by Vanessa Page
A million questions circle through my brain, and the last six hours haven’t brought me any closer to answering a single one of them.
I take a sip from my mug and stand awkwardly in the center of the kitchen, shuffling from foot to foot. Should I leave? Should I sit down at the island with her? Maybe this is the best time to talk to her, when everyone else is apparently still in bed.
Instead of sitting down on the stool next to her, I move to the other side of the island and lean against the counter facing her. When she looks up at me, my stomach flutters with an attack of nerves the likes of which I haven’t felt since I was a prepubescent boy with my first crush. Macey Nicholson. She was also a petite brunette with big doe eyes. Apparently, I have a type.
I take a deep breath, gather my courage, and say, “Should we talk about what happened?”
Her cheeks brighten to a pretty pink color, and she looks down at her mug for a moment before responding. “Yeah.”
“Look… it was really fun…” I trail off. What the hell am I trying to say? I sound like I’m about to give her the I-just-want-to-be-friends speech, but I’m like a spectator in my own body. The words are coming out of my mouth, even as my brain is recoiling from the idea of not being with Krystal
She straightens on her stool, and a muscle ticks in her tightly clenched jaw. “It got the job done.” Her response is flippant, but her eyes flash fire, and I can’t quite get a read on what she’s really feeling right now.
“The job?” I test.
She smiles impishly. “You know… I needed a scratching post, and you were… available.” I can’t tell if she’s teasing me or serious. Either way, her words chip at my ego just the tiniest bit, but I quash the feeling.
“It seemed more like we were mutually… available.” I use her same word on her.
She stares up at me innocently. Any sign of emotion gone from her face now. “Yeah, I guess you could say that I scratched your back… and you scratched mine.
Ouch. “It certainly felt like more than that, especially when you were calling out my name so loud I thought you were going to wake the house.”
She blushes and looks away, but doesn’t cave. “Sure, dude. Whatever you need to tell yourself to get through the day.” She rises from her stool and rounds the island to take her coffee mug to the sink. I do my best to casually adjust my pants to hide my arousal, thankful that my T-shirt hangs low enough to cover most of the evidence.
“So, you up for an encore later? There’s two more bathrooms in this place we could try out.” Holy fuck, did I really just say that to her? The minute the words leave my mouth, I wish I could call them back. As much as I would love a repeat of yesterday—or even better, last night—Krystal is still Krystal and I am still me, and things could get very messy if we keep doing this.
She eyes me as if trying to determine if I was serious or not. Then finally, with a voice heavy with sarcasm, she says… “Sure, why don’t you go pick one of them and wait for me.”
Well, that was a resounding no from her. I try not to acknowledge my own disappointment though. I’m not ready to confront what it says about my budding feelings for her.
“Suit yourself.” I shrug and down the rest of my coffee. Then I join her at the side of the sink, dangerously close. My chest brushes her shoulder as I reach around her to turn the water on to rinse my mug before setting it in the sink. She doesn’t move to allow me more room, though. Instead, she sucks in a quiet, shaky breath. I brush my fingertips up her arm as I pull my hand back, reveling in the trail of goosebumps my touch leaves in its wake. Then I leave the kitchen with a satisfied smile. She may not want to admit it, but she wants me as much as I want her.
When I enter the living room, RJ is there, alone on the couch, staring down at his phone. He looks up at me with wide eyes and pink cheeks, and quickly tucks his phone into the pocket of his hoodie. He clears his throat. “Hey,” he greets.
“What’s going on?” I ask pointedly. RJ is not good with playing it casual when he’s hiding something, and he’s definitely hiding something right now.
He stares back at me wide-eyed for several long seconds, then finally sighs and pulls his phone out. “Look, I wasn’t like… checking her out or anything. They just came up on my feed. I swear.”
“What did?” I move to the couch and sit down next to him.
RJ doesn’t answer me. Instead, he pulls his phone back out of his pocket and unlocks the screen before handing it to me.
There, filling the screen, is a picture of Krystal, completely naked. She’s on a bed, curled on her side, with one leg bent to cover the area between her legs, and one arm holding her breasts, covering her nipples. My first reaction is physical, because Krystal is damn hot. But then it sinks in that she posted a nude pic on social media. I scroll down. Several nude pics. She’s respectfully covering her most intimate parts in each of them, but she’s completely naked in all of them, and staring lustfully at the camera. She posed for these.
I scroll all the way through the photo set, absorbing the images and what their existence means. In the last picture, she’s not entirely naked. She’s in a pair of tiny, white lace panties and a gray T-shirt. A gray Zeta T-shirt. Suddenly, I’m seeing red.
It’s Amanda all over again. Suddenly, the woman I’m seeing posed on the screen isn’t Krystal, but Amanda. My mind flashes back to the day I discovered she was cheating on me with my best friend, Sean. The day I found similar nude photos of my high school sweetheart, the girl I had been about to ask to marry me, on my best friend’s phone.
I had been right to not want to get involved with Krystal, to swear off dating entirely. All women were exactly the same.
And speak of the devil, herself. Krystal and Abby choose this exact moment to slink into the living room.
“Hey, guys!” Abby greets RJ cheerfully and comes over to settle herself into his lap. Krystal lowers herself into the armchair a few feet away.
RJ chokes on a cough and gives Abby a sheepish wave, but doesn’t look her in the eye.
She immediately picks up on his discomfort.
“What?” she asks, her tone sweet, but confused.
He clamps his lips shut and looks wide-eyed at me. I’m still holding his phone, the photo of Krystal in some other guy’s Zeta shirt still showing brightly on the screen.
Abby follows his gaze and gasps. “Krystal!”
And that gets Krystal’s attention. She springs out of her chair and circles behind the couch to look down at the phone. The noise that comes out of her mouth when she sees what I’m looking at is a horrifying cross between a wail and a moan. Because she’s been caught? Did she figure I wouldn’t see these?
The four of us sit frozen in time and space for a long moment. Finally, my anger melts the ice chilling the room. “This is why I don’t date girls like you.” My words come out on a hiss, and I can see the exact moment the verbal blow hits Krystal. She reels back, pressing a hand to her chest. Her face is pale, her expression broken, and unshed tears glisten in her eyes. Without a word, she turns on her heel and races from the room. Her frantic footsteps follow her retreat up the stairs and a moment later, a door slams on the second floor.
I need to get off this couch, out of this room. I need to do something to dispel this angry energy threatening to overtake me. I stand and hand RJ’s phone back to him. I open my mouth to tell him and Abby that I’m going for a run, but Abby climbs off of RJ’s lap so she’s standing toe to toe with me. And slaps me across the face.
I stagger backward, and cover my stinging cheek with one hand. Sure, the slap hurt, but I’m more surprised by it than anything. “What the hell?”
“I hadn’t pegged you for such a jerk,” she tells me venomously.
“For not wanting to get with a girl who posts nude pictures like that after spending the night in my bed?”
Abby stumbles over any possible response, her expression one of shock. Did she really not expect me to be upset about that? Finally, she pulls her
words together and leans forward, wagging a finger in my face in a way I might find comical under different circumstances. “First of all, what a woman does and doesn’t do with her own body isn’t about you or any man, or where she spends her nights. No guy has any right to judge her for her decisions.” She takes a deep breath and leans in until we’re barely six inches apart. I have to go cross-eyed just to meet her gaze. “And second… she didn’t post nudes.”
“Bullshit,” I spit back, harnessing the full weight of my anger and injecting it into that one word. “I just saw them with my own eyes. She was only wearing clothes in one, and barely in that one.
Abby backs up a step, rolls her eyes, and pierces me with a malicious grin. “Shit. You’re an idiot. She didn’t post those pictures. Her ex did. You know… your frat brother, Ryan.”
Fuck. All of my bravado and anger crumbles around me with those words. I am an idiot.
“She’s right, bro,” RJ pipes up from his spot on the couch, and turns his phone toward me. “That’s not Krystal’s account. Looks like a throwaway someone made just to post the pics.”
I don’t bother looking at the phone. I wouldn’t be able to see it anyway. All I can see right now is the broken look on Krystal’s face right before she fled the room. I messed up big time.
“I need to talk to Krystal,” I announce and make for the stairs in the front hall.
“You better do it on your knees, asshole.” Abby’s voice follows me up the stairs as I take them two at a time.
I’m not even sure apologizing on my knees is enough to make this right.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Krystal
I manage to keep my tears at bay until I’m upstairs and safely in my room, but the second I lock the door behind me, I’m ugly crying. I worked so hard to move past Ryan’s betrayal with those photos. Almost three weeks have passed since they were removed, and I had almost forgotten about them, had almost forgotten that Jace didn’t know about them.
Except that, if I were honest with myself, that was one of the reasons I was first attracted to him. It was like a fresh start, a guy who hadn’t seen me naked on the internet.
But now he has.
And he had the nerve to blame me for them. My tears of betrayal meld with tears of anger and frustration as I wage an inner battle with myself, torn between righteous indignation that he thinks he has any right to judge me for anything, and shame that Ryan has once again managed to expose me in such a heartbreaking way.
A tiny knock rattles at the door, and I consider not answering it. When it comes again, I call out, “Leave me alone, Abby,” because for all her brash attitude and mouthiness, she’s the first person to try to offer comfort whenever anyone is hurting.
“I’m so sorry, Krystal.” The words are muffled by the door, but the voice is clear. Jace.
No fucking way. “I know you did not follow me up here and are not out there trying to talk to me after what you just did.” I may never let him speak to me again. Sorry or not.
“I didn’t know.” He tries again.
“I don’t care.” Ignorance is not an excuse for douche-baggery.
“Please, Krystal. Just open the door and let me apologize.”
I’m silent for a long time, debating whether or not to just ignore him.
“Do you want me to beg? I’ll totally do it.” And I can tell by the tone in his voice that he means it.
I get up from the bed with a frustrated sigh and do my best to quickly wipe away as many of my leftover tears as possible before I open the door.
To his credit, Jace looks almost as hurt as I am, like he, too, is on the verge of tears.
I move out of the way so he can come fully into the room. “Give me one good reason why letting you into this room right now isn’t a horrible idea.”
He takes a deep breath, then hits me with the sorriest puppy-dog gaze I’ve ever seen in real life. “Because I’m a horrible person, and I recognize that, and I will spend however long you let me stay in here with you doing my best to make up for how I treated you down there.”
“Not possible.”
“But will you let me try? I think I could be really good at groveling if you give me a chance.”
As angry and hurt as I am by him, he’s almost cute when he’s trying to apologize, and I can feel my mood beginning to lift. I move to the bed and sit cross-legged in the center, then motion with my hand for him to carry on.
He takes a seat on the edge of the opposite bed. “Okay, so please know that I’m fully aware that what I’m about to tell you in no way excuses how I reacted to those photos, but I want to give you some context.”
I raise my eyebrows in question.
“I found out my ex-fiancé was cheating on me because I found naked pictures of her on my best friend’s phone.”
Ho…ly… shit. Jason Harlow, Mr. I Don’t Date, was engaged? Wait… “Your best friend?” That must have been soul-crushing.
He nods. “I guess it had been going on for a while before I found out. But instead of breaking it off with me when she developed feelings for my friend, they decided to keep it a secret. I was young, probably too young to get married anyway—I know that now—and hadn’t seen it coming at all.” He looks down at his hands, fisted on his knees. “I was devastated.”
“That’s why you were anti-relationship when we met,” I supply.
“Yeah. And when I saw those pictures of you on RJ’s phone…” He trails off, as if unable to finish. He swallows hard and looks out the window to his left.
I finish the thought he couldn’t give voice to, “You thought I was like your ex.”
“It wasn’t fair to judge you based on someone else’s wrongs, and I’m sorry.” His tone is heavy with remorse, and his eyes are earnest when he looks back at me.
As much as what he did sucked, and as hurtful as it was, I can’t help but put myself in his shoes. What would I have done if our roles had been reversed? Would I have jumped to the same conclusion he did?
Probably.
“I get it,” I tell him.
“You do?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t change the fact that your reaction hurt me. On top of already being hurt by Ryan posting those pics. Twice.”
“Want me to kick his ass for you? Just say the word.”
I have no doubt that Jace really would fight Ryan for me if I asked him to. “That’s sweet, but fighting him won’t do anything except get you in trouble.”
Jace lifts his arms in a shrugging gesture that clearly says he doesn’t care. “Totally worth it.”
I give a small laugh at the sweetness of it. “Just promise me you’ll never do anything like that.”
“Never!” He says solemnly, and I know deep down he never will. His expression turns hopeful. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”
He looks so adorable, not to mention hot, sitting there asking to serve penance for his error. And after what he just told me about his ex… of course he’s totally forgiven, but I’m not ready to give him the satisfaction of giving in just yet. I toss him a teasing smile. “I don’t know… I feel like you might still have some groveling to do…”
His eyebrows raise in interest. “Oh yeah…”
“Mmm-hmmm,” I smile suggestively and make a show of toying with the hem of my shirt.
“Oh, yeah, I definitely still have some groveling to do.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jace
I can think of a million reasons why I shouldn’t kiss Krystal right now. Not the least of which is how much I want to. After our encounter in the shower, I kept hoping my attraction to her would fade, kept hoping I could be a one-and-done type. But not only has my attraction to her grown, I’m feeling something for her that goes beyond physical.
I try to conjure the annoyance I felt the day I met her, even recalling the memory of her shouting at Ryan on the front stoop of the Zeta house, but now when I mentally replay the scene, all I feel is tenderness. I want to go back in time and beat
the shit out of Ryan for her.
She’s so vulnerable right now, in this moment, I’m not sure there could be a worse time to want to kiss her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask and sink back against the headboard, pulling a pillow into my lap so I don’t pull her into my embrace instead.
“I didn’t know you,” she answers matter of factly and sniffles. “For all I knew, you could have helped him do it. Ryan’s not a smart guy… someone had to have given him the idea to create a fake account.”
She’s probably right. I live with the guy. Not smart is an understatement. “The guy is a douche.”
She nods and smiles weakly. “Why do you think we broke up?”
We sit there in silence for a long time. Finally, Krystal shifts on the bed until she’s sitting next to me, leaning against my arm with her head on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
She tilts her head up to look at me, and there’s something in her expression that makes me dip my head closer. “For being nothing like him,” she whispers the words against my mouth and then presses her lips to mine in the softest of kisses.
I turn my body toward her and place a hand on her cheek. Her skin is the softest velvet against my palm, and I stroke a thumb against her cheek as I move my mouth over hers. When she parts her lips, I slip my tongue through, and she meets it with her own. A lightning bolt of desire shoots through me, waking every part of me. She must feel it too, because she moans into the kiss and shimmy’s her hips lower on the bed.
Without breaking the kiss, I follow her as she moves down the mattress until she is lying flat, then I cover her with my body. Her fingertips tickle up my sides, over my bare chest, up to my shoulders where she loops her arms around my neck.
Her body is warm and soft and pliant beneath me, and I want nothing more than to strip her clothes off and feel every inch of her pressed against every inch of me. But ten minutes ago, she was crying over another guy, over his betrayal and nude photos she’d trusted him with. And now, I’m on top of her, shoving my tongue down her throat.