My mind wandered back to our epic night of lovemaking—yes, oral sex and fucking and anal play would all be considered lovemaking with the right woman—and I still marveled at how responsive she’d been. How eager. Good Lord, that girl was meant to be in our bed.
“I was going to say kind,” Jackson replied, rubbing his hand over his beard. “If that’s the way she was raised, it’s a wonder she’s so sweet.” I could all but hear the grin in his voice as he added, “And yeah, passionate as fuck, too. Our girl is definitely uninhibited.”
Hot. Wild. Sensitive. Easily aroused. Bold.
We were both grinning like idiots as we reached the turn for her parents’ place. She was everything we wanted in a woman, and we hadn’t needed years to figure that out. We’d just…known. It might have sounded strange to outsiders, but for Bridgewater men, it was just our way. We’d been raised to listen to our instincts and trust our gut when it came to finding our lifelong love.
Just like with our tacit agreement to share a wife, Jackson and I hadn’t even had to talk about going after her. We’d taken one look at Avery at the gate in the Minneapolis airport, curled up with her overnight bag leaning against the airport wall, and we’d known.
She was ours.
I slowed down in front of the house where Avery’s family lived. Unlike the others on the block, there were no holiday lights adorning the eaves and no tacky reindeer in the yard. They either didn’t celebrate Christmas or had zero holiday spirit. I assumed the latter.
“I guess this is it,” Jackson said. “Think we’ll get her to agree to come out with us?”
Now it was my turn to shrug, feigning a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “This is destiny, remember? We just need to show her how good it can be.”
“Destiny?” he asked, eyes wide. “When have you ever used that word before?”
I rolled my eyes because he was right. I sounded like an ass. “Fine. She liked us to be in charge the other night. We’ll do it again. Fuck destiny. We want Avery and we’re going up that walk to get her.”
I wasn’t sure who I was reassuring with my bold pep talk. Him or me.
4
AVERY
* * *
Just one day back and I was ready to flee again. I’d slept away most of the first day, catching up after twenty-four hours of traveling…and fucking. I’d woken up to my parents bickering—they didn’t even try to keep their voices down—and now I just wanted to go back upstairs and crawl into my childhood bed.
But I wasn’t tired and there was no way my mom would let me sleep through my entire visit. I’d intentionally made these trips home shorter and more infrequent over the years and she never let me forget it. But listening to my parents argue about the same old shit drove me away. Not that they knew that. It was normal for them.
“I don’t understand why you can’t find a real job and settle down like your sister.” My mom was chopping vegetables with a vengeance, like she could get out almost thirty years’ worth of repressed hatred for my father if she just diced carrots with enough vigor.
I ignored the question like I always did. I loved my job. Sure, it had its downsides, and the violence during this last trip was a good reminder of that, but overall, I enjoyed what I did. I was employed by one magazine, but was a consistent contributor to three others. I had a steady paycheck, benefits. I saw the world, met new and fascinating people. Knew from these experiences that my parents were miserable and they enjoyed making the people around them—namely me—miserable, too.
I was proud of what I did, that I found my own happiness, despite what my family thought about it.
Sure enough, my father couldn’t resist the urge to throw in his own two cents as he came in the room. I had his thick, curly hair, although his was cut short and was now mostly gray. “Leave the girl alone, Marla. If she wants to get herself killed traveling to some godforsaken country on the other side of the world, nothing you say is going to stop her.”
I snagged one of the carrots my mom had finished cutting and stuck a piece of it in my mouth. Maybe if I was chewing, I could fight the urge to defend myself, and the loud crunch could tune them out.
I had to hand it to my dad, though. He was such a pro at the dysfunctional family thing that he’d managed to take an opposing stance against my mom while still making me feel like shit. They were experts at passive aggressiveness.
Way to go, Pops.
My mother spun around, her knife raised dangerously as she jabbed it in my father’s direction. “Don’t you go getting morbid on us, Frank. Her job might be dangerous, but I’m sure she takes every precaution.”
I opened my mouth to thank her for standing up for me, but stopped when she continued.
“But why she feels the need to leave in the first place, I’ll never understand.” She turned to me, apparently remembering that I was in the same room with them. “Why can’t you find a good man, like your sister?”
Ugh. My sister. I loved Jackie, just like I loved my parents. With an arm’s length wariness. We might have our issues, but family was family and that was why I was sitting here, two weeks before Christmas, in the last place I wanted to be. Jackie was only getting married once—or so I assumed—and so I’d wear the seafoam green dress that looked like something out of an 80’s teen flick. Bridesmaid was one thing, but I’d rather stab my mom’s knife in my arm before I followed in my sister’s footsteps.
Younger than me by two years, Jackie had chosen a completely different life path. While I’d raced out the front door the day after graduation and rarely looked back, hell bent on seeing the world outside Bridgewater, Jackie had settled in even deeper.
As far as I knew, the only time she’d left the state was to go to our cousin’s wedding in Seattle a few years ago, and even then, all she’d done was bitch and moan about everything that was different from what she knew. Which was everything, really. She’d hated the traffic, the food tasted weird, the people were rude. Take the girl out of Bridgewater and she’d turned into a whining nightmare. And that was Washington state. I doubted she was headed to Hawaii or Mexico for her honeymoon.