Necessary Restorations (The Walsh Series) (A) (34 page)

Swallowing back the tension rising in my throat, I started responding to Tiel’s messages but knew I couldn’t get it into a text. Deleting it all, I tapped the icon beside her picture—the one from September, where she was sitting on the grass, wearing that smile that always brought out mine—and called her.

“Please don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember who I am when I’m here, and all I want is some definition and structure. I’m in a terrible mood and being bratty. Rant, over.”

“How long have you been ruminating on that?” I asked. She made a non-committal sound and I heard a screen door bang shut. “Just tell me.”

“I don’t know. Maybe since always?”

Aggravation bit at my nerves, but I pushed it all down. She managed to unleash every thought in her head on most occasions, but never mentioned the one thing that was truly bothering her. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

There was wind rustling in the background and I caught an occasional hum or murmur, but minutes passed before she responded. “Because you’re a weirdo and I like that shit. You’re my friend, one of my best friends, and if nothing else, I didn’t want to push away my best friend because I needed to know what it meant now that we’re sleeping together. I’ve always wanted a lot more than you did, but I didn’t want to tell you that and ruin things.”

Well, shit.

I’d been operating under the assumption Tiel wanted casual. Everything about her was casual, all the time, and she eschewed every other label under the sun. She’d even told me she didn’t necessarily like the term ‘violinist’ because she played ‘a little bit of everything.’

And she’d wanted a lot more than I did? Yeah, I would have appreciated hearing about that much sooner. She freaked out when I offered to convert the showers to her practice space. She thought I wanted her to move in with me—it didn’t sound like a bad idea, but it wasn’t what I’d intended to say—and promptly dove into panic mode. If she wanted more of me, I wasn’t averse to offering. “Can I tell you what I’m thinking?”

“Can’t you always?” she asked.

If I had known . . . shit. I probably would have fucked it up somehow.

Simply put, she was unlike any other woman I’d ever met. Sure, I picked up the generalities, but there were so many more quirks I was only beginning to understand. It was obvious that this—the definition of us—was her cornerstone, and until it was square, we couldn’t build anything else. And I was the asshole who hadn’t put those pieces together until now.

But it killed me that she didn’t mention it the other night at dinner when I straight-up told her I wouldn’t be a lying dick like her ex-husband. There were a lot of names I’d willingly accept, but cheater wasn’t one of them. Instead, she waited until she was seven hours away, and the best I could do was talk her down while I thought about spanking her and begging her to love me for eternity.

“More,” I said, pressing my palm to my crotch to alleviate the pressure there.

“More?” She sniffled and blew out a breath. “More what?”

More of my cock inside you, fucking this silliness away and promising our forever,
I thought. Probably not the right thing to say. There was honesty and then there was word vomit, and I needed to keep a handle on the latter.

“We’re more than friends, and I don’t want this to blow over,” I said. “I want this to last. Believe me when I say that, Tiel. We have no idea what we’re doing and we’re probably going to screw up along the way, but . . . we can figure that all out. I want us to be the people who figure it out.”

“Last for a little while?” she asked. “Or last for a long while?”

I’ll last as long as you want me,
I thought. Also, not the right thing to say.

“A long while,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

Let me tell you what you want right now: you want to be spread out on my bed and you don’t want to think again until we’ve made love and you’ve come for me at least three times.

“You mean that? Don’t give me the manwhore boilerplate, Sam, because I really cannot handle that today.”

“Of course I mean that,” I said. I wasn’t addressing the player comment. It was intended to get a reaction out of me, and the only reaction that seemed to make a damned bit of difference on that topic was spanking her. And,
fuck,
I wanted my hand on that round ass. “Unless you want something different.”

“I want to hang out with you,” she said simply. “And have ridiculous arguments about irrelevant things, and long talks about random stuff, and laugh with you all the time. I want you staring at my boobs and saying pervy things, and then doing all those pervy things.”

“Yeah, I get the sense we’re good on the sex side of this,” I laughed. I was going to need another shower. It would either be very long or very cold. Or both. “But you have to tell me when something’s bothering you, Sunshine.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just fall apart when I’m here and it magnifies everything else. It’s like, I’m not good enough for my family, and maybe I’m not really good enough for you.”

I’d thought of Tiel as my life raft since the day in the elevator, but it was possible we’d been keeping each other afloat this whole time.

“I’m here whenever you need me, and you’re definitely good enough for me. Never doubt that, not for a second.”

She sighed. “Okay. I have to confess . . . I’ve been checking out tomorrow’s train schedules.”

Yes,
I thought.
Come back to me. Stay with me. Stay with me
always
. Let me bury myself in you for hours and say all the things I don’t want to say without your skin beneath me. Come home and let me give you everything, all of me.

“I’ve never doubted you,” I said. “Go do the family thing, and then get your ass back here. I’m not letting you out of the bedroom until next year.”

A HAPPY GLOW heating my cheeks and the tingle of Sam’s affection zipping through my muscles, I headed down the street and up my parents’ driveway.

I can do this,
I thought.
Get through this day and get home to Sam.

As I reached out to open the door to the back porch near the kitchen, I froze, some sixth sense holding me in place.

“It’s just so sad.” My mother’s voice. “She has nothing.
Nothing,
” she whispered. “My heart breaks for her, it really does. But how is she going to meet a nice boy? Or have a family? I doubt she has health insurance. What if she gets sick? What if she’s in an accident? I live in constant fear that I’ll get a call in the middle of the night that something awful has happened.”

“You and Vikram should help her out.” My aunt, Daphne. “You can spare some money. We helped Alex for a few years until he got on his feet, and he’s doing well now. But you have to be patient. Sometimes it takes them longer to find their way.”

“She’ll be thirty, Daph.” She sighed and I thought I heard her eyes rolling, too. “We never should have let her go away to school. She didn’t have the maturity for that, and she’s still paying for it. At what point do we stop trying to help? When do we go to her apartment, pack her things, and move her back home? Like an intervention.”

I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. It was hysterical in an outrageous, painful way.

“Didn’t you say she’s still in school?” Daphne asked.

My mother made a dismissive noise. “She claims she finished one program and started another, but that sounds like another one of her lies. How many degrees does someone need? It’s just
music.
If she wanted to give private lessons, she could have stayed right here and gone to community college. But no one can tell Tiel anything. She does whatever she pleases, and she always has.”

“Well it was nice that she came home,” Daphne said. “We haven’t seen her in so long, and she’s grown into a lovely woman. I always knew she’d be pretty.”

“I just hope she doesn’t do anything to embarrass herself this time,” my mother huffed. “I couldn’t believe the scene she made at Agapi’s wedding.”

And by ‘scene’ she was referring to me hanging out at the bar during the reception, and not waiting on my sister hand and foot. Given that I didn’t get one of the ugly blue bridesmaid dresses, I didn’t see it as my responsibility.

Their conversation turned to the food, and I braced myself to walk through the kitchen. They stopped what they were doing when they saw me, staring for a long, tense moment, and then lapsing into rapid-fire Greek. I’d given up on learning more than the basics after my confirmation, and with nearly fifteen years separating me from regular practice, I didn’t understand a word they were saying.

“What is it you’re studying these days?” Daphne asked.

My mother watched as I poured a glass of wine, her stare communicating plenty of disapproval. She didn’t come out and say it—not this time—but she harbored concerns about whether I enjoyed a hard-partying, rock’n’roll lifestyle complete with drugs and blacked-out drunkenness.

So I filled the glass all the way to the top. “Music therapy. My dissertation is focused on the role of musical performance on the emotional, social, and cognitive needs of children on the autism spectrum. I’ve published several journal articles on the power of early therapeutic interventions for children living with autism.”

“Oh,” Daphne murmured. Her face registered a slight hint of shock, but then an impressed gleam sparkled in her eye. This was the first time I’d come out and clarified my work, and it was pleasant to see some reaction, even if I’d polished up the situation a bit. “Good luck with all that.”

“So you plan on staying in college forever?” my mother asked.

I glanced between her and Daphne while sipping my wine. “I’ll be finished with my research in a few months. I haven’t decided whether I want to pursue full professorship or clinical fellowships once I have my doctorate. Or perhaps I’ll devote my time to private practice. I do have many more consultation requests than I can handle,” I said, my tone intentionally contemplative.

I returned to the wine bottle and topped off my glass, my mother tracking my every move. “A little early, don’t you think?” she asked.

Smiling, I moved toward the living room. “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

I settled in to watch Christmas Day parades with my grandmother. She was thrilled to see me, and insisted on a tight hug.

She also thought I was someone else, so it fit with the theme of this trip.