She rolls her lips inward, wetting them. Slaying me where I stand. “When I was a kid, we’d make a popcorn garland and string it around the tree. My mother had all these old Victorian doll ornaments, heirlooms passed down through the generations. The popcorn garland was our one modern touch.” Her gaze drifts around the living room, the kitchen space just over my shoulder. “My old-fashioned boss definitely has popcorn and a sewing kit.”
Boss?
All right. Now she’s pushing it.
Or rather, pushing me away. Trying to establish a boundary.
And that’s fine. That’s her right. But we’re going to negotiate where it lies.
I close the distance between me and Stella, watching the color climb her neck and cheeks. When I slide my fingers up through the back of her hair and grip, her eyelids droop like twin weights and the pulse at the base of her neck starts to sprint. Magic. She has to feel that. “That’s boyfriend, Stella. Not boss.” I fuse our lips together and she stumbles into me, giving me full access to her mouth, even though she denies me the same with her thoughts and fears. I’ll get there. We’ll get there.
Her tongue flickers against mine, inviting me into her mouth and I take. Just like earlier in my office, I sense she needs to be…insulated. Surrounded. So I wrap both arms around her, crush her close and kiss her until she’s whimpering. Until her arms are wound up around my neck and she’s rubbing her tits side to side against my chest.
“Boyfriend,” I rasp, when we come up for air. “That work for you?”
“You’re still my boss,” she breathes.
Using my grip in her hair, I tilt her face up to mine, studying it closely. “On a scale from one to ten, how much does that bother you?”
Those cogs are turning. She’s thinking about it. Processing and re-processing. Good. The last thing I want to do is leave an issue undiscussed where it could pop up and bite us later. “It doesn’t bother me,” she whispers, as though she’s realizing it in real time and it’s surprising her. “It…just doesn’t. You’ve given me no choice but to have total faith in your actions and judgment.” She frowns at my chin. “Sneaky. How did you do that?”
“Pure willpower. And the worst blue balls known to mankind.” I’m trying not to project everything inside of me onto my face, but I’m pretty sure I’m losing the battle. “The pain of walking out of your apartment was worth it, Stella. You just said you have faith in me.”
She hums. Keeps on frowning. “Apparently you have it in me, too.” After a moment of lip chewing, she lifts curious eyes to mine. “How did you know I didn’t take the earrings? Did you Google me? You did, didn’t you?”
Her question throws me for a loop. It’s not that I haven’t considered Googling her to find out more about the night of the robbery that sent her to prison. I have thought about doing it. A lot. I suspect the finer details of what happened matter quite a bit. “No. I didn’t. You’re going to tell me what happened when you’re ready.”
“I told you what happened.”
“Not all of it.”
Lord, her heart is jackhammering against my chest. I want to lay her down and press my full weight down on top of her, just to make her feel grounded. But I appease myself by walking her backward to the couch, turning and sitting down, pulling her sideways into my lap.
When she tucks her head under my chin, I swear I’ve died and gone to heaven.
“You were right. I’ve got popcorn and a sewing kit. We’re going to make a garland worthy of the Rockefeller Center tree just as soon as you get this off your chest.”
“There’s nothing on my chest,” she grumbles, sniffing my bow tie. Snuggling in.
“Nothing but a forty-pound boulder,” I manage through my tightening throat.
“Wow. Who’s calling out who now?” Stella sighs and I wait, trying not to be obvious that I’m holding my breath. “I thought maybe you Googled me and found out, you know…that I didn’t leave the night of the robbery. When the restaurant owner was shot, I called 911 and waited with him, holding my sweatshirt over his wound. I didn’t leave with Nicole. I couldn’t.” Her voice grows a little shaky but she clears it. “And I thought maybe you read about that on the internet and assumed I could never steal earrings. Or hold up a restaurant with a real gun, having no idea it wasn’t fake. Because you’re a man who wants to believe everyone is redeemable and good deep down.”
It takes me a minute to speak. I’m not even sure what’s happening inside of me, I just know I want to go back in time and be in her corner that night. “I won’t deny that. I do think everyone has some good inside them deep down, even my grandmother and father, but I’m also logical. I’m realistic enough to know some people might never locate that good or do anything with it. You’re not one of them. I don’t need a search engine to tell me that.”
“Did you at least type my name into the Google search bar without hitting enter?”
“Sixty-three times, at least.”
Her laughter is light. Lighter than I’ve ever heard it and it sends my heart climbing up into my throat. When the musical sound fades, she’s silent for a moment. Then, “Nicole is getting out of prison earlier than expected. I found out over the weekend. I ran into you right after I spoke to her on the phone—”
“That’s why you were upset,” I say on an exhale, relieved by all of the puzzle pieces fitting into place. “You’re not on good terms with her.”
A beat passes. “I’m not sure our terms have ever been good. We’ve been best friends for a long time. But it’s a relationship that…I don’t know, it got twisted up somewhere along the line and I couldn’t…I can’t untangle it.” Her curled hand settles on my chest almost hesitantly, relaxing slowly. “I’d never put the blame on Nicole for anything I did. I’m responsible for my own actions. I can’t pretend I didn’t go along with her ideas so she’d be happy, though. She had it so much harder than me growing up. Why couldn’t I just do these things that bonded us, made us a team, so she’d feel a…connection? I had one. I had a great one. But time passed. Our antics escalated. And one day, I realized I didn’t have my family connection anymore. We’d drifted apart. I’d gotten closer and closer to Nicole. By then, I was in too deep to climb out. I’d gone along with these plans that made me uncomfortable so long that I’d gotten comfortable. Until the night of the robbery. It all just came into focus. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to go home. But the home I remembered wasn’t there anymore. I’d ruined it. I’d lost the respect of my parents and I’d lost myself.” She looks up at me. “I’m still trying to locate her again. But today…it went a long way. What Jordyn did. What you did, standing up for me to your family like that.”
“Well.” Ah, Jesus, I can barely speak around the rawness in my throat. “A wise woman once told me it’s not my job to teach people to be happy.”
She rubs her cheek against my shoulder. “Who?”