My stomach sinks into the fucking Earth.
“Sul?” Akara’s concern leaks from his voice.
“It’s just my mom.”
“Everything alright?” Banks asks.
I swallow hard and toss my cell between my hands. “Yeah, it’s all normal. Which, I guess is the problem. I just…” I exhale into a deeper frown. “I don’t like keeping this from my parents. It feels wrong.” I hug my legs to my chest.
Banks wipes sweat off his brow. “If it’s eating at you, just call them.”
“Exactly,” Akara chimes in, wafting his shirt which looks damp.
“What if my dad shows up and demands you return me?”
Banks nearly smiles.
Akara shakes his head. “We didn’t kidnap you, Sulli. We’re not going to listen to him.”
My brows raise. “You wouldn’t listen to Ryke Meadows?”
Akara rotates more fully to face me. Confidence eking from every small movement. His eyes lock onto mine. “I won’t listen to Ryke Meadows.”
More heat bathes me. As does skepticism. “You remember Red Rocks when I wanted to go off on the long trail by myself. Without you, even. And my dad said, not that day because I’d already done a hard morning swim. You agreed with him.”
He barely blinks. “You were seventeen.”
“So?”
“You’re twenty-one now.” He tilts his head, hair falling over his forehead. “An adult.”
I’ve always wanted to hear him say those words.
You’re an adult now.
My parents had an epic, soul-mate kind of love that started out as a beautiful friendship, and my mom met my dad when she was fifteen. He was twenty-one. And he never even let himself love her in that way until months after her eighteenth birthday.
When I was sixteen, I dreamt of Akara saying those words to me once I was older. You’re an adult now.
When I was seventeen, I kept that dream.
When I turned eighteen, I threw that dream in the fucking garbage.
He never fell on his knees and proclaimed his love for me. Never made the grand gesture and chose me over being my bodyguard. Never told me we could be together because I was older and an adult. Hell, he never even checks me out or makes an indication that he thinks I’m attractive. I’ve heard him call women babes.
She’s a total babe.
What a babe.
But never to me. Never about me.
In his eyes, I’m probably as sexy as a hairy little caterpillar.
Since then, I thought I’ve accepted what we are. He’s just Kits to me. But recently, lately, I guess I wanted to test the waters. I’m not sixteen-years-old holding onto a fantasy, but I did have some hope that two friends could find a morsel of romance.
Even if it was just for a single night.
Akara must read my silence as indecision because he adds, “Your dad can’t force you back home, Sul. He knows that. He’s just scared.”
My dad’s not scared of anything, I almost say. I stop myself because I know if anything could freak him out, it’d be losing me or Winona or Mom.
I open up my contacts on my phone. Am I still flying too close to the nest? Should I really call my parents just to snitch on my own whereabouts? But I can’t stomach lying about this. Not for a thousand more miles, not even for ten more.
I dial my dad’s number.
I’d rather confront his anger than carry the weight of this lie.
5
BANKS MORETTI
Getting laid is easy for me. I’m six-seven, built like a god, and my deep voice could melt the fuckin’ sun. But easy is boring. I’ve had more fun trying to explore the ways to make a woman come than by having a pair of lips around my dick. The longer the roadmap to her orgasm, the better. But I can count the number of times I’ve truly been challenged in bed.
Zero.
Big ball of nothing.
And I’m not so arrogant to think that maybe the problem doesn’t lie with me. If sex bores me, then that’s got to at least be a fifty percent me problem. I’d blame my issues on not having enough time to cultivate real relationships beyond the first lay, but Akara has the same time-sucking job. And he does just fine going out on dates. I’m the one that shuts anything down after one night.
But I’m not that shocked Akara called it quits with Jenny. He’s the kind of guy that hates to end things the morning after, but Sulli saw Jenny.
And Akara Kitsuwon is in love with Sullivan Meadows. He just hasn’t fully accepted what’s right in front of his face yet.
The past few months, I’ve thought to myself: Banks Roscoe Moretti, you old fool, why don’t you play cupid and put these two dummies together? I’ve played Mother Goose to my first-ever client, young Xander Hale—my little chickadee.
Playing cupid can’t be that hard.
Except Akara hasn’t just dug in his heels. He’s cemented his ankles in the fucking core of the Earth. The more I try to chisel him out, the more I look over at this strong-willed goddess of a woman. In leagues with Athena and Aphrodite. Joyful, funny, tough-as-nails Sullivan Meadows. And I wonder what the hell I’m doing.
No one ever warned cupid of accidentally shooting himself with an arrow. Never been good with a bow, anyway. Should’ve seen this clusterfuck coming.
Because I love Akara.
I love him too much to ever fuck him over.
And Sulli—she deserves to be swept off her feet. Probably by Akara. He’s driven like her. He has money. A business.
He can offer her more than I can.
All I have is love to give, and seeing as how Akara can give that if he gets his head out of his ass, I’m going to come up short in the horse race.
I know that.
I know that.
Taking a deeper breath, I try to be okay with the state of things. Semper Gumby. Always flexible. I go where the wind blows me. Where I’m needed most.
Today it’s in an REI.
Akara and I stand at the end of a shopping aisle. Both our eyes are planted on Sulli as she searches through a bin of plastic camping plates. Out of earshot of our client, Akara whispers to me, “Why were you flirting with her in the Jeep?” If we weren’t friends, he’d have skewered me by now. And I’m not all innocent. I do enjoy busting Akara’s balls now and again.
“Better question is why you were flirting with her in the Jeep.”
He adjusts his earpiece. “I wasn’t.”
“That’s horseshit,” I whisper back, our eyes never leaving Sulli. “You threw a dirty sock at her.”
“You insinuated she was hot enough to fake-drown for.”
“She is,” I say. “Tell me fourteen-year-old Akara wouldn’t fake-flail in the deep-end hoping she’d dive down and rescue your ass?”
“I wouldn’t. Because when I was fourteen, she was eight.”
I grimace. “Alright, alright, that’s not where I was going, man. She’s twenty-one now.”
He whisper-hisses, “And I’ve known her since she was sixteen, Banks. She’s like a sister. I’ve told you that. It’s different for you—it’ll always be different.”
Yeah, I haven’t been her bodyguard for years. I’m not the one she really wants. I joined security right after the Marine Corps and became a bodyguard to Xander Hale. I’ve seen Sulli since I was twenty-two, but I didn’t know her. Didn’t spend time with her. Not like Akara.