All. Over.
I lean back down and open my mouth around hers. The feel of her skin pressing against mine causes me to moan with pleasure, which I think she likes; I assume so based off of the way she grips my triceps and uses them as leverage to arch her back and press into me more aggressively. She’s never done that before, so I know it happened instinctively and not intentionally, but either way, it turns me on even more.
I feel like my heart is beating as fast as the wings of a hummingbird. I’m also certain that there are fireworks exploding in my stomach. I can’t catch my breath, but I don’t know that I want to. Grayson has never kissed me as passionately as he is right now and it feels amazing. He’s doing things with his tongue that I didn’t know he could do. And the feel of his hands—his hands! Big and warm, strong yet gentle…He’s it’s making it impossible to think.
Impossible!
I’m aware that we’ve just crossed a line we never have before, but it happened so naturally that it didn’t seem right to kill the moment in order to stop him. Besides, it feels so incredibly good to be under him right now—and his desperate want for me is obvious, in more ways than one, and I’ve never felt as beautiful or as desirable or as treasured as I do right now.
He pulls his mouth from mine and I mourn our severed connection, but only until he begins sucking and nibbling his way down my neck and between my barely-there-breasts. His attention makes me feel like I might just melt, my core heating me from the inside out. When he reaches behind me and his fingers find the clasps of my bra, I start to panic.
“Sonny?” I barely manage.
A fraction of a second.
A fraction of a second—that’s how long it takes me to return to my right mind. Now, I’m feeling more nervous than excited. I’m not sure if I’m ready to go there—he just took my shirt off, and now he wants me completely topless? No, no, no, no—too much, too fast.
His hand pauses before I come undone, but he doesn’t stop kissing me. “Trust me. It’s okay, just trust me. Let me show you how much I love you. You’re beautiful. Avery, you’re absolutely perfect.”
I think his words are meant to keep me in this moment, but they do the opposite. I don’t know what he means by, let me show you how much I love you. I know how much he loves me. He shows me every day. I don’t need to get naked for him to express it anymore clearly.
At least, not in this stage of our relationship.
“Sonny, can we just slow down, please?”
“Baby, just let me show you,” he whispers as his fingers go back to work.
Baby? Did he just call me baby? He never calls me that.
Suddenly, I’m feeling more than uncomfortable. It’s as if I’ve lost my Sonny. Whoever it is that’s just unhooked my bra with little to no effort, he’s not my Sonny. “Grayson, stop.”
“I can’t,” he whispers before aligning his mouth with mine.
I don’t like this. I don’t like this. I don’t like this!
“Stop!” It dawns on me, as I push him away, that I’ve never had to ask him to stop twice, let alone three times. Not ever. I’m trembling when I roll away from him, hugging my arm across my chest so as to keep my bra on. When I’m on my feet, I turn my back to him as I work to adjust myself. I’m crying as I reach for my shirt and tug it over my head. My thoughts are whizzing through my mind a million miles per hour and I can’t focus on anything, aside from the fact that he wouldn’t stop. I don’t realize how hard I’m shaking until I open my mouth to speak and the sound of my voice quivers with the rest of my body. “Why wouldn’t you stop?”
My back is still to him because I’m too afraid to look at him. When he doesn’t speak, I turn around. He’s shifted so that he’s sitting up, his legs are draped over the edge of the bed and his feet are on the floor. His elbows are propped onto his knees and his head is being held up by his hands. Even hunched over, I can’t help but admire the sculpture that he is. For just a second, I mourn the lost opportunity to explore every dip and curve of his smooth, defined chest with my hands—with my mouth. His skin still wears summer’s kiss and his shoulders are spotted with freckles. I bite my lip as my eyes travel to the auburn hair that trails its way from his belly button down into—No. His gorgeous body doesn’t distract me long, and as I shake away my lust, I realize that he hasn’t answered my question.
“Grayson, why wouldn’t you stop?” I ask again. He doesn’t speak. Instead, his shakes his head, as if that’s an adequate answer. “Are you really not going to say anything?” When he shrugs, my heart sinks. What is happening right now? “Grayson!” I cry.
“I don’t know what to say,” he mumbles.
My jaw drops. I can’t believe this is happening. Am I dreaming? Sweet Jesus in heaven, please let me be dreaming…“What do you mean, you don’t know what to say? What just happened? Why didn’t you stop? Why aren’t you talking to me?”
“Because I don’t know what to say!” he replies, shooting his head up so that our gazes meet.
His words crush me. Now, I don’t know what to say either. I know only one thing for sure, I don’t want to be in this room with him a second longer than I have to be. I snatch up my jacket, not even bothering to put it on, before I grab my bag and my cello and hurry out the door.
Not once does he try and stop me.
Shit.
It’s after midnight. I should be sleeping. I have an exam in the morning. I have a recital tomorrow evening. I have an orchestra concert on Thursday. I should be sleeping. I still have the hardest part of my week ahead of me. I should be sleeping.
I should be sleeping but I’m not tired. I can’t even imagine closing my eyes right now. Instead, as I sit with my legs crossed in the middle of my bed, all I can do is replay what happened tonight in Sonny’s room. Over and over again, I see it in my head. I feel his hands on my body—his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. Over and over I try and figure out what I did wrong, how I managed to send him the wrong message—I try and figure out at what point he thought I was ready to be naked with him. No matter how many times I replay the scene, I can’t justify or explain his behavior. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what I might have done to encourage his advances, I told him to stop. I told him to stop and he wouldn’t!
And what was that crap about letting him show me that he loves me? He has actually never made me feel so insignificant as he did in that moment. I’m actually not even sure how it’s possible that he was able to take me so high that I felt like I was flying and then turn around and make me feel like it didn’t matter what I wanted because he was going to get what he wanted regardless of how it made me feel. It was almost as if he wasn’t himself at all.
No. That wasn’t my Sonny. I’m not sure who that was, unless…
I reach for my pillow and pull it to my chest, burying my face in the top as I begin to cry. As if someone snapped their fingers and planted the truth in my head, I understand. The Grayson who unhooked my bra, even though I asked him to slow down, the Grayson who didn’t say a word as I gathered my things and left, he’s the Grayson who’s slept with seven different women. Seven different women that he wasn’t in love with. Seven different women who probably helped him take off their bras—and their pants—and their panties. His sexual desires have been awakened and explored and satisfied more times than I’ll probably ever know, so how can I expect him to wait for me? How naive of me to think that I could share any sort of physical intimacy with him before he couldn’t take it anymore.
It kills me to think that his promises might just have been words. I mean, how can I think any different? It would be different if we both got lost and neither one of us could find the will to stop. But I did! And when I asked him to stop, instead of taking a breath like he usually does, he just kept on going—where was his fight? He left me to do it all alone.
And he called me baby.
Suddenly, my head is filled with images of him in bed with other girls. As he helps them out of their clothes, he calls them baby. I know
that I shouldn’t allow my head to go there, but it’s too late. Sex doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to him. How can it? I’ve never done it before, he’s done it with more than half a dozen women! I feel so stupid.
But more than anything else, I feel incredibly hurt. He’s supposed to make me feel safe, but he made me feel panic. He’s supposed to make me feel loved, but in that moment, he took that away from me. He didn’t even apologize. That’s what makes this whole thing suck so much. If he had shown me just a sliver of remorse, I’d probably see this whole situation from a different vantage point. He got carried away—okay—but he wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t anything. He had nothing to say.
His silence is what did me in. His silence is what broke my heart.
I wake up feeling groggy, unsure when it was that I fell asleep. I didn’t even change out of my clothes. It only takes me a second to remember why I feel so horrible; as soon as I do, I want to take a shower. I take that back. I want to cry and then take a shower. As I reach for my phone, I notice two things. First, I don’t have time to cry and shower unless I do them simultaneously. Second, I’ve got a text from Sonny.
My Hottie: Avery…please call me. I’m sorry.
As my eyes fill with tears, I’m stuck with an unexpected chill. I realize that I don’t want to talk to him. He just apologized to me in a text. He lives downstairs and he apologized to me in a text!
Me: I’ve got a crazy day today. I can’t. I just…can’t.
I’m not sure if my dismissal is fair, but I’m too exhausted to care. I have so much I need to get done today—
Baby, just let me show you.
My silent tears become a full on cry as the scene is reawakened in my mind. Maybe I won’t be showering today. I pull my hair to one shoulder, succumbing to my emotional distress, and begin weaving it into a braid. As I do so, I chisel away at my heart while I somehow manage to imagine how it could have been. He’s usually so gentle with me, totally aware that I’ve never gone very far physically with anyone but him. When he takes his time and tentatively explores, asking my permission with his hesitant advances, that’s when I feel like a gift he wishes to take his time and unwrap. I’ve never felt his impatience like I did last night.
What happened?
Why didn’t he stop?
Why wouldn’t he talk to me?
My phone alerts me to another text. After I tie off the end of my long braid, I open the message.
My Hottie: Okay.
I gasp as I read his one word reply. I stare at my screen for at least a minute, waiting to see if something else will follow.
It doesn’t.
I get up and slam my phone down onto my desk. I rip off my clothes and change into a fresh outfit before hurrying to the bathroom. I brush my teeth and splash water on my face, fuming the entire time. When I’m finished, I grab what I need for the day, slip into a pair of shoes, and head out the door.
I forget about breakfast, but I’m too angry to care.
My phone, on the other hand, was left on purpose.
I don’t know when, why, or how it happened, but my boyfriend is suddenly a total ass.
She’s going to leave me. If she doesn’t, she should. I deserve it.
People have been leaving me my whole life. It sucks every time. But this—this is different. This time I brought it upon myself. This time I’m to blame. I pushed too far; I’ve pushed her away. What reason have I left her to come back? I never deserved her in the first place. I told her—I told her that I wasn’t good enough for her. She said she’d never believe it…well, I just proved it.
A lie is one thing. A secret—it’s just not the same as what I did. I took advantage of what she was offering me in that moment and I made her feel afraid. The look in her eyes—I despise myself for putting it there. I broke the trust she had with me for her body and that seems so much more significant than any of the other trust she’s offered me. On top of that, I broke my promise to wait and I broke every promise I ever made to myself to protect her, even if that meant protecting her from me.
She’s going to leave me. If she doesn’t, she should. I deserve it.
The ironic part is, I was trying to make her stay. Over the last several weeks, I’ve felt like she was being taken away from me. Both of us were being claimed by our schedules and it was becoming overwhelmingly frustrating. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I just wanted her back. I needed to make her mine, to communicate to her that I am here and that I want her to stay with me always—no matter what. That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to make women stay.
And yet, no matter how much pleasure I was able to provide, they eventually always left anyway.
I guess I thought it would be different with Avery. I thought our love would make it different. Better. After a night of restless sleep, I see now how much of an ass I am for thinking that. Avery isn’t like any of the other people who have left me. Now, when she leaves, I won’t need an explanation. I’ll know.
I’ll know it was all my fault.
I’ve got two flights booked for my upcoming interviews at Stanford and Baylor College. I’ll be going to California on Monday and Texas on Tuesday. I received my final rejection, from the University of California in the mail yesterday, so these are the only two trips I’ll be making. It all seems to be happening so fast—the rejections, the interviews. Knowing that I’ve only got two chances to impress a school enough to accept me into their medical program, it makes the whole process seem that much more daunting. With every day that goes by, I get a little more nervous and a little less confident. This isn’t exactly how I planned it. I thought I’d at least have more interviews. Now, there is a good chance that I might not be accepted into any program next year and I’ll have to start the application process all over again in another year.
What, exactly, will I find to do in the mean time?
I don’t like to think about that. I try and remind myself that it’s not over yet. I’ve got two interviews to look forward to and I’ll just have to kick ass at both of them.
I’ve been talking to my advisor and my dad just about every day, trying to prepare myself for what’s to come. Ultimately, though, I think it’ll come down to staying calm under pressure. I can’t be any more than who I am and I can’t bring anymore to the table than what I have. And since I’ll be leaving in just a handful of days, I really just need to relax. That, however, is easier said than done—especially considering I’m currently residing with the most melancholy best friend in the world. I swear, he’s like Eeyore…only worse.
With my exams behind me, and my travels before me, I’d say now is a good time to get out of the apartment. No, strike that. I think now’s a good time to get Grayson out of the apartment. When I woke up Wednesday morning, he was a total grump. Today is no different. Something happened between him and Avery; I know not because he’s told me, but because he hasn’t told me. He only gets like this when he and Ave are fighting. The two of them are made for each other, of that none of us have ever had any doubt; but they have some really high highs and some really low lows—and the lows are tough on everyone.
“Put your shoes on, grab a jacket, we’re getting out of here,” I tell him, poking my head into his room. He’s stretched out across his bed staring at the ceiling. If it weren’t for his exams, I’m not sure that he would move from that spot at all. Seeing as how I know his final mid-term took place this morning, I’m afraid it’s up to me to keep him from becoming one with his mattress.
“I’m not going out.”
“Gray, you’re killing me here. We can at least go grab a bite to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
When his stomach growls its disagreement I shake my head and invite myself in. I make my way to the chair at his desk, turn it around, and sit facing him. He keeps his gaze trained on the ceiling. “What happened? I know you keep telling me you don’t want to talk about it, but that’s not going to work anymore.”
“I don’t want to
talk about it.”
I drop my head in frustration. He’s not going to make this easy. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. You guys just need to talk it out.”
“She doesn’t want to talk it out.”
“Come on, I know you’ve got more fight in you than that,” I scoff. “How hard have you tried?”
“You don’t get it.”
“Well, explain it to me.”
He pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks straight at me. His bloodshot eyes give away the depth of his anguish and I know, just by taking a good look at him, that this fight isn’t like the last one. It’s worse.
“I screwed up, okay? I pushed her—I pushed her away. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and in one moment, I screwed it all up. She’s not going to want me now. I’m going to lose her. She’s going to leave me and it’s all my fault. I can’t even be surprised! She’s too good for me. Always has been. So excuse me if I don’t have any more fight in me.”
“Hold on a second,” I begin to argue. “Has she told you she’s leaving?”
“I asked her to talk and she said no. She hasn’t said a word since.”
“She loves you, man. Don’t give up so easily.”
The Promises We Keep (Made for Love Book 1) Page 45