“Uh…wow. Why are you still working?”
He finally pulled his eyes away from the poster and looked at my right shoulder. “What else would I do?”
I laughed. “I don’t know…travel all year round? Sit on a different beach every week and read books? I could think of a lot of things.”
“The colors in that print are extremely faded from what they should be.” Clearly, talking money didn’t interest William, given the way he blew off what I’d just said. “That is a famous painting by E. R. Hughes, an English painter of the pre-Raphaelite tradition,” he said without looking at it again.
“It’s an old poster I bought a few years back. I’m going to give it away when I move.”
“When you leave with the Renaissance Faire?”
I shifted in my chair and crossed my legs. William’s gaze followed the movement, his eyes settling on my exposed calves. I sat there for a moment, watching him watch me. He wasn’t ogling. He was just…studying. Maybe he was memorizing how my legs looked in the shorts so he could draw them on his sketchpad later.
I remembered the drawing he’d shown me at the hockey game—the one of my hand. It was excellent…so realistic. And detailed. Almost lovingly so. I’d never really thought my hand was particularly beautiful, but he’d rendered it beautifully. He’d made it beautiful.
I blinked, wondering where that weird thought had come from.
“I’ve never really lived in one place for a long time. My friend says I have what she calls želja za putovanjem—wanderlust. Nothing can nail me down.”
“Nails? Wouldn’t that hurt?”
I laughed. “Sorry, no. I mean…it’s hard for me to stay in one place. Nothing can keep me still.”
“Nothing? And…no one?”
I frowned, thinking about that for a moment. I considered the hurt in Alex’s eyes when I’d told her I was leaving. And Mia. In fact, most of my friends didn’t understand. The people at the Faire got it though. A lot of them were like me. “I’m going to work the Faire for a while, reading Tarot cards.”
His expression didn’t change. “You believe in that? Fortune-telling?”
“I believe the cards can teach people to follow their own intuition. I’m just there to…help it along. My aunt used to read cards a lot. She taught me before she went back to Bosnia.”
He spoke after some hesitation. “I would like you to do that for me sometime. I don’t believe in it, though,” he added quickly.
I nodded. “I’ll read for you. But right now, we need to work on visualization and breathing. We can’t have what happened at the hockey game happen at your next duel, right?”
He looked up at me briefly, caught my gaze and then yanked his eyes away. He looked almost…guilty.
“What’s up, Wil?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t leave because of the crowd.”
I blinked. Well, this was news to me. “You picked me up and carried me out of the arena like the place was on fire. If I recall correctly, you seemed pretty darned determined to get out of there.”
A smile hovered on his lips, and then his eyes flicked to my chest before shifting away just as quickly. Then he colored beautifully. Though William had dark hair and eyes, his skin was pale and it flushed a deep shade of red.
“You gonna tell me why you’re blushing, or am I going to have to guess?”
William’s jaw clenched and he looked off into the distance, over my shoulder.
“Hmm.” I folded my arms. “I was sitting on your lap and…” I remembered the feel of his body underneath mine, the hardness of his chest against my back. It had been pretty darn pleasant for me, and maybe—“Oh, I get it. You got turned on.”
“Turned on what?”
I mentally groaned. This language thing was a bit of a pain in the ass. “You got…aroused?”
His color deepened. He’d probably been worried what my reaction would be if I knew he’d gotten an erection.
It was both adorable and incredibly arousing. And funny. Because I’d been turned on, too. Feeling his strong arms under mine, his warm breath on the back of my neck. It had been almost impossible to concentrate on the game.
Suddenly, I started laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because it’s funny. Did you think I was going to slap you?”
He frowned. “No. I just thought you’d call me a pervert.”
“It was a natural reaction, Wil. I can’t fault you for that. I was the one who volunteered to sit on your lap, remember? And I know how male anatomy works.”
His eyes narrowed. “How well do you know?”
My eyes flicked meaningfully to his crotch. “I know enough. So that’s why you bailed—I mean, left?”
He rubbed a hand down his thigh. “Yes.”
“Well, next time just tell me. We’re adults here. Don’t be silly, okay?”
“I’m never silly.”
I cleared my throat. “How about we work on visualization now before everyone gets here…”
I instructed him to sit cross-legged on the floor facing me, our knees touching. Or rather, my knees touched his shins, as his legs were longer than mine.
His whole focus seemed to be on where our legs touched each other. “You okay? No, um, sudden reactions?”
He scowled but didn’t reply.
“Okay, so this should be easier for you because you naturally think in pictures. We’re going to ground and center using a mental image…”
“What am I picturing? TIE fighters? Snow speeders? Imperial walkers?”
“A tree.”
He raised his brows and smiled. “Ewoks?”
“Nope, no Ewoks. A tree. You are a tree.”
“But—”
“It’s pretend, Wil. Imagine you are a great oak tree and you are going to connect with the earth. You are going to be solid and sturdy and unflappable as a tree. You will be dug in so deeply that not even the strongest storm can blow you over. Because your roots run deep into the earth.”
He was staring at me as if I’d sprouted a third eye on my forehead.
“No, I’m not crazy. Close your eyes and imagine roots extending from your body into the ground below us.”
“But the ground isn’t below us. We’re two floors above the ground.”
I sighed. “Just do it.” His eyes snapped closed. “Good. Hold out your hands. It might help to connect with me.” I rested my palms on his and clasped his hands.
“Now breathe in and send those roots down into the soil below you.”
“Out of my butt?”
“What?”
“Are the roots coming out of my butt?”
“Come on! You aren’t taking this seriously.”
I moved to pull my hands back from his, but his fingers tightened around mine. In that moment, something startling happened. It felt like…a pulse of heat passed from him to me. If I were more new-agey than I actually was, I’d have called it an energy exchange or said that I’d felt his aura.
But no, this was something much more basic. I licked my lips, acknowledging this in-your-face physical attraction.
William was a handsome guy, and though he seemed to be a man of few—and sometimes exasperating—words, he was also accustomed to getting his way. I attempted to pull my hands back again, but he still didn’t release them.
“I don’t want to let go of you right now,” he said in a low voice.
I took a deep breath through my nose and caught a whiff of him. He smelled like soap and clean goodness. And now the tension thickened as my gaze slid down the strong column of his neck to his chest. “Don’t forget to breathe,” I murmured.
“I won’t forget that.”
I didn’t reply. I was talking to myself, not him.
“I don’t want you to leave with the Faire, Jenna,” he said quietly in that strange monotone of his.
“What about you?” I asked. “Don’t you ever get wanderlust?”
He shook his head. “Lust, yes. Wand
erlust, no.”
Lust…there was plenty of that going on right now as I focused on William’s broad chest. His t-shirt had a picture of a knight in a full suit of armor with the words ‘Dressed To Kill’ beneath it. I wondered if he understood the play on words—or even the irony—and I surmised that someone had given him the shirt as a gift.
My grip on his hands loosened as I became aware of the rough calluses beneath my palms. William was a man who worked with his hands—all raw talent and masculinity. And the more I became aware of that, the warmer I felt—and the harder it was to breathe. His fingers squeezed, as if anticipating that I would pull away.
I began to fidget as he scrutinized my neck and then my shoulder, his gazing moving as high as my chin. “Why would I want to move on when everything and everyone I love most is where I am now?”
Longing. Loss. Pain. Something about his words made me ache, and I hated feeling this way, which is why I rarely allowed myself to wallow in those feelings.
“Can you—can you let go of my hands now?” I said in a tiny voice. And he did—slowly—but without pulling them away.
I removed my hands while I tried to analyze where this pang was coming from. My mind raced to figure out a way to make it stop.
As we continued to sit there, William’s eyes drifted back to the poster, then over to the bulletin board hanging next to it. He gingerly rose to his feet and walked directly over to the board. Something must have caught his eye.
He reached up and traced the decorative scrollwork on the border of Maja’s wedding invitation with a long index finger. “This is nice work. Hand drawn.”
“That’s my sister’s wedding invitation. Apparently, her fiancé likes to draw as a hobby.”
He nodded and moved to get a closer look, his eyes skimming over the text. They were lovingly handmade invitations instead of the fancy, mass-produced kind. And Maja had taken care to have some printed in English to send to her old friends in the US. “In June,” he said quietly. “Will you be attending?”
I shrugged. “I thought I’d go back for a couple weeks…spend some time with my family before the Faire moves north at the end of the month.”
He nodded but said nothing before turning back to me.
There was something so refreshing about William. So unassuming. He was comfortable in his own skin and didn’t try to make himself out to be something he wasn’t.
And he never boasted. The offhanded way he’d let on that he was beyond financially secure was evidence of that. The car he drove, the house he lived in…both were nice, but not over the top. Nothing about him screamed small-penised man trying desperately to overcompensate. He was Doug’s polar opposite in practically every way.
I had to admit to myself, if to no one else, that I wanted William. Maybe the card I’d pulled last night really was calling me a fool. A sudden wave of sadness washed over me.
I leaned back on my hands. “I think I could use a drink. How about you? Do you drink?”
“Sometimes. But not to excess. And not when I’m driving.”
“Let’s get drunk, Wil.” And before he could answer, I pushed up to stand and turned to leave the room. I didn’t want to chance him detecting my melancholy—or that strong pull I was feeling toward him. With alcohol, I could convince myself that it was all about my vulnerable state and blind attraction to a handsome guy. Nothing more.
And as with everything else, this, too, would pass.
Chapter 10
William
I’d come over to spend time alone with Jenna—and to work on this crowd issue, too, I guess. I never imagined I’d be sitting in a circle of my friends playing drinking games and watching my cousin get inebriated while his fiancée laughed. In fact, I’d never seen Adam drunk before.
“Never have I ever…watched Star Wars in just my underwear,” Mia says with a smirk while looking straight at Adam.
“Aw, shit,” he says and then grabs his glass of beer and chugs it. “Half of this should count as a shot.”
“Not according to the FDA’s alcohol content guidelines. Drink up, son, or hit the hard stuff,” says Heath, who holds up his shot glass and clinks it with Adam’s beer mug. Heath downs his shot while the women laugh.
“Fine.” Adam sighs, then holds his mug high in the air and lets out a huge belch. Everyone is laughing and teasing him, especially Mia.
“Damn, I’m gonna need to switch to light beer or donkey piss. They taste about the same,” he mutters.
“Oh no, we’re getting you wasted tonight. I plan to use every opportunity to make you drink,” says Heath. “C’mon, everyone, who wants to see Adam Drake soused?”
Everyone raises their hands but Adam and me.
“Me! Me, definitely me!” Kat laughs, and Mia makes a face at her.
“The Force is with you, young Bowman, but you are not a Jedi yet,” Adam says to Heath. I wonder what the quote has to do with the drinking game.
And this game is a strange one. We are supposed to make a statement about something we have never done, and if the other people in the room have done it, then they are supposed to drink. The object of the game, of course, is to get intoxicated. I wonder why we need a game to do that. Why don’t we just sit around the table and drink?
“My turn, then,” Adam says, and he gets a funny look on his face. I’ve seen him make that face before…when he’s planning something devious. “Never have I ever sucked a dick.”
“Ah, come on!” Heath and all the women clink glasses and drink. Adam looks extremely happy with himself.
Me, I’m not happy at all. As I watch Jenna laugh and drink, I feel that same tight curl of jealousy inside. Who is she thinking of? Doug? Another man? Other men? Suddenly, I want to hit something. I don’t like imagining her with other men.
I only want to imagine her with me.
But I’ve trained myself not to go there. If I expect something, I don’t handle the disappointment well when it doesn’t happen. Suddenly, though, I am imagining it.
Her head is turned up to mine, her pale hair cascading over her shoulders. Her mouth is open and she’s kissing me like she did last weekend…like the heroine in a movie. Like Arwen kissed Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. Though we aren’t standing by a giant waterfall and that annoying music isn’t playing super loud in the background.
The others are continuing the game and I’m ignoring everything that’s going on around me, caught up in that image.
“Earth to William!” Alex is saying. I haven’t had to drink once tonight. I doubt it’s going to change now.
“What?” I ask.
“I said, ‘Never have I ever had sex with a woman,’” Alex repeats.
Everyone is looking at me, though I suspect Adam already knows the answer because he’s talking now, saying let’s just move on to the next one. He’s trying to protect me. Since he came to live with us when he was thirteen and I was eleven, it’s always been like that. We might genetically be cousins, but in many ways, he’s my older brother.
But this time, instead of accepting his help, I shake my head. “Neither have I,” I say. And I make it through another round without having to drink.
It’s Heath’s turn. He glares at Alex. “Well, since Alex stole mine, then I need to amend what I was going to say. So…never have I ever made out with a chick.”
The other men drink and so does Jenna. Everyone makes noises of surprise. After she downs her shot, she looks up, eyes round and wide. “What?”
Alex starts laughing. “Don’t mind the men, they are all just picturing it—and getting turned on.”
“Yep. I kissed a girl—and I liked it!” She starts to sing the Katy Perry song and everyone else laughs.
Finally, I have a chance to drink, so I down a shot and immediately start coughing and sputtering. I’ve had tequila before, but I don’t really like it. Beer is much better. Maybe I’ll be like Adam and switch to beer.
“William!” Heath says, slurring his words. “You devil… Detai
ls! I need details.”
I shake my head. “You aren’t going to get them. Play your game. I guarantee that you aren’t going to get me drunk before you pass out.”
“Challenge accepted!” Heath says.
It’s Mia’s turn again. “Shit…this is getting hard!”
“That’s what she said,” replies Adam with a smirk.
Mia frowns, looking at him between narrowed eyes. “You’d better change that pronoun, mister. And quickly, unless you want damage to your most favorite body parts.”
“Hey, they’re your favorites, too. Okay, how about….that’s what you said?”
Mia laughs, snorting through her nose. “Much better. All right, let’s take this game in a nonsexual direction…”
“That’s no fun,” says Jordan, who is elbowed by his girlfriend, April. She still seems flushed and angry from the previous round, when Jordan was the only one who had to drink to, “Never have I ever been in a threesome.”
We end up playing three more rounds. Jordan’s challenge, “Never have I ever kissed my step-cousin,” elicits a lot of swearing and rude gestures from a now fully intoxicated Adam.
Just as I’d predicted, I end up the only sober person at the end of the game. I’m silently gloating about it, and I don’t even care.
Afterward, everyone sits around, either talking or continuing to drink until they pass out (Heath), or trying to sober up by making coffee (Adam). I end up going back into Jenna’s room to get my shoes and stop short when I find her curled up on her bed, crying.
It’s not loud sobbing. In fact, there’s hardly any noise coming from her, and the noise that does come out sounds like a kitten. She doesn’t even notice I’m here. Do I grab my shoes and leave, or do I try to comfort her? I have no idea how I can comfort her, and I could end up making it worse. I’m frozen with indecision until she wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and sighs. I perceive that she’s no longer actively crying.
I sit down on the bed next to her and, without understanding why I’m doing it, I stroke her hair…like I’m stroking a kitten. She rolls over and looks at me, then sniffs loudly. “Turn off the light and come back here,” she whispers.
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