“I’m sorry, babe. My parents have made an impromptu visit, and they’re going to be here any minute. So, I need you to leave or pretend like you don’t know me or something.”
I was going to apologize, say that I wasn’t ashamed of him, that I just wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t get a chance before he held his hands up and backed away. “Fuck. No argument here. I’m out.” He turned for the door. “Call me when you lose the folks.”
Then he bailed. No questions asked. No valiant offer to brave meeting the parents. He walked out the door, lit up a cigarette, and took off. For a second, I thought about following him. Whether to flee or kick his ass, I wasn’t sure.
But I couldn’t.
Now, I just had to figure out what to tell my parents about my suddenly absent library-going-nice-guy-boyfriend. I’d just have to tell them he had to work or go to class or heal the sick or something. I scanned the room for an open table. They’d probably see right through the lie and know there was no nice guy, but there was no way around it.
Damn. The coffee shop was packed, and there weren’t any open tables.
There was a four-top with only one guy sitting at it, and it looked like he was almost done. He had short, brown curls that had been tamed into something neat and clean. He was gorgeous, in that all-American model kind of way. He wore a sweater and a scarf and had a book sitting on his table. Newsflash! This was the kind of guy libraries should use in advertising if they wanted more people to read.
Normally I wouldn’t have looked twice at him because guys like that don’t go for girls like me. But he was looking back at me. Staring, actually. He had the same dark, penetrating eyes as Mace, but they were softer somehow. Kinder.
And it was like the universe was giving me a gift. All that was missing was a flashing neon sign above his head that said ANSWER TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS.
3
Cade
I was people watching, filling in imaginary lives to keep my mind off my own life when she looked at me.
I’d been watching her with her boyfriend for the last few minutes, puzzling them out. They both exuded confidence and looked effortlessly cool. The guy was all dark—dark hair, dark eyes, dark tattoos. All his ink that I could see was depressing or violent—skulls and guns and brass knuckles. She on the other hand was bright—from her vividly red hair to her painted lips that naturally turned upward to her tattoos. She had a few small birds flying up her neck, and what looked like the top of a tree poking out from the heart-shaped neck of her 1950s-style dress.
As often as he touched and kissed her, I saw no real connection between them. She didn’t glance over at him once as she talked on the phone. And when she wasn’t paying attention to him, he didn’t bother even looking at her. Like they were part of two different solar systems, neither revolving with or around the other, and both were just with each other for the passing moment.
He hadn’t even bothered to pick up the cup of coffee when she’d dropped it. He just moved her out of the way, and a barista came around and took care of it.
Now, he was gone and she was looking at me like I had something she wanted. It made my mouth go dry and stirred something in my chest. Stirred up other things, too.
She walked up to my table, her h*ps swinging her wide skirt, and I got my first really good look at her face. She was beautiful—full lips, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. A white flower was tucked into her riotous red curls. She looked like the edgy version of a 1950s pinup girl. She was the complete opposite of any girl I had ever dated or thought about dating. She was the complete opposite of Bliss. Maybe that was part of the reason I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
I could see now that the tattoo on her chest was definitely a tree. Bare branches stretched up toward her collarbone, and when she leaned over and rested her hands on my table I got a good look at the trunk of the tree disappearing down between the valley of her br**sts.
I swallowed, and it took me longer than it should have to avert my gaze to her face. She said, “I’m going to ask you something, and it’s going to seem crazy.”
It would match with the rest of my thoughts then.
“Okay,” I said.
She slid into the seat beside me, and I could smell her . . . something feminine and sweet and completely at odds with her inked skin. I was still thinking about that damn tree, imagining what the rest of the tattoo looked like, wondering how soft her skin was.
“My parents showed up in town uninvited, and they want to meet my boyfriend.”
She slid a little closer and tapped red-painted nails against the table.
“And how can I help?”
“Well, I’m supposed to introduce them to a nice, sweet boyfriend who I met at the library, which is not actually the boyfriend I have.” Her hand curled around my forearm that rested on the table, and I cursed all my winter layers because I wanted to feel her skin.
“And you think I’m nice and sweet?”
She shrugged. “You look it. I know this is crazy, but I would really appreciate it if you’d pretend to be my boyfriend until I manage to get rid of them.” I looked back at her cherry red lips. They brought to mind several things that were neither nice nor sweet.
What she wanted was crazy, but I’d be acting, the very thing I’d been missing for the last few weeks. And part of me was all for duct taping Nice-Guy-Cade and throwing him in the trunk. That part of me thought spending time with this girl was a very good idea.
She said, “Please? I’ll do all the talking, and I’ll end it as fast as I can. I can pay you!” I raised an eyebrow, and she continued, “Okay, I can’t pay you, but I’ll make it up to you. Anything you want.”
Somehow I had a feeling that she wouldn’t have said that last part to someone who didn’t look “nice and sweet.” Since that part of my brain was currently indisposed, I had a good idea of what I wanted.
“I’ll do it.” Her whole body relaxed. She smiled, and it was gorgeous. Then I added, “In exchange for a date.”
She pulled back, and those full red lips puckered in confusion.
“You want to go on a date with me?”
“Yes. Do we have a deal?”
She looked at the clock on the wall, cursed under her breath, and said, “Fine. Deal. Now give me your scarf.” She didn’t even give me a chance to move before she started tugging it off my neck.
I grinned. “Taking off my clothes already?”
One side of her mouth quirked upward, and she looked at me in surprise. Then she shook her head and wrapped my scarf around her own neck. It covered up her delicate birds and the smooth, porcelain skin of her chest, broken only by the thin black lines of her tattooed tree. She grabbed a napkin off the table and wiped off some of her bright red lipstick.
“All my parents know is we met in the library. You’re nice and sweet and wholesome. My parents are crazy conservative, so no jokes about me taking your clothes off. We’ve been dating for a few weeks. Nothing complicated. I haven’t told them anything else, so it should be pretty easy to sell.”
With practiced hands, she started smudging off some of the dark that lined her eyes. She pulled her hair forward so that it covered the array of piercings in her ears.
“What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m an actor.”
She rolled her eyes. “They’ll hate that as much as they hate me being a musician, but it will have to do.”
She kept fussing with her makeup and smoothing down her hair, looking around like she wished she had a hat or something to cover it.
I placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “You look beautiful. Don’t worry.”
Her expression froze, and she looked up at me like I was speaking Swahili. Then her lips pressed together in something that was almost a smile. I was still touching her shoulder when a woman at the front of the store called out, “Mackenzie! Oh, Mackenzie, honey!”
Mackenzie.
She didn’t look like a Mackenzie.
She took a shuddering breath, and then stood to face the woman I supposed was her mother. I rose with her, and let my arm stretch across her shoulder. She seemed frazzled, which was funny, because up until now confidence was practically running out of her pores like honey.
I mean, she’d asked a complete stranger to pretend to be her boyfriend. She had seemed fearless. Parents were apparently her Kryptonite.
I looked at the middle-aged couple approaching us. The man was balding with wire-rimmed glasses, and the woman’s hair was graying at her temples. The hands between them were intertwined, and their outer arms were reaching forward like they expected their daughter to run up for a group hug. She looked like she’d rather run off a cliff.
I smiled.
This . . . I could do.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze, and said, “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Boo boo bear! Oh, honey, what atrocious thing have you done to your hair? I told you to stop using those dyes out of the box.”
Mackenzie was biting down on her lip so hard as her mother pulled her forward into a hug that I was surprised she didn’t draw blood. Her father took over, and she had to let go of my hand. I stepped to the side, and reached a hand out to her mother.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs.—”
The words were already out of my mouth before I realized I had no idea what Mackenzie’s last name was. Hell, I hadn’t even known her name was Mackenzie.
Her mother took my hand and was looking at me with her head cocked sideways, waiting for me to finish my sentence. I saw Mackenzie wiggle out of her father’s hug next to me, her face full of slowly dawning horror.
Damn it.
I put on my best smile and said, “You know, I’ve heard so much about you from Mackenzie that I feel I should just call you Mom.” Then I moved in for a hug.
4
Max
HE WAS HUGGING MY MOTHER.
A total stranger. I could only handle a few hugs a year from her without feeling smothered, and he was wrapped up in her boa constrictor arms for three, four, five seconds.
It was still going.
And it was a full-on hug, not one of those awkward side ones that I gave my dad.
Jesus Christ, her head was tucked under his chin. His chin!
The seconds seemed to expand into lifetimes, and his wide eyes caught mine over my mother’s head. From the way my mother was latched on, he was never going to get free. It was like one of those sad stories where a little kid smothers a cat because he hugs it too hard.
He laughed and patted her on the back. Unlike my laughs around my parents, he managed to pull it off without sounding like he was being held at gunpoint.
Finally after a nearly TEN-second hug, she released him.
At ten seconds I would have been hyperventilating. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have let go of me after ten seconds. I’m convinced she thinks if she could just hug me long enough, she’d squeeze all the devil’s influence out of me.
He stayed there, still in hugging-range, and said, “It’s so wonderful of you both to make this impromptu trip. Mackenzie won’t say it, but she misses you both terribly.”
I cringed when he called me Mackenzie, and my mother beamed. I didn’t know if her aversion to Max was just because she thought it was a boy’s name or if calling me by a nickname reminded her of Alexandria . . . of Alex.