“I know you said it would be messy if we tried to be together, but you don’t even know the half of it. If you did, you’d run screaming away.”
She snaked her arms around my waist and licked her lips. “What if I didn’t?”
“You will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am. It’s always this way.”
Celia let out a heavy sigh and stepped back from me. “It freaking irks the bee-jezus out of me when people say that.”
“What?”
“Always and never.”
I stared at her with my mouth hanging open.
She stomped her foot. “Always and never are pretty absolute. And since you’re not at the end of your life, you don’t know what always happens. Because most of it hasn’t happened yet. You only know what has happened previously. You can only base your assumptions on what you think will happen, not what will happen!”
Celia was worked up in a good lather now. And I knew better than to stop her ranting.
“SUGAR HONEY ICED TEA! Think about your Mama,” she poked me in the chest. “If she thought every man she married wouldalwaysdie, she’d never have taken a chance on Jocko! And if I thought my kids wouldneverlearn a doggone thing, I would have stopped trying to teach them lessons years ago! So, yeah. You need a stick-ectomy and probably a head-ectomy because you need to remove your head from your backside and start thinking positive for a change!”
She was 99% correct. I did need to remove my head from my ass. But that one percent stubbornness still inside caused me to say the first thing on my mind. “Fine. If that’s true about me, it’s also true about you.”
Celia’s eyes went wide, her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“You hit me with analwaysthing too, if you remember,” I pointed out. “You said if I really knew you, I’d leave. That peoplealwaysleave andneverstay. You talk about the messes you have to clean up - but you do that to yourself! No one asked you to clean up the mess your kids create in their lives. They’re grown-ass men!”
“Oh, no, you didn’t,”she hissed at me.
“No one appointed you Chief Savior of Octavio’s embezzlement victims.”
“That’s the right thing to do!”
“Then, give the money back to Keeton and let him deal with it. Why do you have to be in charge of it all?”
She choked back an answer.
I stepped up to her. “It’s because you have this ridiculous need for control. You have to control everything: your clothes, your food, your kids, your car, your… everything. And if one little thing gets out of order, you don’t know how to handle it.”
She stepped closer to me, poking me with a finger. “Who will take care of things if it’s not me?”
“Someone,” I grabbed her shoulders. “Someone else.You have to stop trying to juggle all the balls and let someone else take charge for a change. Because guess what? Life is messy. You get dirt on the good clothes. Your hair won’t always be perfect. Your kids will get themselves into - and out of - trouble. People leave…”
A sharp pain hit me in the chest when I realized what was coming out of my mouth.
Celia blinked. “Then, it seems we need to both get out of our own way.”
I moved lightning-fast, pulling her into my arms and crushing my lips onto hers. She let out a muffled “oof” but kissed me back, slipping her tongue into my mouth. The kiss took on an urgency that Mr. Pecker fully supported until he was so hard, I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk again.
My hands had a mind of their own, stroking down Celia’s sides, then grabbing her ass and pulling her up into my chest. She wrapped her legs around my waist, moaning into my mouth as she rubbed against my cock.
“Celia,” I panted as I walked us over to a flat rock next to the lake and sat her down gently on the edge, without breaking our kiss. It had been too long. I wanted… no. Ineededto taste her.
I slid my hands underneath her shirt, skimming my thumbs over the lacy bra she wore. She gasped and pulled back from me.
“Celia?”
