Heat Up the Fall: New Adult Boxed Set (6 Book Bundle)

by Gennifer Albin

  Or the next day when she’d been decorating cake pops with Helena, and suddenly she was remembering the way Blue Eyes had looked at her when he handed over her jacket. Not with the lust of a one night stand or the disgust of some of her classmates or even with the disregard of the other addicts.

  He had just looked … thoughtful. Like he wanted to ask her something, and he might actually care about how she’d answer.

  Or maybe it was just her imagination twisting the moment into something else.

  She sensed him settle into the chair next to her, which made her stomach tighten with excitement. She should just get that apology out of the way, but she wasn’t very good at saying she was sorry. She’d probably screw it all up. So instead, she focused on the counselor as he walked in, maintaining her glare, and determined not to acknowledge the guy beside her. Even though the side of her body nearest to Blue Eyes burned with awareness.

  He was close enough that she could lift her hand if she wanted and bridge the distance between them, feel the warmth of his skin against her fingertips. Her resolve weakening, she stole a quick glance in his direction. He looked just as good as she remembered. Better even. This time, his sleeves were short, and the way he stretched his arms back to lace his fingers behind his head made the thin cotton stretch across his chest and his biceps bulge. Her throat went dry. Her pulse quickened.

  His gaze shifted, met hers, stayed. There was a question in his eyes, the exact look she’d recalled during her wildebeest documentary, and she wanted to know what it meant.

  She drew slow, deep breaths through her nose to steady her heart rate. Just faintly, she caught the scent of what must have been either his cologne or his soap. Fresh sea. Warm sun. Rich earth. It made her want to press her face into that tiny dip at the base of his neck and inhale deeply.

  Geez, maybe she really did need help.

  She didn’t even notice that the rest of their motley group had straggled in until Stilettos muttered something to Packers Cap about a relapse and a tub of pudding. She cast a quick glance at Old Lady who appeared to have made it to her chair without incident.

  “Good evening!” the counselor announced in that ineffably cheerful voice. “I thought we would try something new this week.”

  Oh, sure, she thought, perhaps a little irrationally angry. Experiment on us like a bunch of helpless, horny rabbits.

  “I want you to split into pairs.”

  Shit.

  “And talk about your childhoods.”

  Holy mother of God. She could feel Blue Eyes turn his chair a little toward her, and she braced herself for the two most awful things in the Leahverse: 1) Having to spend time with someone she physically wanted but couldn’t have (because Helena would find out somehow and cut her), and 2) Talking about her feelings.

  “Off you go then!” said the counselor.

  She reluctantly swiveled toward her ‘partner.’ Blue Eyes was smiling. Don’t look directly at it, she thought.

  “Do you want me to go first?” he asked, his voice rolling over her nerves like honey. “It doesn’t look like this is your sort of thing.”

  She nodded and prepared to endure endless reminiscences about whatever the hell kind of paradisiacal environment could have produced such a beautiful man. Magical dust and fairy god mothers were almost certainly involved. Maybe even footmen made of mice.

  “How detailed are we supposed to get?” she asked.

  He gave a ridiculously sexy shrug. “What do you want to know?”

  How you look without your clothes on. If you’re a shouter. How many inches— She cut herself off before the heat in her neck could give away her thoughts.

  “Where’d you grow up?” she asked and rattled off a bunch of mundane questions. “What do your parents do? Where’d you go to school? Do you have siblings?”

  How weird was it that she had no idea who he was as a person and yet she knew he had closets full of porn? Personally, she hoped he’d been exaggerating because that was a little disturbing and Blue Eyes seemed so … normal.

  A part of her had to wonder if he was really an addict or just some poor idiot who’d lost a bet or came here on a dare. Something about him and his story just seemed off.

  But maybe she just wanted to believe that. Looking at the guy, it was pretty easy to believe he spent a lot of time in bed.

  “Ah,” he said with an indecipherable look. “Well. I grew up in a tower block in Glasgow. My dad’s a bus driver. My mum worked at the post office. They weren’t home much.” He said this with very little inflection.

  It surprised her a bit, but she nodded politely for him to continue, rapt with learning more about him despite herself.

  “I guess you could say I pretty much brought myself up,” he said, sounding forcefully cheerful. “I could use a microwave before I was four, and I ran a wee bit wild later on with some gangs. Nothing too illegal though.” He flashed her a grin, but something hard passed through his eyes.

  A knot formed in her chest. She had the sudden urge to reach out and take his hand. Instead, she laced her fingers in her lap and observed the subtle shifts in his expression.

  He continued on. Blue Eyes had gotten lucky in secondary school where a teacher had taken him under her wing and convinced him that passing exams might be better for his future than stealing bikes and drinking cider beneath the underpass. Blue Eyes had then awakened a previously undiscovered intelligence and done well enough to earn admittance to an American university, where he was now a junior.

  He was a college student. She kept her face blank as the realization that he probably attended REU, River’s Edge University, crashed through her. And he was a junior as well. Could she ask to verify if that was his school? Was that allowed?

  For the sake of maintaining anonymity, she held her questions to herself, but the possibility of accidentally running into him on campus made her palms sweat. Would he greet her? Would he pretend to have no idea who she was? Would they end up in a storage closet?

  “It’s been interesting,” he concluded. He looked hesitant and surprised, as if he couldn’t believe he was telling her this. “Getting used to American customs and the way everyone speaks, I mean. A lot of the professors found my accent difficult to understand, so I’ve learned to speak more clearly and what words not to use. It’s been almost three years so I’m used to it now, but I still forget myself sometimes. And then there are times I overhear conversations that drive me mad.”

  “Such as?” She didn’t want him to stop talking. She liked watching that mouth, and his accent was perfectly clear and perfectly compelling.

  “Oh, you know, stuff like, ‘My parents decided to buy me a house while I study so I don’t have to deal with landlords.’” His brows puckered and he gave her a crooked smile. “Meanwhile, I’m trying to live on a student loan that would appall a gerbil.”

  She smiled before she could stop herself. Blue Eyes smiled back, looking suddenly embarrassed.

  “Strange how easy it is to talk about yourself when it’s all anonymous, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.

  She gave a noncommittal shrug since the counselor had been trying to get her to talk about herself for twenty weeks now.

  There was a short silence before she realized that it was her turn. With a quick swallow to hold back the unease, she tried to belt through her childhood as succinctly and calmly as possible.

  “My parents came from money, but they screwed it all up on bad investments before I was born. We don’t talk much.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” he said. He looked like he meant it. “I don’t talk much to mine either, at least not outside of their monthly emails.”

  Her brows rose. “What do they email about? To catch up?”

  His gaze briefly flicked away, and the corners of his mouth grew tight. “Not exactly. They’re not those sort of parents. My mum’s kind of … well, she’s pished more often than not, and my dad—”

  “Pished?”

  “Ach, sorry, I mean drunk
,” he said with a small smile that tugged at that familiar dull ache in her chest. “Go on.”

  With a sigh, she said, “Fortunately, my parents never resorted to alcohol, but there was this constant air of bitterness and resentment at home because we had to live like normal people.” She stared at his chin—it was a very attractive chin—to avoid having to look him in the eye and see his reaction.

  “That’s tragic.”

  His sarcasm made one corner of her lips quirk.

  “So no fancy private schooling then?”

  “Nope. I went to the only public school in our town and pretty much suffered from the single most prevailing problem of kids who grow up in the country.”

  When she paused, Blue Eyes leaned forward a scant inch and asked, “What?

  “Having absolutely nothing to do.”

  She found herself sharing another smile with him, and something warm and entirely unwelcome settled in her stomach.

  “So then what did you do with yourself?” he asked. He had yet to lean back. His smile and the way he kept asking her to elaborate, as if he actually wanted to know more about her, made her feel annoyingly flustered.

  “I used to steal wine from the cellar and climb this huge oak tree in our backyard to drink it alone.” At his questioning look, she said, “It was a good hiding place.”

  “Why’d you do it alone?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I would have invited friends, but I didn’t have any. Probably because I’m really bad at pretending to care about what people think of me.”

  “Some people consider that a good thing.”

  “Maybe you could introduce me to some,” she said. “Half the people you meet are only nice because they want something from you, even if it’s just your respect. Why should I respect a stranger I know nothing about? Being a decent person shouldn’t come with a motive, and yet most people do nice things expecting to be rewarded. It’s a form of entitlement. But none of them matter to me, so why should I care about what they feel they deserve from me?”

  Blue Eyes cocked his head. “So what do you do when you need respect from someone who does matter?”

  She thought about what she and Helena were going through. Helena was one of the few people who mattered in her life, which meant there weren’t many things Leah wouldn’t do for her. But he didn’t need to know that.

  She pursed her lips, and then wished she hadn’t when those gorgeous eyes dropped to her mouth. Maintaining maximum aloofness, she said, “Then I’m only as polite and accommodating as absolutely necessary.”

  He looked like he wanted to laugh. She wondered what it would sound like.

  “Why do you think it’s such a bad thing to want to be liked?”

  She looked down at her lap and considered lying. It would be easy. But with complete anonymity already between them, lying just didn’t feel right, especially with this particular guy. And after today, she would likely never see him again anyway, even if they did attend the same university.

  “There was this girl,” she said without looking up. “During gym class in third grade, she tried to kiss me. I pushed her away, but some kids saw and they … Well, let’s just say they were complete shits. So I defended her, which of course resulted in everyone assuming I was a lesbian, too. Nobody would talk to me after that, not even my friends. Even some of the teachers began ignoring me, and one of them in particular, the one who told me I could be anything I wanted, she sent a note home to my parents so they’d be aware of my ‘issue.’ I guess ‘anything’ was conditional.” She sighed and rubbed her thumb over the ridge of her knuckles. “People always eventually let you down.”

  Blue Eyes didn’t say anything, but something in his face made her feel like he understood. She didn’t know what to make of it, and she didn’t want to feel whatever connection might be happening between them.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “it at least left me plenty of time to study. Eventually, my parents sold the estate, and we moved into the old vacation home here.” She hadn’t wanted to leave Elijah so she’d stayed in town and gone to college here as well. “I got a couple scholarships, but it didn’t cover everything, and I knew my parents weren’t going to help me, so I was on my own. Luckily, my best friend realized I needed help and offered to share an apartment with me to take the edge off rent.”

  “That was good of her. Him?”

  “Her. And yeah, she kept me from getting too off track. My first year of college, I went a little crazy and almost failed half my classes.” Being physically close with someone had always made her wary. Sex was such an intimate thing, and she hadn’t known if she could share her body with someone without also sharing more of herself. But she had set out to try.

  After her first time, she’d been a little skeptical about sex in general, but it did eventually start to feel good. Turned out she was able have sex with someone without having to deal with the emotional side of it.

  In fact, she had learned to completely close off the emotional side of it.

  But that didn’t necessarily mean she had a problem. If this had happened her freshman year, then maybe, yes, she might have admitted to an addiction. But she was past that stage in her life. Now, meaningless sex every once in a while was a perfectly acceptable choice.

  “So you’re a student too. What do you study?” Blue Eyes asked, sounding for all the world like he was actually interested.

  She was pretty sure questions like that were forbidden as part of the anonymity rule, but she was unable to disappoint him.

  “I’m majoring in writing, but I’m doing a minor in web design.”

  “Hm. Both professions with limited human interaction,” he said, smiling knowingly.

  Again, she couldn’t stop the smile breaking out. It was true. “And the ability to work from home when I need to.”

  “Now, if you would all like to move back into a circle.” The counselor’s extremely unwelcome voice intruded on her time with Blue Eyes, making her appreciate how much she had enjoyed it.

  She liked the way he expressed himself. She liked his total lack of self-pity. They fidgeted their way back into the group, and she resumed her glaring at the counselor. Smiling at Blue Eyes had been unusual and disturbing. Glaring was a relief.

  “I’m passing around pieces of paper, and I want you to write down the first word that comes to you regarding the childhood that was just described to you. Then swap papers with your partner. Sometimes the best perspective on our past, which inevitably influences our present, will come from other people.”

  What a pile of crap. Leah sighed.

  She stared at the piece of paper and thought about the things Blue Eyes had told her. The image of a young child microwaving instant noodles or soup or whatever else he could find for his dinner kept coming back to her.

  ‘Lonely,’ she wrote, before folding up the paper and glancing at Blue Eyes. He was just folding up his piece as well, and they awkwardly swapped. She watched him open the paper she’d just handed him, saw the intake of breath. Then she read her own verdict.

  Her own breath caught in her throat. The sounds of shuffling feet and crinkling paper faded around her. She thought about a large, empty house with only the characters inside her books to keep her company. About parents who never talked about love or family and what those things were supposed to mean. She swallowed thickly as she read and reread the single neatly-written word.

  It said ‘Lonely.’

  Chapter Seven

  Will lingered just outside the circle as everyone else began putting on their coats and shuffling out into the cool night. The creeper with the dirty cap cast him a curious look, but Will ignored it. He knew he was doing an unconvincing job of looking nonchalant. Namely because he was taking longer to put on his coat than any guy in the history of the world.

  Despite what he’d said to his boss, he’d been looking forward to coming back tonight. All week, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He wanted to know why she was in these meetings, and tod
ay’s session had given him a glimpse at the answer. Hypersexuality was as much about sex as alcoholism was about the alcohol. People who didn’t have fulfilling family relationships often looked for other ways to fill in the emotional gap.

  Physical attraction was one thing, but he wanted to understand her as well, especially after they’d written the same word about each other’s childhoods. The more he learned about her, the more intrigued he became. Today’s conversation had only deepened the imprint she’d left in him.

  Of course, talking to her again was probably a bad idea. Liking her would be even worse. Anything more than a passing interest in her meant he would have to confess his non-sex addiction status (although it wasn’t difficult to imagine getting addicted to sex with the grumpy beauty) and hope not to get punched.

  The counselor came over as he was waiting for her to help the old lady, who was either extremely nearsighted or extremely clumsy, navigate her way to the door before returning to put her coat on.

  “Would you mind stacking the chairs for me?” the counselor asked apologetically. “I am running rather late.”

  “Of course.” Will grinned, snatching at his opportunity.

  So it was that the slowest chair-stacking possible began, and within a few minutes, he was alone with her.

  “Well,” said the grumpy beauty (he really needed a name for her). She tucked a wisp of blonde hair that had come loose from her ponytail behind her ear and gave a small, stiff wave. “See you.”

  “Do you think it’s working?” he asked, keen to prevent her from leaving.

  “What?” she asked. Sarcasm laced her voice. “The so-called therapy?”

  “Aye.”

  “It must be, I guess. Do I look like I’m having sex?” She sounded disappointed about it.

  He smiled. “Not right this second, no.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Yep.”

  He watched her hesitate, clearly waiting for him to make a move and prolong the moment despite the awkwardness. He walked over to take a chair that was next to her while suppressing that nagging thread of guilt that he should just leave and stop making things more difficult for the both of them. After all, this girl might really have a problem, and the best thing Will could do was stay professional and keep his distance.