Page 12

ten

. . .

[Declan]

When the fireworks finally end, I insist India stay at my place due to the lateness the hour and the possibility of ridiculous traffic.

“You can take my daughter’s bedroom.” I pop open Montgomery’s bedroom door and India and I both stare into the space from the hallway.

In some ways, the room is a reminder once again of what happened between us. While India was in her mid-twenties during that wedding week, her bedroom in the Colorado house was still decorated for a younger girl.

I chuckle at the similarities and anxiously scratch the back of my neck, like I’ve walked a girl to her front door, and I don’t know whether I should kiss her or not.

Then again, I wasn’t one to date much and front porch kisses happened only back in high school.

India and I seem to prefer bathroom meet-ups .

“I really should get home,” she repeats for the fifth time, while keeping her eyes trained on my daughter’s double bed.

I could suggest we share the room together, instead of me taking the couch. However, there is something about sleeping in my daughter’s room next to India that won’t work for me. Plus, I’m used to my couch. Often my own bed feels too lonely, and I fall asleep on the couch watching game tapes.

“If you’re sure?” she questions like she did earlier about my invitation to join Isaiah and me at my place for dinner.

With a smile that isn’t forced, I emphasize. “I’m certain.”

I’m certain that I want to know her again. Know more about her. Her past. Her plans. But now isn’t the time to push. Instead, I leave her in Montgomery’s room with a Tennessee Terrors shirt of mine and an old pair of boxers I never wear anymore.

When I lay on the couch, I stare at the ceiling.

My body is wound tight as if it knows India is on the other side of the wall.

My apartment isn’t very big and on either side of the living room and kitchen combination is a bedroom, each with a bathroom.

That’s it. All the money I have, and I chose to live in such a confined space.

However, the claustrophobia never got to me until tonight. Until India Baker is on the other side of a thin wall, where I hear the bed rustling like she can’t get comfortable in Montgomery’s room, like maybe she isn’t content being near me. Or maybe . . . she’s just as restless because of me.

On that note, the door to Montgomery’s room pops open and I immediately sit up on the couch.

“Everything okay?”

My question startles her, and she lets out a sharp but quiet squeak. Her hand flattens on her chest, just over the Terrors logo on the T-shirt she’s wearing. My tee.

With a quick scan of her body, I notice she’s not wearing the boxers I lent her, which means, now only a thin layer of cotton separates her from me .

With a heavy breath, I clear my head of visions where I remove said shirt and inspect her fine curves with my hands.

“You scared me,” she whispers. The lights are off inside my place, but city lights trickle into the room despite being stories above the street.

You scare me , I could retort because being close to India, spending this evening with her has stirred up feelings I’ve long suppressed. Desires I decided could never be acted upon.

I’d missed my chance, right?

Slowly, I stand from the couch, exposing my bare chest and a pair of athletic shorts that hang loose on my hips. I don’t miss how India’s gaze drips down my sternum and lingers on my abs a moment before hugging my hip bones, just above the waistband.

My hands fist at my side, allowing her gaze to linger when I want nothing more than to close the distance, press her against the wall and slide my hands beneath my T-shirt covering her breasts.

“What do you need?” I choke out, assuming she desires something other than my groping her body.

“I just wanted a drink of water.”

“Of course.” I start for the kitchen while India leans against the door jamb. I need to pass her to round the peninsula counter, and the nearness gives me a whiff of her lingering scent. Fresh snow. Winter moments. Stolen kisses.

Suddenly, I’m thirsty as well, and I feel her eyes on me as I enter the open space and reach for two glasses on a high shelf. Her silvery gaze sizzles down my spine while I take my time filling two glasses with water. When I turn back around India has moved to the opposite side of the counter.

I step closer as well and hold out the water glass, allowing our fingers to brush during the pass off.

“Thank you.” Her voice is low. Her lids lower. If the lights were on, I imagine I’d catch her blushing .

Instead, I simply feel the heat between us despite the air conditioning cranking.

Wildfire . The energy around us crackles. The flame roaring higher. I can’t get enough water, and I guzzle down my entire glass.

When I set the empty container on the countertop, I catch India watching me. Her eyes wide, while her hands clutch the glass still resting on the counter. She swallows thickly and licks her lips. Slowly, she lifts her glass and sips. But her eyes never leave mine and I’m jealous of a fucking glass.

The way her lips crease over the rim. The way her throat rolls with each swallow.

I’m instantly hard and lean forward, setting my forearms on the cool counter. The cold surface does nothing to lower my temperature. My position is meant to hide my sudden boner, but now I’m level with her breasts. Firm and rounded, and forcing the Terrors logo to stand up a bit.

I’m a fucking mess wanting to know if her nipples are still dusty-colored, peaked and taut.

I clasp my hands together, in an attempt to keep them to myself. Thank goodness for the cabinet between us.

India lowers her glass, barely a sip taken.

“Feel better?” I ask, although my throat is tight.

“Much.” She hums as her gaze lands on my face.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think she catalogued my body for another time.

Alone time. Which is when I’ll be visualizing her, wearing my tee, mouth wrapped around my hard dick, those silvery eyes staring at me with a glimmer in them, like she’s looking at me now.

Slowly, I press myself upward, sliding my hands apart and bracing them on the edge of the countertop. India takes another review of my chest, my abs, the dark trail of hair leading lower. My cock is stiff and heavy and poking at the waistband, itching to spring above the drawstring .

India doesn’t appear to notice but I don’t know how she can miss the evidence. My body craves hers.

“I should probably . . . ” She tips her head toward Montgomery’s room. “Another long day tomorrow.”

Something is long, all right, and it’s in my shorts. But there’s also longing in my chest to reach for her, to pull her close, even if all I do is hold her against me and inhale her wintery scent.

“Yep.” In all the words in the English language, it’s the only one my brain can find right now.

“Thanks again for the water.” She lifts the glass in salute.

“Any time.” Any time she needs water. Or wants to talk. Or wants me to fuck her.

I’m here for her.

She stares at me another moment before turning away and taking the short steps to Montgomery’s bedroom. Once inside, she looks back at me, stone still in my kitchen, watching as she slowly closes the door.

The moment reminds me of an elevator scene in which two people acknowledge the tension between them, hold their breaths, and then address one another before the doors close.

“Wylde Thing,” India whispers toward me.

“Wildfire,” I counter observing her silvery eyes flare, like a private firework display, before the night goes dark because she’s shut the door on us.

In a rush, I round the counter and head to my room. Fuck Isaiah hogging my bed. If I don’t put more doors between India and me, I’m going to do something stupid.

Inside my own bedroom, I shove Isaiah to one side of the king-size mattress, I toss myself on my back, staring upward at the ceiling once again.

My hands are clasped over my chest, my heart racing within.

I’d love nothing more than to slip my hand into my shorts and take care of my sudden issue but I’m not whacking off with my best friend laying beside me, so I tamp down the sexual visions of his sister and her mouth.

“Fuck,” I groan aloud, closing my eyes where more images filter through my head. India on her knees . . . with me behind her, hand fisted in that wild hair and?—

“What the fuck?” Isaiah mutters groggily from his position beside me, back toward me.

“Jesus,” I hiss, startled by his voice, interrupting the clusterfuck of images in my head. My heart races even faster, as if Isaiah somehow saw the porn-reel in my brain, staring his sister and me.

“I can hear you thinking,” Isaiah mumbles, shifting to his back before heaving himself over like a breaching beluga whale to face me.

God, I hope he can’t hear my thoughts.

“Felt my mental telepathy telling you to fuck off, did ya?” I quip, bursting my desire like a spent firework.

My best friend and I have never shared a bed, and I wasn’t about to start, but I need another few minutes to pull myself together before I return to the couch.

Rolling my head on my pillow, I can hardly make out Isaiah’s face in the dark room. “You’re going to have one helluva hangover.”

“I already feel like shit,” he mutters. “Did you guys eat?”

“Hours ago,” I snort.

“What time is it?”

“After midnight.”

“Fuck,” Isaiah hisses, lifting his hand to his forehead and squeezing at the pressure I imagine thumps against his skull. “Where’s India?”

“She’s in Montgomery’s room.” I sigh and face the ceiling again, willing away wishes to enter said room and curl up next to his sister. “You’re a fun date,” I add, mocking his condition, and the idea that he wasted an opportunity to hang out together .

Then again, the night wasn’t a total wash because India and I finally spoke.

We cleared at least a little air between us, like dusting off home plate before the next batter saunters up to bat.

I’d really love another turn around the bases with her, and I’m not just meaning sexual experiences. I want to know her again.

“I had to talk to Penn.” Isaiah interrupts my thoughts again and then remains quiet a second.

“Do you even remember talking to her?” My friend wasn’t making any sense before he took the call from his wife.

“Yeah.” He sighs but doesn’t offer more information.

“Everything alright with you guys?” I turn my attention back to his dark face when he doesn’t immediately answer me. “Isaiah?”

“We’ll be okay.” His tone lacks confidence, however.

“You can talk to me,” I remind him. Isaiah has always been there for me. The team deals. The news about Montgomery. The decision to leave professional baseball behind.

“Like you told me about my sister?”

Shit . Are we really doing this now? With him hungover and my head a mess?

“How long have you known?” I croak.

“I didn’t.”

“But you acted like?—”

“The sexual tension between the two of you is so strong, it audibly crackles.”

I laugh bitterly and roll my head back to ceiling-stare position. “I think you mean awkward tension. We haven’t exactly spoken to one another since she’s been here.”

“So, more lies and secrets,” he quietly states, reminding me I promised him I’d look after her, and then dodged any questions he’d ask about his sister. Pretending like I was checking on her, when I wasn’t, I kept things vague.

She is doing well with The Den. She gets along with the team. The front office loves her .

For most of this night, India and I covered my history, but I want to know more about hers.

For five months, we’ve kept up the ruse of never having met or at least not knowing one another on a more intimate level, but the jig is up.

Like a bat making contact with a hundred-mile-an-hour pitch— thwack!

—I’m thunderstruck again by India Baker.

And I want to know what happened with Malakai? Did he hurt her? Did he break her heart?

Isaiah has also kept details about his sister surface level over the years.

“I didn’t intend to keep it from you,” I say, adding another lie to the growing mound. “I just didn’t . . .”

What? Want to share my transgression with his sister? Explain a meaningful tryst to my best friend? Tell him how being with India wrecked me in the best way, and how I blew any chance I had.

Isaiah doesn’t question me further, and I assume he’s fallen back to sleep. Maybe he’ll forget this after-midnight conversation happened as well as everything else he’s said tonight.

Are you two sleeping together again?

Could it happen again?

“You didn’t mean for it to happen,” Isaiah eventually states, startling me once more with the edge in his tone. His anger as if I would to have thought such a thing, when I don’t regret one second of that week together.

“That is not what I was going to say.”

“Then, you talk to me,” he snips, a little louder, repeating my words to him. “She’s my sister.”

“I know,” I breathe out, frustrated by the simple truth. India is my best friend’s younger sister. The age gap doesn’t matter. It’s the years that have passed that do.

“While I see some issues here . . .” Isaiah sighs. “You’re both adults. Consenting ones. And I want each of you to be happy. ”

“I am happy,” I snap, a little harsher than necessary.

“Are you?” Isaiah asks.

Is she? I want to counter but instead, I ask a more pressing question. “Are you ?” Because something is definitely up with my best friend.

He flops to his back, mirroring my position, face toward the ceiling. “I don’t know.” He blows out a breath.

The silence that follows, dismissing any potential explanation, causes me to almost hear the gears churning in his head.

There are so many more questions to ask. Is it Penn? The kids? His job? However, midnight musings are for the clear-minded, not drunk talk or hangover chats.

“Get more sleep, buddy,” I tell him. “We can talk more in the morning.”

Without another word, Isaiah rolls away from me again, and I stay on my bed, giving up the pull to move to the couch.

I’m safer in here.