The Past


    Brandon appears in the hallway, his forehead shiny from our hard work, an empty dolly between his hands. “That was thest piece.”


    I huff out a long, exhausted breath. “Thank goodness.” Swiping through my iPad, I make sure everything on my checklist has beenpleted before locking the screen and shoving it into my bag. “We’re all set.”


    The back left wheel on the dolly squeaks like it always does as Brandon rolls it to the entry way, where the rest of my stuff is waiting. We stand arm to arm, surveying thepletely staged space. “Was this custom or did Geo have a style in mind?” Brandon asks.


    Sometimes, the listing agent will know the client they’re trying to sell to, and have me stage the home to fit their specific tastes, regardless of what the home calls for. A Spanish-style home decorated in vintage antiques? Makes no sense to me, but we sold a ten million dor homest year just like that. Because it’s what the buyer wanted in their prospective home, and Geo knew it.


    “Actually, this is Sutt’s listing and he left it up to me.” I nce around the mid-century style home, one that was built with modern touches and refinements, but is now adorned in Scandinavian style, using natural light and neutral tones, capitalizing on textures like natural wood and white stone. It’s absolutely gorgeous this way–it’s the same way Sutton’s house looks. I could be partial, I admit.


    Brandon bobs his head as he surveys the living space that opens into arge kitchen,plete with a butler’s pantry and chef’s kitchen. “Can you imagine?” he asks, dragging his fingertips along the beveled edge of the trendy stamped concrete counter top.


    My brows furrow. “Imagine what?”


    He shrugs and nods once, like he isn’t quite sure. “You know, just… waking up in a ce like this.” He fingers the leaves of the fig nt on the counter. I put a fig nt in every home I stage–it’s my calling card of sorts, I guess. “How can you have a bad day waking up in a ce like this?”


    I smile, shoving thest lint roller away in my supply case. “Even people who can afford houses like these have problems, too.” I sling my bag over my shoulder. “Everyone has problems.”


    “I don’t know,” he counters, pulling the front doors open for us. “I think if I woke up here, I’d be pretty happy.”


    Entering the code to lock the door after pulling them closed, I grab my things and make my first trip to my car. Usually in homes like these, there’s a service bay out back where people like house cleaners, gardeners and repair men enter the property, but because we were essing just the front portion of the home today, we used the front door.


    “You going into the office?” Brandon asks, sliding the copsable stepdder into the bed of his MERCER PROPERTIES pickup truck. When I first started and realized I needed muscle on board to help me getrger pieces where they need to be, I found Brandon in the ssified ads. He had a license, a truck, and no criminal record. After Mercer made me their full-time in-house stager, Brandon joined, too, getting his first everpany truck.


    I shake my head. “This was all I had on my schedule for today.” I pop open my car door. “I’m going to Sutton’s. He’s not showing any properties today so we’re going to work on the wedding ns.”


    Brandon’s smile falters a moment, but he reces it. “See you tomorrow, then. Tell Sutton I said hello.”<hr>


    I didn’t know anything about wine until I met Sutton. Truthfully, I still don’t know much, but I love watching him educate me about wine. He lifts the device off the neck of the bottle, and pats the back of it, sending the cork to the counter. He shoots me a smirk.


    I smile. “Impressive.”


    “The first bottle of wine I had with you, do you remember identally pushing the cork inside?” he asks, abandoning the bottle and the two waiting stemless sses on the counter. He collects me in his arms where I’m sitting atop a barstool, tucked under the kitchen ind. My body melts when Sutton presses kisses to my forehead and hairline. “I’m so d you let me open the bottle on the second date.”


    “I’m so d that picking pieces of cork off your lips didn’t scare you away from a second date,” Iugh, remembering our first date very well. I was still all sweaty from staging a home with Brandon, but Sutton would not take no for an answer.


    I became his girlfriend after our third date, and I’ve seen him every single day since. We almost live together. Almost.


    He moves back to the wine, filling each ss partially after taking a long, heady pull of the scent. “Tar and roses,” he says, wrapping his vein-heavy hand around the ss, which looks tiny,pletely dwarfed by his size. “It doesn’t sound appealing, but I swear to Christ, I love the smell of Barolo.” He sips some, then pours a little more. “Did you know that Barolo vineyards have to grow under special conditions?”


    I know this is a lesson, and that the question is rhetorical, but still, I shake my head.


    Hees to my side of the kitchen ind again, and takes another drink, but instead of swallowing, he presses his lips to mine. With his thumb pinned on my chin, he tugs my mouth open ever so slightly, kissing me, letting the bright red wine trickle from his mouth into mine. After, he nudges my lips closed as our gazes collide. “The first note is sharp, but by the time you swallow, it’s smooth.”


    Right there on the barstool, I think about the singr time that Sutton came in my mouth. He was drunk, we’d been out celebrating one of his biggest sales to date—a historical property in the Pacific Heights. Sutton’s always been great at capping himself at three to four drinks, where he’s still warm and buzzy but not obliterated. That particr night, though, he gotpletely drunk. I was drunk, too, and it resulted in me going down on him in the back of our town car on the drive home. When his thighs tensed beneath my fingertips, and he made that little noise in the back of his throat that he always makes right before hees—I took him deeper.


    And he let me.


    And he came so hard, and I swallowed what I could, then swirled the rest of it around in my mouth, tasting, absorbing, memorizing.


    It was so hot, and so personal. I may have had hime inside me a hundred times, but the intimacy of tasting his cum, feeling him erupt in my mouth–being aware of every little twitch and pulse of desire—I came, too. And that’s one of my favorite memories to go back to when I’m using the detachable showerhead in my apartment.


    He strokes his thumb over my lips, his body heat radiating down on me. “Well?” The singr word and electric graze of his finger snaps me back to the present.


    My pulse hammers in my throat. My hands, slick with sweat, cling to the barstool’s edge, the only thing keeping me upright. I flick my tongue over my lips, chasing the ghost of his wine-vored kiss. “I like it,” I murmur, my voice barely audible, my brain scrambled from his proximity—his heat, his scent, the way his eyes lock onto mine. He’s never done this before, never slipped into this kind of yful intimacy– passing wine through a kiss. It sets my nerves on fire, and desire surges through my veins.


    As we n the wedding, maybe Sutton will slowly unravel like this more often? Maybe there will be more town car back seat moments the closer I am to bing legally his? Maybe he’ll slowly unravel and begin to give and show me more of him, which is all I want. The thought sends a thrill skittering through me, half hope, half hunger.


    “The grapes have to be grown on a hillside, not in a valley, and not facing the north. And then they require a 36-month aging process after harvest.” He brings my ss to me, and ces it in my hand. We sip together, eyes locked, and I want nothing more than Sutton to wonder aloud what Barolo might taste like off of my body, particrly if he licked it from the ce between my legs.


    “Anyway,” he says, flipping open the leather folder sitting in the center of the counter. “We won’t serve this at the wedding. It’s far too informal.”


    I can’t help but smirk as he pours more wine into each of our sses. The way he looks stretched over the counter, bicep torqued, hand flexed—I had no clue how innocuous, harmless movement could be sexy until I met Sutton. I find myself staring at him when he gets dressed, listening to him when he showers, watching him when he loads the groceries into the car. Everything he does, he looks so handsome and sexy, and I’ve never been so blindly, massively, unyieldingly attracted to someone before in my life. Whenever I let myself think about how beautiful and perfect Sutton is, my heart beats a little faster, and electric, crimson res beneath my skin. I shift on my barstool, hit by a normal wave of awe that I have for the love of my life, and smile. “I feel so lucky to be marrying you, even if you’re a pretentious, uppity wine snob.”


    He waggles his brows. “I’ll make you a Mercer first, then I’ll turn you into a pretentious, uppity wine snob.”


    I look down at therge piece of architecture paper strewn out in front of me. “Speaking of snobs,” I say, tapping my sharpened pencil on the stretch of paper. “Do you think I could put your dad next to my friend Amelie?”


    Sutton snorts. “Amelie is not a snob.”


    I raise an eyebrow and go for a sip of the Barolo. “Notpared to you, maybe,” I tease, which earns me a sultry little wink.


    Sutton leans over his side of the kitchen ind, sipping wine as he flips through the open folder. After we finalized the guest list in bed this morning, he got everyone’s addresses for the invitations. “I don’t have an address for her. She’s the only one.”


    “She’s between ces right now,” I exin to him. “She’s got a new role in Paris in a few months, and didn’t want to lease a ce she’d have to leave right away. So she’s couch surfing.”


    Sutton, wearing a fitted v-neck white t-shirt and ck track pants, his feet bare, moves to the oven where he pulls the stainless door open. Heat fills therge kitchen, and steam clouds him temporarily as he pulls a dutch oven out, sliding onto the top of the stove. “Coq au vin,” he says, abandoning his oven mitt to return to our nning while dinner cools.


    “You made my favorite dinner?” I ask about the time-consuming French dish.


    He nods. “Can someone who couch surfs at age twenty-seven really be considered a snob?” hees around to me, pressing his chest into my back, stacking his chin on my shoulder. Reaching across my body, he drags the blunt end of his finger along with faded white and blue paper. That finger—hell, that hand—drives me wild. Beneath the counter, I pull my legs together, softly and quietly aching for his touch.


    I know Sutton well. If I were to take his hand and drop it between my legs, writhe against him and beg for him to make mee right there at the bartop with wine and wedding ns out—he’d look at me like I’d grown a third head. He’d say, “we have a bedroom, Avery.”


    I stroke the side of his cheek as he surveys the seating chart. “Do you think we’ll change as a couple, you know, after we’re married?”


    He turns his head, and though our mouths are right there, he doesn’t steal a kiss. Instead, his eyes drop to my mouth for a moment that makes my belly flutter, then go back to the chart. He taps the spot where I’ve written “Geo.”


    “He’ll give her more than a couch to ride,” he says, drawing my focus back to the two seats around the table nearest us. “And I hate that I said that turn of phrase, but unless you want your friend to sleep with my father, I would not sit her there.”


    Cool air stings my back as Sutton pulls away, tending to the dish of hot food waiting on the stove. “And how so?” he asks, his back to me. I study the way his body looks beneath the thin cotton t-shirt, how the muscles of his back make my mouth water, and just how pathetically obsessed I am with my fiancée.<fn49e1> Follow current nov?ls on f?ndnovel</fn49e1>


    In my mind, I see my best friend Amelie, her chestnut hair pinned into a seductive messy bun, her long legs on disy from one of her favorite pieces of clothing—tiny skirts. I picture herughing, Geo next to her, his shirt undone a few buttons, his effervescent charm permeating all of her barriers. “I don’t know,” I reply, reverting back to my question about our rtionship shifting. “Are you fullyfortable with me? Maybe there’s something about a wedding ring that breaks down any, I don’t know, lingering hesitations?”


    I look back at the seating chart, trying to imagine Amelie next to anyone else, but seated with Geo, Ford, Cade, Kat and Juliette makes the most sense. “How long has your dad, you know, been like that?”


    Sutton snorts as he tes the red-wine based chicken dish. “Been like what? A man who sleeps with anyone and everyone he can?”


    I furrow my brow, confused by that categorization of George Mercer. I mean, I’ve seen him go out with many different women over thest year, but something about implying he’s a heartless manwhore just doesn’t feel right at all. Sutton’s not told me much about his mother Margot, who married Geo young, and passed away when Sutton was just eight years old. Nodding, I say, “Yeah, you know. How long has he been a womanizer?” That feels like a more fitting term for what Sutt is describing, and I refuse to even once say “manwhore” aloud in reference to my future father-inw.


    He licks his thumb, cleaning the traces of food. “From what I remember?” he asks, arranging the food on my te. “His entire life.”


    I lick my lips, nerves curling my insides as I move my fingers over the edge of the seating chart. Sutton is going to be my husband, and Geo will be my father-inw. Knowing about his mother isn’t outside of reason, still, I feel like I’m tiptoeing into a ce I don’t belong. “Even before your mom passed?”


    I don’t think Sutton would ever cheat on me. I’m not asking because I’m worried he’ll turn into Geo. His eyes lift from the beautiful ting of food, ande to mine. “I like knowing everything about you, including your past. And your family,” I respond quietly.


    Sutton brings me my food, taking care to roll up the seating chart and push it away. He even drapes a linen napkin over my bare legs before sitting next to me, pulling my barstool as close to his as possible.


    I smirk. “Our elbows are going to bump while we eat.”


    He winks. “Good.”


    He never answers my question about his father, and if he slept around on Margot all those years ago. Maybe his silence is the answer, and verbalizing it is just too painful? Or maybe not. We eat in rtive silence, because the food is so good, but all the while I keep thinking–Geo Mercer is a man who cheated on his wife? I didn’t know him when Margot was alive and when they were married, and I’ve only known Geo for a year but still… that information leaves me more confused than before.