Still Not Into You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Read online

  “Don’t.” It comes out frigid, furious, but there’s a heavy, hurting hitch in her voice. Her reflection-face is trembling, on the verge of crumpling, long bronze-black lashes trembling, and I can’t let her know I can see that or it’ll hurt her even more. “You don’t know me. Don’t try to get inside my head. You won’t like what you find there.”

  We’re here, headlights sweeping over her little house, the tufts of tall, grey-green grass waving in the breeze, the faint white froths of the waves hitting the shore. I pull the Dodge to a halt and shift gears to park.

  I don’t know what to say to her.

  I feel like if I say something, if I answer that, I’ll be nailing the coffin closed on any chance she’ll ever open up to me, believe in me, let me just reach out to offer her a hand up from the dark.

  As long as I’m silent, there’s an unanswered question hanging between us, souring the air. Maybe that unanswered question will keep her here for just a little bit longer.

  I watch her stare blankly through the window, unmoving, her hands curled into white-knuckled fists in her lap. Then she launches into motion like a robot hit with a charge of current, jerky and stiff and swift, pushing herself out of the truck. She slams the door hard enough to make it rock and bounce, but then turns back, glaring at me expectantly through the window as she rakes her hand furiously through her hair and rips it down from the bun to spill around her face in lashes of dark, sun-kissed brown.

  I hit the master button to roll the window down, letting in the taste of the sea and the brimstone of her sulfurous anger.

  “I’m not holding anything in. You're wrong, Gabe,” she bites off coldly. “What you see is what you get, and what you see is someone determined to bring Joannie home. That's who I am. That's all I am. I’m going to find her soon. Then I’m going to end the man who took her. And nothing – you hear me? – nothing will stand in my way.”

  I don't think any mortal man could doubt the furious will shining in her eyes. But she ain't finished.

  “Not you, not Landon, not protocol, not rules, not feelings. And not some asshole who’s the last man on Earth I’d ever want to help me out.”

  She steps back. I can feel every inch of distance between us widen, turning into this chasm that swallows up the world.

  Her lips tremble, her hair tossing across her face in dark night-lit lashes, and she tightens her jaw, lifting her chin.

  “You want to do your job?” she says. “Then do your job. No one hired you to be a therapist, so save that for someone else. I don’t need it – and I don’t need you.”

  I don’t need you.

  Fuck me.

  Not since I got the call that my Dad was found dead in a shithole have any words felt like razor blades, swimming under my skin.

  I just wish, as I watch her walk away from me with her spine stiff and proud, trying so hard to be strong, that I could understand why.

  * * *

  Never seen nothing like moonrise over the ocean. It's pretty.

  It’s the only sentence I write in my book tonight. Nobody tells you how big and clear the moon looks over the Pacific. We’re getting on that witching hour again, after midnight when Sky’s still up, but I know the exhaustion’s going to claim her soon. It always does, pulls her into a soft, exhausted, fitful sleep.

  Just a few days hanging around, and I already know her patterns.

  Only, tonight I can’t look at her. If I look at her I’m gonna feel that gulf, that chasm she made sure to pry open between us with a crowbar, reminding me I belong on one side of it and she belongs on the other. Nothing but the strangers she wants us to be.

  So, I just sit back and watch the moon rise, and then stare as it hangs low and heavy in the sky, almost touching the waves. It's a quarter full and so damn big and pearly clear, I feel like I could reach out the window and feel the pock marks on its face.

  It turns the sky around it a different kind of blue with its silver light. A sweet and melancholy blue. A dark and lonely blue.

  I don’t want to be alone right now, but I got nobody I can turn to.

  My Ma and I, we don’t talk much. Not since Dad died.

  Don’t know if it’s my guilt and shame or her sorrow but we don’t seem to have much to say to each other. Me and the rest of my unit kind of drifted separate ways after that bad business I got mixed up in.

  Meanwhile, Landon’s mad at me over something I didn’t do.

  My other old pals from the war got their own lives these days. Like my buddy, Brent Eden out in Phoenix, fresh off his own drama with a dead brother, a motorcycle gang, and some Happily Ever After he told me about in a Christmas card with the wife he thought he'd never have and an adorable, happy, brilliant little girl. He'd been raising her all alone till things got wild and he met his wife, Izzy.

  My shit ain't his. He's been through enough drama and enough hurt for me to ever think real hard about asking him for tips on how to clean up mine.

  And Sky don’t want a damn thing to do with me.

  It’s a helpless, awful feeling to realize how alone you are. Never bothered me much before.

  Guess I always believe you gotta be the kind of person you don’t mind being alone with, and I’ve always been good with my own company.

  Don’t know why it’s not enough, all of a sudden.

  Must be because that little wildcat looked right through me like I wasn’t there, like I was just a phantom, and showed me there’s no one in my life who needs me at all.

  7

  Don't Look Away (Skylar)

  It’s been nearly a week, and I’m still upset.

  Only, I’m upset for all the wrong reasons.

  I should be mad at Gabe for turning that mess around on me. For making me look and feel like a petty child for getting even with him when he was just trying to do what I wanted.

  I...okay, let's be real. Maybe I owe him an apology for that.

  Maybe I was being spiteful because I hate this whole situation and this messy tangle inside me. Maybe I don't understand this weird feeling of camaraderie I get around him and how gentle he is and how screwed up I get knowing I hurt him.

  And knowing he hurt me, when for just a second, I was terrified. Trembling because I know that all he saw of me was this vicious, spiteful little monster.

  Just this heinous thing brutal desperation turned me into.

  I don't hate Gabe.

  I hate this.

  Hate going on about everyday life while Joannie could be hurt or in danger or just miserable with that demon man who’s nothing but a sperm donor. Nothing like a father. Nothing like family.

  I get up every day, go to work, do my job, come home, spend all night digging for leads, and never take any action. I work myself raw like a zombie, digging, chasing loose ends. All under Gabe’s watchful eye.

  I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to have a normal life until our little girl comes home. My own helplessness is eating me alive from the inside out.

  It makes me cruel, but I’m trying not to be.

  It makes me a bad person, and I don't want to be.

  Especially not to Gabe. Though all week, I’ve wanted to lash out at him for being too nice.

  It makes no sense after the verbal lashing I handed down.

  I don’t understand this game he’s playing. Every day, he shows up like clockwork.

  All smiles, all warmth and pleasantry, though it never goes past the surface. He's a mask of civility, but I wonder if deep down, I've firebombed his soul.

  Doesn’t change how he’s always waiting with a coffee and my breakfast special in a paper bag every morning. Every afternoon, he's got another coffee.

  When I go running, he’s there with mineral water. Or sometimes a strawberry diet slush the big lug knows I can't resist.

  He knows my life inside and out, my habits, and he’s quietly squeezing himself in. Purely just so he can be there without challenging me. Without setting me off and turning me into walking napalm and witchfire all o
ver again.

  And it’s shallow and empty and amazing he doesn't crack, but I hate it.

  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but...I want the old Gabe back.

  The sweet-talking, easy going Louisiana giant in all his too friendly, too personal, too intimate glory.

  I want to see those hazel sunlit eyes of his piercing into me like he’s trying to find every soft bit I buried and stroke those places until I purr.

  I guess even Gabe has his walls, though. And me being me, I managed to push him to the other side of them.

  It’s probably for the best. Maybe?

  * * *

  Or maybe not.

  There’s a moment, as I come back from a run on Thursday evening. He’s just pulling into my drive.

  I’m a sweaty mess, barely dressed, my hair coming loose when I can barely keep it in a tail to start with, sticking to my face and jaw.

  My knees hurt. I throttled them. I ache all over, really, and there’s an adrenaline rush running through me, heightening my senses until my entire body is aware of the thick, heady, masculine bulk of him sitting in that truck, so muscular and heavy, he makes it dip low on its tires on the driver’s side.

  I can’t not feel him, as I stop on the curve of the lane, just looking at him across the stretch of asphalt. It’s like he’s hardwired into me.

  A real connection. A mysterious, scary, indescribably wonderful one.

  And across the wavelength we're sharing, there's this kind of low and quiet melancholy. It sinks deep in my chest.

  For the first time this week, I feel like he’s really looking at me and showing me more than his polite, professional face, this haunted quiet beast who won’t ask but can’t help but want. His entire soul is in those tawny eyes. My already heated skin turns to fire as that gaze tears me open.

  I can’t let him see the wanting starting to build inside me, too. No freaking way.

  Talk about disastrous. Talk about distraction.

  So I turn my back on him, and shut myself in my house, shuttering the blinds to pretend I'm alone again. All so I can keep chasing leads to anything but this horribly kind, handsome man's big sky embrace.

  * * *

  I never do this.

  This brooding. This wanting.

  I learned early on that men can’t be trusted, and wanting men just gives them power over you.

  Or maybe I’ve got abandonment issues with my parents being dead and my father letting me down, I don’t know.

  I just know very few men I’ve known have ever proved me wrong, and the only ones I can stand to trust are the ones who have the good sense not to want me.

  Wanting me is a dangerous thing. Maybe it always was before the Navy stripped me raw, and sanded me down into something sharp-edged, defensive, and cruel.

  I still remember being sixteen and crushing on Casey Hicks.

  He was this big brawling jock who had a sensitive side, supposedly – a tyrant on the football field but suddenly poetic, sweet, and soft-eyed in art class, where he drew these French silhouette portraits and made self-deprecating murmurs when the girls fawned on him over them.

  I want to say I didn’t fawn, but I’d be lying.

  I was sixteen.

  I just did my dreamy wanting in a really quiet, awkward way. I never really fit into any group in school. Not the popular kids, not the preppy kids, not the band kids, the nerds, the theater kids, the jocks, nobody.

  I was on my own. A world unto myself.

  People didn’t even notice me enough to pick on me. I just skulked around the edges, too angry to be lonely, not even sure how to make my puzzle pieces fit into this weird human scheme.

  And if I liked a boy, I wouldn’t admit it to myself, even when I couldn’t stop looking at him from across the room and watching his paint-tipped hands work over a brush, his broad shoulders moving slow and quiet and calm as he stood before the canvas.

  I thought for sure I was invisible. I hadn’t realized he’d noticed me. Not until the day he asked me out. Not until he stood before me with that calm, easy smile and those steady eyes and laughed like my wide-eyed stammering and scowling was charming, cute, instead of just me being a frazzled mess.

  I’m still not sure how he got me to say yes.

  And I’m not sure how he got me to relax, smile, or laugh as we went for walks in the park, and fed each other corn dogs, and he wiped mustard off the tip of my nose.

  We hung out on the beach together. Chasing shadows across the sun-warmed sand, bright summer light shining off his bronzed shoulders. We kissed in the back rows of movie theaters, and had no idea what we were watching because we were so wrapped up in each other. He made moves, and I was afraid if I made a sound, someone in the darkened room would catch us and kick us out.

  He made me feel wanted. He made me feel pretty.

  He made me feel safe enough that one night when he toyed with the button of my jeans and whispered “Sky, do you wanna?” I wrapped myself up in him and whispered yes.

  You know the story from here.

  Maybe there’s no pig’s blood and hysterical screaming and rampant wholesale slaughter, but if I’d had psychic powers there would've been. One fumbling night in the back of his car, a sporty Camaro that he borrowed from his Dad.

  There was pain, but it was okay.

  It was awkward and he didn’t quite know what he was doing, but neither did I. When he climbed out to smoke a cigarette after and left me to get dressed, I told myself it was beautiful and special. Not cold and stiff and embarrassing. I thought it had to be okay, because it brought us closer to each other.

  The next day he told our entire sophomore class I was a really bad lay.

  Boasted how it had only taken him two weeks to break me down, bag me, and take my virginity. He'd broken the infamous class 'ice queen,' and we were done.

  Yeah. That was me.

  Every high school cautionary tale of mortification ever.

  I’d been a dare, a joke, an experiment.

  Just to see if he could get the quiet angry girl to defrost. Casey Hicks made me a mark on his scorecard, and taught me right out of the gate that men don’t change. Boys like Casey grow into men like Casey, and I feel sorry for anyone who ever actually believes an asshole loves them.

  But Gabe makes me think of Casey Hicks – if Casey hadn’t been a bitter lie. A façade. A prick.

  Thing is, after Casey told the whole world I was a cold fish in bed?

  I left a whole lot of cold fish in the back of his Dad’s Camaro.

  Cold, gutted fish. Catfish, to be precise.

  It was messy, and it stank like a latrine. It got him grounded for a week.

  Speak softly, but carry a big fish. That’s my motto.

  I may be small, but I’m vindictive – and Harmon Ketchum's about to find out the hard way.

  That’s why I don’t have time to be wondering if Gabe’s really honest. If he’s really a good man, someone I can trust. Someone I can learn not to hurt the way I’m so good at hurting people, because I don’t know how to do anything else.

  Maybe I’ve been stabbed so many times it’s all I know. All I’ve learned.

  And all I’m able to do is stab back.

  That’s not fair to him. Not when he’s so strong, but so gentle.

  It’s for his own good, I tell myself. His own good, and mine.

  Yet, every night I check out the window, just to make sure he’s still there.

  * * *

  My car’s out of the shop by Friday afternoon. Finally some good news.

  Not having my car felt like missing a limb, and it’s a breath of relief to have the freedom to drive myself around again. It’s weird not having Gabe waiting for me after work, though.

  I know that wasn’t really part of the security patrols, but it really hits me, knowing he was driving me around as a courtesy. Not just to keep an eye on me. I never asked him to, never thanked him.

  He just did it because it was there to be done.

&nb
sp; I...damn.

  I can’t go soft on that oversized moron, but I should go see him.

  I know he’s staying at the boss' place. Probably catching up on his sleep since he doesn’t have to babysit me while I’m at the office. I could just swing by, make nice, get out the second it starts to get awkward – and it will get awkward. But it’s the right thing to do.

  I stop by a fast food joint on my way out and grab a bacon double cheeseburger with fries and a strawberry shake. Then on impulse, as a peace offering, make it a double.

  If that’s his favorite, too, I might even laugh.

  Though I can never let Grandma find out.

  Matching combo meals? Jesus, she’ll think we’re soulmates.

  It’s only about a twenty-minute drive from the office to Sausalito, where the boss' house nestles in a little curving tree-shrouded crescent of private beach, the sprawling space separated from the beach house by a stretch of grass. I know my way around pretty well; I’ve been out here several times for meetings, barbeques, even impromptu scenario training sessions.

  The house looks empty, shut up and locked, the Impala gone, the lights dark. Guess Landon and Kenna aren’t home.

  The windows are open in the beach house, though, and I see Gabe’s Dodge parked on the lane leading up to the sand.

  I stop my Buick a few feet behind it and just sit there for a minute. My palms are sweaty, and my face and neck feel hot. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I’m being ridiculous. The burgers are going to get cold, plus I’m not a coward.

  Even if I left the Navy years ago, I’m still a soldier.

  And I’m still that little girl who peered through the blinds and dared the shadow men to try to get to her sister.

  Let's do this, I tell myself, biting my lip.