“Maybe we should stay in.” Porter’s deep voice made me smile without me having to look up and see that it was him. I was leaning against the dresser to fasten my sandals.
“We already promised,” I told him when I stood up.
“I don’t give a fuck.” He stalked over to me, not closing the door behind him. As soon as he got to me, he took me by the hips and lifted me onto the dresser, settling in between my legs.
His hands came up to cup my face, tilting it the way he wanted before he leaned in and his lips met mine. He wasted no time pushing his tongue into my mouth, taking over all of my senses. Everywhere I was, there was Porter.
If he kept that up, I’d agree to stay in.
“Ohmigod.” Laney’s voice was a mixture of surprise tinged with… disgust? No. That was too harsh of a word. She sounded the way most kids did when they saw their parents kiss.
I pulled away and tried to keep a smile at bay. “Did you need something?”
Her face was pinched together as she looked from me to Porter and back. “Uh… I was just going to tell you that we’re ready when you are.”
“We’ll be right out.”
She scurried away and I could only imagine what she was saying to Zac.
“We should go,” I said quietly. His face was still right there. He hadn’t even glanced at Laney when she’d interrupted out kiss.
He groaned but stepped back to let me slide off the dresser. Yet he didn’t follow me to the door.
“What?” I asked. “You’re coming, right?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Unfortunately not.”
It took about fifteen seconds for that sink in. I slapped a hand to my forehead. Damn my own wording making it easy for him to turn something innocent into innuendo.
“I meant… leaving for the movies with me.”
He chuckled. “I know. But I also know I need a minute.”
I furrowed my brows and stepped toward him. “Why? Is something wrong?”
A grin played at the corners of his mouth. He grabbed my hand and placed it on the bulge I hadn’t noticed in his pants. Yeah. That was a raging erection.
“Oh,” I said with surprise, allowing myself to slowly raise my eyes to meet his. “Sorry.”
“I don’t think you are.”
He was right. I wasn’t sorry at all.
Finally, we met Zac and Laney in the living room then took my car to the movies.
Porter pulled the door open for me at the theater. He let me buy his ticket after whining like a baby then insisted I let him get popcorn and drinks. Seemed like a fair trade.
Zac went down the aisle first, followed by Laney then me then Porter. Seemed the best way to settle in.
We’d let the guys pick the movie, but the joke was on them because I loved action movies. Sure, a good rom-com hit the spot sometimes too, but this was great.
Now, usually when Laney and I were at the movies, we’d whisper about things throughout. Nothing disrespectful, but at this movie, she said nothing. It was odd. I hadn’t noticed her being upset about anything but she was an expert at masking her true feelings when she wanted to. She just didn’t usually want to with me.
“Let’s go get a drink,” Laney said as we walked back to my car and she threaded her arm through mine.
“Sounds good, but I’m not drinking tequila.”
“Nobody said you had to. Why no tequila?”
“That’s what I was drinking with Tegan the other night and I have no intention of ever drinking it again.”
Porter chuckled behind me.
At Mac’s, Laney and Zac’s favorite bar, Laney and I chose a booth and the guys slid in on each side next to us. We all ordered beers, which the waitress dropped off rather quickly.
Porter slid his arm across the back of the booth. Not exactly around me, but in the way, guys did when they were with their girlfriends, almost like staking their claim for the eyes of any other interested males in the vicinity.
“This is fucking weird,” Laney finally said after the small talk about the movie died down.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Zac countered as he leaned over and gave Porter a pat on the shoulder. “Makes me a proud papa.”
Porter snorted. “You can fuck all the way off.”
“You kiss Rhian with that mouth?”
“As often as I can,” was all Porter said back.
I rolled my eyes and jabbed an elbow into Porter’s side. He grunted softly then ran a hand over the spot.
“Why do you think this is weird?” I asked Laney. “Because it’s the four of us? Or is it me and him?
She took a large drink before answering. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” she said to Porter, not to me. He stiffened beside me. “It’s him. This is fucking weird because I saw you two kissing earlier and it was different than… well, than before. Now he’s acting like this date thing is something he’s done before.”
“Because we have,” I countered. I thought I knew what she was getting at, but she was saying it all wrong. “Also, I don’t think you mean to sound like a judgmental bitch, right?”
Her eyes widened and Zac’s mouth opened like he was going to say something. I leveled a stare on him that either dared him to keep going or demanded he keep his mouth shut. Laney and I needed to hash this out.
“No!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean it at all like that. I’m sorry if that’s how this is coming out.”
“Didn’t think so.” I relaxed back into Porter’s arm. “So try again.”
She nodded and wet her lips. “What I meant was, I’ve never seen behavior out of him like this.”
“You know I’m sitting right here, right?” Porter asked, but she and I both ignored him.
“I’ve never seen it before.” She took a deep breath. “He surprised me is all.”
“That bad?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I’ve never been happier to be wrong.” But she looked over at him. “But seriously, Porter, if I ever find out you’re fucking around—”
“You won’t,” he answered quickly, but I wasn’t sure if she was threating him about messing with my head and heart or threatening him not to cheat on me. I’d have to address that later because my phone rang from my purse.
After digging it out, I growled, hit the ignore button, and dropped it back into my purse.
“Your mom?” Laney asked.
“Yup.”
“Any idea what she might want?”
“None,” I told her honestly. “Don’t need to. To use Porter’s words, she can fuck all the way off.”
We ordered a second round, once we got that conversation out of our system, though mine was only water because I’d learned my lesson, but there’d been something else I’d been wondering about.
“Hey, Zac, what’s going on with buying the store?” I asked. “That was the plan, right?”
He nodded. “That is the plan, but I’m not close yet. Maybe I won’t be before the boss retires.” Laney rubbed his arm to comfort him.
She’d told me this was what he’d wanted to do. In East Branch, this was more than most people hoped for, honestly, and he wanted it as his way to take care of Laney and Dylan.
“Maybe we should do it together,” Porter offered.
Immediately, Zac shook his head no. “I’ve told you a million times I’m not into that.”
I snorted into my beer then choked on the liquid that had gone down the wrong way. “Oh, god.”
Porter laughed loudly as he handed me some napkins. “For the record, I’ve never asked you that even once.” Then he leaned over to me. “You OK?”
“Perfect.” I dabbed the napkin around my face to make sure I got it all. “You want to buy the parts store with Zac?” I asked because this was the first I’d heard about it.
He shrugged. “Yeah. We’ve worked there since high school. I like the job and it pays decently for this area. I know from talking to him that Joe makes an even better income owning it and renting out the shop.�
��
“Makes sense,” I agreed.
“Do you even have any money saved for something like this?” Zac asked Porter seriously. “I was trying to do this without having to take out a business loan because that scares the shit out of me.”
“More money than you do,” Porter told him just as seriously. “I haven’t had a kid to support for the last five years and I live on the cheap.”
All true things.
Zac leaned on the table on his elbows, his brows slightly down and his hands running together. “Are you serious right now?”
“Hell yes, I am.” Porter gave him a cocky grin. “I’d excel at being the boss.”
Laney and I shared a look. Porter might have been being serious, but his cockiness could talk him right out of this opportunity.
“I’m serious, Porter,” Zac said while rubbing one of his temples with an index finger. It was the same thing my father did when I was being me.
“So am I.” Porter shifted, pulling his arm from behind me and leaned onto the table the same way Zac was. “I know I fuck around a lot. That fucking around had Laney questioning why I’m with Rhian. It has you questioning this. But I’m telling you right now that I am not fucking around on either front. And I’ve never fucked around when it comes to work. Tell me I’m lying.”
“You’re not,” Zac said right away.
“Well then?”
Zac rubbed his index finger over his bottom lip as he thought about everything that had just been said then nodded. “Then let’s do this.”
I couldn’t believe I’d just witnessed them make such a huge decision, but by the looks on their faces and the third round of drinks they’d ordered, neither of them could’ve been happier.
It also reminded me that I was the only one at the table who had no idea what they were going to do with their future.
Chapter Nineteen
My phone woke me the next morning and the last thing I wanted to do was open my eyes to see who was calling, let alone actually have to talk to someone at what had to be an ungodly hour of the morning.
Porter moved beside me and pulled me back to his chest. A hard, warm reminder that I’d spent the night at his apartment last night after going out with Zac and Laney. Now that they knew about us, this was a luxury we could indulge in. I’d told him he could stay with me at her house, but he’d asked why he’d do that when he had an empty apartment just waiting for us.
Couldn’t argue with that.
“You gonna see who that is?” he asked in that deep, just-woke-up, disturbingly sexy voice that I’d never had the chance to hear before.
“No,” I mumbled into the pillow.
The sound ended then started up right away again. I groaned and buried my face into the pillow. It was Friday morning. I had no need to be awake this early. But I did crack my eye just enough to see the alarm clock on the little nightstand next to the bed and discovered it was after ten.
Not so bright and early after all.
Porter groaned but reached over me and snatched my phone off the nightstand. “It’s your mother.”
“Ignore it.”
“You’ll have to answer eventually.”
“I think I won’t.”
“Can’t ignore her forever.”
“I bet I can.”
After a deep sigh, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. When I rolled over and found his gloriously naked body with the sheet lying loosely over the good parts, whatever we’d been talking about slipped my mind.
Until my phone began ringing again.
“I’m going to block her,” I said as I went to grab my phone out of his hand.
He moved it out of my reach. “Maybe you should see what she wants? Maybe she wants to apologize. If you block her, you’re saying you never want her to be able to contact you for any reason ever.”
I snorted. He obviously didn’t know my mother. “She’s never apologized for anything in her life.” I sat up beside him but held the sheet to my chest. Not sure why. He’d already seen everything there was to see. “When we went shopping for dresses for my junior prom, I picked out a strapless red one with sparkles. It was fucking beautiful. It was long.” The phone began ringing again. “At least turn the ringer off.”
He shook his head but gave me a cocky little grin.
“So I picked out this dress. There was nothing wrong with it, but she told me to be serious because I didn’t want to look like a whore.” For some reason, that stuck out as a painful memory among the vast number to choose from. “I was a virgin then. How could I be a whore?”
“You’re not a whore. I’m a whore.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Former whore. Trust me. All we whores knew each other and I didn’t know you.”
I bit my lips together to keep from laughing. “She doesn’t apologize, Porter. She’s probably calling about some party where she wants to look like a happy family. I played along while they were paying for college. I don’t have to anymore.”
“OK,” he finally said, then he handed me my phone then raised an eyebrow.
After turning off the ringer, I climbed on top of him, straddling his thick thighs, letting the sheet fall away. “Besides,” I whispered. “There are other things we could be doing right now rather than talking about my mother or my birthday.”
He didn’t need any other coaxing. His erection was immediate when I’d climbed on top of him and he spent the next hour coaxing every orgasm I had out of me. Because of all the overtime, Zac and Porter’s boss gave them a three-day weekend. They needed it.
We spent the weekend at his apartment. He slept a lot because of how much he’d been working. There were breaks. Breaks that didn’t even include sex. We would snuggle on the couch watching a movie. I cooked dinner Saturday night. Baked Chicken, baked potato, and a huge salad. It was really nice to have this time together.
Monday morning when Porter had to work, I still hadn’t turned my ringer back on. By Monday afternoon, I’d forgotten about it altogether. The ringing had stopped and that was all I cared about.
“Rhian,” Laney called out when she came through the front door Monday afternoon.
I scurried out of my room, where I was quickly becoming a hermit. “What’s wrong?” It’d been her tone of voice that tipped me off.
“Oh, you’re alive,” she said with a look of irritation I didn’t think I’d seen before.
“Yes. Was that ever a question?”
She dropped the bag in her hand onto the floor. “Yes. Because I’ve been texting you all day to see if you wanted to meet for lunch or do some shopping and you didn’t answer. For hours,” she emphasized. “Then I stopped in to ask Porter if he’d heard from you today and he tried to text. You didn’t answer and everyone started freaking out.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Shit is right. I had to promise to come right here to make sure you’re OK and tell you to text him back to get him to stay at work.” She dropped her ass to the arm of the couch. “They can’t get caught up in shit that makes them leave work, Rhian. They can’t afford it.”
Well, that felt like an attack. “I didn’t ask him to,” I snapped. “I silenced my phone on Saturday when my mother wouldn’t stop calling and forgot to turn it back on. I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Well, at least you’re alive and no one was murdered by a serial killer.”
“Are there a lot of serial killers in East Branch?”
She shrugged. “You never know.”
I shook my head then went to my room and grabbed my phone. Holy missed calls and texts. There were a lot. First thing I did was text Porter back explaining things. He came with back Good to hear. Then it was time to look through those calls.
Scrolling through all of that wasn’t part of my plan for the day because ninety-five percent of the calls were my mother. But one wasn’t.
“Holy shit,” I sat up so fast that I got lightheaded. There was a missed call and voicemail from the East Branc
h high school.
I took a deep breath and hit the play button.
Rhian, this is Misty Carter, the secretary at East Branch High School. Mr. Shephard has reviewed your resume and would like to schedule an interview. He’s going on vacation so please call me back as soon as you can.”
What sucked was that Mr. Shephard was on vacation for a couple of weeks, so the interview was actually not for a couple of weeks. That was fine. Lots of time to think it over and decide what I wanted to do even before the interview.
Then my phone rang. She wasn’t going to stop until I answered and I had no intention of answering. I couldn’t silence my phone because that had already gotten me in trouble, so I would just have to ignore it.
After dinner that night, Porter and I along with Zac and Laney were hanging out at our house watching a baking show on TV. The guys pretended to know what they were talking about while Laney and I laughed.
And my phone rang again.
“She’s fucking relentless,” I yelled at my phone then glanced around to find them all watching me.
“There could be something wrong,” Laney offered from one side of me.
“Tegan would call me then,” I told her. “Haven’t heard from him about anything.”
“You should answer,” Porter said from the other side of me, his arm on the back of the couch.
“Nah.”
“Just answer and she’ll go away. You can’t hide forever.”
“Uh, you do,” I snapped back. Probably not the best way to handle this situation.
“How’s that?”
“Where are you parents? Am I going to meet them?” I asked, not because I was desperate to actually meet them. It was more to prove a point and his trying to tell me how to handle my parents was wearing on my nerves.
“You don’t want to meet them,” he said.
“You really don’t,” Laney agreed.
“I don’t know. Maybe she has a soul that needs saving,” Zac said. Porter snorted, which was not what I expected.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. Didn’t seem like anyone wanted to answer me.
Laney was the one to turn to me and finally speak. “Porter’s parents are nice. Super nice. They’re just religious above anything else and if they see him with you, they’ll assume you’re having sex because, well… ” She pointed at my boyfriend. “Then they’ll try to save you from his sinful ways.”
A Little More Touch Me (The Fallout Series Book 2) Page 16
