Fool Me Twice

by Aarons, Carrie

When I look up at the monitor, I see none other than my own face up there. Next to the cheerleaders. I’m about to shake my head and laugh, to get back to the game. But then everyone is chanting my name, and I’ve never had this feeling before. Of so many people rooting just for me.

  So I lean forward and plant a kiss on her cheek. She leans in, and I see us up on the camera, that perfect high school picture that so many teenage girls dream about. The football player and the cheerleader.

  “Go get ’em champ!” she says, waving a pompom at me. “And afterward, hit me up.”

  I march back onto the field, adrenaline fucking coursing through my veins.

  Half an hour later, I’m running off the field after winning my first game for Warchester. And there is only one place I’m going.

  I’m keyed up from the game, the victory pulsing through my blood. It surges down to my balls, which are heavy with impending release. I’m always horny after a win, it’s just the nature of the godlike feeling that seems to overtake athletes when they win a game.

  In a few short minutes after arriving back to main campus, I’m in front of Henley’s door, knocking insistently.

  It opens slowly, to reveal a yoga-pant clad Henley with her hair tied up on her head, and a strappy tank top falling off her shoulders. Without a word, I push inside, my hands peeling the top down without hesitation. My tongue invades her mouth, but in another flash of a second, she’s shoving my backward.

  “You really are going to come in here and do that?” Henley practically spits, and I missed the rage in her coffee-colored eyes.

  “What the … ?” I’m so stunned by her reaction that I’m not processing fast enough.

  “The Kiss Cam, really? You’re pathetic. And then you have the gall to come over here and shove your tongue down my throat? Get out.”

  Guilt gnaws at my stomach. “Jimmy, I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t call me that. Not when you just had to be the big man on campus. Did it feel good, getting your dick stroked by all of those people?” Henley is in a rage, and she misses me by a mile as she throws a small notebook across the room.

  She’s jealous. That shouldn’t make me want to crack a smile, especially because she might decapitate me, but it does. She likes me enough that she’s pissed about some other girl getting my affection.

  “You’re a cocky bastard, Lincoln. All you want is your ego inflated every second of the day—”

  “Shut up,” I demand.

  Of course, she doesn’t. “What the fuck, Lincoln? Don’t ever say that to me. I’ll kick you in the goddamn nu—”

  I cut her off before she can follow through on that threat. “Shut up.”

  And then I crash my mouth right down onto hers. The kiss is angry and passionate, flames about to burst from our lips and light the whole room on fire. Her hands dive into my hair, pulling my face closer to hers, as I slide her tank top down all the way to her hips and roll her nipples between my hands.

  “I came straight over here when we won.” I breathe in between furious kisses. “The only one I want is you. That was a stunt, and I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”

  My fingers push past her waistband, into her underwear, and down until I find her slick with desire. I push two fingers inside her and she all but screams.

  “You. You’re the one I want to fucking destroy me after I win. And you do. Every time.”

  Everything moves in fast forward after that. Clothes shed, moans unfurl from our mouths, we’re tearing at each other like savage animals. Every inhibition is thrown out the window, and this is what make-up sex feels like. Anger dissipating into tormented need.

  I track Henley like an animal, grabbing a condom from the place she keeps them beside her bed, and sliding it on. I don’t even pause as she lies back, her hair surrounding her like a halo on the pillow, and I’m inside her before either of us can take our next breath.

  Our eyes never leave the others as I fuck her, at first slow and deep and then gradually picking up the pace. Then it becomes a sprint, a marathon that leaves us both crying out in agonizing pleasure.

  “Can’t. You. See. I. Only. Want. You?” I grit out with every punishing thrust inside her.

  She cries out, half-blind with all the pleasure I’m giving her. She grips at my back, her nails nearly drawing blood. The pain is so good; I push down farther onto her.

  Like a rocket, Henley goes off, throwing her head back as she moans through the orgasm. I take the invite to latch my lips to her neck, and with her pussy still vibrating around me, I pour myself into the condom. It’s the hardest I’ve ever come, the most intense sex I’ve ever had.

  That? That was much more than sex.

  It’s the first moment I realize that I might not just be into this girl, but actively falling head over heels.

  20

  Henley

  Fall break comes before we know it.

  Seven weeks into the semester, the school gives us a four-day weekend to …

  Well, I’m not really sure. Maybe go home and see our families? Study? Most people don’t do either. Instead, they visit their friends who go to other colleges and get just as shit-faced as they do on a regular weekend at Warchester.

  But we’ve decided to forego that and cross off one of my bucket list items instead. I finally confessed to Rhi what I’ve been doing, aside from the last item on the list concerning Lincoln. She was super supportive about it and even wanted to help.

  Which is how two girls who barely like to squish a spider on their dorm wall ended up at a camping site in the middle of fucking nowhere.

  “I’m going to kill you, Henley,” Rhiannon mutters, lugging the portable stove we bought at the camping supply store out of her trunk.

  “Not any more than I’m going to kill myself.” I grin back sarcastically in frustration, trying to read and understand the tent manual for the fiftieth time.

  Why, Cat? Why did you have this on your list?

  Rhiannon, Alden, and I were the first to arrive at our campsite. Even though she tells me he’s her “friend” every time we talk about him, she and Alden have been having quite the courtship. And by that, I mean, as close to a relationship in college as one can come. Alden walks her to class every morning, they eat meals together, and four times now she’s asked me to sleep at Lincoln’s room when he is coming over. They’re together, with everything but the title, as much as she wants to play nonchalant about it.

  “You girls are wussies. This will be fun.” Alden tries to push two of the metal poles of the tent together, but they bow and nearly smack him in the face.

  “We’re going to get eaten by bears, I just know it,” Rhi whines, sitting down on the camping chairs I’d already set up around our designated fire.

  I found this campsite, which is about an hour away from Warchester, online and paid for the spot with my credit card. I was ready to get this bucket list item over with, and as soon as I’d survived the night sleeping on dirt, I was going to book myself an extra-long spa manicure and pedicure.

  A navy blue SUV pulls up alongside Alden’s black truck, and Jamie hops out of the passenger seat. She brought with her a large Tupperware that I hope is filled with brownies, because it’d be the only way I was going to get through this.

  “Hey!” she exclaims, giving me a hug. “Thanks for the invite. I love camping.”

  “That makes one of us.” Rhiannon comes over and gives her a hug.

  Jamie comes over to study almost once a week, so she and Rhi have already been acquainted.

  “I hope it’s okay I brought my … guy.” Jamie blushes.

  She told me she’s been hooking up with someone for about a month now, and I said of course she could bring him along. That makes me a fifth wheel, but I’m fine with it. This is going to be headache enough without feeling guilty about having Lincoln around to cross off a bucket list item. You know, when he is a bucket list item.

  But I guess I should have asked who she was hooking up with, because when he g
ets out of the car, I about pee myself.

  Shit, this is going to be so totally awkward.

  “Wait, you’re hooking up with him?” My eyes nearly bug out of my head as I see Lincoln’s brawny friend carrying Jamie’s tent.

  She seems to stutter in her steps, blinks up at the guy, and then smiles nervously at me. “Um, yeah?”

  “You didn’t tell your friends about us?” Boulder-muscle guy looks seriously offended.

  “This is Janssen. Janssen, this is Henley.” Jamie makes introductions, but Janssen only looks like his jaw is about to unhinge.

  “Wait, you’re not that Henley—”

  He’s cut off when another body emerges from the big black truck, carrying a bunch of sleeping bags in hulking arms.

  “So, who is ready to camp?”

  Lincoln stands there in a flannel that makes his eyes pop way too beautifully, and a three-day-old scruff that I’d like to feel south of my waist. He looks like he could chop down a tree and then make his woman pancakes after ravishing her on the forest floor.

  I swear, I almost drop the cardboard box of food I’m holding right onto my foot. I recover, only jostling it, while I stare open-mouthed at him.

  “You’re … here? How, what …” I sound like a blubbering fish, but I can’t stop rambling.

  There was a reason I didn’t invite him on this trip. One, I didn’t want to embarrass myself. It’s going to be hard enough for me to camp, seeing as I am so far from a nature girl that I think an evergreen scented candle is roughing it. But with him here? God, I would lose my entire cool girl persona, which is the whole facade for making me irresistible to him. If he sees how unnerved a night under the stars makes me, it’ll tarnish some of the unreadable persona I’ve been building up to him.

  And another reason? I needed some distance. We’ve been spending too much time together. He comes over almost every night, or I go to his room on the weekend. We grab meals together, or he sends me funny texts throughout the day. I know it’s exactly what I wanted to happen, but I guess I didn’t realize it would be such a … relationship. Or that I’d look forward to seeing Lincoln every day after class.

  He was beginning to grow on me, so much so that I forgot at times that I was doing this to ruin him. In those tender moments, when we were together in bed or laughing over lunch, it completely slipped my mind that I was ensnaring him in my web.

  “Janssen told me he was going camping with his girl and her photography friend. Couldn’t remember the name but said it started with an H. I thought I’d tag along, see if the friend was cute.” Lincoln waggles his eyebrows at me sarcastically.

  So, he knew I’d be here, and I didn’t invite him to come. This was either going to be really awkward, or he’d brush it off after we had a talk.

  After staring at the two of us for longer than needed, the other couples break off, pretending to busy themselves. I give Lincoln a weird smile, it even feels strange on my face, and go back to trying to set up my tent.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to come, Jimmy?” He crouches down where I’m hammering a spike into the ground.

  “You have football.” I don’t meet his eyes.

  “You knew I had a break in my football schedule.” Lincoln’s voice tells me just how silly my excuse sounds.

  I chance a glance up at him and sigh. “I don’t know? I-I’m not good at camping. Maybe I didn’t want you to see it.”

  Lincoln lays a hand over mine so I stop working, so he can get to the root of the issue. Dammit, I hate how level-headed he is. I wasn’t prepared for Lincoln Kolb to be so … no nonsense. From his reputation, from what Catherine told me about him, I was expecting to get involved with someone who played games even when he was in a fully-committed relationship. Days without talking, skirting around issues, not giving straight answers, not caring if I disappeared—these were the things I thought Lincoln would pull.

  It unnerves me that he’s so genuine. That he wants to get down to the core of the problem so we can move forward. It makes me like him more, which I simultaneously loathe. It pisses me off that I can’t hate him more.

  “Well, we can address why you’re camping when you hate it later. But that’s not the reason. I think you’re scared. Of this.” He motions back and forth between the two of us.

  God, I hate that he thinks he can read me so well. And I freaking hate that that is actually the reason, and he knows it.

  “I thought you’d be going home, or spending time with other people. You’ve been with me a lot lately.” Why am I pushing him away?

  I should be relishing in his attention, wanting him to be all over me and all about me. That’s part of the plan. Get him hooked. We’re past the stage where I need him to chase me, because from all angles it appears that Lincoln is only about me. He said as much after the whole Kiss Cam incident, where he all but freaking branded me with his cock. God, that sex had been amazing. He was so intense about it, so pissed off that I questioned him.

  I have him right where I want him. And yet, I’m getting cold feet. Maybe I don’t want to follow through on breaking his heart. Maybe I’m just scared I’ll break my own. Either way, I’m doing the opposite of what I should right now, and it only adds to my complicated feelings about the whole thing.

  “And that’s a bad thing?” Lincoln smirks like he sees right through me. “Come on, Henley, just admit you’re freaked out that we spend almost every day together. That you didn’t invite me on this trip because it turned into a couple’s thing, and then you’d have to call us a couple. Am I right? Because I know I am.”

  Notice he didn’t say he thinks he’s right. He said he knows. Jeez, he’s so confident. I both love and loathe it.

  I sweep a piece of hair behind my ear and give him a small smile. “It’s annoying how right you are. Isn’t it the woman’s job to always be right?”

  “We can both be right if you just stop disagreeing with me.” Lincoln grins.

  “Aren’t you freaked out by how much time we’ve been spending together?” I ask, curious.

  Lincoln shakes his head. “No. I wasn’t looking for anything, but I’m not mad we fell into this.”

  Not the most romantic sentiment, but at least he’s here when he could have spent his break fucking random girls. I know he could have. So does he. And I need him here to complete my last bucket list item, though my heart is denying that’s happening.

  “You’re not mad we fell into this?” I raise an eyebrow.

  Lincoln grabs my waist, gently tickling. “Don’t give me shit about my wording when you didn’t even invite me on the camping trip. What I’m trying to say is, I’m all in. How about you?”

  Fuck. It annoyed me how to the point he was.

  “I’m all in.” I nod, both elated and disconcerted at the flutter that passes through the organ in my chest.

  Lincoln leans forward, capturing my chin with his hand and laying his lips over mine. The kiss is gentle, a whisper, a promise.

  It leaves me breathless, and I can barely open my lids when he pulls back.

  “Now, let me build this tent, because if you do it, we’ll definitely be getting eaten by a wild animal out in the open tonight.”

  “Won’t that happen anyway?” I smirk.

  “Right now, there is about a fifty percent chance. But with a proper tent built by your man, it’ll lower to about thirty.”

  I roll my eyes. “I need a snack anyway. I deserve it after all the hard work. Besides, you have more fat on you than I do. They’ll eat you first.”

  As I walk away, I hear Lincoln laughing wholeheartedly.

  21

  Henley

  “Never have I ever swam naked in a lake.”

  Janssen’s eyebrows wiggle as he looks at everyone around the circle. I shrug, keeping my beer balanced on my knee as Lincoln adjusts his arm that’s been cradling me into his side. He takes a swig, not making eye contact with me.

  “You have?” I laugh, staring at him.

  “Bastard did that
because he knows I have.” Lincoln sends a middle finger to his best friend. “It was one year at football camp, we did it as a dare on the last night.”

  “So it was just a bunch of naked football players in a lake? That I’d like to see.” Rhiannon cackles.

  But to everyone’s surprise, Jamie drinks, too.

  “Babe, what?” Janssen cries out, but his eyes spark with lust.

  Lincoln’s best friend from home is not a person Catherine ever told me about. Not because we didn’t gossip about our respective high schools, but because in her last year on earth, we just didn’t bother with it. She found out she was sick in October, and Lincoln dumped her shortly thereafter. So while I heard her gush about the quarterback all summer, she didn’t really bother telling me about his friends. And then, when he broke her heart, we only talked about how much of an ass he was, and how much we wanted revenge.

  Jamie shrugs. “It was a dare, just like Lincoln said.”

  “Show me. Show me right now.” Janssen stands up, and starts to unbuckle his pants.

  She pulls at him, bringing him back down onto the bench they’re sharing. “Sit down, hornball. It’s about twenty degrees in that late. You go in there and your balls will definitely shrivel to nothing.”

  He sits down, his eyes wide. “You’re so right. What would I do without you, babe?”

  “Okay, Alden’s turn.” Rhiannon turns to her guy.

  Alden smiles. He’s quieter than Janssen or Lincoln, the latter of whom apologized for how curt he was the first time he met him. But he’s still engaged, mostly with trying to get Rhiannon to lean into him more. He’s managed to get his arm around her, though my roommate is maintaining her aloof independence.

  “All right.” He looks to be thinking. “Never have I ever … kissed two people in one night.”

  A chuckle goes through the group, and most everyone drinks, Lincoln and I included.

  “My turn!” Rhi claps her hands, then picks her drink up off the ground. “Never have I ever been in love.”