He gestures to his sleeping bag; he wants me to join him. This realization makes my heartbeat almost triple in speed, and I can feel my stomach start to flip with excitement. Or maybe fear. Or maybe anxiety. But I mean, what did I expect when he said he wanted the tent for both of us? I don’t know. All I do know is that I feel like the next in line to ride a big-ass roller coaster, and I want to get on, I’ve been waiting for it for a while, but I can’t seem to move. I want to stay in line a little longer. Except this big-ass roller coaster has his hands hooked behind his head and is looking at me with such a penetrating stare, I actually get an adrenaline rush.
I breathe deep and walk to my bag, untie the strap of my halter dress, and slowly slide it down my body until I’m left in my bra and panties. I reach down in my bag and put on my big cotton sleeping shirt. Malcolm is still looking at me, inviting me to come into his sleeping bag. I pad over in my bare feet, feeling the grass softly crunch underneath the tent floor.
He opens the flap of the sleeping bag. I slip in, making sure there’s some distance between us, because I don’t want to seem eager. I settle into the surprisingly comfortable sleeping bag, looking up at the ceiling. I can hear soft chatter outside. The crickets chirping. The wind rustling the leaves. And I can feel Malcolm’s body beside me. His heat. His cologne. I don’t dare look at him because I know that if I do, anything can happen. We’re surrounded by a couple dozen people, but inside our little tent, our little bubble, there is just me and him. No one else. And that scares the crap out of me.
Just then I feel Malcolm shift, and his hand makes its way across my stomach, to my waist, and he draws me up against him until my back is to his chest.
Holy shit, I’m spooning him. Or he’s spooning me. Holy shit.
I focus on breathing. The back of my head is tucked beneath his chin, and I can feel his chest expand with every breath. His heat flows through my cotton T-shirt, warming my stomach and back. His face is so close to mine, if I turn around my lips will touch his.
I nervously move my arm to cover his, and he turns his hand to intertwine our fingers.
All I can hear is my heart banging in my chest and my pulse ringing in my ears. Just being around him makes me lose myself. He makes me feel a thousand different things, so I snuggle a little closer to him, the daredevil that I am, telling myself there’s nothing wrong with wanting a little warmth. Even though it’s not that cool in here. He nuzzles my head, tightens his hold on me, and places a little kiss on the top of my head. The feeling I get when he does that is indescribable. I feel butterflies in my stomach, and my throat tightens. I want to turn around and wrap my arms around him, and I want to kiss him, because feeling his huge chest against me makes me crazy. He is enveloping me completely, holding me in his arms, his big, strong, warm arms. Being drawn against his chest, having his arm hold me against him. It’s the safest I’ve ever felt.
I crack my eyes open, hearing voices outside. I hear movement, some laughter, and the sunlight is shining through the tent’s ceiling.
The tent’s ceiling.
Malcolm Saint’s tent’s ceiling.
Malcolm Saint, who’s currently lying beneath me.
HOOOOLY SHIT.
My arm is thrown across his chest, and my head is settled in the crook of his shoulder.
My leg is thrown across his body, resting between his legs.
What the hell is wrong with me? Holy crap.
Second thing I notice: he feels very muscular against me.
Okay.
My heart is beating so fast I can feel it threatening to burst out of my chest and run away.
I start to unwind myself from Malcolm, and I feel him stir, tightening his arm around me. He groans a little, and I can feel him move his arm a little lower.
I try to unwind myself more, and his hand ends up splayed across my butt cheek. His hand is huge; it covers my whole butt cheek. I try to contain my panic and some other emotions boiling up in me as I manage to lie on my back. Malcolm shifts again. He drags me up against him and I gasp. The bastard is awake, isn’t he?
His face is nestled between my breasts.
“Malcolm!” I shout-whisper.
He stays silent.
“Malcolm, I swear to god, someone could come in here any minute; get your face off my boobs!”
At that he laughs and picks his head up, looking at me quietly.
My breath catches in my throat. He looks gorgeous. His lazy stare, his bed hair, his body deliciously warm and holding mine. I feel something stir in the pit of my stomach. He lowers his head back down.
“Don’t be mad at me,” he whispers to my neck. His voice sounds even deeper in the morning. I groan inwardly because my anger vanished the moment he opened his eyes and smiled at me.
I don’t answer, because I know my voice will betray me.
He looks up at me again. I frown and attempt to scowl at him, but I don’t think it works that well, because he just smirks and lowers himself back to my breasts, then moves lower still. He plants a kiss on my stomach; then he raises himself up and places another kiss on my neck.
“Are you mad at me?” he says again.
I don’t even know what he asked me.
“What?” I ask.
He places a kiss on my shoulder, then takes my hand and kisses the inside of my wrist. He keeps my hand in his, his fingers playing with mine. “Are you mad at me?” he teases, brushing my hair behind my ear in a move that suddenly just fills me with longing.
“Yeah, I’m mad. I’m mad because . . . What are you doing here? I can’t sleep with you.”
He chuckles.
“I can’t sleep with you, Saint. I won’t.”
His gaze goes liquid as he rubs his thumb up my arm. “Yeah, you will, Rachel,” he promises.
“I won’t,” I promise him.
All the laughter fades from his eyes and he says nothing. He surveys me, and I can almost hear the wheels turn in his head as he figures out how to break my walls.
“Is there a man in your life?”
“No!”
“Then I don’t see a problem.”
“The problem is”—I jab a finger in the direction of the tent’s zipper—“Tammy . . . and all your other floozies. I don’t want to be one of them!”
“Then don’t be one of them,” he whispers in my ear.
When he offers to give me a ride home so that I can change for the office this morning, we don’t even tease each other at all.
“Come here so I can kiss you,” he coaxes from the bench across from mine in the back of the Rolls. I feel vulnerable and raw, like someone just opened me up and peered inside. He knows I want him, and I can tell from the look in his eyes he won’t let up until he gets me. I shiver. “Rachel,” he says, when we get close to my place.
“We can’t keep doing this.”
“Rachel, there’s nothing I won’t do to get you in my bed,” he says, his eyes hot and hungry.
My body responds, and it takes all my effort not to leap across the car, wrap myself around him, and let him kiss me stupid like he always does.
“Thanks, Saint,” I murmur as the car stops before my building.
He murmurs, “Malcolm,” as I get out.
I pause and look at him. I feel like I’m kissing him again when I concede and murmur, “Malcolm.”
He looks at my lips like he’s definitely thinking of kissing me again. Like hearing his name in my mouth just fondled him somewhere . . . maybe his beautiful, perfect dick. Ohmigod, what am I thinking?
I turn away and hurry upstairs.
On Thursday, he asks me out to dinner.
My heart leaps and vaults—he wants you, Rachel, he’s actively pursuing you—but my brain puts an end to that ridiculousness. I can’t risk being seen by more press—my true story being discovered. I am also afraid of seeing him in any sort of dating sense again. Look what happened last time?
I tell him that I’m busy and he just texts back: OK.
I wonde
r if he’s calm about me denying him or if he’s frustrated. My own sexual frustration is so acute I beg the girls to please let’s have a night out at our favorite Japanese restaurant because I need the girl therapy. Distraction. I just really need to stop thinking of him.
But it seems they both found out, through word of mouth and everyone’s best friend, the internet, that Saint was at an End the Violence campout, and they can’t believe he actually went looking for me after my casual mention at the Tunnel.
“Okay, so let me get this straight. This guy, a playboy who doesn’t truly know you, is willing to do what Wynn and I aren’t?” Gina says.
“Don’t look so stumped. You’re with me when I’m painting murals, you’re great supporters.”
“He wants to get laid—that’s a powerful motivator. Wynn and I, on the other hand, want nothing from you but your friendship.”
“Does he want to get laid? He’s a guy who gets it whenever. He’s the kind whose body just begs for it.” I blush. “He’s getting it somewhere.”
“Get out and get drunk, have fun, and get it somewhere too, then,” Gina says.
I’m sleepless and tired, groaning. “Not really up for that.”
“You’ll get rolling once you’re a few cocktails in.”
“You’re worried that you like him?” asks Wynn.
“No. This isn’t a relationship, I’m just worried that he’s much more than a manwhore. He’s pretty cool.”
Wynn: “It’s so nerve-wracking but exciting not to know in those heart-pounding early stages what he’s thinking.”
Gina: “Oh, trust me, all he’s thinking of is his cock in your mouth.”
“When you say you worry,” Wynn says, “you mean you worry the man wants you or that you may not be as strong as you thought, strong enough to resist him?”
“I am resisting him. Otherwise that night I could’ve just torn his clothes off and ravaged him.”
“Rache!” Wynn scowls. “Physically denying him is only making you more obsessed. Just fuck the guy and get your head straight for the article, and he’ll move on, giving you plenty of fodder.”
“True,” I agree.
Wynn: “And you’ll think clearer.”
The thought of doing Malcolm is wreaking havoc in me. “It feels like danger zone to me.”
“It’s a fucking suicide mission. I don’t like it,” Gina says.
“More danger zone to keep prolonging the inevitable time when he moves in—just get it over with and get your piece written,” says Wynn.
Sex with Malcolm. I’m growing obsessed with it.
That’s what Gina strives for now, just sexual hookups. It’s strange how circumstances that burn the people around me, like Gina, could have such a profound effect on my love life. But they have. I have been reluctant to start anything with any man my entire life.
And now I choose to want to sleep with this one?
Really?
It’s like waking from a nap to find yourself dropping down into the world’s deepest chasm.
I have a job to do; I wanted to do it, and I didn’t plan to sleep with him to find out what makes the man tick.
My life has been all about studies, work, my mother, a great job, Gina and Wynn. With the girls? We’ve been friends since middle school, all through high school—we even managed to survive those college years when Wynn went away. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving and summer we’d meet up, catch up.
We all “lived” the Paul issue. He was so nice and so in love with Gina. I used to fantasize about meeting my own Paul. Paul was what Wynn and I aspired to. Until he did the Paul move, and our best friend was broken, not only brokenhearted, and we struggled to help her pull through. Wynn got over it, she still believes there are good men out there, like Emmett. I, on the other hand, developed a fear of guy love that has made me determined to avoid heartache and heartbreak at any cost. And it also, in a sense, made me avoid sex and focus on work.
Gina and I like men—but we don’t want them close enough to hurt us. And we feel lucky that we know. We’re in the smart girls’ closet, where all the girls who never want to be brokenhearted go. Right?
True, when Emmett proves us a little wrong and Wynn comes to brunch looking flushed and excited, it’s a bit of a downer. But all we need as a reminder that we’re right is another tale from a guy like Paul, and our goals are reinforced. Our careers, our moms, and our friends are what matters.
Now I’m not so sure.
Now I think about Saint’s anatomy all day. Maybe I chose the wrong career. I should’ve been a chemist. A doctor. Because I keep wondering why he has this pull on me. I keep wanting to go crazy, have my way with him, and watch him dump me and then write about it.
“Rachel’s clammed up, I think a plan is forming,” Gina says worriedly.
I groan and shake my head.
“Don’t sleep with him, Rachel, not him,” Gina murmurs.
I look at her and nod.
The thing about having such close friends like Wynn and Gina is that we are determined to fix each other’s lives. So now Gina and Wynn are determined to fix mine. And if they can’t, it seems they’re ready to fix me up with a guy.
“Okay, so not him. I know who. He’s Emmett’s cousin and he’s the complete package,” Wynn insists. “The reason you’re attracted to Saint right now—”
“Is because he’s Saint,” Gina groans.
“Well, true,” Wynn agrees. “But you’ve been focused on work too long. Every extreme is bad news, even in dieting, even in sex or abstinence.”
“Guys, stop. I don’t want to date, okay? I want to feel secure in my career first before I let some guy take me out for a spin. . . . Look, don’t worry,” I assure them. “It’s all work for me from now until I get this piece done,” I vow.
I imagine his flesh against mine, him sliding inside me, his mouth on me, his moan of ecstasy, and I wish things were different for me, that I could actually have him. But this, this story, is all I can really have. Isn’t it?
He’s not a man to give anyone more, and I’m not the kind of woman to change all of her life for the wild dream of love. But what if for one night, one night, I let myself spend it with him?
18
SPINNING
Later that night I’m feverish, gathering more data at 12 a.m. It suddenly seems imperative that I get the exposé done as soon as possible because, despite what I assured my friends, I’m afraid I’ve developed somewhat of a crush.
Mooning over his pictures on the internet.
What the hell is up with that?
I stumble across another YouTube video of his father. Saint isn’t in the video, but his father is ranting about his own son on television. “He’s had business luck, he has a shrewd mind and his mother’s inheritance, but my son has no idea of the responsibility it takes to run a billion-dollar company.”
“Well, he’s proved you wrong, hasn’t he?” I mumble to the man.
He’s a handsome man, maybe fifty-five years old. He looks nothing like Malcolm, except that he’s large and virile. Malcolm got that from his father, but he got his mother’s beauty and her dazzling smile.
When I research her and her death, I find out several things. Catherine H. Ulysses, one of Malcolm’s assistants, the one I’m sure is in love with him, seemed to be at the funeral, standing close to a young Malcolm, which confirms that she’s known him for a while. And second, I find out something surprising about his mother. Saint’s mother, Juliette, was apparently big on animals, and every year made huge donations to activist groups. The day Saint saved Rosie, it was the anniversary of his mother’s death—I track back in time and find out that every year since she died Saint has saved, or adopted, one animal. Every year he visits her gravesite afterward (his cars have been spotted in the cemetery parking lot yearly).
My heart tugs. I saw him that day, and maybe he was hurting the same way I do when it’s the anniversary of Dad’s death. I remember we dropped Saint off at M4 and his car w
as waiting, and I never expected that he’d be heading to the cemetery, but it makes me wish I’d known before. It makes me wish I knew what makes this man tick. I could’ve been with him tonight. I could’ve let him take me out to some fancy event and then . . . then what, Rachel? Then do the most reckless thing you’ve ever done by sleeping with him, even with your most precious story on the line?
Utterly conflicted, I keep clicking links, especially the ones about him and his parents.
Gina’s chowing on cereal in her effort to get rid of the cocktail buzz she’s still harboring when we get a knock on the door, and all I hear, after she goes to answer it, are the words “. . . apartment 3C . . . dead . . .”
My blood freezes in my body as I watch Gina close the door, put her hands over her face, and burst into tears.
“Gina!” I gasp.
“Miss Sheppard,” she chokes out.
An image of her smiling, just the other day, with her pets outside, hits me. One second my face is dry, the next it’s wet with tears. This scene, this fear, of huge, unexpected loss, has haunted me my whole life. It’s been there since my father’s death, even before I had reason enough to know it was there. A feeling of complete vulnerability. Of having your world always spin and never be still for a minute for you to get your bearings.
It turns out that Lindsey Sheppard, our neighbor a few floors down, was shot and killed by a group of young men driving by in a vehicle only an hour ago.
Miss Sheppard didn’t make it to the hospital alive.
Gina and I are so shocked that, after crying passionately for ten minutes and hugging each other, we turn on the TV and watch the news. I snivel, she snivels, we both snivel. I call my mom and ask if she’s all right. She asks if I’m all right. I lie and say that I am.
“I swear I will die happy the day I don’t see all this in the news,” Gina sighs wearily, grabbing the remote and switching off the TV. She flips open my laptop and settles next to me so that we can search the news online.