Free Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) by Christopher Rice Page B

me,” she whispers. “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go.”
    “I am,” he growls.
    He presses their foreheads together, takes the sides of her face in both of his large, powerful hands. It’s torture, this position. It’s deliberate, she’s sure. It keeps her from lifting her mouth to his. Keeps her from looking straight into his eyes. He’s fighting it, still. Just as she’s fought it for years.
    She parts her lips, inviting him to kiss her.
    “Please,” he groans. “Just, please don’t go.”
    “Caleb…” She reaches for his face.
    She’s reaching into open air.
    The door slams.
    He’s gone.
    By the time she realizes what’s happened, the truck’s engine has already started. His headlights swing across the front of the house.
    “You son of a bitch,” she whispers to no one. “Coward, bastard son of a bitch !”
    But real anger, the kind of anger she feels toward Joel, can’t make it to the surface through all the other emotions she’s feeling.
    She wasn’t nuts. She wasn’t some deluded freak who’d made too much out of one kiss twelve years before. He’d wanted her as badly as she’d wanted him, and he’d been just as tortured by it. They’d had all of the anger and fighting of siblings, but with none of the loyalty and companionship. To try for either of those things would have awakened desires her father had declared off limits. Still, every argument they’d had, every time they’d forced themselves to look away from each other, every frustrated attempt they’d made to connect since the night his parents died, had just been another step in one long dance of desire leading up to this very moment.
    But what was this moment?
    Where the hell are they now?
    Would he disappear again? Maybe for ten years this time. Or twenty!
    Her father— their father—was gone, so why is this still so hard?
    Dazed, she walks in circles around the living room while these questions assail her. She’s holding her phone in one hand, waiting for anything. A text. A call. An e-mail. Something from Caleb that proves she didn’t just imagine what happened.
    Part of her wants to cry, but every time she starts, the smell of him, the feel of him, the sounds of desire and struggle that came from him turn her sadness into something more like exhilaration. Even the speed with which he left is proof that everything just changed. And maybe it will keep changing. And maybe changing means no more running and no more avoiding and no more shame.
    Maybe.
    But he still fucking left.
    No text. No missed call.
    What did he expect her to do? Chase him down the front walk, screaming his name?
    The front door creaks. The truck hasn’t come back so it can only be one person.
    “Girl,” Belinda says quietly.
    Amber had completely forgotten her boss was lingering outside.
    “When do we leave?” Amber asks.
    “Uhm. Never.”
    “What?”
    “You’re not going, honey.”
    “Why? Because I told my mother?”
    “Nope.”
    “Because Caleb doesn’t want me to?”
    “Nope.”
    “Then why , Belinda?”
    “Because you don’t need to find out what you want. You already know. He just stormed out of this house.”
    “He’s my brother.”
    “On paper, you said. So what’s that mean? Adopted?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “Well, is he adopted or isn’t he?”
    “Yes. My parents adopted him when we were fifteen.”
    “I see… Well, people will talk, but they always talk, so who cares? And if you ever want to get married, you just dissolve the adoption before you—”
    “Belinda, it’s not that simple!”
    “It is if you want it to be, Amber.”
    “Belinda. Come on, now. You promised me and I want to go. Seriously!”
    “No, you don’t, Amber. You want to avoid what you’re feeling for this man again. And forgive me for saying it, but it’s starting to look like the last time you avoided it, you wound up jumping into marriage with a cheating, lying bastard.”
    “Oh, come on! That is way too simplistic. You