“Umm,” is the only sound that escapes her lips, and it’s the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard her make. I take one hand off of her ass and slide it under her shirt, moving up her back slowly. When it reaches the straps of her bra, I grab ahold of the middle where the bra connects together and I unclasp the little hooks with an impressive flick of my fingers, a talent I worked very hard at to master when I was with Adrienne. Bree lets out a small gasp of breath into my mouth as the bra comes undone.
I pull away from her lips. “Is this ok?” I ask, praying to God she says that it is because I want this so bad. But I need her to say it first; I won’t go further till she does.
“Yes,” she says, and even though I can’t see anything in the pitch-blackness of the closet, I can tell she’s smiling as she says it.
I smile too, pressing my lips happily to hers.
I move my hand around her, gently gliding it toward her left breast. I move it so slowly that the anticipation makes her begin to whimper. “Please,” she begs between unsteady breaths. The sound of her voice begging me to touch her in a place my hands have yet to explore makes me want to rip her clothes off right here in this closet and fuck her up against the wall.
Whoa!
The thought surprises me the instant I think it. I usually have way more control than this. I want to have sex with her, so bad, but I won’t. She deserves a perfect first time with a guy, a romantic one, not a spontaneous fuck in the storage closet of her place of work.
My hand is now completely covering one of her breasts. She moans loudly as I stroke the nipple with my thumb, and the minute the sound escapes her lips, I eagerly slam my mouth onto hers so that I can feel the moan in my mouth. I want to feel every reaction she’s having to my touch. I want to feel every shiver her body makes, every breath her mouth takes, and every moan that she can’t contain. All of it.
A brightness flashes over us suddenly, and we both pull our mouths away from each other to look toward the source.
The door has opened and someone’s standing in the entrance. I pull my hand out from under her shirt.
We’re caught.
Bree
“Spencer!” I exclaim, pushing off of Evan and standing back on my own two feet. I wipe my lips with the back of my hand and look up at him in absolute horror. “Please don’t tell Skylar.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” he yells, before slamming the door so hard that the cleaning supplies mounted on the wall fall down to the floor around us.
I kick a bottle out of my way as I storm out of the closet after him, “Spenc, please.”
He turns around abruptly and glares at me, his eyes burning deep into mine, telling me that begging for his silence will get me absolutely nowhere because right now he hates me. He grabs ahold of my wrist and yanks me into the staff room, slamming the door behind us so that Evan won’t follow.
“Ow! Jesus, Spencer, rip my arm off, why don’t you!”
“Right now Bree, don’t even tempt me because I’m so pissed at you that I just might try!”
“It just happened,” I blurt out. It’s a lie, obviously, but it feels like the right thing to say.
“It just happened?” he returns, unconvinced, “Like, right now?”
I nod. “Yes,” I whisper.
So many lies.
“Yeah, I bet.” He throws the door open. “Let’s see what Mr. Home Wrecker says. Daniels, get the fuck in here.”
Evan glares at Spencer, looking as though he might punch him in the face, but he steps into the room and shuts the door behind him anyway.
“Did it just happen?” he asks Evan, pointedly. Evan looks at me then back at Spencer. He drops his eyes to the ground.
Please don’t tell him, please don’t tell him.
“No,” he mumbles finally, and I close my eyes. I let out a long sigh.
“Lots of lies, B,” Spencer says with a shake of his head.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I tell him, deflated.
“Looks like it happened anyway. So now what are you going to do about it?”
Evan plops down on the couch next to where we are standing and looks up at me expectantly. He wants to know what our next step is too.
“I don’t know!” I snap.
“So how long has it been going on then?” He demands, kicking Evan in the foot.
“Ow, jeez Spenc, lay off, man.”
“Why should I? You think what you’re doing is fine?”
“It’s not fine,” I interject. “But it happened. It’s happening.”
“This wasn’t an accident,” Evan adds. “We want to be together.”
Spencer’s brows narrow into a scowl. He looks as though he might throw a punch at Evan, and even though I’ve never seen Spencer do something like that before, I have no doubt in my mind that it’s something he would do if provoked enough. He stops glaring at Evan and points his finger in my face. “You’re going to fucking tell her!” he hisses. “Tonight! I’m sick of the lies.”
“She’s not ready,” I say in a small whisper, barely getting the words out.
“You mean you’re not ready!” he snaps.
“I mean Skylar!” I counter. “This will destroy her.”
“Well, if you ask me, she’s better off not having you in her life anyway.”
“Spenc,” I say dejected. His words puncture a hole into my heart and I bite down on my lip, attempting to hold back the tears that I can feel creeping up on me.
“No!” he growls, seeing the tears well up in my eyes. “No fucking way are you going to give me that look and try to make me feel bad for you.”
“I can’t tell her. She’ll have no one,” I say through my fit of tears.
“She’ll have me!” he hollers, his dark eyes piercing into mine with so much intensity that I instinctively back away. I’m not scared, but the intensity of the gaze is unsettling. This is not a Spencer I’ve ever seen before.
“Ok, Spencer.” Evan gets up off the couch and positions himself in the middle of us, “you’ve made your point, man, now leave her alone.”
“You think I’m going to hurt her?” Spencer demands, astounded. “Bree and Skylar are my girls! I take care of them, not you. I’m not going to fucking hurt her, I’m just pissed at her, all right?”
“Whatever, man. Just leave it alone already. She’ll tell Skylar. Right Bree?” He looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to agree with him. Like it’s just the easiest thing in the world to agree to.
I’m trapped, and Spencer knows it. He shoots me an almost gloating look, obviously enjoying the position Evan has so conveniently put me in.
“I’ll tell her tonight,” I mumble, glowering at Spencer. “I promise.”
“You have till ten, if you haven’t told her by then you better fucking believe that I’ll be calling her to let her know,” he says with no amount of sympathy in his voice.
“Fine.”
He storms out of the staff room without saying another word.
Skylar
I spend the entire day at Bree’s house watching TV and chatting with her mom. When she decides that she should get started on making something for supper, I climb the stairs to Bree’s room to take a little nap before I’m expecting her home at six. But as I’m about to take off my jeans and climb into her bed, I hear a tiny ticking sound at her window. I curiously move toward the sound and once I push the curtains aside, I see Parker in the yard below, tossing tiny pebbles at the glass.
“What are you doing?” I ask with a chuckle as I slide the window open.
“I went to your place first,” he says. “But your aunt said you were here.”
“You went to my place and Cecelia was actually co-operative and told you where you could find me?” I ask, bewildered. That’s incredibly unusual.
He shrugs. “Yeah. She was nice,” he replies, adding to my confusion.
“Nice?” I repeat, unconvinced. Cecelia is never nice. “What exactly did she say?”
>
“She said you were probably here, that Bree’s a waste of your time, and that she’s rooting for me.” He shoots me a confident smirk. “I have to say, I tend to agree with her,” he adds, his smirk turning into a huge grin.
I can’t help but laugh. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Self-righteous,” I say.
“You going to come down to talk to me, or what?”
I sigh, pretending to be annoyed, but I’m anything but. His smile captivates me and I can’t help but to be charmed by it. “I’ll be down in a second.”
Before heading out the door, I call out to Alice, “Going for a walk, tell Bree I’ll call her later.”
“Ok honey, be good,” she says back in a singsong voice.
“I will.”
Parker is sitting beside the trellis that runs from the top of the gazebo, next to Bree’s window, all the way to the ground. When I round the corner, he gets up from where he’s sitting but stays where he is, waiting for me to approach him.
“What’s up?” I ask once I’m standing directly in front of him.
He reaches for my hand. “I was wondering how you were.”
“I’m fine,” I reply, gently pulling my hand away from his grasp.
He sighs. “We’re back to that again?”
“I’ve already told you that I can’t be yours,” I say quietly, avoiding his gaze and looking toward the brook that runs behind Bree’s house instead. I start walking toward it, and motion for him to follow me.
When I take a seat on a rock right next to the water, he doesn’t hesitate to sit on it next to me this time. He’s more comfortable with me now, almost like how we used to be. Almost. Things will never be exactly how they were; they can never be that way again.
“Ok, just friend,” he counters, putting emphasis on the words ‘just’ and ‘friend’. “How have you been since we last spoke?”
I arch my eyebrow. “You mean since you kissed me, and told me that my girlfriend is cheating on me, and that you are in love with me?”
He grins, attempting to keep the mood light in spite of my desperate attempt not to. “We’ve texted at least three times since that day,” he points out with a wink.
I roll my eyes, giving him a playful shove. “I’m fine.”
“I have to say, though,” he continues, his face growing serious, “I was pretty surprised when I went to your place today and found out that you were here.” His tone is still light, but I can tell he’s upset. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug. “You didn’t ask.”
“I didn’t think I needed to. What’s going on?”
I sigh, “Bree’s my best friend, and I love her more than I can even put into words so that you can really understand it because she’s not just my girlfriend, she’s also my family. I can’t walk away from what I have with her. This house, it’s mine too. And her mom and dad, they are the only mom and dad I’ve ever really known, ok? You make it out to be like it’s so simple, like she’s cheating so therefore it’s over. It can’t be over. If I end this with her, there’s no staying friends, I will lose everything.”
He contemplates my words for a long while and I can tell he’s trying hard to understand my predicament. I appreciate the effort, I really do. I know that he’s in love with me. And I also know, though I can never admit it to him, that a part of me is in love with him back.
“You won’t lose me,” he says finally with his head hanging low. His eyes look up at me vulnerably, and my heart aches. His kindness is too much. I don’t deserve how much he wants me.
“Why do you love me?”
The question catches him off guard. “What do you mean?” he asks, dumbfounded as if he’s already told me the answer to this question a million times before and he can’t believe that I’m even asking it.
“Why do you love me even though I can’t love you back? I mean, I pushed you away for the first six months that I knew you. I was mean to you. I knew how much you cared about me and I kept fucking all of those guys for drugs anyway, right there in front of you. And then, to add insult to injury, I finally did give in to you, only to run off at the first sign of trouble. I didn’t even give you a chance to explain. Instead I just stumbled my way into a new relationship with my best friend. And now here you are again, just being everything I need you to be, and I can’t give you anything back. I want to know why because I think you deserve so much better than that.”
“You don’t think you can give me anything back?” he asks, countering my long-winded question with a simple and straightforward one. His eyes look hopeful and I wish that they wouldn’t.
“I don’t know. I just want to know why you don’t demand it from me; why you don’t demand it from anyone?”
He shrugs, “I guess I don’t feel like I deserve anything more than that.”
I glance at him, dejected by his words. It makes me feel horrible knowing that what I’ve given him is all he thinks he deserves in a relationship. I’ve never met a more kind, selfless, and loving person than him. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve him. He could be with somebody worthy, but instead, he can’t keep away from the likes of my fucked-up self.
“You think you don’t deserve me,” he says pointedly, knowing, as usual, exactly what it is I’m thinking. “You think you’re too fucked up, too damaged, but you’re not. I’m just as fucked as you. I can’t keep my shit together. I’m pissed off all the time. Every part of my being has been numb since the day my mom died. I don’t care about anything, and I hurt people. But I love you. I love everything about you. I love that you are just as fucked up as me and that we get each other in a way that no one else can.”
I take a sharp breath, holding it in for a moment before exhaling. My heart is pounding in my chest. I don’t know what to say. I can’t be what he needs, not if I want to keep Bree. But for the first time since he’s walked back into my life, I wish things were different. I wish I could love him back.
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth nervously as I attempt to come up with a reply. He’s rendered me speechless. Instead of struggling for the words, I take his hand into mine and bring his palm to my mouth, kissing it ever so softly.
He sighs and slowly moves his hand up to my face, running the back of his fingers over my cheeks, then down around my neck, and then back up to my lips where I kiss each finger individually before I lift my eyes to look into his.
He gazes into my eyes, asking for permission to kiss me. I know the look well. I lean in an inch, allowing my eyes to close. I want to give him this; I want to show him that I do love him, but I just can’t put it into words for him to hear. Too much has happened that can’t be erased.
Kissing me softly and deliberately, he pushes his body right to mine, wrapping one arm around the small of my back, as his other hand searches for mine and holds onto it. He puts every emotion of every word he just said to me into this beautiful kiss. His need for me to want him, to need him in the same way he needs me, is made so incredibly clear in this kiss that I tremble from the intensity of it.
When I move my lips away, gently ending the kiss, he brings my hand to his lips, kissing it softly, mimicking the exact same kisses I gave to him.
“I can’t lose her,” I say finally, voicing the inevitable. He knew it was coming as much as I knew that I needed to say it.
“I know,” he says, defeated, his gaze falling from me to the water flowing below us.
I want to cry. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be in this place right now, torn between two worlds and two loves and never being able to make it right because no matter which way I go, I’ll lose someone that means something.
“Just friends then?” I ask in a hesitant whisper, our bodies still pushed close, our hands still entwined.
He nods, leaning in to my forehead and planting a soft and loving kiss. “You won’t lose me,” he assures me instead. And I can’t help but think it again… I really don’t deserve him.
Bree
“Are you ok?”
Evan asks as he holds the passenger door of his car open for me that evening after work.
I climb into the passenger seat and nod. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say quietly.
He closes the door and makes his way around to the driver’s side. Once he climbs in front of the wheel, he looks at me uncertainly, “Are you sure?”
I force a smile, “I’m just really worried about tonight.”
“Yeah, I know,” he sighs. “But you know it’s better that she hears it from you than from Spencer, right?”
“Doesn’t change the fact that everything will change after tonight. You don’t go back to being friends after a breakup like this. No one does.”
He grimaces. I can tell that he’s feeling uneasy about all of this and, to be honest, I don’t blame him. How do you comfort your girlfriend who’s sad about having to breakup with her girlfriend? It’s just a really messed up situation for everyone involved.
We drive to my place in complete silence and once he arrives in front of the house, he shuts off the engine and turns in his seat to face me. “Are you going to be ok?” he asks, reaching his hand to my cheek.
I place my hand on top of his and hold it there. There is no answer that I can give him that isn’t a lie and I’m sick of lying. I don’t think I’m going to be ok. Nothing about any of this is ok.
He wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in closely. I sigh contently, breathing in his scent, allowing his embrace to take me away from all of this, even if only for a moment.
“I don’t understand why you’re still with me,” I say quietly.
He reaches for my chin, tilting it upward with his index finger till my eyes meet his. “Because I want to be.”
I push my mouth to his till our lips just barely meet, letting them linger on his softly. I can tell he wants to kiss me, like, really kiss me. He licks his lips, regarding me intently.
“I wish I could kiss you right now,” he says, pushing his body even closer to mine.
“Me too,” I say. My breathing is getting heavy and I can’t deny how much I wish we weren’t in front of my house at this very moment. What we are doing is already way too dangerous. What if Skylar sees us? She will definitely find out tonight, that’s a given, but it shouldn’t be like this.
Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) Page 17