He marches me into someone’s room and closes the door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he hisses.
“I’m having fun,” I counter. “And since when do you care? I thought it just ‘can’t happen’ with us.”
“It can’t,” he says, nostrils flaring. “But I’m staying away from you for your benefit. Not mine.”
I narrow my eyes. “Well, guess what? It can happen with my new friend out there. And his lap was pretty freaking comfortable, so I’m going back to it.”
Before I can even inhale, he’s backed me to the door, his body pressed against mine, his hands pinning me at the hips. His mouth descends, equal parts anger and desire, his hands digging into my skin. There’s a whimper in my throat as I open to him, the hard assault of his lips, his tongue. It’s an angry, desperate kiss, and my response is a desire I feel everywhere, emanating out from my center to the tips of my toes.
His mouth moves to my neck, and I gasp, leaning into him, our hips locked together so I can feel the hard weight of him against me. “You fucking torture me,” he says, his hands pulling my dress down past my shoulders, unclasping my bra. He groans as he cups my breasts, the tip of his index finger brushing against me, eliciting a small, shuddering cry.
Things are happening too quickly and yet not quickly enough. We are not like a new couple, tentative and unsure. It’s as if we’ve been like this many times before, so far beyond the point of uncertainty that there is only action without thought. I’m thinking of nothing but the need for more, for the things that come next. He pushes my dress up around my waist, and I tug the top button of his shorts open with a single hand, my fingers sliding beneath the waistband of his boxers.
And then someone tries to open the door behind me, the knob gouging my spine and sending me flying forward. James somehow manages to catch me and slam the door shut at the same time, but the moment it latches, he jumps away from me with a look of horror on his face that makes me want to cry and throttle him simultaneously.
“Goddammit,” he hisses. He digs his hands through his hair. “What the fuck is wrong with me? I can’t believe this is happening again.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I whisper.
“My dad was right,” he says, sitting on the bed and staring at the floor. “It would have been so much better if you’d never come down here.”
The last words are quiet, not really intended for me, but I hear them all the same. And they take everything I feel for him and twist it tight in my chest, make it so raw that I want to clutch at it, this phantom pain that hurts more than any injury he could have inflicted.
I don’t wait for him to apologize, though I imagine he will. I’ve heard enough. Whatever his body says, James doesn’t want me here. Ginny doesn’t either. And so I am done.
Chapter 32
JAMES
Elle leaves, and I remain behind in the room, angry at everyone—at her, at that dick out on the porch, and at every other guy she will ever be with. Mostly, though, I am mad at my family. At my mother for the endless fragility that’s had us all walking on eggshells for years. At my father for the chain of events he set in motion by leaving in the first place.
If my mother hadn’t gotten sick, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have come home. And maybe he shouldn’t have. Maybe my mother would have gotten over it, eventually. Instead, she’s spent the remainder of their marriage wracked by self-doubt. She went away for treatment and came home, still far too thin, and not entirely better. She still stops eating. And we all watch it happen, wondering if she’ll wind up in the hospital again, me blaming my father a little.
I shake off my reverie. I’ve fucked up with Elle again, and this time I think I really hurt her. I rush to the deck. She’s gone. So is the guy she was with.
“Did Elle leave with that guy?” I ask Kristy. I try hard to disguise my panic.
She puts both her hands on hips and glares at me. “What the hell did you say to her, James? She was really upset when she came back outside.”
“I...fucked up. Where’d she go?”
“I’m pretty sure that, thanks to you, she’s going home.”
I sigh in relief. “Okay. I’ll find her there and apologize.”
“No,” says Kristy. “Not the beach house. She’s going back to DC.”
I thought I’d feel relieved if Elle was gone. I realize now, as my stomach turns over, that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Chapter 33
ELLE
My furious walk home sobered me up pretty freaking well.
I have no idea what I will find when I get to DC. I called my mother on the way back from the party and left a voicemail saying I was going back to the townhouse whether it’s free or not.
No one is at the beach house, so there will be no awkward half-truths to offer in explanation. It’s best this way. I consider the possibility that I will never see James again, and it produces a sharp pain in my chest. I do my best to ignore it. If one thing’s been made abundantly clear this summer, it’s that James Campbell will cause me pain no matter what I do.
I walk down to the Porsche and am pulling out the suitcase I stored in the trunk just as James swerves into the driveway, blocking my exit.
My teeth grind together as he jumps out of the car. “You’re blocking me in.”
He looks stunned, broken. “Kristy said you’re leaving.”
“Yes,” I reply. “Consider your wish granted.”
My voice breaks as the last words come out, and he closes the distance between us, his hands sliding into my hair, pulling me close.
“It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever said in my life,” he breathes, forcing me to look at him. “I just didn’t know it until I imagined being here without you. I can’t do it any more. I can’t stay away from you.”
His mouth covers mine, firm and demanding and certain. His teeth graze my lip and I open to him on a gasp, meeting his tongue, capturing the anguished sound he makes. He touches me as if he needs too many things at once, his hands everywhere—my hair, my hips, my legs.
There have been so many false starts with us that I should question this, stop him and ensure that this isn’t one more foray into something he plans to end. But I don’t. I can’t. I’ve waited too long, and I need these things—his warmth and the pressure of his chest against mine and the greedy noises he makes while he devours my mouth.
I barely register our movement—across the yard, through the house—until I am in his room, falling back on the bed. He climbs over me, supporting his weight but not so much that I can’t still feel the solidity, the heat of him, above me.
He rests his forehead against mine, and his voice is both apologetic and determined at once. “Elle, there are two things I have to tell you before this...before anything happens. First, we need to keep this quiet, okay? From my parents and Ginny especially. They would never accept this.”
I swallow. “Why?”
“My mom is going through some stuff, and Ginny is too. It’s hard to explain. They’re fragile right now, and I can’t upset the balance any more than I already have.”
I guess I understand what he’s saying, but I can’t say I love the fact that James dating me would so unpalatable to his entire family.
“What’s the second thing?”
“That it can’t be more than this. No matter how badly I wish it were otherwise.”
“Because of my age?”
He hesitates. “Yeah, that’s part of it. But also, I’m leaving. I’m waiting on the formal offer, but the FBI actually has an office in Paris, and since I’m fluent in French, that’s where they want me. I just...I can’t afford complications.”
I could continue to ask questions, but the truth is nothing he is going to tell me will change the fact that I want this. And there’s this small, blindly optimistic voice inside me insisting I’ve got a month to change his mind, no matter what his hang-up about it is.
And that’s the part of me that wins.
<
br /> He lowers his head, and I stop thinking entirely. All I know is him, the weight of him, the smell of his soap and the rasp of his scruff against my skin, the heat of him between us, resting hard against my abdomen. His mouth moving to my ear, to my neck, his fingers brushing against my collarbone, sliding my dress down, a small groan in his throat when he does it.
His hands move over me as he returns to my mouth, the small flicker of his tongue making me arch, wrapping my legs tight around his waist to feel him grow harder and heavier as his fingers glide over my calf.
“Jesus Christ, it pisses me off thinking about you sitting in that guy’s lap. Especially dressed like this.”
I would laugh, but there is no time. He grabs my hips and pulls me toward him so there’s no space between us, and then he is cradling my neck and kissing me so hard that his words are driven from my head.
My dress slides up, and his fingers brush my inner thigh. His touch is light, but enough to make me feel that things can’t move fast enough, like the ten seconds it would take for him to be inside me is ten seconds too many.
“Elle… “ he begins, and then the sound of the front door opening and slamming makes both of us freeze. We stare at each other with similar degrees of panic, listening to the clip of Ginny’s heels coming down the hall.
“James?” she calls. His door is wide open. Without a second to spare we throw off our shock and scramble from the bed.
I can play this off, but judging by the way his shorts are tented, he cannot.
“Run to the bathroom,” I say.
She gets to James’ doorway mere seconds after he’s shut the door behind him.
“What the hell happened? I turn away for one second, and you’ve both left the party.”
I tug at my dress nervously. “He’s in the bathroom. I think he’s sick.”
She knocks on the bathroom door. “James? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
She turns to me. “What happened to you and that med student?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I took off.”
“Something must be going around,” she sighs. “Well, go to bed. Let me know if you need anything.”
I hesitate. Ginny’s arrival may have stalled things, but my body is still demanding what it was denied, no matter how impossible it now appears.
“Go ahead,” she urges. “He’ll be fine.”
I walk away, feeling uncomfortable about the deception. And if it already bothers me that we lied, a secret relationship with James might not be as easy as I thought.
Chapter 34
ELLE
I give myself ten seconds in the morning to relish all of it: his words and his weight above me and the feel of his skin beneath my hands. Because right now, with the sun streaming in my room, I can only imagine him taking these things away from me again. I can only imagine finding him the way I’ve found him before: full of regret.
My limbs are sluggish as I shower and head downstairs. James sits at the table with Max, his gaze meeting mine for a moment before it flickers away. I beg him to smile, to find some small way to tell me my fears are unfounded, but he does not.
When I hear him push away from the table, I continue on toward the coffee, but all I want to do is go upstairs and pack. Except suddenly he’s beside me, standing closer than normal. He slides his mug over as if he’s only here for a refill.
“Everything okay?” he asks in low voice.
“Yeah. You?” I fill his mug and push it back toward him. His hand wraps around mine, warm and rough and firm, and holds it there, blocking Max’s view with his body. I wait for him to pull the rug out. I wait for the phrase ‘we need to talk’, but it doesn’t come.
I venture a quick glance at him, and his mouth quirks up at the corner.
“Yeah. Everything’s perfect.”
I stand here, trying to commit the moment to memory, his smile and the way he’s looking at me, his hand wrapped around mine. These moments will likely be fleeting. I know that much.
But I’m going to enjoy the hell out of every one of them.
James quietly suggests the beach. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed when Ginny and Max decide to come with us. On the one hand, it will be impossible to hold a serious conversation. And on the other hand…it will be impossible to hold a serious conversation.
“You had to wear that bikini, didn’t you?” James groans under his breath when I come downstairs.
“I thought you were all done staying away from me?” I whisper back.
“That doesn’t mean I need to spend three hours next to you dressed like that.” He sighs. “Especially after last night.”
He stays by my side as we walk, close enough that our hands brush, a small frisson of electricity that makes the surface of my skin come alive. I look at him out of the corner of my eye—his strong jaw and the curve of his bicep at rest—and feel something spasm low in my stomach. I’d be so much better off right now if we hadn’t been interrupted last night.
We lay our towels down, James not-so-subtly nudging Max aside when he walks up beside me.
“Want me to do your back, Elle?” Max asks.
James snatches the sunscreen from his hand. “I’ve got it.”
You’d think, with the anticipation I’m feeling, that we were both in bed naked. I sit up and face away from him, hugging my knees to my chest, waiting for him to begin. His hands whisper over my skin, and the anticipation builds. He lifts the back of my bikini, sliding his hand beneath it, and I actually shiver. His low laugh in response brushes my ear.
It’s only when Max calls him on it—“Gee, James, I had no idea you were so thorough. Do my back next.”—that he stops.
“Want me to do yours?” I ask.
He hesitates, and we exchange a look.
“Sure,” he says, lying down on his stomach.
I could spend hours applying sunscreen to him, memorizing the feel of his skin and the tightly bunched muscles of his back. And I probably would, were I not a foot away from Ginny, though she seems to have noticed nothing.
“So what happened with Justin?” she asks sleepily.
I feel James tense beneath my hands. Fortunately for us both, there’s not much to tell. “I told him I didn’t feel well and took off.”
James relaxes.
“How’d he take that?” she asks.
“I believe his exact words were ‘I have a bed at my place too.’”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” she says.
“Yes, you can,” snarls James.
Ginny scowls at him. “Why are you eavesdropping anyway? No one asked for your opinion.”
I roll on my back and start talking to Ginny, but James’ proximity is so distracting that I barely know what I’m saying. It’s almost a relief when he and Max walk down to the shore to throw a football back and forth, except my eyes follow him even then. Every muscle is delineated when he throws. Really not what I need right now.
“Why are you watching them?” asks Ginny.
I shrug. “I’m bored. Nothing else to do but watch. They’re good.”
I thought she was over her mysterious unhappiness with me, but I see a flash of irritation cross her face before she finally puts her head down again.
I glance back at James, and he’s already looking at me. I want to pick up where we left off the night before, and I’m fairly certain he does too. It’s hard to know for sure, though, until we’ve gotten a minute alone.
James goes into work before me, and by the time I arrive, the bar is packed. It stays busy most of the night, but that doesn’t stop me from focusing on James. No matter where I move in the restaurant, I’m conscious only of him, as if I’m the minute hand of the clock and he is its center. I look toward him and he turns, holding my gaze longer than he should, his mouth moving a mere fraction—that secret smile of his for once directed at me.
We don’t hold any kind of real con
versation until later, when I turn from the deep freezer and slam into him. He grabs my hips to hold me steady.
“Hi,” I say weakly. The moment I stand this close to him, my chest against his and our mouths millimeters apart, my heart begins an irregular, fluttering rhythm.
His lips move upward again, infinitesimally. He doesn’t let go of my hips. “Are you sure this is going to be okay?” he asks. “I shouldn’t be letting this happen. I know I shouldn’t. I’m counting on you to tell me if it’s not enough for you.”
It’s not enough for me, James. “Stop worrying,” I lie. “I’m fine.”
He steps in then, his mouth closing over mine, a light kiss that shouldn’t affect me nearly as much as it does.
“That’s all I get?” I ask.
“When I have to walk back into a crowded bar in about 20 seconds? Yeah.”
I shrug one shoulder. “Your loss.” I begin to move around him, but he pulls me back into place, tugging me into him and finding my mouth at the same time. He pushes my back to the freezer door, his fingers bruising my hips to pull me closer. It’s a different sort of kiss, desperate and without thought, the way he kissed me at Brooks’ party. The kind that makes the bright lights and the din of the kitchen seem to disappear.
His eyes are dark when he pulls away, his hands still tight on me as if he’s not sure he’s willing to stop.
“Better?” he asks.
“Much,” I say breathlessly.
His eyes flicker over my mouth, rest there for a moment while he struggles with his indecision, and finally he releases my hips.
“Soon,” he says quietly, almost to himself.
His shift ends an hour before mine. He waits at the bar instead of going home, watching me out of the corner of his eye, making it impossible for me to behave naturally. My waitressing skills perhaps worsen, if that’s possible.
“Are you meeting Max here or something?” Ginny asks him.
No One But Us Page 14