“Don’t hide from me, Harley.”
Breathless. That’s what he left me.
I couldn’t move his hand away, and I couldn’t stop staring into those eyes. Eyes that saw through my bullshit and mess and saw me.
“I’m not. I’m just…I don’t know.” I blew out an exhausted breath. I had nothing. I couldn’t say anything. So I just looked away. I was a coward on top of everything else.
He turned my face back to him gently. “Why are you so afraid?” His voice mirrored his touch.
I couldn’t answer. I felt the stupid vulnerability giving away to shame, and my lips started quivering. Oh god, no, I couldn’t have a meltdown in front of him. I couldn’t. But yes, because why did I ever believe that I could be a normal twenty-three-year-old out with a boy? People liked to talk about panic attacks like they were cool, like it was the new fad. What was so cool about a tightening chest and racing pulse? I felt my breathing quicken, and my palms started to moisten with sweat. My chest squeezed and jumped, like there were a thousand horses galloping around inside of me.
I was almost positive he could see my heart beating rapidly in my chest about to break free any minute. The thump, thump, thump of my heart was so loud it consumed me. My vision started to blur, and my head was swimming, I was going down in a matter of minutes over that stupid word. Afraid. I hated it. There was nothing I could do, no escape.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I blurted and ran toward the front of the diner where the restrooms were located. I made it through the door in a blur and collapsed behind it, clutching my chest and willing my breathing to slow down.
Need to calm down.
Breathe. Positive thoughts in, negative out. I kept repeating the mantra I read in a book once, but it wasn’t working for me now.
Breathe.
“Harley?”
Fuck! He sounded like he was directly on the other side of the door, bent down to my level. How could he have known I was on the floor?
“Harley, let me in. It’s okay.” He said softly before pushing the door, and me in the process, and sliding through the small crack he’d created. I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I might’ve actually died. Instead, I tried to pretend he wasn’t there and continued to try and control my breathing.
It wasn’t working.
He sat down next to me and pulled me into his lap. I had never been cradled before, so I froze in his arms, not sure how I was supposed to act. It felt strange but…nice.
“Relax, Har, breathe with me. In then out, in then out, come on.” His voice was melodic in my ear.
It may have been his soothing voice or his strong, warm embrace, or both, but I listened to him and closed my eyes. I matched my breathing with his, in and out, in and out. I don’t know how long we sat there. I was surprised no one came in. I could only imagine what they would have said if they had made it past the entrance.
I felt my breathing return to normal and my pulse calm down. I slowly opened my eyes and began to realize what had just happened, what my stupid fear had done, what I allowed it to do. Panic of a new kind crashed into me like a tidal wave, drowning me. One way to make a guy less interested in you was to have a full-on meltdown on a dirty bathroom floor in front of him. There was no way Deklan would want anything to do with me now. I mean, who does that?
My body stiffened under his embrace as I frantically searched my fuzzy head for an escape route. One that would allow me to at least look cool and aloof, like what just went down was not big deal.
“You good?” He looked down at me, and I couldn’t force myself to meet his stare. I scrambled from his lap and stood only to stare at my feet and mumble that I needed a minute.
“All right, but I’ll be waiting, you got me?” He gave me the look. The one that said, “I want to know what the fuck just happened.” I nodded and waited for him to leave, then glanced around frantically for…something. There was a window just off to my right, shitty, but I had no choice. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I passed, and I looked the same—same simple T-shirt and jeans that I always wore—but it wasn’t what I wore that made me look hard. It was my eyes. I had perfected the hard, cold stare, but right now that stare wasn’t there. The eyes that looked back at me were the ones that no one saw, the soft, scared, wounded animal eyes that I kept under lock and key because if people saw them, they would make me their prey, like I was to my monster. No thank you.
These were the eyes that Deklan had seen.
Without another look, I headed for the window.
Chapter 12
Harley
“You giving me your ass to kiss already?”
I froze with my legs and ass hanging out the bathroom window that I was trying to make my getaway through. Arms encircled my waist and helped me the rest of the way out, easily lifting and turning me simultaneously to face a pissed-off Deklan.
“What the fuck? You bailin’ on me?” He slid me down his hard body until my feet touched the ground but made no indication of letting me go. I didn’t know how to respond to his accusation. I was leaving. How was I going to explain to him that it was just better we didn’t become anything more than this? People who occasionally ran into each other.
“It’s getting late. I really should be going.” I tried to step around him, but he blocked me and I stepped back. “Look, thanks for…that back there, but…”
“You gonna tell me what ‘back there’ was?” His hard gaze penetrated me, making me feel judged and ashamed.
“Nothing. Sometimes I get like that. It’s nothing…I’m fine,” I stammered. Why couldn’t I make up something like I normally would have, if this had been someone else? Because I wouldn’t have let it get this far if it was someone else, that’s why. His eyes drilled a hole into me whenever he looked at me and found the scared, little girl hiding in the dark corner of my being. I hated it and cherished it.
“I know panic, and I know panic brought on by fear,” he stated.
Again, I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t. Instead, I looked down at my worn sneakers and stubbed my toes in the concrete, playing with some loose bits.
“Okay, so we are playing this game, cool. Let’s go finish our meal, then I’ll walk you home.” He motioned for me to walk, which I did, and he followed. He seemed—I don’t know—not angry, just annoyed. It was something I was used to being; I was a constant annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” I said as he opened the door for me to go back into the diner. The surly waitress who was just placing down our food gave us a double take, then shook her head and walked back into the kitchen. I guess she was trusting that we hadn’t skipped out on our meal.
“Why are you apologizing? Do you feel you did something wrong?” We slid into our seats, and I avoided his gaze. His tone was accusatory, like he knew exactly what I was apologizing for and he just want me to say it too.
“Yes,” I said meekly. I stared at my food, still steaming in front of me, taking up my natural response when I knew I had fucked up. Silence and avoidance. I had to show I was the weaker person so the other person didn’t pounce harder.
He sighed and leaned over the table, tilting my chin with his finger until I our eyes met.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I was only trying to make you see that you don’t have shit to apologize for.” He met my gaze and dared me to look away. I wanted to look away. I felt that if I didn’t, I would crumble in his arms and tell him everything. It took everything in me not to call upon that version of myself that I let everyone believe was the real me, if only for a minute, and boldly stare him down until he released my chin.
When he finally did release me, it wasn’t with a satisfied look, more like contemplative, like he was thinking about something. There was no way I was going to be able to have a meal with him after what just happened. None.
I only nibbled my food, because really, I wasn’t hungry anymore. Sometimes people stress eat; well, I stress starved. When I was consumed by thoug
hts of either survival or kill or be killed, I didn’t really think about eating a balanced meal. I suppose it’s why I was so skinny, thus my mother telling me I was fat, and we’d come full circle. I was focused on my thoughts of escaping and jetting back to my room and forgetting about all things Deklan, as I assumed he would forget all things me, when his voice broke through my thoughts.
“What are you thinking about?”
I hadn’t realized I’d been sitting there zoned out. I did that a lot, zoned out, especially after an attack. I was smart enough to know that it was my mind’s way of protecting itself from all the horror. Only it never did. I remembered all the horror. All of it.
There are books and shows on TV that explain that when a person disassociates or zones out, they usually do it when what’s going on around them is too much for them to handle. I knew why I started, knew when I was about to. It had happened so much it was a normal response for me, but my mind, it always remembered what it was trying to protect me from. That’s what that was in the bathroom. But I didn’t tell him any of that. Instead, I shrugged and gave a weak, “Nothing.”
He huffed out an annoyed burst of air and just stared at me. I couldn’t take it. I could almost see him with the flashlight searching for that same girl who was huddled in his arms no less than twenty minutes ago. But he didn’t say anything. He just stared. I was hyperaware of him and everything I did, how I picked up my fork, how I drank my rapidly cooling milk, and how my pulse jumped every time I met his eyes.
“I’m done,” I announced and pushed my plate away. He frowned, looking at the barely touched meal, but still said nothing. He signaled for the check, and Surly must have been waiting because she was at our table in a flash and took his money.
“No change,” he said, getting up, then waited for me to scramble out of my seat.
As I passed him, my body lightly brushed up against his, sending chills over my entire body. He must not have felt it because he didn’t react like I did, with a parting of my lips in surprise. He didn’t say a word to me as we walked out the door and up the next few blocks.
I stopped him from going any farther when we were close to my neighborhood. This was it. I could almost feel what he was going to say: “Look, Harley, you’re a good-looking chick and all, but no ass is worth this much work. Look me up when you have less…issues. I’m out.” I had been mentally preparing my “it’s cool” look the entire way so that I wouldn’t show how devastated I was going to be. It was inevitable, him crushing me. I had started to like him. It was just as well.
“My house is up the road from here,” I said. “I’m okay the rest of the way.” I thought about beating him to the punch and giving him the “I can’t date people who shop at the store” line, when he grabbed me by my face and kissed, in his words earlier, the shit out of me. It was what I imagined being kissed the shit out of felt like. His mouth was warm on my cold one, molding to fit. I had read enough to know what I was supposed to do, move my head in the opposite direction of his, part my lips a bit, and then…he completely dominated me. I’d always had this image of what my first kiss would be like. When I was younger, it was always something so sweet and innocent, a small peck on the lips that would make my heart skip a beat and my foot pop up like in those old movies. Then, as I got older, those images turned a little more R-rated, lips crushing mine laced with slippery tongues and curses of adoration. Hands moving to places, gripping and groping, fireworks exploding behind closed eyelids, the works.
I was in no way prepared for this kiss, though.
His hands were firm but gentle around my face as he tilted it slightly upward and moved his thumb in between our lips, slightly parting mine. His tongue slipped inside, and it was all over mine, moving back and forth as it tried to share a space that was already occupied. This was not like the books said it would be. I mean, it was, but it was so much more. Sure, the slippery tongues and fireworks were there, but there was also this feeling that if I didn’t get enough, if he didn’t kiss me more, give me more, I might explode, ignite. It made my body feel alive. This was what I had been waiting for. The explosion.
Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to take any more of this amazing pressure that was starting to build, he slowed his tongue, then sucked on the bottom of my lip and released me.
“Whoa.” I hadn’t intended for that to be audible, but it was.
He chuckled and gave me what could only be a cocky stare before saying, “Yeah, I’ll be getting more of that. Bet.”
I didn’t even have time to do anything but watch his back as he walked away whistling. The goofy-ass smile on my face couldn’t be helped as I turned and walked home.
My first kiss.
It wasn’t inadequate or awkward or sloppy as I’d read and heard about other people’s first kisses. It was intense, amazing, and hot, and I knew that I would compare all future kisses to it. If I ever got the chance.
I was blissfully unaware of my surroundings when I walked into my house, forgetting that I was supposed to come back in through the window. I could say that I blamed Deklan, but it was me and my forgetfully stupid self. The first thing I heard was moaning, followed by, “Yeah, woman, suck me harder,” and I instantly knew two things: one, I’d walked in on what I thought was the most demoralizing thing a woman could do with a man, and two, this was going to be bad.
The bad part was that the asshole she was pleasing looked directly at me and with a flick of his tongue asked if I wanted some, too. I grimaced and tried to quickly make it to my room before…
“The fuck?” she slurred as she made a wet sound and twisted her head toward me.
So gross.
Great, she’s sloshed, I realized. I didn’t understand. It always seemed that for my mother to do what she was doing, she had to be out-of-her-mind toasted. The men were assholes, calling her names she often repeated back at me, then leaving her crying and lonely in more beer because they wouldn’t stay, only to do it all over again in a few days. I never wanted to feel that way or have someone make me feel that way—useless. I knew that feeling well, and I despised it.
I despised everything she was.
“Deal with that family drama shit after you finish milking me,” the asshole said and pushed her head back down.
I turned away to avoid showing my absolute disgust and went to my room. I was safe, for now.
It wouldn’t last long. It never did.
Chapter 13
Deklan
My dick was jumping like it was on speed.
I should have never gassed it up with that kiss. Shit, now it was craving her. I was craving her, her softness, her smell, her taste.
I knew she was full of shit with that tough-as-nails shit I assumed she tried to pull with everyone else, but that kiss, that kiss told me she was innocent. And fuck it if I didn’t want more of that innocence, of her. After I spotted her outside that diner, I was ready to seal the deal. There was no way that I kept running into her for no damn reason, and I knew she wanted me, so why not?
I was trying to get it in, be all mysterious and shit with my left field “tell me your biggest dream” question. But after her answer and that look in her eyes, I fucking knew something was up with her. When she ran to the bathroom, I gave her two beats to try and handle that shit before going and making sure she was one hundred. I heard the labored breathing before I hit the door, and I knew she was in a bad way, knew she was struggling to catch a breath like she just ran a fucking triathlon and shit, vision fucking with her, palms sweating and shit. I knew that shit like I knew how to breathe. When Royce was being an asshole of epic portions, back before I got the fuck out and before Mom was sick, his nightly “lessons on how to be a man” had me experiencing panic attacks on a daily fucking basis.
That shit sucked.
I don’t even think Harley was aware I was holding her until she calmed down, and then I saw that panicky deer-in-headlights-he-did-not-just-witness-that look, and I knew she was about to try and go ghost
on me. That shit wasn’t happening, so I let her have her time and waited for her to make use of the only window in that small-ass bathroom. If I was any more of a bastard, I would have grabbed hold of her by her ass and helped her out of that window, but I knew if I did that I would have punched myself in the nuts. Besides, I was pissed, but not shocked, and if one thing can get my mind off sex for two minutes, it was being pissed. It took me all through dinner to calm the fuck down. I was patient, and I didn’t expect her to tell me the extent of her baggage, because she had a fucking U-Haul full from what I could tell, but for her to tell me nothing? Really? The need to protect her from whatever was causing this reaction in her was at the forefront of my mind, and I had no idea why. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me, it was stupid, but it didn’t discount the fact that the feeling was strong.
I don’t know why I cared so fucking much, either. I knew that I could do my usual “fuck her and leave her” routine and peace out of this shit-ass town and she couldn’t give me shit about it. But I knew she would always be in everything I saw after I left. In every girl that I fucked after her and in every fucking tough-as-nails bitch I saw.
Kiss her.
My brain whispered the demand to me so forcefully it almost faltered my steps.
I saw the moment in her eyes again, when she was about to pump the brakes on whatever she was feeling for me, and I took what I knew she wanted me to give. She responded so readily to me it put a fire in my veins that ran all the way down to my dick, and when I opened her up and slipped my tongue inside of her, my balls grew tight. Never had that happened with just a kiss, and I’d had my tongue in a lot of mouths over the years.
Hell, I’d had my tongue a lot of places, but none as sweet as her mouth. But as much as my mind was whispering for me to take her, to claim her for the night, it also told me to ease back, to not go at this like any other chick, to be gentle. Gentle? Pssh, I didn’t know what context that played in anything that I did, but it ran through my fucked-up mind like a broken record. I don’t know why the fuck I listened to my mind and pulled back because that look on her face as she came down from the high I took her to was enough to make me realize that it was the dumbest shit I could have done. After leaving her, I tried to find some bar lusty who would help me bury this need or whatever the fuck it was for some chick I barely knew, but all she did was piss me off because her mouth wasn’t the sweet-as-berries one I had just tasted hours ago, her skin not as soft, and her eyes were zoned out and glazed over on some shit. But that didn’t stop me from getting it in and then spouting my usual “it was fun” line before pushing her ass out of my hotel room and heading to the shower, where I washed off her spit and pumped my dick and vowed to look up all things gentle.
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