Elijah's laugh was deep and rich, and soothing in all the right ways. “It’s a joint, Ry, not the anti-Christ. It won’t bite you.”
I relaxed back into the mattress with an exaggerated eye roll. “I know what a joint is.”
I’d actually never seen one in person before, but I didn’t live under a rock. I had cable.
“Do you mind if I . . .?” He lifted the joint and I realized what he intended to do with it.
Not wanting to look like the total prude I was, I shook my head. “Go ahead.”
He reached over me to grab a lighter from the night stand and lit it up. “So, you want to tell me what happened today?”
“I needed to get away for a while.”
“From your folks?”
I nodded as the soothing scent of pot wafted toward the open window. The drug itself might have made me uncomfortable, but I did like the smell. “We had a fight.”
“About your report card again?”
“I got benched from the track team.”
“Shit, Ry.” His shoulders sagged. “What a clusterfuck this is turning out to be.”
It was the truth. The entire situation was one massive clusterfuck. But something about hearing him say it out loud like that made me want to laugh. Not an amused laugh. More of an ‘I’m losing my ever loving mind’ sort of laugh. The kind that led to full-blown hysterics. Maybe I really was losing it.
“You want to know what’s really funny?”
“I’m not seeing how any of this is funny.” Elijah was good and pissed. For me. And somehow that made things better.
“I never even liked running in the first place. I mean, I liked it when I was doing it—just running—but all of the practices, and work-outs, and competition, and the pressure . . . I only did it because I was good at it.”
Elijah shook his head. He didn’t look angry so much anymore as . . . sad. “You’ve got some serious shit to work out, Ry.”
“Ya think?” The tightness in my chest returned as I heard my father’s scathing words again. “They . . . they think I’m a failure.”
Elijah set the joint aside and rolled over to face me. “They said that to you?”
“He said I’m a waste. I’ve done everything. Everything they’ve ever asked me to. Everything they’ve ever expected me to. And this one thing . . . It wasn’t even my fault.” The tears rushed up on me before I could stop them. “I try . . . so hard . . . to . . . to live up to their expectations. And it’s ruined. It’s all ruined.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” He shifted closer, slipping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me into him. I burrowed into his solid chest as he ran a hand over my hair. “It’s okay. This isn’t your fault. You work harder at everything you do than anyone I’ve ever met. If they can’t see that then they must be blind. You’re amazing, Rylie. I know that. You should know that. And anyone who doesn’t know that can kiss your ass because it’s the truth.”
“But I let them down, Elijah. I let myself down. We were all counting on me and I . . . failed.”
“Princess . . .” He tipped my tear stained face up to his. “You have got to stop basing your self-worth on what other people see in you. You’re never going to be able to please everyone. You’re slowly killing yourself trying to. If you keep this up, the disappointment will destroy you.”
“I don’t know how to s-stop.”
“Start by trying to please just one person. Yourself. What do you want in life?”
“To study pre-med at Harvard.” It was my automatic answer. “I’ve always wanted to go there. I have pictures of me wearing a Harvard onesie when I was three months old.”
Elijah tipped his head. “Somehow I doubt you picked it out yourself. That sounds like what your parents want. I’m asking what you want.”
I leaned back against the headboard and examined the vibrantly decorated wall at the foot of the bed. Strangely enough, I’d never actually considered that question. No one had ever asked me what I wanted before. They just told me.
Elijah seemed to recognize my need to think and leaned back beside me, reclaiming his joint.
“I’m not sure it really matters what I want. At this point it’ll take a miracle for an Ivy League to accept me.”
“Of course it matters. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. What you want should matter more than anything. And if Ivy League is what you want, then it’s not out of reach. You’ll just have to work for it . . . Hard.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Elijah had a way of making me feel free of all the things in my life that weighed me down.
“Yeah. Really hard. An eidetic memory must be nice.”
“Not always. There are some things you don’t want to remember.” His foster dad’s bitter words from earlier came rushing back to me. “But I can’t forget them.”
A sudden thought struck me as he took another pull on the joint. “Is that why you do this? The drugs, I mean. To forget?”
He thought about it for a minute and shrugged loosely. “That’s part of it, I guess.”
“Can I try?” Nerves danced the Mamba in my stomach, but I held to Elijah’s words. And right then, I wanted to try.
“Weed?”
“To forget.”
Chapter Fourteen
Elijah studied me for a minute, trying to decide if I was saying what he thought I was saying. Then, he carefully passed me the joint.
“Be careful not to burn your fingers. Just pinch it, here.” He eased my fingers around the edge of the damp paper.
For a long moment I just looked at it sitting there in my hand. The desire to try something new warred with the old, unquenchable need to consider what my parents would think. In the end, that’s what decided it for me. I needed to stop thinking about them so damn much, which meant I needed to stop thinking so much, period.
“How do I . . .?” I peeked sheepishly up at Elijah.
“Bring it to your lips.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, which suddenly went inexplicably dry.
I did as he instructed and his eyes came back to mine.
“Don’t hold it too tight.”
I loosened the death grip I had on the thing.
“And inhale. Hold it as long as you can and then let it go.”
I took one last, long look in his molten eyes, feeling oddly like I stood on the precipice of something. Then I inhaled. And immediately burst into an unattractive coughing fit.
Elijah broke out in laughter, removing the joint from my hand before I hurt myself.
“Jesus.” I rubbed my chest as the fit came to an end and I collapsed back onto the bed.
“That happens to everyone the first time,” Elijah assured me.
I glared up at him. “A little warning might have been nice.”
“It’ll be easier the next time. Here, try again.”
I eyed the small, white, deceptively benign looking thing in his hand and considered how big of an ass I’d make of myself if I did that again. Probably not as big as if I didn’t even try.
With a deep breath of fresh air to calm my burning lungs, I took the joint back and tried again. This time I was able to hold on a little longer before the coughing started.
Elijah took a draw himself and then offered it back again. “You want more?”
“What do they say about practice?” I grinned at him and accepted his offering. Before long I was giving Elijah a run for his money, and damn proud of myself for it.
“Damn.” He broke out into coughing laughter after a particularly long head-to-head challenge that I’d won.
“I obviously have the better lung power in the room.”
“Not for long you keep smoking like that.” When the joint was burned almost to the nub, Elijah tapped it out on an ashtray hidden in his nightstand drawer. “How are you feeling? Not gonna puke on me again, are you?”
I took a deep breath and considered my stomach. It felt strangely fine. “Nope. I feel great, actually.”
“I bet.”
“Shut up. What time is
it?”
“After six. Why, you have to get home?”
“Nope. No curfew.”
“No curfew?”
“It’s hard to give someone a curfew when they’re storming out of the house. I even packed a bag just in case they kicked me out.”
Oh, the drugs were definitely working. Somewhere inside my far too sharing-is-caring brain, I knew I never would have revealed that I’d packed for an overnight stay otherwise. I just couldn’t figure out why not or why I should care. That’s when I realized I didn’t. I didn’t care. About anything. And it was the most amazing freedom I’d ever experienced.
“They didn’t, did they?”
“Huh?” What were we talking about?
“Your parents. They didn’t kick you out, did they? For coming here?”
“No. No one told me not to come back, so I don’t think so anyway. Not that I’m in any hurry to go back. But I am hungry!”
Elijah chuckled and tucked some loose hairs behind my ear. He did that a lot. Like he wanted an excuse to touch me. I wanted him to touch me. He didn’t need an excuse.
Flopping somewhat like a fish out of water onto his chest—not my smoothest move—I pressed my lips to a very surprised Elijah. At first he gave in, kissing me back, and it was everything I hoped it would be. But then he stopped. He pushed me away and an overwhelming sense of rejection swamped me.
“Not like this, Ry. Not now. You’re high. I’m high. I do want you, Princess, more than you know, but not like this, okay? We should wait.”
His sweet words eased away some of the sting, but it lingered on my skin and in my veins. “Fine.”
“Don’t be mad. I just want everything to be . . . right between us.” His dimples winked at me and I groaned.
“Nothing is ever going to be fair with those damn dimples in your arsenal.”
“What?” Elijah laughed and it was such a nice sound. Something else that wasn’t fair.
“Nothing. Never mind. Are you gonna feed me, or what?”
He shook his head and crawled over me with a smile on his face. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Being high was a little like being drunk—not that I’d been that particular brand of inebriated more than a couple times—only more . . . mellow. I didn’t feel the urge to jump around or go do something wild or crazy. I really, really wanted to sit. And not think. I was always thinking. My whole life all I ever did was think. About the future, about the past, about things I had to do, things I should have done. And worry about what other people thought. People like my parents. It felt nice not to think or worry for a change and to just . . . sit.
So I sat. I sat on Elijah’s bed and didn’t consider all the possible repercussions that could have, especially considering the overnight bag he now knew was waiting in the backseat of my car. I just sat and looked at his walls. They were fascinating.
The first thing I did was seek him out. I scanned face after face in the photos that wallpapered his room, but couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t in a single one of them, which led me to the realization that he must have taken them. Which led me to the realization that they were good. Very good, in fact.
I moved closer to the door to study another batch and heard raised voices coming from somewhere else in the house. “Just stay the hell away from her. I mean it, Andy, you touch her, I’ll kill you!”
Chapter Fifteen
I stumbled away from the door just in time to avoid being hit with it as Elijah burst back into the room to catch me eavesdropping.
“Everything okay?” No use denying what I’d heard.
He sighed and handed me a cold carton of Chinese takeout. “Yeah, Andy can just be a dipshit sometimes. Do me a favor? Stay away from him.”
“Sure.” I cracked open the carton to find a crap ton of white rice.
“Sorry, that’s all there was in the fridge.”
“I’m normally not a rice person,” I admitted. “But this actually looks delicious.”
Elijah’s chest bounced with silent laughter. “I bet it does.”
He produced two forks and we sat together on the edge of his bed to dive in. I was right. That rice was just about the best damn thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
“So . . .” I chewed and swallowed my mouthful of rice, trying to maintain some level of decorum. “Are you some kind of photographer or something?”
His eyes scanned the walls, verifying my earlier assumption that he’d taken all of those pictures. “I like to take pictures.”
“They’re really good.”
“Thanks.” He tried to shrug it off like it was nothing, but I couldn’t let it go that easily.
“Seriously. You’re talented. Do you plan to be a photographer someday?”
“I don’t really plan anything.” He took another bite of rice, scraping the bottom of the container. How could it be gone already? “I just take each day as it comes.”
“But how do you know what decisions to make when you don’t have an ultimate goal to work toward?” I was fascinated.
“Simple. I do whatever makes me happy at the time.”
“Don’t you ever regret some of those decisions later, though?”
“Not really. I mean, yeah, occasionally things would be easier if I’d made different decisions in the past, but I try not to think about that. I try to live in the moment and be as happy in each individual moment as I can because you never know when everything will change and everything you’ve been sacrificing your happiness for all along, could just . . . disappear.”
That particular sentiment hit a little too close to home and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you, Ry. Nothing has disappeared on you, okay? You don’t even know what you really want yet, but when you do? Princess, I promise, nothing will be out of reach.”
I’d tried his do-what-makes-you-happy-in-the-moment thing earlier and he’d turned me down flat. Obviously, what I wanted and what he wanted were two entirely separate things.
“Now what’s going through that head of yours to put that look on your face?”
“Nothing.” The mellowness of earlier had worn off and I was itching to move. “I should go.”
“You can’t.”
“What do you mean I can’t? Sure I can.”
“Seriously, Ry. Neither of us are good to drive right now.”
Me, I understood, it was my first time feeling these effects. But him? “You can’t drive?”
“Okay, I probably can. But I’m not risking it with you in the car with me.” A warmth spread through me, making me smile at his care. “We wait. Besides, your eyes are ridiculously bloodshot and you probably smell like pot.”
Grabbing a handful of my shirt, I brought it to my nose and sniffed. Shit, he was right. I reeked of the stuff.
“Crap! What am I gonna do?”
“I have some eye drops in the medicine cabinet. You can grab a shower and you said you have a bag in your car?”
“Oh yeah.” Suddenly, I was a flipping genius.
“Stay put. I’ll go get it.”
“Okay.”
Elijah slipped out the door and I dropped back down on his bed, silently praying the shower water was better than that sludgy crap coming from the kitchen sink. I rolled onto my side and my keys dug into my hip. Shoot, Elijah would need those to get to the bag.
I hurried after him toward the front door, only to be brought up short when Andy stepped out of the kitchen. His bulky body blocked my way down the narrow hall.
“Hey there, sweet cheeks. What have you and that boy been doing back there all day?” He took a step closer and I took one back. “You want a real ride? I could show you a thing or two that boy can only dream of.”
The repulsive grin returned and I had to choke back the bile creeping up my throat.
“I-I don’t—” I was saved from figuring out where the hell that sentence was going when Elijah’s hand closed over his shoulder, dragging him away from me.
The guy was nearly twice Elijah’s size, but he planted him in the wall with ease. The beer on his breath might have had something to do with that.
“I told you to stay the fuck away from her.” I’d never heard a person growl before. I’d read about it plenty of times, but I’d never actually heard it for myself.
“Hey.” Andy raised his hands in mock surrender. “I was just offering the girl a good time. If you can’t please your woman, don’t take that out on me.”
“Go near her again and I’ll break your face.” Elijah turned, taking my arm and dragging me back toward his bedroom.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay put?”
“I thought you might need these.” I held up the keys in all their triumph.
To which Elijah held up my bag. “You didn’t lock it.”
Dammit. He always won.
“Come on. Let’s get you looking presentable.”
He escorted me across the hall and showed me where he kept the eye drops, even going as far as helping me squeeze them in my eyes when I couldn’t do it myself. Then, he left me to shower.
There were two different bottles of shampoo. I opened them both and sniffed until I found the one that smelled like Elijah—cinnamon and spice—and used that one. I did the same with the body wash.
Wrapping a towel around my body, I opened the door and nearly collided with his back. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you. Just in case Andy got any ideas.” He used his arms and body to shield me from any potential view from the living room as we crossed the hall.
I rooted through my bag, pulling out a pair of jeans and an old, faded tee—I’d packed in a hurry—and turned around just in time to catch Elijah checking out my bare legs. Maybe what I wanted and what he wanted wasn’t so different, after all.
Clearing his throat, he turned his back and folded his arms across his chest as I dressed. “You alright to drive now?”
I considered how I felt for a moment and realized the shower had sobered me up. Almost immediately, the worry crept back in. It was late. I had no idea what time, but it was dark out. There was little hope that I’d be able to sneak back in. My parents were no doubt waiting up for me—and livid. It was going to be a very long night. I already missed the uncaring haze that had helped me decompress all afternoon.
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