Sugar Sweet Sin

A Close Call

Dante shifts next to me. Though I'm not looking at him, I'm oh-so-aware of every move he makes. I want the truth, once and for all.

"Have I changed so much that you can't guess my answer?" he asks, his voice low. "I invited you here for the same reason I showed up at your bakery. Because I wanted to see you."

And to meet my boyfriend, I think. I may not have a lot of ex-boyfriends—and certainly none who shared the same intimacies Dante and I did—but I recognize the game we're playing here. Dante was never exactly what I would describe as possessive—he didn't freak out if I talked to another guy or anything like that—but he'd never needed to be. Even when we were together, we never defined what we were to each other—and for most of our relationship, I never thought we needed to. There was an understanding between us, something neither of us spoke aloud but both seemed to know deep in our bones. We belonged to each other and no one else. I knew it when I looked into his eyes, when I felt his hands in my hair or his lips on my skin. I knew it when he groaned my name in the dark.

But now I have someone new in my life—in theory, anyway—and though Dante might not come out and say it, Jack's presence is a challenge to the thing we shared, to the energy that still weighs heavy in the air between us. Dante's invitation tonight is his way of poking at that intrusion, of testing what Jack and I supposedly have between us.

Coming here was a bad idea. Engaging Dante in any way was stupid. But I can't help it, just like I can't help the feelings that have come rushing back since being in his presence again.

I've stopped shivering. In fact, my body is too heated now, responding to memories I thought I'd buried. I'm suddenly too vividly aware of how long it's been since the last time I had sex. My body is ravenous. I've starved it for too long.

I should get up. Go back to the party. But my ankle is still throbbing, and I tell myself that's why I can't seem to find the will to move. In fact, I want nothing more than to lie back and seek the comfort I found in the sand and the surf back then.

Dante seems to share my thoughts. He lies back on the beach beside me with a sigh—a low, deep exhale that makes my stomach twist.

And then I'm lying back too—I'm already wet, so why does it matter?—and we're side by side on our backs in the sand, just as we were on that night long ago. Only this time the surf is far down the beach, much too far away to interrupt anything.

I can hear him breathing. He's not touching me, but I can feel the heat of his body. My heart is pounding against my ribs, but the longer we lie here, the more my nerves seem to slip away. It's cathartic. There's something unspeakably intimate about this moment, and at the same time, I don't feel like he expects anything of me. We don't need to talk. Don't need to move. Don't need to think. We're just stealing a moment away.

Is this what Mama Pat meant about finding closure?

I don't know how much time passes before I feel the brush of something against the back of my hand. His fingers. Without thinking, I turn my hand, opening it to him, and his fingers lace through mine.

This is wrong! a voice screams in my head. My anger for him is still there, a hard knot in my chest, but somehow it doesn't matter right now. This feels just as natural as it did that first night, even though miles of hurt and pain and other complicated things stretch between us now.

But God, is it hard to remember why we threw this away. Right now, I feel like that lonely, emotional girl in the waves. If I close my eyes—and I do—it's as if no time has passed at all.

This time, the touch of his fingers on my cheek isn't a surprise. It's hard not to turn my face toward that touch. I can sense him leaning over me, but I refuse to open my eyes. The moment I do, I have to think again, and I'm not ready for that.