Page 68 of Bombshell (Whiskey Dolls 1)

“Okay.” He started toward the front of the house, stopping just long enough to give me a big squeeze. “Love you, Mar-Mar.”

That lump in my throat that I’d been battling for the past couple weeks made a sudden reappearance. “Love you too, Cool Guy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He took off like a bat out of hell, running up the stairs and into his room with Titan on his heels.

I pulled in a fortifying breath before turning back to Pierce, and what I saw in his gaze nearly struck me mute. The longing in those clear blues was so obvious you couldn’t miss it or possibly mistake it for anything else.

“Hi,” he said in a low, husky voice. “Thanks for doing that with him today. I bet he had a blast.”

“He did. But we need to talk.”

He blew out a sigh and rubbed at his jaw that was covered in a few days’ worth of stubble. “You’re right. Marin, I—”

I wasn’t sure what he thought we needed to talk about, but Iwascertain it wasn’t something I could handle. At least not right now. “We have a problem.”

At my blunt statement, his back shot straight and concern carved into his features. “What’s wrong? Is it Eli?”

“No, nothing like that. When we were leaving the park, I saw your mother. Or more correctly, she saw me... with Eli. And she didnotlook happy.”

“Fuck,” he hissed, his shoulders slumping like the weight of holding them up was just too much.

“Yeah. And from what I saw on her face, I don’t think you have much time before she gets here.”

As if Satan himself had summoned her, the doorbell rang through the house, the normally melodic chime suddenly seeming like an ominous gong.

Pierce lifted his glass to his lips and threw back the entire thing in one gulp before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Might as well get this shit over with.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, my eyes darting toward the back door.

“Youarenotsneaking out,” he grunted with a frown. “You have every right to be here. You’re one of Eli’s people, whether she likes that or not. Let’s go.”

Without giving me a chance to object, he started toward the front door just as the person on the other side began to pound on it. I stayed a few paces back as he whipped it open, the picture of calm as he greeted the woman on the other side.

“Mom, this is a pleasant surprise,” he said in a deadpan voice. “What brings you by?”

Dun, dun, dun.

* * *

Pierce

The past couple weeks had been absolute misery. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. My sheets still smelled like Marin, like sugar and flowers, and I couldn’t bring myself to wash them or strip them off the bed.

It was a self-imposed punishment. I’d made the huge fucking mistake of throwing Marin away, and having to smell her every night, having that fragrance surround me, was my penance for screwing up one of the best things I’d ever had.

I’d been racking my brain the past few days, trying to think of ways to make it right and summon up the courage to actually do it, but every time I started, fear would clutch my chest in its icy grip, refusing to let me go.

What if I gave my heart to her completely and something happened? What if I lost her too? I couldn’t possibly survive another heartbreak like the one I’d had with Constance. But I also didn’t know how to live any longer without the light Marin brought into my life, and that talk with her sister earlier that day only made that more obvious.

Any attempt I’d made at talking to her the past two weeks had been shut down in an instant. She wanted nothing to do with me; she made that clear every time she walked out of my house, brushing past me without so much as acknowledging me.

I couldn’t get a word in edgewise with her, not that I was putting my all into trying. That was on me. Just another example of my complete and total cowardice. I’d let her go without a fight, and I continued to do it again and again every single day, every time I let her walk away from me. But Tali had helped to pull my head out of my ass, and I knew it was time to act, really and truly act.

When she came in earlier and said we needed to talk, I felt a niggling of hope bloom in my chest. This was my chance. Then she squashed that hope with what she said next.

Now I was standing in the doorway of my house with my mother on one side and the woman who held my heart in her delicate hand on the other.

This was the last goddamn thing I wanted to deal with.

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