by A. m Madden
Most of them didn’t even know me, having gone to Chase’s school and not Windsor-Horne. It was obvious they were interested only in grabbing a piece of their own fifteen minutes. A photo on their social media, bragging rights over being friends with Shane Lair, getting a touch, copping a feel. It was all fucking ridiculous.
A few girls turned to follow until Ryan shoved a firm hand in their faces. “Girls, please stop.”
The entire scene took no more than ten minutes. It was scary how quickly things could escalate and get out of control. Did people who idolized others to the point of intrusion even possess an ounce of remorse? Maybe I was biased, having grown up among famous people.
Meanwhile, I panicked, having lost sight of the only person I cared about.
“Sorry about that, man,” Chase said as he hustled after me.
“I’m sorry I kind of stole your thunder.”
His face twisted into a comical grin. “Are you kidding me? You just got me a guarantee lay tonight and every night. I have no shame telling anyone Shane Lair is my best bud.”
That one comment snapped what little was left of my patience. “Shut the fuck up, man. I’m leaving.” I turned to walk away, and his hand landed on my arm.
“You can’t leave yet. Come on, dude. I’m gone in two days. We need to party.”
“I’ll be seeing you in a month,” I reminded him. The ass had made me promise I’d get him front-row tickets to our LA show.
“That’s not the same. You’re never around, and I miss hanging with you.”
Joey joined us with Harrison in tow. “Shots?” Joey looked from left to right before producing a flask from his back pocket. “The old folks aren’t paying attention.” As he untwisted the cap to take a long swig and pass it to Harrison, I’d never felt such a disconnect from my friends before.
Chase was last to drink and shoved the silver thermos into my chest. “You of all people need this the most.”
“I need to find Liv.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. You’re always missing out because of—”
“Fuck off!” I barked into his face before walking away. While scanning the heads in the darkened hall, but seeing no sign of Alivia, I wondered when my friend had become such a selfish prick. I asked a few of my classmates if they had seen her. Headshake after headshake made me crazy with worry.
There weren’t many places she could be, and if she’d left, I’d never forgive myself. Taking a long hallway beyond the bar, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard voices coming from a room right past the bathrooms.
That was until I heard, “You can’t help how you feel, Liv. None of us can. As much as that bastard hurt me, if he were to say he couldn’t live without me, I’d be in his arms in a heartbeat.”
“Really?”
“Really… and like you, I hate that I feel that way. The difference is, I learned how to move on, or pretend to at least… but you’re stuck. Maybe you guys need a break to figure things out?”
“Maybe.”
She wants a break?
No… I wouldn’t let that happen.
I should’ve turned and walked away, but while in some sort of trance my feet carried me closer on their own accord until I stood in the doorway, catching Kim’s attention.
“Shane,” she said, causing Alivia’s head to twist revealing two panic-stricken eyes.
While our gazes remained tethered, I asked, “Kim, can we have a minute?”
“Of course.” She scurried out of the room, and after a torturously long pause, I took the chair she had vacated.
“I’m… um…” Flicking my thumb toward the door, I said, “I’m sorry about all that out there.”
“It’s your new reality, Shane.” She looked down when she added, “You heard what we said?” I waited until she looked back at my face, and when she did defeat was obvious in her tired expression.
“I did. Is that what you want, a break?”
“I don’t know.” My disgusted grimace sparked a fire within those ice-blue eyes. “Don’t act so shocked, Shane. You’ve been distant and withdrawn.”
“Yeah, because all I keep doing is hurting you. Over and over, you’re getting punched from every direction because of me.”
“I can handle that. You’re letting it change us. Let’s not pretend you aren’t.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong, Alivia.” I was far from confused about my feelings for her. “Nothing has changed for me. You know you’re all I want… all I’ll ever want.” How could she have lost sight of something so obvious? “But I’m now wondering if it’s you that doesn’t feel the same.”
She shook her head defiantly. “Of course I feel the same. I meant being confused about what’s happening in our lives. Things are changing. It’s no one’s fault that we weren’t prepared.” Her slender throat worked a swallow as she looked away from me again. This was killing her, and that killed me. “I no longer recognize who we are,” she added in a whisper I barely heard.
I knew she deserved better than the fucking nonsense she’d been force-fed these past few weeks because of me. If the bully bullshit and media blowups weren’t enough, now knowing she felt lost as to what her future held made it crystal clear what I should do. But the selfish prick I was refused to let myself go there… to acknowledge that she needed a break. At least not now.
“We’re both guilty of the same thing,” she said softly. “I don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t want to hurt me. But somehow we’re hurting each other anyway.”
“No… we’re not. This will pass. It will pass.” This would not be how we ended up, drifting apart in a dank office with a hundred people I couldn’t give a shit about not forty feet away. “I’m ready to leave,” I practically growled. I was over this entire night. Without permission, I and snatched her hand, hauling her out. But instead of heading right toward the party, I headed left and pushed through the emergency exit. The blaring alarm served as an ironic siren to get the fuck out of there.
The entire time she stumbled along because of my frantic pace. “Where are we going?” she asked when I made no attempt to head around the building to where Alec’s car would be waiting. “Shane?” she prodded, but I remained silent.
Once we emerged from the alley, I rushed us toward the curb and hailed the first cab that came by. Opening the door, I ordered, “Get in.”
“We can’t just leave like that.”
“The fuck we can’t.” If she wasn’t going to get into the cab, I’d shove her in it myself. “Get in,” I repeated.
She did as I asked, and I slammed the door and ordered the driver to our destination. “What are we doing?”
“We’re finding ourselves.”
Several times during the ride she attempted to talk to me, but I just wasn’t ready. I did send a text to my parents, explaining we’d left the party and that we were fine. They weren’t happy I had ditched Alec and Ryan, but I’d worry about them later.
My priority was to deal with us. Having Alivia believe I was angry at her served my purpose well. I was sick of the emotionless void that had replaced her usual feistiness. I needed to know I hadn’t completely lost her. It would be the only thing to keep me going. It felt as though we were racing toward a cliff and neither of us knew if the fall was a shallow one or not.
I wasn’t even sure if it was anger I felt or sadness. Either way, the result came with an ache smack in the middle of my chest.
How the fuck did we end up here?
Despite her annoyed silence, she clutched my hand in a death grip as the concierge tapped away on his computer.
“Room 324.” He placed the key on the worn wooden counter while studying us with a narrowed glare—“Eighty-seven for the night”—and probably not trusting that we would pay at all forced him to snarl, “You need to pay up front.”
I peeled a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet, handed it over, and snatched the key to once again tug her along toward a waiting elevator.
It wasn’t the Pla
za, or the Waldorf, but it would serve its purpose. We hadn’t had a moment of peace in far too fucking long, and our relationship now depended on it.
“Are you going to talk to me?” she asked the moment the elevator doors slid shut.
But not until I had us secured in our room did I finally hold her shoulders and say, “I need you, Liv. I need us. I don’t know what will happen when you start school in a few days, or after I leave. I can’t allow myself to go there. Right now, right here, I need you.”
“I need you too. I’ve always needed you. That’s part of the problem.”
When she broke our tethered gazes, I forced her eyes back to mine. “No. No more hiding from me.” Her silence pushed me to push her. “It’s only a problem if you make it one. You know I’ll support anything you choose to do… no matter what it is.”
“I don’t know what I want to do. I’m embarrassed that I have no idea who I am.” She hastily swiped at tears that rolled down her cheeks. “All I identify with is being Trey Taylor’s daughter… or Shane Lair’s girlfriend.” The sobs came harder, and I pulled her into my arms, hating every tear and cry she released.
“Shh, baby. I’m here. Don’t cry. I’ll always be here.”
“No, Shane… ,” she challenged, her voice muffled by the fabric of my T-shirt. “You can’t always be here, nor should you think that you have to be.”
Taking her face in my palms, I leveled her with my stubborn glare. “I may not be with you physically, but my heart will be. Why are you constantly questioning that?” She opened her mouth to speak and then slammed it shut. “What? Talk to me.”
“Make love to me.” I wanted to push her to answer my question, but doing that could ruin what I needed from her tonight. And once again that selfish prick reared his ugly head by doing what she asked.
With her eyes still pinned to mine, I lowered my mouth over hers. All the sexual frustrations I had pent up bubbled to the surface as I kissed her deeply. When I broke away, her eyes remained closed for a few seconds longer.
I continued to control the situation, raising her shirt over her head and tossing it. For each article of clothing that I removed, I countered with one of my own. Once we were both completely bare, I lifted and placed her in the center of the bed and lay right beside her. My arms snaked around her body, our legs automatically entwined, and she began to caress my chest.
“I love you, Liv. There will never be a day I won’t love you. That’s enough. That’s all we need.” Again, she pressed her lips to mine without responding, and that scared the fuck out of me.
But I’d let it go for one more night.
During the kiss, I molded one hand around her breast while my hard cock invaded the space between us. I needed to taste her and maneuvered her body until her pussy hovered over my face. The moment I began to circle her clit with the pad of my thumb, she arched and moaned so erotically that I practically came right then. Replacing my thumb with my tongue, I picked up the motion where I left off, licking and sucking every part of her pussy. She moved her hips against my mouth, manipulating my direction until she trembled above me and then stilled.
A long, breathy sigh told me she was completely sated. The just-came expression on her gorgeous face was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
And then, without warning, she surprised me by turning herself around to grab my cock. Her grip remained firm as her mouth covered my tip. She dragged her tongue up and down my entire length, driving me insane. A frantic pounding in my chest mimicked the pulsing in my cock. As much as I wanted to come down her throat, I wanted to be buried in her pussy more.
Gently lifting her face with both my palms, she looked at me inquisitively. “I want to finish.”
“I want to finish too… inside you.”
On a nod, she turned and straddled my waist just as I pulled her head down toward mine. When I stroked my tongue against hers, she moaned erotically. When I positioned my cock at her entrance, she rested her hands on my shoulders. When I slipped inside her, she leveled me with an intense stare.
I’d like to say that with each thrust I felt our issues vanishing into thin air. That the familiarity of being in her cleared my mind and escalated my lust. That with each plunge deeper and deeper while she gasped against my lips, I temporarily forgot what had conflicted me a few minutes earlier.
That would be a lie.
Our lovemaking had a desperation to it that had never existed between us before.
Regardless that my engorged cock filled the space inside her, or that she flexed her hips, sending a jolt of electricity through my body, it felt off. Despite a hair-raising tingle that coursed through me, traveled down my spine, and settled at the base of my hard-on, it felt wrong.
I tried to focus on the way she swallowed me whole, enveloped me with her warmth. I used every fiber of my being to slow my impending release, to prolong the mind-blowing sensations, to relish in her voracious greed, to pretend we were fine.
My mind and my body were at war with each other. Denial forced me to ignore it all.
“I’m close, Liv,” I admitted through gritted teeth. Shoving a hand between us, she caught it before it reached her clit.
“No need. I’m close too.”
Knowing that she was about to come from my cock alone made my attempt to control the situation a futile effort. I lost the battle, submitted to the strain that caused my muscles to shudder as she constricted around me, and came along with a ferocious growl.
“Fuuuuck,” I cried out, emptying myself into her. It seemed to go on forever before I was completely drained.
And then I buried my face in her neck, inhaling her, and cried.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alivia
Loving someone as much as I loved Shane, and as much as he loved me, should have been enough. That kind of love should cancel any hurt, any pain, any doubts. I guessed sometimes love wasn’t always enough. And despite making love to each other while feeling every emotion on the spectrum, we were both no less confused than we had been.
When he broke down, so had I. We clung to each other for what felt like an eternity, and as profound as that moment had been in our relationship, neither of us had mentioned it again.
I’d only seen Shane cry once, and that was when I’d fallen off the jungle gym at his beach house and broke my arm. He said it was his fault for tickling me and moped about it for days. Funny, he acted no differently back then than he had these past few weeks, believing all my angst was his fault as well.
When he appeared at my apartment door this morning unannounced, looking like death warmed over, at first I assumed it had to do with all that had happened the night before. Besides the chaos that forced us to leave Chase’s party less than an hour after arriving, the hours spent after were heavy with desperation and laced with fear… on both our parts.
And then, because the universe had a sick sense of humor, Cannon’s band had to unexpectedly fly to LA for promotional appearances that had been rescheduled.
We had one hour.
All the things I hadn’t said the night before, assuming I had all week to truly explain why I’d been acting the way I had, slipped off my list of priorities. All the special moments we’d hoped to share before I moved into my dorm vanished off our radar. And all we ended up doing for those torturously long sixty minutes was hold each other, kiss each other, and tiptoe around the reason our lovemaking last night had felt like a goodbye.
One thing was for sure: making plans and hanging your excitement on them was a waste of time. Life could turn on a dime and pull the rug right from beneath you.
I had high hopes for this week—days spent with my family or packing up, nights spent with Shane. Because he was now away, I called Kim and asked her to spend the day with me. She wanted to know all that happened after Shane interrupted our talk, but I said I’d explain once I saw her. It was a lot to ask, since she had so much to do before their drive to Massachusetts the next day. My bestie easily agreed, clai
ming she was already packed and ready to go. Even if she weren’t, I had no doubt she would stay up all night to put my needs first.
I would’ve loved to have spent the day doing all the things we loved, visiting MoMA, having lunch in the park, catching a cheesy rom-com at the multiplex. But because of the situation regarding my safety, Mom had a catered brunch delivered to our apartment along with arranging manicures and pedicures for us this afternoon.
After the concierge announced Kim was on her way up, I leaned against the doorframe, waiting for her. Not surprisingly, the first thing she asked two steps out of the elevator was, “Okay, now can you tell me what the hell happened to you guys last night? I know you bolted. Who wouldn’t after that scene? But you had me worried when you didn’t text me back.”
“We went to a hotel.” I gave her a hug and led her inside.
“I love that! Tell me everything.” Again, I kept it vague. It really was between Shane and me, but filling her in on the impromptu hotel visit brightened her up. “We needed some time alone. Our parents were pissed as hell. So damage control took some time.”
“Eh, they’ll get over it.” She appraised the spread laid out on the island and grabbed a plate, helping herself. “I’m starving. Where is everyone?”
“They’re at the Lairs.’” No doubt discussing Shane and me. “Trestan is at a friend’s. We have the place to ourselves. Serenity Spa will be here in an hour. We’re set up on the terrace for manicures and pedicures.”
“God, I love your mom.” Popping a forkful of chicken salad into her mouth, she asked midchew, “Have you heard from him?”
I scooped salad onto my plate and sat beside her with a firm shake of my head. “Not yet.”
“He’s probably crazy busy.”
“Probably.”
She offered an understanding nod before saying, “Oh, guess what? Chad mailed me a UMass care package.” Undoubtedly, the tone behind that one simple word, combined with the look on my face, was what had caused her to move onto a different subject. “I got it yesterday.”
