Page 53 of Getting Lucky Number Seven

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The darker it got, the quieter Beck was, and I worried he’d regretted the decision to stay. But when I asked, he insisted he was fine. He instructed me to pick out a movie from the large entertainment center while he went to get something to drink.

Twenty minutes later, he still hadn’t come back. It was a big house, but twenty minutes was a stretch, so I went to look for him.

I found him in the downstairs office, sitting in the chair behind the desk, his head in his hands. “Beck?” I took a cautious step inside, not wanting to interrupt, but unable to leave him like that.

He looked up when I touched his shoulder, the sorrow on his face so raw it punched me in the chest. “Sorry. I… This was my mom’s office. I stepped inside to… I don’t even know.”

Papers were scattered across the desk and the drawers hung open. I hadn’t gotten a good look at the room when I passed by it on the way back and forth to the kitchen, but I didn’t think it’d been messy. “Were you looking for something?”

Beck pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wanted to see if my mom was still having an affair. I don’t know what I thought she’d have here to prove if she was or wasn’t, but…” He gestured vaguely at the desk and exhaled a shaky breath.

What do you say to something like that? “You think she had an affair?”

“No, I know she did. Sophomore year I ditched my last class of the day because I’d accidentally grabbed two left skates and didn’t want to be late for practice. When I came home, I heard my mom in the office and thought I’d say hi. But when I pushed open the door, she was in here with Mr. Brooks, my dad’s financial advisor who also helped with the charity she was involved in. They weren’t having sex, thank God, but it was clear they were about to.”

“That…sucks.” It wasn’t nearly strong enough, or probably helpful, but it was all I had.

Beck sniffed and shook his head. “Sorry. I thought I’d dealt with it, but apparently I just held it at bay long enough for it to come crashing into me at the worst possible time.” He pulled the brim of his hat lower and stood. “Ignore me. Let’s go watch the movie.”

I placed my hand on the center of his chest, stopping him from moving around me. “Remember how you once said that with me, you could just be you?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well, you can be. Be sad. Be mad. Be whatever the hell you’re going to be. You don’t have to hide it from me. There’s nothing you could say that would scare me away or make me think less of you.”

The muscles in his jaw flexed like he was trying to hold back. I reached up and smoothed a finger over them. His mask slowly cracked and his shoulders slumped. “My dad forgave her and moved on,” he said. “Why can’t I?”

“It’s not an easy thing to forgive. I’m not sure I could do it.”

Beck stared at me for what seemed like forever, and for a moment I thought he was going to confess to cheating on me. Which, well, he couldn’t have. Not really. But it’d still hurt like hell if he told me he’d been hooking up with other people on the side, especially during the past few weeks when we’d grown even closer.

“It doesn’t help that, according to the rumors, it was still going on,” he said. “And I have no idea if it’s true or not. But it’s possible, so then I get pissed off she’d betray my dad like that again—that she did it in the first place—and then I feel like shit because I’m thinking badly about my dead mother. Every good memory is taken over by it, and I…” His voice broke and he looked away.

I wrapped my arms around him, wanting to hold him tightly until he felt whole again. I opened my mouth to try to come up with something to say, but then he whispered, “Make it go away, Lyla.”

Of all the kisses we’d shared, none of them had gone so slowly. Or felt so sweet. This one was different, like he was transferring part of himself to me. I took it in, hoping it meant I could take away the pain and help him escape. We stumbled out of the room, our mouths and bodies never breaking contact.

At the base of the curving marble staircase, I peeled off his shirt. I lost mine halfway up. My bra hit the floor at the top, and by the time we got to the bedroom, all I had on were the pair of tiny lacy panties I’d worn hoping Beck and I would get a chance to be alone. When Beck moved toward the bed, I pulled back. He wanted it to go away—I planned on making sure he wasn’t thinking about anything but me.

He groaned as I slowly kissed and licked my way down his body, his muscles twitching under my mouth. I’d hesitated to do this before, and Beck never pushed it. I used to think blow jobs were slightly demeaning, the whole down-on-your knees, could-be-anyone thing. For the first time I got that it was caring about someone else more than yourself, and that made it unexpectedly hotter than I ever could’ve imagined.

Empowerment filled me. I could be the one to make up for everything wrong in his life. I’d stay by his side, no matter what, and eventually he’d see it was all going to be okay. It was scary to give him so much of myself, but at least I knew Beck would take care of it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Beck

I waited for the sharp edge of panic to set in, but as I looked at Lyla, my lungs didn’t constrict the way they did for a moment last night during my confession in the office, when I wondered if I was letting her in too much.

The woman completely unraveled me, and I didn’t care to be wound back up and put in a box where I had to be careful about everything I did or said. I ran my fingers across her bare back, grinning when I hit a ticklish spot and she jerked, pressing her breasts into me with the movement. “Morning.”

She tipped her head up and flashed me a beautiful smile I vowed to capture on my phone so I could stare at it whenever I had a crappy day.

“Breakfast?” I linked my fingers with hers and kissed the top of her head. “We’ll go out—I won’t even demand you make me pancakes.”

“Damn right you won’t.”

I chuckled and glanced at the time. “We better get going, though. I’ve got to get to my lawyer’s office in Concord by eleven. So we’ll do breakfast in yesterday’s walk-of-shame clothes, and then we can go get cleaned up. After that, you’ll have time to hang out at my aunt’s and study, or if you want, you can take the Land Rover and explore. I could just call when I need you to pick me up.” Or, I supposed I could take one of the other cars out of the garage, but that’d mean not riding with Lyla this morning, and I wasn’t ready to let her go yet, even for a few minutes.

Yep, I’ve definitely reached sappy territory.But I didn’t care.

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