“You won’t want to.”
I pointed to the ceiling. “Riley would love all these exposed beams.”
Will grabbed my hand and pressed it to his hardening cock. “Yeah, I’ve got an exposed beam for you right here.”
I gave his shaft a squeeze and shifted to straddle his lean hips. “What’s the agenda?”
“First, you’re getting naked,” he said. “Then you’re putting your legs over my shoulders and insulting my moves while I fuck all that stress right out of you. After that? I’ll show you around the island. Get something to eat. Do it all over again.”
My hands traveled over his chest, mapping the hard lines beneath his t-shirt. “I’m not stressed.”
Will shot a doubtful smile at me. “Says the girl who wants the agenda,” he said.
“This is a first for me. Never been in a guy’s childhood bedroom before.” I nudged his ribs. “How many girls did you sneak in?”
“That would be zero,” he said, planting a sweet kiss on my forehead. “My father would’ve had me doing fifty-meter dive drills until I passed out on the beach if he caught me with a girl up here, so…” He dragged his fingers down my belly and popped the buttons at my waist. “It’s a first for me, too.”
“If you didn’t bring girls up here…there was a backseat. I’m guessing a truck.” Will’s hands slid up my thighs, squeezing as they moved higher.
“There was a backseat. In a truck.” His hands traveled down and then up, faster now. “And you? I’m thinking there was a lacrosse player. Maybe tennis.”
I twisted away from him, immediately regretting this topic. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. It came out in an angry wail as I vaulted off the bed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Will watched me, his arm bent under his head. He nodded slowly, and though the twitch in his cheek told me he wanted more, his expression stayed calm and steady. “You don’t have to be tough all the time.”
“I’m not being tough,” I said, dragging my fingers through my hair. I needed a shower. Something to wash off the grime of air travel. “I just don’t want to talk about it. There are certain things I’d rather not discuss.”
“You don’t have to,” Will shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, “but someday, you’re going to tell me who hurt you.”
Intent on stripping off my clothes, I turned my back to him while I stepped out of my jeans. “It’s not like you can do anything about it,” I said under my breath, and before I could yank my shirt over my head, Will’s arms came around my waist.
“Because he’s dead,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it because your father’s dead. Right?”
It all came back to me like echoes bouncing off a cavernous space, and the memories—the worst ones, the ones I’d fought to forget—cackled through my mind, mocking, haunting. The disgusting sounds Angus would make as he invaded me. The names he called me. How he threatened to touch Erin whenever I’d resist. They rolled in like smoke, rising up around me until I was choking. My breath caught in my throat, and I was powerless to respond, tentatively bobbing my head instead.
Will’s forehead dropped to my shoulder as he exhaled. “Every time you mention that bastard, I want to dig him up and kill him again. I hope he died peacefully because believe me when I say that’s not the end he would’ve gotten from me.”
I shivered, and he folded me into him until all I could feel was hard muscle and heat. In Will’s arms, I was safe—I believed that above anything else—but a shimmer of doubt lingered along the edges. This wasn’t information I disclosed freely. My brothers didn’t know, and after all this time, there was no reason to tell them.
The one time I’d shared my history with a man I was dating, he buckled under the weight of it. He tried to look past it, but it was the only thing he could see, and he couldn’t comprehend my desire for intimacy, especially the harder, rougher sort I favored. I was supposed to be damaged and I was supposed to find sex revolting, traumatic, and painful, and that was the only narrative he could abide. Everything else was evidence of myissues.
Will wasn’t handing me the victim treatment, and I adored him even more for it. He held me, and not because I couldn’t stand on my own, but because he wanted me to know that I didn’t have to. He was mine to lean on, and right now, I knew that leaning didn’t make me any less strong.
“Before he died,” I started, “I told him that I forgave him. That he was a sick, sad man but he didn’t take me down with him. He took a lot of things from me, but didn’t break me.”
“No, peanut, he didn’t,” Will said. “Not even close.”
*
I’d forgotten thecrisp pleasure of escaping with Will, and escaping to his town was even better than our previous destinations. Our nights were spent drinking and laughing in the backyard or tangled around each other in bed, and our days belonged to his favorite beaches, hiking trails, and taco shops.
We ventured to his preferred surfing spot—the southern end of Black’s Beach—though he didn’t mention anything about the breakneck cliff trail we had to descend to reach the shore until we were there. I didn’t need new reasons to crave Will’s body, but watching him emerge from the sea, surfboard tucked under his arm and water running through the deep cuts of his chest and abs, gave me a few more.
We argued about the existence of ghosts after he converted me to the splendor known as the Thanksgiving buffet at the Hotel Del Coronado. We joked about making this an annual trip, and each laugh we shared turned the words into small promises. Next year was starting to sound possible. Even likely.
An entire day drifted away while we wandered through the gardens at Balboa Park. It was sunny and balmy, and I was free to drag him into a shady grove and kiss him like I was a lust-hungry teenager.
“You can’t wear that,” he grumbled from the hallway while I straightened my hair in the bathroom. We were leaving soon to meet some of his friends at a bar near the base.
