by Shelia Grace
“Don’t … please,” I whispered.
Chapter 12
Ryan
I turned her in my arms and slipped my hand under her chin, lifting her face until I could look into her eyes, which glowed green as the tears streaked down her cheeks. I hadn’t thought there was a single thing she could say that would force me to let her go.
… I think I’m falling in love with you.
Fuck, I had been so wrong. I released my grip on her and gestured for her to follow me.
“I’ll take you back to Mercer,” I said quietly.
She swallowed, and I started walking. I turned back once to see if she was following me. The look of shock on her face cut through me. In that moment, I knew there was a special place in hell reserved for me, because I could see the damage I had just done. I could see it in her eyes. I was the reason why this girl wouldn’t be able to trust herself. I was the reason she would probably spend the rest of her undergraduate career questioning the intention of every male she came across. And, yet, some sick part of me was congratulating myself. It was the old “If I can’t have you, then no one will” bullshit.
But she had said the one thing that could break this fucking spell—this goddamn, unfamiliar need to possess her. I had never—not once—felt this way about Gretchen or any other female in my life. But that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that I didn’t know if I was even capable of love.
For almost two decades—since Reece had died—I had known that I didn’t fall in and out of love like other people. Maybe it was why I had chosen Gretchen, someone so self-involved and broken that neither of us could damage the other one.
This was why I had to let Alex go. I wasn’t a monster. I didn’t want to hurt her. I just knew that I couldn’t be what she needed, what she deserved. Fuck, if I had the power to, I would choose her first boyfriend for her. Someone who wouldn’t hurt her. Someone who wasn’t me.
When we reached the bike, I took the spare helmet and placed it over her head, struck again by how tiny and delicate she was. My hands looked monstrous in contrast to her small, pale ones as I got on and offered her my hand. When she reached out, her hand was icy cold. I gunned the engine, and her arms tightened reflexively around my waist. Again, I had no delusions. Her grip didn’t have anything to do with need for me; it had everything to do with fear of two-wheeled transportation. By the time I pulled up in front of Mercer, she scrambled off the bike as fast as possible, fumbling with the helmet before holding it out to me.
Then she ran.
###
I would have liked to say that I had caught up to her and wiped away her tears, lied to her—told Alex that I loved her. But I hadn’t. Instead, I had gone back to the house, where I killed a bottle and a half of wine and fell into bed.
Wednesday morning, after dragging my pathetic ass out of bed, I took a shower and waited until the lunch hour to go to the bursar’s office. Brenda, who typically ate at her desk unless Jess showed up to take her out, smiled when she saw me. Her expression quickly faded, and with no one else in the office, she didn’t bother to sugarcoat it.
“You look like shit,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Thanks. How’s the wine?”
“Divine. Are you going to owe us another case by the time you leave here?”
“I am.”
Brenda had curly blonde hair, brown eyes, a sunny disposition, and a general willingness to help others. I had no idea what she saw in Jess, who ate, slept, and breathed math. Without explaining why, I told her that I needed Alexis Reed dropped from Robertson’s Calculus lecture. Brenda gave me a long look before beginning to type.
“It’s past the drop-dead, so it’ll leave her with an incomplete on her transcript. And she’ll be dropped down to part-time status.”
I shook my head and took out my checkbook. I had already taken care of the incomplete. Robertson wouldn’t even notice that I had signed off on one student, effectively eliminating her existence from the course.
“Isn’t there a loophole to keep her at full-time through the end of the quarter?”
“I guess, but her account won’t be refunded.”
“Fine. Can I write a check and have it credited for her spring term?”
She nodded and whistled.
“Thank you,” I said.
“This is a pretty big favor. Is this girl going to be happy that you just funded the rest of her freshman year?”
“Probably not.”
Brenda frowned.
“Ryan, are you okay?”
“No.”
I turned to leave, calling over my shoulder that I’d drop by with another case of wine. Next up, I went to the department and filed some of the paperwork for my thesis, which reminded me of what Alex had said.
Studying math? Are you insane?
Not only was she a decade younger, but we also had nothing in common. Then why can’t you stop thinking about her, dickhead? But I couldn’t answer my own question. Didn’t want to.
During office hours, half a dozen students showed up at the cramped cubicle I shared with Jess, all of them asking what they could do to pass Robertson’s course. Knowing he would fail roughly forty percent of the class, if not more, I restrained myself from saying, “Pray.” Deep down, I was waiting for Alex to show up. I was waiting for her to yell at me, to call me a prick. I wanted her to hit me. I wanted any excuse to drag her against me and devour her.
This was why I had just dropped her from Robertson’s lecture. Because, ethically, there was no way I could have graded her exams and then taken her home at night. Images of her naked beneath me filled my head, and I couldn’t take it. As soon as the last student left, I grabbed my jacket and went out to the bike.
Heading off campus, I rode out of town toward the orchards and into the hills. In a month or so the blooms would begin to return. Right now, though, everything was gray and dead, the trees empty and lifeless. Reaching the dam, I stepped off the bike and looked at the wall of concrete and metal, imagining the infinite calculations that had gone into making sure it wouldn’t fail and flood the valley below.
I had been going through life the same way—making sure there were no weak spots. Then I had seen Alex chewing her lip in the front row of Robertson’s class, and everything had been fucked since that moment. If I had just wanted sex, I could have easily screwed her roommate, or Gretchen … or any number of willing college girls. But I couldn’t stop thinking of this one girl. I had friends from undergrad, most of them scattered across the country now, who had never slept with the same woman twice. Thinking of James, I laughed.
James was the definition of lothario. James McDevitt IV, my roommate from freshman year of college, was a dick. At least as far as women were concerned. Fuck, he had even hit on Becca—my sister—at her own wedding. And if I hadn’t known that my sister could demolish him with one swift look, I would have had to beat the living shit out of him.
I inhaled. The fresh air felt good, but it hadn’t done as much to clear my head as I had wanted it to. I got back on the bike and rode down the hill, stopping at the grocery store across from the dorms to pick up a case of dog food for Finn. On the way back to the house, I passed by Mercer, hoping—like a fucking fool—to catch sight of Alex. When I pulled up in front of the house a minute later and saw her, I thought I was having a hallucination. She was wearing a pair of tight black pants, running shoes, and a hoodie—and she was sitting on my front steps looking enraged. I was ridiculously and stupidly happy to see her as she jumped up and stalked across the lawn toward me.
“What the fuck makes you think you have any right to mess with my life?” she demanded.
I had to give it to Brenda—she was efficient. I walked toward Alex. She wasn’t yelling, but I was sure that was coming since she was practically shaking with rage.
“I just got an e-mail on my school account saying that I’ve been dropped from Calculus! Which puts me four units short of full-time. It was you, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Well, who made you ruler of the fucking universe?”
I nearly laughed, but I stopped myself. Walking up to her, I took her by the arm and pulled her toward the house. When I got the front door open, I propelled her over the threshold and shut the door behind us to prevent the neighbors from calling the cops. I walked away from her, trying not to be as deliriously happy as I was that she was here.
“I get it,” she continued. “You don’t want to deal with the lovesick little freshman anymore. But seriously—what was I going to do? Stalk you? Make you love me back? I would have sat in the back and finished failing, and then you would have never had to see me again.”
It was like she had punched me in the solar plexus, my muscles tightening painfully at the thought of never seeing her again.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she demanded.
“You’ll keep full-time status … and Calculus will never show up on your transcript.”
She blinked, tears running down her cheeks.
“W-what? How?”
“And I paid for your spring term.”
“Why?” she gasped.
“Because I’m a selfish prick. Because I want to kiss you. And touch you. I want to watch you coming in my arms.” I threw my arms up. “Why else?”
I laughed, and it sounded harsh even to my ears. She took a quick breath and backed up a step. From the look on her face, I could tell she had just realized how fucking depraved I was.
“Alex, I only have so much willpower. I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried not to want you. But I’m sick of trying.”
I crossed the room in three steps and lifted her against me with one arm. The contact with her body caused a wave of relief to course through me. Running my fingers across her lips with my other hand, I lowered my head to kiss her, coaxing her mouth open. Her hands pushed against my shoulders, but when she tried to twist away, I stilled her face with my palm. Then I reached down and swung her into my arms. In a matter of seconds, I had kicked open the bedroom door and was easing her onto the bed before following her down. I bit her bottom lip softly, desperate for the response I knew it would cause. When she moaned, I smiled, pulling back to watch her face. She opened her eyes, which were still bright with tears.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t do this,” she said quietly. “I can’t feel the way I do and pretend it isn’t killing me when you touch me. I’m not ready for casual sex, or casual anything. … I-I don’t think I ever will be.”
“What I feel for you is anything but casual, Alex.”
Hearing the inherent condescension and simultaneous idiocy of my statement, I cringed inwardly.
“To you it would just be sex, but it would be my first time. I didn’t expect to wait for marriage or anything like that, but I did promise myself that I would wait until I really felt something for that person … and he really felt something back.”
I was about to make another dumb-ass comment, but I stopped myself just in time. Again, I couldn’t argue with a goddamn thing she said, and there was something horrifying about listening to the wisdom of someone ten years younger while I had the hard-on from hell. I pushed myself up and wiped a hand over my face as she sat up and moved away from me to the side of the bed. I looked over at her.
“Alex, this is why I let you go last night. It’s why I dropped you from Robertson’s class. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t think rationally when you’re anywhere near me.”
She nodded. Then she stood up and walked out. A moment later I heard the front door close behind her. Tomorrow, I would show up to Robertson’s class, and she wouldn’t be there. I got up and walked to the backdoor. When I opened it, Finn bounded in and gave me a reproachful look that said: You’re a dick, and you deserve to be alone. And I couldn’t argue with my fucking dog, either. Back in the bedroom, I took out the picture of Alex that I had mercifully kept in the nightstand drawer. For a brief moment, I was grateful to her fucking stalker for taking the last picture I might ever see of her.
I moped around the rest of the fucking day, and then as I was eating canned soup as part of my penance, my phone buzzed on the coffee table. Some stupid part of my brain told me it could be Alex. Instead it was a text from McDevitt.
Landing in a town near u, muthafucker. Time 2 party.
James worked for an Internet startup—one whose shares hadn’t tanked after its IPO. He said he was in sales, but as far as I could tell, his primary functions seemed to be traveling from location to location, partying, picking up women, gambling, and drinking heavily. He called me his grandmother because I wasn’t a complete wastrel like him.
In my more self-righteous moments I liked to think of myself as a real human being and McDevitt as an alien trying to impersonate one. His problem was that he never thought more than two seconds into the future. He’d get kicked out of one of the nicest restaurants in New York City after a round of “ultimate cheers.” In other words, he would smash his glass with his buddy’s, just to say he did it. Or he’d tell the flight attendant on a trip from Chicago to L.A. that he needed to update his membership in the mile-high club. Or he’d wake up in Vegas without a shred of money or any memory of the preceding twelve hours.
Like me, he came from a well-to-do family, but I liked to think we took different paths starting ten years ago. I knew I wasn’t fucking Peter Pan, and I hadn’t expected to stay eighteen forever. James had never wanted the party to end—which made him a pain in the ass and a liability. His level of disregard for practically everything and everyone made me wince at the thought of him within close proximity to anything I valued, because just about everything James did could be categorized under ill advised, likely to cause bodily harm, or likely to set the place on fire.
Likewise, he could kiss my fucking ass if he thought he was going to get anywhere near my shit. I’d meet him in San Francisco, and that way, if he was being a complete dick, I could walk away. If anything, maybe a night with James in the city would serve as a cautionary tale. Or maybe I would regret wasting my time in a tiny college town, fixated on an eighteen-year-old girl. I doubted it, though.
Alex and McDevitt occupying the same mental space for even a single second made me physically ill. McDevitt would never shut up if he knew about my pathological obsession with an inexperienced little college freshman, because to him, devoting more than five minutes to any particular pussy, as he put it, was an epic waste of resources. He preferred shady massage parlors to dinner conversations with the fairer sex. How he got within five feet of any woman without setting off her asshole detector was an eternal mystery of the universe. Somewhere out there, he must have been on an asshole registry by now.
Thursday passed by in a blur, and for a few painful seconds before Robertson’s lecture, I forgot that I wouldn’t see Alex. Part of me hoped she would show up just to piss me off, and my optimism caused me to spend the better part of the class time searching for her row by row. The chubby kid from her floor gave me a strange look as he handed over his homework at the end of lecture, but I didn’t see any sign of Alex or her roommate.
I left the lecture hall immediately after class, and when I got back to the house, there was a ridiculous Cadillac parked in the driveway. McDevitt was sitting on the steps with an open six-pack of cheap-ass beer.
“Howdy, shithead,” he called jovially. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been waiting like ten minutes.”
“Let me guess. I can blame my mother for giving you my address?” I asked, reaching out and catching the can of beer he had just thrown at my head.
“Kathleen says she wishes you’d call more often.”
“Fuck you, McDevitt. And you can keep your shit beer.”
I walked past him and opened the door. At least Alex hadn’t chosen tonight to show up on my doorstep. That would have been a fucking disaster. As James followed me inside, I did a quick scan for things he could fuck up. No
t unlike Gretchen when she was wasted out of her mind, McDevitt had a proclivity for fucking up other people’s shit. But as long as my work was locked up, I decided there wasn’t too much trouble he could cause. I walked into the bedroom and changed shirts before letting Finn in and feeding him. If James fucked with my dog, Finn had my full permission to maul him within an inch of his life.
“What the fuck is that?” he asked when Finn trotted into the living room with a tennis ball.
“A dog. You have heard of them, right?”
“Good for you. I see you’re settling into rural domesticity quite well, Bennett.”
“You staying at the usual hotel in the city?”
“It’s barely ten, and you’re already thinking about sleep? Jesus. Are you fucking ninety?”
“Let me rephrase. Where were you planning to wake up in your own vomit?”
“You sound like Papa McDevitt, asshole. I’m sorry. Is Gretchen not giving it up anymore now that you’re whipped?”
The last time James and I had conferred over my relationship status, his method of congratulations had come in the form of a giant dildo that he had sent to my parents’ house. My mother hadn’t opened the package, which was the only reason I was still talking to him.
“Do you see her here? Presently Gretchen Mueller is giving it up to pretty much anyone. Didn’t my mother give you the memo?”
“Oh shit! Nice! Now I see what you’re doing in a college town, my friend. Horny sorority chicks. Maybe we should stay around here and sample college life.”
“McDevitt, you never left college. Now, let’s get out of here before you decide to go back for your Ph.D.”
“Hold up. I’ve gotta take a leak.”
“Straight back,” I said, pointing toward the guest bath.
I took Finn out back and threw him the ball a few times. I had no intention of staying out all fucking night, regardless of James and his grand plans for mayhem. Walking back inside, I saw the light in the hall bathroom was off, and the light in my bedroom was on. Fucking James.
