by Tessa Bailey
“Rory,” she gasped.
“What’s it going to mean for me?” he asked her in between soft bites of her neck. “Having a girlfriend.”
Olive stuttered her way through some gibberish, then appeared to give up, scooting her hips closer to the edge of the seat. “I can’t think right now.”
Unable to subdue his smile, Rory caught her full lower lip between his teeth and tugged. “You want me to get on Facebook? So you can tag me in pictures and all that nonsense?” As soon as the suggestion was out of his mouth, he wanted to take it back. What if she didn’t want her college friends to know she was dating a bartender without an education? “Forget I said that—”
“No.” She gripped his shoulders, pleasure blowing across her features. “Would you really do that? I know you think social media is stupid, but…I don’t know.” She seemed to be searching for the right words as Rory held his breath. “I want my profile to say In a Relationship with Rory Prince. Don’t you want that?”
His heart started to sprint. “You really have to ask me?” He cleared the rust from his throat. “Do we have time to do it right now?”
“Really?” Olive squeaked, hopping off the bike and whipping her phone out of her backpack. “Oh my gosh, this is going to be so fun. I can’t even remember what it’s like to set up a Facebook account. I’ve had mine since I was eleven.”
Rory leaned back against his bike and watched her fingers fly over the screen of her phone, her lip caught between her teeth. Given the choice, he would have stood there for the rest of the day telling her the answers to question like, when is your birthday? Where did you go to high school? He got the feeling she skipped over some of the questions about college, but nothing could ruin this chance to make her happy. With something as small as throwing his picture up on a website, no less.
Olive shifted in her sandals. “Relationship status…”
“Worshipping Olive Cunningham.”
Pink climbed her throat. “That’s not one of the options,” she said softly, not quite hiding her smile. “But I like it.”
“Good. That’s my plan.”
They stared at each other for a few beats, the air around them thick. “So. Okay, we need a profile picture.”
She lifted her phone, preparing to shoot, but Rory shook his head. “I want you in it.”
“Oh.”
Olive turned and raised the phone again and Rory saw them on the screen, a study in contrasts. In the forefront, she smiled broadly, wreathed in sunshine. Meanwhile, he was buried in a shadow with his arms crossed, watching her underneath the hood of his eyelids. Before he knew his own mind, Rory snagged Olive around the waist with his forearm, dragging her back against front. On a whimper, she snapped the picture while his mouth moved up the side of her neck—and he couldn’t help it. He looked dead straight into the camera and let every man who’d see it know. Touch her and regret it.
“Holy whoa,” Olive murmured, looking at the final product and making a few, final taps on the screen. “I’m only going to sneak a thousand looks at this during class.”
Rory laughed. “Go, sunbeam.” He pushed off the bike and kissed her forehead, settling his hands on her hips. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”
She nodded. “Thanks for doing this. I know you have to get to the beach.”
“I love doing this.” When she started to look hypnotized by his mouth, Rory turned her around and smacked her butt lightly to get her moving toward the front side of the building. As soon as she was out of sight, he blew out a shaky breath and adjusted his hard dick. As much as he’d wanted Olive all to himself, he’d never be the reason she missed class.
Christ, being responsible was fucking painful.
Attempting to take his mind off the ache between his thighs, Rory left campus and gassed up his bike, grabbed a coffee and read the newspaper at a diner. While he was sitting there, his phone buzzed with an incoming text from Andrew.
Need a head count. You coming to Mom’s party or what?
Rory drummed his fingers beside his coffee on the counter. Of course he was going to say no. He always said no. As usual, that memory of her disappointment in the courtroom smoked into his head and occupied it. The other memories followed close behind. Coming home from prison and finding she’d aged a decade in the space of two years. Hollow eyes, lines of misery around her mouth. The way she winced when she moved.
The phone creaked in Rory’s fist. He had to say no to the party. He couldn’t look his mother in the eye after abandoning her to such a horrible fate, could he?
He could if Olive was with him.
Fuck, it was possible he could do anything if Olive was with him.
Before he could stop himself, Rory pulled up the text conversation with Andrew. Yeah, I’ll be there. Me and Olive.
A full minute passed before Andrew responded.
I’m glad, man. You belong there.
With a knot in his throat, Rory paid for his coffee and left the diner. His pulse wouldn’t slow down on the ride to campus, his blood buzzing with the decision he’d made. Was it nerves or something else? Something like optimism?
That optimism only spiked when Olive exited the door of the building, smiling and surrounded by girls, her books hugged to her chest. The world moved in slow motion as she searched him out, her lips spreading even wider when she spotted him and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. Jesus. What incredible new reality had he been dropped into?
She said a few more things to her friends and nodded, jogging in his direction. He was only partially aware of Olive’s friends observing him like a strange new species at the zoo and giggling because Olive’s tits were bouncing around, making him hard as iron all over again in his jeans.
“Hey,” she greeted him breathlessly, cinching her tight body up against him and sighing, as if having their bodies pressed together restored her. Rory could relate, because he felt the exact same way. Olive was the embodiment of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “Everyone is going to that pop-up carnival on the boardwalk tonight.” She dropped a sweet kiss onto his mouth. “We should go.”
Rory kissed her mouth long and hard. “You want to go, we’ll go.”
She laid her head on his chest. “I want to go everywhere with you.”
And riding back toward Long Beach with the girl he’d never dared dream about clinging to his back, for once it seemed like nothing could go wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Olive inhaled deeply of buttered popcorn scent carrying on the warm summer night breeze, barely stopping herself from throwing her arms out and dancing in circles like a lovesick lunatic. Already her friends were way too curious about Rory, but the grin she couldn’t seem to wipe off her face amplified their interest tenfold. There was definitely a part of Olive that wanted to disclose every single detail of the man who’d sent her freefalling into a giant, mushy love pie. But there was a bigger part of her that wanted to maintain the secrets. Keep them all to herself, bundled to her chest like the softest pillow.
She walked along the boardwalk with Leanne and two other girls from her study group, trying not to be obvious about scanning the evening crowd for a tall man with wind-whipped dark hair and a smirk. Seriously, it had only been six hours since he’d dropped her off outside her building. Why did it feel like a millennium since he’d growled questionable things into her ear and kissed her mouth? She was a windsock in the breeze, flapping around, and she wanted to wrap herself around his solid, grounding presence.
After he’d walked her to the front door of her building, she’d floated upstairs in the elevator, knowing there was a wistful smile plastered to her face. She’d studied, made lunch, dozed off on the balcony in the sunshine dreaming of a wicked half-smile and soulful eyes. When it was time to get dressed for the carnival, she’d taken her time shaving, lotioning, straightening her hair, applying makeup. Putting on the exact right dress, a soft yellow strapless sundress that fluttered at the tops of her thighs. All the while, her stomach f
lip-flopped and she continually found herself staring into space, almost burning herself with the straightening iron on more than one occasion.
Obviously she hadn’t been finished staring into space because Leanne’s elbow caught her in the ribs now, sending her hurtling back to the present; a loud, crowded boardwalk.
“Damn, Olive,” Leanne laughed. “Your expression is going to get us all pregnant and I’m way too young for kids. Side note, I’ll be too young when I’m forty. Kids smell.”
“I mean, we all saw homeboy today. It’s understandable,” said one of the other girls with a playful smile. “But I don’t want to be that friend who hates you out of jealousy. Just be warned that I’m dangerously close.”
Olive pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Sorry, guys. I’ll probably be back to normal soon. Right?” When they all passed her skeptical glances, she winced. “Uh, so…what did you guys think of the lecture today—”
“Shut up,” Leanne said, giving her a withering look before nodding at something beyond her shoulder. “Rory is over there.”
A chemical change washed over her, her skin sensitizing, breath shallowing. Even her earlobes and toes started to tingle, as if preparing for a full-body awakening. And it happened as soon as she turned and saw Rory prowling toward her on the boardwalk, one hand in the front pocket of his jeans, the other pushing through his wet hair. Had he just come from the shower?
Olive’s thighs snapped together and squeezed, her sex already softening, growing damp. Her fingers twisted in the short hem of her dress, which she was regretting now. How was she supposed to hide her body’s reaction to Rory? If she turned wet upon merely seeing him, a kiss would turn the insides of her thighs moist.
“Hey,” he said gruffly, stopping in front of her.
And she’d been wrong. It didn’t even take a kiss to make her thighs slick.
When her greeting emerged as an incoherent whisper, Rory’s eyes filled with amusement. “Uh oh.” He leaned down and rolled their foreheads together. “Looks like you missed me. Maybe even half as fucking much as I missed you.”
Olive’s knees almost lost power, but her desire to keep their mouths close gave her the strength to keep standing. “I’m trying not to be that girl who gets a boyfriend and ditches her friends. Help me.”
His laughter puffed against her lips a half-second before he kissed her, light and tender, but so potent she swayed toward his broad chest. “Something to drink, ladies?” Rory said, throwing a brief glance over her head.
“Beer,” Leanne said without missing a beat. “Beer sounds great.”
Rory shook his head but didn’t take his eyes off Olive. “Nice try. You’re getting sodas.” He pressed his mouth to Olive’s ear. “I’ll make you a white Russian later.”
Heat propelled into her belly like a torpedo. “Okay,” she said, wetting her lips. “What am I going to make you?”
“Happy.”
He ran a hand over her hair and backed away, reluctance in every line of his rangy body. “Go have fun. I’ll find you.”
A moment later, he’d been swallowed up in the crowd’s current, although his dark head was still visible above the majority of the carnival goers. Olive watched him go, already regretting her plea for help so she didn’t neglect her friends. Still, his willingness to comply when they were both obviously dying to be alone? It made her like him even more. Like the unselfish man he was. Even if she had an intuition that he’d be selfish later to make up for the delay. God, she couldn’t wait for him to be selfish with her.
Her friends walked up, flanking her on either side.
“Just do it,” Leanne muttered.
Olive squealed. Honest to God squealed, turning heads of passersby.
“Thank you. I just had to get that out.”
“Understood,” Leanne returned.
They continued walking and chatting, taking a right into the carnival entrance, which led them just off the boardwalk, where the rides had been erected in a large plot of empty land. Darkness had fallen completely, the blinking, rainbow assortment of lights turning everything in their path into a dreamy kaleidoscope. The smell of salty ocean air mingled with the scent of funnel cake, the crowd a moving sea of animation. Exhilaration danced over Olive’s arms, like she was walking inside an electrical current, her laughter coming more freely than it ever had.
“So how did you meet Rory?” asked one of the girls from study group.
“He rescued me,” Olive answered, trying not to let her eagerness to talk about Rory show. “I was reading and walking at the same time…”
All three girls nodded in total understanding.
“And I was just about to step into the path of a speeding bus. But he pulled me back.” She tucked some hair behind her ear. “A-and then a couple days later, he rescued me from drowning. I got caught in the rip current.”
Everyone had stopped walking, their jaws halfway to the ground.
Leanne’s expression was one of pure betrayal. “I’m only finding this out now?”
“I was embarrassed! Sorry sorry sorry.” Wincing, she gave Leanne a quick hug and continued weaving her way through the crowd, encouraging the girls to follow. “So yeah, that’s how we met. And then we took a weird break. But then he had to save me again from a bar fight…”
Olive trailed off, feeling a crease form between her eyebrows. Had Rory really saved her three times? Wow. Stringing all those events into a few sentences made her not only seem kind of pathetic and accident prone, but for some reason a niggle of discomfort was crawling up her spine now. She’d wondered since the beginning why Rory seemed so infatuated with her. She was a shrimpy bookworm with a gap between her front teeth who couldn’t even legally buy alcohol. He was drop-dead gorgeous and cool and caring and loyal.
He was guilty, too. Carried so much guilt, in fact, the weight was practically visible on his shoulders. If I’d been there, I would have saved her. Hadn’t Rory said that? Was he drawn to Olive because she’d needed saving? The way he hadn’t been able to do with his mother?
Now that she didn’t need constant saving…how long until he lost interest?
The carnival sounds around Olive grew muffled, her friends’ conversation fading away until she could only hear the dull thudding of her own heart. A cavern opened in her stomach. Or maybe it had never sealed up in the first place. After the first time she’d been disregarded by her parents for not being exactly right.
Olive felt a hand on her waist. Breath warmed her neck and a familiar voice broke through the haze that had descended.
“Hey, sunbeam.” Concern was thick in Rory’s tone. “Look at me. What’s wrong?”
A roller coaster trundled past overhead at top speed and a group of children ran by laughing, propelling the world back into its usual rhythm. At first there was only the outline of Rory’s head, surrounded by blinking lights, but he steadily came into perfect view, worry creasing his handsome face.
“Baby,” he said urgently.
“I’m fine,” she said, then cleared her throat and attempted to be more convincing. “I’m fine. Sorry, I guess I zoned out.”
Olive looked around to find three of her friends sipping their sodas grudgingly, but none of them seemed to have noticed her trip to La La land. She wanted to question Rory. The words were right there on the tip of her tongue. Am I just a rescue mission? Using her to fulfill a regret from his past made sense, didn’t it? Her psychology professor would call it repression. Or something equally fancy.
“What’s wrong?” he said, moving closer and wrapping her in body heat. “Tell me.”
“Nothing is wrong, I just…” The suspicion was bad enough—she didn’t need confirmation so soon. And what if she was wrong? The electricity between them wasn’t a fluke. Or a product of the past. It was right now and it was consuming. Stop overanalyzing and live in the moment. “Take me on a ride?”
As soon as Rory smiled and twined their fingers together, the fears began to dissipate. It had been nothing
more than a weak moment. This man was nuts about her. It went both ways and she wasn’t going to get buried beneath a checklist of how their relationship could go wrong.
“Let’s go,” Rory said, kissing her knuckles. “I’m stealing my girl,” he called to her friends. “Enjoy your non-alcoholic beverages. We’ll catch up with you in a little while.”
“There are supposed to be perks when your friend dates an older man,” Leanne shouted over the noisy carnival. “I want my perks!”
Rory and Olive shared a laugh, settling the chaos in her belly once and for all. He led her to the Ferris wheel, where thankfully there was only a short line. And when Rory wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on top of her head, she wished it would move slower so they could stand that way for longer. Minutes later, Rory helped her onto the moving seat and slid in beside her, pulling down the bar and testing it, not relaxing until it was secure.
He threw an arm along the back of the seat, moving close until they were pressed together from shoulder to knee—and Olive had no idea if his proximity or their sudden ascent into the sky caused the ticklish, weightless feeling in her stomach.
“Hey,” Rory breathed against her mouth.
“Hey,” she murmured back, letting him ease her lips open with a kiss. A rush went through her, amplified by the air that blew across her bare shoulders, whipping her hair around. There was so much vulnerability in having her feet dangling dozens of feet above the ground while this man’s mouth wreaked havoc on her senses, she had to grip the metal bar where it rested at her waist or risk floating away.
