And no, I hadn’t told Jamie about my feelings for Liv.
She’d guessed.
She’d said it was obvious the moment she saw the two of us together. If it were so obvious, then why did Liv not see?
Jamie had not been able to answer that. And honestly our time together was better spent working on her charity than in discussing my feelings for Liv.
Though it had been nice to have my secret out in the open for once, even if it was with the wrong girl.
“You must be so busy,” Cameron’s friend Ella was saying.
“I suppose,” I said. Was I busier than the typical high school student? Perhaps. Life had become a never-ending parade of meetings at which my father did most of the speaking on my behalf, or phone calls with the publicist, during which I wasn’t expected to say much at all, or using my new influence to raise funds for Jamie’s charity.
Also, there was school. But schoolwork had never been difficult for me. That took up the least amount of mental faculties. Through it all, my brain was almost always occupied by Liv.
“Don’t you think?” Cameron asked.
I tore my gaze away from Liv, who’d been rudely ignored by this group of girls I’d rarely if ever spoken to before. It was difficult to look away when Liv was smiling at me like that. What was more, all of Liv’s attention was on me, even though I spotted a familiar and unwelcome former classmate standing right next to her. But Cameron’s direct question made it necessary for me to look away. Though I was often rude by accident, I tried not to behave badly on purpose. “Pardon me?”
Cameron opened her mouth to presumably repeat the question, but it seemed Liv had had enough. “Okay, ladies, that’s all for the Q&A portion of the evening.” She cleared a path through the group and linked her arm through mine. “Let’s let Harmon High’s new celebrity breathe, shall we?” She turned me toward the dance floor and gave me a little shove. “Come on, Romeo, show me some of your new moves.”
A laugh bubbled up at her possessive attitude. I liked it. Liv had always been overprotective of me, but this was something different. The look in her eyes when those girls had been talking to me…it had been something awfully close to jealousy.
“What are you smirking at?” she asked with narrowed eyes as we headed toward the dance floor.
I shook my head. I’d been too afraid to hope lately, but now I was starting to think maybe I hadn’t been wrong all along. Maybe there was a chance my plan for the night wouldn’t blow up in my face.
We both came to a stop in the middle of the dance floor and she looked up at me with an expectant smile. “So? Let’s see these moves, hotshot.”
I glanced around at the teenagers who were pulsating and gyrating. I frowned. “I didn’t learn to dance like this.”
She let out a cute little snort laugh before bursting into movement. I watched her. This was pretty much how we’d always danced at every school event since grade school, when Liv had first made me tag along with her.
I stood there watching as she tossed her head back and let loose with wild abandon. I had no desire to dance. But watching Liv? It was better than anything else in the world.
When the song came to an end, she was laughing and I was enchanted. People were probably staring but neither of us cared. For the length of that one song, everything was normal. I forgot all about the new pressure of being in the public eye, and I could even forget that Liv and I were going to different schools and I was in a new town.
For right now, everything was the same.
And I was about to blow it all up.
The thought made my mouth go dry as I followed her to the sidelines. I noticed a few of the judgy sneers Liv got—no one else ever seemed to appreciate her dance moves the way I did—but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you going to dance like that at the magazine gala?”
She turned to face me when we found a place to rest near the far wall, away from prying eyes and on the opposite side of the room from Julie and her friends. And Mikey. I felt that smirk coming back.
I was surprised to find that she was eyeing me warily. “Why? Would I embarrass you if I did?”
My head jerked back. “Of course not. You could never embarrass me.”
Something flickered across her face, something I couldn’t read. Then just as quickly it was replaced by a smile as she gave her head a little shake. “Sorry, it’s just…” She twisted her hands together in a gesture I didn’t recognize. Was she… Was this…
“Are you nervous?” I didn’t exactly mean to say it, and I certainly hadn’t intended for it to come out as an accusation.
She winced. “No! Not really. It’s just…I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”
My heart kicked up its pace and the adrenaline that shot through me was sweet torture. She was going to beat me to it. I couldn’t let that happen, I needed to man up for once. Liv was always the forthright one in our friendship, but this had to come from me. I opened my mouth to say it first, but she blurted out her next words too quickly.
“I think you should take Jamie to the gala.”
I blinked. Then I stared at her as disappointment made my heart sink down to the region of my lower intestines. I cleared my throat. “Pardon me?”
“Or someone else.” Her expression was pained but her eyes were pleading. “This is a big deal for you, Jackson.”
The use of my last name right now felt like a punch in the gut. It was like she was physically shoving me into the friend zone.
As if you’d ever left.
“This is a big deal for you,” she was saying. “There will be press there, and a lot of important people. I’ve never even been to a formal function, but someone like Jamie will be able to help you.”
My head was buzzing and I barely heard her next words, all about how I’d be in the spotlight and I needed to take someone who’d make me look good. How this was my first impression to the world, how I had to look the part…it went on and on. I finally cut her off because I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I asked you.” My voice came out gruffer than intended. “I want to take you.”
I watched her eyes widen in surprise at my tone. It wasn’t often that I got emotional, and when I did, it was rarely anger. It was never anger toward Liv. But right now? All the frustrations of the past two years raced to the surface and I had to tamp down the urge to shout. Could she really not see? Was it really that unthinkable?
I stared down at our feet and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go with Jamie. I want to take you.”
When I glanced up her eyes were still wide and they were filled with a jumble of emotions that were impossible to name. There was warmth there, and tenderness, and…fear.
My anger faded fast in the face of it. I understood that fear because I’d felt it too. But at some point, I’d gotten past it—the fear had been swallowed alive by wanting. By desire. By the hope of what could be.
I let out a long exhale. “Tell me you don’t want to go as my date, too.” I spoke quietly but I knew she could hear me even with the crappy pop song blaring on the dance floor. Even with a crowd shuffling around us, and with eyes on us from every quarter, I knew she was only seeing me. She was only aware of me, just like she was the only person in my world right now. The only one who mattered.
Her lips moved and I realized she was trembling. She caught her lower lip with her teeth to stop it.
I wanted to reach out and give her a friendly hug, but that would be the easy way out. If I touched her, if I pulled her close, she would be in my arms and I would be comforting her, and this moment would end. It would end in relief, but the moment would be gone.
This right here? It was tense, and it was uncomfortable, but if we didn’t face it… If I didn’t face it, I didn’t know if I could look myself in the eye the next time I looked in the mirror. “What are you afraid of, Liv?”
She’d been staring at my tie, as if the knot at my throat was some sort of puzzle she
could solve, but my question had her eyes flicking up to meet mine. She swallowed. For a second I thought she might not respond. I held my breath as I waited.
“I don’t want things to change.” I’d never heard her voice like this. She sounded breathy and small and so vulnerable it made my heart ache.
“They already have,” I said.
She held my gaze for a long moment and her lips twitched up at the corners. She couldn’t deny that things had changed this year…drastically. The crazy wildfire success of my app had been one thing. We’d managed to treat that like the freak phenomenon that it was. But this year with all its changes—the sudden money, the actual publicist who now insisted that I be the face of the app, the new school, the distance between us—this was all new, and from the look in her eyes I knew that it scared her to death.
I guess I’d always known that, but it was rare for me to see it. Liv wasn’t one to show fear. She hid behind her bravado and sass. I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to her and reassuring her that nothing would change.
That would be a lie—we already had changed. And I never lied to Liv.
Besides, this wasn’t about all those changes that had already occurred, it was about the change that hadn’t.
“I’m afraid we’ll change,” she said, her eyes filled with pleading. She wanted me to understand, and I did. She was afraid of what would happen if we stopped being friends. Stopped being just friends.
I understood it, because I shared that fear. But there was another option that scared me even more. All I could tell her was the truth. “I’m afraid we won’t.”
She met my gaze evenly but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, or if she even understood what I meant by that. Was I scared of what would happen if we stepped out of the friend zone? Yeah. Change is scary. But at some point over the past two-plus years I’d come to fear one thing more—never leaving the friend zone. That fear propelled me to keep going. To force this conversation even though she was clearly scared to death of where this was going.
“I’m afraid I’m never going to get to kiss you,” I said. Her eyes turned to saucers and her lips parted. “I’m afraid I’ll never be able to hold you in my arms the way I want to,” I continued.
“Oliver,” she said, her voice small and desperate.
“There’s no going backwards,” I said.
I watched with gut-clenching desire as she licked her lips, every muscle in my body tensed for her response.
“I know that,” she said. “And you shouldn’t go backwards. You shouldn’t be held back.” I stiffened defensively at her pleading tone. “You should be moving forward,” she said, and somehow I knew that ‘forward’ didn’t include her. “I want that…for you. You deserve all the good things that are coming your way. You deserve the attention, and the money, and the glory, and th—the girls.”
I frowned at that. It was always about what she wanted for me. And somehow that always seemed to include me dating…someone else. Everybody else. I tried not to pay attention to the stab of hurt that thought brought about. I was certain that tonight I’d seen jealousy in her eyes when I’d merely talked to other girls. I clung to that memory now. “What do you want?” I asked.
It was a simple question, but one would have thought I’d just asked her to solve an algebra equation. She blinked, her brows drawing together in confusion. I held back a sigh of irritation. Sometimes my best friend was generous to a fault. Like with me, for example. She always believed the best of me, wanted the best for me, but for herself? She was either willing to settle or deny what she wanted.
Stuart was the perfect example of the former, and as for the latter? Well, I was banking that I knew the answer to what it was that she really wanted.
I was placing all my bets on me. On us.
Liv’s gaze shifted slightly so it wasn’t quite meeting mine. “What do I want? Um…I don’t know. World peace, I guess?”
Against my will I felt my lips twitching up in amusement even as a surge of irritation rose up at her obvious attempt to avoid the question. “You will seriously go to any length to avoid this conversation, won’t you?”
That had her looking straight at me. “What conversation?”
I held back a sigh. “Don’t play dumb.”
Her brows flew up and she crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “Hey, just because we’re not all geniuses—”
I kissed her. Don’t ask me what the thought process was leading up to that kiss, I just did it. I’d always been better at doing than talking, and I guess something in me just snapped. If left up to Liv we could be dancing around this topic for another two years.
That initial contact was…terrifying. I’d love to say that there were sparks and magic but that very first point of contact of my lips against hers was just weird. I came in too quickly, she wasn’t expecting it, our lips smashed together with all the force of my pent-up frustration and then I retreated just as quickly because—oh holy crap, I just kissed my best friend.
I’d hazard a bet that I was just as shocked as she was. We stood there staring at one another in wide-eyed shocked silence for one heartbeat. And then, something happened.
No, something exploded.
I didn’t know who moved first or how, but the next thing I knew she was in my arms and I was holding her tight. Her lips were clinging to mine eagerly and this second kiss took on a life of its own. Here were the sparks, this was the magic I’d always knew would be there if we ever kissed. It wasn’t magic, though. It was chemistry. The feel of her pressed against me, the taste of her mouth when she parted for me… For the first time in my life, my brain stopped working. Instinct kicked in and my body took over. My senses went on high alert, absorbing all of these new, heady sensations as our lips moved together, our tongues tasted, tested…teased.
The kiss was intoxicating. Her warmth, her light, her scent, her curves—all so familiar, and yet so new.
It was heaven.
Not literally. No one died. But it was what I imagined nirvana to be like. Blissful, sweet, exciting, and the perfect fit.
Having never kissed nor been kissed before, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but nothing could have prepared me for the sweet feel of her lips gliding over mine, or of the intimacy this new bond created.
Nothing in the world could have prepared me for the heady sensations that had my arms tightening around her as if I’d never let her go. I did, eventually, but only because I needed to breathe, and presumably she did too.
Our foreheads still pressed together, I barely noticed the crick that was forming in my neck. I didn’t want to straighten. I didn’t want to pull away. I had no idea what was going on around us, and I liked it that way.
I also had no idea what she was going to say, how she was going to respond, and I wasn’t eager to find out. She might have reacted well to the kiss—oh who was I kidding? Her eager response was a dream come true. But moving away again, that meant we were back in reality.
Sure enough, I knew the moment she landed back on earth because she raised a hand to my chest and pushed gently, taking a half step back, just far enough so I couldn’t touch her.
She didn’t meet my gaze. In fact, her eyes were lighting on everything but me as she scanned the room. “Oh man, this is going to be everywhere.”
I didn’t even look to see what she was talking about. I didn’t care.
She muttered some curses under her breath and I resisted the urge to sigh with irritation. “It doesn’t matter, Liv.”
She shot me a glance, her eyes wide. “Everyone saw us.”
“So?”
She gave her head a little shake. “They all have phones.”
I stared at her.
“With cameras.”
“And?” I narrowly resisted the urge to point out rather snarkily that I had just been deemed the next tech genius by multiple news sites. I was somewhat familiar with the news gadgets called smartphones and their many uses.
Norm
ally that would be something to make Liv laugh. At this particular moment, she didn’t seem like she was about to laugh. In fact, she looked…
Oh no.
She looked like she was going to cry.
I moved closer to her and tilted my head down for a better angle to view her features. “Liv? What’s wrong?”
Her gaze shot to mine and her wide eyes told me she thought I was missing the obvious. Not an unusual look from Liv but at this particular moment, I wasn’t keen on being left in the dark. “Explain,” I said shortly.
She blinked and waved a hand around at the room around us. Presumably at the people there with their phones, which likely did house cameras. I was more concerned with Liv so I didn’t look away.
“Use words, Liv.”
She blinked, and then her brows drew down in a frown. “Stop calling me that.”
“Calling you what?”
She pressed her lips together for a moment, her nostrils flaring in indignation. “Liv.”
Now it was my turn to blink in incomprehension. “But that’s your name.”
“Yes,” she said slowly—it was the voice she used when letting me know she thought I was being particularly dense. “It’s my name, but it’s not what you call me.”
Ah.
“You call me Vance,” she said, as if I didn’t know that.
“Not anymore.”
She widened her eyes again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
We were getting off track. I reached out for her. Words weren’t working for me. Kissing? That had worked.
She shrugged me off with a hiss. “Everyone is watching.”
“So? Let them watch.” I wasn’t into exhibitionism or anything, but people made out in the corner all the time at these high school functions. It wasn’t like we were breaking the law.
She glared at me. “Do you really not get it? Pictures of us will be everywhere.”
I furrowed my brow as I studied her, trying to see this from her point of view. “And you don’t like having your photos publicized?” It struck me as odd since Liv was hardly the shy type. She posted her every move on Instagram, although I was one of her few followers.
Tall, Dark, and Nerdy: High School Billionaire #1 Page 10