Sweet Salt Air (41 page)

You’re pushing me away.

Yes, so I can work. Please respect that for a change.

For a change?

Sighing, she typed,
Delete that. It begs a whole other discussion. I’m working now. Please.

She put the phone in her pocket, determined to ignore it, reasoning that the beauty of being uncommitted was that you didn’t owe anyone anything. The downside, of course, was that you felt unloved, which was why she kept checking for notes from Leo. By the time he finally texted, her hackles were back up.

Do I have a prayer in hell of dinner?
he wrote.

She might have considered it if he had texted sooner, but while he’d been taking his own sweet time, she had made other plans.
I can’t. We’re going to the Warrens.

So after. I’ll pick you up at their house.

But Nicole had wanted her for the evening, and Charlotte had every intention of drinking enough wine to put her to sleep as soon as she got home, thereby keeping her from agonizing over why Leo couldn’t commit.
Tonight isn’t good, Leo. Sorry.

*   *   *

She dressed up, which by Quinnipeague standards, meant a blouse and skirt. That the skirt was short and paired with high wedged sandals made her feel like she might have been able to pick up a guy if there had been anyone there of interest. There wasn’t. Moreover, the wine plan didn’t work, largely because Julian’s presence reminded her that bad things could happen when too much wine was consumed. So she simply smiled a lot, nodded a lot, and spoke when addressed, but her heart wasn’t in any of it. Slumped in the backseat on the way home, she felt empty, which annoyed her, which was why, when they approached the house and she saw a dark blue pickup parked on the edge of the road just past the driveway, she rediscovered her spine. The instant the SUV parked, she was out and, ignoring the echo of slamming doors behind her, strode toward the house. She wasn’t halfway there when a hand closed on her arm.

“We need to talk,” he said.

She stared at his hand. “Not tonight.”

“Don’t shut me out.”

Her eyes met his, but the night was dark, making them as opaque as his jaw was tight, all in a shadowed face. “Should we discuss who’s shutting who out?”

“We can discuss whatever you want.”

Charlotte felt she’d been doing that internally for the better part of the day, and hadn’t she told him tonight wasn’t good? “I’m tired.”

But his hand was insistent, its grip just shy of hurtful as he drew her toward the truck.

“Hey,” Nicole shouted. “You can’t just drag her off. What part of
no
don’t you get? She doesn’t want to go.”

He stopped and murmured, “Tell her to mind her own business.”

“She loves me,” Charlotte said.

His hand fell, his mouth went flat. “Fine. She’s your future? Fine. She’s all you need? Fine.” He took a step back.

Charlotte’s heart was curling up on itself, aching with want and need. “She’s not my future, and she’s not what I need, but she’s my friend and she loves me, so she cares.”

“I care.”

“Is that the best you can do?” she shot back.

“No.”

She glared at him, thinking that one word didn’t do it—
two
words didn’t do it—that she
knew
there was more inside him, and that she couldn’t turn away from him yet.

Glancing at Nicole, she held up a hand, said a terse, “I’m good,” and stalked off across the grass, across the road to the truck, around the truck to the far side, where she stopped, leaned against the door, and angrily folded her arms.

Leo was there in a heartbeat. Pinning her to the metal with his hips, he pried her arms free, anchored them over her head with one hand, and held her face with the other. His mouth tore at hers, lips angry, tongue insistent in ways it had never been before. In those seconds, he was the dangerous recluse who threatened trespassers and shot gulls for sport.

But she wanted the man she knew. So she returned his aggression with aggression, asking for more, tearing her arms free so that she could search with her hands. She was clutching his hair when his mouth found her neck, and when his hands found her breasts, she slipped hers in the back of his jeans to pull him closer. Mouth to mouth, he gave her breath, and when he began rocking hard against her, she forced her hands between them to touch him there.

“Jeeeez,” he groaned and, covering her hand, held it still. Struggling for control, he leaned into her, pressing his mouth to the top of her head.

Charlotte gasped for breath, but with each breath came more of Leo. He always smelled clean, though not in the herbal way she had once imagined. He might bathe her with peppermint and sage, but he was Irish Spring all the way. Now, between that and man and arousal, she was desperate with need.

“Do it,” she gritted between her teeth, pulling at his snap.

He swore when her hand closed around him.

“Here?”

“They’re inside.
Do
it,” she ordered, aching for him. If this was the only way they could communicate, she would take it for the sake of sheer affirmation.

Frenzied, he pushed her already-hiked skirt to her waist, tugged her panties until they tore and, lifting her legs, slammed inside.

She cried out at the sudden fullness, then again when her back lashed the truck, but if he had tried to slow down, she would have screamed. He was rough, but she wanted rough. In this, too, she gave as good as she got, kissing him, clutching his shirt, riding him fiercely until a guttural sound came from his throat, at which point she broke apart herself.

After a climactic eternity, he sagged against her, holding her up when her body went limp. And he stayed in her for a while, panting with decreasing force, before slowly withdrawing. Even then, he held her close.

The truck, the muted crash of a distant surf, their state of undress, her anger—item by item, her awareness returned. With it came the idea that he had just punished her for the hurt he had suffered years before, but if that hurt was exorcised now, she couldn’t object. They needed to move on.

She let her legs slide down his until they took her weight, pressed her face to his chest, and listened to his heart. It calmed, but only to a point.

“I can’t say the words you want,” he finally murmured.

She didn’t move. “Because you don’t feel it?”

“Because I can’t say the words. I don’t know where to go with this.”

“What do you
feel
?”

“I feel … like I’m doing what I swore I would never do. I told myself I would never commit that way again.”

Though it wasn’t quite the declaration she wanted, it was something.

“Things change.”

“Do they? Look at me. I am what I am.” He pushed a hand through his short, dark hair not so much in frustration as bewilderment. “I didn’t expect any of this—the book, you. I’m clueless here, Charlotte. Don’t know what in the hell to do about any of it.”

Hearing the echo of Angie’s thought, Charlotte said, “Life is like a game of cards. It deals you different hands at different times. You don’t have that old hand anymore, Leo. Look at what you have now.”

“I’m looking at her,” he whispered. And she was lost in the midnight blue complexity of a deep, darling man.

Framing his face with her hands, she kissed him until that lean mouth softened. She didn’t say anything else. He was uncomfortable with words, and she couldn’t bear to spoil the moment. Back at his house, though, when she bundled up in one of his sweatshirts and they went out to the dock, she thought about the few weeks she had left. Words weren’t necessary; she could show him how she felt. She would get under his skin so that by the time she left, he would feel the loss. And yes, he’d been there before, the difference being that she was willing to meet him halfway.

It was his choice.

*   *   *

Nicole had remained in the dark at the front window long after the truck pulled away. Lost in thought, she gave a start when Julian slipped his arms around her waist. She leaned into him, appreciating that he’d sought her out.

Quinnipeague had been good to him. After nine days here, he was rested and stronger. He had even put on a few of the pounds he had lost while on that last dismal drug. His symptoms remained, neither better nor worse. Even now she felt a tremor in his hand, but steadied it with her own. He wasn’t debilitated by a long shot. And yes, she was committed to the stem cell transplant. Hadn’t she been the one to suggest it? Still, a tiny part of her wished that they were taking it more slowly, adapting to his illness, waiting before taking this next iffy step.

His thoughts were elsewhere as he rested his chin on her head. “Why does he make you so angry?”

Leo. She sighed. “Because he’s all wrong for Charlotte.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s nothing like you.”

“Nicki,” he said with a curious laugh, “why should he be like me? Charlotte’s nothing like you. You’re sweet and giving. She’s independent and edgy.”

“Do you ever wish I was more of those things?” Nicole asked, because always,
always,
in the back of her mind, there would be an image of them together—always,
always,
in the back of her mind, there would be the worry that she was somehow lacking as a woman.

“No, I do not. I love you for who you are,” he said, giving her the reassurance she feared she would need again and again.

Closing her eyes, she turned her face to his neck. These nine days had been good for them as a couple, too. They had talked, made love, slept close. Fear of the future was never far, though she knew that the stronger he was, the better he would withstand the transplant. Still, she wondered if he was living on borrowed time. She guessed he was wondering it, too. He was softer, gentler, mellower.

And forgiving. When she said that one aloud, he asked, “Where does forgiveness come in?”

“Charlotte’s baby.”

“It was my baby, too,” he said, mellow indeed. “I can accept that she’s gone, but having a shot at these stem cells is something. Charlotte didn’t have to come forward with them. She didn’t have to come here at all this summer.”

“You didn’t want her to.”

“No,” he said with a modicum of shame for his evasiveness then. “But it worked out. And now she deserves happiness, don’t you think?”

Nicole truly wanted that for her, but something about Leo rubbed her the wrong way. “Can she get it with him?”

“I don’t know. But neither do you. Only Charlotte can answer that.”

She angled her head to try to see his face in the dark. “She says she loves him. After five weeks? That’s all it’s been, Jules. Five weeks. Did you see how rough he was tonight?”

“He wasn’t all that rough. And she handled him.”

“But what is he? Okay, so he lucked out with
Salt,
but can he repeat that? People may buy his next book, but if it isn’t as good, they won’t buy him again. And how can it be as good? The guy is
Quinnipeague,
Jules. I mean, I love it here, but living nowhere else—oh, he was in prison for a while, sorry, I forgot about that. Like he’d get material for a follow-up to
Salt
there? I mean, really.
Salt
was a place just like this. He can’t repeat it. My dad would call him a flash in the pan.”

“Wrong,” Julian said quietly. “Your dad would have been intrigued. He’d have invited the guy over for dinner to talk about how he made his book such a success.”

Nicole was appalled. “You want me to invite Leo to
dinner
? Omigod, Julian. That would be like giving Charlotte a green light to do whatever she’s doing with him.”

He sighed. “Baby, you are not her mother.”

“But I love her, and she is being totally stupid. He’s taking what he can get while he can get it.”

“You may be wrong,” Julian said more firmly, at which point Nicole grew defensive. She was going along with what he wanted when it came to treatment, even though it wasn’t what she wanted. And still he found fault.

“Wrong, like I hover? Like I smother you?”

He pressed her lips closed. “I was taking my frustration out on you when I said those things. But you’re doing the same thing now. You’re worried about the cookbook and angry at your mother, and we’re both on edge waiting for Hammon. But none of this is Leo’s fault. You’re making him the receptacle of every other bad thing. That’s not fair, Nicki. It’s not right.”

Nicole wasn’t sure if she agreed, but she didn’t want to argue more with Julian. Things had been too good between them for that, and if time was short, she couldn’t waste it. So she turned in his arms and kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

She felt his smirk. “Is that meant to shut me up?”

“Yes,” she mused, then reflected. “It’s like right now, at this moment in time, I’m arguing with Charlotte about Leo, Leo about Charlotte, Mom about Dad and Tom and the house—or I would be, if I was talking to Mom—even Kaylin, who is doing absolutely nothing but playing in Manhattan until school starts again, and when I ask her about it, she starts in on MS, and I can’t go there with her right now. I don’t want to argue with you.”

He didn’t pursue it, simply guided her up to bed, though when he teetered on the stairs, she was the one to steady him.

She hadn’t shut him up, she knew. If she were to resume the argument the next morning, he would pick up his side of it again. And maybe he was right. Maybe she was demonizing Leo for no reason. Only it did feel like a reason. And she was worried about Charlotte.

Whatever, she’d be damned before she would encourage Leo Cole.

*   *   *

Charlotte didn’t have to encourage him. In lieu of not saying The Words, he was attentive and gentle all on his own. Whether it was prepping her for interviews while driving her into town, making the effort to talk with other Quinnies at the end-of-July potluck dinner Sunday, or making sweet love to her in the shower, the bath, the bed, or the boat—he was an interesting companion, a devoted helpmate, an exquisite lover. And the irony of that? Despite her determination to sink her teeth deeper into
him,
she was the one falling harder herself.