Playing for Love at Deep Haven (23 page)

“It’s also where
it started.”

“
Really
messy, Zach.”

“Okay.” He let
go of her, rolling onto his back with exasperation, and part of her felt
relieved. “Life’s messy, Vile. Love’s messy. Unless you’re with
Shep
fucking Smalley. Then it’s parceled into perfect,
bite-size pieces of sawdust.”

He was pushing
back. He was also right. Goddamn it.

“Don’t talk
about him like that.”

“Your sainted
ex.”

“He’s dead,
Zach. Have some respect.” She tugged the blanket over her, moving onto her side
and turning her back to him. Yeah, he was right, but it felt disloyal to let
him talk about
Shep
like that—she didn’t like it.

After several
minutes, she felt the back of his fingers run softly down her back. “Vile? I’m
sorry.”

“You should be,”
she muttered, still facing away.

***

He rolled onto
his back again and stared at the ceiling, annoyed. What had just happened? They’d
been talking about living together and suddenly she’d shifted the conversation
back to what had happened at Yale. She still didn’t trust him enough to say “I
love you,” even when it was written all over her face. She could barely talk
about a future with him And as much as he hated to admit it, thoughts of her
with
Shep
still invaded his mind at odd moments and
made him want to punch something.

“You know what,
Violet? Let’s hash it all the fuck out once and for all, because I’m sick of it
popping up every time we’re having a good moment. Fuck, yes, we got messy. We
were kids trying to figure out enormous fucking feelings. And no, I couldn’t
handle it. You were the first girl I ever loved, the first person who ever
loved me. Forgive me for not recognizing the feeling or knowing what to do with
it when it arrived on my doorstep. And yes, I made the biggest mistake of my
life when I got freaked-out and ran away. But, goddamn it, Vile, I can’t change
the past. I wish I could. I wish I hadn’t missed out on nine years with you.
But we’re here now, aren’t we?” She didn’t answer and something inside him that
longed for her beyond words, and definitely beyond good decisions, snapped. “And
as long as we’re hashing things out, you jumped in
Shep’s
bed in what? Three weeks? Four? How long was it until he was
comforting
you, huh?”

She whipped
around to face him with furious eyes and sat up abruptly, grabbing one of the many
blankets to hold against her chest in an effort to hide her breasts.

“You’re
such
an asshole!”

“
I’m
an asshole?” Zach sat up too,
yanking another blanket up to his waist. “You couldn’t wait a few days for me
to get my head around—”

“Around
what
? Whether or not you
liked
me? We’d spent every waking
moment together since the first day of school, then you slept with me and
walked out of my life!”

“Because ‘I love
you’ felt like too much, Vile. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Too big. Too final.
Too scary. Ever felt like that?”

Her eyes were
wide and furious, and he could see her face reddening, even in the dim light.
She looked like a volcano about to explode. And then she did.

“Why didn’t you
ever come back to me?
Before
I got
together with
Shep
!
After
! Five years ago! Last summer! Sometime! Anytime! Why? If you
loved me so much, why didn’t you
ever
come
back to me?” Her last words came out in a harsh, strangled, ragged sob.

He didn’t flinch
but heard his voice waver a little as he answered, “Because you had already
moved on.”

“At Yale?”

He nodded. “Was
I supposed to assume some sweet words from my lips would have prompted you to
walk away from your life with him?”

“Yes,” she
breathed, low and intense with fury. “Yes. You could have assumed that. Zach, all
you needed to do was tell me, and I would have been yours.”

Now he
did
flinch, hating her words because she
was lying to him. Didn’t she know that he had come to find her the second his
feelings had come into focus that fall at Yale? By then she hadn’t wanted him.
He looked down at the violet on his wrist, working to keep his voice calm
despite the wave of anger he felt.

“That November,
when I finally realized what I had lost, I wanted you back, Violet, but you weren’t
available. You were always with him. You moved into his room just like you’d
moved into mine. I was sure you were sleeping with him, and when I thought
about it, I wanted to die.” He tried to keep his voice measured, but it was
hard to control the pain that resurfaced as he discussed those dark days. “The
days I saw you together? Him touching you? Kissing you? Every time it was like
someone reached into my chest and ripped out my beating heart. I never saw you without
his arm draped across your shoulder, his tongue fucking your mouth like he was sucking
the life out of you. I finally had to transfer to Juilliard because I thought I
would go crazy if I had to see it anymore.

“And the one
time I actually approached you, you looked like you were going to faint or
vomit if I took one step closer. You stood there staring at me, leaning back
against your rich, popular, frat-hole boyfriend like you couldn’t bear to look
at me, like I was nothing to you. I saw it, Violet. You may not remember it.
But I saw it in your eyes. I knew. I knew we were totally and completely over.”

Chapter 17

Violet knew
exactly, precisely, the moment he was talking about.

She’d been with
Shep
by then, standing beside him as he talked with some of
his frat brothers. Only Violet had noticed Zach decisively approaching from a
distance. Her heart wrenched with agony, and her lungs leaked air until they
were as weak and empty as a popped balloon.
Shep
was
oblivious to the hitch in her personal space-time continuum, but his strong arm
over her shoulders was the only thing that kept her standing upright. As Zach
got closer, his eyes had narrowed to furious slits, glancing at
Shep
, then watching her from where he stopped a few feet
away. He looked down at the ground before meeting her eyes again for a split
second. She was sure he was going to say something, and her legs were ready to
sprint to him and launch herself back into his arms. But he didn’t say
anything. He turned on his heel and stalked away, pulling up the collar of his
jacket and disappearing into a nearby building. She didn’t see him again after
that, and it was rumored that he’d transferred to Juilliard when he didn’t
return to Yale in January.

She looked at
him in the firelight, at the pain etched on his face as he talked about a
moment in time so many years ago. The rawness in his voice startled her.
Finally she recognized the deep pain he’d suffered, separately but equally,
when they lost each other, and she felt the last barriers to trusting him slip
away. He had loved her. He had run away. But he had wanted her back again.

She leaned
forward, touching the blanket on top of his leg, but he shifted, moving his leg
away as if her touch hurt.

“Zach,” she said
softly. “I remember that day. I wanted so badly to run to you, but I knew I’d
just be humiliating myself chasing after a guy who didn’t want me.”

“No,” he snarled.
“Don’t lie to me, Violet! I saw your face!”

“My legs were
buckling every step closer you came. I leaned into
Shep
so I wouldn’t fall. And I stared at you, and you stared at me, and I waited for
you to say something, to grab me, to do anything that would just let me know—”

“No! That’s not
what I fucking saw, Violet! I was there. I was the one standing alone. I
remember!”

“You . . . my
face . . . I mean, yes, I
was
going
to faint or vomit, you’re right. Because I was standing with the wrong guy, and
the right guy was standing in front of me. All you needed to do was put out
your hand out to me. Say my name. Anything, Zach. Any sign that you wanted me
and I would have run to you.”

His eyes closed
slowly, and he clenched his jaw. His fingers twisted the hem of the blanket.
When he opened his eyes again, they looked glassy, devastated, and defeated.
His voice was soft and flat,
thready
with emotion.

“You were
with
him. I couldn’t compete with that,
Vile. I was some poor, scrawny kid from Upstate New York on scholarship. Awkward.
And intense. I’d broken your heart and walked away from you, and he’d scooped
you up. A rich jock frat boy from Greenwich. I had nothing to offer you. I—”

“
Nothing
?” She gasped as though he’d
slapped her. “You think I ever cared about money? About
Shep’s
money? I
never
cared about shit like
that. Never!”

“You said you
loved me!” he exploded, pointing his finger at her. “You said that! You said, ‘I
love you whether you love me back or not. And I’ll go on loving you until I
don’t anymore.’ What’d that last for? A couple of weeks? Before you were
playing tonsil hockey with
Shep
fucking Smalley?”

“I did!”

“You did
what
?” he spat out.

“I did go on
loving you!”

“Until you
didn’t
anymore!” He crossed his arms
over his muscled chest, which heaved up and down with emotion, his face tangled
and pinched. “You
chose
him. You were
with
him. You
didn’t
fucking love me anymore—I could see it on your face.”

“Fuck you, Zach!”
she half screamed and half sobbed, remembering the debilitating pain of his rejection
as fresh as it had happened yesterday. “You don’t know anything! I did! I did
love you, you unbelievable asshole! I was trying to get over you, but it didn’t
work. Poetry didn’t work.
Shep
didn’t work. Greenwich
didn’t work. Writing a book about it didn’t work.
Shep
dying
didn’t work.
Nothing
worked. I
did
go on loving you
. I
never stopped!
”

As she realized
what she’d said, she gasped, and tears flooded her eyes. She bowed her head,
covering her face with trembling hands, appalled by what she’d just revealed
and the way it had come tumbling out. She exhaled in a labored rush of regret
as she clenched her eyes shut, trying to catch her breath.

“No no
no
no
no
no
,” he whispered in disbelief, the blanket falling
from his waist as he lurched forward to kneel directly in front of her, his
breath brushing her forehead as he exhaled raggedly. “What did you say?”

She heard the
bewilderment in his voice as his hands reached up to cover hers, threading his
fingers through hers so that the pads of his fingertips touched the hot,
flushed skin of her face.

“What did you
say, Vile?”

He tilted her
head up to face him, and when she opened her eyes, his were glistening and his
face contorted in pain and hope and a thousand other conflicting, clamoring
emotions. His chest swelled like he was holding his breath and his voice was
the gentlest, most brokenhearted, hopeful whisper she’d ever heard in her
entire life when he asked, “What did you just fucking say to me?”

She didn’t want
to tell him she loved him like this, at the end of a screaming match with both
of them knee-deep in decade-old recriminations. But he was looking at her eyes,
and there was no point in denying it. She took a deep, jagged breath.

“I never
stopped,” she breathed, exhaling with relief and surrender.

***

“You still love
me?” he asked, kneeling before her. He let go of her face, reaching down to tug
away her blanket until she was as naked as he, knee to knee before him. A
shiver of want trailed down his back, and he fought to control the burn behind
his eyes. “Right now? Right this minute?”

“Zach, I . . .”

He didn’t let
her finish. Unable to keep from touching her, he reached for her roughly, and
she let herself be gathered into his arms. Her breasts were crushed against his
chest, and her eyes—her beautiful brown eyes that were stricken and uncertain—were
almost level with his.

“Violet, do
you?”

“I . . . Please,
I . . .”

“Just say it. Do
you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He’d never had
an orgasm without sex, but a shudder ripped through his body at her admission,
and an animal-like instinct—to own her, to belong to her—overtook him in a wild
wave of requited love. His muscles flexed and released as he sat back on his
heels, reaching forward to cup her ass and lift her onto his lap. His mouth
crashed into hers, and she locked her ankles around his waist and her arms
around his neck. He loved the way she responded to him, matching him in
fierceness and intensity, holding him as tightly to her body as she could,
until he couldn’t tell where his skin ended and hers began. He slanted his
mouth over hers, reaching up to hold the back of her head and slow them down,
because he wanted to savor this moment.

She loved him.
She still loved him, and as much as he wanted to possess her, he wanted to draw
out the unbelievable quality of the moment when he learned Violet Smith still
loved him. After so long. After so fucking long, she belonged to him again. He
swept his tongue into her mouth, prolonging the agony of wanting to impale her
on his rigid sex, listening for the sound of her moan at the back of her throat
and then releasing her mouth to trail his lips down her neck. She wiggled on
his lap, and his lips twitched as he teased her with his self-control.

“You love me,”
he whispered against the soft skin under her ear.

“Yes.”

Her fingers
twined through the back of his hair, sending shivers down his spine as he
reached up to cup her face.

“Thank God,” he
whispered, plundering her mouth with his again.

As he kissed
her, she reached down between them, running her fingertips down his chest with
excruciating slowness, anticipation gathering between his hips as she finally
paused in the taut V of muscle that led to his erection.

He leaned back,
waiting for her to open her eyes, and when she did, she grasped his sex,
holding the hot, hard flesh in her fingers.

“Yes,” she
whispered again.

“Forever,” he
murmured, his eyes fluttering and his breath hitching as she moved her hand on
him.

“Probably,” she
said, and he heard the humor in her voice as she reached for a condom from the
pile on the floor by the fire with her free hand. She bit the wrapper to tear
it open, and he leaned back so she could sheath him. He flinched, sensitive and
ready, as she rolled the thin latex over him.

“Violet,” he
gasped as she positioned herself over his tip, teasing him, using her hand to
keep him steady. He panted. He wanted her to say it. “Tell me you love me.”

She didn’t.
Instead, she lowered herself onto him slowly, easing down, then up a touch
before easing down again, holding his eyes as she fit him into her body. When
he was fully sheathed within her, she arched her body against his, his pelvis
slamming upward into her, needing to possess her, to know she belonged to him
in every possible way. He claimed her lips again, winding her hair around his
hand until he held her head uncompromisingly to his, almost roughly, as he slammed
up into her over and over and over again. She scraped her nails down his back,
and he cupped her ass to push her closer, to take him still deeper. She moaned,
sinking her teeth into his shoulder.

Fuck, this is hot.

He groaned in
pain and pleasure, rotating his hips into her, and she cried out, digging her
nails into his back.

“Say it,
Violet.”

She murmured, “Zach,
come with me. Come with me . . .”

The pressure
built within his core, tightening up, shifting up, pulsing faster and faster.
She threw back her head, and he felt her muscles start to contract around him, sucking
him deeper into her hot, wet center, and he reached for her face.

“Violet, look at
me,” he rasped, holding still, using every bit of strength to control his
imminent orgasm.

She opened her
eyes, which were dilated to black, and panted against his face in light puffs. The
look in her eyes almost made it impossible not to come. She was about to fall
apart, and he knew it and he wanted her to, but he needed to hear her say it first.

“I love you,
Violet. Forever.”

“I’m yours,” she
murmured, closing her eyes. She clenched her internal muscles once, twice, then
bucked in his arms, setting off a spasm inside her body that made her muscles
flex and relax over and over again in tight fast ripples, vibrating against his
flesh. Mind-blowing. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his mind went numb.

He growled, unable
to hold back anymore, thrusting one last time to explode inside her. His
muscles convulsed, taut then undone. Waves of pleasure made his glistening skin
hot and cold as he surrendered to the exquisite pleasure of being intimately
coupled with the woman he loved.

She collapsed
against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he felt the shuddering tremors
that made her tremble in his arms, even as her body draped loose and languorous
against his. He gently maneuvered them down onto the floor, pulling the
blankets up and over them as she snuggled into his chest. He didn’t say
anything, and neither did she, and within moments her breathing was even and deep.

Zach watched her
sleep by firelight, brushing her hair off her forehead.

She’d said “I’m
yours,” but not “I love you.”

He pulled her as
close as he could, resting his chin on the top of her head, and closed his
eyes, wishing his heart didn’t feel so heavy, wishing that she hadn’t held back,
wishing that hearing she belonged to him was enough.

***

Violet jumped a
foot when her cell phone rang the next morning. The power had been back on for
several hours, which meant the refrigerator was working and Zach had gone into
town for some groceries. He told her he was making his specialty tonight, whatever
that meant. One thing about college was that she’d never cooked for him and
he’d never cooked for her, so she had no idea what to expect. The only thing
she knew for sure was that he was dessert, so frankly dinner was just about
irrelevant.

She flipped over
the phone to check the caller ID. Sophie.

“
Soph
!”