Blinking open my eyes, I see her. Jen’s face above mine, her delicate brows scrunched together, those big brown eyes full of concern. A relieved smile curls her lips and she touches my cheek with delicate fingers. “You’re awake.” Her voice is so soft, I almost can’t hear her, and I wonder if she’s talking this way so she won’t startle or scare me.
Staring at her, I drink in her pretty, familiar features. The soft glow in her eyes, the way she touches me, makes me realize I need her in my life. I need her to open up to me again, share with me her hopes and dreams and problems. I want to help her. I want her to help me.
There’s more between us than friendship, more than our shared history. She means everything to me.
The realization renders me breathless.
I squeeze my eyes shut, then slowly open them again, trying to get her into focus. My muscles are tight, my entire body is tense, and she slips her fingers into my hair, her touch so gentle it sends tingles scattering over my skin.
My very exposed skin, since I’m naked as the day I was born.
Chapter 5
Jen
He’s trembling in my arms, his electric-blue eyes stark and full of so much misery and pain as they stare into mine. I go with my instincts and draw him fully into my arms, clinging so tight I’m afraid I might never let him go.
His dreams are coming more frequently and I’m worried. They’re consuming him. Time is supposed to heal all wounds, not make them worse.
Though time hasn’t healed all my wounds, I suppose, so why should I expect it would for Colin?
Rolling onto my back, I bring Colin with me, his head nestled on my shoulder, his hair tickling my skin. He slings his arm around me, resting it across the top of my chest, his big hand cupping my shoulder. I don’t mind the heavy weight. He feels solid, alive, so incredibly right lying with me like this. He’s still shaky, though his breathing is evening out, and I tentatively sink my fingers back into his silky, soft hair, hoping to calm him down.
“Want to tell me about it?” I ask him this same question every single time.
And every single time he ignores it. Still, I have to try.
I rake my fingers through his hair again and again, closing my eyes when he nestles closer, our legs tangling. His skin is hot, the hair on his legs rasps against mine, and he’s so incredibly hard . . .
As in I can feel his erection since he’s naked.
My eyes fly open and I stare up at the ceiling. I’ve come to his bed countless times, but he always at least has underwear on. Not tonight. I can feel every blessed naked inch of him against me. Arousal courses through me, trickling through my veins, settling between my legs, and I press my lips together. The temptation to turn toward him is so overwhelming I have to remind myself I can’t do it.
Well. I could. But I’m not about to play with fire.
“I was chasing Danny,” he finally says, his voice so quiet I have to strain to hear him. I’m stunned he’s saying anything. This is a total first. “That’s how my dreams always start.”
I quietly wait him out. I’m scared to speak for fear he’ll shut up. Scared not to say anything, too, for fear he’ll shut up.
“The scenario can change, but I’m always, always chasing him. Looking for him. Most of the time I don’t find him, but when I do . . .” He shudders. “Those dreams are usually the worst.”
“Did—did you find him in this one?” I want to know, and then again, I don’t. I used to dream of Danny too. All the time after he first died, some of the dreams sad, most of them happy, though I always woke with an ache in my heart because I missed him so much. Those dreams were more like memories of our past, as opposed to horrible nightmares.
“I did.” His deep voice is somber, the sound slowly breaking my heart.
Colin is always breaking my heart. He can smile and laugh, joke and flirt at work, but it’s all a mask. At home, here in the middle of the night, this is the real man. The one who deals with pain and suffering and so much damn guilt it has to be paralyzing.
I wish I could absorb some of it for him, but I have my own pain to contend with. If I weren’t so worried he’d hate me forever, I’d tell him what I did. How I sold myself to men so easily. My secret shame would devastate him. He thinks he’s dealing with a tremendous load of guilt . . .
Mine nearly suffocates me.
He says nothing else and neither do I. We lie there together quietly for so long, his breathing starts to slowly even out, and I know him well enough to know that he’s fallen back asleep.
I wish I could sleep too, but I can’t. Not when I’m held captive in his strong arms, his big, hot body pressed to mine. My thoughts race with what he told me, the questions running through my mind. I’ve known Colin for years, yet in many ways he’s still a complete mystery to me.
As I stare at the ceiling, I’m achingly aware of how close he is, our bodies practically entwined. After our kiss last night I can think of nothing else but doing it again. Doing more. Taking our intimate moments farther.
Kissing him, doing anything else with Colin, would totally deter me from ever leaving him. Though I’m not stupid, my heart might be, and my body definitely would. It would betray me in an instant. I know I would become addicted to him. We’re not even doing anything and I literally crave him. Want to taste him, touch him, run my hands and mouth and tongue all over his skin.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a very sexual person. I’m no uptight virgin, but no guy has ever really rocked my world and left me gasping for more. As I grew up with an overprotective big brother and his equally overprotective best friend, boys tended to steer clear of me in my earlier teen years and I couldn’t blame them. As I grew older, though, those same boys came chasing after me once Danny and Colin graduated high school, and yeah, I dated a few. Had sex for the first time with my first serious boyfriend on prom night during our senior year.
A spectacularly bad experience for me at least, and Doug Evans and I broke up soon after. Then he took off to college midway through the summer after we graduated, and I never saw or heard from him again.
I had one other long-term boyfriend, but we split right after Danny died. He couldn’t take all the mourning and sadness, not that I could blame him. I would have broken up with me too. Other than that, I’ve had sex with a handful of guys, but nothing too serious—and what happened when I was at Gold Diggers doesn’t count.
But no man has ever rocked my socks off, for lack of a better term. The only guy who makes me want is the one who’s lying here with me, sleeping on my shoulder, clinging to me like I might be his lifeline.
He devastates me and he doesn’t even know it.
This is absolute, exquisite torture. I need to get out of his bed before I do something stupid. Slowly I try to disengage myself from his hold but he clings tighter, his fingers curling around my shoulder, his weight seeming to become heavier as he lies half on top of me. I thought he was asleep, but he’s not acting like he is.
“Don’t go.” He whispers the words against my neck. I can feel his lips move, their damp warmth upon my skin making me shiver. “Stay with me.”
His words, the tone of his voice, render me completely still and I lie there, immobilized. I want more, want to do so much more, but I’m afraid he’ll reject me the way he did last night. I played it off to Fable earlier—hell, I played it off to myself—but that hurt, how easily he walked away. How Colin never acknowledges anything that happens between us. It’s confusing.
Devastating.
“Colin . . .” My voice drifts off when he touches my jaw, his fingers feather light as they trace my chin, then slip down my throat. His entire hand spans the front of my neck, exerting the slightest bit of pressure, and a wave of arousal washes over me at his possessive touch.
He slides his hand down, settling on my chest, his wide palm pressing against the tops of my breasts, his fingers gently tracing my collarbone. My breath hitches in my throat, leaving me in shuddery little whispers I can?
??t control.
“You want this. I can feel your heart racing.” His lips are on my neck, his breath a hot gust on my skin. “You come to me every night always wanting to help me. Never asking for anything. Why, Jen?”
“You’re my friend.” A shaky exhale leaves me. “I don’t like to see you hurting.”
Colin remains quiet, nuzzling me with his nose, inhaling deep, as if he’s trying to inhale me. I’ve gone completely rigid, stunned by the way he’s acting. I like it, I can’t lie, but he’s also scaring me.
I don’t want to get my hopes up.
“Is that all there is? That I’m just your friend and you don’t want to see me hurting?” He sounds incredulous, as well he should. After what I said to him last night, how I told him I wanted him?
Yeah. He knows I’m full of crap.
“I . . . I don’t know.” God, no way can I admit how I feel again only for him to throw my words back in my face.
Again.
He moves so quickly I gasp, shocked to find him hovering above me, his face close to mine, his hand moving to cup the side of my neck. His eyes are practically glowing as they rove over me. “What the fuck are we doing?”
His bold question shocks me further. I have no idea how to answer, and I close my eyes when he presses his forehead to mine. I can’t look at him. Everything I’m feeling at this very moment is too . . . much.
Colin Wilder is the epitome of too much.
He shifts closer so that our lips practically touch. “I have no idea,” I whisper, my lips moving over his as I speak. His mouth is on mine and then he’s kissing me. Soft, heady kisses that make me dizzy, my lips parting with every brush of his, a whimper escaping me when he draws my lower lip in between his and sucks.
He feels so good, tastes even better, and he shifts against me, his erection brushing the very center of me. We’re perfectly aligned; he could shove aside my panties and be inside me within seconds.
I want it. I want him so bad my entire body is wound tight, feeling like at any given moment I could shatter into a million tiny pieces.
A ringing sounds in the distance and I open my eyes to find Colin staring into them, his gaze full of questions. No way do I want to stop this. We’ve only just begun. He can answer his phone later.
But then I realize the ringing is coming from my cell phone in my room. We can hear it through that thin wall we share. Disappointment crashes over me at the same exact time I see it shade Colin’s beautiful eyes.
Damn it! I have Colin sprawled on top of me naked and my fucking phone is ringing. And it’s the special ring tone that I assigned to none other than my mother, who never, ever calls me. Especially in the middle of the night.
At least in a long time. All of a sudden, I’m filled with a weird sense of déjà vu that leaves me uneasy.
“I—I have to get that.” I shove at his broad mountain of a chest but he doesn’t so much as budge. “It’s my mom.”
He leaps off me as if I burned him with the word and I scramble off the bed, running for my room, but I’m too late. I’ve missed her call. Immediately I dial her number, my heart racing, my head pounding, worry gnawing at my stomach.
“There you are,” Mom answers, her voice slurred.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I grip my phone tight, dread consuming me. I don’t want to know what’s wrong. Maybe something happened to Dad. There’s really no one else in our family to worry about anymore. And we’ve only just started talking again, my mom and I, though it hasn’t been easy. After I ran away without a word and then Colin found me, I had a difficult time talking to them. I felt too guilty for leaving.
I still remember the night I left. I’d planned my getaway for weeks. Saved up a little money, sold off a few things. I told absolutely no one I was going, though I really didn’t have any friends around who would have cared.
The evening had been cold and my parents stayed up for what felt like forever. Drinking and arguing and crying—yet again—over Danny. I’d put my hands over my ears as I lay on top of my bed. Closed my eyes as tight as I could to drown out their sorrow.
Escaping hadn’t been easy, but it had been the right thing for me at the time. I avoided their calls, my mom’s texts, until I changed my cell number. I gave them no way to find me, though somehow, they eventually did. I think one of Danny’s high school friends saw me at the club.
How embarrassing!
They’re still wrapped up in their mourning for Danny, not that they care what I have to say about it. There are so many things I could tell them. Terrible, horrible things, but I know they wouldn’t hear me. Oh, they’d pretend they were listening, but my words wouldn’t sink in. Besides, my parents don’t really talk. My dad works too much. My mom . . . I don’t know what she’s doing, but I have my suspicions. She’s drinking too much. Drowning her sorrows.
I don’t know how to help her. I don’t want to. It’s incredibly selfish of me to think that way, but I can’t help it.
“Belinda Lambert called me,” she said. “You remember Parker Lambert, right? He was right in between you and Danny, graduated high school the year after your brother did.”
Frowning, I try to place him but I can’t. Sometimes all those kids I went to school with morph into one big blur. And I went to school with pretty much all of them from kindergarten through senior year of high school. Funny how they’re all just a mass of faces now, not a one of them really standing apart. “Why are you calling me in the middle of the night to gossip about local boys?”
She lets loose an irritated sound. I wonder if she’s drunk. It’s not quite two a.m. Has she been at a bar? I sort of can’t imagine it, but then again, I can. She’s done this before. And besides, weirder things have happened these last few years. “I ran into his mom at the Buckhorn. Parker died in Afghanistan, ju—just like your brother.”
Oh God. She’s definitely drunk, considering she was at the Buckhorn, the bar where all the locals hang out in Shingletown, where I grew up. “When . . . when did it happen?”
“A few days ago. Belinda’s devastated. Just devastated.” She hiccups and sobs at the same time and I settle on the edge of the bed, hanging my head as I listen to her go on. Crying over Danny, crying for Parker.
Crying for herself.
She used to call me like this a lot, right after Danny died. I’d worked late-night shifts at one of the diners in the next town over, a real tourist trap where I kept busy, worked plenty of hours, and made great tips. She would call me on my thirty-minute-plus drive home, a little drunk from the wine she consumed too much of at dinner and crying. Always crying over the loss of Danny and how unfair life was.
I’m sick of it. Yes, I miss my brother, but it’s been almost two years. Why can’t everyone just . . . move on? He would be furious to see everyone act like this, especially Colin. I left home for this very reason, and here I am all over again. Surrounded by sadness and despair. I need a change of scenery. I need to find myself without the dark cloak of my brother’s untimely death hanging over me.
As I finally hang up with my mom and crawl into bed without going back to Colin, I realize now more than ever that I need my freedom.
The healing butterfly tattoo on my neck is becoming more and more representative of my life as every day passes.
Chapter 6
Colin
We’ve gone back to the way we were, Jen and I. Those few days after she gave her notice and confessed that she wanted me and I basically refused her, those two nights in my bed . . . all of that’s forgotten. We’re back to her working, me working, and the two of us living together but never really talking.
It’s been a week. She’s leaving me in three. To find out what’s going on in her life, I eavesdrop on her conversations with others at The District like a desperate loser looking for any glimmer of information. They’re all curious as to why she’s leaving, and why I’m not reacting. They all think we have a secret thing and we’ve never really deterred them from thinking otherwise.
&
nbsp; More like I’ve never deterred it. I know how hot she is. Guys would be all over her if they thought they had a sliver of a chance. So I glower every time I catch any guy approaching her. Putting all of my past ‘I’m a protective big brother, don’t touch her’ skills from when she was a teen and every dude in her class wanted to bang her.
They all leave her alone and she never protests. Somehow, I still fucked this up.
When people question her about her plans, she’s always evasive, offering general answers and with such a pretty smile every single time, I swear my heart seizes up when I see it. I’m surprised I haven’t dropped dead of a massive heart attack before the age of twenty-five. Last night had been an eye opener. I want her. Just looking at her makes me feel all growly and possessive. Jen belongs to me.
She just doesn’t realize it yet.
Only Fable knows what’s really going on in Jen’s life and head—at least I figure she knows everything, because she and Jen are so close. Whereas I know nothing, because Jen and I aren’t anything close to close.
My employees on shift tonight are all crowded in the bar at this very moment, chatting before the dinner crowd shows up. I don’t bother reprimanding them, though I should. I rarely let them get away with standing around and doing nothing while on the clock.
But the restaurant looks good—everything’s clean and the tables are properly set for the customers. I like everything to have a certain look, a clean aesthetic that gives us a reputation for being a classy joint, as my father would say, versus yet another dive bar/restaurant where the college students hang out.
Considering I’ve trained my employees so well that they’re actually getting shit accomplished without me having to remind them, I just don’t have it in me to yell.
Besides, I’m trying to glean information from Jen, since she’s sure as hell not talking to me. They all surround her because they respect her. She’s taken it upon herself more than once to help run the place. She has a convincing way about her; corralling my employees and getting them to do what she wants comes naturally for her.