It was Amanda who broke the embrace this time. She stepped way from me, her fingers trailing down my sides as she put distance between us. Her eyes, haunted and somehow secretive, met mine.
“I was going to do this a different way, Bren,” she said. I couldn’t miss the choked tension in her voice. “I was going to . . .”
She stopped and looked away, grief eating up her face. Grief, and something close to contempt.
My gut knotted. My pulse thumped hard in my ears. “Going to what?” I asked. Why the hell was I feeling like all the air in the terminal had suddenly turned to steel wool?
Amanda turned back to me, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip. A part of me – the purely male part – reminded me how incredible that lip felt between my own teeth. That purely male memory sent a tight finger of heat into the pit of my stomach and for a dangerous moment I didn’t want to hear what Amanda had planned to do differently. For a dangerous moment, that purely male part of me wanted to take control of the situation. Wanted to haul Amanda back into my arms and kiss her until her knees crumpled and all she could do was cling to me as I rendered her defenseless against the pleasure of our—
“You were going to what?” I asked again, killing the caveman inside me. I smiled, letting her see it was all good. That I was okay, that we were okay. That we were gravy.
She looked at me, and then let out a slow sigh and said, “I’m scared.”
“What are you scared of, Amanda?” I asked.
She let out a sigh that belonged more to a world-weary octogenarian instead of a vibrant twenty-three year old. Although to be honest, vibrant wasn’t the word I’d use to describe Amanda at this point in time.
“I’m scared you’re not going to like me any more after . . .” She stopped and looked away.
My gut knotted. After what? “You became a human drug mule?” I asked. I needed to make her laugh. I needed to see the Amanda I knew, the one I’d once loved. I wanted her to know she didn’t have to rush revealing whatever had brought her to ask me to come.
And I also didn’t want her to reveal it.
Selfish of me, maybe, but there really is bliss in ignorance. I wasn’t ready to know why I was here. I just wanted to be here. With her.
That haunted expression filled her face again for a moment, making my chest ache, and then she smiled.
“Yeah, I’ve become a mule. I transport an experimental drug called Sunshine around the globe. The pay sucks, but at least no one can tell me to stick stuff where the sun don’t shine any more.”
I burst out laughing. The statement – slightly depraved – was thoroughly and utterly Amanda.
“Well, in that case,” I said, “consider yourself still on my like list.”
She grinned. Yes, I could tell there was still a guarded hesitancy to her, but I was prepared to roll with it. “Let’s go.”
We left the terminal walking side by side. The urge to take her hand overwhelmed me more than once. I resisted, just.
“So,” I said as we crossed the road outside the building, dodging speeding taxis and shuttle vans as we headed for Amanda’s car. “How goes your degree? Second last year, right? Have you had your first prac yet?”
As it had the last time I was in the States, I enjoyed the sense of being in a different country, breathing in different air, standing under a different sky. Southern California bore a similarity to the east coast of New South Wales, with its gum trees and warm, dry heat, but there’s no way it smelled the same. Walking toward the parking lot where Amanda’s car waited for us, I couldn’t stop myself drawing in a deep breath and studying the sky, marveling at how different it all was. Sometimes the simplest things moved me the most.
As a consequence, it took me a while to register Amanda hadn’t answered. I shot her an expectant look. “So?”
She shrugged a lop-sided, one-shoulder response. “Me and university didn’t take.”
My eyebrows shot up before I could stop them.
She laughed, a self-deprecating, playful chuckle that made me forget what I was doing for a moment.
“What? We can’t all be entrepreneurial world-changers like you, Osmond. You own your own personal trainer business yet?”
“Waiting for the thumbs up from the bank, as we speak,” I answered with a grin.
Amanda laughed again, bumping her shoulder to my arm as we walked. “Oh man, why am I not surprised? What’s it going to be called? Buff R Us?”
“Buff R We, thank you very much.”
“The perfect name.” For a wonderful moment, there was the faintest hint of shallow dimples in her cheeks and the Amanda Sinclair I knew in her delight.
It dawned on me then she’d very successfully sidestepped the issue of her teaching degree. I wanted to re-address it, but left it alone. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit of a high achiever, and Amanda – at least the Amanda I knew – was the same. Something in my gut told me the reason for my presence here in the US was connected to her incomplete studies and, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t ready to have that reason revealed to me yet.
If you’d told me I was a coward before Amanda stood in front of me again, I would have laughed in your face. But here I was, not asking about Amanda’s reasons for wanting me to come, and not asking about her reason for dropping out of uni.
The things you learn about yourself when your heart gets involved. It truly is a stupid damn organ at times.
“So,” I asked, “you seeing anyone?”
Apparently my brain was as stupid an organ as my heart.
Before I had the chance to process the pending idiocy of my question, Amanda burst out laughing. “No, I’m not. You ruined me for anyone else, Mr. Osmond. Couldn’t find anyone here with your atrocious sense of humor and impressive muscles.”
There’s a point in the life of every guy who spends time working out where something is said that makes them want to check out their own muscles. It’s a confirmation, as such, that the body they think they’ve achieved through an insane amount of hard work, dedication, denial and willpower is, in fact, the one they’re walking around in.
That moment hit me then. For the first time, really. Sure, I’d flexed before to get a laugh (and I’m the proud owner of a tank top that reads on the front I Flexed and the Sleeves Fell Off) but I’d never before felt the need – like a physical pressure – to make sure the “impressive muscles” Amanda spoke of were actually there.
It was an insecure moment, and it threw me. As did the fact I felt my arm curling and my fist bunching, causing my right biceps to flex, before I realized what I was doing. Thankfully, Amanda stopped beside the driver’s passenger door of the most insane car I’ve ever seen and I forgot about my biceps.
“This is yours?” I asked, staring at the neon-purple Volvo station wagon before me. Along its dented side was painted an emerald green Chinese luck dragon, complete with stylized flames flaring from its nostrils. The wheels were the same green. On the top of the antennae was a long, crimson ribbon. It was startling to look at to say the least.
“It’s Chase’s,” Amanda answered with a grimace bordering on a grin as she unlocked the door and pulled it open to reveal purple leopard-print seat covers and neon-green fluffy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.