But he made no move to leave, and it gave me a tiny bit of hope.
“I . . . I just wanted to know how old you are.”
“Twenty-five. I’m twenty-five,” he muttered, “and you’re jailbait and not my type.”
“What type is that?” I asked, dying to know.
“Experienced girls my age who don’t expect to hear from me the next day. Girls who aren’t in high school. In other words—not you.”
And as we stood there, facing each other, I waited for him to make his move, to snatch me up and take me to his bed like I wanted. But he didn’t, because I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or smart enough.
I was never enough.
I cleared my throat and powered on. “I started kindergarten when I was six, almost seven, mostly because I’d contracted a bad case of mono at the age of five and had to stay away from germs for several months. So, for your information—not that it matters, of course, because I’m not your type—but eighteen isn’t jailbait.”
We stared at each other and the longer our eyes held, the more I knew my boundaries were gone. It seemed like there was nothing I wouldn’t say to him. Even though my insides were quaking with nerves, I went over to him until our bare chests were only inches apart. I was five feet ten inches, and he was at least six inches taller, making him the tallest guy I’d ever stood next to. Not only that, but his body was built like an NFL football player, with lethal yet lickable muscles. I liked being near him. I felt safe, like no one would ever hurt me again.
My eyes caressed the dragon on his chest, and I wanted to trace it with my tongue. I thought about how warm his skin would be, how it would feel to have his strong arms wrap around me as I kissed his sensuous lips. When his breathing accelerated along with mine, I knew I wasn’t completely alone in my feelings. I searched his eyes, surprised at the new sensations coursing through me. I‘d never wanted someone like this, not even Drew.
I pressed myself against him completely, and he hissed at the contact. “Don’t you want to touch me?” I whispered, rubbing my breasts against his chest to get some friction.
He gripped my arms and shoved me away from him. “You’re playing with fire. You think you want this?” He laughed darkly. “Buttercup, you can’t handle me.”
And with those words, he pivoted around and stomped out of the room, slamming the door hard behind him.
“I’m not waiting for the right girl because she doesn’t exist.”
–Leo Tate
HOLY, SHIT! I bolted out of the bathroom with images of her X-rated body fried into my brain. Why had I stood there like an idiot while she took off every stitch of clothing? I groaned. I’d never look at her again without imagining her naked, without seeing her centerfold body in my head.
I got to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of ice-cold water and chugged it down, and when it was gone, I pressed the cool glass against my hot face. I’m not sure why she was able to get to me. I’m not a touchy feely kinda guy, especially when it comes to matters of the heart, but I think we’d had a moment that day at the open house. Which was ridiculous because I didn’t believe in that shit. However, there was no doubt I had to stay away from her. Maybe I needed to call Tiffany, my current hookup, who was definitely older than eighteen.
Tiffany knew the score; she knew I wasn’t good boyfriend material, because I’ve always made it known up front that I’m not in it for the long haul. I didn’t have time for some unrealistic notion of everlasting love. My gym, Sebastian, and the band were my priorities.
Nora was young and had needy written all over her. Something about her behavior wasn’t right. Mix that with the mother I saw and who knows what issues she had. Oh, she’d tried to come across as cool with her little striptease, but she didn’t fool me. She may have acted fearless, but I’d seen the way her hands shook when I mentioned her parents.
“She okay?” Sebastian asked, coming in from the living room. “You were in there for a while.”
“She’s fine and showering now. Can you grab some sweats and an ice pack?” I said, feeling weird as I looked at him. Shit, I’ve been lusting after a chick who was closer in age to Sebastian than I was.
He nodded and left.
I pulled out her phone and dialed Portia’s cell. It rang and rang and went to voicemail on five tries, so I gave up and scrolled through her contacts and found the name: Ellen Blakely, Mother. I had my finger on the number, but instinct made me put the phone down. In the distance, I heard Sebastian knock on the bathroom door and tell Nora the clothes and ice pack were sitting outside.
I unzipped her backpack that Sebastian had left on the kitchen counter, which contained the spray paint, a flask and, oddly enough, a seven-inch everyday carry knife. It had a smooth black-enamel handle, and when I popped it opened, a titanium-coated, stainless steel six-inch blade came out. Impressed, I studied it carefully. I’d known a lot of cops who’d come through my gyms, and I recognized this type of knife as an expensive brand that policemen chose to carry when off duty. As I wondered about why she’d need a personal-protection knife, a blue journal caught my eye, and I picked it up and flipped through it, finding a page where she’d made some list.
I read through it, having a what-the-fuck moment at the things she’d written down. According to the school brochure, she’d been the perfect poster girl for BA. But the girl who made this list was not. This girl was set on destroying herself.
By the time the shower turned off, I’d been staring at her handwriting for several minutes, trying to understand her, knowing she was only hurting herself if she carried through with what she apparently intended to do a few moments ago in the bathroom. I shoved it all back into her backpack and walked to the bathroom door.
“Nora, Portia isn’t answering.”
Her voice was muffled from the other side. “Okay, let me get dressed, and I’ll be gone. My car’s across the street.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re drunk,” I said at bit louder. Maybe I’d been rough on her in the bathroom, but truthfully, I’d been a mixed bag of emotions, pissed off at what she’d done to my car, horny as hell at watching her strip, and then furious with myself for wanting to take her up on what she’d been offering.
She opened the door a crack. “Why do you care? I messed up your car.”
“Trust me, I haven’t forgotten what you did and you’re going to pay me back, starting tomorrow morning. Right now, just sleep it off. We have an extra bedroom down the hall,” I said, staring at the towel she had wrapped around her, a part of me wishing she’d drop it again. Damn. I looked away and stared at the family photos I’d hung last month. Photos of my parents and me at my high school graduation, photos of them with Sebastian on his first day of kindergarten. Staring at them made me sad, knowing I’d never see them again. Never experience that kind of family again.
“I promise I’ll come back tomorrow, and we can talk about how you want me to pay for the damage,” she said, pulling me back from my thoughts.
“Yeah, right,” I said with sarcasm. “If you leave, I’ll call the cops, and a BA girl like you getting arrested? The newspapers would love it.”
She chewed on her lip, and I saw the uncertainty on her face, like she didn’t know where to turn. Whatever. Deciding this conversation was finished, I turned around to leave, needing to put some space between us.
“Why did you call me Buttercup?” I heard her ask in a small voice.
I couldn’t answer that so I kept walking.
AN EAR-PIERCING SCREAM jerked me awake, or at least, I thought it was a scream. There was nothing but silence in the loft now. I looked at the digital clock and realized I’d only been asleep for a few minutes. After I’d made sure Nora was settled, I’d tried to sleep, only I couldn’t. I’d lain in bed for an hour, staring at my ceiling, running our conversation and her insane list through my mind.
I heard another muffled yell. Fumbling around the floor, I found my shorts and pulled them back on wondering if this wa
s round two with Nora. I walked out into the hall as Sebastian stumbled out of his room, squinting.
“Did you hear something?”
I nodded. “I think I heard Nora yell out.”
“Yeah, it sounded freaky whatever it . . .” A long wail interrupted him. “What the hell?” he said, looking at me with wide eyes.
“Must be a bad dream,” I said. “I had them after mom and dad died.”
“Yeah?”
I shrugged. “It passed after a few months.” It took two years.
Sebastian listened outside her door for a minute with a concerned look. He might act cocky sometimes, but he was a softie. “Hey, I think she might be crying. Should I go talk to her?” He shot me a quick look. “Unless you want to?”
I opened my mouth to tell him he could, but stopped. I wanted to check on her myself. “No, you get some rest. I’ll handle it.”
When Nora didn’t answer my knock, I entered the dark room and walked over to the bed where she was lying on her side facing me, her legs drawn up into a ball. Her hands covered her face, and she muttered incoherently.
I sat down on the bed and shook her shoulder.
She flinched away from me. “Stop! Get away from me! I hate you!” she cried out.
I reared back, surprised by the vehemence in her tone, wondering who she was dreaming about. “Nora, it’s time to wake-up,” I said using a quiet tone.
I kept saying her name until she stirred on the bed and blinked her eyes open. When she saw me, she scrambled away to huddle on the other side.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed hard, shivering in spite of the warm room. “I woke you up.”
“Not a big deal. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
She looked away, letting her tangled hair cover her face.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Her head jerked up. “No.”
“Do you want me to leave and let you get some sleep?”
She shook her head and asked nervously, “Did I say anything?”
“Nothing I could really understand.”
“Did I hit you?” she asked in a rush.
“No, but you were mad as hell at someone.”
She nodded. “My dreams . . . sometimes I hit. It’s a bitch at a sleepover,” she said, laughing a little. It sounded forced.
“Yeah? Guess it could be worse. When Sebastian was around ten, he would sleepwalk and do the funniest things. Well, I thought they were, but he’d be embarrassed,” I said with a little smile.
“Like what?”
“I’d hear him rattling around the house at night and get up and go look for him. Most times, I’d find him sitting naked on the kitchen floor eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He loved those things. The naked part . . . well, that I can’t explain.” I chuckled. “So see? It could be worse.”
“That’s a good story,” she said, gazing up at me with hesitant eyes, almost as if she were shy, not anything like the girl who’d stripped.
Without thinking it through, I said, “Tomorrow I’m cooking breakfast, and I’d like for you to hang around and eat. We can talk about payment for the Escalade.”
She gave me a surprised look. “You really don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll talk more tomorrow,” I said, getting up from the bed to leave, but her voice stopped me. “Leo, I know I don’t deserve your help, but will you . . . will you stay for a while? If you talk to me for a bit, I think I can sleep.” Looking embarrassed, she glanced down again. Yeah, the drunken girl from the bathroom had vanished.
I battled with myself, because I wanted to stay with her, but my head knew it wasn’t a good idea. Feeling like it was a huge mistake, but unable to stop myself, I lay down beside her on top of the covers, careful to keep our bodies from touching.
She grasped my hand and intertwined our fingers, and my first reaction was to pull back, but I didn’t. I stared at our hands and, fuck, I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held a girl’s hand. Maybe high school?
“Tell me another happy story,” she said, her lips softly parted, like she couldn’t wait.
“Why don’t we share stories? I told you one, so it’s your turn now.”
“You don’t want to hear mine. They all suck.”
I raised my brows. “Come on, a girl like you who has everything? There has to be a couple.”
She tilted her head, like she was considering one. “Okay, but you can’t laugh at how stupid it is,” she warned me. And I think she was kinda teasing me.
I shrugged. “I’ll do my best.”
She said, “When I was fourteen, my parents decided I was overweight and had an eating disorder. So, that summer they sent me off to this camp for screwed up kids with rich parents. It was this super pretentious finishing school for fat girls. Don’t get me wrong, being called fat wasn’t fun, but it was in Paris, France, the most beautiful place in the world with its art museums and amazing architecture. I was sent there for eight precious weeks.” She sighed dreamily, like she was remembering something good. “Sometimes I’d sneak off to this place called Café Bonaparte to eat these hot, buttery croissants. And people watch, of course. It’s kind of a quirk of mine,” she said, sneaking a little glance.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
She smiled. “Your turn.”
I hesitated, surprised that I wanted to tell her about my parents. I’m not the kind of guy who just opens up to girls, especially one I barely knew. “You were right about my parents,” I told her anyway. “They’re dead, killed in a carjacking right outside our house. We didn’t live in the best neighborhood. They were shot point blank in the head by a druggie looking to fund his next fix. So at eighteen, I got a kid, a house, and an old gym. Shit that had taken my parents a lifetime to accumulate.” I sighed. “Sorry, guess I forgot we were supposed to tell happy stories.”
“You loved them,” she said with a bit of what sounded like wonder in her voice.
“Yeah. We never had much, but . . . yeah,” I said, picking at the blue bedding. “My dad taught me to play guitar, but after they died, I gave up being a musician.”
“Because of Sebastian?”
“Yeah. The road’s no place for a kid. Sebastian’s all I got now.”
“You were practically a kid yourself,” she said, squeezing our still clasped hands. “Do you miss music?”
I nodded. “We had a band in LA, and I started one here, too. But this gym was my dad’s dream and now it’s mine. It does well and I like it, but music is my first love.”
We faced each other on our pillows. “Sebastian’s lucky to have you,” she said, her green eyes searching my face. I gazed back, and I think for a second, my heart may have skipped a beat. She was beautiful. I’d been dead wrong at the open house when I’d thought she wasn’t. Her beauty was real and fresh, not manufactured by tanning beds or a plastic surgeon like some of the girls I’d dated. Still dated.
A lock of her sun-bleached hair fell over her eyes, and I reached over and smoothed it out of her face, not wanting to stop looking into her glittering eyes. I let my hand drift down her cheek, and my fingers didn’t want to leave her skin. As my hand fell away, I caught the scent of peaches, and it smelled good and sweet. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning in and inhaling deeper. God, I loved peaches. The sticky juice, the tart taste, the firm texture against my tongue.
Fuck. This was so wrong.
I lay back down and blew out a deep breath that I think I’d been holding since the first moment I’d realized who she was outside.
She sighed. “Leo, I’m sorry for how I acted earlier. For everything.”
“Even the strip tease?” I joked.
She nodded.
“Was that the first time you’ve ever, you know, stripped for a guy?” I said. “I mean, shit, never mind. That’s none of my business.”
“I’ve never done anything like that in
my whole life. You were the first,” she whispered.
And I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the blood rush to my groin at those words. It was wrong, but I wanted to be her first in everything. I moved a bit further from her, until I was practically on the edge of the bed.
“That’s not really you is it?” I finally said, getting myself under control.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she said with a sad smile.
“Tell me about your family.”
“Sometimes I dream my family is dead,” she said, “and it’s not a nightmare.”
“What happened to you?” I said, remembering her mother.
She drew up, like she was protecting herself. “I think it’s your turn to tell me a story, Leo.”
“I know you’re hiding something,” I whispered, squeezing her hand. “You said everyone has secrets. What are you hiding?”
Her face hardened. “Nothing.”
I wanted to question her more. I wanted to know what made her tick, why she was scared of her parents, and why she’d written that list, but I sensed she’d had enough for one night. So I ended up telling her the story of how my mom had played on a quiz show in LA and won a family trip to England. No one knew that story but me and Sebastian, yet I found myself describing all the touristy places we’d visited and how Stonehenge had been my favorite. I told her how awed I’d been at those vast chunks of rock that have stood for thousands of years and how no one knows how they got there or what they were used for. I chuckled as I told her how, when we’d gotten back, Mom had insisted we call her Mum. So, of course, we did.
After a while, I glanced over, and she was asleep. I didn’t know much about her, but I did know one thing: she was the first girl to ever show up uninvited at my house and get an invitation to spend the night, much less to have breakfast in the morning.
MY EYES POPPED opened automatically at 6:00 a.m. on the dot, the time I normally take a quick run in the park. Thankfully, I woke up completely clothed, on top of the covers, and still a respectable distance from Nora. There had been no kissing, no cuddling, no sex. Nothing. Nada. Just a bit of hand holding, that’s all.
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