100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series)

by A. J. Lape

  “Say it,” I coaxed softly.

  Big breath. “I intend on finishing a conversation tonight we should’ve had four months ago. And before you make a joke out of it, I’m begging you to take me seriously. This is my heart, Darc. Please respect that.”

  Sweet God Almighty.

  Wasn’t that an H-bomb?

  And no wonder he thought I’d joke because I’d done that before and predictably clammed up when my internal dialogue (my own fears) went haywire.

  “Let me get this straight. If I understand correctly, you want something more from me than best friends?” I clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to make me Mrs. Hottie.”

  “Yes.” Not even a blink.

  “Am I allowed to laugh?” I half giggled. Because let me tell you, folks. This was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard in a while.

  Still no blink. “You said you wouldn’t, Darcy…please.”

  He said my name like a prayer—a whisper so soft and powerful it was like a breath from the gods. I had a momentary flair of panic. I’d held hands with the devil, manufactured lies, told lies, and confessed lies all in the name of my warped sense of justice. And Dylan wanted me? Me? Dang, that was so freaking romantic I might write a song about it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly, “and I agree. It’s about time.”

  My word, there might be hope for me in the communications department yet. He glued his eyes shut as if in physical pain. “Dammit,” he cursed.

  “I’m not sure how to interpret that,” I whispered.

  “This conversation is scaring me to death,” he whispered back.

  I punted those words back at him. “Like Brynn Hathaway scares me?”

  The fairies of transparency just kicked me in the tail. It wasn’t normal for me to be on the up-and-up with something so darn raw. Me, Darcy Walker, Queen of Rationalization and All Things Procrastinatory asked, “Should I be scared of something?”

  Once again, I’m not sure where this girl came from, but I was über stoked she’d made an appearance.

  Dylan kept his eyes closed and looked like he drowned in an emotion he couldn’t pull himself out of. When he spoke, although quiet, his words were impassioned. “I am the one thing,” he whispered, “you should never fear, sweetheart. I love you as you are. You can trust me. That comes from the purest place imaginable in my heart.”

  My mouth went bone-dry.

  Dylan had “All of Me” by John Legend screaming out of his pores.

  And this is why Dylan was my best friend…

  There were many things to love about Dylan. First off, the way he was loyal to his friends—no questions asked. There’s the way he said my name in his sweet voice, or the way he called me Darcy when he was mad. Then there’s the fact he forgave my little, white lies and never held a grudge. Or poured all that hot-blooded charm on me and spoke “alpha” when someone messed with my heart. I loved the way he reached for my hand before I even knew I needed it. Hellloooooo, the way he filled out his jeans. I couldn’t forget the dimples and teeth or the fact he grilled a burger like Bobby Freaking Flay. Or maybe it was all about the eye contact and the little things that made my heart melt. Like him bringing me UDF coffee when Starbucks was closer to his house. Or the way he hugged my little sister when he didn’t even know I’d been watching. But perhaps the biggest thing I loved was he always knew when my thoughts were on my mother.

  Realization hit me hard.

  My crush had evolved. Evolved into something that worried me. There was a brief moment where I pictured us happily ever after. Trouble was, I didn’t fit the prototype of the girl you brought home to Mom…Brynn did.

  But instead of shouting this evolution from the rooftops or declaring my undying like (or love), I blurted out, “I want to date around first. Like a science experiment or something.”

  I think he held his breath. I know I wasn’t breathing. In fact, if my legs were long enough I would’ve kicked my own tail. Can someone tell me why the heck I said that? That just ensured I was one hundred percent mental. This was Dylan-OMG-Taylor we were talking about. I’d practically just turned him down.

  A dark gleam flashed in his eyes, and he inched toward me and took my face in his hands. A glint of humor marked his gaze, and I swear to God in Heaven, the dang room started to sway. “You want to date around first,” he said low.

  “Yeah,” I sheepishly answered.

  “Yeah,” he repeated even lower.

  “And the rule goes for you too,” I insanely added.

  A slight pause. “It goes for me too,” he echoed.

  Wow, so much for a heart-to-heart. We weren’t getting anywhere. Complements mainly of me. “Kill your mockingbird, Dylan. I hate it when you do that.” He had this dreadful habit of mocking whatever I’d say when he felt it was stupid. Believe me, it was highly effective because it threw me off of my game. But a little part of my brain told me I needed to be worried about what I’d just encouraged him to do. I’d die if he paraded someone around in front of me, and I wouldn’t give up my seat in the Beemer without one heck of a dogfight. “I want to date around,” I attempted to say firmer.

  Dylan narrowed his eyes and laughed darkly. “You’re joking.”

  “No,” I said.

  His eyes locked on mine, and my throat went tight with a lump of emotion that felt quite a bit like regret. “Oh, do tell. Who threatens to take you away from me in this little science experiment?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe he’s out there.”

  Dylan was undeterred. Imagine that. He took my hands, gave them both a tender kiss, and replaced them back over his heart. We both watched as my fingers (again) stroked the planes of his chest. Let me tell you something. That thing between us? It had gone from friction…to heat…to straight up gosh-darned combustible. Drat! As usual, my mouth said one thing; my body said another.

  “Do you really want to date around?” he asked softly.

  “No” was in my mind, but “maybe” came out of my mouth. “I don’t even like you,” I lied as I still rubbed his chest. “In fact, I hope you rot in the Land Down Under. And I don’t mean where baby kangaroos frolic happily.”

  Dylan gave me the full weight of his gaze. Deep emotions resided there along with truths he longed to utter. Not even a sigh on his part. “You more than like me, sweetheart. Therein lies your problem.”

  “I would agree that you’re a problem.”

  A teeny-tiny grin. “Then explore it, Darcy. Date me too.”

  I had to take a moment. We both did because he appeared to have unleashed something that’d finally set him free. Dylan had never considered himself a pinch hitter, so this was completely out of character and bizarre on a level that had no name. But a date with him would be tantamount to holy matrimony. It would mean forever—but the inevitable divorce would come, and then who would there be to pick up the pieces?

  “I’ve had other dates, Darc,” he said. “I’ve told you as much, but as I’ve lain here with you—anytime I’m with you—I feel more intimate than I ever have with anyone else. I know our relationship has always crossed the normal boundaries of best friends, but give me a chance. Give me a chance to show you it can be something more. Something that’s getting harder and harder for me to deny.”

  The moron in me asked, “Is that allowed?” Dylan had stuck by me when a lesser man would’ve run: through puking, PMS, crying so fierce I either needed a sedative or shot of whiskey. For some reason, he kept coming back. But come on—was it wise to navigate the choppy waters of friends dating friends? We were polar opposites. He was a morning person; I was a night owl. He ate healthy; I didn’t give a crap. He knew important people; I knew the gutter trash. And even bigger than the differences, I had the overwhelming fear he’d rip my heart out of my chest
, shove it in a blender, and hit shred.

  And if he did? Would the best friendship end as fallout?

  Let me play devil’s advocate here—um, yeah.

  Dylan’s face was as pure and honest as I’d ever seen. “It’s our lives,” was his answer. “Anything is allowed we agree upon.”

  “You’d do that?” I said in awe.

  “Darcy, I want to give you what you want, but I won’t let you leave my life altogether.”

  My chin trembled. I scrunched up my eyes…ears…heart. Dylan’s words usually cut through the noise, but my chest tightened up in a panic attack.

  He leaned his forehead into mine, angling his lips to my ear. “Shh,” he murmured, “I feel your panic. If this is the only way for us to end up together, then I want you to do what you have to do in order to get to that place.”

  Unfortunately—or rather, fortunately for my libido—Dylan didn’t stop there. He slowly trailed his mouth down my throat, making the circuit under my chin until his lips hovered at my other ear. “Can you do that?” he asked.

  I pulled on my feline and purred…purred, for Pete’s sake!

  Time dragged at a snail’s pace before I crawled out of the Dylan lovin’ and found my voice. “I must admit you have nice…jeans,” I said, meaning his rear. “And a nice…shirt,” I added, hinting of his muscled torso. “But I don’t think that’s enough to pull me away from this glorious life of a wallflower.” He met my eyes with a deep grin. “This is not the competitive Dylan I know,” I whispered, wondering where my best friend had gone.

  “I asked for this, Darc, so I’m down with your decision, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  Dylan’s straight talk was sometimes hard to stomach. Here’s the crux of the problem. If I followed through and dated someone else, I’d hurt him. If I didn’t and jumped right into a relationship with my best friend, then that meant I’d be opening my heart up for a hurt too big to handle. I’d loved and lost before and barely made it out alive. I needed to call this off…but oddly a veto didn’t materialize from my mouth.

  “All right,” I sighed.

  Dylan grasped me by the shoulders, his fingernails digging deep into my flesh. The amber in his eyes lit up to glowing, a gaze full of triumph and swagger. “Yeah?” he grinned.

  “Yeah,” I grinned back.

  Sweet God on the Great White Throne. My head nodded enthusiastically in agreement. We were going to date—well, as soon as I got said hypothetical boys out of my system—but I couldn’t shake the feeling we were finito before anything even started.

  Dylan remained undeterred. “Okay, if we do this, I have one rule. It’s complete honesty. At all times.”

  “Even where Brynn is concerned?” I surprisingly asked.

  His brows furrowed, almost as if he’d been shocked Brynn even popped in my mind. “Absolutely,” he reiterated. “The rules between us don’t change. I pray they never change.”

  Dylan switched gears, something else now on his mind. “That being said, I’m gonna slip on my best friend hat. You go on this date, and if you ever feel uncomfortable—even in the slightest—you call me, and I’ll come to get you? Yeah?”

  It felt like someone parked the Smoky Mountains on my chest.

  It was one thing to say I’d date other people. It was something else to talk about it so openly with Dylan, let alone execute. Dylan acted as if our “future relationship” was a fait accompli. Right now, I wasn’t sure what to do with that, so I did the usual…nothing.

  His hand slid under my head, tunneling his fingers in the hair at the base of my neck. When he parted his lips to speak, I cut him off. “I’m trouble,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he grinned cockily.

  “I might hurt you.”

  “You won’t.” The voltage between us piped up a notch, and his smug grin grew wider. Wicked. Dylan knew the effect he had on me, and as much as I tried to act nonchalant, my heart beat out of my chest. A fact I’m pretty sure he felt against his. “I’ve never lost anything, sweetheart, and I don’t intend on starting now.” I knew this to be true. “So you can go on these experimental dates. You can even have a soul baring and enriching conversation for all I care, but in the end…I win. But the moment I hear anyone lays a hand on you, we’ve got a problem.”

  I hitched my chin up a notch, suddenly wanting to push his buttons. “What if I want them to lay a hand on me?”

  His voice turned low, lethal. And what hair he’d captured in his hand was now held firmly in his fist. “Surely to God you aren’t that stupid.” With that statement, he kissed the top of my head and pushed off the couch, stalking right out the door. Not even a GTG face.

  And dang, if his butt didn’t look good strutting away.

  12. The Island of Misfit Toys

  Detention came quicker than a forest fire in the dead of a California summer. Detention usually held a shroud of secrecy if you were on the outside looking in. But since Coach Wallace was close to Grumpy and me, he gave us a heads up that our punishment—or rehabilitation—was to do homework and paint a section of the cafeteria that needed a face-lift. Can I get a what-what??!! If anyone would gripe about how this painting job wasn’t as fun as their last gig (translation: Coach’s car), my guess was I’d found the proper venue.

  Murphy referred to detention as The Island of Misfit Toys. How fitting that one of my brothers was stranded here with me.

  Where I was stoked for the entire detention experience, Grumpy seemed petrified of the possibilities. Even though his fate wasn’t technically at my hands, I’d searched all week for an act of atonement. I eventually told him I’d help him land Clementine as a date for our Winter Formal. This at least produced a smile, and on some weird plane I think he believed detention would make him look like a bad-boy.

  Maybe Clementine was the bad-boy type.

  At seven forty, he puttered up the driveway in his clunker Ford pick-up truck. It was at least two decades old and at one time had been navy. The passenger side door had been T-boned; the silver bumper hung by not enough bolts. Both of us dressed in old sweatshirts—mine white, his gray—with ratty jeans that looked like a werewolf had slashed into shreds. I’d added a baby blue crocheted beanie, going for a hipster look. Grumpy added—heck, nothing.

  “This feels like a date, Grumpy,” I told him as I sat down. Coupledom wasn’t a category I’d ever place him in. Out of all my brothers, he was the closest one to blood…as dysfunctional as that sounded.

  He shot over a dark look. “Shut up, Walker. This will be the last time I wind up on the wrong side of the law with you.” Funny, I had a feeling we’d be dodging the wrong side of the law for the rest of our lives.

  My iPhone rang, and a peek at the number showed my best friend’s gorgeous smile. “Crap,” I muttered, shoving the screen in Grumpy’s face. He shook his head, calling Dylan an enabler.

  “I’m cuffed and in the back of the squad car,” was my greeting.

  Silence for a beat. “Darcy,” he started, and then I registered he was scarily formal.

  “Yes, Master?”

  “Do exactly as you’re told, sweetheart. Don’t make waves, and do not,” he repeated sternly, “crack an off-color joke. The guys running the show might not have a sense of humor. Just shut up and take the punishment. Yeah?”

  Dylan acted as though he’d be leaving a nuclear bunker unsecure. Seriously, that felt about right. “I’ll try,” I answered, “but when I’m nervous I say stupid things.”

  There was a moment when Dylan probably debated how to keep that from happening. But it was a given, like death and taxes. “Darcy,” he pleaded again. “I’m here to talk to if there’s something that’s bothering you. Let me share some of the burden.”

  Sheesh, that’s like a please-let-me-have-your-baby chat. What sixteen-year-old guy say
s ‘share the burden?’ I’ll tell you who: the guy who’s headlining every girl’s naughty dreams at night, that’s who.

  “There’s nothing to share,” I muttered.

  “Then please conform. Just this once.”

  Dylan had a great morning voice: husky, raspy, and sex hopped up on sex. If I could bottle it and sell it to the terrorists, it just might be the answer to world peace. I could do without his running commentary on my life, though. In fact, I woke in a total mind squeeze when I remembered what we’d spoken of earlier. The we’re-dating-once-you-conduct-a-science-experiment convo. Dylan had stripped his soul bare, and it wasn’t a hey-let’s-hook-up conversation. He said I meant more to him than anyone ever had and honestly wasn’t intimidated by the prospect of other guys. In fact, his cocky self appeared humored when he claimed he’d already won. And even though I knew he genuinely cared—and we’d danced around this issue in the past—being direct had been so intense…

  I seriously peed my pants a little.

  I sighed, “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  “One more thing. Swear to me you don’t have an ulterior motive here. I know you didn’t ask to be ambushed, but something smells wrong. You’re unusually quiet—at least with me. Swear to me you aren’t working one of your little schemes because nothing makes sense…except that. Pinky swear,” he growled.

  All my ventures were filtered through the how-not-to-get-caught paradigm. Dylan was the main obstacle. Problem was, I’d rather chew a kill-pill than deal with broody Dylan, but I wouldn’t lie and pinky swear. I didn’t have many standards, but that one I’d never manipulate.

  “Call you later,” I whispered, hurrying up and cutting the call.

  “How was the conversation with Taylor?” Grumpy asked.

  I gnawed on my pinky nail. “Rainbows and roses,” I joked.