Jilted: Promise Harbor, Book 1 (17 page)

“That’s nice.”

“That’s weird.”

He chuckled.

“Seriously! My dad…oh my gosh. I guess it just freaks me out a little.”

“Well, sure, that’s normal. I’d be freaked out too if my mom started dating.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So if you don’t want to stay with him, stay with me.”

He didn’t even hesitate to say it. Oh god. Oh god. She couldn’t stop the bubble of hope that expanded inside her, even as she knew that was a crazy idea. “Josh…”

“What?”

“That’s crazy.” She dropped her gaze to his chin. “I can’t do that. Can you imagine what people would say? A week ago you were going to marry Allie.”

He groaned. “I don’t care what people say.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Well,” he said, rolling her onto her back and moving over her. “Maybe I can convince you this way to come back with me.” And he kissed her, holding her head in both his hands.

.She melted into the bed, kissing him back, her hands on his lower back, his skin warm and satiny. His weight pressed her into the mattress. Oh yeah. That was pretty damn convincing.

Just you and me
.

In that bed, in that quiet, dim hotel room, it was just them. Once again, everything else fell away as she lost herself in him, in the pure rapture growing inside her, in the wonderful pain of him so deep inside her, the agonizing pleasure of being with him like this.

“Devon,” he growled. “Damn.”

She could only blink her eyes in response, her heart pounding in her ears, that ultimate pleasure just out of reach. With every stroke of his body, with every impact of his pelvis against her, she climbed higher and higher. Flames licked over her body.

“Oh god,” she whispered as she climbed higher still, sensation twisting inside her into a hot, hard point of near pain, so exquisite. “Oh god, Josh. Yes.”

Their skin dampened, their hearts thudded against each other, her entire body went up in flames, heat and light and power.

“Fuck yeah,” Josh groaned. “Oh yeah, Dev. I’m coming too…Christ, there it is…”And he gave a roar as his body went tight and still, his hands fisting in her hair, his face pressed to hers. He pulsed inside her, long, hard beats of pleasure.

They clung to each other, breathing fast, for a while. Devon wasn’t sure how long as she drifted on a lethargic cloud of bliss. Maybe she slept a little, but as Josh moved on her, she became aware of her surroundings again, their damp skin sticking together, her hips aching a bit. She shifted too, and he slowly moved off her, again that moment of withdrawal unpleasant, and he disappeared into the bathroom for a moment. She stretched her legs out in the bed, the soft sheets sliding over sensitized skin, and lifted her arms above her head for a full body stretch. Oh wow. That was really all she could muster. Just wow.

Josh clicked out the light they’d left on in the living room and turned off the fireplace, returning to the now dark bedroom just as a flash of lightning illuminated the room. He peered out the window. “Blowing like crazy out there,” he said. Thunder rumbled in the distance. “And there’s the rain.” Big drops splattered against the glass panes.

He turned and climbed back into bed with her, once more wrapping her up in his embrace, and she snuggled into him. “It’s nice in here,” she murmured.

“Yeah.”

He stroked her hair and her back and her hip, and for a while they were silent. She tried to process what had happened and what it all meant, but it was overwhelming. She’d had no idea this was where she’d end up when she’d made the trip home for the wedding. It made her ache, the wanting of him, the wanting of so much more. The futility of the wanting so much more.

He’d asked her to go back to Promise Harbor with him. Her immediate, instinctive response had been no, but now…she didn’t want to leave him.

That was so dangerous, that kind of feeling, that kind of thinking. So dangerous because she knew only too well how much it would hurt when things ended again. As they would. Her life was in Boston, and his was here, with his family.

She’d always known his family was important to him, including his “extended family” of the Ralstons. She knew his mom mainly as “Mrs. Brewster”, her high school math teacher, and it had always been odd seeing her at Allie’s place, seeing a teacher as a normal woman with a family and friends. She hadn’t met Josh until a couple of years after his father had died, and although she knew he’d looked after his mom and his sister, she’d never realized how hard that had been for his mom, to the point where she’d been nearly suicidal. He’d never told her that before, and it made her ache for him, for how he’d dealt with that at the age of fifteen, just a boy whose dad had died and who was afraid of losing his mother too. It made her ache for all that was beneath the surface. She’d thought hers was the only family with secrets like that, things that nobody talked about.

He cared about his mom and his sister, and he sacrificed a lot for them. The job he’d loved with the Boston Fire Department. Devon had been hurt and angry when he left, that he’d been willing to give up that and give up her so easily to go back to Promise Harbor, those feelings of abandonment she’d experienced when her mother had left resurfacing so painfully.

He was a good man, though. How could she fault him for doing what he thought was right and best for his family? How could she fault him for caring about them the way he did? His loyalty to family only highlighted how different her own family was, a father who’d shut down and wanted nothing to do with her. Josh was different—he was open and honest and loyal and protective.

“You okay, baby?” Josh whispered. Outside, rain fell in a steady thrum, the wind occasionally splattering it against the windows, thunder growling closer and closer.

“I’m okay.”

“Why don’t you want to come back to the harbor?” he asked quietly.

She hid her face against his neck and breathed in his scent. “You know my dad and I don’t really get along.”

“Yeah, I sort of know that. I don’t really know why, though. You never talked about your dad much.”

“There’s not much to talk about.” She hesitated, afraid to say it out loud, but she knew she had to. “He just doesn’t like me very much.” There. She’d admitted it.

He choked. “What? You’re fucking kidding me.”

“It’s true.”

“How can you say that?”

There in the darkness with her face hidden and his arms wrapped around her, she felt safe and secure, and she told him things she never had before. “I think I remind him of my mom. I think he blames me for her leaving. No doubt he blames my mom for leaving me with him and making him raise me all by himself.”

His hand moved up and down her back in a warm, soothing movement, and he didn’t speak for a moment. “Your dad’s a good guy,” he finally said. “I mean, I don’t know him very well, but lots of people like and respect him.”

“He
is
a good guy,” she said slowly. “It’s just me he has a problem with. After my mom left, he shut down. I always felt like he hated me.”

“Oh Christ, no, Devon. He’s your father. He has to love you.”

She gave her head a little shake, still buried in his neck.

“Of course he does.” He rubbed her back again. “Why’d your mom leave? Why would he blame you for that?”

“I don’t know if he blames me for her leaving. She left because she wasn’t happy in Promise Harbor.” She told him the story. “She went back to New York, to her family and her life in the city.

“I don’t understand how a mom could leave her child,” Josh said quietly.

“Yeah. I always wondered when I was a kid why she didn’t take me with her. What I’d done that made her not love me enough to want to take me with her.”

Josh went very still against her, so still she wasn’t sure he was even breathing. When she lifted her head to look at him, his eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth a tight line.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “It’s okay. I’m fine with it.”

“Oh, Devon.”

This was why she never told people that. She hated being the object of pity. “I’m fine, Josh,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”

He gave a short nod. “Yeah.” He studied her. “Do you feel the same way about Promise Harbor as your mom did?”

She frowned a little. “No.”

“No? You wanted to stay in Boston and live in the city and have your career. You must understand why she wanted to leave.”

A feeling of pressure rose in her chest. “I never
hated
Promise Harbor. Not the town itself. I just didn’t like the memories. I didn’t like the way everyone felt sorry for me.”

Josh cleared his throat. “First of all, nobody ever felt sorry for you, Dev. They might have felt sympathy for you because of what your mom did. Sympathy for both you and your dad. Because they liked you and cared about you. Not because you were pathetic. People didn’t feel sorry for you that way. I remember my mom talking to Allie about you, and how she thought you were so strong and well-balanced despite what had happened.”

She swallowed. “Really?”

“Yeah. If anything, that’s how people in town saw you. People respected your dad for being a good father to you, for never badmouthing your mom after she left. It’s not easy to be a single parent, and probably even harder for a man to bring up a teenage daughter.”

Her throat quivered, her thoughts jumbled. “Yes,” she whispered. “That’s probably true.” Could what Josh was saying be right? That she’d never really been an object of pity or shame? “My dad never talked about my mom, not to anyone, not even to me. But I…I wanted to talk about it. At first, I mean. I wanted to understand. I wanted…”

Hell. She couldn’t say it.
I wanted to know that I was loved by someone—if not by the mother who’d abandoned me, then by the father I’d been left with.

She could understand that people outside their family would have seen the two of them making the best of things and getting on with their lives. Because that was what they’d both wanted people to see. But people didn’t see the aching loneliness of a young girl who needed love and affection, who so desperately needed to know that she wasn’t the cause of her mother leaving, that someone wanted her and loved her.

“Have you ever thought about trying to find your mom?”

She smiled. “All the time when I was a kid. God, all the time.” Her smile went crooked. “But she’d left and obviously didn’t care. I tried to mention it to my dad once, and he just snapped at me to forget about it. I never really did, but when I was an adult and I could have just gone to New York to find her, then I didn’t want to anymore. I don’t want anything to do with her. She’s never…” Her throat squeezed and she coughed. “She’s never come back or tried to see me, and that tells me enough.”

“Fuck,” Josh muttered. “If she was here right now I’d… Well, never mind.”

Her heart swelled at his anger toward her mom. “It doesn’t matter,” she said gently. “Once again, it was a long time ago.”

“Maybe you should come back and talk to your dad,” Josh said. “Maybe that’s an even better reason to come back. To sit down and fix things with him.”

“That’ll never happen. He would never do that. Sitting down and talking? Especially about feelings? Not gonna happen in a million years.”

“Huh. Really.” He went silent for a moment. “So you really don’t hate Promise Harbor?”

“No. I do like it. It’s pretty and there are lots of great people. I love how much pride everyone takes in the town and all the community spirit. But I’m done there. I don’t have anything there anymore.” Once more she hesitated. “My dad and I aren’t close. Allie was my best friend, but…”

His body tensed at her unfinished sentence. “I know she talked to you. When we started dating.”

“Yes.” She kept her face buried.

“She said you were fine with it.”

Something inside her swelled up, hot and fast. She almost choked on it, couldn’t breathe. He must have felt her tension.

“Dev?”

I wasn’t fine with it! I hated you both for that! How could you have done that to me?

“We were done,” she managed to say.

“But you and Allie aren’t friends anymore. Are you.” He said it as a statement, not a question. Because he knew the answer.

Her mouth trembled, more pressure building inside her. “I came to the wedding.”

“Yeah. You did. Oh Christ, Dev. I’m sorry.”

Anger sizzled through her veins
. You think of everyone else. You look after everyone else. Why didn’t you think about what that would do to
me
? To date my best friend. To marry her
. She shoved at his chest, pushing away from him, tangling herself up in the covers.

He grunted. “What?”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she cried. “I’m fine.”

They’d just been so intimate, and she’d felt so close to him. Already she was making herself vulnerable just by sleeping with him again, knowing she was going to get hurt again—she did not want to be an object of pity. She did not want him to know how devastated she’d been when he’d left. She was not going to cry in front of him again. She never cried.

He lunged across the bed and grabbed her. “Devon. Stop. What’s wrong?”