Rekindling the Flame (Smoky Heights #1)

Chapter 17

SEVENTEEN

AURORA

Both of our eyes dart to the door to the studio apartment, knowing there are very few who could be on the other side of it, at the top of the stairs, pounding at the door like I wish he were pounding inside of me right now.

Whoever it is, I’ll fucking end them.

I may not have biceps from a lifetime of labor like the man in front of me, but I’ve got a razor-sharp tongue, and that motherfucker can be just as deadly. Probably more so, because inflicting damage on others with my weapon of choice doesn’t tend to lead to as many arrests as his would.

Wyatt’s fingers don’t loosen their hold on my wrist.

“Grady. Need to talk to you,” comes the husky, muffled voice of Duke.

“Old fucking bastard,” I grit out.

Wyatt scoffs in agreement. “That he is.”

He doesn’t need Wyatt. He could’ve seen him all fucking night while they were both downstairs. What he wants is Wyatt not upstairs. Not with me. Because I’m the bitch that ruins everything in this town. Especially Wyatt.

My eyes zero in on the man in question, the burning gaze he has on me, my hand that he’s still got captured in his vise of a grip. Making sure I’m watching him, he brings his head forward until he’s directly in front of my hand—held up in the air, frozen—opens his mouth, and closes it around my fingers I’ve been holding out for his inspection.

He sucks my fingers like I wouldn’t do to his dick, using his tongue to swipe up and around, teasing me, letting me know exactly the treatment my clit would get from his mouth if we’d remained uninterrupted. The way his eyes drill into mine is so intensely personal, I flush. Flutters erupt throughout my core and my heart beats between my legs, both sensations I can’t remember ever getting from one of my partners in New York. And this is from what he’s doing to my fingers .

Wyatt pulls his head back, back, back until my fingers pop free of his lips, all evidence of my arousal gone, nothing but remnants of his saliva in its place, glinting in the shitty, low light of the room. I’d say it’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen, but my spank bank is full of insanely hot shit this man has done.

Still, I may have just flooded my underwear. Again.

“Grady!” Duke’s voice booms throughout the small room, causing us to jump apart, and Wyatt to curse under his breath.

“Hold your fucking horses,” Wyatt grumbles as he redoes his pants, and I take a second to adjust my skirt after everything it’s gone through tonight, try to look a little less guilty of whatever crime he’s here to accuse us of.

Wyatt stalks to the door and yanks it open just enough for his large body to fit in the open space, blocking me and most of the room from Duke’s searching gaze. The owner of the bar doesn’t try to lower his voice, making sure we can both hear every word he says.

“I don’t know what you two think you’re doing, but we all know it’s not nothin’. There’s enough hardship in this town right now without you two causing another meltdown for everyone involved like you did last time.”

“Mind your business, Duke,” Wyatt grumbles.

Duke brushes off the rebuke and keeps going in on us both. “Think with the head on your shoulders, not the one in your britches, and maybe talk some things out between the two of you, like mature adults, before you start desecrating my bar again. This place means something to these people. You can at least do me that much, both of you.” There’s a pause for a few seconds before I hear him speak a little quieter this time. “I don’t wanna know what you did to that pool cue or why it’s on the ground, but you’d better clean up your mess.”

Now would be a great time to be swept away in a flash flood, thanks so much.

His volume is even louder when he speaks again. “Also, you look like you haven’t shaved in two weeks, Grady. It’s called a razor. Use one. The ladies like a smooth face against their softest bits.” I see Wyatt’s head flinch to the side ever so slightly as Duke taps his cheek a couple times and is gone.

And with that, the door closes again, a little sharper than necessary, leaving the two of us in the kind of awkward silence I expected when I first ran into him, my first (awful) night back in the Heights, but strangely, haven’t felt with him until this precise moment.

The years of history, the eon of cruel silence that followed, they swallow me now. Swarm in, rushing to fill every gap, every iota of space in this small room, and press in on me. I’m left gaping, grasping for a way to fill the silence—the unanswered questions he must have—with anything that makes sense, makes what happened all those years ago any better, makes what we just did okay after all of it. For the first time in all twelve years, I’m faced with the pressure of having to explain myself, having to face the damage I caused to this man’s life, to his very soul. At least try to apologize for the scars I left behind.

Duke is right.

We need to talk.

The fact Wyatt didn’t ambush me for answers the second I walked back into town, stumbled into Suds, it speaks to his maturity, his strength as a person. The fact that he hasn’t held our past against me, hasn’t pushed me for anything beyond what I can give him here and now, but he’s just been here for me, giving me what I need to get through this shitshow of a time …

He deserves more from me than what I’ve given him. Time to bad bitch up.

“We should probably talk about the elephant in the room,” I say, pointing at the only piece of furniture in here that’s big enough for two. We both head over as my head spins to try to find words.

“Eh, that elephant, she’s kinda my roommate at this point,” he cracks, but it cracks something in me. That I’ve left him with this burden to bear, all this time.

“I’m sorry,” I start quietly, clearly, as I sit down on the edge of the bed that takes up most of the square footage in this room.

His solid frame follows me down, and the bed shifts and settles under his added weight next to me.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he rebuts automatically, something softer than normal already present in his tone. That better not be pity. Or understanding. Ugh, understanding might be even worse.

How could he understand? I’m the asshole that left him in the middle of the night with nothing but a note after we were together for five years. He shouldn’t understand. If the roles were reversed, I would’ve nut-punched him when he strode back into the bar that first night, and probably thrown him outside and let the rest of the locals have at him too.

He’s clearly grown and matured well beyond the young man I fell in love with. The one who was as hot-tempered as I am, and almost equally as selfish. There’s nothing selfish about the way he’s been there for me since I got back. Being my buffer from this town, all the feels that come with it. Keeping me out of my head as best he can when he owes me nothing. Just protecting me because that’s his nature.

I wonder if he can tell I’m still the same self-serving girl I was when I left. The one who expects too much and gives too little. Who’s never fit in this small town, who had to go to the biggest city in the country to blend in, and still struggles with living with herself there, even amongst millions of other people who probably have more trauma and bigger problems than I have the right to claim I suffer from.

If anything, I’m a bigger mess now than I was when I left, and he deserves better. Everyone here knows it, too, even Duke, who is nicer to me than anyone else in the Heights, but still knows I’m bad news. Hell, he’s probably counting down to me leaving and being out of his precious bar almost as much as I am.

My chest heaves with a sigh and I resign myself to the truth. “I do. I need to apologize because you didn’t deserve that ending after what we had.”

More than the best sex I’ve ever had. He was the best I ever had. Best I’ll ever have, I know that now. My—maybe our—issues kept us from working past our youth, paired with my burning need to get the hell out of Dodge, but being around him again this past month, there’s no denying my memory didn’t even do him justice. He’s an eleven out of ten across the boards, only gotten finer with time, grown into one hell of a good man, and I’m the girl who broke his heart and never even told him why. My leg bounces as my mind races.

He lets out a heavy breath and looks at the ground between his booted feet before he answers me. “If you hadn’t left then and there, you might never have. I get that now. I don’t love it. I’ll never like it. But I see it.”

His maturity, that objectivity he’s showing about my well-being instead of focusing on how I wronged him, it could take my breath away if I let it. This is the worst thing that ever happened to me, probably to both of us if I may be so bold, but at least I had a say in the matter. He was blindsided, not even a warning we were on the rocks. It’s damage I inflicted on myself, on both of us, and I still hate me for it. How he doesn’t stuns me.

I had no intention of running into him, had hoped to defy the odds and not be forced to see him by sheer proximity for my entire stay here. It never occurred to me that just weeks in, I’d be trying to see him, wanting to spend time with him, or God forbid, hook up with him while I was here. The guilt should’ve eaten me alive by now. But I guess that goes to show you what kind of person I am. Willing to hurt him all over again because it makes me feel good (or more accurately, less shitty) to be around him.

I should be better than that. Not because I have some great aspirations as a human being, but just because the last thing I owe this man is more pain. So I try to apologize, my best effort at making things as right as they can be after what I did to him.

“I’m sorry for getting … physical with you after the way things were left between us.”

“Don’t give me that shit.”

My mouth pops open at his harsh tone.

“I’m just saying, it probably wasn’t the right thing to do.” I can feel, more than hear, the defensiveness in my voice, the acrid taste in my mouth of how sour things can get between the two of us when we start in on one another.

We weren’t oil and water; we were fuel and a match. We went together perfectly, but when one of us lit up or went off, so did the other. Now … now I don’t know what we are, what we might have the potential to be, but clearly it’s still something explosive. Is it any more stable than what we were before?

Wyatt gets up off the bed and starts rummaging through the kitchenette in the corner of the room.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“What?”

“Your vocabulary is a lot more impressive than mine, Aurora, don’t act like you didn’t understand the question. When did you last eat?”

My head pulls back in shock from the random divergence.

“Um, I don’t know. Lunch, I guess?”

“Lunch.” He huffs out the word, lazy hand on a trim hip, staring at me in disbelief. “It’s almost nine, Rory.”

I bite back the impulse to correct him. “I was with my mom.” That defensiveness has crept back into my words, and I make a concerted effort to drop it before I say, “She had a medical emergency.”

“Shit, what happened?” In an instant, the accusation in his glare shifts to concern, worry for the woman who was damn near his second mother for a number of years too.

“She fainted while we were out together. Fell pretty hard, got bruised up, but the paramedics said she was fine to go home. She didn’t hit her head, miraculously. But I stayed to watch her for a while.”

“So you haven’t eaten since before all that,” he mutters under his breath, back to digging around through my kitchenette. He finds something in the mini fridge he deems viable after a sniff check and pops the biodegradable plate in the microwave. “You’re too busy taking care of your mom to take care of you .” He says it more to himself than to me, but I catch the disapproval in his voice. The hum of the ancient appliance fills the silence as he watches the door with determination until it finally dings. Wyatt brings the plate of leftovers to me with a new disposable fork he found on the counter, and hands it to me.

“Eat,” he commands me.

When I put the first forkful in my mouth and start to chew, he does this tiny nod of satisfaction, and then he starts talking.

“You can be sorry for a lot of things, Aurora, but don’t be sorry for giving in to what we both wanted. We’re adults. We’re not kids anymore. If we need to scratch an itch, there’s no reason you can’t scratch my back and I scratch yours. You wanna talk shit out so we can keep doing that without feeling bad about it, I’m all ears. But don’t you try to fucking give me some shit about not doing it again when we both know you damn well want to.”

“How do you not hate me, Wyatt?”

He shrugs. “A lot of water has gone under that particular bridge. Can’t say I would’ve reacted as well if you’d come back ten years ago, or five. But I’ve had time to process. And it’s not like you’re here to rub in my face how well you’re doing. You’re here because your mom is dying. Come on, what do you think, I don’t have a heart? I know you don’t want to be here a second longer than you have to be. Couldn’t be plainer on your face that you can’t wait to get the hell out of the Heights again. But is it really such a terrible idea to make your trip a little less shitty by spending a few nights together, here and there?” A shoulder bumps up into his cheek again. “It’d make my life a little more rewarding, at least.”

“Do you really think that’s smart? Do you think we can get involved again?”

Lord knows it’s hard for me to even see him, much less be around him, without being attracted to him. Wanting the physical aspect with him. Kinda thought time would’ve taken that out of my system, but it’s only intensified, apparently. All the ways he’s evolved are apparently exactly what some huge part of me has been looking for (and not finding) in NYC.

“I don’t see any reason not to. Might as fucking well.”

“Not to sound pessimistic, but I think any semblance of a repeat of last time would be a good enough reason not to.”

“I’m not saying we should date. Plan our future together, name our kids.” Again.

The cozy cottage-cabin combo we were going to build ourselves out in the woods. (Okay, he was going to build it while I admired him from the sidelines, there to thank him for all his work for our future after a long, hard day of physical labor, and make sure he felt inspired to keep going on it the next day.) With a yard that’s just a meadow full of flowers in the spring, where we’d do a bonfire in the fall. The house with the windows I could open outward anytime it snowed and put an arm through the opening to catch snowflakes while still staying warm, drinking my hot apple cider. Where we’d raise our one son, Axle, with his cousins from Lexi and, eventually, Weston.

My eyes sting, so I blink away the thought.

“Definitely not,” I agree.

“I know you had to leave. You had your reasons, whatever they were. I’m just happy you found what you were looking for.”

Hah. Found what I was looking for. I’m still running, is the pathetic truth of it. Still haven’t found a way to stay still without feeling like everything is crumbling in on me, but that’s my burden to bear, not his. He doesn’t need my shit, he’s probably got his own. It takes a moment to swallow the final bite, and I stand up to throw out my plate and fork before turning to face him again, somehow feeling more even-tempered already.

“So what are you proposing, exactly?”

Another careless shrug, but I see through it. He wants this. For some reason, he wants to keep seeing me.

“We keep hooking up, trade some Os while you’re here.”

I actually laugh a little at him. “Make it sound more clinical, why don’t you?”

His eyes twinkle at me as I step between his legs. “What do you want me to say? I’ll get you off, if you wanna get me off, I’m down for that too?”

My head tilts back and a real laugh bursts out of me. “So fucking romantic.”

The corner of his lips tilts up in a rare sighting of humor. “Don’t bullshit me, Hellcat. You don’t want romance from me. You want my cock.”

“You make it sound cheap and dirty.”

“You like it dirty,” he throws back. “You just also like it expensive.” A genuine smile breaks out across my face.

“I mean, I wouldn’t hate banging you while I’m here.”

“Gee, thanks,” he mutters, with zero offense taken, as I keep talking, unbothered by the interruption.

“But we both need to know what this is. I’ll feel guilty till the day I die about what I did to you last time. The only way I’m agreeing to this is if we stay clear on what this is.”

“Clear as the Heights River to me, Hellcat. I get your pussy, not your head, not your heart.” He holds his hands up in front of him. “More than I’ve had in a long time. I can live with that.”

I push my tongue into my cheek, watching him closely as I think it over.

“How is this going to work?” I ask him.

“You’re the contract whisperer, the professional negotiator. Isn’t this your specialty? Don’t you get paid to make deals and lay out terms? You tell me.”

“Hmm.” I tap my finger on my chin in mock thought. “A mutually beneficial arrangement. I think I can draw up something agreeable.”

“I consent to an oral arrangement, if you do.”

I reach out a hand and shove his shoulder playfully, and his arms come up to catch around my waist as an excuse to hold himself in place. The tips of his fingers trace the curve of my back as he opens up.

“Look, the past is the past,” he tells me seriously. “I can keep it there, take what I can get while you’re here. I think I’m man enough to act like an adult about this, if you are.”

It’s worth taking a second to consider the potential pitfalls and downsides to the arrangement before jumping in with my kitty doing my thinking for me. My ovaries have always wanted this man. I need to be sure the rest of me can handle this too.

Truthfully, there were good parts to us. There were great parts. But there was toxic shit too. We had our issues. The way we fought. The way we would never put one another ahead of our own wants. Am I na?ve enough to think that none of that will rear its head this time? Or have we possibly outgrown that?

By setting boundaries, maintaining clarity on exactly what this is and isn’t, are we really able to enjoy one another’s company while I’m here, and both come out unscathed the next time I leave this foggy, sleepy town nestled in the Smokies for the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple and never look back?

Maybe it’s the lack of good sex I’ve had since him, and this giant carrot (pun intended) dangling in front of me right now. Maybe it’s the lack of anything halfway decent in this season of my life. Facing all my demons to say goodbye to my mother, while eating shit for decisions I made as essentially a child from just about everyone around me.

Wyatt might be the only one who’s treating me with dignity, kindness, decency, and appreciation. He is rapidly (okay, tonight moved him way up the list) becoming the best part of my stay here. Why shouldn’t I get more of him?

Without the feelings, the emotional side we would get so wrapped up in, we can do what we do best. Fuck each other’s brains out, give each other some dopamine hits, and go our separate ways again.

For me, it’ll be something to look forward to, something to take my mind off the hellhole that is watching my only remaining parent slip away a handful of cells at a time, while being surrounded by everything I sacrificed my entire life to escape.

It’ll be a way to stock up on a fresh batch of the kind of memories I’ll need to rely on to get off when I’m back beneath Trevor, or any other of the lackluster suitors I’ve had back home.

Maybe it’s selfish of me to give in so quickly, to see all the ways this could serve me, instead of the potential of hurting him, but I never claimed to be a good person. Just one trying to get through this mess I call my current reality.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I tell him, hands on his firm shoulders. “Your cock is mine, for as long as I’m here. Then you can have it back.”

“Shit, Hellcat, I’m not gonna have any use for it when you’re not around.” He’s got a teasing smile on his face, but I can’t tell if it’s a joke.

We discuss the terms until we reach an agreement. Very mature of us. For all my prowess in conference rooms, my personal life has never been put together in quite the same way. There’s something satisfying about all this. Having precise expectations, what will be offered and what will be gained from the pact.

This arrangement is not to exceed the end of Aurora’s stay in Smoky Heights.

No feelings are to get involved, only genitals.

We both continue our normal lives and routines, no expectations other than the occasional physical release when our schedules align. My mom is my priority, so is keeping up on my work from afar, and those will always come first.

No other partners during this time. (Obviously, but we’re being thorough here.)

And lastly, we leave the past dead and buried.

It’s near midnight by the time we’ve laid out the “terms,” and Wyatt tells me he’s going to take care of the cue stick and “some other things the bar needs done.” We say good night, goodbye for now, and agree to text later this week about when to meet up next. It’s the first night I fall asleep without the cityscape noises playing on the iPad, and I don’t even realize it.

I spend the bulk of the next day diving into my project for Duke, and I tap in some resources from back home to help me with some specialized research.

But the next time I enter the bar, later that evening, my nose is tucked into my phone again—as per usual—reviewing the response I got, and I don’t think about it. On instinct, I use the right-hand door when entering Suds. Except, I don’t get a splinter. The handle is completely smooth, freshly sanded.