Living Out Loud (The Austen Series Book 3)

by Staci Hart

  I almost lied. I probably should, but alas, I was the worst liar in history and knew it. “To Romeo and Juliet at the Lincoln Center. Greg got us tickets.”

  Everything about his face hardened, even his eyes. Maybe his eyes most of all. “You’re kidding, Annie. Please, tell me you’re kidding.”

  I shook my head.

  “You know he likes you, don’t you?”

  I huffed. “Not you too.”

  He stepped away from me and raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. You don’t take a friend to the ballet.”

  “And why not?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest.

  “Because you just don’t. He likes you, and you’re going on a date with him.”

  “It’s not a date, Will.”

  “It’s a date, and I thought we were exclusive.”

  “Hang on just a second,” I shot. “Because this isn’t about me going to the ballet; it’s about me going with Greg. I won’t ask you to like him. I won’t even ask you to be around him. But Greg is my friend. He was my friend before I ever met you, and he’ll continue to be my friend. Just as much as I don’t want my seeing you to be a problem for him, I don’t want my friendship with him to be a problem for you. And if it’s a problem for you, then we really do have bigger issues.”

  He watched me for a second, the muscle in his tight jaw bouncing.

  “So, is it going to be a problem?”

  Will let out an audible breath and unlocked his jaw. “No,” he said as he stepped back into me, winding his arms around my waist.

  “Good,” I sang sweetly, trying to defuse the tension, my arms taking their previous spot around his neck.

  “I just don’t like him.”

  “I know.”

  “And I don’t want him to interfere.”

  “He won’t.”

  Will almost smiled. “He’d better not.” He sighed, his anger dissipating. “I’m sorry, Annie. Sometimes when I get mad, get…jealous,” he admitted, “I say things I don’t mean. Will you bear with me?”

  My heart softened. “Of course,” I said on a breath.

  And then he kissed me.

  I was so preoccupied with where my hands were or if he was enjoying the kiss or if I was any good at it; there was really no way I could even stop to enjoy it.

  He pulled back with a crooked smile on his face. “Wanna make out?”

  A giggle bubbled out of me, and I nodded, feeling like I was in junior high. Except in junior high, I had been too busy reading books and playing piano to kiss boys.

  Will scooped me up and carried me to the couch, laying me down. My heart almost stopped when he started climbing on top of me, and I shifted, smiling nervously, putting him on his side with his back to the couch.

  And thus began my very first make-out session.

  We kissed in the same emotionless way I’d felt on our date, but we persevered until our lips were swollen, and a very alarming, very hard boner was pressed against my hip. I tried to mimic what he did with his lips, tried to match him motion for motion, tried to understand what to do with my tongue, tried not to wonder how humans had figured out that shoving your tongue in someone else’s mouth felt good.

  I spent at least two full minutes just puzzling through that particular discovery of mankind, but I couldn’t quite sort it out.

  A couple of times, he tried to roll on top of me, but I found ways to keep myself at his side, hoping he would remain content with our scissored legs, hips pressed together. I started sweating a little and spent a few minutes obsessing about whether or not I’d put on deodorant, which I thought might have made me sweat more.

  I was in the dead center of that thought—Did I put it on after my shower or when I brushed my teeth?—when his hand roamed from my hip up to my ribs, and his broad palm cupped my breast.

  I involuntarily pulled back—not out of surprise that he had done it, but out of shock from the contact. No one had ever touched me like that before.

  We separated with a pop of our lips.

  “Oh,” I breathed.

  His hand didn’t move. Well, it didn’t move away. He buried his face in my neck, his lips against my skin, his thumb brushing the peak of my nipple through the thin fabric of my bra, sending a jolt of heat down my stomach, between my legs.

  “Oh!” I gasped and leaned back. “Whoa!” was all I managed before hitting the ground between the coffee table and couch with a thump.

  He laughed without mocking me, and I looked up at him, blushing furiously as I wished I would just die already.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded and tried to smile. “I, um…”

  “Come here,” he said in an honest-to-God come-hither voice.

  I fought the urge to run. You are a grown woman, Annie Daschle. Now, get up and get on that couch with that boy.

  To which another part of my brain said, Nuh-uh, no way.

  “I…I don’t think I’m…it’s just that…”

  One of his brows rose. He was still smiling.

  God, he’s going to make me say it. “I don’t know if I’m…ready for that.”

  His smile fell at that. “Oh. Right.”

  “Can we…do you want to maybe watch a movie?”

  He cleared his throat and sat up, his face unreadable as he discreetly rearranged the steel pipe in his pants. “Yeah, sure.” The words were level and distant.

  Shame crept over me, and I climbed back up onto the couch. “I…I’m sorry,” I said, wondering why the hell I was apologizing.

  Will offered a smile I didn’t believe, but he didn’t absolve me. “What do you want to watch?”

  He turned to the television and started talking about movies, but I only gave cursory answers as I tried to sort through how I felt.

  Why did I feel so guilty? Should I have just gone along with it? Was he frustrated? Annoyed? Why did I feel like I’d let him down?

  I agreed to a movie he said he’d wanted to see, some action flick I couldn’t remember the name of and wouldn’t remember the plot of the next morning. We didn’t speak, but he pulled me into his side, throwing a blanket over us.

  As close as our bodies were, he seemed a million miles away. But once it was playing, he finally looked at me and saw me.

  “Hey,” he started gently, and I looked over at him, trying for reassuring. “It’s really fine, Annie. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  He seemed appeased, turning his attention to the screen as I mercilessly lectured myself.

  Because had he done anything wrong? Other than seeming put out, no. He wanted what most people wanted, and if that thing in his pants was any indication, he wanted it pretty bad. All he’d done was grab my boob. Most people did that their freshman year. It was me who was different, not him.

  Maybe that was why I felt so bad, I told myself.

  Because I was weird, and in that moment, he had known it. And for that moment, he hadn’t been happy about it.

  It was me who had the problem, and really, he didn’t have to put up with it. He could tire of me at any time. I could almost guarantee he hadn’t been with a virgin at any point in recent history, especially not one who had zero experience, not even with something so rudimentary as kissing.

  I wondered how long he’d be patient. And I wondered if I could force myself to be ready for something I wasn’t prepared for. Was it like jumping off the high-dive—you just needed to go for it—or was it like learning to do skateboard tricks—something that required instinct and practice and familiarity?

  I told myself again that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d stopped when I said to. And I was only imagining that he was unhappy with me.

  By the time he took me home, I’d even convinced myself that was the truth.

  15

  Some Magic

  Annie

  I held up the quilt my nana had made for me before I was born, remembering a hundred moments in the span of a second, sparked just by hold
ing that stitched, worn fabric.

  “It feels like a lifetime ago,” Elle said quietly.

  In her hand was the painting she’d done of the rolling hills, dotted with trees and spring grass that lay behind our house—our old house, the house I’d never wander through again. The painting had hung over our mantel for years and had traveled thousands of miles in a moving pod, a little window into our old lives.

  It was almost as hard to bear as it was a homecoming.

  Boxes were stacked around the music room where there was plenty of room to spread out and sort through them. There were nonessential clothes and boxes of filed papers. Some were filled with photo albums and some with old schoolwork. And the rest were our own keepsakes.

  Elle had arranged for the furniture Daddy had made to be put in a storage unit in Texas in the hopes that someday we would be able to bring it to wherever we were. And everything else had been sold, donated, or packed up in a big wooden box to travel here.

  My boxes contained mostly books with some clothes, scrapbooks, and sheet music. I pulled the old Polaroid camera he’d given me when I was little and dozens of albums I’d accumulated over the years. But I had another full box devoted to things Daddy had made.

  That box I put in my room to go through another time when there were less eyes to witness.

  Susan cleared an entire bookshelf for me; it went all the way up to the ceiling, and I was more than a little excited to get on the ladder to add books to that topmost shelf. They were my old friends—my hardback set of Outlander and Harry Potter, stacks of Harlequin romances, piles of indie romances, the entire collection of Neil Gaiman books, which included one limited edition illustrated copy of Neverwhere, signed. In marker.

  Mama came in when I was deep in the organizational throes, Mozart playing from my phone speaker and entire mind turned to the best way to order my books.

  “You’re making progress,” she said as she wheeled herself over, stopping when she made it as close as she could with the maze of boxes.

  I sighed happily. “It’s so good to have our things. I don’t know why, but it is. I don’t think I could ever be a minimalist. I forget things if I don’t have a touchstone to remind me.”

  She chuckled. “Meg’s happy as a lark. She’s got Daddy’s old atlas split open on her bed, and she’s poring over the pages like she’s never seen them before.”

  I walked over and sat in an armchair next to her. “And how about you, Mama?”

  She took a breath, her fingers winding together in her lap. “I’m not quite sure how I feel. My worlds have collided—the one from before I met your Daddy and the other one, the one from before he died. The third one, I’m not sure about yet. It’s just as alien to me as it was when I woke up in that hospital bed.”

  I nodded, knowing there was nothing to say.

  Mama glanced at the window. “When I left here, I didn’t think I’d ever come back. And having the remainder of my life with your father here in boxes is comforting and sickening, all at the same time.”

  For a moment, she sat, unmoving and quiet.

  “You know,” she started softly, “when I met him, I knew. There was something about him, some magic, something in his smile and his eyes and the way his hand fit with mine, like they’d been cast together and split apart, and when they found each other again, there was a note plucked in both of us. And, after that moment, I marked my existence by the moments before and after him. So when my parents didn’t approve, it didn’t matter. There was only one thing I could do; I had to go with him. I had to be with him because I couldn’t see my life without him in it. But I don’t have a choice now either. He’s gone.”

  “Mama,” I breathed, emotion pinching my lungs and heart.

  Tears slid down her cheeks, but her voice was steady and sure. “What I mean to say is that I chose love, and I’d choose it again. I chose him over everything—family, money, career—because it was the only way for me to be happy, truly happy. Someday, you’ll find a love like that. You’ll find someone you love beyond anything in this world, and when you do, you have to choose that love and let it guide you. It’s all I wish for you girls—to love someone that much and be loved in equal measure.”

  “But what about now? Now that it’s gone?”

  She smiled, her breath hitching with a silent sob. “Oh, it’s not gone, baby. It lives here.” She touched her chest. “I’ll miss him until I draw my last breath, but his love made my life rich and full and meaningful. His love gave me three beautiful daughters, each who remind me every day of him—your smile and your eyes and your love for beauty in ordinary things, Elle’s quiet nature and care for others above herself, Meg’s laugh and uncanny ability to retain facts.”

  A small laugh escaped me, and I brushed tears from my face.

  “Anyway,” she said with a sigh that brought her composure, picking up a stack of books on the small table next to her, “I’m glad you have your things. Where are you going to put Lisa Kleypas?”

  “Next to Eloisa James and Julia Quinn. Where else?”

  She laughed and handed them over, and over the next hour, she helped me sort through it all until the massive shelf was packed ceiling to floor. And all the while, I thought over her admissions, sifting through my feelings and hers.

  Deep down, I knew Will wasn’t the kind of man my father was, and I knew that Will and I didn’t have that magic, that awakening or devotion between us. I did have a lot of feelings though, feelings that hung in my mind like a fog, too vague to pinpoint without them disappearing.

  I had a lot of feelings, but I didn’t know how I felt.

  Part of me wanted to hunt down an answer, but the rest of me said I should take the gift of a beautiful man who went so far out of his way to make me happy.

  Greg’s face flashed through my thoughts, my heart skipping a hard beat with a jolt. Because he fit that description just as much as Will did.

  The difference was that I didn’t question Greg at all, not once. I trusted him implicitly.

  But did I trust Will?

  It was a question I couldn’t answer as easily as I would like, especially not after last night. I wondered how Greg would have handled it, handled me, but I only imagined he would have treated me with care and respect and quiet joy.

  And I let myself wish for a moment that it could have been him instead.

  16

  Do vs. Feel

  Greg

  The fabric of my tie zipped as I tugged the knot apart for what had to be the tenth time.

  I hissed a swear and lined up the tails, my eyes on my hands reflected in my bedroom mirror.

  “Having trouble?”

  I glanced behind me to find Sarah leaning against the doorframe, smiling. I grumbled a nonresponse.

  This time, I’d pulled too tight. I huffed and pulled the knot out again.

  “Nervous?” she asked.

  “Does it show?”

  “Not at all,” she joked. “I haven’t gotten the Annie update in a couple of days. Is she still…are they still together?”

  My teeth clenched. “As far as I know. We have a sort of unspoken rule not to discuss him. But the last couple of days, she’s been under house arrest working on her Juilliard application.”

  “That’s good. She probably hasn’t seen him either. And tonight, you’re going out, and you’re wearing that suit. There’s no way she’ll be able to resist you.”

  A dry laugh huffed out of me. “Well, suit or not, we’re just friends, so I couldn’t say. In fact, I’m not sure how I got myself into this. Goddamn it,” I mumbled, the knot ruined again.

  Sarah chuckled and pushed off the doorframe, walking around me to take the tie tails from me. “Here, let me.” Her hands went to work. “I think I know how you got yourself into this; you care about her.”

  “And she isn’t available.”

  She frowned, her head tilting as she worked on the knot. “You can’t give up. Greg, you’ve got to get her away from Will.”

/>   “I know, but Sarah…I don’t know what to say to change her mind.”

  “You told her what Will did, right? You told her he’s not a good guy?”

  I sighed. “I can’t warn her off just because I don’t like him. I can’t do that to her. I can’t put her in that position. And telling her the details of the rumors your ex-boyfriend told about you in high school, as much of a nightmare as that was for you, wasn’t enough to warn her off from him for good. And if I push it, I’d look like a crazy person. I can’t force her to choose me. I can’t force her to leave him. She has to make her own decision, and I have to let her. And as hard as it is, all I can do is be her friend. All I can do is take what I can get and be there for her as best I can.”

  Her eyes were on her fingers as she smoothed my perfect tie, her face tight, throat working as she swallowed. “I just…I’m so afraid she’s going to get hurt.”

  My chest ached, my voice softening. “Hey, don’t worry, okay? Annie’s going to be all right.”

  “It’s just…Greg, I’ve been wanting to talk to you—”

  Dad knocked on the doorframe. “Thought you might want to know you’re about to miss your date.”

  I glanced at my watch with a whirl of anxiety and swore. “Sorry, let’s talk later, okay?” I planted a kiss on her cheek and reached for my suit coat. “See you guys tomorrow,” I called as I left the room, then the apartment with my strides long and my heart thumping.

  The cab ride across the park was quiet but for my thoughts, which wouldn’t quiet, wouldn’t slow down. My wonder over what Sarah had wanted to talk about was quickly washed away by the force of anticipation of Annie, worrying over what the night would hold as much as I was eager to live every moment. And my nerves just wouldn’t stop, not when I stepped out onto the sidewalk and not as I rode the elevator up to her uncle’s penthouse.

  Especially not when the door opened to a cacophony of barking dogs.

  I couldn’t help but laugh and pet them as an older woman did her best to wrangle while attempting to greet me over the pack of happy dogs. Elle made her way in and hugged me hello, introducing me to Susan before we fought our way past the dogs and inside.