RESHUFFLE: STACKED DECK BOOK TWO Page 2

  “Show us your cards, Sasquatch.”

  Smug, Ben tosses down a full house. “Three tens, and two queens. Pay up.”

  I scoff and toss mine on top. “Four of a kind. I win, ya little bitch.” I scoop the pile of chips in my direction and tuck them under my legs. There are a hundred plastic chips that mean absolutely nothing to the rest of the world, but to us, it means victory. It means superiority. It means–

  Bean tosses down a straight flush and shoves me to the side so hard that Ben’s strong hands have to catch me. “You’re always too damn smug for your own good. Give me my damn chips, loser.”

  Ben

  Reshuffle

  I follow Evie through the back gate of her family home, close it behind me, and step into the thick forest that surrounds the estate.

  It would be creepy, and if this were a slasher film, no doubt the girl dies. But this isn’t that, and it’s not like she doesn’t know I’m following. She knows I’ll follow her anywhere, which is why she pulled her sneakers on and gave me the come here, big boy eyes.

  Evie Kincaid has been the love of my life since I was fifteen and not even sure yet what to do with a girl. She’s been my every dream and every waking thought since the day our worlds collided, and soon after that, our tempers.

  She’s my wildcard, my crazy other half that forces me to always be on guard, or risk losing her to some freak accident.

  If the world was ever going to open up à la Ice Age with the squirrel and the nut, there’s no doubt in my mind that Evie will be standing exactly where the earth opens up. If the Loch Ness monster is real, then it’ll be Evie who discovers it – from inside the monster’s stomach. If the zombie apocalypse were to come upon us, Evie will be the first one turned, and she’ll make a game of tracking her friends down so we can all be part of the same club.

  Because without her friends, owning the world just wouldn’t be as much fun for her.

  Which means, if Evie gives me the come-hither eyes and steps into the forest, then I make sure my laces are tied, and I follow.

  Because I love her, and I’ll do anything it takes to make her mine for good.

  Including diving into the Loch to pull her out again.

  The weather is edging toward summer already, but in here, amongst the tall trees and thick foliage, it’s cool enough to make goosebumps break out on her porcelain skin. I follow for a few minutes and study her long hair. The curls are tight enough, a guy could wonder if she spins them around a pencil every single day to maintain that look, and since the curls are so tight and still touch her lower back, I’ve always wondered just how long her hair would be when straightened out.

  I know firsthand that, even when wet, her curls are still curly.

  I study her trim hips as we walk, and the high-waisted shorts she wears, the inch of belly she teases me with, and then the shirt that is basically just a crop top. She’s a fighter through and through, having spent most of her life in her family’s gym, which means her body isn’t typical of a woman her age. Her thighs are toned and muscular. Her stomach shows ridges from abdominal muscles, and her back shows the deep valley of her spine.

  She’s every man’s filthy dream, and though I’ve had her, I’ve spent time with her in the most intimate ways, it was short-lived, and we had to be gentle and discreet.

  Virgins, teenagers, scared.

  Our time together was a cornucopia of nerves and rush. There’s only so much you can do in the back of a pickup truck in the snow. There’s only so many times a seventeen-year-old – home from college and living with her parents – can sneak away to be with her boyfriend.

  We tried to be together as often as we could, but our options were limited, and our knowledge was… well… tame.

  We’re grown now, and we don’t have to be sneaky.

  But before that, we need to date again, we need to become who we used to be, but the more mature versions. We have to learn each other all over again, and seeing as this is the only chance I’ll get, I’m determined to get it right.

  “Hey, Ben?” She continues walking, facing ahead, so I only catch her smiling voice in the air.

  Laughing, I walk faster to get a little closer. “Yes, Evie?”

  She stops on a dime, spins and absorbs my blow when I crash into her, and our chests flatten together. My breath comes out on a whoosh, but she’s steely and unbothered as her hands come to my hips and hold on. She’s a little more than five and a half feet tall. Five-six or so, and because I stand a whole foot taller than that, every time we’re this close, she’s forced to bend her neck right back and expose the delicate skin that protects her throat.

  Small, blue veins stand out against her creamy flesh. Her pulse beats hard enough that I can see it, and I swear, every time we stand like this, I’m tempted to lean in and bite.

  I’ve never been rough with Evie Kincaid, but I know her. I know her very soul, and I know the day I bite, we’ll both go wild with need.

  But there are rules, right? No biting people that you’re not even with yet.

  “Did you…” I study her eyes and pray my heart doesn’t beat out of my chest. We’ve touched a million times in our lives, but we’ve been broken up for years. We’ve been geographically and emotionally disconnected for the longest time, so I was certain this would never happen for us again.

  It’s taking me a minute to adjust to the fact that she’s back in town, and that she’s willing to touch.

  “Did you want something?”

  Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip. “Yeah. I wanted a hug.” She lays her face on my chest and lets out a deep breath of air. “And this is our forest. When we’re in here, things are put back into perspective. The trees don’t care about the small shit that might have happened.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  She wraps her arms around my hips so tight that they overlap. “The trees have been standing for hundreds and hundreds of years, so what happened between us – ya know, the time we couldn’t be on the same page? – well, to the trees, it was nothing more than a blip in history.”

  “So you bring me into the trees and demand a hug?”

  I can feel her smile in the air. “Precisely. In here, you’ll give me the hug and not make me feel bad about being weak enough to ask for one.”

  “I don’t think it’s weak.” I take her chin in my fingers and tilt her face up. “I consider it brave, because I sure as shit wanted a hug, but I was too scared to ask.”

  She grins. “You don’t have to be scared. Friends?” Her icy blue eyes flick between mine. “Let’s be friends again. Let’s build us up from where we left off.”

  “You’re friend-zoning me?” I stumble back a step and press a hand to my heart. “Ouch!”

  Giggling, she steps back in and re-wraps her arms around me. “Only for a minute. Because our friendship made us who we are. It’s where we began, and what we forgot when we weren’t getting along. Friends first.” Bravely, she presses a kiss to my pec, and just so happens to make it land against the chain I have hidden beneath my shirt. “But soon, you’ll ask me out to dinner. A real dinner, with candles and fancy food that we’ll rush through. I’ll wear something sophisticated, and probably heels too, since I’ve seen you look at my legs.”

  I chuckle and press my lips to the top of her head. I don’t kiss, because I’m not sure that’s my right yet, but I rest my face in her hair and inhale. “Guilty. I’ve been looking a long time.”

  “Right, so after you ask, and after I say yes – which I will, seeing as I told you to ask me – that friendship has to come too. We can be friends and date, and then hopefully we don’t screw it up a second time.”

  “We won’t,” I declare. “I won’t let it go to shit again. This is our second chance.”

  “We worked out the kinks, so now we’re gonna make it work. There are no rules that say we can’t try this again. There’s no one in the world that won’t support this.”

  “Maybe your dad?”

/>   Her shoulders lift and fall with silent laughter. “Biggie loves you. If he didn’t, he would’ve kicked your ass already.”

  “He can’t kick my ass,” I mock grumble. “He’s old. I’m the new generation of fuckin’ awesome. Those old dudes have no chance of knocking us down.”

  “And you’re so humble, too.” Pulling away, she takes my hand and tugs me along so we’re walking in the forest hand in hand.

  We’ve done this a million times in the past, but the difference now is I’m a man, and she’s a woman. We’re not children anymore, so holding hands while we’re alone means something else.

  We walk in companionable silence for half an hour and pass markers we’ve laid out over the years. Our initials in a tree trunk. Our fight records in another. That time Evie tied a hair ribbon to a branch, loose at the time, has now grown into the branch, so it’ll be stuck for the rest of our lives. The faded ends flutter in the breeze, and make us both smile as we pass.

  We’ve told secrets in these woods – secrets, like how I’m terrified of the blood that runs in my veins. Ben Sr. felt narcissistic enough to name me after him, so when he tried to murder my mother when I was four, I’ve held onto this deep, paralyzing fear that I might hurt the women I love, too.

  I have a sister to take care of – two of them. A mother. A grandmother.

  I have Evie.

  Obviously, hitting a woman is a choice I make – or in my case, don’t make – but sometimes I get so angry that I can’t control the rage that blinds me. I can’t stop the starving desire to hit things when they piss me off. I’ve never been tempted to hit a woman before, but it’s not a big leap in my mind.

  And then there was the time I almost hurt Evie outside her college dorm room.

  It’s been my most paralyzing fear since I was a child, and when I spoke my truths amongst these trees, Evie held me, she soothed my fears, and as my best friend, she made it so I could believe her when she promised that I was a good man.

  In one of the million hours spent in these woods, Evie told me how she feels like a disappointment because she struggled so hard in school. How her family has never said as much, and their total support has helped pacify that fear, but when she compares herself to her cousins, it scares her that she’s the only one who can’t do numbers.

  Her sisters do just fine in school, so her dyscalculia – dyslexia, but with numbers – comes from her piece-of-shit biological father’s side of the family, and it bothers her that he was a woman-beater, a drug pusher, a bad man who almost – almost – makes mine look like an angel.

  We both come from shitty stock, and though our lives have been full of setbacks that try to slam us to our asses all because of who our mothers had children with, we do our best to pick the other up when we’re feeling weak.

  Three years of separation hurt us, because no one knows our secrets like we do, so without that connection, we were forced to swallow our fears and absorb the poison that, had the other person been accessible, we could have purged and come out stronger from.

  I was terrified of being Evie’s boyfriend back when we were teens because I was scared of losing my best friend.

  Which, ultimately, is exactly what happened.

  “You need to stop overthinking.” Smiling, she drags me through the final trees before we emerge among the sound of moving water. I haven’t been down here in years. I haven’t breathed in the humidity, or sat and listened to the running water. The hot springs, the springs we claimed as our own, has been deserted, because without her, I didn’t want to come here. Without Evie, it was just water, and I could get that at home without the walk through the forest.

  “I’m not overthinking,” I lie. “I’m totally chill.”

  “You’re never chill,” she snorts. “Like, literally ever. You’re the least chilly person I know.” She stops by the edge of the spring and releases my hand. Kneeling lower, she slides her fingers through the water and turns to me with a breathtaking smile. “I’ve missed this place more than you could ever know.”

  “I think I do know.” I back up and take a seat on a fallen tree that moss grew over and covered long ago. “I haven’t been down here in forever. I’ve missed the shit out of it.”

  “Really?” She sits on her ass and does what she always does. She unlaces her shoes and sends my mind spiraling. “Why the hell not? I’d have been here every single day if I was in town.”

  I shrug and try my damnedest not to hope she’ll strip all the way down. “I came down once or twice in your first semester, but–”

  “With Nora?” She tries to hide the hurt in her voice. She tries to swallow it down and not show how much my friendship with another woman hurt her.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I never brought her down here. Not once.”

  “You swear?” She studies me with insecure eyes. “Do you really swear?”

  “I do, I swear.”

  I look away when she stands in bare feet and unsnaps the button on her shorts. The last time I saw her like this, she was a teenager. The last time I saw her in any way like that, we were a couple, and I had permission to touch any time I liked.

  “But coming down here alone doesn’t feel the same.” I try to distract myself. And when she drops her shorts to reveal a black and white polka dot bikini bottom – she came prepared – I have to fold my arms and lean forward to cover myself. “I tried twice, but I kinda realized something important.”

  Her eyes come to me. She’s like a succubus, an evil beauty with the ability to appear innocent, as she slowly, so very slowly, brings her shirt up and over polka-dot-covered breasts. Her stomach is as toned as it always was, but when she turns to the side and shows off a single line of script along her ribs, I nearly fall off my log.

  “Ben?”

  I study the vertical script and hurriedly try to read it before she notices I’m staring.

  “Ben?” Fingers click in front of my face. “What important thing did you realize?”

  “Huh?”

  Eyes sparkling, she laughs and crouches down so we’re on the same level. “Stop looking at my body and answer the question.”

  “You got ink? What does it say?” I try to turn her, but without touching her too much. It’s an impossible feat that is both infuriating and insanely pleasurable. “What does it say, Evie?”

  “What’s the important thing you realized?” She smacks my hands away and lifts a brow. “I’ll show you after you answer.”

  “Um…” I tilt my head and try to read. True love is–

  “Ben!”

  “That this place isn’t magical because of the place.” I peel my eyes away from her bare ribs and stop on her face. “It was because of who was here. And though I made up fifty percent of the people that visited, I realized the magic had nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with the spring. The magic is in you.” I reach forward and tap my fingertips to her collarbone. I’d rather press them to her heart, but best friends that aren’t together don’t touch chests when the woman is almost naked. “This place stopped being magical the moment you left town. And even if I called while I was here, it still wouldn’t have been the same.”

  Her brows crinkle and come together. “Well shit. That was a little bit romantic.”

  “Shut up.” I grab her body with rough hands I know she can handle, and turn her so she stands between my legs and her ribs are at my eye level. Her hip pokes out and lifts the waistband of her bikini bottoms away from her skin, but my eyes are stuck on the script that stretches from an inch below her bra line, right down to the soft spot of her hips. “True love is the best thing in the world… except for cough drops.” Frowning, I look up and wait for her eyes. “Are you serious right now?”

  She bursts into laughter. “I’m not ashamed.”

  “Of all the things you could have inked onto your body, of all of the Princess Bride quotes you could have used, you chose the one about lozenges? Evelyn!”

  Resting her left hand on my shoulder, she throws
her head back and laughs. “I almost chose the one about sands and oceans, but this one made me smile. It made me think of that time we were watching Princess Bride and you choked on the Whoppers.”

  “I almost died!”

  “With balls in your mouth,” she cackles. “It was the funniest day of my life.”

  “You’re such an asshole.” But she’s not. Truly, she’s not, and the fact she tattooed something on her skin that made her think of me and smile does things to my heart. “When did you do this?”

  “Fight night.”

  I pause. Frown. “What fight night? Whose?”

  “Yours, in March. Bean and I went together while you were fighting. We made the tattoo folks give us their Wi-Fi password so we could watch while they worked.”

  I want to pull her into my lap and never let go. I want to press my lips to her flesh and declare her mine forever. I want to do a million things to her perfect body, but what I actually do is release her and try my best not to telegraph my body’s reactions to seeing her in her underwear. “I won that fight.”

  “I know you did.” She steps back and tiptoes toward the water. “We watched, we cheered. I made my call to biggie because you were sucking and forgot how to fight.”

  “Dude had tree trunks for legs!”

  “And you had soup for brains,” she replies without missing a beat. “I made my call, yelled at Biggie because he wasn’t coaching you the way he was supposed to. Like… magic,” she teases, “your guard came up again, and you won the title and cash.”

  “You know the magic too,” I murmur. I watch as she stops by the water’s edge, stands on one muscular leg and does a half squat to dip the other foot in, and when she steps back onto two feet, she turns to me with her vixen’s smile and inviting eyes.

  “You coming in?”

  “Um…”

  She sits on her butt and slides in so she barely disrupts the surface of the water. Half of her hair turns heavier the second it sucks the water in, it floats in the dark pool around her shoulders, while the dry half somehow seems to turn curlier. “It’s toasty warm.”