the big guy in the face. The guy's grip immediately releases my neck and I slide to the floor, coughing and gasping for air. The big guy falls backwards onto the bed, knocked out. I hear Danny screaming for a cop to cuff the guy.

I feel hands on my arms and look up blurrily to see Matt holding me up.

“Are you all right?” he asks, worried, really worried, and it sounds like he's in an echo chamber, all distorted. I nod, still gasping and breathing hard, and look at the knocked out big guy. Matt puts an arm around me and helps me up and into a chair.

“You're okay,” he says. “You'll be okay.”

“Get that guy out of here and lock him up!” he yells to the cop when the cop shows up. The cop cuffs the unconscious guy to his stretcher bed and rolls him into another room, past the worried staff.