It’s another intimate piece of me, and I’m sharing it with him. I feel both excited and vulnerable at the same time. Beau makes me feel interesting, intelligent, and attractive, all things that give me butterflies and make me want to spend even more time with him.
Once we’ve devoured the dessert, we talk in the low light for over an hour. It’s late, and we both know it. The sleepy haze falling over the room clouds my inhibitions, allowing me to hold his gaze when our eyes meet in the quiet pause. My insides whirl with tingles and heat and all the feels I felt as a crushing teen. His eyes are a deep and wonderful brown, a complement to his dark hair and the short scruff accenting his chiseled jaw.
He reaches out, and I hold very still as he pins a lock of my hair between his finger and thumb, slides down the length of it, and then wraps the tips around his pointer finger, twirling up one twist at a time. The sensations cause pleasurable chills to ripple all the way to my scalp.
Slowly, then, he unravels my hair, slides his warm hand along the column of my neck, and glances down at my mouth. I feel myself leaning in, lured by his seductive draw, drunk on the chemicals between us, desperate for another taste of him.
Our lips meet at last in a hungry kiss that shoots a thrill right through my core. His lips are strong and certain as he tilts his head, deepening the kiss and showing me exactly what I’ve been missing all these years.
When we caught Greg kissing Trish, I couldn’t help but comment on the fact that he never wanted to kiss me. Beau had said something about Greg being a fool, but in these moments, with this unparalleled kiss, he’sshowingme what it’s like to be kissed by a man who desires me.
We shift into slower, lingering exchanges, tasting, teasing, breathing each other in. Beau finds another strand of my hair as he pulls back, toying with it as he did before, and gives me a wink. “I think I like you.”
I laugh and blush. “I think I like you too.”
We spend the weekend together while the kids are away, and once they’re back, we do things as a group. A family. Soccer season is running full throttle, meaning Lenny is back in the picture, so he joins us sometimes too. Things with Greg and Trish are amiable, albeit awkward, but they seem to have accepted the fact that Beau and I are dating, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
It’s not until I’m gathering lawn chairs after one of the games that Trish shimmies over in her high heels, Gucci visor, and sunglasses filling more than half of her face.
“I hope you don’t think this is going to last,” she says in a classic mean-girl tone.
I glance to where Beau is helping the boys stack cones and round up the balls, then shift my gaze to where Greg is refilling his water bottle at the drinking fountain across the field. When my eyes settle back on hers, I lift one, barely interested, hopefully bored-looking brow.
“You know why he’s going after someone like you, don’t you?”
A dose of discomfort seeps in. It’s like pulling on a thread of a sweater. You know that if you keep on pulling, the entire thing will unravel one layer at a time. She’s found the one thread that could unravel a woman like me. Especially because we’re talking about a man like Beau. One who’s probably been attracted to the Trishes of the universe since he hit puberty.
It never made sense for him to like me. And though he’s made me believe that he genuinely does, though he’s made me feel confident and beautiful and desired, the thread that Trish threatens to tug is capable of undoing it all.
“It’s all about stability for the kids. He cares about them more than he ever cared about me. But if you think he cares aboutyou…if you think he’s actuallyinto women like you…you’re mistaken. I know how he really feels.”
My hands ball into fists. I cannot believe this is coming from the very woman who stole my doofus husband from me. I grit my teeth and narrow my eyes as Trish wraps a frail-looking hand around the strap of her designer bag, revealing those ridiculous daggers attached to her nails. In a loose fist, her thumbnail, which is chipped, hovers clear over three of her knuckles.
“You know what?” I say, tipping my head. I blink twice and grin. “Iloveyour nails.”
CHAPTER22
November
Beau
It’s been weeks since I had a Wheaton brothers boys night, and as I eye the array of bowling balls around the dispenser, looking for the blue-marbled one I favor, I grin at the sounds of their razzing.
They’re talking about last night’s singles meetup. I hadn’t gone, of course, but they tell me this time it was combined with the thirties group, which, if you ask me, sounds risky. It makes me picture men close to fifty hitting on the barely thirty-year-olds, hoping to prove that they’ve still got it.
I shiver, feeling grateful that I’m not in the singles game anymore. Neither Kirsten nor I have the desire to date anyone else. And since being together feels so good, we’re rarely apart. I always hoped Trish would start to enjoy family time more as the kids got older and less demanding. When that didn’t happen, I loved her despite her aversion to hanging out with the kids and doing stuff they wanted to do. It’s how she was, and she couldn’t exactly change it. Besides, I loved her; I’d taken vows, we were in it together.
But man, it feels good to have someone who enjoys that time as much as I do. And our alone time… Heat flares low in my belly at the mere thought. Things are incredible in that department too. She’s a great kisser, and every time I sample that mouth of hers, I’m turned on by all the witty, sarcastic things she shares with those petal-soft wonders.
Like clockwork, a disruptive force wriggles its way into my mind, threatening to put a serious damper on my parade. The wordstoo good to be truetaunt me as I consider the years it takes most people to move on after divorce. I fear that all of it will come crashing down. That I’ll be left brokenhearted all over again.
“Braxton is seriously a cougar chaser,” Luke says, smacking my arm with the back of his hand to get my attention.
I pull out of my stupor and grab the nearest ball. It’s Liam’s, which makes me smile because he used to hate it when we used his ball. Superstitiously, he thought it disrupted his mojo. I hoist it into place and set my gaze on the pins.
“Oh yeah?” I say before nearing the lane and letting it fly. It crashes into them left of center, taking eight of the ten down.
“Yeah. He’s come to the forties group a few times, right?” Luke continues.
