Michael saw me do it, and his face crumpled to one of hopeless begging. He started to walk toward me, looking like he might fall down at my feet. "You heard what she said," James said. "She said she'd take it into consideration."
"It's Christmas," Michael said. "Just let me come in for a minute. I drove from Houston. I thought you'd be at Jessica's tonight, but your car wasn't there, and it wasn't at your mom's…"
"Yeah, that's because I rode with James."
Michael stared pitifully at me. "I've been sitting out here for hours waiting for you to get back."
"Michael, you cannot do this."
"I had to," he said with an intense, pleading expression. "I owed it to you to make sure you knew what a lying snake this guy was."
"All right, I think we're done here," James said.
Michael spit at us. He meant to do it at James, but I was standing behind James, so it seemed like he was doing it at me, too.
"Thanks Michael, that's really nice of you," I said sarcastically.
He focused on me, and his expression changed. He stared straight at me, pleading, begging, with his eyes. "Please come back to me, Laney," he said.
It had been so long since I had thought about Michael that his intensity seemed completely out-of-nowhere to me.
"No, Michael," I said, stepping even closer to James. "Merry Christmas to you, and I wish you all the best, but you need to go. Tell your family 'hello' for me."
I gave James a tug, letting him know that I was ready to walk inside. Michael saw us start to take off, and he lurched forward in a desperate attempt to grab me. James's hand came out, faster than a bolt of lightning, and he blocked Michael easily. He held onto Michael's arm with a tight grasp for a second before pushing it roughly away.
"That's the last time she'll ask you," he said to Michael. "You need to go."
James had broken contact with me when he reached out for Michael, so I used the opportunity to start heading toward my house. "Bye, Michael. Merry Christmas. Hey, James, just meet me in the house when you're done, please. I'm going to get the fish situated."
I looked over my shoulder a few times as I was going inside. I could see and hear James talking to Michael, but I didn’t try to make out what he was saying. He was confident and bold and big compared to Michael. It was clear by their statures that James was the alpha.
I went inside and set the fish and my purse on a side table before heading straight to the window to look out and see what was going on. They only talked for a few more seconds before James gestured to the street, and Michael began to walk off.
Neither of them looked happy, but it was Michael who relented. I watched James as he watched Michael get in his truck and leave. He peeled out, causing his tires to make a squealing sound. He lost control and hit a curb. I gasped. His truck shook violently, crossing the curb with two tires before he was able to steady it and get onto the street again.
James stood out there and watched until Michael was completely gone. I saw him heading my way, and I dropped the curtain, quickly moving away from the window. I took Jimmy from the side table near the entryway and carefully but quickly situated him in the kitchen. I jogged over to the living room and bent down to plug in the lights on my Christmas tree.
While I was at it with the last-second preparations, I reached out and pressed the power button on my radio. It was tuned to a local station that was playing a Chuck Berry song. It was a song I didn't recognize, but I knew it was Chuck Berry by the sound of his voice.
James knocked on the door and I hollered for him to, "Come in!" as I stood up from the radio. He opened the door. His face was cautious at first, but it softened when he saw that I was smiling at him. "Come in," I said over the music.
James came inside.
"I'm so sorry about that," I said as I crossed the room heading his way. He went instantly to the window and peered out of it the same way I had been doing.
"Did you say it was the first time he's bothered you in a while," James asked.
"Yes. I haven't seen him in months."
I moved to stand closer to James in the living room, and he turned and let the curtain fall behind him. He regarded me from five or six feet away.
"I hate you being alone like this," he said. "It's not okay that he was sitting in your car."
"I know that was weird," I said.
"I told him you would press charges if he came around here again."
"Thank you," I said.
"You would, wouldn't you?" he asked.
"Yes. Of course. He won't come again. I haven't seen or heard from him in months. He just came because someone told him we were at the party the other night."
Chapter 9
James
"Burn the ships, I say," Laney said, staring up at him and shrugging like that was her best plan.
She was standing in front of James in her living room, smiling and looking like she was in a good mood in spite of her ex's surprise appearance.
James struggled to take it all in. He hadn't expected to find Michael sitting in her car, and he needed a minute to clear his mind and figure out what was going on. He pulled back the curtain and glanced out of the window again, just to make sure he hadn't come back.
"What'd you say?" he asked when he saw that Michael's truck was still nowhere in sight.
"I said burn the ships," she said. "As far as I'm concerned, you can burn the ships."
"What's that mean?" James asked, thinking she meant it had something to do with Michael.
"I was thinking about trapping you here. A man named Hernán Cortés did it in the early fifteen-hundreds. Legend has it that others did it before him, including one at the rock of Gibraltar hundreds of years before Cortés, but he is the one people remember. He and his troops landed in Mexico after an arduous journey across the sea, and rather than let his men have the option to retreat, he ordered that they burned the ships. They had no choice but to conquer the new lands. They had no way back home."
"Is that true?" James asked.
Laney shrugged. "I don't think there's iron clad evidence that it actually happened, but it's generally accepted, yeah. But like I said, others are said to have done it. Now, it's more of an idea, really. The whole concept of taking away your safety net. It sort of forces you to succeed." Laney smiled at him, and gave him a goofy shrug. "And now that I've told the whole story, it seems like it doesn't really apply so much. But I was telling you, James, that you should burn your ship. You know. Burn your car, theoretically, so you can't get home. I know you wouldn't really burn your car, so I was just joking, but—"
Laney stopped talking in mid-sentence because James reached out and took a hold of her. He pulled her into his arms, bringing her next to him in a motion that was so swift that she let out a tiny involuntary shriek.
James was ridiculously protective of this woman. He was insanely attracted to her, too. He held her there, staring into her big brown eyes and feeling like he might turn into a rock if he didn't kiss her. He had felt her mouth. He had put his lips to hers. But he hadn't kissed her like he wanted to. Not yet. He didn't want to rush things with Laney, and he had been trying to take his time, but good grief, she had told him to burn the ships. Wasn't that permission enough?