by Unknown
I guess Drew was going to try to have fun this weekend whether I liked it or not. I just hoped Laura would be able to handle it. Really, I hoped Laura would be able to handle him.
“What the fuck are you doing, Troyer?” Cassie yelled, using her last name, I suppose, because she was in shock, because she was so pissed off her brain rewound back to Turning Pines. She didn’t move, though. Didn’t run to the table and force them apart. I think she was afraid of what Drew might do if she did.
Drew pulled away from Laura and looked at us. “She’s kissing me.” He put his hand on Laura’s chin and looked at her. “And she likes it.”
I watched Laura turn red, as red as one of the neon beer signs hanging above the bar, and her eyes fell on Drew’s like her puppy had been drowning and he’d saved it with his tongue.
“We’re here for a funeral!” Cassie exclaimed, crossing her arms. “Not to have sex.”
“Who said anything about sex?” Drew asked. “But now that you mention it…” He went back in and nibbled at Laura’s neck.
Seeing Drew and Laura so close, it couldn’t help but punctuate the distance between Cassie and me. Even standing next to each other, our lips and arms were miles away.
“Just leave her alone, Drew,” I pleaded.
Cassie stormed past me and toward the lobby . “Get the fuck out here, Troyer.”
Laura let go of Drew, left the table, and followed her, turning to look back at him sheepishly as she walked.
Cassie had a power over people, Laura especially. It might have been the words she chose, but I always thought it was because there was something they both knew about each other that no one else did. Some secret they shared that bound them.
Like Drew and me.
With Drew alone at the table, I headed over. I shouldn’t have even brought him here, but I’d wanted him for moral support. Not that I would’ve admitted it, but if Cassie and I were really through forever, I didn’t want to be here alone.
Maybe he was chasing Laura so he wouldn’t have to take care of me. Like he’d said, he wasn’t putting my heart back together again.
I guess he’d meant it.
It was no secret he thought my being with Cassie was a mistake. But there were things he didn’t know about us. Things I couldn’t tell him because they didn’t have words. The way my chest seemed to fill with steam that struggled to escape when I looked at her, and that her lips brushing against mine sent surges of need through me. The way when I had her in my arms, I understood she was holding me, too.
Crap, she’s doing it again.
“What the hell, Drew?” I asked, sitting down next to him, my eyes boring into his.
“I like her, dude.” He shrugged.
“You just met her,” I replied.
“Ever heard of ‘like at first sight’?” His lips were still swollen and shiny. “Besides, we’ve been talking for months. You don’t answer your phone a lot.”
“Don’t do this,” I said, shaking my head.
“Ha.” He laughed bitterly and took a drink of his beer. “I am not taking relationship advice from you.”
That struck me right in my chest; the place swelling with hot, scorching steam when I was near Cassie turned into a mass of ice.
“Sorry,” he said, looking down. “No offense.”
“Right,” I mumbled. “Thanks a lot.” I watched him for a moment, considering what I was going to say next. “You seriously can’t keep your dick in your pants for one weekend?”
“What the hell is with all this talk about sex and dicks?” he asked, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. “I told you, bro, I. Like. Her.”
I squinted. “You’re sure it’s not because you’re stuck here this weekend and she’s the only free female?”
“We haven’t even made it to the funeral yet,” he volleyed back, leaning toward me, “so how do I know that?”
I reached for my beer and took a long drink, willing the alcohol to do its work. “You really are a sick bastard.”
I sat back in my chair, trying to overhear Cassie and Laura in the lobby. Not that I needed to hear what they were saying to know. Cassie was telling Laura to fucking stop it and Laura was listening, staring with her big blue eyes.
“I’m a man,” Drew explained, downing a shot of Jameson like he was trying to prove it. He barely coughed as he added, “Just like you used to be until Cassie castrated you.”
“Get fucked, Drew,” I said, even though from his perspective that statement was absolutely true. After Cassie, I couldn’t even look at another girl. I didn’t want to. But it didn’t mean I needed him to point it out to me.
“Still talking about sex.” He tsked and shook his head. He glanced over at them fighting in the lobby. His eyes weren’t just undressing Laura, they were practically licking her.
I’d never seen Laura in a sexual way because I had always been so focused on Cassie. If Cassie was fire—hot, angry, uncontrollable as a mustang—then Laura was air: light and soft, comfortably surrounding you.
I could believe Drew liked her. I had to. And he didn’t care what I said, anyway.
“Hey, at least I didn’t go after Cassie,” he said, turning his attention back to me.
“Cassie would castrate you if you tried anything with her.” I laughed, picturing it.
“Exactly why she’s all yours,” he said, his hands up in surrender.
I grabbed his forearm. “You’d better not hurt Laura.”
“I have no plans to do anything but pleasure her,” he said, lengthening the word.
“I’m serious,” I said, gripping him harder. His pulse beat into my hand.
“So am I,” he replied heavily.
I let him go and glanced back at the lobby. Cassie was yelling, and Laura was nodding like she agreed. I knew it was no use. In the twenty minutes Cassie and I were outside fumbling just to be near each other again, Drew had baited, caught, and reeled Laura in. She would be his until he chose to let her go.
Why couldn’t it be that easy with Cassie and me?
Why couldn’t I have gone with her, all those months ago?
Why couldn’t she have just come with me?
Chapter Nine
Cassie
I stood with my back to Ben in the elevator, staring at the split between the silver doors. I didn’t know where his eyes were, but I hoped they were on the back of my head and not on my ass. I knew they could have been. If I were standing behind him, my eyes would have been obsessively stuck on his ass.
It was why I wasn’t standing behind him.
Fucking Troyer.
While I had been yelling at her in the lobby to stay the fuck away from Drew, he came up behind her and whispered something in her ear. She laughed a sexy whatever you say laugh and nodded.
I stood there watching their disgusting mating dance with my fucking chin down at my feet.
Before I could stop her, she was following Drew over to the elevator. Not that it seemed like I could stop her. She was under his spell, and I knew what it was like to be under the spell of someone with his DNA.
“You’re hanging with my brother tonight,” Drew yelled as he pushed the button to take them upstairs.
“No fucking way I am,” I yelled back, my hands turning to fists, ready to punch Drew’s fucking face in.
“If you don’t want to sit in the lobby or in Laura’s car, you are,” he said.
“Troyer, what the fuck?” I asked, wishing she would turn and look at my eyes, see the anger burning in them, but I knew even that wasn’t enough to break Drew’s spell.
How could she leave me all alone with Ben?
“I won’t be long, Cassie. I’ll text you soon,” she said. “You can come get the keys to the car if you need them.”
The elevator dinged, and they both walked in. Laura kept her head down, but Drew threw me a slo-mo wink as the doors closed on the two of them.
Fucking Troyer.
Fucking Drew.
Fuck me.
&
nbsp; I could have just followed them back to our room and tried to ruin their party, but even from my short experience with Drew, I knew he was the kind of guy who was going to do whatever he wanted whether I was there or not.
My face boiled. Laura had not only forced me into a hotel in the middle of a snowstorm with Ben for the weekend, but now into a room with him, unless I wanted to freeze my ass off in the car outside or sit for who knew how long in the fucking lobby.
The thing that was making me crazier than anything was how it wasn’t anger that scared me about being in a room alone with Ben—it was the other thing he brought out in me, the desire he ignited. As strong as anger but so much more dangerous.
“Sorry about my brother,” Ben said from behind me in the elevator, waking me from my Troyer and Drew hate-rant.
What else was he going to say? Sorry you’re forced to spend who knows how many hours with me behind a closed, locked door.
“You can’t control him, just like I can’t control Laura.” I shrugged. It was true. People had enough to apologize about on their own without worrying about apologizing for other people.
“Hormones,” Ben said. I heard him suck on his bottom lip. “They’re more powerful than rules.”
I didn’t respond, but he was right. It was why I’d been with him in the first place. Why I broke my own never let any guy touch me again mandate. Why we were in an elevator now pretending we were okay about it all.
For weeks at Turning Pines my mind said, no, no, no, until finally my body could do nothing but say yes.
“I can’t fucking believe she did that,” I said. Of course, look at what she’d done so far—I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
“She’s definitely changed,” Ben said, tapping his foot against the back of the elevator in a steady bass beat. At least it wasn’t “The Bitch is Back.”
“For the worse,” I responded, even though I knew that wasn’t entirely true. She’d become stronger after Turning Pines. She was doing what she wanted, and while I was fucking pissed off for what that was making me have to do, I couldn’t entirely fault her for it.
I knew the kind of girl she used to be—silent, scared, and spineless. It seemed incredible she’d actually been able to leave all that behind. She’d grown up, while I was still growing, a work in progress. I didn’t know how much longer I could get away with being under construction.
“Drew’s just who he always is,” Ben admitted.
“At least someone is having a good weekend,” I said, my eyes still on the silver doors.
“Does that mean you’re not?” he asked, stopping the tap of his foot.
“No,” I said, “I love funerals and seeing people I never thought I would see again.”
“Me, too,” he replied. “It’s better than sucking on hot buttered thumbs.”
I turned to look at him. His face was in full-grin mode.
“I’ve still got both of mine,” I said, pointing them at the ceiling of the elevator.
His smile turned suggestive, a look as delicious as it was disobedient. “It’s a long weekend.”
My lips parted, my lungs took in air, anything to get oxygen to my head and heart, to remind myself my body shouldn’t want his, even though it did. Not like I needed him to start talking so intimately about our past to think about it. Even without his suggestion, it was impossible to do anything but stare at his lips, think about how they had the power to remind me I was alive.
How his hands couldn’t only play the shit out of a drum set, they could play the shit out of me.
He looked at me, too, leaned in slightly, his lips honing in on mine—both of us fighting the urge.
I couldn’t help craving the charge of his lips hitting mine, the emptiness inside me filling with the realization he was there, that I was not alone. I stayed still, but a rush hit me as I imagined kissing him ravenously, hungrily, my throat aching, my lips stinging until I tumbled into the loss of it—the absence of Ben’s lips, the lack of his arms and warm breath, of him not asking for anything more than me.
I’d lost that feeling before.
I never wanted to go through it again.
I turned away before he did. It wouldn’t be that easy for me, for either of us. It definitely wouldn’t be as easy as it was for Laura and Drew—baggage is a bitch, almost as big of a bitch as me.
The seconds waiting for the doors to open lingered like years. Why the hell is their room on the highest floor? Why the fuck does the elevator move like a geriatric snail?
Finally, they opened with a ding and I walked out quickly, trying to escape what had just almost happened—forcing myself out of the sweet, hot air surrounding us for that brief beautiful moment. Before I remembered what came after beautiful.
We couldn’t give in to it. After this weekend, we would just sleepwalk back into our lives and both try our best not to miss each other. Try our best to live our lives as sleepwalkers, because being awake meant the lack of the other one.
We moved down the hall in silence, the fluorescent lights above us humming, the busy carpet below us seemingly spinning.
He used the card key to unlock the door to his room. It made its click and beep and we entered. It was dark inside. So dark, it reminded me of my brother’s apartment. I liked to keep it dark so the days tumbled into each other rather than splaying out in one long interminable line.
But right now I wanted light, because darkness with Ben might mean more than just an almost kiss. Might mean something I couldn’t stop.
I burst into the room and started flicking them on, as many as I could find: the light switch on the wall, the bathroom, and the nightstand closest to the door. It was then I saw the king bed in the center of the room: its white pillowcases, comforter, and sheets, as innocent as a cloud.
One bed. Ben and me together, alone in a room with only one fucking bed.
My blood thundered in my ears. “This is it?” I managed to choke out.
“This was all they had left,” he explained.
“We have two beds in our room,” I said, even though my saying it wouldn’t magically make two beds. Honestly, I wanted my words to magically make two rooms.
“I guess you should have let us check in first,” he said.
I glanced around the room. There wasn’t even a couch or a chair.
“Fuck,” I said.
He shrugged. “You want to call them and tell them to switch with us?”
I closed my eyes angrily. I definitely didn’t, not that they would answer the phone anyway—their hands were most definitely busy.
I looked at the bed again. Usually I believed a bed was a raft, sleep as an escape, but with Ben in it next to me, his body inches away from mine, close enough to feel my roaring heartbeat, it would be anything but.
“You stay on your side, I’ll stay on mine,” I said, crossing my arms.
“I think I have some gaffer tape in my bag if you want to mark it up.” Ben smiled.
Smart-ass.
I looked at the bed again. If I couldn’t stop thinking about almost kissing Ben in the elevator, what would I not be able to stop thinking about next to each other with just soft white fabric between us? Would I be strong enough this time to stop myself?
“I seriously cannot fucking believe this,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at the ceiling. “It’s like Laura planned it.”
“She definitely planned some of it,” he said, “but not this. I doubt Drew was a part of her equation.”
“He is now,” I said. “They’ve seriously been talking for months?”
“I guess,” he replied. “He has a way with girls.”
“A player just like his brother, huh?”
Ben was standing in the doorway, watching me. Maybe he was afraid of being in a room with me with just one bed, too. “I guess I deserve that,” he said, “but I’d say you also deserve some blame, Cassie.”
Crap. We had almost kissed, now we were discussing us, what had happened between
us.
“Fine. We’re both to blame,” I said, sitting up straighter. “Can we stop talking about it now?”
“If that’s what you want,” he said solemnly.
“It is.”
“Guess we should get ready for bed, then.” He sighed.
“Bed?” I exclaimed.
“You really think Laura’s texting you?”
“She fucking better if she knows what’s good for her,” I said.
“I think it’s clear she’s got someone else to tell her what to do now,” he said.
“I don’t tell her what to do.”
“You tell everyone what to do, Cassie, she just chooses to listen.”
He used to be one of those people, too. I guess that was his way of telling me he wasn’t anymore.
“You want a T-shirt or something to wear?”
“Nope,” I said, taking off my boots and lying on the left side of the bed on top of the covers.
“Some toothpaste?” he tried.
“No.”
“Soap?” he pressed.
“Fuck no,” I said slowly, like Ben was stupid. I didn’t want anything. If Laura wasn’t going to text me—which, he was right, she probably wouldn’t—I wanted to go to sleep and wake up and leave so I could stop trying not to think about wanting to kiss Ben.
“Going for the old Turning Pines look, huh?” Ben asked.
We had both been so dirty and disgusting back then. Our semi-daily shower and pit toilet and back-breaking-labor lifestyle had made us both as ripe as spoiled fruit, but none of that had mattered.
All that mattered was him wanting me, and me finally admitting I’d wanted him, too.
Even if I got up the strength to admit it now, would he even agree?
So much had changed. Being alone with him, it seemed like years had passed instead of months. I had locked my heart up good and tight, Troyer had grown college-age balls, Ben had played who knew how many bride and groom first dances, I didn’t even want to imagine what Drew had done, and Rawe had died.
I closed my eyes, trying to will sleep. At least then it would be tomorrow and then it would be the next day and then I could be gone and I could stop feeling this way. Because with Ben right here, there was only my body aching for his and my mind kicking the crap out of me for it.
