Only when its us, p.13
Only When It's Us, page 13
Finally, we make it onto the ledge behind the waterfall. Willa drops down, immediately leaning against the mossy wall of the overhang. Water sprays in a fine mist, dampening her hair against her neck and her cheekbones. Her eyes hold mine, her chest heaving with exertion from the climb. My own chest rises and falls harshly. My lungs tug for air they can’t seem to get enough of. I feel lightheaded, and it’s not because of the climb.
Willa tears her gaze away, reaches inside her sports bra and pulls out her phone, wiping the front clear of residual water. “Right, time for this godforsaken ‘getting to know you’ questionnaire.”
I groan in agreement, ripping my phone out of my armband case. I use it for running or other times when I need to be hands-free and I’m without pockets. Willa sighs and crosses her legs at the ankles as she swipes through the list. “First things first. Full name.”
Ryder Stellan Bergman, I type.
Her phone dings and she taps the message. Her face brightens with a grin before she glances up at me. “Could you be any more Scandinavian, Lumberjack?”
I shrug, typing, My mom is Swedish. First-generation.
She frowns. “But your last name sounds Swedish, too. Your dad isn’t?”
A grin slips out because I know Willa will appreciate this. My dad took my mom’s last name. Well, legally, it’s hyphenated to his family name since that was tied to his degree, but he goes by Bergman. His was an awful mouthful, and he liked hers better. She said it was the least he could do, for all the kids he wanted her to pop out.
Willa snorts. “That’s badass.”
Quiet falls, but for the roar of the water creating a curtain between us and the outside world. Sutter’s a good name. I think you could find a guy who’d take it, I write.
She reads it and taps her phone, thinking. Maybe. I won’t have all those kids to justify it, though, at least for a while, maybe ever.
My question is out of my fingers into her phone before I can help it. Why?
She lifts her head so I can read her lips. “Can’t play pro with a baby bump.”
I nod. Of course. Willa’s going to have a professional athlete’s life. She’s going to travel the world for the National Team. She’ll make the Olympic Team next time they compete. Her life is going to be so different from mine.
I’ll admit it, I was fucking livid with Aiden after he pulled this couple’s therapy shit. I know my brother-in-law. I know exactly what he’s doing, and I’ve resented him this entire semester for pushing us together, over and over. I drive Willa nuts with my blunt delivery, my pragmatic outlook, my dry, needling teases. And Willa’s a temperamental pain in my ass. She makes fun of my flannel shirts, she provokes me almost constantly. She ribs me for my gruffness, then jabs me the moment I show her my soft side.
Despite all that, she’s important to me, and I’ve come to realize she needs a kind of gentle handling she won’t admit. Underneath that tough exterior and irascible temper of hers is someone just trying to protect herself from getting hurt. That clarity first came to me when I picked her up from the club. The way she looked at me so trustingly, how she leaned into me like I was somebody she could count on, someone strong enough to take her being human and a little needy. It was a rare window into her vulnerability. Seeing it felt like a gift.
But she was also shit-faced and exhausted, and she woke up the next morning just as feisty and playfully combative as always, teasing her body against mine, coaxing whatever reaction she could, just to get a rise out of me. And, so help me, for just a minute, I took the bait.
The moment she left, then texted me from her apartment, we were right back to what we always were. Enemies who can tolerate each other, friends who drive each other nuts. One of those. Both of them.
Who fucking knows. God, I have a headache.
The point is, her behavior that night and the next morning was an anomaly, not the norm. Reading any more into that night is delusional, and this reminder, this sobering reminder that a world-class athlete, the next great female soccer star of at least the U.S., if not the world, does not have room in her world for someone like me, is exactly what I needed. Because even if Willa Sutter did feel anything for me besides contemptuous amusement, I’m the least compatible partner for someone like her. I’m a guy who wants to live a quiet life in the woods, who wants to take walks among the trees and build campfires, and maybe teach some deaf kids and adults that they can be independent and active and safe in nature.
“Bergman.”
At least I think that’s what she says. My head snaps up. What? I mouth.
“I lost you,” she says.
Shaking my head, I sit straighter. Sorry. Your turn. Full name. Cough it up, Sunshine.
My phone buzzes in my hands. Willa Rose Sutter. Don’t you dare make some crack about a cutesy middle name for a hellion like me. It’s my grandma’s name and I’ll throat punch you.
I stare down at those words, saying them inside my head. Willa. Rose. Sutter.
That’s beautiful, I type.
Willa startles. Seems I caught her off guard by complimenting her. Am I that terrible to her? I say nice things about her, don’t I?
No, you ass, you don’t. Because that’s dangerous territory. We don’t go there.
True, subconscious. Very, very true.
Willa finally breaks away from staring at me in bewilderment and lowers her eyes to her phone. Favorite food.
Spinach, I type.
She scrunches her nose. “You would, Mountain Man.”
I roll my eyes. Healthier than yours. Double-stack cheeseburger and a root beer float. You and Rooney get it after two-a-days and rough games. You’re secretly worried Rooney’s going to confess your breach in strict diet to Coach because she has a guilt complex that typically prevents her from being able to lie at all.
Willa’s jaw drops, her eyes narrowing as they flick up and meet mine. “Have you been following me, Bergman?”
A slow grin pulls at my mouth. No, I type. But you talk, Willa, and I listen. I know you, better than you think.
Her face falls as she types. Then why do I know almost nothing about you? My body tenses as I read her words. Why don’t I know you’re a badass soccer player? Why do you know my favorite food and post-game ritual, and I don’t even know how you spend your weekends, or what you do for fun? How’s that fair?
I narrow my eyes at her, then type, Fair?
She throws up her hands, then grabs her phone and types furiously. Yes, fair! Why do I run my mouth around you, why do I tell you anything about my life, just for you to use it against me, to throw it in my face and tease me left and right? Then there’s you. What do I have to work with? A closed-off, cold, contained Abominable Snowman.
Now back up, I type. I tell you things. You met my friends, my roommates, I brought you to my house—I never do that. You know my schedule. You know I hate peanut butter cups.
She lobs a small pebble at me, so I look up. “Because that’s weird to hate peanut butter cups. Because you deserve shame for hating peanut butter cups. And I only came to your house and met Tucker and Becks because we had to do this project together.”
Because that’s the only thing that ever brought us together, Willa! Your world is not my world. I hit send and watch her face shift as she reads.
Suddenly, Willa looks up at me, her eyes tight. Her stare is unblinking and I can’t hold it. Stupidly, indulgently, my eyes roam her body. Water rushes around us, the mist plastering her scant clothes closer to her body, tightening the curls in her hair. God, she’s perfect. Muscular and fit, and still the faint curves of a woman. I felt those strong thighs in my grip, her high breasts smashed to my back.
I shut my eyes, trying to scrub the image from my brain, to erase the desire staining my system.
I sense movement and my eyes jerk open. Willa’s gaze glows as she leans onto all fours, then crawls my way. My heart pounds in my ears, heat floods my stomach and lower. I’m keyed up and cornered and I have no idea what Willa’s about to do.
She straddles my legs and I involuntarily hold my breath. Reaching past me, she yanks the stem off a plant, then sits back on her haunches, right on my thighs. My nails claw ineffectually into the slate beneath my palms. My pulse thunders, watching her rip off a leaf and set it to my lips.
“Mint.”
I sniff it, giving her a suspicious look that makes her grin.
“I’m not poisoning you, Lumberjack, see?” She stuffs a leaf in her mouth and chews happily. “You more than anyone should know what this is. Mint.”
I open my mouth, feeling the warmth between her legs slide over my thigh. She leans and sets the leaf on my tongue, and air finally rushes out of me.
Pungent mint bursts inside my mouth. The leaf tickles as I chew and watch Willa mirroring my movements. Her throat works as she swallows, and hunger coils tight inside me. Willa’s hands clasp mine, then skate up my arms. I can’t hear my breath, but I can feel it. I can feel each violent tug of air, the pound of my pulse along my length. Need soars up my chest, tightens my throat.
I stare at her lips. It takes considerable effort not to bite them.
“What do you want, Ryder?” her mouth says.
What do I want? That’s not the question. The question is what do I get? Do I want Willa? Hell, yes. Can I have her?
She leans closer. “What do you want?”
I’ve spent weeks restraining myself. Weeks trying not to picture her every time I close my eyes at night or pass a soccer field or taste oranges or smell roses. I haven’t touched myself once to the thought of her. I’ve shut it down every step of the way.
I could lie to her, text her some stinging jab, politely set her off my lap. But I don’t want to. What do I want? I want her. So. Fucking. Badly.
Her eyes are luminous, sunlight pale and wide, as they flick to my mouth. My shoulders flex as Willa’s fingers wrap around them.
She arches forward, making her breasts slide against my bare chest. My fingers sink into her hair and grab hold, nothing gentlemanly in my touch. I feel primal. Desperate. I fist her hair tight and watch her mouth fall open. Those lips. I’ve watched them for months, tortured by how full and soft they look, dying to taste them. I sit straight and slide my palm around her neck. My mouth lowers toward hers, controlled, slow. One moment we’re separate, the next we’re fused.
Boom.
Velvet-soft, decadent. The feel of her sweet mouth is so much better than I imagined. I gasp for air and steal hers. She tastes like mint leaves and something sweet that must simply be Willa. I haul her tighter to me, wrap her in my arms, as my hands feel everything I’ve barely let myself imagine touching. The dip and swell of her backbone, the jut of her hips, the curve of her waist. Every single rib.
When I part her lips and tease her tongue, she moans. I want to throw her down, rip off her swimsuit and rut into her like an animal, but if I’ve learned anything in my life it’s patience, it’s the long game. So, I’m gentle, exploratory. Our tongues tangle, a seeking kiss that starts whisper soft and ends in an open-mouthed beg for more. It becomes hungrier tastes, wet and hot, slow and lazy. Breathing is an obligation, and I resent its interference in the best kiss of my life.
Willa’s arms curl around my neck. She presses herself into me, her warmth seated over my lap, where I’m hard as fucking stone for her. She sighs as she feels it, and her fingers scrape through my hair. I can’t help but groan and sense my voice filling her mouth. It’s so impossibly sexy to feel her sounds, to give her mine.
Willa’s lips open wider over mine, her tongue a teasing flick that taunts mine to find hers again and dance. Slide, then nip, a kiss that pretends to be delicate before it builds in rhythm like a wave swelling to the point of collapse. Willa writhes over me, her movement so natural, her fit so perfect, we were made to do this. Her thighs lock around my waist, her elbows prop on my shoulders as she slides her fingers through my hair, and my world telescopes to this tiny breadth of space in which we touch and kiss and feel.
She grinds on me, and I roll my hips beneath hers, panting against her mouth, knowing if I do much more of this, it’s game over.
My hands find her shoulders and squeeze. Breaking apart, breathing heavily, I press my forehead to hers. Willa leans in for more, but I pull away just enough for our eyes to meet.
I’m beyond overwhelmed. My brain is scrambled, my senses confused.
When Willa sits back, her eyes search mine. She must read my torn expression, my shock. I watch her eyes cool and her walls go up. Clasping her hand, I wrack my brain for the right words, wishing I were clear-headed or brave enough to make her tell me why she asked me what I want, why we’re kissing when the drive up here was stony silence.
All we’ve done for months is banter and snap, prank and poke until this game ratcheted up to a dangerous realm of sexual tease. That damn yellow top started it all, and since then we’ve been brutally amping up each other’s libidos, taunting each other’s bodies.
Is this just the final move? Is this checkmate in our one-upmanship, and now all that’s left is to knock every piece away, to wipe away the history of each lost battle and victory from the board, now that she’s come out the winner? If so, I lost. She got me to kiss her. She undid me. I was putty in her arms. Willa fucking won.
Our eyes hold for a small eternity, hers cooling even more as time extends. On a long sigh, Willa gives me a halfhearted smile, then sweeps up her phone.
“Come on, Mountain Man. Back to reality.”
More obligatory questions answered perfunctorily, then our assignment is done and regret is a boulder in my chest. I know her favorite food, her twenty-year plan, her earliest memory, and the last state she lived in, but I still don’t know why she asked me what I wanted, why we just kissed and touched like the world was ending. I still don’t know what Willa Sutter wants from me.
Our descent’s silent, light still high in the sky as we walk to my car. Our clothes are sun warm, our skin sticky from sweat and the falls. Willa leans her temple against the window and stares out at the Pacific Coast Highway as I drive and rack my brain for how I can gain some clarity, some insight into what the hell is happening.
Just then I drive by a billboard featuring a father, his arm wrapped around his son, and it hits me. Dad.
I don’t often take advantage of the fact that my dad’s a physician, minutes from campus and my place. In fact, I never do. Mostly, it’s because I’m conditioned not to need him too much. My whole life, many other people’s need of him was more time-sensitive than mine, and I don’t mean that to sound like a victim, it’s just the truth. Dad’s an oncologist, he’s a father of seven, he’s a husband who loves his wife and prioritizes time with her. He’s on the boards of too many things to count, he even works with fellow veterans in his nonexistent spare time.
He’s a busy guy. I’m the middle child of his seven kids, so even when it came to family time, big agenda items like baby fevers and periods and first steps and failed tests were way more pressing than Ryder waiting with a book under his arm to read with Dad.
I learned how to be patient. I learned how to find those slivers of time when Dad was mine. I’d get up early to watch him shave and tell him about my day. I crawled into bed after he got home late from work and had showered off. Just five minutes cuddling in his arms before he started snoring, that was all I needed.
So now, as an adult man with his education underway and a practical life-plan ahead of him, I tell myself I shouldn’t need my father at all. Except I should, and I do.
I really need my dad.
My brothers and I aren’t talking much except for Ren, who’s empathetic to woman puzzles but not particularly helpful. He’s a bull in a china shop when it comes to the ladies. Aiden’s been there for me before, but he knows what’s good for him and has kept his distance the past few days, seeing as this whole mess is thanks to him moonlighting as a goddamn yenta.
I drop off Willa at her apartment and watch her slowly walk up the pathway. She turns and gives me a tired, halfhearted wave before she steps inside and closes the door behind her. Confused and torn, worried I’ve hurt her and terrified she’s played me, I feel the last emotional stilt collapse from under me. I pull out my phone, texting Dad, Got ten minutes for your favorite son today, old man?
His response is almost immediate. I always have ten minutes for you, Ry. Bring your old man a sandwich and an iced tea. Then we’re talking favorites.
13
Willa
Playlist: “Sunscreen,” Ira Wolf
What the fuck just happened?
Tears prick my eyes. I slam the door behind me, feeling the urge to do a quick sketch of Ryder’s face and throw darts at it. That’s followed by an oppositional tug to run after him, yank him by his good ear and drag him to my bed, where I’d take one punishing orgasm from him after another.
When he said your world is not my world, all I could think was how wrong he was. Ryder’s a big part of my world, for better and for worse. He’s my nemesis, my antagonist, my provocateur—perfect bookstore word for a moment like this—but he’s not just someone as cut and dried or as extreme as my enemy. He really is my frenemy. Someone I can count on to soak up every little thing I say, find its one weak spot and tease me for it. The person who’ll notice when I have a booger on my nose, take a picture just to fuck with me, then wipe it away with his bare hand. The guy that knows I eat three helpings of Swedish meatballs and has my practice schedule memorized so he can harass me with texts while I’m sprinting, late to our class.
So, I called his bluff. Bullshit, my world’s not his. I sat on his lap, got right up in his face and pretty much dared him to kiss me. It was the only way I could think to express all of those icky, sticky, mushy, impossible-to-verbalize feelings I have about him. To make Ryder Stellan Bergman understand how much his world is mine.
