“I’ve never . . .” she paused for a minute, surely contemplating how she should finish her statement. She threw her hands out to the side and huffed, “ . . . been drunk at a party.” Lame, but at least it was an easy one.
Everyone took a swig of their drinks and Nick laughed over at Sammy. “You’re full of shit. You’re drunk now.” He tipped his drink at her and she shrugged. “Let’s do this right,” Nick called out as he rested his elbows on the table, nearly missing it entirely. “I’ve never sucked a dick out in the pool house.” A sly smirk spread across his face and Janie smacked him on the arm, a heated blush racing across her face. I choked on my sip of beer, panicked that he saw Shane and I out there earlier.
“You’re a fucking asshole!” Janie cursed and tossed her beer in Nick’s face.
Nick just laughed, rubbing his hand over his face to rid it of the beer. He looked across the table at Shane and me for some kind of guy-support. I had no clue what kind of look he got from Shane because I was suddenly too nervous to say or do anything. Luckily, Sammy jumped up from her seat just in time to break the awkwardness that I’m sure was about to fall around us.
“Nice job, Nick,” Sammy sneered as she ran off to go find Janie.
Smugly, Nick just sat there, drinking his beer, flipping off Sammy’s retreating back. “Fucking women!” He raised his cup to us and we both laughed in agreement with him. “Not worth the trouble just for a blow every now and then, right?” Nick laughed again as he stood from the table.
“You might want to go do some damage control before you never get blown again,” I offered up my suggestion more out of Janie deserving an apology than out of Nick getting another blowjob. He was a certified asshole, through and through, but that didn’t mean Janie had to be embarrassed like that.
Nick muttered something as he stumbled away from the table. Seconds later, Reid came crashing down the stairs. The banister and girl at his side were the only things that kept him from face planting onto the hardwood floors.
Shane sighed and put down his cup. “I should get him home and sobered up.”
“Wait,” I gripped his thigh under the table where no one could see, “let me help.” Shane looked down at my hand, and where his face was rigid and tense just a second ago, his eyes now softened and a small smile curled at his lips; lips that were both soft and firm, tender and demanding. He didn’t say anything, just nodded subtly at me.
“Hey, man,” Reid slurred as Shane approached.
Shane rubbed a hand over his face and through his hair. Frustrated, he stared Reid down before puffing out a soft chuckle. “Dude, you’re such a fucking handful.” Reid shot him a dumbfounded look as if being drunk beyond all recognition shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Shane and I looped our arms around Reid’s waist and helped him out to Shane’s car. Once we dumped him into the backseat, he fell over and passed out. “Well, at least he’s on his side. He won’t gag on his own vomit,” Shane joked, but I knew there was real concern there. Whether it was concern over his brother being way too drunk for his own good, or concern about what their father would do once they got home, I wasn’t sure.
But I did know for certain that I couldn’t let Shane deal with it alone. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, things changed back in that pool house. I changed and feelings I once thought would never come to the surface were right in front of me, staring me right in the eyes, making it impossible to ignore them anymore.
I had to do my best to protect Shane, and apparently getting Reid home safely was now part of that deal. “Why don’t you guys stay at my house tonight?” Shane kept his eyes on the road, ignoring my question; I’m sure it made him a little uneasy.
“We can sneak Reid into the basement. By the time he wakes up, my parents won’t even know he was drunk. We won’t have to explain anything to them and it’ll save you from having to deal with your dad.” An angry silence filled the cabin of the car.
“What the fuck do you know about my father?” Shane gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“Seriously?” I twisted in my seat, facing him and meeting his angry stare. When he didn’t say anything, I puffed a sarcastic breath. “I’ve been your best friend for fucking years; I’ve seen him in action. You’ve told me enough, too. I’ve seen the black eyes and I’ve heard the fights. You can try to cover it up all you want, but I know he’ll lose his shit on both of you if you bring Reid home like this.” I tipped my head to the backseat where Reid was snoring like a beast. A palpable tension settled in between us. Taking a chance, I reached out and laced our fingers together, terrified that he’d pull away.
But he didn’t.
“Okay,” he said as he squeezed my hand in return, “thanks.”
We kept our hands together for the rest of the ten-minute ride back to my house. It was never uncomfortable or weird. To me it felt perfect and I could only assume since he didn’t pull away either, that it felt the same to him as well.
Somehow, we both managed to wake Reid up enough to get him into the basement through the side entrance without making too much noise. After he flopped down on the couch, I grabbed a bucket from the laundry room and put it next to the couch. “I’m just gonna go let my parents know I’m home and that you guys are with me. I’ll be right back.” Shane sank onto the small sofa as I made my way up stairs.
When I came back down, he was sitting there in the darkened silence, his elbows resting on his thighs, hanging his head in his hands. Shoving my hands into my back pockets, I rocked on my heels, totally unsure of what to say.
“Listen, about before,” I said, awkwardly trying to start the conversation.
Shane leaned back on the couch, folding his arms behind his head. My eyes were drawn to his biceps and shoulders, the muscles bunching slightly under the short sleeves of his T-shirt. “Yeah, about that,” he added quietly as he focused his eyes on mine.
I sat next to him, folding one leg under my body, turning toward him. “I don’t regret it. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now,” I admitted. He sat there like a statue, before his eyes starting searching my face for more.
“I don’t know what the fuck to think. This is all so fucking confusing.” Shane’s voice wavered with heavy emotion, but he was careful not to wake Reid. Even though he said he was confused, that he wasn’t sure what to think, his eyes kept darting back to my lips.
I inched closer to him, my knee gently brushing against his thigh. Taking a deep breath, I reached up and cupped his jaw, running my thumb against the scratchy stubble there. He closed his eyes as a shaky breath escaped past his slightly parted lips. “Then don’t think. Just feel.” I swallowed hard, a world of new feelings swirling around me like some crazy-ass kaleidoscope of endless possibilities.
I pulled his face to mine and he leaned into me willingly. With our lips barely touching, I whispered, “Just feel this. We’ll worry about the other shit later.” He leaned his forehead against mine and I felt his hot breath wash over my lips. He licked at his bottom lip and my heart beat a frenetic tattoo in my chest forcing my blood to thrum wildly in my veins. I couldn’t hear anything except the loud rush of blood pounding in my ears and the frenzied breathlessness of our ragged desire.
We were all lips and tongues—tasting, devouring each other. Unfolding my leg from underneath me, I twisted us so that Shane’s back rested against the arm of the couch. With our bodies aligned, I could feel every single inch of him beneath me. Instinctually, my hips rocked against his, grinding against his rigid hardness. Shane groaned into my mouth and I pulsed painfully behind the zipper of my jeans. His back arched off the couch as he pushed back against me, revealing a small sliver of his tight stomach.
Keeping one hand on his jaw, I reached down with the other, ran it across his hot skin and up under his shirt, across his chest. We didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Words weren’t needed to communicate what was going on between us. When I strummed my thumb over the flat disc
of his nipple, his hips lifted off the couch once more and he coiled his arm around my waist, pulling my body tightly to his.
“Dylan,” he panted, the pause allowing me to kiss a heated path from his lips, to his jaw and down his neck.
My response was a simple “hmm” against his skin.
“I don’t . . . I mean . . . I can’t . . .” I heard the nervousness mingled with his desire. I heard the trepidation at moving forward, laced together with the excitement. But I wanted him to want it as much as I did, so rather than pushing forward, I pulled away.
We both rolled to our sides, facing each other on the couch. Gently, I ran my fingers through his hair. He closed his eyes at my touch and I noticed the faint yellow outline of his most recent black eye. My stomach churned with anger at the thought of anyone hurting him, much less his own father.
“We don’t have to do anything. Just relax and we’ll talk in the morning,” I said as I continued to stoke his hair, a more-than-satisfied smile pulling at my mouth.
Shane fell asleep in my arms and I watched the worry wash away from his ruggedly handsome face. The tension that usually creased the corners of his eyes smoothed as he drifted peacefully into a world where fathers didn’t beat their children and where thoughts about who you were didn’t plague your consciousness.
I slipped out from his side and pulled a blanket over him, knowing it wouldn’t do well for any of us if Reid woke up and saw us curled together on the couch. After one last kiss to his forehead, I laid back in the recliner next Shane, letting the sounds of his light snoring lull me to sleep.
Chapter Six
May 21, 2007
The locker slamming shut right next to my head made me jump. “The fuck?”
I could tell it was Dylan before I saw him, his smell invading my space, making me feel weak all over. “Did you pass?” He leaned his back up against the bright red locker and I watched as he adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder. His hands were perfect and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from them.
The hand I was just staring at—fantasizing about touching me, waved in front of my face. “Huh?”
“AP Bio. Did you pass? You said you had a final today in class.”
I shut my own locker and tossed my bag over my shoulder. “Not sure. It was tough.”
“I’m sure you did fine. You always do.” Dylan’s faith in my abilities never failed to amaze me, but the honest truth was I failed miserably. I didn’t know a single fucking thing on there. Sadly, I was failing pretty much everything. With baseball season done, and the state championships over and lost, I didn’t have much to keep me motivated.
Not to mention there was a huge fucking weight on my back of simply figuring out what the hell to do with the rest of my life. Looking at the inside of the proverbial closet was high on my list.
Dylan bumped his arm against mine, stirring me from my dark thoughts. “You okay?” His voice took on that softer, more intimate tone, the tone he reserved for the times when it was just the two of us. The problem was that right now, in-between the seventh and eighth period walk toward my calculus class; we were most definitely not alone.
I shrugged, scanning the hall before answering him. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered him quickly. “I’ll see you later.” Dismissing him, I walked into my last class of the day, of the year actually. Holy shit, come to think of it, this was my last class of my entire high school career. When the fuck did that happen?
In the last two weeks, I was so distracted by the end of baseball season, my father’s endless rants about what a loser I was since, well, since I’d lost states, letting up a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth.
Then there was Dylan. Thoughts of sneaking around with him over the last two weeks filled my overcharged brain as I sat and listened to Mrs. Meyer’s last review for the math final next week. The simple truth was that when I thought about Dylan, when I was with him, I was happy. So happy in fact that I couldn’t help the goofy grin from spreading across my face—one that, when I looked up, I realized Sammy, the overly clingy girl from Nick’s party a few weeks ago, mistook as one meant for her. She was a row over and a seat in front of me. Turning in her seat, she faced me, pressing her tits together, forcing them even further out of her already-too-skimpy tank top.
Wiggling her fingers from under her chin, she waved at me, obviously flirting. I rolled my eyes, attempting to dismiss her, but she misread it, thinking I was encouraging her because when the bell rang a minute later, she nearly sprinted over to my desk as I gathered my books.
“Hey, Shane.” She dragged her finger down my arm; her voice sounded like it was fucking my name as it passed by her lips.
“Hi, Sam.” I stared down in agitation as she looped her arm through mine. Like some kind of leech, she remained stuck to my side even as I moved toward the door. “So there’s a party tonight. Wanna take me?” she asked me with so much enthusiasm, almost expecting me to kneel before her at simply having been blessed with the chance to take her anywhere.
She leaned both of us up against the wall outside the classroom. Her body was pressed up against mine as she stretched up on her toes to whisper in my ear. “I’ll make it worth your while. I wanted to make it worth your while at Nick’s, but you left before I could.” I watched in stunned disbelief as Sammy hooked her thumb into the belt loop on my cargo shorts. I’d like to think it was an accident that her fingertips lightly brushed against my groin, but I wasn’t an idiot.
Neither was Dylan who moved into view behind Sammy and she stretched up one more time to plant a soft kiss to my cheek. Before I could do anything, before I could even move, Dylan was stalking away from us. What killed me even more than having Sammy pressed up against me—hell, any girl pressed up against me—was that I couldn’t chase after Dylan.
Because then everyone would know it was him who I wanted.
“Open the door, Dylan!” My knuckles were red, nearly bleeding after knocking at his front door for nearly five minutes. I knew he was home, and he was totally ignoring me. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to let me in, I turned away, an empty feeling gnawing at my insides.
As I got in my car and pulled out of Dylan’s driveway, I couldn’t figure out why I felt like crying. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been a hundred times I’d shown up to Dylan’s house just to see he wasn’t there over the years. But this time was different. He was there and he was shutting me out. He had to know what happened between Sammy and me didn’t mean anything—couldn’t mean anything.
I turned the corner heading toward my house as a rising panic took up residence in my gut. It was a panic born out of the idea of Dylan being pissed off; it was a burgeoning nervousness that I’d lose him somehow.
Since I’d never told him exactly how I felt, always backing away when things got too complicated, claiming I was still confused, him blocking me out completely was a very real and scary reality—one that forced me to back out of my driveway.
Two minutes later, I slammed on the brakes in front of Dylan’s house, causing the car to lurch back and forth as I parked it. I jogged up to the front door, but knew he wouldn’t open it. There was a spare key hidden in the garage. I laughed to myself as I scooped the keys out of his dad’s toolbox. The realization that Dylan was much more to me than a confusion, that he was more than my best friend, came barreling through me as I gripped the cool metal of his house key.
I let myself in and took the stairs two at a time up to his room. There was music playing, but not loud enough that he didn’t hear me earlier. I knocked, not wanting to scare the shit out of him, or disrespect him, by just barging in.
“Dyl, open up. It’s me.” I leaned my shoulder up against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting for him to let me in.
Rather than opening the door, he spoke through it. “Why should I?”
“Because I’m an asshole and I need to tell you some things.” Relief washed over me as the door opened.
I’d been in Dylan’s room countless times over the years. We’d played video games for hours on end right there on his bed—hell, I’d slept on his floor more times than I could remember. Yet somehow, being in his room at that moment, with the words I needed to say, with the words I knew he needed to hear on the tip of my tongue, his room felt strangely new and exciting.
He sat on the edge of his bed, and I flopped into his desk chair, noticing that his journal was wide open on his desk. He must have been writing while he was busy ignoring me. His stare pinned me to the spot; a glacial air filled the room and I couldn’t fathom why he was so pissed off over what seemed to me like nothing important at all.
“Why didn’t you let me in before?” I asked when the tension reached a breaking point.
He chuckled a snide puff of laughter. He leveled me with his gaze, crossing his arms across his chest. “The better question is why haven’t you let me in?”
In that instant, I choked on my words. “I–I mean . . . I have . . . I thought . . . I didn’t mean . . .” I scrubbed a hand over my face, trying desperately to grasp onto something that I could say to save this.
To save us.
I took a deep breath. “No. You’re right. I haven’t let you in.” Dylan continued to stare at me, obviously needing more than a one-sentence explanation as to why I’ve been reluctant to name this thing between us.
“Not gonna get off the hook that easily, huh?” He shook his head, and even though he tried to hide it, I saw him crack the tiniest of smiles. “Okay, then. Here goes.” I stood from the chair and paced the room, hoping the words would somehow magically appear if I moved.
Raking my hands through my hair, I pulled on the ends, more than frustrated at my own feelings. “I know you’re pissed about what you saw with Sammy before.” He laughed and I walked toward him. “Just listen, please.” He looked up with me with his big blue eyes and my chest hurt at seeing the anger there. I sank to the floor in front of him, pulling his hands into mine.
The Love Series Complete Box Set Page 115