by K. A. Linde
He leaned forward and smiled. “I’m getting there.”
She laughed lightly. “Well, you’ll need more than one class to get to know me. I’m a woman of many mysteries.”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character.” His eyes swept her face. “I’d say you’re only as mysterious as you want to be.”
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” she murmured.
The professor walked up to the front of the room.
“Oh, I intend to,” Cam said under his breath.
Bryna tried to pay attention in class, but it was the first lecture of the new term, and she knew nothing important would happen until the next class. Instead, she tried to figure out what to make of Cam. He was hot—tall, blond, dark eyes. But he definitely wasn’t her type…even though he was a charmer. He had a laid-back attitude that didn’t mesh with her high-strung type-A personality. He was almost a little sloppy in jeans and a T-shirt with flip-flops. He looked like he would be more comfortable on a snowboard or a surfboard than in Las Vegas. Yet that was all a part of the appeal.
She was still thinking about it when the class was dismissed, and he followed her out of the room.
“Well, see you on Wednesday,” she said with a smile.
“Hey, are you free?” he asked. “Do you want to go get something to eat?”
She smiled. It was nice to be treated like any other girl for a minute. No one else in this school did it. And when she had gotten here last year, that was exactly what she had wanted. Strange how much had changed in a year.
“I’d love to, but I have cheer practice.”
“You’re a cheerleader?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Is that a problem? It’s not like we always carry around pom-poms or something,” she said.
“Not a problem,” he said automatically. His lazy smile was back on his face. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“All right. See you then.”
As she turned away to walk to the sports complex, she smiled to herself. It wasn’t as if she had a date. All he had asked was if she wanted to get food after class. Of course he was cute and seemed interested in her. Maybe if she stopped trying to scheme and calculate his motives, then she could just enjoy the moment.
She walked into the complex, and her stomach turned to knots. This place made her think of Eric. She hadn’t spoken with him yet. She knew she needed to. There was a lot left unsaid between them, but she had wanted to ride out her high for as long as possible.
She hurried to the cheer locker rooms before she could run into him, and she changed into her workout clothes. This would be a good practice. It would clear her mind of everything that kept floating around up there.
And it did just that.
The team had spent hours perfecting sideline cheers, working on stunts with the new girls, practicing dances, and working their bodies into the ground. By the time they were done, Bryna’s muscles were sore, her legs felt like Jell-O, and she was all-around exhausted. She even stuck around to take a shower at the sports complex instead of waiting to go home. She had taken too much time off this summer, and now, she was paying for it.
She threw on a pair of Nike running shorts and a tank top, diffused her hair until it was in loose beachy waves rather than her normal stick-straight look, and then exited the locker room. Almost everyone else had already left, but she could still hear the football players rumbling around outside. This time of year, they would work until there was no more daylight, and then they’d turn on the field lights and keep working.
She rounded the corner and stopped dead in her tracks. She had been hoping to avoid this for another day, but fate didn’t seem to allow it.
“Bri,” Eric said.
His voice. God, his voice.
She kept her face impassive. “Hey.”
Four months. After four very long months without him, she had almost forgotten how hot he was. She had always thought it wasn’t fair that he was gay with those features. Now, her mind had to skip over that assessment she had made so often and remember that he was most definitely not gay.
“How was your summer?” she asked when he didn’t say anything.
He stared and drank her in. “Who cares? You weren’t in it.”
“Eric,” she said.
She shook her head but didn’t look away. His hazel eyes trapped her, even from this distance.
“We can’t do this right now.”
“If I keep letting you decide when we can talk, we never will. You can’t pretend that nothing happened.”
“I’m not, all right?” she said, her voice a little too loud. “I’m not pretending anything. I know perfectly well what happened.”
He stormed over to her. “Then, talk to me. I’m still me, you’re still you, and that means we’re still us. Just the way we were. You can open up to me.”
“I did. I told you I needed space. The thought of you touching someone else made me nauseous, and I needed to process. What part of that did you miss?” she yelled.
Yet, she didn’t step away from him. She couldn’t. At this point, she could smell him—musky and all man with a hint of something purely Eric. She hadn’t even recognized it until he was standing before her, but it was just…him.
“None of it. Not a single thing.”
His hand reached up and swept her hair off of her face. He left it resting on her neck, and her pulse raced.
“I like your hair like this. Natural,” he murmured.
She swallowed hard. All of the brand-new happy Bri feelings vanished from her mind. There was only this moment with his eyes and hands and lips.
Then, those lips were touching hers, and everything went cloudy in the most perfect way. Never had she imagined their conversation would lead here. She had imagined arguing, fighting, a whole lot of yelling, and storming out the door. But his kisses were intoxicating, and she was awash with the drunken feeling.
He grabbed her hand. “Come with me.” Then, he pulled her away.
A protest rose up in her throat, but he didn’t stop as he wove her through the hallways and into a back locker room. It was dark and deserted. No one came back here this early in the season, and even if the football players did, they wouldn’t be done for another couple of hours. But that didn’t explain why Eric was here…
She opened her mouth to ask him, but he pressed his lips to hers, and all coherent thought vanished once more. How did he do that?
He pushed her back against a locker, and his hands slid under her tank top to touch her skin. She gasped into his mouth, every nerve responding to him, to this. She hadn’t been touched in over a month, but it wasn’t just that. She knew it. It terrified her. She should stop. But his tongue was massaging hers, his hands were on her skin, and his body was covering hers. This was Eric. Her body was screaming to let it happen.
“E…”
“Please,” he breathed against her lips. “Tell me to stop, and I will, but you want this. I want this.”
“I…” She didn’t have the words.
She didn’t know what she wanted. Everything was so confusing, but this right here made perfect sense. Eric made perfect sense.
His hands slipped all the way under her shirt. His thumb flicked against the soft unlined bra she was wearing, and her body arched into him.
“I’ve thought about doing this for months.” He kissed her throat, and his other hand grabbed her ass. “I’ve thought about how you would taste, how your skin would feel against mine, what this would feel like.” He grabbed her leg, hoisted it around his hip, and pressed against her.
Her body responded like a lit match.
“Tell me you’ve thought about it, too.”
She had. She most definitely had fantasized about what he would do to her if he weren’t gay. But she had kept herself from getting too lost in a fantasy that would never come true. She hadn’t wanted to feel, and now, it seemed all she was ab
le to do.
“I’ve thought about it,” she admitted.
He sighed as if he hadn’t been sure, and she had confirmed everything for him. He continued with renewed purpose. He lifted her shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. His hands traveled the length of her body, admiring every inch of it. His fingers ran teasingly along the inside of her shorts, and she squirmed against him.
She couldn’t take it any longer. Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and yanked him closer. She wrenched his shirt off next, exposing his chiseled chest, and she reclaimed his lips.
The energy crackled between them. In seconds, her shorts were in a pile on the floor. Then, she tugged down his zipper, and his pants slid over his hips. Eric grabbed her other leg and forced her body back hard against the locker digging into her back. She ignored the feeling. There was so much pent-up energy between them that she couldn’t stop this train ride even if she wanted to, and her body was absolutely saying not to stop.
Their breath mingled, and their eyes met. Something passed between them that she couldn’t even begin to explain. But it was powerful and terrifying. Her heart constricted as she opened herself to him in a way she never had to anyone else before.
He filled her in one swift motion, claiming her body. When he moved, she closed her eyes and slammed her head back into the locker. Their bodies melded together fiercely, desperately. It was perfection. Her nails clawed into his skin. His grip on her hips tightened. She was sure there would be bruises. But neither of them stopped.
Bodies smacked together. Eric picked up the pace, and sweat beaded on his forehead. She could feel it slicking her own back in the hot locker room, undoing the shower she had just indulged in. Her body didn’t care what she was giving up for this, and she was giving up much. She knew it.
As he hit the right spot with her yells filling the space and his orgasm following right after, she knew that something had truly cracked inside her. And she couldn’t go back to not feeling. Yet emotions like this only brought pain, not the joy and happiness she had been feeling for the past month.
Eric dropped her legs back to the ground and rested his forehead on her shoulder. “Fuck, Bri.”
Her heart was still racing in her chest, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say. She was shaking, actually terrified of what this was. It wasn’t supposed to be like this—hot and cold and full of extremes and heartbreak. It was supposed to be effortless, and things with Eric had always been complicated.
She reached for her clothes and righted herself. “I should go,” she murmured.
“Wait, what?” he asked.
He touched for her, and she spun away from him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” She covered her face, heaving in a deep breath.
“That was incredible. There was nothing wrong with that,” he said.
She could hear the pain in his voice.
“I can’t do this! Don’t you understand? We can’t be together!” she yelled. It made no sense with what she had just done, but she was pushing all of that aside and giving in to this terror welling inside of her.
“We can. We can be together. We just were.” He gestured around the locker room.
“No.” She shook her head. “This isn’t how this works.”
“Why?” he yelled right back. “Why can’t it work? You wanted this. You wanted this to happen between us. Can you look me in the eye and say you don’t have feelings for me?”
She stared at him and clenched her jaw. “That’s the point, Eric. I do. I do have feelings for you. And I shouldn’t. It scares the shit out of me. You’re dangerous, and you are only going to break my heart. I…I don’t trust myself when I’m with you.”
“You can’t really mean that,” he said, uncertain, his voice losing its edge.
“I do. I mean it wholeheartedly.”
She swallowed hard and then brushed past him, leaving the locker room. Her whole body was humming from what had happened, yet she had tears falling out of her eyes, tears she couldn’t control or explain.
This is the right thing. That was what she kept telling herself through the tears.
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY.
Cold.
Lifeless.
What had once brought her so much happiness left her with a bad taste of desperate materialism. Everything from the hardwood floors to the Swarovski chandelier to the pool out back and the rich furnishings within made her feel slightly nauseated.
Every day, all it did was bring back memories of Barcelona. The look on Hugh’s face when she’d asked about his wife. His very dead wife. His anger and rather valid accusations. The ease with which he had thrown that necklace over the balcony just to show how little money meant to him. She could still recall exactly what he had looked like when she said she didn’t love him. It made her cringe all over again.
She couldn’t change it now. She didn’t love him. She had cared for him, but she had been selfish from the start.
Young, selfish, and stupid.
Just like she had been with Eric. Her heart constricted, and she stumbled up the stairs to her bedroom. It was immaculate, all classic whites and blacks, just as she had left it. Yet it didn’t even feel like hers. It felt like a version of the person she had contrived for Hugh out of the person she had become after Jude left her. Looking around, she didn’t even know why she had ever thought she wanted this.
She shivered at the depressing chill that wracked her body. She hated feeling like this. Vulnerability was not her norm. But she couldn’t bring back the self-assurance she wore like a second skin.
Thinking about Eric only made it worse. She had never been good at turning down sex, and when he had approached her, all of her desire for him had exploded into that one singular moment. It was a year of pent-up energy that had cracked open like fireworks in the night sky. But she couldn’t let it happen again. She didn’t want to lead him on or hurt him.
Jude had hurt her, and though Eric was far from Jude, he had the same ability to completely and utterly wreck her very existence, taking this semblance of control that she still clung to like a life raft and leave her drowning in the middle of the ocean.
God, I need to get a grip.
She clawed her clothes off her body and threw them in a pile in the corner of her room. Even though they reminded her of how she had let Eric fuck her in the locker room, she smiled at the mess. Then, she stepped into the giant waterfall shower and turned it to scalding. She stood under the spray until her body was pink and tender, letting the water wash away all remnants of what had passed between them.
She took time to blow her hair out, making it pencil-straight, and forced out the memory of him fingering the wavy tresses with such care. The person he had kissed wasn’t even her. It had been someone who was both mentally and physically exhausted that she hadn’t even taken time to do her hair. She couldn’t let herself do that again. Once she was finished, she slipped into a pair of black designer jeans and a black crop top.
There. Now, she felt more like herself. Except for this house. It still haunted her. She was slowly suffocating under the weight of Hugh’s presence here.
She had to get out. Picking up her phone, she dialed Trihn’s number.
“Hey!” Trihn said. “How was your first day back?”
“Eventful.”
“I bet! I’m in this new art class with Neal, and it’s amazing! What are you up to?”
“I’m at home.” She bit her lip, debating if she could do this. “Do, uh…do you think I could stay with you?”
“Like, at my apartment?” Trihn asked, confused.
“Yeah. I mean, for the night. I can’t be here for another second longer.”
“Sure. Of course. What’s wrong with your place?”
“Everything.” She sighed heavily. “It feels like the walls are closing in.”
“Sorry, B. Do you want to come over now?”
“Yeah. Let me pack a bag. Thanks, T
rihn.”
She laughed lightly. “What are friends for? Of course, I never thought you would want to stay with me since you have that huge mansion, but Stacia and I have plenty of space at the new apartment!”
Bryna hadn’t felt left out when Trihn and Stacia decided to move in together. It’d made sense for them to do that. She had always liked her space, and with the guys she had been interested in, it was better to not have any roommates. Now, she was kind of wishing she had been included, a feeling she was not familiar with.
After she hung up, she quickly packed her Louis Vuitton carry-on and strode out of her house. She locked it up tight and immediately felt better. It was official. She couldn’t stay there any longer.
The drive to Trihn and Stacia’s new apartment was easy enough. She made it through the front gate, parked next to Stacia’s SUV, and took the elevator to the top floor. Trihn answered on the first knock and beckoned her inside.
The place was cute and way bigger than it looked from the outside. It took up nearly the entire top floor of the building with four bedrooms and baths and direct access to the pool. It wasn’t Bryna’s dream house, but look where that had gotten her. The apartment was cozy and warm, which was more than she could say for the house. More importantly, this place was full of her friends.
That meant it had to be better.
“Okay. Spill. What’s going on?” Trihn asked.
She looked at Bryna in that knowing way. Sometimes, it felt like Trihn could read her mind, and after what had happened with Eric, Bryna was really glad that she couldn’t.
“Nothing. Everything.” Bryna took a seat on the couch and tossed her bag at her feet.
“Well, I can tell. You look pretty run-down,” Trihn said, taking the seat across from her.
“Wow. Thanks!” she said sarcastically.
Stacia bounced into the room. Her blonde hair swished around her face as she walked. “Hey, B!”
“Hey.”
“You know what I mean,” Trihn said. “You look out of it. Not your normal pep.”
Bryna shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the house.”
“Is it Hugh?” Stacia asked. She bit her lip and looked uncertainly at Trihn. “I know you were stressing since you came home from Barcelona, but I thought things were better.”
