by Cora Carmack
Or maybe that’s my history. I only know how to expect the worst of people because it’s all I’ve ever seen.
“I think you’re something.”
Her lips pull into a small smile.
“Something ridiculous?”
“Something special. Where I come from people are more concerned with changing their own worlds than someone else’s.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It is when nothing ever changes. Each new scheme or plan always winds up just how you started. And all you’ve got is some messed-up cycle that does nothing but drain you a little more each time around. I think it would be easier to change the whole damn world than to change some people.”
She lays her head on top of her knees, and those big blue eyes lock on me, studying and sizing me up like I’m her next save-the-world project.
Oh hell no. Enough about me.
“You didn’t answer my question. What did you do for your twenty-first?”
She does another one of those deep-breath things where her whole body moves, and she looks out at the party, her eyes flitting between groups of people talking, drinking, and smoking. “Honestly? I went to dinner with my boyfriend.” Her eyes flick to mine. “My ex now. We had dinner and then went back to his place. That was about it.”
“No big party? No night out on the town with friends?”
She shrugs. “We weren’t really party kind of people.”
“You weren’t? Or he wasn’t?”
“You know,” she laughs. “I don’t actually know.” Her laugh is this pure, perfect thing. Everything about her is light. She makes it seem so easy, like I could just toss off all the bullshit and live in a bright shiny world just because she’s in front of me and that’s the world she lives in.
I want to forget myself in her, and maybe help her do the same with me.
“Well, you’re in luck, Pickle. Because you happen to be with an expert partier.”
I stand and slip one arm beneath her knees and band the other around her middle before lifting her up. She squeaks and wraps her arms around my neck.
“Excuse me,” I call out on my way to the kitchen. “Novice partier in the house!”
“Silas,” she groans. I dig my fingers into her side, and she jerks, squirming and squealing in my arms. “Oh my God, stop!”
“No groaning then. At least not that kind.”
She stills and the pink blush on her cheeks brings out her eyes even more, and who would have thought getting arrested would put me in a better mood?
I keep shouting until my way into the kitchen is clear, and then I sit her right onto the counter. People are staring, and I can see her noticing them all. Intent on distracting her again, I lean against her knees and am surprised when her legs move to let me rest between them.
Not so nervous anymore, are you?
I end up being the distracted one, too caught up in how I like the feel of her knees pressing into my sides. It makes me want to really be between her legs, to be pressed right up against her. Up on the counter, she’s the perfect height so that my head is just a few inches above hers. And if I tugged her to the edge, she’d be at the perfect height there, too. I plant my hands on the countertop beside her and lean in until all I can see are those wide, nervous, excited eyes.
“What’s your poison, Pickle?”
She frowns. “What will it take to get you to stop calling me that?”
“Stop answering my questions with other questions. Tell me how you want to belatedly celebrate your birthday.”
“I really don’t think I should.”
“Why not?”
“I just . . . alcohol leads to bad decisions. And I’ve already made enough of those today.”
“So we’ll get high instead.”
Her mouth opens on a surprised inhale, and goddamn her lips are perfect. Curved and full, and I’m thinking of all the other ways I could make her lips part like that.
“I can’t do that,” she says.
“Your friend Matt doesn’t have any problem with it.”
I nod my head over to the kitchen table, where Matt is part of a group sharing a bowl.
She looks afraid, but she asks, “What’s it like?”
I shrug. “It’s different depending on the person and what you’re smoking. Some stuff just makes you relaxed. Clears your head and calms you down. Some makes you happy and kind of light. Everything makes you laugh or seems really entertaining. It’s like taking a break from the world, you know? The outside stuff just kinda melts away, and you forget to care about the things that are bothering you.”
“Is that why you do it?”
I give in to the itch to touch her and start at her bare shoulder, dragging a finger along until I can curve my whole hand around the back of her neck.
“You’re gonna have to stop trying to analyze me. I’m really not that complicated.”
For a girl like her, analyzing is step one. Fixing me would be step two.
She leans her head to the side, and my hand falls away from her neck.
“Tell me about the fight tonight.”
And so it begins. “Why?”
“Tell me about the fight. Let me clean up your hands. And then, I promise to let you teach me how to party. Or whatever.”
I feel like I’ve just stepped into a courtroom, and am being outnegotiated.
“So we’re making deals, are we?”
She smiles. “I suppose we are.”
I reach up again, and this time she doesn’t pull away when I curl my fingers around the back of her neck. I brush my thumb over her pulse point . . . feel that thin, vulnerable skin, and fuck, beneath that bossy exterior, I can see her nerves. But they’re different now. She doesn’t look scared or uncomfortable. Her heart is racing, blood pulsing fast beneath my finger, and she’s taking these tiny sharp breaths. It turns me on in a way I don’t even understand. Normally, the skittish, inexperienced types send me running. But the thought of teaching her anything makes my jeans feel too tight. I want her on her back in my bed, legs spread wide, eyes big and blue, lips parted, mouth babbling that nervous nonsense until I make her forget what she’s saying, forget how to talk altogether.
I want to forget myself in her, too, steal some of her sunshine, and give this pristine, perfect girl a taste of what it’s like to get a little dirty.
“Deal,” I tell her. “But you’ll have to come upstairs. All my first-aid stuff is in the bathroom up there.”
She swallows, and I watch her long, delicate neck move.
Damn. Is there anything about this girl that doesn’t turn me on?
I watch her think about it, and when she finally fixes her eyes on me and says, “Okay,” I get the feeling that she’s come to a bigger decision than just this.
I help her down, and on the way out of the kitchen, she stops to say something to Matt. He gives her a blissed-out smile, and takes another hit.
We exit the kitchen into the front entryway and cross over to the stairs that lead up to a meager second floor that only really consists of my bedroom and a bathroom. I feel a little like the big bad wolf as I follow her up the stairs, but when she reaches the top of the landing, she shoots me a look over her shoulder that makes me pretty certain that I’m not in any hurry to rejoin the party downstairs.
“Which door is the bathroom?”
“This one.”
I twist the doorknob and open up the small room on my right. I let her go in first, mostly so I can get another look at her ass in those shorts.
“Medicine in here?” She’s already reaching for the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, and when she pulls the latch open, a box of condoms falls out.
She mumbles, “Oh crap,” under her breath, and rushes to replace the box, but it landed top down and when she picks it up, all the foil packets dump out.
She starts shoving them back in as she utters an apology. Or four.
Barely biting back a laugh, I decide not to help her and instead enjoy h
er flustered rush to throw the condoms back inside the box. When she’s done, she returns it to an open shelf in the cabinet, closes the door, and then steps away from the sink until her back meets the wall.
She says, “I should let you find the first-aid stuff. It’s your bathroom after all.”
I step in front of her, not bothering to open the cabinet. I turn on the tap and let the cool water run over my hands. The water runs a little pink, mostly from the dried blood, and I rub at my skin with my fingers until the water runs clear again. I turn off the tap and shake out my hands a few times before presenting them to her. Still red and raw, but clean.
“See? We’re all good. Now, let’s go show you some fun.”
I turn to go and she grabs my bicep.
“You’re not going to bandage them?”
“Bandages would just be a nuisance. They’ll heal up fine as long as I keep them clean.”
She looks around the bathroom, and I can imagine she’s thinking about the fact that college guys live here alone. How clean can things really be?
“At least put something over the worst scrapes.”
“I think you’re trying to stall.”
“I am not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to not put anything on it. Besides, our deal was that I clean up your hands, which means I decide how to treat them.”
There she goes being bossy again.
“I’m going to leave this room with my whole hands covered in gauze, aren’t I?”
Her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile. “Possibly. Now give me your hands.”
I lay them on top of hers, our palms touching, and say, “Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrow. “Can’t you ever just call me Dylan?”
I’ll call her that when I’m inside her. When she’s in my bed. When I’ve got my hands on that perfect ass. That’s when.
“Maybe,” I tell her. But I hope to God it’s not a maybe.
She rolls her eyes, and after a few moments of her standing there, holding my hands, I raise an eyebrow and ask, “Would you like to know where the bandages are? Or are you going to heal me through touch?”
If anyone’s touch could help, it would be hers.
She releases me and mumbles a quiet no. I have her open the medicine cabinet again, and this time the condoms stay where she put them.
“That little black bag on the bottom shelf should have whatever you need.”
As she searches through the bag, I take a seat on the toilet and perch my elbows on my knees. She sets aside some ointment, gauze, Band-Aids, and tape. Then carefully, she begins, “So tell me about the fight.”
She digs through the box of Band-Aids, looking at the different varieties. She looks almost uninterested. Almost.
“It was nothing.” I direct my gaze to the floor.
“You said before it was with a friend. Or someone who used to be a friend.”
“It was.”
“Your friend Carson said the name Levi. That’s the guy? Carson didn’t sound like he liked him very much, either.”
She comes to stand in front of me, but I keep my head down.
“Do you remember in the fall last year when there was a bunch of drama going on with the football team?”
“I remember people talking about it, but honestly I didn’t pay much attention to what actually happened.” I lean back to look at her, and she picks up my right hand. She’s gentle as she rubs ointment across each busted knuckle. “But I’m listening now.”
I tell her about Levi, about how we had a tendency to cause trouble together.
“He felt a little like a brother, you know? Doing stupid shit. Pissing each other off. Pissing other people off.”
“Are you an only child?”
I laugh. “No, I’m not. But I don’t really talk to my real brother anymore, either.”
I tell her about those first few days after Levi’s arrest. All the drug tests. Being questioned by the police, questioned by Coach. I don’t tell her how it reminded me of when my brother was arrested. How the police searched our granny’s house and found the stuff he stole. How I got taken in, too, because he’d given some of the stuff to me without telling me where it came from. Fuck, thinking about that shit used to feel like it was a different world I left behind. Now it feels too damn close. Like I walked right back into that world without even realizing my feet were moving.
Levi was supposed to be different. He was rich, smart, had a good family, but he ended up the same as the guys I grew up with, same as I would have ended up without football. I guess I understand better now why we worked so well as friends. Granny always said like sticks with like.
“You had no idea?” Dylan asks, switching to my other hand.
“I mean . . . he smoked on occasion, for sure. But I had no idea how far into it he was. That he was selling, too.”
“So how did you end up fighting tonight?”
“Because I’m a fucking idiot.” My tone is a little too hard. I’m still agitated about the whole situation, and that fight wasn’t enough to clear the tension out of my blood.
“You’re not.”
“I am. I shouldn’t have even gone to see him.”
“Yeah, well. We all do stupid things sometimes.”
Her brows crease, and I know she’s worrying about her own stuff now.
“That’s another thing we have different definitions of. Helping people doesn’t seem that stupid to me.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“So why’d you get arrested? You could have backed off, yeah?”
“I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t. Except that . . . it felt right.” Her eyes lift to mine on those last words, her thumb gently rubbing over my sore knuckles, and damn if that doesn’t feel right, too. “Even as I was doing it, I knew the consequences. But I just didn’t care. I wanted to do something, not because it was what I was supposed to do, but because it was what I wanted to do.”
I think I get it then. That decision I saw in her eyes back in the kitchen. That’s what this, what I’m about for her, too. I’m just another part of whatever rebellion she started earlier today. About doing what she wants, not what’s expected of her.
“We’re not talking about me, though,” she says. “So you went to meet your friend, and then what happened?”
She keeps her eyes down as she picks up the gauze and begins winding it snugly around the knuckles of one hand, and then the other.
“He said the wrong thing.”
“Which was?”
“Dylan.” Now it’s her that’s pushing too hard. I didn’t want to talk about things with my friends, and I won’t talk about them with her, either, no matter how gorgeous she is.
“I’ll guess. You were mad about what he did, and he wasn’t sorry.”
“This isn’t middle school, Pickle. He didn’t hurt my feelings. He said some shit he had no business saying, and it pissed me off. The end.”
“But you don’t think some of that anger stems from what you feel is a betrayal of your friendship?”
She finishes taping down the last of the gauze, but doesn’t let go of my hand.
“I think you’re analyzing me again. Making things more complicated than they are.”
“And I think you’re just a guy who doesn’t like to admit he has feelings.” She drags out the word, teasing me with some goofy smile on her face. I turn my hand over so I can clutch her wrist. I curl my other bandaged hand around her waist and pull her closer.
“I feel plenty of things.”
The teasing stops. She swallows.
“I wasn’t talking about that kind of feeling.”
With her standing and me sitting, I’m eye level with her chest. I see the sharp rise and fall as she sucks in a breath. I want her in my lap again, straddling me this time.
“Doesn’t mean we can’t talk about that kind of feeling. Or experiment with it.”
“Is that Stella girl an ex?”
I cough, surpr
ised. My throat twists uncomfortably, and it takes me a couple of solid breaths to get a hold on myself.
“Ah, no. Stella and I have never dated.”
“Have you—”
“Do you ever run out of questions?”
“Not ever.” She turns playful again, and I’m done doing this the careful way. If she wants a rebellion, I’ll be the one to give it to her. I want her against me, and I’m tired of waiting.
I pull her forward, insinuating my knees between hers, and her body naturally follows, settling across my thighs. Her lips part, but she catches herself before she gasps this time. I keep her steady with my hands at her waist and say, “I’ll make you a deal. A question for a kiss.”
Tentatively, she lays her palms against my shoulders. They rest there, her grip light and casual. She ponders my offer for a moment, and it drives me mad that she can do that while our hips are inches away from alignment.
“Okay then. Are you—”
I cut her off. “Not so fast, Dylan Brenner. I’ve already answered one question. We’ve got to settle up first.”
I wrap her braid around my hand like I’ve been waiting to do all night, and I use it to pull her head back just enough that I can crush my mouth against hers.
Chapter 7
Dylan
I’m going to shatter into a thousand pieces from the intensity of this kiss alone. His hand is on my cheek, turning my head, and it’s so big that I feel like I’m completely at his mercy. In fact, he kisses me like he wants to own me. Not even that . . . he kisses me like he already does own me.
I want to feel put off by that. I want to feel disturbed by his dominance.
But I’m not.
I like that he wants me that much, that he kisses me hard enough to bruise, that he’s holding on to my braid like a lifeline. I like that he doesn’t handle me like a breakable, naive little girl. The Brenners adopted me—their pretty little well-behaved orphan girl. Henry cherished me, kept me as a pretty little doll that would one day be his pretty little wife. Until one day that apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe I didn’t play my part like I was supposed to.
