Southern Seducer (North Carolina Highlands 1)

I’ve made her that exact cup every morning for the past two weeks.

The spoon clatters to the floor. I jump, and she curses.

I hop to my feet, ignoring the twin arrows of pain that shoot through my knees.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathes. She tries to stoop to pick it up, but I hold out my hand to stop her, and pick it up myself.

“No biggie.”

“I made you jump—”

“Bel. It’s a spoon. I’m fine.” I grab her hands, not thinking. She’s shaking. “Oh, honey.”

She’s not crying yet, but she’s about to.

Still, she looks me in the eye, something I was too chickenshit to do a few heartbeats back, and says, “I’m going to miss you. So damn much.”

Anguish curls around my heart like a fist. “Please. It’s our last day. Let’s not—please don’t do this. Not yet.”

“Don’t do this?” Her voice rises with hurt. “Are you serious?”

She’s shaking, and I’m shaking, and I don’t know what to do.

I should be able to stay calm. Steady. I want to make Annabel feel safe.

That’s what the good guy would do.

But trying to be that guy has me doing things that don’t feel all that great.

I wrap her in a hug. Our embrace is easy, worn in now: my lips in her hair, her arms low around my waist, wrists crossed, fingertips casually grazing my ass.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I know. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

“What can I do?”

“Just…be you. Be with me. I’m trying to stay in the moment. But it’s not easy today.”

My blood warms. And I can tell hers does too by the way she presses into me. If I reach down and pull up her shirt, slip my fingers between her bare legs, she’ll be just wet enough to let me know what she wants.

Our last time.

We haven’t said it, but it has to be. I want Bel to go back to Charlotte and move on. It’ll hurt at first, but she’ll get over me. She got over Ryan, the man she married, so it’s only logical that she’ll get over the man she hooked up with for a few weeks during her maternity leave. She’ll find someone new. Someone better.

My gut convulses at the idea. It doesn’t shock me, it just—

I’ve never been possessive of a girl before.

Lots of firsts with Bel.

A cry erupts from the monitor in the bedroom.

My bedroom. Her side of the bed. A baby monitor and a book on her bedside table, condoms and lube on mine.

Guess I’ll be celibate from now on because no one’s ever gonna take that side again.

Bel loosens her grip on me, but I’m already heading for the stairs.

“Want me to bring her to the bed? Or do you want to nurse her on the couch?”

She says, “Couch, please,” and reaches for her coffee.

Everything I do reminds me it’s the last time I’m going to do it. I’ve probably been reading too much Mantel, my brain stuck somewhere in Anne Boleyn’s England. But I feel like I’m headed to the executioner’s block later today.

Last time I wake up with Bel.

Last time I climb the stairs and get Maisie up for the day.

Last time she’ll smile at me from her Pack ’n Play.

The grief is fucking real.

Time is oily today, slipping through my fingers, making me slide and slip through the morning.

Bel nurses Maisie, then I’m taking her on my hip, I’m showing her how to make banana pancakes for her mama, because Bel loves them. Who’s going to make them for her when I’m not around?

We eat, the baby still on my lap. Annabel always smiles at us together. This morning, her mouth is a straight line. We make halting attempts at conversation.

What is there to say, except the things I can’t?

By the time Annabel takes the baby up for a nap, I’ve got a moon lodged in my throat. I wash the dishes and load the dishwasher and make pointless, frantic phone calls to the head of housekeeping, my sister.

Anything, anything to keep from standing still. Because that’s when the axe comes down.

I hear Bel on the stairs and look at her. I can see up her shirt, the little triangle of pubic hair between her legs. Just a glimpse of her pussy, pink and pretty.

The moon rises, and so does my cock.

“Can I help you pack?” I ask, already knowing the answer but wanting to feel helpful.

“Nah. Mom and I pretty much packed up the other house yesterday. I just need to grab a few things here, and then we’ll be set.”

“So, your mom and Larry are going to do the phone sex thing, huh?”

Sniffing, Annabel laughs. “I guess so. For the time being, anyway.”

“I hear your mom has become quite the fisherman. Fisherwoman. Whatever.”

“Yep. And Larry is now a woke feminist who’s been mobilized to help change our sexist, racist, homophobic world for the better.”