“Did you?” I can’t stop myself from saying.
Was that what he was doing, just ordering? Oh please.
“What?”
I let go of the death grip on the door and sigh. “Nothing. I’m just not—”
“Are you crying?”
Damn it.
I move away from the door, hiding my face from him. “No.”
“Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine. I’m not hungry though. So, you should go eat.”
Turning away from him, I walk to the bathroom or at least, try to. But Dean grabs my hand, his fingers circling around my wrist. His touch is so hot I forget to breathe. I forget to do anything but feel his grip on my hand.
“What’s going on, Fallon?” he asks, his chest awfully close to my back. To my trembling back, actually. Because I can’t contain the things inside of me anymore. I can’t take his nearness, his voice, his smell and be unaffected.
I face him, my eyes stinging with miserable tears. I compare how Dean looks now—tensed, concerned, his jaw tight—with how he looked with that waitress, carefree, laughing. Happy.
“You were flirting with her,” I whisper.
“With who?”
“The waitress.”
I’m met with silence and I don’t know if he’s heard me. In his defense, I did say it very softly. I was embarrassed. I am embarrassed. I don’t do jealousy; I never have. Well, apparently not until him.
At last, Dean lets go of my wrist and draws away from me. The earlier tightness of his frame has nothing on how he looks now, aloof and cold.
“So?”
Like me, he speaks softly but I flinch all the same. His casually-asked question hits me somewhere deep in my gut. My soul, even.
“So . . .” I fist my hands before admitting, “I didn’t like that. In fact, I hated it.”
A pulse runs through his face. “Why?”
“Are you really asking me that?”
“Yes. Because from where I’m standing it doesn’t look like it’s any of your business who I flirt with.”
Anger bubbles up inside me. Anger and something very close to despair. So far, I’ve been holding onto the hope maybe Dean feels the same for me. Maybe he hasn’t realized it yet. It took me years as well, to come to the conclusion that I love him. So, I can’t really blame him for his ignorance.
But maybe I was deluding myself. Even so, I can’t stop the words coming out of my mouth.
“Not my business?”
“Yes.”
“God, you’re so . . .” I grit my teeth and practically vibrate with fury while he appears to be unruffled, watching me with a blank face. “You’re such an idiot. I love you, Dean. I’m in love with you. Don’t you know that? I’ve been in love with you all my life.”
My words sound like a gunshot. An explosion, even. They are probably louder than any other words I’ve spoken in my entire life. They have rattled me, quickened my breaths, my heartbeats. But apparently, they have had no effect whatsoever on this man in front of me.
“No, you don’t,” he says, a dangerous, angry glint in his eyes.
I’m not afraid of it, though. I’m not afraid of the danger lurking in his gaze. All my secrets are out. I’m exposed. I’ve got nothing to fear or lose.
“What?”
“You don’t love me.”
“Wh . . . What the hell are you talking about?”
“You don’t love me,” he repeats, though this time his mouth seems pinched. “You think you love me. There’s a difference.”
“Oh yeah? Why don’t you enlighten me? Tell me about this difference.”
Contrary to the ruckus inside my body, I sound so calm to my ears. So put together, like I’m not falling apart with every second he simply stands there, looking like none of this matters to him. Like, I don’t matter to him.
He sighs impatiently and runs his fingers through his gorgeous hair—typical Dean. The hair I was playing with the other night when we were watching a movie. The night he told me he’s into women, not little girls.
“I’ve always been there, Fallon,” he begins, almost lashes out like it’s a bad thing.
“What?”
“I’ve always been there for you. With you. I’ve been there for every one of your scrapes and tantrums and achievements. Every single thing. I was there when you first got bullied in school. I was there when you kicked those bullies’ asses. I was there when you failed math in third grade. I was the one who tutored you after that. Helped you with homework the rest of the year. I was there when you started high school. I drove you to school because you wouldn’t go with anyone else. I’ve been there. Always. I’ve been the one you turn to for everything. So, what you feel for me, Fallon,” he takes a deep breath and says slowly, like explaining it to a child, “is not love. It might be a strong affection. Infatuation. Which will probably go away when you meet the right guy. So yeah, there’s the difference. You think you love me because you don’t know what love is yet.”
“I don’t know what love is yet?”
His jaw clenches. “No. Because believe it or not, you’re still young.”
“So young people don’t know what love is? Is that what you’re saying?”
“What I’m saying is that it’s ridiculous. The thought of you and me together.”
I swallow. Once, twice, thrice. Four times.
“Ridiculous,” I choke out the words. “Right. Thanks so much, Dean. Thanks for educating me. For telling me that the thought of us being together is ridiculous. And what I feel for you is not love. Thanks a lot.” I nod and keep going against the expanding heart in my chest.
It’s pressing on my throat, stealing away my voice but I don’t care. Either I talk or I break down. And I refuse to break down in front of this . . . this heartless man who I thought was my friend.
“I’m so dumb, right? That I can’t figure it out for myself. I can’t figure my own feelings out. I can’t understand why my heart races when you’re close. Why I can’t see anyone else but you. I can’t understand why the hell I can’t stop dreaming about you at night. I’m too dumb to figure out why I couldn’t get out of bed for days when you left. Why everything lost its meaning when you weren’t there. Why laughing was hard, harder than it usually is for me. And even now, after moving across the country for you, to be close to you, why it hurts when you hang up on me or when you refuse to see me. I’m too dumb to understand why, despite being mad at you for ignoring me, I can’t stop myself from worrying about you. About how all you ever do is work, how you’ve distanced yourself from everyone. Of course, I can’t understand any of that, can I? Because I’m just so fucking dumb.”
“Language. Watch it,” he grits his teeth, somehow angrier than before. Livid, even.
“I’m not a fucking kid,” I almost shriek. “Do you understand that, Dean? I just told you I moved across the country for you. That I uprooted my life so I could be close to you, and this is what you say to me?” I shake my head and cross my arms, hugging myself, protecting myself against him. “Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you get to boss me around like you’re my dad.”
I take a step back when he closes the distance between us. All I can see is the wide expanse of his carved chest, his massive shoulders in the crisp white shirt. My breath hitches when he bends down to look me in the eyes. Like a pathetic fool, I admire his long, curled lashes. Instead of turning away from him, I breathe deep, so I can capture his citrusy smell, like I’ll never get to do that again. I probably won’t.
“And just because you wear dresses that barely cover your ass, doesn’t mean you get to throw tantrums like a little girl.”
God.
God. He makes me so mad.
“You know what? Get out of my room.”
“Happily.” He straightens up. “I want you out there, at the table. In five minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.”
CHAPTER FIVE
<
br /> Dean
Fifteen years ago, a girl asked me to marry her.
I was seventeen and she was three. It was a joke. A story you tell over Christmas dinners or at family gatherings. A story you laugh over for some time and move on. I’m very well aware of that.
I’ve always been aware of that.
But for some strange reason, I haven’t been able to forget it. I haven’t been able to forget the hope shining in her eyes or the way her face crumpled when I told her she’d feel differently when she grew up. We bet on it, by hooking our pinkies together. And then, she ran away because someone called her name and waved a gift wrapped in pink glitter paper. It was her birthday and Fallon loves pink.
For some strange reason, I don’t tell this story to anyone. I don’t share it over a meal or laugh at it like I thought I would. Or I should.
I keep it close to my chest like it means something. Like, it was real. A three-year-old girl proposing to a seventeen-year-old boy.
I’m sick; I’m aware of that as well.
I call myself that every day. Every minute of every day, in fact. Especially when I hear her voice over the phone and heat grips every part of my body. It wraps itself around my limbs and doesn’t let go. Thoughts—wrong thoughts—and longings surface in my brain, my gut. My fucking heart.
Avoidance and throwing myself into my work is the only key when it comes to Fallon and the things I feel for her.
It started as a strange protective instinct. I couldn’t see her sad. I couldn’t see her battle the bad days. It hurt something inside my chest when she’d come home crying from school. Saying she didn’t want to go. Saying she had no friends because it was so hard to keep up with them.
As she grew up, that protective instinct grew with her. But along the way, it took on an edgier turn. It became possessiveness. It became the need to hide her from the world and keep her for myself. Keep her smiles, her laughter, her heart for myself.
Nobody has made me feel even close to how Fallon does. Nobody has inspired my heart to beat or my soul to fucking sing, for lack of a better word.
She’s the one. An eighteen-year-old, slip of a girl with silver hair and gray eyes.
And I can’t stop staring at her.
We’re in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and we’ve stopped for the night at a hotel. Tomorrow we’ll reach New York and that’s for the best. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take us traveling together.
The moment she came up with the idea of a road trip, I knew it was going to be a disaster on my sanity. I imagined her in the seat beside me, the leather sticking to her soft, pale thighs. Her shifting, adjusting herself. Her sighs, her smell.
I imagined the long, torturous hours of her being close enough to touch but not being able to.
What I didn’t imagine were her glares. Her silent treatment after what happened between us in Des Moines. I didn’t imagine forgetting all the reasons I’ve accumulated over the years for us to not be together.
I didn’t imagine her saying those words to me.
I love you, Dean. I’m in love with you. Don’t you know that? I’ve been in love with you all my life.
Fallon’s across the room, at a table different than the one I picked for us. She’s too pissed to sit with me at dinner. I know I should apologize, but I think it’s for the best.
Or it would’ve been if not for the douchebag talking to her.
Fury explodes in my gut when I see him leaning toward her. She arches her neck to listen to what he has to say. He looks like an asshole with low-slung jeans and spiked hair with too much gel.
I’ve got no idea why she’s talking to this fuckface. Can’t she tell he’s an asshole?
Jesus. She always needs to be looked after, doesn’t she?
But then I remind myself that technically, Fallon’s an adult. She can do whatever she wants.
It’s none of my business. Just as it’s none of her business who I talk to. I know after my shitty response, I have no right to feel this absurd jealousy.
But I do feel it.
And when he leans in further and reaches out to touch her, I spring up from my seat. This isn’t happening. Not on my watch. Not ever.
She loves me, you fucking asshole.
I stride across the room, grab hold of his collar and yank him away from her. Fallon gasps but I pay her no attention. Looking into the startled face of the guy, I grit out the words, “Take a hike.”
He looks like he wants to protest but the look in my eyes—probably, something similar to murder—scares him away. As soon as I turn around to face Fallon, I’m met with a tiny firecracker, glaring and almost spitting out fire.
Sometimes I can’t believe Fallon is all grown up. Fierce and beautiful. Fucking breathtaking.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snaps and the heat that blankets me every time I talk to her, look at her, even think of her, grabs hold of me now.
I hide it with anger. “Saving you.”
“What?”
“He was talking to your chest.”
She looks down at her chest and despite cursing myself in my head, my gaze follows hers. She’s wearing a tank top with a quote from her favorite book series, Harry Potter. But like a pervert, I’m more interested in the soft-looking, smooth slope of her cleavage.
I grit my teeth angrily.
“Yes. Because I spilled something.”
That’s when I look at a mustard colored stain on her top. Even though it should calm my agitation, it doesn’t.
“Well, it’s none of his business if you spilled something,” I grumble.
Frowning, she purses her lips. “Not everyone is a jerk like you, okay? Some people like to help.”
“He was only helping you because he wanted something from you.”
“Yes. A thank you. But how dare he, right?”
“Yeah, a thank you. But there’s a lot of ways to get that,” I growl, leaning toward her like that asshole was doing not a minute ago. Don’t know what that says about me.
Actually, I do know what it says about me. I’m an asshole too. Because I can’t stop staring at her lips. I can’t stop thinking about how they’ll taste, how soft they will be.
“You’ve lost your mind,” she snaps again, breaking my thoughts.
“And you need to use yours. Because men only want one thing, Fallon. And it’s not just a verbal thank you.”
Men like me. Men who belong in prison for harboring such thoughts about someone so young. Men I’ve prosecuted myself.
How am I different from them?
So far, we’ve been standing at a respectable distance from each other. But Fallon moves closer. She looks up at me with a mutinous expression.
“Contrary to your belief, Dean, I do know what guys want. I’m not an idiot. And maybe I’ll go give it to him. At least, he’ll know how to treat me like a grown up.”
She pushes me away, and I’m so startled, that she’s successful in shoving me out of her way and storming out.
I take a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm myself. Calm the jealousy inside me that she’s just flared to life. Once before I’ve felt this way, this out of control, and I hate it.
But as I watch her walk away, I realize there’s no stopping it.
I leave the restaurant in her wake and catch up to her just as she’s about to enter her room. Following her inside, I shut the door with a massive thud.
“What the fuck?”
“Language.”
She shakes her head, sending her soft silver hair swaying around her shoulders. “If you don’t stop that, I’m gonna kill you. And I’m not kidding. Now, get the fuck out of my room.”
“If you don’t stop cursing, I’m going to wash your mouth out. And not with soap.”
As soon as I say it, I pinch the bridge of my nose.
Fucking hell.
I did not mean to say that. Now, visions of things I could do to her pretty pink mouth won�
�t stop bombarding me.
Fallon looks dumbstruck, as she should. I’ve never talked to her this way. I’ve always—even when it bordered on pain—tried to remember she’s young. Far younger than me.
Not to mention, she’s the daughter of the man who saved me when I needed it the most. I probably owe Fallon’s father my entire life, my entire career. He took me in when my own dad didn’t care about me and Mia.
“God, I never knew you were such an asshole, Dean,” Fallon says.
Her face reflects heartbreak and despite all the promises I’ve made—I keep on making—I approach her. I try to find words to comfort her, to apologize for being such a jerk. I go so far as to circle her delicate wrist even though she protests.
But as soon as I touch her, all I can think about is touching her even more. Touching her in places where I’m not allowed to, and that only fans my aggression.
“Well, now you do,” I growl, smelling her sweet strawberry smell.
Fallon loves strawberries. When she was little, she’d steal all my strawberries and give me oranges in return. I didn’t mind her stealing, but she’d say, my mommy says if I steal something from someone, I need to give them back something, too. It’s only fair.
Your mom teaches you about stealing, Tiny?
She’d grin, shaking her head and popping strawberries in her mouth. Nah, I made that up. I just don’t like oranges. You need to make them your favorite, okay? So I can steal from you.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
I tighten my grip and her fist connects with my chest, probably trying to push me away once again. But her effort is half-hearted.
When she glares at me for not budging, I wind my other arm around her waist, uncaring of the consequences. Uncaring of the fact that somehow, I’m betraying Simon, Fallon’s dad. Uncaring that maybe I’m similar to those men who I put away for preying on the innocent. Uncaring that if a man like me, much older, jaded and more cynical, tried something like this with my sister, I’d kill him with my bare hands.
Uncaring of everything but her.
We’ve ended up in an embrace somehow, when that wasn’t my intention at all. Fallon’s glare has turned into a wide-eyed look and I know I won’t be able to let her go.
Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology Page 4
