Baggage Check (30 page)

Rebecca had reactivated at work, and they had her back on the schedule starting Monday morning. She had the weekend, then, to get home and reacclimate to life outside Oreville before she was back in her old routine. She had no idea if she was looking forward to it or not.

By the time she had showered and packed her bags, it was nearly seven thirty. She sat on the couch in an old oversized flannel shirt she had grabbed on her last trip to Atlanta. She had pulled on a pair of cotton gym shorts and twisted her wet hair up into a loose knot to keep the shirt from getting damp. She was debating whether to lock up and go home tonight or wait until morning, when there was a soft knock at the door and Alex Chen waiting on the other side.

He wore faded jeans and a button-down black shirt. Simple black leather shoes had replaced his usual work boots, and if Rebecca was not mistaken, there was product in his black hair. Was he coming from a date or something?

“Hey,” she said as she opened the door.

“Hey.”

“You look nice,” she said. She leaned closer. “Are you wearing
cologne
?”

“You sound surprised.”

“No, not surprised. Just … you look nice.”

His eyes took in her flannel shirt and she crossed her arms in front of herself, feeling suddenly slouchy. “You always look nice,” he said. His expression was dark and unreadable.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I just heard your mom left today. I thought you might be on your way out, too.”

“Yeah, originally I was leaving in the morning.”

“Originally?”

“I was just entertaining the idea of throwing the bags in the car and being in my own bed before midnight tonight.”

“Ah,” he said. “I can see the appeal.”

“Do you want to come in? Want some … toast?”

He smiled and stepped inside. “Sure, but I'll pass on the toast.”

“Sorry, I don't have a lot to eat here.”

“Understandable,” he said. “You're going home tomorrow. Or tonight.”

“I'm glad you're here, actually,” she said, gathering herself.

“You are?”

“Yes. I wanted to, before I leave, I wanted to thank you for being such a good friend to me. While I was here.”

A bitter smile crossed his features. “Good friend.”

“And I wanted to apologize for my behavior at the riverbank. This has been a really hard time for me, but that's not an excuse. I should have told you sooner that I didn't want to get involved with anyone.”

“You did.”

“What?”

“Tell me sooner. You did. I chose to ignore it. I'm the one who wouldn't let go. I asked for it.”

“That's not how I would put it,” she said.

He shrugged. “The important thing is that you still feel that way. Not wanting to get involved, I mean.”

Alex took a step toward her. His closeness, the seriousness of his expression, thrilled and terrified her. But she refused to back away. “I don't really know how I feel, Alex. All I know is that I have to go back to Atlanta tomorrow. My life is there.”

“You have to? Your life couldn't be anywhere else?”

She sighed. “I just don't want to live in Oreville. I worked too hard to get out of here. I can't—” Rebecca could hardly believe the tears forming in her eyes, the catch in her throat that stopped her words. “Please, I can't talk about this right now.”

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Alex put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her to him, kissing her forehead softly, just as he had the first morning—after the karaoke she didn't remember. “It's okay,” he said again.

She shook her head, her brain resisting, but nuzzled closer to him anyway. She felt the closeness of his chest, the strong arms wrapped around her. She could smell the familiar scent of his deodorant beneath the cologne. “I'm sorry,” Rebecca said. “I wish I—”

“Shhh … don't.”

“Alex, I want to be able to give you what you've given me, but—”

He lifted her chin so that she was looking up at him. “Rebecca, please shut up. Please.”

She obeyed. He kissed her gently on the jaw. Everything she'd felt at the riverbank came rushing back; unlike that morning, however, tonight she had no resources to keep it in check. This was wrong, she knew. It would never work. She should push him away, ask him to leave. Stand on her own two feet, keep things clean. But she was so tired. Her legs seemed to cave beneath her, and his arms around her felt like her only connection to the world.

He put his hand on her head, tangling his fingers in her wet hair and working it out of the bun so that it fell in damp chunks to her shoulders.
No, no, no.
She said it, she was sure she did, but the words would not come out of her mouth. He leaned in to kiss her, and she found herself kissing back. She felt him fumbling with the top button of her shirt, loosening it so that he could push it off one shoulder. Rebecca opened her mouth to protest but only a soft moan came out.

“I don't want you to doubt me,” he said into the hollow of flesh near her collarbone. “I can't offer you the life you want, but at least I can show you how I feel about you. Maybe you don't feel the same, and that's okay. Just look me in the eye, and tell me you don't want me here. I will leave and never bother you again.”

He pushed a stray hair back from her face with his thumb, and then held his hand on her jawline. His expression deepened, his dark eyes like liquid pools of onyx. His voice was a hoarse whisper as he let his hand trail down her neck and over her bare shoulder. “Say it, Rebecca. Tell me to go. Just say the words.”

He kissed her again before she could answer, skillfully working her shorts down with the other hand and tracing lightly over her belly. Her body shuddered and she thought she might collapse. “I can't,” she whispered. “You know I can't.”

“I know, sweetheart. You can't say it, and I can't do it. I'm in love with you, Rebecca. I can't leave you. Not tonight.” He lifted her as though she weighed nothing and carried her to the bedroom.

Before she knew what was happening, he was placing her gently on the bed. “I can't,” she said again, barely audible. Though this time, she was not entirely sure what it was she couldn't do.

“I know,” he said. “It's okay.”

He kept his eyes on hers as he reached under the shirt to retrieve her panties. Her traitorous hips rose to help him. There was a half smile that flitted over his features as he pulled the lacy red bikinis over her knees. She wondered if he was remembering the Walmart granny panties she'd been wearing that first night. He had been a gentleman then, and every day since. He had given her space and listened to her sorrow and given her his affection freely. He had let her push him away, let her break his heart, and he was back.

But now something had changed. He was calling her bluff, and this was the point of no return. Rebecca knew she could ask him to leave right now, and this good man who loved the law and was friends with her father would respect her wishes. He would go home to a cold shower in his haunted house. And she would never see him again. The thought was unbearable.

He tossed the panties on the floor and put his hands on her knees, which she had instinctively pulled together. “You're shaking,” he observed.

She had not noticed. “I guess so,” she said.

Alex applied a gentle pressure, the lightest push outward on her knees, and Rebecca watched her last chance to refuse him melt away as her legs relaxed apart, against her brain's receding advice. He disappeared beneath the soft plaid flannel and within seconds she was awash in a cloud of pleasure. His tongue was rough against her, like the hands that were now holding her arms down against the bed, and like those hands, skilled and strong. She had scarcely resigned herself to enjoyment when she felt her body bucking and rocking against his face, and from a distance she heard herself shrieking in pleasure.

Deputy Alex Chen chuckled a bit as he unbuttoned his own shirt and removed his jeans, enjoying her embarrassment. It must have been gratifying to him, she thought, and this vulnerability before him only heightened her breathlessness. The voices in her head explaining why this was a terrible idea and a recipe for emotional disaster had all been drowned out by his tongue between her thighs. Now he unbuttoned the remaining buttons on her shirt and flipped it open, and for a long moment, he did nothing but look at her. He wore boxers, she noticed. Red plaid.

He kissed her nose, and then the top of her head, her cheeks and neck. He smiled at her before tracing his warm breath across the skin of her chest, where he sucked lightly on each nipple and left her covered in goose bumps. He kissed the center of her torso down to her belly, smiling as his nose grazed her pubic hair and her body shuddered again in memory. He kissed her thighs, her knees, even her shins and ankles and toes. It was exquisite and maddening. She closed her eyes, swirling with feeling, teetering on the edge of a dark oblivion. She put an arm over her face to help her feel more grounded.

He pushed her thighs apart with one hand and stroked her belly with the other, causing her to arch reflexively. Then he was inside her, strong and insistent. He lowered himself to kiss her passionately on the mouth, thrusting and clutching and even pulling her hair as he rocked into her. She gave herself over to him, kissing him back, returning the passion with her body that she could not express with words. He cried out softly in her ear when he came, and then lay there, still inside her, kissing her gently until she felt him get hard again. This time she wrapped her legs around him and clawed at his bare back, feeling her own pleasure rise again, too, with even more urgency and depth than before.

They climaxed together, which had never happened for Rebecca, and collapsed on the bed in a sweaty tangle. He positioned himself behind her, curling around her to keep her warm and safe with his body as the room went from dusky to full dark. Alex was quiet for a long time. Rebecca tried to think of something to say, but sleep took her before she could find the right words.

She awoke in the soft gray light of dawn, wondering if she could sneak out and leave for Atlanta without waking him. But she was already alone. There was a note on her suitcase in his careful block lettering. “Now you know how I feel. Maybe there are more choices than you think. Please stay. Love, Alex.”

 

34

Under normal circumstances, the pomp and glamour of Suzanne and Dylan's public wedding in mid-October was the kind of thing that would have had Rebecca bragging for weeks to anyone who would listen. While the wedding was as lovely as she ever could have expected, Rebecca found she had little energy for bragging. She had already been facing the curious questions about her absence from her coworkers nearly every day since she'd returned to work a month before, and did not want to draw extra attention to herself.

The wedding was held at the Atlanta Country Club with nearly five hundred people in attendance, and at least as many paparazzi and onlookers outside the front gates. So far, no word of the first wedding had leaked to the press to dampen their fascination with this one. Suzanne, of course, looked strikingly beautiful in a custom mermaid-style bridal gown, with some kind of exotic orange flower tucked behind one ear. Dylan wore an expensive-looking tuxedo with a cummerbund of burnt orange, a nod to both his wife's tasteful headdress and his Tennessee roots. And of course, his ever-present cowboy boots.

The ceremony itself was a simple one: the two of them exchanged vows beneath a pretty gazebo overlooking the golf course at sunset, with the party of the season inside one of the club's biggest ballrooms. Between Dylan's four sisters and her own friends, Suzanne had simply chosen not to have bridesmaids at all, for which Marci and Rebecca were both immensely grateful. They had both offered to help Suzanne with the preparations, but given Rebecca's summer spent cleaning her mom's house, and Marci's ever-expanding midsection, neither was offended when Suzanne's devoted assistant Chad insisted on handling everything.

“He really did a lovely job,” Marci said when they were seated around one of at least fifty resplendent round tables in the ballroom. There were gorgeous harvest baskets of gourds and fruit in the center of each table, with a small placard indicating that the basket would be donated to the Atlanta Food Bank after the ceremony. “Don't tell Suze, but if I were getting married again, I'd have Chad do the planning instead of her.”

“You will let me know if you decide to get married again?” Jake said behind her. He had been to the bar to get drinks for the three of them. “I would hope I'd be invited. I could give you away.”

Marci made a face at him. “I'm not letting you off the hook that easy,” she said. “You're stuck with me now.”

Jake kissed her affectionately and rubbed her protruding belly. Rebecca watched them, for once without the accompanying misery their way-too-cute public displays had always brought her. She was still a little relieved, however, when Marci seemed to remember her presence as the only other person at the table so far. “Heard from Alex?”

Rebecca shook her head. “No. He won't return my calls since I left Alabama. I guess I missed my chance.”

“Well, it was totally unfair of him to put you on the spot like that,” Marci said. “He didn't really expect you to stay in that crappy little town. Ouch!” Jake had elbowed her and Marci went on. “I mean, it's a beautiful town, of course. It's just hard to picture you living there.”

“Yes, it is,” Rebecca said. “Can you imagine me being a forty-five-minute drive from the nearest mall? And even then, no Bloomingdale's.”

As she heard the words in her own ears, they sounded hollow, even in jest. Marci shook her head as though the whole idea were ridiculous, but Jake avoided her eye. Rebecca went on, “Plus, he has a kid. Not just a kid, but a teenage girl. Can you imagine me as a stepmother?”