It takes a moment before his neck cranes toward me, green eyes glinting from the subtle glow of the nightlight. He heaves in a rattled breath, holding me tighter. “This won’t work, Melody. It can’t.”
No, don’t do this. Not now.
I grind my teeth together and duck my head. Pushing aside the sting, I collect my wits and try to read him instead. I try to wind my way through this endless maze that is Parker Denison and locate the source of his block. His deep-seated resistance. “Tell me why it won’t work,” I prompt softly. Gently. “Please, talk to me.”
“Because…” Parker’s fingers uncurl from my waist, then skim down my body until his arms fall loose on either side of him. “Because I’ll never be him… and you’ll always be her.”
My brows pull together, my heart stuttering.
Him is Charlie.
But who is… her?
I refuse to give in to the frustration of his push and pull, his indecision. I choke back the anger that bubbles to the surface. I won’t allow the prickle of rejection to consume me and drive another wedge between us.
I know he wants this. I know he has feelings for me.
So, I run with that.
I run with what I know because it’s the only way to understand the things I don’t.
“You want to know what’s on the other side of grief and pain?”
My question causes a trace of curiosity to flicker across his face. Parker sighs, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Fuckin’ rainbows and butterflies, right? All that shit therapists shove down your throat to keep your head above water.”
I pin my eyes on his, punctuating each word like shrapnel to his skin. “What you put there.”
A heavy silence fills the space between us, and I watch carefully as a frown draws across his brow line, pensive and wistful. He blinks, processing my response and swallowing down the remnants of it.
I don’t wait for his reply because I’m not looking for one—instead, I step backwards and slowly spin around to collect my discarded dress, stepping into it and pulling the straps back up over my shoulders. Straightening where I stand, I face him once more, noting that his thoughtful expression still stares back at me. I smile. “Let’s go watch a movie.”
As it turns out, Parker doesn’t have cable.
Or Netflix. Or Hulu. Or Amazon.
I’m actually not even sure why he has a television. It’s cased in a thick layer of dust, a telltale sign that he never uses it.
Settling beside him on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, I maintain a small distance between us, allowing him time to return from the dark place he entered in his bedroom. The room is dim, with only two working bulbs on his ceiling fan illuminating us in tungsten.
Parker glances at me, hands gripping his spread knees. “Popcorn doesn’t go well with invisible movies.”
I pop a kernel into my mouth with a grin. “We can talk instead.”
“I don’t go well with talking.”
My smile widens as I pull my legs up to the sofa cushion, my knees grazing the side of his thigh. “You have a sense of humor behind all that grouch. You kind of remind me of…” I trail off, realizing he reminds me of… Zephyr.
Sort of. Sometimes.
The dry sense of humor and occasional quick wit.
But Zephyr doesn’t exist to me anymore. He took one look at me and disappeared, leaving me questioning everything we had, everything we shared. Every joke, every pun, every sage word of advice.
I know I’m not completely monstrous to look at, so I have no idea what transpired that night. Part of me regrets taking it to video—he was right in the sense that everything was perfect the way it was. I must’ve ruined the illusion for him.
Still, it doesn’t justify him ghosting me like that.
It was hurtful.
“Who do I remind you of?”
I blink at Parker’s words, returning from my dreary musings and setting the bowl of popcorn on the side table. “Just… someone I used to talk to. It’s nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“He was…” Swallowing, I debate how much I should confess to him, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. “He was kind of a pen pal. He, um… he was the recipient of my husband’s heart. I reached out during a particularly rough time in the grieving process, and he replied to me. We had a connection.”
Parker studies me, expressionless. “Is that important to you?”
“What? The connection?”
“The heart.”
I hesitate, my eyes dancing away from his.
Is it?
I mean, it was. For a while, it was everything. Zephyr and his heart were my final tie to Charlie—the last tangible piece of the man I loved with my whole heart.
I suppose it still is.
Important, anyway.
But it’s not everything.
“Yes,” I answer honestly, drawing my eyes back to Parker. The lines in his forehead crease, and his jaw stiffens. “He’s gone now, though. We don’t talk anymore.”
“Why not?”
I spit the words out quickly, because if I don’t, I’ll choke on them. “He saw what I looked like and never spoke to me again. I must not have been what he was hoping for.”
A flash of pain crosses Parker’s face, a wince, almost as if my admission were a sharp slap across his cheek. He grits his teeth together. “Or maybe you were everything he was hoping for, and he wasn’t ready for that.”
My next breath lodges in the back of my throat, not expecting something so kind and reassuring to pass through Parker’s lips. I inch closer to him on the couch, placing my palm against his thigh. “Thank you. That was really sweet.”
“Sweet,” he parrots, glancing at my hand. And then in one fell swoop, he snatches it up, pulling me by the wrist with his left hand and using the other to scoop me off the couch and position me on his lap. His fingers glide up my spine until he’s gripping the back of my neck, our foreheads almost touching while I straddle him. “If you knew all the things I wanted to do to you right now, I don’t think you’d be calling me sweet.”
A surge of desire blazes through me as I press my groin into his, running my fingers through his soft hair. “I thought… I thought you didn’t want to.”
“Oh, I fucking want to. I want you so much it’s killing me,” he nearly hisses, grinding his erection into the heat between my thighs. “It’s killing me because I can’t…”
Parker’s eyes close, and he goes silent.
“You can’t what?” I brush a lock of loose hair from his forehead, then place a tender kiss to his hairline. “Tell me.”
A heartbeat goes by, and then a growl rumbles through his chest, vibrating into mine. He yanks me off his lap and flips me over on the couch until I’m faceplanted into the cushions. I squeak in surprise when he lifts me up by my midsection, my ass jutted out, ramming into his hard arousal. Parker’s hands sweep up the back of my thighs as he drags my dress up over my hips, then palms my cheeks sheathed in lace. “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”
I hear his belt buckle unlatch, and something in me freezes.
God, I want him, there’s no doubt about that…