I stare at my best friend in shock, anger, and happiness. They’re all rooting for us to get together but we’re too stubborn.
“You planned this?” He nods, nonchalantly. “I could have killed him, Lennon. I could have killed a guy on your wedding day.”
“No, Tristan. No, you wouldn’t have.” He smirks shaking his head. “Because Lillia would have stopped you, just like she stopped you with Jared.” Hearing his name turns my blood to ice. “You love her, man, and she loves you. Go to her. Make this right.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Make her.” Lennon pats my shoulder. “Make her talk to you. Don’t let her push you out or ignore you. She’s as stubborn as a mule and I’m not going to lie, it’ll be difficult. But stay strong and just talk.”
I sit mulling over Lennon’s words of encouragement. Not letting Lillia shut me down and ignore me for another year. Another year of hearing second hand how she’s doing and waiting on tenterhooks to hear whether or not she’s dating someone. No. It’s not happening.
Walking towards the hotel, I see Josh sitting with Hugh in the corner of the outside sitting area. When I approach him, Hugh stands, anger in his eyes. “Josh?” I look round Hugh at Josh. “I just wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.”
Josh stands beside Hugh, holding out his hand to shake mine. “It’s okay. I understand what it must have looked like.” He nods, the bruising under his eyes starting to show.
“It’s still no excuse.” I shake my head, looking down. “Do you know where Lillia is?”
“Leave her alone.” Hugh speaks slowly. He’s pissed, I get it. He’s fiercely protective of Lillia, much like Luke and Lennon.
“She went home. Aiden drove her,” Josh tells me.
I nod, turn on my heel, and hail a cab to go get my girl. Or at least get her to talk to me.
I walk into the Kennedy’s home like it’s my own. I look in the kitchen and the living area and she’s not there. I head up the stairs two at a time and stand in front of her door. I hear a sob before I knock on the door. I walk in and see her curled up in the fetal position, hugging her unicorn teddy her grandpa bought her before he passed away.
“Lilly?” My voice is barely above a whisper, but loud enough for her to hear. She stands up quickly. Her cheeks are tear-stained, her glazed over eyes staring, shocked. Thank God their mom and dad left beforehand, otherwise I’d be pulling a size five women’s shoe out of my ass instead of making Lillia listen to me.
“Get out,” she whispers, turning to go into her bathroom. I stay rooted to the spot, trying to stay strong like Lennon told me to. She doesn’t come out for what feels like a lifetime. When she does, she halts in her tracks, letting out an audible gasp. She probably expected me to walk away like I always do. Not this time.
“Tristan, I’m tired. I have an early flight tomorrow. I don’t have time for your temper tantrums.” She sighs, walking over to her vanity and brushing her hair out. I look at her - really look at her. She really is beautiful. Her face is free of make-up now; her long hair flowing down her back in waves. She’s no longer in the bridesmaid’s dress. She’s changed into her pajamas; skimpy shorts showing off her long, toned legs, and a thin-strapped vest top. My dick becomes painfully hard the longer I look at her.
“Well?” She turns and jumps when she sees I’ve moved to stand inches from her, close enough to touch her. She folds her arms over her chest, pushing her tits up.
“I need to talk to you,” I mutter, my voice husky, laced with lust and longing.
“Not a chance in hell.” She lets out a humorless laugh and walks around me towards her door. Opening it, she points out of it. “Please leave.” She can’t look me in the eye.
“No. I’m not leaving until you hear me out.” I take off my suit jacket and place it over the chair of the vanity.
“Tristan.” Her shoulders slump. “Please. I don’t want to hurt anymore.” She says it so quietly I almost miss it. “I’ve tried for almost a year to get over you, and I was. I was getting over you. I was getting to a point where I could be in the same room as you and not cry or feel like someone was chipping away at my heart every time I heard your voice or your laugh. Then you pull this shit.” Lillia pushes the door closed, slamming it, obviously defeated at the fact I’m not leaving anytime soon.
“Lilly…” She glares and practically growls at me. My head jerks back in surprise. Ever since they moved in and we became friends, I’ve called her Lilly. I’m the only one aside from her grandpa who called her that. I swallow the lump of emotions forming in my throat and walk towards her.
“Lillia, please.” I stand in front of her, close enough to touch. I can feel the tension rising, and the heat from our locked gaze becomes blistering. “I need to tell you how I feel.”
“It’s too late for that.” Her voice is hoarse.
“No. No, it’s not. It’s never too late with us.” I slide my hand into her hair. She leans into my touch then catches herself and moves her head away as if it will kill her.
“It is. I can’t do this! I can’t be your fuck buddy! Your booty call!” she shouts, her face red with anger. “I won’t be your whore!”
“Lilly!” I shout back at her, pissed she just called herself a whore. I don’t give a shit if she looks like she wants to kill me right now for calling her Lilly. “Lilly, please don’t call yourself a whore. You’re not.”
“No?” Tears fall down her cheeks. “Why do I feel like I am when you’re around, huh? Because you make me feel like that!” Her voice is getting louder. “You always make me feel like that’s all you’re after! Whenever you need a release, you think, ‘Oh I know, let's call Lillia. She's always keen for my cock!’”
I hope Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy are heavy sleepers.
“That’s not true,” I utter in a low tone.
“No? Well, tell me how the fuck you feel, because for the past six years, all I’ve heard from you is that you can’t love or that you’re not good enough for me. Or you’ve made me feel like I’m the one who’s not good enough for you.” She swipes the tears angrily from her eyes. “God, how I wished every night that you would utter those three little words to me as we made love. That just for that moment, you felt the same as me.” She sniffs and fixes me with a hard look. “But you didn’t. You used me like I was some fucking toy you could pick up and drop whenever you felt like it.” Her words are like daggers through my heart.
“I know, Lilly.” Sighing, I risk stepping closer to her. Once again, she steps back. “God, I fucking know what I put you through! I think about it every damn day!”
“Do you, Tristan?” she asks, narrowing her eyes and licking her lips. “Do you really know how you broke my heart every time I saw you around Darcy or Kacey? Hell, even tonight when you were talking to her I was transported back to high school. The jealousy bubbling beneath the surface, threatening to pour out like lava from a volcano. I know she’s happily married with a kid but that didn’t stop the feelings.” I step forward again, wanting to reach out and comfort her. “I felt it all over again. I can’t do this.” She shakes her head. “It’s time we just face facts that this is it. We will never be a couple, no matter how much meddling our family and friends do. This will never work.” She points between us. “This is the last you’ll see of me. You have to move on.” She looks up at me with nothing but sadness in her green eyes. “We both need to move on.”
My heart breaks further, but this isn’t over. I’m going to make her see that we can be good. I’ll be the man she deserves.
Make her listen. Lennon’s voice echoes in my head. Trapping her in my arms, I make her listen.
As soon as the words left my mouth, tears stinging the back of my eyes, I feel my heart shatter into a million pieces.
“I can’t do that. I love you. Please, Lilly. Just give me one last chance to prove the love I have for you.” Tristan circles his arms around my waist. Butterflies flutter in my stomach, and there’s pain
in my throat from trying to keep the tears from falling.
I sigh and turn, still trapped in his embrace. Looking up into sad blue eyes that I loved so much, I kiss him lightly on the lips. He tries to deepen the kiss.
“I’m sorry. I can’t. Please don’t make this harder than it already is,” I say, as he leans his forehead on mine. I need to let him go. We both need to move on from this, whatever this is between us.
“Please.”
“Please, Tristan. I need to let you go.” I try to blink the tears away but one escapes. I reach up and wipe the tear away as fresh tears fall down my cheeks.
“Please, Lillia. Don’t do this. You make me the happiest man on earth when you’re around. I hadn’t been so happy in my entire life, not until you moved in next door. I’m only miserable because I thought you hated me.”
This news makes me gasp. “I don't hate you, but what hurt was that each time I thought we were getting closer, you ended up with another girl pawing at you,” I say, looking into his eyes. He looks at me, confused. “Kacey, Darcy, and tonight, Erin.”
“Lilly, look at you. You’re beautiful. Why would you want to be with someone as broken as me when you can have your pick of guys that are just lining up to take you out?” He slides both hands in my hair, framing my face. “I love you, Lilly. Always have and I always will love you. Even if you never want to see me again, I’ll stay out of your way, but this…” He places my hand over his rapidly beating heart. “…This will forever be yours and yours only.”
We stare into each other’s eyes for what feels like a lifetime, green to blue, the air crackling between us. Still in Tristan’s arms, my hand on his chest, I glance down at his lips and back up to his eyes. His normally baby blues are almost black with desire. His head inches closer to mine. His mouth crashes onto mine before I can even blink.
With tears falling down my cheeks, I can taste the saltiness of them as we kiss. I had to give in; I couldn’t help it. It’s Tristan. It’s like there’s an invisible magnet pulling us together every time we’re in the same room. My hands travel up his solid chest to his hair and pull a little. Tristan’s kiss gets hungrier, our tongues stroking each other.
Breaking the kiss, I start unbuttoning his shirt, becoming increasingly impatient. I rip the rest, causing the remainder of the buttons to fly across my bedroom floor. Pushing the shirt off his shoulders, I throw it across the room. Tristan grabs the hem of my skimpy vest top and throws it over his shoulder. His mouth fuses back with mine, and our tongues continue to battle while we strip each other. Grabbing my ass, Tristan lifts me up, slams me against the wall and lifts my arms above my head, locking them in with one hand while the other slowly descends down my side. He trails kisses down my jaw, nipping and licking all the way down to my collarbone and back up to my lips. I grind against him, begging for some sort of contact. It’s been a year. I need him. Need his dick inside me, no matter how upset and broken I’ll be tomorrow, or when this is all over. I need him one last time. One last taste and feel of him driving into me.
Trapped by the man I love, my first love, the love of my life, the man I used to envision myself marrying and having a family with, I know this has to be the last time we ever have a moment like this and I’m going to make sure that he never forgets it. Every woman after tonight will be compared to me because no guy will ever compare to Tristan Hunt. I wrap my hands around his shoulders, my nails digging in and scraping across; I’m sure I’ve drawn blood.
“Argh, shit. Lilly.” He groans against my mouth. His tongue plunges into my mouth again. I circle my hips against his hardened dick, my head falling back against the wall. Tristan’s hand spears my hair, and gripping a handful, he pulls my mouth to his and kisses me like I’m his only source of oxygen, his lifeline. I moan loudly against his mouth as he grinds his hard penis against me.
Tristan reaches down and rips my skimpy boy shorts and throws them to join my top and his shirt on the floor. He slams into me without a second thought. Gasping at the force of his dick impaling me, I let out a loud moan, barely muffled by our kiss. Thrusting deep and hard, he suddenly stops his movements and looks me in the eye. My heart is racing against my ribcage. A tear falls from his eye.
“I should stop. We need to stop.” Disappointment fills my body. I swallow it down. “But I can’t. I won’t stop, Lilly.” He reaches up to move a stray piece of hair from my eyes. “I feel like I'm losing my reason for living.”
My head falls to his shoulder; I can’t look in his sad eyes anymore, and I start shaking. Wracked with emotion, the tears flow like a river racing towards a waterfall. He places his hand under my chin, lifting my face so I’m looking at him again. I almost come at the sight of him and the way he’s looking at me with nothing but love. “You’re so beautiful,” he says quietly. Thank God he’s holding me up, otherwise I’d be in a heap on the floor, nothing but a liquid mess. The longer I stare into the eyes I love so much, the more I need him to move. I move my hips and smash my lips to his, our kiss desperate.
“Move, Tristan.”
He angles me, pulls back, and eases back into me. His heart beats against mine so hard, as if our hearts want to join together and never part. He moves in and out of me at an agonizingly slow pace. He lifts his head to look into my eyes, my mouth hanging open in ecstasy, gasping to fill my lungs with air. I just want to feel this connection for the last time. This is our final goodbye.
Tristan thrusts into me so sharply, my head falls forward. I tighten my arms around his neck as he continues thrusting in and out of me slow and hard. The only sound I hear in my room is our hard breathing and moaning.
“Oh, God. Tristan, don’t let me go.” I groan as he continues pounding into me. He lifts his head to look me in the eyes. The love and hopefulness behind them have me wishing he told me how he felt years ago, then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be like this now. We’d be happy. We wouldn’t be ending whatever we had like this. We’d be moving forward together.
“I’ve got you, baby. I’ve always got you,” he breathes against my shoulder, kissing me lightly on the sensitive part of my neck. My nails scrape across his back again as I feel myself tipping over the edge. I come hard, my muscles tightening around his cock, pushing him over the edge and he blows his load in me.
I don’t want this moment to end. I don’t want him to move. Then I know it will be over for good. I can tell he doesn’t want to pull out of me either because he knows this is it. I’ll be gone for good in the morning and we’ll never see each other again, just like I said. I pepper kisses lazily along his neck. I don’t want this to be it, the end of us. There never was an us. But I know I have to let him go. It may have taken me six years to figure it out, and I had my heart broken so many times that I’ve lost count, but I can’t take the heartbreak anymore. I might never survive the next. Yes, he’s poured out his feelings for me just like I had always dreamed of, but what if he decides that he doesn’t want me anymore? What if someone else catches his eye and he leaves me for her? It would never happen, Lillia. You’ve seen the way he looks at you. You’re it for him. I wish I could believe that faint voice in my head, but I can’t take that chance. I won’t put myself through that pain again.
He pulls out of me and steps back a little. I feel an emptiness in my stomach and in my heart. We stare at each other, both of us naked as the day we were born. My hair probably looks like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. As for the rest of me? I can’t imagine what I look like right now; my lips feel swollen and could probably rival Mick Jagger’s. My cheeks are most probably tear-stained and my eyes feel puffy.
“How can you still manage to look so fucking beautiful right now?” he whispers. I blink. I don’t think I was meant to hear his inner thoughts that he’s just uttered out loud so I keep quiet.
Neither of us makes a move, we just stand and gaze at each other. How did we come to this? How could this happen? You’re both stubborn asses, that’s how.
“I should go,” he says
, pulling his boxer briefs up his long muscular legs. I can do nothing but nod, unable to move or speak for fear of becoming an emotional wreck. Staring at him as he heads for the door, his hand on the door handle, he stops mid turn and sighs. “We’ll never be over, Lilly. I’ll always love you and no-one will ever come close to how much I love you.” He sniffs, starting to turn the handle the rest of the way.
“Tristan,” I say, barely above a whisper as I rush towards him, still naked, and touch his shoulder. He turns, not looking me in the eye. Reaching up, I kiss him slowly and sensually. I don’t know what comes over me; I push him back against the door and rip his clothes off for the second time and jump on him. Tristan kisses me with such passion I think he’ll devour me whole. I put every ounce of my feelings into that one kiss, hoping he can feel just how much I love him. All the love, the fear of losing him for good, and the heartbreak he caused me over the years, but most of all, the love I will always have for him.
Lifting me up, my legs like magnets wrapping around his waist, he walks us over to my bed with me still clinging to him like a spider monkey.
“Make love to me, Tristan,” I whisper again, but loud enough for him to hear me this time. He lays me down. Tristan plunges into me and starts moving slowly. The tears roll down my cheeks. I don’t want to leave but I have to for my own good and for Tristan. We may never be able to be in the same room together again, but we need to try to move on. We can’t continue to live like this, holding on to something that will eventually pull us apart. His thrusts become faster. I can feel myself building higher and higher, chasing the orgasm, and explode, coming harder than I have ever come before. Tristan groans his release. “I love you,” I say quietly, my fingers buried in his hair.
“I love you too. Please don’t do this.” He sniffs.
“I have to. I have a job and a new life in New York,” I half lie.
He nods, standing to dress. I watch every inch of him, etching the way his body moves and how it looks into my brain.
She Loves Me. He Loves Me Not. Page 14
