“Watch it.” Ian gave her ponytail a yank. Half her hair had come loose, hanging in a total mess around her shoulders.
“You watch it.” She flicked his bare chest. “I’ve got a lot of making up to do for all that ‘little baby Diana’ crap you gave me when we were kids.”
“You mean you’ve got a lot of showering to do. I’m sneaking you into my house when we get back.”
“Ian—” Apprehension pricked her skin.
“No one will know.” He squeezed her knee.
Of course. Ian knew all the best ways to sneak into his own house. He’d probably been escaping and coming back from the time he could walk.
“I guess I need your help to get clean,” she giggled. “It’s so hard on my own. Don’t you think?”
Ian tipped his head back, then looked straight at her. “I think it doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Oh, I think it does.” She stroked his wrist. “This is just the beginning. I’ll let you train me twice a week, but the next time we go out—” She let out a breath. “I’m going to take you somewhere you’ve never been before.”
Outside the Jeep, crickets chirped. Ian’s voice was so quiet she barely heard it.
“You already do.”
Chapter Five
The bookstore was busy for a Tuesday night. Diana lingered by a display of greeting cards, eyeing the entrance over the top of a random book.
She hadn’t told Ian where they were meeting. She’d just texted him an address, with instructions: Meet me inside the front door. Come after you’re done at the gym. Don’t dress up.
Ian’s shift ended at eight. The bookstore closed at nine. It was eight-thirty now, and it shouldn’t have taken him more than fifteen minutes to get here.
Maybe she’d made a mistake. Asking Ian to a date at a bookstore — and springing it on him as a surprise — might genuinely be his idea of torture. At least she’d known what she was getting herself into at the gym; she’d planned her visit, thrift store shorts and all. She’d been back once since ‘Samantha’ showed up and both the twins were right: the second time was easier. But Ian had no idea what he was in for.
She’d been joking when she promised to take him someplace he’d never been, but it might be true.
Her tote bag hung from her shoulder. Inside was her red leather journal, bulging with all the poems she’d ripped out, turned into paper airplanes, and stuffed back inside. Ian still didn’t know she’d almost flown those poems to his backyard.
She carried her journal everywhere now. It didn’t live hidden in her underwear drawer any longer.
Snapping her book shut, she pushed it back on the shelf and toyed with the greeting card display.
“Okay, Diana.” A deep voice spoke up, so close that she jumped. Ian stood in front of her. “Nice one. This is the real prank, am I right?”
“No prank,” she said cheerily. Glancing both ways, she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Just a surprise.”
The look of sheer confusion on Ian’s face was priceless. He eyed the walls of books, hands in his pockets.
“So we’re here because you want me to buy you a book?”
“You don’t have to. We can just browse.”
“What does that mean?”
“We wander around and look through books to see if there’s anything we like. It’s fun.”
‘Fun’ was not written anywhere on Ian’s pained face or hunched shoulders. “This place is stressing me out.”
Diana touched his hand. Ian’s palm was warm, the way it always was. Large, giving her flutters. But alarm radiated from his body.
“The gym stressed me out,” she said softly. “And it’s where you go to relax. This is where I go to relax.”
Ian nodded a few times, like he was trying to convince himself. “I get that this is basically your heaven, but I don’t like books.”
“What did they ever do to you?”
They were blocking the doorway. Someone coughed behind them. Ian circled her shoulders with his arm and pulled her to the side. At least they were still in the store, instead of out on the sidewalk.
“I was kidding about taking you someplace you’ve never been,” she added.
“No, you weren’t.” Ian’s lips twitched.
“You’ve never been in a bookstore?”
“Not really.”
“I can’t believe that. What about when you have to buy books for your classes in college?”
Ian shrugged, but a faint flush crept up his neck. “Brendan takes care of it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“What’s going on here, Ian?” She was being just this side of obnoxious, she knew. But Ian had pushed her so many times…and she’d pushed herself for him…and she sensed the best way to get to Ian was to push back.
Ian sighed loudly. “Okay. I’ll spell it out for you. Books mean school. I don’t like school. I don’t like teachers. I don’t like sitting in class, I don’t like being told what to do, I don’t like grades and kissing ass and playing stupid games. It’s boring and fake and has fuck-all to do with what I want to do.”
“That’s not books’ fault. You’ve never liked school for a single minute?”
He leaned against the wall and raked a hand through his hair. “Listen. The only reasons I graduated high school — the only reasons I got into college — were my brother and Mike Harris.”
“Who?”
“Um, Coach Harris? The basketball coach?”
“I’m sorry, I never knew his name. I really paid zero attention to sports.”
“Yeah, okay.” Ian closed his eyes. “You never came to any of our games either. I know you didn’t care.”
Dammit, her date was rapidly going into a tailspin. Ian had been so supportive when she came to the gym, so encouraging. She’d blubbered all over him when they’d had sex in his Jeep, and he’d just urged her to let it all out.
“Of course I cared.” She squeezed his arm. “I cared so much that I stayed away. I don’t know if that makes sense. But I’ll take the bus for two hours in the winter to see you play, I’ll learn how the game works, I’ll cheer you on. I promise. I’ll be your biggest fan. I know it’s the most important thing for you. I brought you here because this place matters to me. I want to share that with you.”
Ian exhaled. “I get it. But Diana, I came that close — that close —” he held his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart — “to being expelled from high school. You know why I wasn’t? Because I cared enough about playing basketball to skate that line and be good after I pulled some shit, and because Coach Harris massively helped me out, over and over.”
“I wish I’d known,” she said softly. “I would have been there for you too.”
“It’s better that you didn’t.”
“Where was Brendan while you kept getting in trouble?”
“We had a lot of agreements in place.” Ian didn’t blink, but his leg was jiggling. “I benefitted too. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. He helped me graduate.”
And probably, more than one outraged parent had found Ian fooling around with their daughter, only to get a dose of puppy-dog eyes from “Brendan.” She knew. She’d been there.
She leaned against the wall next to him. “Look, you like me. I like school.”
“Really?” Ian folded his arms across his chest. “Do you really, Diana? ‘Cause I’ve always wondered.”
“It’s how I win.” She flushed and looked around to see if any random book-browsers had overheard. “I know I’m not supposed to say that. But I like being on top.”
“Bloodthirsty bitch.” His face broke into a grin. “You’re not much of a team player, are you?”
She began to laugh. “I like learning too. I’ve had some really inspiring teachers. I’m excited to go to Yale and broaden my horizons…”
Ian swiped her glasses and held them high in the air. “Forget the college essay, baby.”
“Hey!” She smacked h
is chest.
“Listen to yourself. I know you like broadening your horizons, bad girl. How about we broaden them a little more tonight?”
“You’re such a dick.” She made a snatch for her glasses. Ian held them out of the way and messed up her hair. As she dove to yank on his wrist, she bumped into the greeting card display.
“Oh shit,” she wheezed, grabbing the rack to steady it.
A woman passing by gave them a shocked look.
“Sorry.” Ian flashed her a charming smile and patted Diana on the shoulder. “I can’t take her anywhere.”
As soon as the woman walked off into the nonfiction section, shaking her head, Diana dissolved into laughter.
“I’m going to kill you,” she gasped, tipping her head into Ian’s chest.
“In the bookstore, or outside? You’re already killing me slowly in here.”
She made a split-second decision. “Ten minutes.” She leaned close to whisper in his ear. Softly, urgently. “Ten minutes here, and if you want to leave after that, we leave. Okay? We go home or go to the gym or go do it in your Jeep or whatever you want.”
He gave her a reluctant grin. “You memorized that little speech from the club, huh?”
“It was very persuasive.”
“You’re really fucking stubborn.”
“Takes one to know one.”
He exhaled. His breath stirred her hair. “Where do you hang out when you come here?”
“Usually here.” She pointed to the fiction section. “Or over there.” She gestured toward poetry. Taking Ian’s hand, she pulled him down the aisle towards the back of the bookstore. Then she shot him a smile over her shoulder. “Ten minutes to do whatever I say.”
Ian’s mouth opened and closed. Oh, she’d remember that look on his face for a long time.
“Okay,” he said, as they approached the poetry section. “Yeah. You write poems that you never show anybody. And you said you’re gonna show them to me.”
“I will.”
“When?” They halted in front of the bookshelves. Ian’s hand was warm around hers, his big palm giving her goosebumps.
She opened her mouth to say soon. What came out was “Now.”
Ian’s eyes widened.
“You’re going to sit down right here and read them,” she added, before she lost her nerve. Three shelves formed three sides of a square, a quiet alcove in the back of the bookstore.
“Here?”
“You heard me. Sit.”
He laughed. “Yes, mistress.”
Easing his long body to the floor, he spread his legs in a vee, his knees bent, and looked up at her expectantly. His feet touched the opposite bookshelf. She settled down opposite him, between his legs, her back against the books.
Holding her journal over Ian’s lap, she opened the red covers and shook out a snowfall of ripped paper. Poems went everywhere. On his legs, between his legs, on the floor to either side.
“What’s all this?” Ian ran his hands through the poems and let them fall. He looked the way she’d felt for the past month: confused, nervous, excited. Dazzled. His broad shoulders were hunched, his mouth hanging open a little. Hazel eyes wide, the dark pupils almost swallowing the clear green-brown of his irises. She wanted to kiss him, but she held herself back. “Why do they say Ian on them? Did these used to be paper airplanes?”
He picked one up and folded it back along its creases. She expected him to pitch it at her. Instead, he turned it over in his hand.
“They’re my poems.” She touched his knee. “I’ve been writing in this book since the beginning of high school. After that night at the club with you and Brendan, when we weren’t talking, I tore them all out and was going to fly them into your backyard. That’s why they say Ian. They’re not all about you, but there are a couple…”
“We weren’t talking,” he repeated. His fingers linked through hers, holding her hand loosely. “You mean, you weren’t talking to me.”
“I didn’t think it would ever work,” she said softly. “I didn’t know what to do with how I felt about you.”
“That makes two of us.” A grin split his face. “Now I’m hanging out with you in a bookstore. Does that change your mind?”
She kissed the back of his hand, because yes didn’t seem like enough. “Read something. Pick anything. Before I lose my nerve.”
“You’re not going to read to me? I forgot to tell you.” Ian leaned forward to whisper. “I don’t know how to read.”
“Ian,” she groaned.
“Kidding.” He picked up the poem he’d refolded into a plane and flattened it out, reading silently. Then another. Diana watched every half-smile and flutter of his eyelids.
After he’d read through a handful, he stacked the papers in a neat pile and squeezed her knee.
“You were lonely,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.” Ian had cut to the heart of it so fast, it took her breath away.
He held up a poem in each hand. “I know you said that when you told me everything in the Jeep, and all the shit you went through, but this makes it a lot more real. And — damn.” His voice dropped. “Horny as hell on top of it.”
“You knew that.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know the extent.” He folded and unfolded one of the poems. “No wonder you were so ready when I — when we wanted to fuck you.”
Ian’s crude words, in the quiet of the poetry section, sent hot pinpricks over her body.
She glanced down. She was leaning forward, her dress gaping open a bit to reveal her cleavage. Her light tan made a vee that reached the tops of her breasts. Below that, a ribbon of paler skin showed above her polka-dotted dress.
Ian looked down too. He licked his lips.
“What do you think of the poems?” Diana whispered. “Besides me being all lonely and horny. I did have a life, I promise.”
He held her gaze. “I don’t know anything about poetry, but what you write is making me feel things.”
She felt warm, sticky, her pulse throbbing. “That’s the best I can hope for.” She’d clutched her poems close for so long, but sharing them felt…powerful. She was powerful, making Ian feel things.
He picked up another poem from the pile he’d read. “Is this about me and Brendan?”
She glanced at the looping handwriting and the scattering of dirty words.
“Yes.” Her cheeks were red now.
His slow smile made her stomach lurch. “You’re a very bad girl, Diana. I saw the date. This is from before we took you to the treehouse.”
“You thought about it too.” Heat trickled down her body.
“All the time.” He grinned. “While you were walking around being all prissy with your nose in the air, you have no idea how many times I thought about melting you from the inside out.”
She shivered. “Did you ever think about the three of us?” she whispered.
Ian leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. “Sometimes. After the first time me and Brendan were with, you know, Lauren, my old girlfriend, yeah, I thought about it.” The tips of his ears were red. Hard to believe this made him blush, but it was adorable. “That day we ran into you by the gym vending machine when you were just an innocent little sophomore—”
“I remember that,” she put in.
“Yeah, innocent little sophomore, except for this.” He waved the poem he’d just held up. “And these too.” He rattled a pile of paper.
“Are you sorting out my dirty poems for future reference?”
“Hell, yes.” He flashed white teeth at her. “Anyway, after we saw you at the vending machine and you would only talk to Brendan, not to me, and then Lauren showed up and we went outside to the bleachers—”
“Did you…?” she asked in an undertone, trailing off. She glanced out of the poetry section. The back of the bookstore was quiet, empty for now.
Ian raised his eyebrows at her.
“I’m curious!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “I’m very curious.
I want to know.”
“Yeah, you’re a curious cat. And yes, we did.”
“Was it good?”
“Not as good as it was with you, bad girl.” Ian hesitated, like he didn’t want to go on. “She had more experience than you, but Brendan and I had a lot less at…” He waved both hands in mirror movements to illustrate working together. “And you know the three of us have a history since you were born, and I’ve been in love with you for longer than I’m going to say, and there was that part under the bleachers when I closed my eyes and pretended she was you.”
“Wow.” Ian’s hand rested on her bare knee, squeezing lightly. She picked it up and played with his fingers. “I don’t know whether to be happy or freaked out.”
“It was a long time ago. She never knew. I was behind her, and Brendan—” he broke off.
“Was in front of her,” Diana finished. “I get it. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like. And thank you for not dragging me under the bleachers.”
But no, she realized. In her crazy whirlwind with the boys next door, they’d never tried that. She’d never had Ian take her from behind, heard his pants and growls of desire, while she opened her mouth to Brendan. She’d never come around Ian’s thickness, rippling helplessly with each rub of his finger on her clit, while Brendan fell apart the way he only did when his cock was being sucked.
The other way, yes. More than once. But this arrangement was something she’d never done — something she’d never do, now.
“Diana?” Ian’s voice was teasing. “Where’d you go?”
“Sorry. Just, uh—”
“You really want to hear this?”
“Part of me wants to hear everything you’ve ever done and everything you and Brendan have done together with girls. And another part of me knows that once I hear something from you, I can’t unhear it.”
“Yeah.” Ian rubbed her palm with his thumb. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go into details. Besides what we’re talking about now.”
“That’s fine,” she said, surprised. “I can’t believe it, I was so envious of Lauren when I saw you guys, but now I feel bad for her.”
The Girl in Between Page 7