Always Been You

by Beverley Kendall

  All mine.

  “But he doesn’t know he can’t have me,” she counters.

  I drag my gaze back up and look into her eyes. “I guess I can’t blame a guy for trying as long as you don’t take too long to tell him to get lost.” Just like I wasn’t going to let Johnson stop me. April was going to be mine one way or another, although willingly is always best.

  She smiles briefly and then her expression changes to one of concern. “Okay, so what’s going on with your mom? Did something happen?”

  I lower myself onto the beach towel spread out behind us and tug her down beside me. “It’s nothing. My mom’s kind of freaking out over my dad again.” I brief her on what Mom shared with me.

  “Oh thank God, I thought—I thought…” She glances over at Emily, who is reclined in her chair unashamedly listening to every word of our conversation. Both girls exhale a deep breath.

  “Yeah, I know. I know.” Cancer. Relapse. It’s the first conclusion I jumped to also. “You up to shopping with me? I want to get her something nice. She deserves it.”

  April’s eyes soften and her pat on my leg turns slow and arousing “Of course. You’re such a good son.” Her voice is a breathy purr. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing. Or how close her hand is to the fire she’s setting.

  I allow myself to do the only thing I can in public; one kiss with a few seconds of tongue. Her green eyes are clouded with desire when I lift my mouth from hers.

  “Okay, it’s officially time for me to cool off,” I mutter as I push to my feet. The cold water will do me good. “Who’s in?” I call out, my gaze touching on my buds.

  “I’m in,” Scott says.

  Zach stands. “I’m in too.”

  I smirk as April makes a big show of spreading out the edges of her towel. She’s still turned on and trying to get her sexual urges under control. Well that makes two of us. I can’t fucking wait until tonight.

  “You guys go ahead. We’re going to lie in the sun for a bit. We’ll go in later.” Liv, who is stretched out beneath the umbrella, rolls over onto her stomach. Emily follows her lead while April and Rebecca don sunglasses and settle down on their backs.

  “We’ll come back every half hour to turn you over so you won’t burn,” Scott jokes, grinning at his girlfriend.

  “Emily and Liv burn. We don’t,” Rebecca says gesturing at April.

  I throw my head back and laugh. “That’s what you think. Remind me to tell you about the day April burned so bad, she couldn’t sit down for two days.”

  April lowers her sunglasses and pushes up onto her elbows. “It was one time, Troy. And I was twelve.”

  I walk back to her, lean down and drop a kiss on the soft curve of her shoulder. “And you thought you didn’t have to worry about sunburn. Weren’t you wrong.”

  I feel her shoulder shake beneath the brush of my mouth. “Go and swim and let me get some more color, which I obviously need according to Bill Keets.”

  Chuckling, I straighten and follow the guys to the water.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It’s been six days since Troy and I got together, and I’m still getting used to the fact that we’re a couple. Getting used to being able to kiss and touch him in public. And doing it in front of our friends.

  The sex I’ve taken to like a duck to water. I’m addicted and already a heavy user. And so is Troy.

  I admire the perfect V of his tanned form: the broad expanse of his back, his narrow hips and muscled thighs. I watch him until he’s neck high in the water, and then wipe a hand across my brow.

  God, my boyfriend is bite-your-lip, clench-your-thighs-together sexy.

  “Boy, do you ever have it bad.”

  I turn my head to find Emily watching me as if she’s never seen me before. Which is probably because she hasn’t seen me like this with anyone. With Troy I am different. Certainly happier, and definitely hornier. I must have that getting-it-regular glow. The same one Liv and Rebecca have had for so long, I now take it for granted.

  “Bad? Don’t you mean good?” I tease, quirking my eyebrow.

  “I guess it’s good when it’s love, but not so great when it’s not,” Emily says, her smile tinged with sadness.

  Rebecca rolls partially onto her side to address Emily. “Have you ever been in love?”

  Liv may have her eyes closed but I can tell by the fluttering of her eyelids, she’s listening to the conversation.

  Emily’s face turns pink. “In lust, yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in love.”

  I scrutinize her closely. My friend is a real study in contrasts, endearingly sweet and open in some aspects, yet reserved and unyielding in others.

  “What about Graham?” I blurt out the question without giving it a moment’s thought.

  At the question, Liv’s eyes snap open like a marionette doll. She quickly scrambles to a sitting position and demands, “Who’s Graham?” Her eyes narrows suspiciously as her gaze darts between me and Em. “What are you two keeping from me?”

  “Graham’s from Britain,” I supply to soothe poor Liv’s hurt feelings and feed the insatiable curiosity she has for Em’s closely guarded personal life.

  To be fair, we all share that same insatiable curiosity. The less Em is willing to share, the more we’re dying to know, and so on and so forth.

  “I don’t know anything about this Graham guy, so they’re keeping it from both of us.” Rebecca is firm in her solidarity with Liv.

  “Well don’t look at me. That’s as much as I know about him,” I say, fending off their accusing stares.

  All eyes then turn to Emily. Our intense scrutiny has her squirming in her chair.

  “Graham is—is a guy I dated for about a month years ago. I was too young to know what love was when I met him,” she replies quietly.

  Too young?

  “Really? How young would that be?” More than idle curiosity prompts my question. I’ve seen the guy. He’s got to be in his mid-twenties, which makes him four or five years older than Em, give or take.

  “Eighteen,” she replies. “I’d just turned eighteen when I met him,” she adds.

  “You really think eighteen is too young to fall in love? I don’t. I mean it’s young but I knew I was in love with Zach when I was nineteen.”

  “Same here. The first time I fell in love with Scott, I was seventeen. Okay, so it didn’t work out the first time so maybe it wasn’t exactly love. But I never got over him and I know for sure I’m in love with him now,” Rebecca finishes in a rush of words.

  “So what Rebecca’s saying is that yes, seventeen is too young to know whether it’s love or not,” I joke.

  “Oh I don’t know. I think there’s different types of love for different stages of life.”

  Honestly, Liv is way too wise for her years. My paternal grandmother would say she’s been here before.

  “I think love changes and matures over time,” Liv continues. “And if we’re lucky, we’ll meet someone we will love throughout the maturing process.”

  “Do you think you have?” Em asks, her gaze touching on each of us.

  Liv nods and Rebecca gives a resounding, “Oh yes.”

  I smile. “Lord, for as long as we’ve known each other, I think Troy and I are in the maturing phase.”

  Rebecca huffs a laugh. “What is it, fifteen—sixteen years? I’d say so.”

  “So tell us about Graham? What’s he like?” Liv asks.

  “Tall, light-brown hair, nice build. Seriously hot if you like ’em surly and are into sexy accents.” I glance over at Em to see if she confirms my assessment. A blush stains her cheeks hot pink.

  Uh oh. Was I not supposed to mention that?

  Rebecca sits straight up and pushes the sunglasses from her eyes. “Wait, you met him?”

  My nod is hesitant as I watch Em. “Yeah, at the mall a couple weeks ago.”

  “Why did—” Rebecca breaks off when a shadow falls over us.

  I look up to
see two guys standing a few feet from the space we’ve carved out on the beach. The dark-haired guy looks to be about my height and possesses a solid, muscular build. The blond is lankier and stands a good four inches taller. They’re both good-looking in a frat boy way; clean cut, hair low, but not military short.

  The shorter speaks in a manner laden with youthful self-confidence. “Hey, we thought you girls might be interested in joining us in a game of volleyball.” There’s a net set up at the busier part of the beach. The area we made a point of avoiding.

  “Thanks guys, but maybe a little later. We’re just catching some sun now,” I reply, reasonably confident that I’m speaking for all of us.

  Undeterred, he cranks up the charm to full blast, his smile both cajoling and flirtatious at the same time. I bet that look has worked on women his entire life. “You sure?” His gaze makes the round, pausing on each of us in hopes of finding the willing—or more appropriate, weak—link.

  His friend hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He’s staring at me with such single-minded focus that I wish I were wearing my cover-up.

  “Damn. You’re the girl from the video,” the blond guy blurts out.

  Ah, so that was it. And here I thought he was just a perv.

  His friend shoots him a puzzled look. “What?”

  The blond guy ignores him and persists, “You’re that model.”

  Sigh. To lie or not to lie. That is the question. “I’m sorry but you must be mixing me up with someone else,” I reply, blinking innocently up at him.

  He shakes his head and smiles. “No I’m not. You’re her.”

  Clearly I’m a better model than I am an actress.

  Quick to come to my rescue, Emily interjects with, “I know who you’re talking about, and they do look alike, don’t they?”

  For a second, doubt begins to cloud his baby blues. “You’re April,” he insists. What a stubborn, stubborn guy.

  Liv pretends to choke back a laugh. “April? I’m sorry, but her name is Rose.”

  The dark-haired guy gives Liv a thorough once-over, his gaze lingering on her chest. “Mind if we join you?”

  Before we have a chance to firmly decline their request, our boyfriends return. Dripping wet, and tall and intimidating.

  A smile cracks the hard planes of Zach’s features, but his light-blue eyes are cold. “What’d we miss?” he asks.

  “Hey hon.” Liv’s gaze goes from Zach to our admirers. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we caught your names.”

  They both look decidedly uncomfortable now that the guys are here. The shorter one clears his throat and replies, “Doug.” Then he angles his thumb toward his friend. “And that’s Jon,” as if Jon can’t speak for himself.

  “Doug and Jon want us to join them in a game of volleyball,” Liv tells Zach. “You don’t mind if our boyfriends play too, do you?”

  At this point, Troy has planted himself at my side, his damp hand splayed on my upper thigh. I suppress a smile at his blatant show of possessiveness.

  “Uh yeah. We’ll come and get you when we’re ready to play,” Doug says, he and his friend already backing away.

  “It was nice meeting you,” I call out after them. I doubt we’ll be seeing them again.

  “We can’t leave you girls alone for ten minutes,” Scott grouses, roughly rubbing his head with the towel Rebecca handed him moments ago.

  “It wasn’t us, it was April,” Liv says, quick to lay the blame at my door. “Jon—the blond guy—recognized her from the video, so we had to convince him that she’s a doppelganger, not the real deal.”

  Troy’s hand moves from my leg to my hip, sending tingles to my nipples and stoking a fire between my thighs. “That damn video is going to be the death of me.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I murmur.

  His warm breath wafts my temple as his hand circles the crest of my butt. “That’s the damn problem, you don’t have to do anything. That video is out there racking up view after view, doing it all for you. It’s drawing even more attention to you than I ever thought I’d have to deal with.”

  Sigh. I stare into his beautiful silver-gray eyes and stroke his cheek. “This time next month, the video will be old news. No one will even remember my name. The most important thing is that you have me all to yourself. In every way.”

  His eyes turn nearly black with desire as his hand tightens on my hip. “C’mon. Let’s go in the water where I can touch you,” he says, his voice husky and low. Without waiting for my reply, he stands and pulls me to my feet.

  “We’re going in.” His announcement is made to no one in particular as we make a dash for the water.

  I can hear my friends laughing and snickering in the distance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You’re not going to guess who’s here.”

  I look over at Em to see if the warning note in her voice matches her expression.

  It does.

  A knot forms in the pit of my stomach. I automatically pitch my voice to a level barely above a whisper. “Who?” I hope Em can hear me above the din of noise in the bar.

  Please don’t say Melissa.

  And for no other reason than I don’t want to deal with any of her drama.

  “Colin,” Em states simply and then carefully gauges my reaction before continuing. “I saw him in the line to get in.” Despite the mass exodus of students during the summer, business remains brisk at Zenith’s largely in part because of summer rentals in the surrounding area. Which means the clientele is older, many more people in their mid-to-late twenties.

  Crap. Crap. I begin worrying my bottom lip until I taste lipstick.

  “Does he know?”

  About Troy and me she means. I shake my head.

  Her gaze touches on the empty chair next to mine. “Where’s Troy?” He’d been sitting with me when she’d gone to the restroom.

  “He went to see what’s taking the waitress so long with our drinks.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  My chair scrapes the wood floor as I rise and grab my leather clutch off the table. “Tell Troy I went to the restroom. I’ll be back in a few.”

  Em nods. She knows what I’m going to do, which is to nip this thing in the bud.

  I make my way to the front, hoping that Colin has made his way inside. As I pass a group of guys, they fall silent. Usually, I’m able to ignore the attention, but tonight I can feel the weight of their stares. That’s probably because I’m dreading what I have to tell Colin.

  Speak of the devil. I spot him with his friend Jeff standing a few feet inside the entrance to the bar. Jeff is talking, his expression animated, while Colin slowly surveys the growing crowd. It doesn’t take long for his gaze to find mine. A smile slowly spreads across his face.

  I force one of my own and wave awkwardly at him. Hey, here I am. Guilt swamps me because he actually looks happy to see me. After saying something to Jeff, he walks over to where I stopped by the corner wall.

  “Hey,” he says. “I never expected to see you here.”

  I tilt my head to the side. “Didn’t you say you were going home last week or the week before that?”

  “I decided to stick around for a bit.” He pauses. “You’re not here alone, are you?”

  I shake my head. “I’m here with friends.”

  He nods and gives me a thorough once-over. “You look good.”

  This would be a lot easier if he wasn’t being so nice. I take a deep breath. “Listen, I wanted you to hear this from me. I’m seeing Troy.”

  His head jerks slightly, the mark of his surprise. Then anger gathers like clouds in his eyes.

  “Nothing was going on before, I swear. We both sort of figured out why none of our other relationships had ever worked.”

  “Do you seriously expect me to believe that?”

  “I’m not lying.” My protest is met with a look of disgust. I decide to change tactics. “Why would I lie?”

  For this I receive a look even
more scathing. I mentally throw up my hands. I give up. There’s no winning with him. He’s going to think what he wants to think.

  “Save it, April. Just fuckin’ save it. You’ve fucked me over for the last fuckin’ time.” I find his excessive use of the f-bomb slightly alarming.

  Suddenly, his attention shifts to something behind me.

  Or someone.

  Colin’s eyes narrow dangerously. I know who he is before I turn around.

  I glimpse Troy’s face, before I feel his arm wrap possessively around my waist. “Hey, where’d you go? I’ve been looking for you.” And then to make sure that his message is heard loud and clear, he pulls me tight against his side and kisses me soundly on the lips.

  Argh. Of course he has to come and make things ten times worse. He’s such a caveman.

  “Hey.” I try to keep my voice level while I seethe inside. We’re going to have a long talk when we get home. Mark my words.

  The next few seconds are dedicated to Troy and my ex sizing each other up in a Clint Eastwood-style squint off.

  Unaware of the downward trajectory our conversation had already taken, Troy grunts out a, “Hey,” to Colin with the barest tip of his chin.

  The only way to describe the sound that comes out of Colin’s mouth is a snarl. “Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

  Speechless, I watch as he storms away, shouldering people aside as he exits the bar.

  “What a fuckin’ tool,” Troy says, drawing my gaze up to his. His jaw is taut and his eyes are cool as he peers down at me. “You wanna tell me what that was all about?”

  I angrily shrug his arm from around me and step back, needing to put some distance between us. “God, Troy, did you have to do that?” I hiss.

  His eyes narrow in warning. Then he grabs my hand and tows me to the corner next to the emergency exit. It’s private if you don’t mind the dark. “Do what?” he snaps.

  “You know. Kissing me like that.” I don’t know if I’m being a bitch about this or whether I have every right to be upset, but right now I don’t care.

  He shakes his head as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “So I’m not supposed to kiss my own girlfriend? In public?”