Mouth to Mouth (Beach Kingdom 1)

What if something bad happened and he wasn’t there to save her?

He tossed the dregs of his freezing cold coffee into the bushes, set the mug down and scrubbed his hands down his face. She’d called his bluff. No sense in denying it. He’d been awake enough hours and replayed their conversation in his head so many times, he could recite it word for word. Yeah, he’d meant what he said to Olive. There couldn’t be a relationship between them. They lived in different worlds. They were going different places.

But he hadn’t really allowed himself to consider what it would be like never talking to her again. Never seeing or kissing her again. A world where none of those things were possible left him lifeless, staring out into the sunrise trying to remember if there was a point to going through the motions every day, like he’d been doing for so long.

Since returning home from prison, he hadn’t allowed himself to be ambitious. Wasn’t ambition kind of pointless with a prison record? How far could a man reasonably go with an assault attached to his name? Even without a record, his hair trigger energy made people uneasy. On the nights he bartended at the Castle Gate, conversations were kept to a quieter pitch. Customers chose to sit at tables instead of in front of him at the bar. Every once in a while, a woman would be attracted to the very same energy that made others wary, but until Olive, Rory hadn’t realized how uncomfortable those women made him. They looked at him and saw a novelty. A one-time thrill.

No one had ever looked at him the way Olive did. No judgment. Only curiosity, awareness…and that complicated something between them that he didn’t have a name for. Like she wanted to explore him. Like she couldn’t help wanting to. Needing to.

What would it be like to have Olive look up at him with such trust and open admiration…and know he’d earned it? To be a good man for her?

Pointless thoughts. Rory traced some carvings on the concrete stairs with the toe of his sneakers. His initials, along with Andrew’s and Jamie’s. He could still remember the afternoon they’d used a stick to alter the wet cement. How their father had reacted when he got home that night from running the Castle Gate. Their mother had borne the brunt of his anger. She always had—and they’d been too young to do anything about it.

Back then, anyway.

As always, when Rory thought of that time, the nape of his neck turned hot, wire seeming to stretch his fingers, curl them into fists. When he’d gotten sentenced, his mother and father had still been living together in the house. Jamie had been a senior in college, on the brink of earning his degree in Education, Andrew was beginning to take over the family business and working constantly. That left eighteen-year-old Rory alone with his parents in the house. By then, he’d grown taller and broader than his father. It went unspoken that he would protect his mother and win.

Until the night on the beach when he’d given in to his anger.

Hard to protect anyone from inside of a cell.

The door of the house opened, saving Rory from his darkening thoughts. When both of his brothers emerged barefoot in sweatpants and hoodies, Rory ignored them, continuing to stare out at the horizon in stony silence.

Jamie sat on the bottom step. Andrew took the one beside him. No one said anything, except for the neighborhood, which spoke its own language of cars rumbling to life, seagulls calling to each other on the breeze, the Atlantic Ocean waking up in the distance.

Finally, Andrew broke the silence. “I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. About not being able to afford you. Especially after you’d just been through a rescue. A tough one.” He scratched at his morning beard. “I was just pissed off.”

Rory waved a dismissive hand, even though a shift took place in his chest. “It’s fine, man.”

“No, it’s not.” Andrew shifted on the step. “Look. This girl Olive is obviously important to you and she overheard—”

“I said it’s fine.” Hearing her name out loud cracked him straight down the middle, so it took him a few seconds to continue. “My brother bitching about me and saying I’m unpredictable wasn’t the deal breaker.”

Jamie turned to face them with a curious expression. “You told her about prison?”

His jaw clenched “Had to be done.”

“I assume you told her how it happened.” Jamie prompted. “Why it happened.”

“It doesn’t make a difference, Jamie.”

“Sorry, but fuck that. It makes a difference to me.”

A stone lodged itself in Rory’s throat. “I didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t important. Only that the outcome is the same, no matter what prompted me to almost kill a man.”