He nodded.
“Maybe we’re making this too complicated, giving it more weight than it deserves. If we’re honest, and stop trying to avoid the situation, I believe we can put things back to the way they were.”
“And how would you define things between us?”
“Cordial, but certainly manageable.”
The waiter came back and dropped off their drinks. “Are you ready?”
Evan’s attention didn’t leave hers. “Give us a few minutes.”
“Of course, sir.” He wandered away, leaving Penelope once again alone with Evan.
“Go on,” Evan said, his expression intense but unreadable.
She did, laying out her plan. “It seems to me, if we could learn to be friends, everything would be fine.”
“I see, and how do you propose we do that?”
“Well”—she cleared her throat—“consider how you treat Sophie, and treat me the same way.”
“There’s only one problem with that.”
“What’s that?”
His gaze dipped to her mouth. “I don’t think about Sophie naked. And I sure as hell don’t have the same images of her in my head.”
Penelope shrugged. “You treated me platonically for years, you can do it again.”
“I could say the same for you.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“In theory, we have years of practice treating each other platonically, so it should be easy. But it’s not, is it, Pen?”
No, it certainly wasn’t. Although he didn’t know all these years had been an act, something she’d gotten good at over time. But now he wasn’t playing by the rules they’d established. It was so much easier when he was some wild, out-of-control jock who cared about nothing but partying and football. Who treated her like she didn’t exist. That was a man she could hate.
But since his injury he’d changed. Now he was more like that boy from the basement.
She sighed. “And to think, if I’d just stayed upstairs that night, none of this would have ever happened.”
Expression turning quizzical, he tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, if I hadn’t come downstairs that night, we’d never have started talking in the first place. I’d have stayed your little sister’s annoying friend.”
“You’re wrong.” The words hard, with a bit of bite. “That’s what you’ve never understood. To me, you’ve never been just Maddie’s friend. I’ve never seen you like I saw Sophie.”
That didn’t fit into the narrative she’d created all these years, and she needed him to fit back where she’d put him. She tried again. “But you can’t deny you never would have noticed me if we hadn’t started talking. It’s hardly like I was on your radar.”
He picked up his drink and took a long gulp, hissing out a breath as he looked past her shoulder. He put the glass down on the table. “Okay, yes, when we were kids you were Maddie’s annoyingly perfect little friend. But I noticed you long before you ever came down those stairs that night. Why the hell did you think I encouraged you to stay?”
This was new information, an angle she’d never thought of before, nor wanted to contemplate. She cleared her throat. “To be nice?”
He raised a brow. “When have I ever been nice?”
He’d always been nice to her. In that basement he’d treated her like she was the most important girl in the world. She played over the stem of her water glass. “I assumed you didn’t mind me because around me you could relax.”
He sat forward, leaning across the table. “The first time I noticed you in a way that wasn’t platonic, was your first day of high school. You walked into the house in your neatly pressed Catholic uniform, your black shoes all polished up, that white blouse buttoned to your neck. There shouldn’t have been one thing sexy about you, but somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, you stopped being a kid. Your skin was flawless, your eyes the brightest blue I’d ever seen, and your hair was in a ponytail. The sun was coming in behind you, and your hair was shiny and thick and so gorgeous all I wanted was to liberate it from that tight hold you had on it and run my fingers through it.”
It was the second time in less than an hour that he’d shocked her, and her throat grew tight at the words. She swallowed hard, unable to speak, which was okay because he kept on talking, making her remember the past in a whole new light.
He sat back, his strong fingers playing over the rim of his glass. “It was a weird thought and it kind of freaked me out. I was sixteen. I was supposed to be obsessed with getting into a girl’s pants, not thinking about her hair. At school, before Kim Rossi, I was dating Julie . . . I can’t remember her last name.”
“Borkowski,” she supplied for him without thinking.
He nodded. “That’s right. She had this overprocessed blond hair that looked like straw, but she had gorgeous breasts and all the guys wanted her.”
Penelope remembered.
He took another sip of his drink before continuing. “After that morning, every time I saw her I thought of you. I tried to ignore it, because I wasn’t supposed to think of you that way, but when I touched Julie’s hair all I could think about was how yours would feel. I broke up with her the second week of school.”
Penelope licked her bottom lip, her throat dry. “I didn’t know.”
He smiled at her, and it was so reminiscent of the way he’d smiled at her all those years ago, her chest squeezed. “Why did you think I always pulled your ponytail?”
She’d forgotten. The corners of her mouth lifted. “To annoy me.”
He laughed. “I wanted to touch your hair. Didn’t you ever notice how I was obsessed with it? I mean, Jesus, Penny, what did you think I was doing?”
“I didn’t know,” she said, her voice sounding strained. Long before he’d touched her sexually he’d played with her hair. She hadn’t thought about his motives; all she’d thought was she hoped he wouldn’t stop. She used to live for those nights when they’d watch television, moving closer and closer. He’d rest his arm on the back of the couch and they’d be so close she could feel the heat of his body. She’d wait, breathless with anticipation, until his strong fingers finally slid over her neck to tangle in her hair. She cleared the huskiness from her throat and told him the truth. “I thought you were doing it without thinking.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would you think that?”
They were already traveling down this path and maybe that’s what they needed. To clear out all the misunderstanding between them so they could move on. Even though it made her ache. “Because it was a gradual thing. It never seemed intentional. It would only happen when we were fixated on some show or movie we were watching. It seemed absentminded to me. Like you weren’t even aware you were doing it.” She bit her bottom lip. “And you never seemed interested in touching me in any other way.”
“Penelope,” he said, his voice more serious than she’d heard in a long time. “Every single second I spent in that basement, touching you was the only coherent thought I had. At first, I promised myself I wouldn’t touch you. You were good and innocent and I didn’t want to take that away from you, and touching your hair seemed like something I could get away with.”
“I didn’t know. I was a kid and didn’t have any experience with boys.” There was a long, heavy silence and as much as she wanted to look away from him, to avoid the intensity and swell of desire and lust that filled the air, she couldn’t tear herself away.
He looked at her mouth, then back into her eyes. “Obviously, I caved.”
And then she saw it, the guilt lurking in the depths of his gaze. That he somehow believed he should never have touched her. It shifted her perception.
She swallowed hard. The air was humid and thick, threatening to strangle her. “I’m not sorry.”
His expression flickered. “No?”
She shook her head. She had her regrets, and he’d hurt her badly, but giving herself to him wasn’t one of them
. “Not even a little bit.”
“Why?”
Because she’d loved him, and at bare minimum at least she’d given herself to a boy she loved. She couldn’t say that, but there was another truth she could tell him. “Because I was lucky.”
“How’s that?”
She licked her lips and his expression darkened. “I never told anyone, but I’d listen to the other girls’ stories, and their experiences were so horrible. All that rough groping and awkward, sloppy kissing. They’d talk about it, wondering what they were missing and where the pleasure they were supposed to experience was, and I always felt bad for them.” The heat climbed up her cheeks. “You, um, obviously weren’t like that.”
“Never with you.” His voice dropped, turning low and intimate and it sent a shiver straight through her. “Although I seem to recall us getting plenty rough and sloppy.”
“Yes.” That breathless rasp was back, and an image of them filled her mind.
God, she’d never been with anyone else the way she’d been with him. With the men she’d dated, she’d always put up a wall of reserve, and no one had ever breached it. Nor had she wanted them to. Her heart had always belonged to Evan.
His fingers tightened around his glass, knuckles turning white, and she knew he was recalling some memory of the two of them. They had a thousand of them.
He cleared his throat. “It’s kind of silly. I thought I was somehow preserving your virginity.”
Yes, her virginity had been a technicality at that point, because God knew they were doing everything else. She smiled. “Well, we were teenagers and didn’t have the clearest logic.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t all bad.”
“Not even close.”
Neither of them seemed inclined to bring up the last time, and that was fine with her. It didn’t change anything; it was all the memories before that that kept her attached and wanting.
“Penelope?”
She met his gaze. “Yes.”
“It was always you. I’ve always wanted you, even at my most terrible.”
She didn’t understand what they were doing, or why. “We can’t go back, Evan.”
“I know.”
She opened her hands in a gesture of surrender. “So what are we doing?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t stop it. Can you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He reached across the table and took her hand. “Let’s just take it slow and see what happens.”
Her fingers tangled with his and she resisted the urge to close her eyes and soak up the rightness of him. She’d always loved his hands, and adulthood had only made them stronger, more capable. She had no idea where this was going, and she was positive it was stupid, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t go on like this. Needed to finish this somehow. She nodded. “I can do that.”
* * *
More than anything he wanted to touch her. She stood there, leaning against her front door, her chin tilted, her lips slightly parted and waiting. Her coat hung open and her dress, which had driven him crazy all night, clung to her body. All he wanted was to run his hands all over her, to feel her tremble under him, to taste that mouth of hers.
But he didn’t trust himself to stop.
And he wanted to give her all the things he’d never given her back in high school. Do all the things he should have done back then, now. Only he wasn’t sure how to give her what she deserved and manage the sexual chemistry and tension that were ready to rage out of control with the slightest spark.
His gaze dipped to her mouth and he clenched his jaw.
Those big electric-blue eyes stared up at him, wide and slightly glassy. She used to look at him that way down in the basement. With that sort of pleading expectation. It held just as much power now as it had back then.
He flexed his fingers, fighting the urge to reach for her. “We made it.”
“We did.” Her teeth scraped against her lower lip and he stifled a groan.
“And you’ll be at Shane’s tomorrow night?”
She nodded, and then shifted her attention to his mouth, her body lifting up just a tiny bit in silent offering.
He needed to go, or he’d cave. “You need to go inside, Penelope.”
“Okay.” Her voice a hot little whisper that wrapped around his cock and squeezed.
Neither of them moved.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
His breath increased as his chest started to burn. “Inside.”
She put her hand behind her back, on the door handle. “Yes.”
He needed to touch her, just once. Innocently. He stepped closer and she dragged in a sharp inhale. She was killing him.
He slid his hand around her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair.
Her pupils dilated. “Evan.”
Fuck. He was so hard. All he wanted was to feel the weight of her under him. His thumb brushed her pulse beating wildly in her neck, before skimming the line of her jaw. He could give her this one thing. Put aside his primal, base desire and this one time do what was right by her. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
She nodded, and he could see the confusion etched in the corners of her eyes.
Like an idiot, he ran his thumb over her bottom lip, gliding along the wetness and the soft, plump flesh he could still recall the exact feel of, even after all these years. “Tomorrow.”
Then he somehow found the strength to pull away from her. “Good night, Penelope.”
She frowned, turned around and went inside.
He dragged a hand through his hair and slowly made his way back to his car, trying not to think about how everything he wanted lay right beyond that door.
Chapter Eleven
If she’d thought she didn’t know how to act around Evan before, she had no idea how to act now in front of everyone. The get-together at Shane and Cecilia’s was in full swing and Penelope was thrilled to see Maddie and her husband, Mitch, but she was so on edge she couldn’t relax.
She had no idea what had happened last night, or why he’d left, but now she was a wreck. She kept trying to remember how she had always acted around him when everyone was around, but for the life of her couldn’t get a grasp on it. She kept questioning everything. Was she looking at him too much? Not enough? What was her normal tone when she said hello? Had there been too much rasp in her voice?
She felt on display. Like everyone knew something had changed, and watched her. She hated being on display. Hated it.
Last night dinner had been . . . well . . . it had been spectacular. Like a real date, and she’d wanted him so badly, but he’d left without touching her. Despite the fact that sex practically vibrated the air.
She didn’t understand anything, or him.
Now she could feel him, over on the couch, with his brothers and Mitch. Could feel the way he watched her and she willed herself not to look at him.
At some point, Cecilia had put a glass of champagne in her hand and she downed it in one big gulp.
“Whoa!” Sophie said, her expression wide with surprise. “What’s gotten into you?”
Penelope jerked from her thoughts. “What?”
Sophie pointed at her empty glass. “You just slammed down an entire glass of champagne in one gulp. Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s great,” Penelope said, far too brightly.
Maddie and Sophie looked at each other, and then looked back at her, twin expressions of speculation.
Hey, that was her look.
“I’m good. Great.” The words spoken absentmindedly as she scanned the room. God, where was the champagne? She needed more.
“You look like you need a refill,” Evan said from behind her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. For the love of God, she was never going to make it through this night.
She whirled around and glared at him. “You scared me!”
“Sorry, I thought you could use another drink.” He held up the bottle.
Ugh! She
wanted to punch him. Why did he have to look like that? Why did his stupid shoulders have to be so broad? His body so ridiculous? Couldn’t he look horrible for her? Just once? She held up her glass. “Whatever. Stop that.”
Evan raised a brow. “Being helpful?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
Maddie and Sophie looked back and forth between them.
They know nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Gracie walked up, sporting a huge, knowing grin. “Everything okay here?”
“Everything is great,” Penelope said, her voice sounding too high-pitched. She pressed the glass into Evan’s chest. “Champagne?”
He took her wrist, steadying her as he poured. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking.
Penelope said through gritted teeth, “Thank you.”
His thumb brushed over her pounding pulse. “You’re welcome.”
What was he doing? Why was he being so obvious?
She pulled away and found her friends all staring at her, their gazes ping-ponging back and forth between her and Evan.
He raised the bottle to the rest of the girls. “Anyone else?”
“I’ll take some,” Gracie said, her voice filled with suppressed laughter.
Penelope needed to get away from him. Now. Or she’d lose her mind.
Once again she drained the glass.
Evan raised a brow. “More, Pen?”
“Yes, please.” She was drinking far too fast, and raising suspicions, but she didn’t care. The alcohol was making her stupid, careless, but she had no intention of stopping. She was pulled too tight; in danger of seriously snapping and blowing the cover she’d worked so hard to cultivate all these years.
Evan turned to her and she lifted the flute. He tilted the bottle, but didn’t pour. “Have you eaten?”
“Of course.” At ten this morning when she’d choked down a slice of toast.
He steadied her hand again, and poured another glass. “Just be careful.”
Oh God. Electricity shimmered along her skin where he touched her.
“All right,” Maddie said, hands on her hips. “What is going on here?”
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