Never Let Go: Top Shelf Romance Collection 6

by Steiner, Kandi

  “Is it?” he challenged, parking the Jeep in a free spot in front of a beach bar. He rolled down his window to check the parking meter, but I guessed it was probably free parking at this time of night. He didn’t make a move for cash, but left the window down, his elbow resting on the edge. “I’ve always been so sure of everything. Confident. And here I am at one of the most exciting times of my life and I feel like hiding.”

  I rolled my window down too, and Jamie took it as a cue to cut the engine. The distant sound of the waves behind the bar replaced the cool hum of the engine and we both relaxed into the comfort it brought.

  “I think it’s normal, to feel both excited and terrified of the future. And I’d be willing to bet every senior goes through what you are right now. You’re excited to get out of high school, but also sad, because as much as it’s sucked, it’s been fun, too. I mean look at you — you’re this big basketball star and you’re playing your last season, your hot little girlfriend is a junior, so you know she’s not coming with you, and you’re going from a familiar city and state to one you’ve only visited before now.”

  He shifted when I mentioned Jenna, but I tried to move on quickly.

  “What I’m saying is it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. I’d be more concerned if you weren’t scared.”

  For a minute we were silent, and Jamie ran both hands back through his long hair. I wondered if he’d cut it when we graduated. I hoped he wouldn’t.

  “What if I fail? What if I hate college and all the pressure and I just crack?”

  “You won’t.”

  “But what if I do?”

  “You won’t, Jamie,” I said again, leaning over the consul. I waited until he looked at me to continue. “Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about you. I know that when you want something — truly want it — there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever give up on it. Like when you wanted me to go watch one of your stupid basketball games even though you knew how much I hated it and you found new ways to pester me every day until I finally gave in.” I chuckled, but he remained stoic, so I cleared my throat and leaned in a little closer.

  “I know how much your family means to you, how much the firm means to you, and since you never play fair,” I teased, “you don’t have to worry about not succeeding.” The corner of his mouth lifted, but fell too quickly. I reached out then, just barely placing my hand over his. “In all seriousness, you’re not going to fail. Because that’s not who you are. And I think once your feet hit California, you’re going to buzz to life with the energy there and use that to drive you forward. And you’re going to drink too much and stay up too late but you’re also going to study hard and work harder and one day you’ll be back here, running the firm, with the wife and kids you’ve always wanted.” My throat felt thick at the mention of him building a family. “And I’m going to be sitting right here saying, ‘I told you so.’”

  Jamie turned to me then, and I realized how close we were. Too close. I felt his breath on my lips, but my eyes never left his. He smelled like fall — not like pumpkin and freshly fallen leaves, but like fall in Florida — salty like the beach air, earthy like the palm trees, with a sweet spiciness that reminded me of the honey whiskey my dad always drank after Thanksgiving dinner.

  “I hope you’re right,” he finally said, voice just above a whisper.

  My heart was racing, my hand still touching his, and he moved his fingers beneath mine as if he were about to grab me in return. But I took my chance to put distance between us, sitting back in my seat with a grin and a wink. “Always am.”

  Jamie turned on a new playlist after a while and we sat together, letting our minds race as we watched the waves gently roll in. It was too dark to really see them, but we could hear them, smell them, feel them. It was almost dawn by the time Jamie turned the Jeep back on to drive me home, and my eyelids were heavy when he pulled into the driveway.

  “Can I ask you something?” Jamie asked as my hand found the door handle. I nodded. “What happened to Rory?”

  I smiled, feeling the sleepiness tighten my skin. “My grandma came and stayed with us not too long after the bathroom incident and she and Rory fell in love. I suggested she take her, and I’d barely gotten the sentence out before Grandma was loading her up in the car.”

  Jamie looked tired, too — his honey eyes rimmed with red. But he was smiling at me so genuinely, watching me so closely — like he always did.

  “Can I ask you something now?” I whispered.

  “You can always ask me anything.”

  I hated the way those words both stung and exhilarated me, like a stiff shot of liquor.

  “If Jenna wasn’t out of town, would you have texted her tonight instead?”

  Jamie’s brows bent, and I hated the way my breath shallowed as I waited for him to speak. But when he finally did, I wished I’d never asked at all.

  “Don’t make me answer that.”

  His eyes were focused on mine, looking for my reaction, and I did my best not to have one. Nodding, my lips spread into a quick smile, but it slipped just as quickly as it’d appeared. “Goodnight, Jamie.”

  With that, I opened the door and closed it as quietly as I could behind me before sneaking back into my room. The sun was already starting to rise and I knew I didn’t have much time to sleep, yet still, I couldn’t even shut my eyes. I just stared at my wall, knees tucked up and covers wrapped around me tightly.

  Of course he would have called her if she were here. Jenna was his girlfriend, and I was just his friend. Which was fine, I reminded myself. It was more than fine. It was the way things were meant to be. Jenna and Jamie just made sense, and I was happy to be a part of the tricycle.

  Everything was fine.

  My eyes were fluttery, exhaustion seeping in, but just before I could doze off, my phone pinged from my bedside table. I tilted it up, my heart stopping at the text on the screen.

  — Thanks for tonight… You’re my best friend, B. —

  I stared at those last two words before my name, reading them together and then dissecting them until they blurred and I dropped my phone back to the nightstand, finally surrendering to sleep.

  It was less than a month before the end of the school year when Jenna told me she was breaking up with Jamie.

  “What?!” I exclaimed, a little too loudly, my burrito half-falling out of my mouth. I scrambled for my napkin, wiping at my mouth with wide eyes still locked in on Jenna’s unfazed face. “What are you talking about? Why? What happened?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Jenna asked, diving into the guacamole with one of her chips before popping it into her mouth. We were in the middle of the food court at the mall, hundreds of people around us shopping away, not knowing my best friend was dropping astronomical news on me mid-Mexican Fiesta. “He’s leaving, B. Jamie is about to graduate and move to California. It’s been fun, but it’s over. I mean, I knew this was coming. He was a great boyfriend, but it is what it is.”

  She said it so nonchalantly, dressing up another chip while I gripped my foil-wrapped burrito so hard the fillings oozed out onto my hands. I dropped it to my plate, grabbing more napkins, mouth still open wide. “Jenna, you can’t break up with Jamie. You guys are perfect together.”

  Jenna scrunched her nose. “I mean, we’re cute together, yes, but he’s going to college, dude. He’s going to want some sorority girl or something. And I’m going to be a senior. The last thing I want is a long-distance relationship.”

  “But this is Jamie!” I argued. “We’re talking about hilarious, down-to-earth, smart and driven Jamie. The guy who brought us chick flicks, french fries, and chocolate when it was period week. The guy who went to every single football game to watch you cheer. The guy who wore a freaking hot pink tie to match your prom dress.” I was waving my arms around like a mad woman, but Jenna didn’t bat an eye.

  “Like I said, he was a great boyfriend. Amazing, even. But we both knew it wasn’t going to last. And it’s totally
okay.”

  “No it’s not!” I couldn’t figure out why I was so horrified by her news, but I just couldn’t let it go. “He listens to classical music, Jenna. Like come on, what other guy do you know who listens to classical music?”

  “Um, no one?”

  “Exactly!” I said, exasperated. “And he has goals. He wants a family. He has the best sense of humor but he can also be serious when he needs to be. He’s like the pegasus to your unicorn.”

  “Okay…”

  “And he’s a good friend. Like, the best kind. He treats his mom like a queen and that says something about a man. And he drives a bright cherry red Jeep, Jenna! He surfs!”

  “Oh my God, I get it!” she finally huffed, tossing her hands up before crossing them over her chest. She rolled her eyes. “Jeeze, maybe you should date him.”

  I had nothing in my mouth to choke on, but I choked anyway. “What? No, no way. He’s, no Jamie is your boyfriend. You guys are perfect together. Jamie and I? No. We couldn’t, we’d never. No way.” I was stumbling over my words, slurping my drink too hard in-between sentences. I was officially the furthest thing from cool about the whole situation.

  And Jenna noticed.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I was joking, spazz. What is up with you? Why does this bother you so much?”

  Jenna was scrutinizing me, waiting for a confession of some kind. I stared back at her for a minute, frozen, and then finally forced a long, deep breath before covering my face with my hands. “Ugh, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I just really thought you guys were good together.” I sighed, scrubbing my hands down my face and letting them slap into my lap. “I just want you to be happy. But clearly you’re fine with this and it’s what you want, so of course I support you. It’s just my job as your best friend to question big decisions like this and make you think about them.”

  She was still watching me, eyes wary, but she smiled. “I love you, B. Even if you are thirty-five shades of weird.”

  “Love you too, bestie.”

  I forced a smile and changed the subject, all the while replaying our conversation in my head and wondering how Jamie would take the news.

  I must have texted Jenna a million times that night asking if she’d done it yet, but she hadn’t. She waited four days to break up with him, and once she told me it was done, I waited again — for him to text, for him to show up at my house, to want to take a drive. But he didn’t. He didn’t say a word to me. Not the night it happened, or the night after, or the week after. Jamie completely ignored me and Jenna both until the night he graduated.

  And that was when I met the other side of Jamie Shaw.

  It had been more than three months since I’d had a Friday night off.

  Since I needed every single Friday off in the fall semester for the games, I had to make up for it once football season was over by picking up the Friday slack at the grocery store. But now, school was out, the seniors were currently walking across the stage at our high school gym, and I was less than an hour away from stepping into the role they just left vacant.

  Senior.

  It felt strange, calling myself a senior, like when you say a word too many times out loud and it stops making sense. The plan for that night had been to crash the grad parties, say goodbye to our senior friends and toast our new reign. But Brad Newman’s parents had surprised him with a trip to the Bahamas, flying out immediately after graduation, and so the biggest grad party of the night had, in turn, been cancelled.

  Jenna made a joke earlier that week when we found out, saying that we should throw a party at my house. I don’t think she expected me to say, “Let’s do it!” Hell, I didn’t expect me to say it. But I was high that week, feeling the rush from the transition, and my mom was going to be out of town. Why not throw a party?

  So instead of getting ready to go out, Jenna and I were setting up my house, lining the counters with booze most of the seniors had worked together to get for the occasion and cranking the music on my mom’s old five-CD changer stereo. We were both dancing as we mixed punches with too much alcohol, broke out my mom’s favorite shot glasses, and put on lipstick that smeared too easily on the rims of our red plastic cups.

  “To us,” Jenna said, her cup tapping mine. “The new seniors.”

  “Seniors, Jenna!” I squealed, sipping my drink quickly before wrapping her in a crushing hug. “Can you believe we’ve made it? From pigtails and sandboxes to high school seniors.”

  “I know, it’s crazy to think about,” Jenna agreed, her eyes glossy as she shook her head. We were standing in my small kitchen, her leaned back against the counter while I straightened everything for the fifteenth time. “I couldn’t have gotten through all these years without you.”

  I paused, smiling at my best friend. “Me either.” Lifting my drink to my lips again, I kept my eyes on the counter when I asked, “Do you think Jamie will show?”

  It seemed I was more affected by that possibility than Jenna was, because she simply shrugged, shaking her blonde hair over her shoulder and adjusting the spaghetti straps of her thin tank top. “I doubt it. He went ghost on us after I broke up with him. I imagine he’ll probably end up at a different party, if he even goes out at all.” She frowned. “I think I broke his heart, B.”

  I took another, longer drink, letting the fruity sting of the alcohol sink in. “I should turn the air down. It’s probably going to get pretty hot in here.”

  I couldn’t have known how right I’d be about that.

  The party kicked into gear slowly, a few people trickling in around nine followed by a few more and it continued like that until my house was completely packed. The music was too loud, thumping through every room as tables were cleared of picture frames and knick knacks and replaced instead with drinking games of various types. With how often the front door opened to let new people in and the back door opened to let people out to smoke and drink in the back yard, it became a pointless task to try to keep it cool. South Florida was hot in June, plain and simple, and I gave up trying to fight that.

  Still, if I wasn’t able to control the temperature inside, I needed to find another way to stay cool. The alcohol was cold, but still sent a heat wave through me with each new sip. I was in the middle of a flip cup game with Jenna and a slew of people I didn’t know very well when I gave up and decided to go for the next option — taking clothes off.

  I had a thin tank top on underneath my shirt, so the strip show would be PG-13, at best. I pulled the loose v-neck over my head, vision temporarily blocked by the lavender fabric before I dropped it to the floor with a smile, those in close proximity cheering over the music at my little stunt. I felt instantly cooler for all of three seconds before my eyes landed on the newest arrivals at the party and my smile slipped, along with the cup in my hand, its contents crashing to the table.

  Jamie looked different. I knew it had only been a few weeks since we’d hung out, I knew he was the same age, but there was something different about him. It was the way he carried himself, the cocky half-smile he was flashing me as he high-fived a few of the guys in my living room, the challenge in his eyes before he tore them away from me and turned to a tiny brunette on Jenna’s cheerleading squad, instead. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at him with my mouth open, but clearly it was long enough for Jenna to notice, because she followed my eyes and gasped.

  “Holy shit, he showed.”

  I swallowed, finally ripping my eyes away and stacking cups for a new game. “Mm-hmm.”

  “He looks hot.”

  “Everyone does, it’s a hundred degrees in here.”

  Jenna smirked, nudging my elbow before letting her eyes find Jamie again. “Man, maybe I should have waited until after graduation to break things off. Would be nice to have one more night with him…”

  “I’m going to go figure out what to do with my hair,” I said quickly, giving up on setting up a new game and ducking through the crowd to my room. There were several signs on the door with warning
s of those who dared to enter, clearly marking it as a NO PARTY ZONE, which I was even more grateful for when I slipped inside and felt the only air-conditioned relief in the house. I sighed, back against my door, and took a few much-needed breaths through my nose before opening my eyes again.

  I fanned my neck, crossing to my small vanity mirror and taking a pulse check of my appearance. My makeup was somehow holding up, eyes dark and dramatic like Jenna had shown me how to do, but my hair was frizzy and unruly, so I twisted it into a tight bun on top of my head and secured it with a few bobby pins before reapplying lipstick. The deep, dark red almost made my freckles pop more under my gray eyes, but I embraced them.

  Turning in the mirror, I eyed the wet spots on my tank top, debating changing, but knowing that would earn me a few raised eyebrows from my classmates. I’d just called attention to what I was wearing and it would be weird to walk out in something new now.

  Once I had regained my composure, I slipped back out to the stifling heat of the party and made my way to the kitchen, a new idea for cooling myself sparking to life. Frozen margaritas. That’s what this party needed. But first, I had to get to my mom’s blender, which was conveniently placed on the very top shelf of our top right cabinet.

  I opened the cabinet wide and eyed the edge of the blender peeking out over the shelf, hands on my hips, debating options. I’d just braced my hands on the counter and was about to lift myself up when strong hands found my waist.

  “Here,” he said, voice low and husky. “Let me help.”

  His hands gripped tighter and he lifted me, my knees finding the counter as I tried to find my breath and a little balance. For a second I just stayed there, staring at the blender within reach now, but not being able to focus on anything other than where his hot skin touched mine. My tank top had risen, his grip on the slick skin of my hips. I forced a breath, grabbed the blender, and made to turn but was stopped by him once more.

  He had stepped closer to the counter and every inch of my body brushed his as he lowered me down. First just my hips in his hands, but then my ass rubbed against the front of him, causing him to groan into my neck as my toes finally found solid ground. I turned, his hands still on me, my breath still caught in my throat as I lifted my eyes to his.