Sweet Cheeks (11 page)

She turns her head to face me, the heat of her breath hitting the side of my cheek as I keep my eyes trained on the sky, because fuck if I trust myself right now to not take advantage of a situation I shouldn’t even be in.

“I looked at him and realized he didn’t make me feel how yo . . . Nothing. Never mind. It just wasn’t right.” She laughs again. Nerves tinge the edges. “Can you believe he had the audacity to invite me to the wedding? To
my
wedding?”

“Your wedding?” She can’t be that drunk she’s mixing things up, can she?

“
Yep
. My wedding. All my planning. All the stupid hours I spent perfecting every detail. All he did was change the date and the bride.
Who does that
?”

“Wait a minute. They’re copying your plans?”

“Yep. From what I can tell it seems so. Same paradise location. Same ceremony time. Even the damn invitations. What kind of woman gets married to a man and keeps all of the ex’s wedding plans? Well, good thing she has the same initial in her first name so they could save all the monogrammed crap his mom bought.”

I laugh. Can’t help it. Ryder never told me this part of the story. “Maybe his mother talked her into it.”

She snorts again. “
Uptight Ursula
.”

I laugh. She sounds like the freckled face girl from before. “That’s her name?”

“No. But that’s what I call her. And you’re probably right about her talking the new girlfriend into it. She was such a controlling bitch. And to think she was going to be my mother-in-law.”

I feel her shiver beside me in mock disgust. Maybe she doesn’t still love him.

“Do they actually think you’re going to hop on a plane and show up?”
Shit
. Let’s hope she’s had enough to drink that she doesn’t realize I knew she’d have to fly to get there.

“That’s the thing—Whoa!” she says as she sits up quickly and then puts her hand down on my upper thigh to steady herself.

“You okay?” I ask as she giggles.

“I haven’t gone out drinking like this in quite a while, wow . . . this feels funny.” She sounds embarrassed.

I clear my throat. Try to concentrate on the conversation instead of her hand on my thigh where her fingers are dangerously close to my dick. Focus on anything but that.

“You okay?”

She looks down at me: lips parted, eyes wide, and fuck if the look on her face—innocent, complicated, pure Saylor—doesn’t make me think of the pressure of her fingers again. “Yeah.” She swallows and nods. “I’m fine. Just caught me off guard.”

“Okay.” I shift up. Figure that’s the best way to get her hand off my thigh. Try to be the good guy here. And the minute I move, she immediately jerks her hand back as if she didn’t realize it was there. Good thing her hand’s not on my thigh now. Bad thing? Bad thing is her lips are inches from mine.

I smell her perfume. See the moonlight in her hair. Hear her draw in a breath. And hell if I don’t need a distraction from stepping over a line I can’t cross.

The sway of her ass tonight at the club.

The sound of her laugh as she climbed the steps up here.

The way she went from fiery to cute in a goddamn second.

Step back, Whitley. Way the fuck back.

“You were saying something about being invited, Saylor?”
Distraction
. Get the conversation back on track. And my thoughts off of her lips.

“Uh. Yeah.” She shakes her head as if to clear the moment we just had and reaches forward to pick up nothing in particular to have a reason to shift away from me. “Ryder’s lost his mind.”

“And that’s something new?”

I get the smile I was working for but this time it’s more shy than confident. She plucks at the legs of her pants with her fingers. I wait.

“We both agree that Mitch sent the invitation as a kind of fuck you to me, but Ryder thinks I should play him at his own game. That I should accept the invitation and show up at the wedding. He believes the Laytons are badmouthing the bakery and that’s why it’s not doing too well. That they have enough pull with the people in this town, so now I’m like a pariah or something. I don’t know.” She shrugs and chews the inside of her cheek as she pauses for a moment. I can tell she’s hurt by the possibility that her brother’s assumption is true. The girl without a mean bone in her body. “He thinks if I were to stride into the wedding I walked away from and exude absolute confidence, like I knew for a fact that I had made the best decision ever by not marrying Mitch, it wouldn’t go unnoticed. In fact, he thinks that since it’s likely most of the guests have been told horrible things about me, seeing me so unaffected would make them curious. They’d wonder what I know about Mitch that they don’t, and curiosity might lead them to check out the bakery and—”

“And curious people will come to the store and possibly generate business.”

She looks at me, surprised I’ve come to the same conclusion as Ryder, and I cringe inwardly in case I’ve revealed too much.

“So you think he’s right?”

“I think there’s some merit to it,” I muse.

“Why?”

I think of Jenna. Of the burden I’m bearing to play a similar game all for image’s sake. And know if I am doing it for her, and how it could affect my career, I sure as shit will help Saylor if she asks. Now I just need to convince her of that.

“Because I see it every day. Take an actress who breaks up with an A-Lister. There are rumors as to why but no one knows the truth and neither of them comment publicly about their split. All of a sudden, the press wants nothing to do with her. She’s overlooked for parts. Not invited to any parties. She might even be snubbed by their friends if they run in the same circles because it sucks, but people don’t want to piss off the one who has the most power in the relationship.”

“Because that’s fair. Sheesh.”

“Yeah, but she gets the last laugh. She somehow gets her foot in the door somewhere. Shows up looking ten times better than she did before with some star or director or mogul more powerful than her ex on her arm, and it’s amazing how suddenly the people who wanted nothing to do with her are now knocking down her door to be her best friend.”

“Shallow assholes,” she mutters, and I’m pretty sure she’s ticking off names in her head of who that criticism matches.

“Very. But that’s life.”

“In your Hollywood bubble, maybe. Not mine,” she grumbles as if she’s seeing this through different eyes for the first time and is begrudgingly accepting it.

“Not my bubble at all.” I laugh with a shake of my head, needing her to know I’m not like that in the least. She glares at me and I’m not sure why. Is she putting two and two together?

“So what? I’m just supposed to fly there and show up at the wedding? Twiddle my thumbs while acting confidently, and then that’s all it will take? The tide will turn?”

“No.”

“No? Ah yes, I forgot. In order to appear self-assured, I apparently need to have a big, powerful, strapping man at my side because that’s the only way a woman can be confident, right?” Bitterness.

Can’t say I blame her.

“Not in my eyes, but in theirs? Possibly.” My comment settles between us. She rolls her shoulders. Her only physical tell of how pissed she is over this.

“So what? I’m just supposed to say, ‘Hey Hayes, wanna ditch your filming schedule and glamorous life and go on a ridiculous trip with me to my wedding that’s no longer my wedding?’” I hate the part of me that loves I’m the one she thinks of when she needs a man to accompany her. “Like you’d really fly to some island with me, so we can show my ex-fiancé and his family and uptight friends that I’m better off without him, because I’m “fake” dating you instead. A man who is so much bigger and better and more successful and handsome than he is? Like that’s going to happen.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” That stops her rant. Knocks the sarcasm from her last sentence.

Her head whips up and her eyes meet mine. Hand stops halfway to her hair as a disbelieving laugh falls from her mouth. “You’d actually go?”

I shrug. “Yeah. Why not? I could use a little R&R with someone I know and who doesn’t expect anything from me.” Something flashes in her eyes that I can’t read. “Besides, now that I remember him, Mitch always was an asshole in high school, I’d get some sick satisfaction from showing that fucker what he was missing out on by not being with you.”

“The irony,” she whispers and the two words hit me in the gut. The pang of regret not far behind it.

“Saylor—”

“No. Never mind. That was a cheap shot.” She says the words but the truth of them linger in her eyes. She reaches out and puts her hand on top of mine. “Thank you. The offer is sweet. The intent behind it even more so. But even if I wanted to, I’d never be able to pull it off.”

“Did you forget what I do for a living?” My laugh rings louder than it should. The Oscar on my shelf at home flashes in my mind as my need to convince her suddenly grows stronger than when Ryder first called. Greater than when I saw her earlier tonight. “I assure you we could pull it off.”

“We should leave.” She shifts to her knees suddenly and moves toward the door. I hate the hurt in her tone. Hate knowing that the fucker Mitch isn’t the only one who put it there.

I did, too.

“Saylor.”

“No. I’m tired. I need to get home.”

“Okay. Let me go down first in case you need help.”

She levels me with a glare for implying she can’t do it herself but I move past her, bodies brushing against one another, and take the lead anyway.

My feet are through the doorway when I look back at her. “For what it’s worth, Say, I think you should go. And I’d drop whatever to be there for you. It’s the least I could do.”

She doesn’t say a word to me, just nods as I lower myself out of her sight and down the rungs.

I’m on the ground in a few seconds, a very quiet Saylor not far behind me as I wait at the bottom. When she’s on the second step from the ground, her heel slips. Just as I step forward and reach out to her hips to help her, she spins around.

Our bodies are pressed against each other with her hands flat against my chest. Her expression is startled, but her eyes remain on mine. Her breath an audible hitch.

And fuck if standing like this with her doesn’t make me want to lean in and kiss her. It all comes back: her taste, that little sound she used to make in the back of her throat, the scar on the back of her head from falling off the brick wall that I’d feel when grabbing the back of it to direct the angle of our kiss. All of it.

And it’s a temptation like I haven’t felt in forever.

“Hayes.”

“Yeah?” My gaze flickers from hers down to her lips and then back up. I want to know what her eyes are telling me.

“Nothing. Never mind.” She shakes her head and steps back.

I clench my jaw. Fist my hands. Tell myself to let her walk away. To not notice the freckles on her nose are still there. The ones I used to tease her about as a kid, then later, loved staring at when she fell asleep in the bed of my truck at the drive-in when we were teenagers.

The thought triggers so many more things I used to love about her. Reminds me how close we were. How many parts of our lives were woven so tightly it was like we were one.

My God
. I know we were young. Know that I did the right thing in chasing my dreams since she was only seventeen and I was nineteen. But how selfish was I to leave without an explanation or a goodbye?

Ass. Hole.
Yep. You sure as hell were one, Whitley
.

And for that I deserve her understandable caution, every bit of her wrath, and every ounce of her hatred.

I start behind her down the worn path toward the car. Use the sight of her hips swaying to distract me from the memories rushing back.

My mind still runs but turns instead to how this was supposed to be easy. How I was going to come back, convince her to go to the wedding, and do my part to help her show up Mitch. Debt repaid just in time to walk away.
Again
.

And yet one look at Saylor the other day and I knew it was going to be far from easy. That combination of the fresh-faced girl-next-door I left mixed with the hurt and feistiness I see now, and I can’t help but wonder
what if
. What if I hadn’t left? And how did my leaving change her life’s path somehow?

Fuck that, Whitley. You did what you had to do. Took advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that definitely panned out.

But watching her ahead of me with the hurt in her eyes fresh in my mind, I know this is going to be harder than I expected.

Good thing she rejected the offer.

I have a plan. I have my world. My perfect, chaotic, surreal, fucking awesome world and there’s no room for error. She fits nowhere in it. That’s what I told myself when I left. That’s what I’m standing by now.

I’m just here to repay a debt to Ryder.

Just here to ease the guilt over what I did to her.

So why am I already thinking about the next time I can see her again?