by McLean, Jay
Every inhale is torture.
Every exhale the same.
I didn’t have to stop it. I could’ve kept going until I’d stripped her bare, my fingers leaving marks on those fucking thighs of hers. And I wouldn’t have stopped—not until my hands and my tongue tasted of nothing but her for days. And then I could’ve had her, my cock deep in her pussy while she writhed on the bed, begging for more. I could’ve flipped her over, gripped her waist, pressed her face into the mattress, and fucked her the way I dream about.
I could’ve had her.
I groan at the thought.
If I didn’t care about where we’d stand a year, a day, or even a minute after it was all over, I could have had her.
But I do care.
And that’s why I stopped it.
Because it would’ve been a mistake—a moment of weakness.
And five years on, there’s only one thing I’m positive of: Mia and I—together—we deserve more than just one moment.
We deserve a lifetime.
* * *
When I get back to the house, Mia’s already waiting for me. I slow my steps as I approach the porch, where she’s sitting on the porch swing offering a weak smile. “Hey,” she says, raising a hand.
“Hey,” I reply, out of breath.
She points to the little table between her grandpa’s rocking chair and mine, where she’s set out a jug filled with iced water. “You down, like, twenty of them after a run.”
With a nod, I flop down on my chair and fill a glass. “So what’s up?” I ask, staring ahead.
The chains of the porch swing creak as she shifts. “I just feel like we need to talk about what happened.”
I inhale as much air as my lungs can handle, down the entire glass, and fill it again. “So talk,” I say, but it comes out harsher than intended.
“Like adults,” she tells me, and I look down at my lap.
It’s not that I don’t think we should talk about it; it’s just that I don’t know what to say, and, if I’m being honest, I’m terrified of every single word that might possibly leave her lips. “I can do that,” I lie.
“How, Leo?” she asks. “You can’t even look at me.”
My eyes drift shut, and I take a moment, two, and when I open them again, they’re on her. She’s sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest, her chin resting on them, arms wrapped around her legs. “I’m sorry.” She almost chokes on the words.
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Don’t say you’re sorry or that you regret it or any other thing that’ll try to convince me that you didn’t want it to happen. Because you did, Mia. Even for a second, you wanted it as much as I did. And you saying that shit will take it all away.”
“Then what do you want me to say?” she almost shouts. “I accidentally fell asleep, and you—”
“What?” I cut in, my eyebrows drawn. “I took advantage of you?”
“No! God, no, Leo. I know you’d never do that. I just…” she trails off, her chest rising with her intake of air.
“Look,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “It happened, and personally, I want it to happen again. But you have a boyfriend—”
“Exactly!”
“Exactly what?”
“I have a boyfriend, Leo.”
“I’m aware of this, Mia.”
She shakes her head, mumbling, “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in your bed.”
I heave out a sigh, try not to let my frustration show. “I have an idea.” I lean back in the chair, letting it rock my weight back and forth. “And just hear me out before you say no, okay?”
She’s quiet a beat. “Why am I scared of whatever you’re about to say?”
I face her, smirking. “You should break up with your boyfriend.”
She snorts when she laughs, which yeah, would be hot as hell if she wasn’t laughing at me. Her features level, and she goes silent when she realizes I’m not even close to kidding. “You’re serious?”
“Yep.”
“Leo...”
I shrug. “You should break up with him.”
“No,” she deadpans.
“No?”
“No.”
I stop rocking. “Why not?”
“Because I like him.”
“Uh-huh, you sure liked him a lot when you were grinding your pu—”
“Leo!” She’s shaking her head. But I can see it there, in those wide eyes of hers, in the way she can’t look at me for more than a second. The lust is there, hidden behind her portrayed outrage and innocence. And damn if I won’t use that to my advantage.
I shrug again, try to play it cool. On the inside, my pulse is racing, thumping against my flesh.
She stutters when she speaks, “I-I-just wanted to talk to you because I…” She looks down at her lap, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t want you to think…” She swallows, nervous.
“You don’t want me to think what?”
Her gaze meets mine again. “That I’m a whore.”
“Mia.” I almost laugh. Almost. “I don’t think that of you. I’ll never think that.” Then I stand, start for the door. Hand on the knob, I tell her, “Besides, if you were a whore, you wouldn’t have left my room. You would have stayed, let me strip you naked before throwing you on the bed.” When I glance at her, her eyes are huge, mouth open in shock. “And then you would’ve let me fuck your boyfriend’s existence right out of that pretty head of yours.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Leo
Mia’s a silhouette in the middle of the barn door, nothing but shapes and angles. “Do you ever relax?” she yells over the music coming from an old stereo I’d found under one of the beds.
It’s been three days since our little “incident,” and we haven’t had any more mishaps since. After I made her blush fifty different shades of red, she disappeared for a couple of hours, and when she returned, she made us lunch, and then sat me down and gave it to me straight. She told me she was in a serious, committed relationship, and because of this, she took full responsibility for what happened that morning. And while she didn’t deny that there was—in her sleep-haze moment—a part of her that wanted it too, she shouldn’t have let it get as far as it did, and she was grateful that I had it in me to stop it before it got too far, because the last thing she wanted was to ruin her relationship. Her relationship made her happy.
Even though sitting there and having to listen to every word she said was my equivalent to getting a screwdriver in the ears, again and again, I could tell how hard it was for her to say those things to me, in person, and I had to respect that. And that’s what I told her. Then she smiled, offered me her hand, and asked, “Friends?”
So, that’s where I am currently: friend-zoned.
I haven’t wanted to be just friends with Mia since before I first spoke to her. I was thirteen.
With studying and the work in the barn, I can keep my mind occupied for a good, oh, three seconds before I want to put my head through a brick wall.
It’s dope.
Mia walks toward me in her classic Mia style: flip-flops, denim cut-offs, and a loose tank. She dropped the fancy wardrobe and makeup the second day she was here. I, for one, will not miss them. Maybe the heels, but that’s my dick speaking.
She stops a foot in front of me, her head tilted back to look up. “I need the barn.”
I glance around. “I’m kind of doing stuff, obviously.”
Her loaded smile is sugary sweet and completely fake. “Can you do it later?”
“What do you need it for?” I say, squaring my shoulders and looking down my nose at her.
She shrugs. “I need to work out.”
“Work out?” My eyes narrow. “Didn’t you just get back from lunch with Holden?”
Another shrug.
“And can’t you do that, I don’t know, anywhere else?”
Pointing to the treadmill in the kitchen area, she says, “I use that.”
“Okay, so go use it.�
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“I can’t with people around.” I stifle my laugh, and she pushes my shoulder. “Don’t laugh. I get… weird about people watching me.”
“Watching you run?”
She nods. “I’m self-conscious, okay?”
“You’re a strange little thing,” I say, patting her head.
She shoos my hand away. “And I’m going to do yoga, too.”
I drop the trash bag I’d been holding and quirk an eyebrow, my interest piqued. “Yoga, huh?”
She nods.
“Are you flexible?”
Her lips thin to a line.
I swear, my smirk is unintentional. “How flexible?”
“You’re a filthy, giant…” She pauses, her eyes roaming my bare chest. “…muscly thing.”
“Your insults are lacking,” I say through a chuckle. Then, seriously, I ask, “Can you put your feet behind your head?”
Mia bites her lip, her cheeks flushed. The image of Mia with her legs behind her head, naked, has my vision blurring. I don’t even bother to suppress my groan as I shove a hand down my shorts to adjust myself. Who cares now? She’s felt it all.
“Leo!” she shouts.
“What?” I laugh out. “I’m an eighteen-year-old guy, Mia.”
“Yeah, but you’re better than other eighteen-year-old guys, Leo.”
“You kind of haven’t given me a chance to prove that, so...”
She says, after a forced inhale to keep her frustrations at bay, “Can I please have the barn?”
“Fine.” I look down at her clothes. “You run in flip-flops?”
“I’m getting changed. I just wanted to tell you to get out first.”
“You mean ask my permission to use the space I’m currently occupying?”
She moves behind me, pushing on my back until I’m out the door. Holden’s truck’s still in the driveway, and he’s behind the wheel, talking on his phone. I watch Mia enter the house, and then I lean against Holden’s truck. When she returns a minute later, she’s changed into tight shorts and sneakers, same top. My eyes track her all the way into the barn, where she makes a show of removing the key from the doorknob and taking it with her. When the barn door closes, Holden’s truck door opens. “You got it so bad,” he mumbles—the body of the truck whining in protest when he stands beside me, his weight against it.
“Shut up. We don’t talk about her.”
“Fine,” he says, crossing his arms. “Should we talk about Drake then?”
“What? Like how no one wants to admit that they actually like ‘Hotline Bling’?”
Holden busts out a laugh, and I turn to him, brow dipped in confusion. “No, Drake—as in Mia’s boyfriend.”
Acid burns in my throat. “That’s his name?”
“She hasn’t told you?”
I shake my head, stare at the closed barn door. “Hasn’t come up.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asks, as if I have options.
“I’m going to be respectful of their relationship.” I say it slowly, enunciating every word because a guy like Holden probably has no concept of the idea of respect when it comes to unavailable girls.
“Or…” he says, standing in front of me now, one finger pointed up between us. “You could, and I’m just making a suggestion here, so please don’t rearrange my pretty face, because you have serial killer eyes right now and it’s freaking me the fuck out.”
I glare at him.
“See,” he says. “Serial killer eyes.”
I widen my stance and cross my arms. “Fuck off.”
He laughs at this. “You could fight for her, you know?”
“I could,” I concede. “But what would be the point? She doesn’t want me. She wants…” The bile in my throat prevents his name from coming out of my mouth.
“Drake,” Holden finishes for me. “And the first point of your statement—about Mia not wanting you—I offer this.” He makes a dramatic show of rolling his eyes. They go so far back his irises are no longer in view, and he shakes from the brightness of the stars he must be seeing.
I chuckle. I can’t help it. “You’re an idiot.”
He resumes a normal human stance. “Says the guy who’s been in love with a girl for how long now?”
I shake my head.
“Right,” he deadpans. “We don’t talk about her.” He rests against his truck again. “He’s kind of a jackass—that Drake guy.... That’s why Mia and I had that weird vibe when she got back. I thought he was trying to change her, and every time I brought it up, she’d defend him.”
I take in everything he’s saying. “Maybe she loves the guy.” It hurts to say, as much as it hurts to admit that this is my reality.
“Maybe,” Holden mumbles. “But loving someone doesn’t make them a good person.”
I run a hand over my face and take a breath, and then another. I turn to him. “Is she in love with him, dude? Because if she is…”
“If she is what?” he pushes.
“I don’t know, man,” I say, head down, literally kicking rocks. “I don’t know if it’s going to be worth all of this.”
“All of what?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
Holden gets in my vision, ducking down, so his eyes meet mine. I lift my head, just an inch.
“Heartache?” he teases, mock pouting.
I shove his chest. “Fuck you.”
“Despair?” he says through a chuckle, and I shake my head. He sniffs twice, his nose in the air. “You smell that?” he asks, and I don’t bother answering because it’s not a question. “I think that’s desperation…” He moves closer, sniffs my shirt. “And it’s coming from you.”
I push him down to the ground, and we both laugh as we roll around, loose gravel pricking our backs. We fake-wrestle on the driveway, and I get him in a hold that has him huffing, trying to push me off him. “I forgot you used to wrestle.”
“I also have five brothers, you lonely only child!”
He guffaws. “Better get off me before you realize how turned on I am with you as top.”
Before I can respond, Mia’s sneaker-covered feet are right beside us. My eyes make a slow drag up her body, to her face, where she’s watching us, her head angled to the side. “What are you doing?” she asks.
Holden’s laugh dies in his throat. “Playing a game.”
“What kind of game?”
I get off Holden and come to a stand. As he gets to his feet, he tells her, “It’s called Kitchen Warrior.” His face reddens with his withheld chuckle. “We were trying to make a sandwich.”
Mia nods, her eyes scanning both of us in turn.
“You want to play?” Holden asks her.
“Okay,” Mia says, shrugging.
I’m too fucking slow at connecting the dots, but when I do, I shake my head at Holden in a warning. Don’t say it.
“Good,” he tells her. “You be the meat in the middle.”
A pitiful groan escapes my lips, right before Mia says, nodding enthusiastically, “Okay, what do I have to do?”
Holden and I turn to each other, slowly, our eyes meeting in disbelief. It starts as a snicker, and then we lose it. Completely. We’re howling with laughter, while Mia looks between us. “What?” she asks. “What’s so funny?” And it only makes things worse. Holden’s wiping at his eyes, and I’m holding my stomach, and Mia says, “I don’t get it! What’s so funny?”
Holden settles his hand on the hood of the truck, trying to calm his breathing. When he’s righted himself, he grabs the back of Mia’s head and pulls her closer. After kissing her forehead, he tells her, “Please don’t ever change, Mia Mac.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Leo
“Question,” Mia states, sitting on a bench in the barn, her legs swinging back and forth. This is our new normal now. When I’m studying, she leaves me alone. When I’m in the barn, she’s in here, too.
It took a lot of groveling on my and Holden’s end to gain her
forgiveness after we explained to her what “meat in the middle of a sandwich” meant. To Holden, she said, “You’re disgusting.” And to me, she said, “You! I’m just disappointed in.” And then she marched into the house. It took a solid half-hour for Holden and me to collect ourselves enough to confront her and apologize. It was a stupid joke. A funny as hell one, but still, stupid.
“Where is your truck?” she asks.
“I don’t have a truck. I have a car. A shitty old Honda that was my mom’s, and I highly doubt it would have made it all the way here, and Dad didn’t have any available trucks in his fleet, so he gave me a ride here, and your grandpa’s letting me use his truck.”
“You know that truck can’t travel—”
“Faster than fifty miles per hour, yes. Your grandpa warned me.”
She nods at my response and picks up a Skittle from the bowl, raising it in the air. I stop dragging a piece of a bed frame across the room and open my mouth. “Shoot,” she says when it misses me completely.
Today, she’s in workout shorts and an oversized sky-blue tee with GOALDIGGER printed across it. Her bare shoulder’s revealed, showing her black bra strap, and I say, “Question.”
She nods.
“Why the fuck do you look so cute right now?”
“I always look cute,” she responds, and even though she’s kidding, to me—it’s the truest answer she could’ve given. “Question.”
“Yep,” I say, hauling the bed frame to a pile in the corner. Then I squat down next to another bed with a wrench in hand.
“What are your plans for college? I assume that’s why you’re doing all this work for extra credit. Because you want to go somewhere for something specific?”
“The goal, which is pretty fucking unattainable right now, is to get into a state college and study criminology for four years, get out, and join law enforcement.”
Eyes wide, she asks, “You want to be a cop?”
I nod, focus on loosening the rusted bolts of the steel bed frame. “That’s the plan.”
“When did you decide this?”
“Last year,” I tell her. “After I left here, it was kind of like a light-bulb moment. Laney’s dad’s girlfriend—she’s in law enforcement back home, so she’s helping me with it all, which is awesome because I wouldn’t have a clue where to start.”
