“I don’t lose matches because no one knows my right leg is basically made of glass and sawdust. Half of wrestling is hiding your weaknesses so your opponent can never exploit them.”
“This must be pretty weird for you then. Describing exactly how I can do just that.”
“Actually it feels more like bursting a blister. Sort of painful but mostly a huge relief.”
“Because you always wanted to tell me how to bust your chops?”
She intended sarcasm, she really did. She intended it hard.
Only he didn’t take it that way at all. He answered it straight, and sort of softly.
“Because you’re the only person outside the team I’ve told.”
Then carried right on as though it didn’t mean anything at all.
“Now…when I lunge I tend to throw everything I got into it. So what you have to do is use it against me. You have to come back at me immediately, while I’m still committed to it.”
“Tate, if you lunge at me chances are I’m going to pass out.”
“You stood your ground when Jason threatened you with a fucking truck, Letty. If that doesn’t make you lose your goddamn mind, nothing on earth will.”
He paused then, but not to give her time to process this bombshell. He just needed it to clear the table to one side, so he could get into what she assumed was a lunge position—left leg crooked, right leg back, shoulders forward. While she stood there, heart suddenly thumping slow and thick, mouth too open, eyes too wide. If he glanced at her for even a second he would see how much he’d just affected her. How awesome it was to hear him talk as though she was brave.
But he didn’t. Like with the confession about his weaknesses—he just hit it and carried on.
“Okay, so you see how the plane of my thigh is completely open here? You need to use that. You need to use it like a step—just put your foot right up on it.”
“I really don’t think I can put my foot up on your leg.”
“Sure you can. Just give it a shot.”
“You say that like you’re not seven hundred feet tall. I think I might have to do the splits just to get anywhere close to your thigh,” she said, though that wasn’t really what bothered her.
It was the thought of what she might reveal when she did it. She was wearing jeans, but the jeans would probably pull taut in places she didn’t want them to. Parts of her would crease and form rolls—and then there was her lack of balance. He knew she would wobble.
She did wobble when she tentatively attempted it.
She gingerly lifted her right leg, and almost went sprawling.
And there was no relief when she finally planted her foot.
“Now just climb. Get ahold of my shoulder and climb until you’re behind me.”
“Are you sure this is a method of defeating you? It sounds more like you want to help me audition for Cirque du Soleil. In which case I should probably remind you: I have all the coordination of a drunk puppy.”
“Seriously, just try it. It’s way easier than it looks.”
“And you know this how? Had a lot of girls springboard off your thigh?”
“Sure, it’s my favorite thing to do from The Kama Sutra.”
She jerked back at that—though not all the way off him.
And curiously, when she spoke her tone seemed to lack any real anger.
“Are you serious Tate? Is this just you goofing off because—”
“No, no, Letty I’m kidding, okay, that was me kidding. There is no thigh springboard in The Kama Sutra. I swear to god. That was just a joke come on. Come on, just put your hands on my shoulder.”
“I…okay. Okay, yeah, I can do that.”
She reached forward, tentative as a fawn. Eyes constantly on his face, to judge whether some sudden terrible shock was coming. Yet when it did come, she still wasn’t prepared.
“Oh baby, that feels so good,” he said.
Followed by her losing most of the shit she had left.
There was hand waving and jumping back and stern words.
“You fuck face. Fuck you I hate you so much.”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that and know you weren’t being serious. Kind of like hearing it come out half full of laughter.”
“It’s going back to all full of fury in a second.”
“No it’s not; come on. Just go for it.”
“What exactly am I going for here? I mean, once I’m behind you, what then?”
“Then you get me in a headlock.”
“Oh my god this is…this is the most ludicrous self-defense class I’ve ever been a part of.”
“How many have you been to prior to right now?”
“Like twenty. In my head. While watching Kill Bill.”
“And you think this is ridiculous? In that movie she escapes a coffin by punching it. This is completely reasonable by comparison—I mean all you have to do is grab ahold of my shoulder and haul yourself around me. Just think of it like mountain climbing. My body is a rocky outcrop you need to get past,” he said, which in some ways made it easier. She managed to get her hands on him, at the very least.
It was just keeping her hands on him, once they were there. He was almost impossibly muscular and solid seeming, in a way she wasn’t really ready for. It was like grabbing the haunches of some enormous and powerful animal, right before it pounced.
And then there was the heat.
Was it normal for a human being to be this hot? Suddenly she was sweltering—though after a second she realized it wasn’t just the contact. It was all the places where no contact was happening at all. His hand was almost but not quite touching her ankle, as though waiting to support her if she lost her balance. But it didn’t feel like the safeguard he obviously intended. It felt like it was supercharging the air between them. She could almost make out the imaginary blister it was raising on her skin—but what could she say? Touching me is bad but not touching me is worse? That sounded insane. She would never be able to fully explain it.
So she simply went for it instead. She got hold of his shoulder and hauled herself around just like he had suggested, the move surprisingly easy now that she was motivated. It barely even occurred to her that her breasts brushed his arm and her butt was supremely visible to him for a good few seconds. There was no self-consciousness at all, despite the proximity of her gross body to his fantastic one.
Or at least there wasn’t until she had to put her arm around his neck.
Then things got kind of…awkward and sweaty and weird. She had to almost force her arm into position, but even then she couldn’t get it to go right against his throat. There was something too unsettling about it—too violent, she thought, as she leaned in, even though there wasn’t anything violent about it at all. If anything, it seemed more like a bizarre kind of embrace. Any closer and you could probably call it a cuddle.
And that was when it clicked.
“You know I think maybe that’s enough.”
“You do? But you’re not even in the right spot.”
The right spot is too much like intimacy, she thought.
But of course she couldn’t say it aloud. She just had to try, pushing her arm uncomfortably deep into the space between his enormous jaw and his throat. Breasts squashing against his broad back, legs too spread around his side, every inch of her bristling and bristling. The urge to back off was a living thing, writhing underneath her skin. It drove her steadily to the point where she had to pull away again.
And she would have, if it wasn’t for his laugh.
God she’d never been so grateful to hear him laugh.
“Letty, honestly, is that what you think a headlock is?”
“Well, your head is locked by my arm.”
“My head is not locked by your arm. I could blink and get out of this.”
“Because you’re a goddamn wrestler at the top of his game. You get out of headlocks for a living.”
“Okay, fair enough, fair enou
gh, just…here, lemme show you how to—”
She didn’t mean to jerk away when his hands closed over her forearm. It just happened, like feeling pain when someone stabbed you in the gut. She tried to grit her teeth against it, but still it came.
“Easy, easy.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“It’s okay. It’s cool. You want me to just tell you how?”
“No. You can…you can put your hands on me.”
“All I’m going to do is just…”
He reached up again, and this time it was better.
Partly because he went real slow.
Mostly because he was weirdly excellent at saying soothing things. That laid-back drawl she used to loathe so much swung effortlessly into a low sweetness. And each time she tensed, he gave her a little more of it. He doled it out like good medicine, until she was barely thinking about the closeness of their bodies at all. Instead, she focused on squeezing right where he told her to squeeze. At first gently, but then as hard as he prompted her to go. Go on, he urged, so she did. She tensed the muscles in her arm and tightened one hand around the other, until her heart was pounding and her breath was coming fast.
With the effort, she told herself.
But had no idea if that was true.
It could have been something else that made her bare her teeth and bear down hard. He’d told her to do it, but telling her to do it wasn’t a great excuse. Not when she could nearly feel the pulse in his throat and the hand on her arm had slipped away and he was…he was…
Oh, Jesus, he was sagging forward like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Oh my god, Tate. Tate are you going to sleep? Am I putting you to sleep? Jesus Christ no, no, wake up, wake up, this is not cool. It’s not cool. I don’t like this, wake up now.”
She released him and jumped back, but that was a mistake. Now he was falling backward instead of forward. She had to brace herself against his shoulder blades to stop him from crashing to the ground—though it wasn’t exactly a successful move. Her feet started sliding as soon as she did it. She just wasn’t big or strong enough to hold his enormous bulk, and now he was going to crush her.
This was how she was going to die.
Squashed like a bug beneath Tate’s dead body.
“Tate, fuck, I can’t hold you up,” she said, but still he kept coming.
She was almost on the floor by the time he shook himself awake.
“Yeah,” he half slurred as he staggered woozily to his feet. “That’s much more like it.”
“So knocking you unconscious and getting crushed by your body was the aim?”
“Pretty much. Except, you know, if I attack you, just let me crash to the ground.”
“I was more afraid for it than I was for you. Probably would have punched a hole to the floor below.”
He grinned, not in the least bit offended.
And then he told her why.
“Feel a little more comfortable now?”
She answered yes, because it was true. She did in fact feel more comfortable about being close to him. How could she not, after spending an hour play-wrestling with him in the goofiest possible way she could imagine? Hitler would probably seem like a great guy to hang out with, after that.
Yet when they sat down, it suddenly seemed like a lie.
Their knees bumped beneath the table, and when they did, a strange, slithery tingle ran right up the inside of her thigh. Like the kind of thing that usually happened when she felt embarrassed, only more intense somehow. Sharper, as though humiliation had just stabbed her. She had to spread her legs around the bulk of his to avoid it happening again, but doing so only seemed to make it worse.
The space she opened up between them turned hot and thick—just as it had when his hand came close to touching her. And the longer they sat there, the hotter it got. It burned, in a way that made it impossible to concentrate. She read over the same paragraph thirteen times and still it didn’t sink in.
Though she did her best to pretend. She kept her head down, one hand almost shielding her face from view. Occasionally she wrote something in her notepad, sure he wouldn’t notice that all of it was an irrelevant mess of song lyrics. He was probably just concentrating on the book he was looking at: The Female Body in Film. It had plenty for him to concentrate on, after all. Lots of juicy pictures of babes in tiny panties.
Or so she thought.
“Not really convinced we should write three joint essays and deliver two presentations on the lyrics to ‘You Ruin Me’ by The Veronicas.”
She kept her head down in the wake of his words.
It made answering easier—and more convincing.
“I…that was just a reminder for me for later on.”
“You wanted to remind yourself about some song lyrics?”
“Why would I lie about a thing like that?”
“I have no idea. You tell me, honey.”
“I’ll tell you that we are supposed to be studying.”
“I know. Why do you think I’m so concerned?”
“You’re not concerned at all. If you were you would be silently writing things down right now.”
“Silently writing things down, got it. No problem, boss.”
He sounded sincere—though it still surprised her when she heard the slide of his pen over paper. Halting at first, but then quicker and more sure. Soon all she could hear was frantic scribbling, as though he was really getting into it. He was forgetting her pretend notes and their banter, and just doing the work. She was sure of it.
And then came the note.
The torn-off, jaggedly written note, pushed under her nose.
So what do you like about “You Ruin Me”?
Of course she tried to resist replying. She really did. But he was talking about the song. He knew the song. And he had crossed out and started again so many times. She could see one sentence beneath the scribbles: it would be really cool if we could talk a little bit.
Then suddenly her pen was scribbling underneath his question.
I like that you knew it well enough to guess where those words came from.
You think I’m going to be embarrassed about being a fan of The Veronicas?
You used to be embarrassed about stuff like that.
And now I wish I hadn’t wasted so much of my time worrying about what the right thing to wear or say or do was. Look where it got me.
Being forced to study by your mortal enemy?
No. Seeing you call yourself my mortal enemy.
She hesitated there, pen hovering over the space she was supposed to fill. That one underlined word—call—going around and around in her head until the urge to write no in ten-foot-tall capital letters was enormous. It took almost everything she had to dial it back, and even when she managed to, her writing came out like his. Jagged and too firmly pressed into the paper.
Full of emotion she didn’t intend.
I don’t really feel like I am anymore.
What do you feel like you are?
Someone who needs to study, Tate, come on.
Answer truthfully and we can. I will. Just this one. Please?
Now she did look up, too desperate to see his expression to do anything else. Was he happy? Sad? Full of resentment? Just joking around? She couldn’t tell from his handwriting, or from the words themselves. She needed to see his face, no matter what was written all over it.
And then she did, and wished she hadn’t. He looked agonized, she thought, as if waiting for her answer was a terrible strain on him. Though once she had written it everything shifted again. I think we are friends, she wrote, and he simply nodded. He didn’t seem relieved or particularly pleased. He just carried on with his work then, as though all that other stuff had never happened. And she felt like it hadn’t, too.
Until they both got up to go. They shook hands and went off with separate things to work on, her just a little way in front of him. Or at least she thought she was just a little way in front of him
. When she glanced behind herself and saw he wasn’t there, she went back. She stood in the shade of the shelf she’d just passed, and watched him do something he obviously thought she would never see.
He tore off the paper that held her last words to him, carefully, so carefully.
Then just as carefully folded it up, and slipped that we are friends into his wallet.
Chapter 8
The party was so loud the walls of Kappa Phi seemed to shake. At least three different sets of speakers were playing three different sets of songs, and on top of that everyone present was either laughing, yelling, or knocking something over. It was total bedlam.
Yet somehow she still heard Lydia loud and clear above it all.
The question was like a chain saw, buzzing through everything else.
“So how did it go?”
Of course Letty knew why she had asked. Tate was just over by the makeshift bar someone had set up in what was once a living room. They could see him from where they were huddled, in a corner marked COMING HERE WAS THE WORST DECISION OF ALL TIME.
He looked nothing like the guy who had encouraged her to get him in a headlock or told her about his sawdust leg. He seemed twice as big, for a start. And that guilelessness was gone, replaced by the deadly cool he had possessed in high school. His smile was easy and effortless as he talked with some bro she thought might have been on the team with him. There was no hint of uncertainty there at all—this was Tate the top-notch athlete, the popular guy, the one who knocked back beers and thumped some guy’s shoulder.
It was disconcerting enough that she didn’t know how to answer.
The piece of paper he’d slipped into his wallet now seemed like a lie.
Worse: it seemed like a hallucination.
“Oh, you know he was civil. He didn’t do anything awful, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well that’s a start. At the very least I don’t have to murder him now.”
“You would murder him for me?”
She tried to keep the hopefulness from her face.
She knew she failed, however.
“Totally. I know you’d help keep me out of prison.”
“I was just thinking how hard I would cover up your crimes.”
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 5