Coming Home to You (The Rockport Beach Series Book 1) (13 page)

As soon as she sits down, Erin slips her
fingers under Ryan’s chin and forces his eyes to hers. “Hi, my name’s Erin
Connelly and yes, I have amazing tits, but if you keep staring at them, I’ll never
let you see them with my clothes off.”

Ryan nearly spits his beer out as Beck and
I laugh out loud. That’s Erin for you.

“Dude, I think you met your match,” Beck
laughs out and Ryan glares back at him.

We order some appetizers and the
conversation begins to flow. Ryan and Beck fill us in on how they met and have
been friends since their days in the Academy. Each one trying to one-up the
other with stupid stories of all the dumb things they’ve both done. It makes
Erin and me laugh and we egg them on as each story gets funnier.

It all feels very natural and something
about it makes me feel guilty, like I should have just left Rockport and gone with
Beck in the first place. He has a life there and friends that don’t include me,
but it could have, if I hadn’t been so stubborn.

I shake off the thoughts and order us
another round of beers as Erin begins to give Ryan the cold shoulder after some
conversation about gun control. I was too busy talking with Beck about the
quote I got to fix a hole in the hull of one of the charter boats at The
Rockport Beach Inn to hear their full conversation.

 
Erin is a heated debater and judging by
what just went down, so is Ryan. I don’t think it’s just Ryan who’s met his
match; Erin better watch herself.

After letting out a loud huff, Erin gives
Ryan the death stare and then looks at me across the table and shouts over the
music that has just picked up, “Let’s do some shots and then dance, okay?”

“Sure,” I answer back, kissing Beck on the
cheek and leaving him with his friend.

After a couple of shots of tequila and a
carbomb, Erin and I are dancing in the middle of the bar with a bunch of
drunken tourists.

Erin has found herself a guy who appears to
be at least twice her age and probably has a frigid wife asleep at home in their
million-dollar beach cottage. She’s grinding up against him and he has his
hands on her ass. Everything about it is inappropriate, but then I catch her
glance over at Ryan. I see the fury in his eyes and I know exactly what she’s
doing.

I pull her away from the oldie, shaking my
head at her. “No,” is all I say and she laughs.

“No, to what?” she shouts over the bar
noise and the music while giving me an innocent look.

Before I can answer her, she locks her
mouth with mine in a kiss that is designed to draw attention and then she swats
me on the ass.

“I gotta go pee,” she says and bails off to
the bathroom leaving me with an entire bar of horny men staring at me.

I make my way back the table where Beck and
Ryan are sitting. Pulling my hair off my sweaty neck, I sit down and realize
Ryan is missing.

“Where’s Ryan?” I ask, not even thinking
about Erin until Beck speaks.

“He went to the bathroom,” Beck says, his
eyes focusing only on my heaving chest.

Oh, shit. I can only imagine what’s going
down right now. My only thoughts are that Erin has that poor boy cornered in
the men’s restroom of O’Loughlin’s.

I take a long drink of my beer and fan
myself with my hand.

“It’s hot as hell in here,” I yell to Beck
as I hike my skirt up a little trying to cool off, but it just distracts him
and his eyes are now glued to my sticky thighs.

“You having fun?” he asks his hand sliding
up my leg.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“I am. It’s been fun catching up with Ryan.
We usually spend every day together and don’t tell him I said this, but I kinda
miss him.”

I laugh just as Ryan walks up to the table
in a hurry. His face is flushed and his hair is messy.

“What happened?” Beck asks as he takes in
Ryan’s appearance.

“Nothing,” he quips. “That girl is fucking
infuriating.”

“Where’s Erin?” I ask, knowing exactly what
has just gone down.

“She left. That fucking girl,” Ryan says as
he runs his fingers through his hair, the frustration written all over his
face.

Beck stares him down, obviously knowing his
friend far too well; without the two of them speaking another word, he gives
Ryan Erin’s address and tells him to go fix it.

“Don’t blame him,” I say after Ryan has
left the bar. “Erin is a piece of work.”

“Trust me, I remember her from all those
summers she spent here with her family, but Ryan’s not innocent either.”

Beck and I finish our beers and as I stand
up, I realize those shots I did with Erin early on are starting to kick in.
Beck slips his arm around my waist as we both yell a good night to Pop.

“Come on my drunk girl, let’s get you
home,” Beck says, planting a kiss on the top of my head.

“You know I’ll always be your girl,” I tell
him and I don’t know where it comes from.
Why
did I say that out loud?

“You’ve been my girl since the day I
watched you catch that thirty pound bass on your dad’s boat,” Beck jokes.

“Oh, god, don’t remind me.”

“You were screaming like a girl because you
were so scared you hurt it. Your dad and I were jumping up and down. That
fucker was huge.”

“But I made you get the hook out and throw
it back,” I say, remembering exactly what Beck looked like then. Boyish, but
still so incredible and I wanted him before I had ever spoken a word to him.

“I couldn’t say no to you and neither could
your dad,” Beck adds and it makes me smile. Beck continues and what he says
next surprises me. “But that wasn’t actually the day I realized I wanted you to
be mine. I knew I wanted you long before I ever even met you.”

He looks down at me and his eyes are full
of love. I can see it in his face and hear it in his voice as he talks about
our past. It makes my heart swell in my chest, but it also makes me want to
cry.

Beck unlocks the front door, scooping me up
in his arms; he carries me to the bedroom, setting me down on the bed as he
kisses me slowly.

His lips brush over mine as his tongue slips
into my mouth. Everything about it is perfect. Slow and sweet.

He pulls my skirt down and my shirt over my
head and unhooks my bra tossing everything off to the side as he does the same
with his clothes.

Beck climbs in bed next to me, pulling me
into his arms, I settle myself against him, fitting perfectly. I want this
night and everything about us to stay this way forever. I need Beck; I can’t
lose him a second time.

“Tell me something else you remember about
me,” I whisper as the sound of the waves fill the room; a lulled silence with
only the sounds of the ocean and our breathing cutting through the night.

I feel Beck smile and I wait.

As I lie here staring up at the ceiling,
Kelsey asleep in my arms, my mind drifts back to memories from our past. When
she asked me to tell her something else I remembered about her, I’d said the
first thing that popped into my head, probably the single greatest night of my
life.

“Tell me something else you remember about
me,” she’d whispered.

I smiled. “The night I took your
virginity,” I said.

“Beck,” Kelsey said, lightly whacking me on
the chest.

I grabbed her hand, holding it in mine as I
said, “No, Kels, it’s not like that, baby.”

“What is it like then?” she asked.

I lifted our joined hands to my mouth and
pressed a kiss against her knuckles. “It was the first time you told me that
you loved me,” I whispered. “And the first time I’d admitted out loud that I
loved you.” Kelsey had snuggled closer then, understanding what it was about
that night that I was talking about. “And everything that came after was so
much better because of it,” I said, kissing the top of her head.

“Yeah,” she’d said, her mouth on my chest
as she straddled my hips and kissed her way to my mouth to remind me all over
again. “It was.”

And as I lie here with her in my arms now,
her body still hot, but her soft, slow breaths letting me know she’s asleep, I
can’t help but admit it again. Admit what I’ve been fighting for the last ten
years, what seeing her again has finally forced me to acknowledge.

“I love you, Kels,” I whisper, knowing she’s
already asleep and probably won’t hear me.

But it doesn’t make the words mean any less
and it doesn’t mean I’d take them back if she could hear me. I’d wake her up
and tell her right now if I could just figure out a way to make what I’m
feeling be enough. But despite everything that’s happened between us, the
amazing night and day we’ve just spent together, nothing has changed.

I still have a life in Boston, and Kelsey
still has her life here in Rockport. And I know none of the things that were
between us ten years ago have changed. If anything, Ryan coming up here now has
only served as a reminder of all the things that are still waiting for me.

“Fuck…” I breathe out, my arm tightening as
Kelsey stirs in my arms.

If only I could find a way to make this
work.

The next morning I wake early. Kelsey is
still fast asleep and she looks so peaceful, I decide to leave her while I
wander into the kitchen to make coffee. As I’m sitting out on the front porch
with Bella, sipping my first cup, Ryan drives up. When he gets out of the car,
he looks like he hasn’t slept for days and he’s wearing the biggest shit-eating
grin I’ve ever seen.

“Guess you had a good night after all,” I
say, laughing.

Ryan grins as he walks up the path to the
house. “A gentleman never tells, O’Loughlin. You’d know that if you were one.”

I practically spit my mouthful of coffee
out. “Since when the fuck have you ever been a gentleman?” I ask.

Ryan slaps me on the shoulder and then pats
Bella before walking into the house. “Fucking always,” he says and I stand and
follow him in.

“Bullshit,” I say as we walk into the
kitchen and I pour him some coffee. “But if that’s the shit you’re spinning, I’ll
just get Kels to ask Erin,” I say, smiling as I hand him the cup.

Ryan leans back against the kitchen island
and an image of Kelsey bent over it while I fucked her from behind yesterday
morning, pops into my brain. I have to shake my head to clear it before I leave
Ryan and my coffee and go back into the bedroom and wake my girl up instead.
Ryan smiles at me, but doesn’t say anything. What the fuck happened last night
with him?

“Okay,” I say, forcing the thoughts from my
head. “You don’t want to spill the beans, fine. How long you hanging around
for?”

I watch as he runs a hand through his hair.
He’s still in his suit, although his jacket and tie are missing. “Gonna head
back tomorrow,” he says. “Just a quick stop to fill you in on what’s happening
with the case.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Could have done
that over the phone, Summers.”

“Could have, yeah,” he says, grinning at me
again. “But then I wouldn’t have met your girl or her friend now, would I?”

I shake my head at him. “You’re fucking hopeless.”

Ryan laughs. “Like you can talk, you’re so
fucking pussy whipped, it’s not funny. No wonder you’re sticking around up
here.”

A jolt hits my stomach, although I don’t
fully understand where it’s coming from. He’s partly right, I am pussy whipped.
I always have been with Kels and I’m not embarrassed to admit it’s true. The
things that girl does to me, I don’t think I could ever get enough of her. But
it’s more than that. It’s everything else we still share too, everything else
we could have if I just stuck around. Days like yesterday, which was so fucking
perfect could become regular days for us.

“So tell me about the case,” I say, not
wanting to go down this path just yet.

Ryan takes a long sip of his coffee and
runs his hand across his jaw. “Well, the fuckwit has decided to change his
story. Says he’s not guilty after all, even though the DNA evidence all points
to him being the one.”

“Fuck,” I breathe out, sure we’d gotten
this fucker when we’d interviewed him last week. “But he gave us a signed confession?”

“I know,” Ryan says. “But now he’s saying
we forced him into it.”

“That’s total bullshit,” I practically
shout.

Ryan holds up a hand. “I know, Beck, I
know. The DA thinks it’s an open and shut case; that he’s just stalling and
trying to buy time. But,” he says, finishing off his coffee. “It does mean you’re
going to have to give evidence in court when it eventually goes to trial.”

“Jesus christ,” I say, running a hand down
my face. This whole thing would have been a million times easier if this fucker
had just stuck to his original story. Ryan and I didn’t force him into
anything, and he knows it. All this little shit is doing is trying to find an
alternative to the twenty years he’s likely to spend behind bars when he’s
found guilty. If only he’d given us a reason to put a bullet in him, we’d never
have even reached this point and Jane Donovan still would have gotten some sort
of justice for everything he did to her.

“I guess this means I’m going back to
Boston,” I say, just as Kelsey walks into the kitchen wearing one of my
t-shirts.

After Ryan and I make plans to meet up for
lunch later on, I walk out of the kitchen and into the bathroom, where Kelsey
is taking a shower. Stripping off my clothes, I open the door and step under
the hot water, sliding my arms around her waist.

Kelsey stiffens in my arms and it makes my
heart skip a beat. I lean in and press kisses along her shoulder and neck,
trying to get us back to where we were last night. I know she heard what I said
to Ryan about needing to go back to Boston; the look on her face said
everything. She hadn’t said anything though, just made some lame excuse about
needing to go to work before she walked out with barely a glance in my
direction.